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Getbig Main Boards => Politics and Political Issues Board => Topic started by: Soul Crusher on August 24, 2010, 01:33:16 PM

Title: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 24, 2010, 01:33:16 PM
I am starting this thread to list the daily examples of how the Obama Admn is killing the economy and destroying jobs.  

I'll start with the Stim Bill.  See below.




  
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 24, 2010, 01:36:23 PM
Next up - killing commercial fishing jobs. 

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Obama intentionally destroying Commercial Fishing?
Boston Herald ^ | August 24, 2010 | Richard Gaines


Fishermen aim Vineyard protest at Obama By Richard Gaines / Gloucester Daily Times | Tuesday, August 24, 2010 | http://www.bostonherald.com |

Leaders of the recreational and commercial fishing industry are planning a boat protest against federal policies Thursday outside the harbor of Vineyard Haven on Martha’s Vineyard, where President Obama and his family are summer vacationing.

The protest is being organized after a bipartisan, bicameral coalition of federal lawmakers -- including the core of the President’s Congressional base on banking and health care issues -- have given up hope of working productively with Obama’s top appointee for oceans and fisheries, Jane Lubchenco, who heads the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Boats from Gloucester and New Bedford, the hub ports of New England, Point Judith, R.I., and New York and New Jersey are expected, according to Tina Jackson, president of the American Alliance of Fishermen.

The heads of the region’s two primary seafood auctions in Gloucester and New Bedford have agreed to co-sponsor the protest, with the Ciulla family that owns and operates the Gloucester Seafood Display Auction agreeing to provide fuel to boats in need of help to make the trip. An anonymous donor has given the protesters a grant of at least $5,000 for fuel vouchers.

With elements arriving from different directions, the armada is timed to meet in Vineyard Sound at noon on Thursday. The Coast Guard was being informed of the action, Jackson said Monday.

A co-organizer is the Recreational Fishermen’s Alliance, the lead organizing group behind the national protest outside the U.S. Capitol in February that drew as many as 5,000 demonstrating against federal policies seen as heavily tilted against the industry and unduly swayed by non-government environmental organizations.

Since her appointment to head the NOAA by President Obama, Lubchenco, who had been an officer of the Environmental Defense Fund and a leader of the Pew Oceans Commission, has pushed to convert the fisheries into commodities markets under a management system known as catch shares.

In a statement to the Times soon after her confirmation by the Senate, Lubchenco’s office said her goal was to see a "significant fraction of the vessels ... removed."  

With the stocks rebuilding strongly, fishermen wonder at the need to reduce the size of the work force.

Mayors Carolyn Kirk of Gloucester and Scott Lang of New Bedford have condemned federal fisheries policies for bringing unnecessary social and economic hardship as a certain price for the uncertain resource management benefits of catch share regulations.

Lubchenco has argued that consolidation, which has consistently followed catch shares, produces fewer but better jobs while giving the government a stronger hand in conservation.


The industry sees catch shares as an invitation for market speculation that will condemn the fishing culture to the same fate that conglomeration brought to the family farm.  

New England’s groundfishery, America’s oldest continuing industry which had harvested commonly owned resources, was converted to catch share principles on May 1 -- with a total allocation divided and distributed to fishermen as catching rights that cane be bought, sold or traded.

But the minute size of the total allocation and the eccentric mixes of quota from the 15 species and 20 stocks in the groundfishery have pushed many businesses into -- or close to -- insolvency, a development that earlier this month brought a proposal from a bipartisan coalition of U.S. senators for a $100 million buyout.

The planned Thursday protest also comes amid growing anger over a fisheries law enforcement system that has been found by the U.S. Commerce Department’s own Inspector General’s office to have subjected the fleet to vindictive treatment and excessive fines used by the agents and lawyers to finance foreign travel and daily operating expenses.

The longtime federal fisheries police chief, Dale Jones was put on paid administrative leave in April following the first report by Inspector General Todd Zinser, but Jones remains on the NOAA payroll to the tune of $150,000 a year.

"We will be lining up to protest law enforcement abuse of funds, the blatant arrogance and abuse of Dr. Lubchenco and her ENGO (environment non-government organization) driven agenda, the continued employment of Dale Jones and every other abuse our regulators have punished our industry with over 33 years of corruption and egregious behavior," the organizers said of the protest in a prepared statement.

"There is a call for a protest of all fishermen, commercial, recreational, lobstermen," the statement said. "... Now is the time to show our backbone, our strength and our unity."

***

To see more of the Gloucester Daily Times or to subscribe, go to http://www.gloucestertimes.com/.

Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1276664



Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 24, 2010, 01:48:02 PM
Thank God this disgusting policy is put to rest for now. 

He wants to put people in coal business in the street.













And attached is a graph of job losses. 

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 24, 2010, 01:57:17 PM
Next up - Card Check - Another Union scheme that will destroy jobs.   

Even Warren Buffett & George Mcgovern hates this idea.

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Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 24, 2010, 02:04:42 PM
Killing the off theoil industry.   You morons will be paying $7 a gallon and still blaming Bush. 

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U.S. Saw Drill Ban Killing Many Jobs [ie. Obama KNEW he was destroying jobs, kept it secret]
WSJ ^ | AUGUST 21, 2010 | STEPHEN POWER And LESLIE EATON


Senior Obama administration officials concluded the federal moratorium on deepwater oil and gas drilling would cost roughly 23,000 jobs and freeze up to $10.2 billion in oil-industry investment, according to previously undisclosed documents detailing their internal debates.

Marcia McNutt, an Obama administration science adviser, commented on the corporate culture of BP in a memo sent to Michael Bromwich, the administration's new top offshore oil exploration regulator, on June 28.

Critics of the moratorium, including Gulf Coast political figures and oil-industry leaders, have said it is crippling the region's economy, and some have called on the administration to make public its economic analysis. A federal judge who in June threw out an earlier six-month moratorium faulted the administration for playing down the economic effects.

After his action, the documents show, administration officials considered alternatives but chose to impose a new drilling moratorium after concluding the industry lacked viable strategies for containing another major spill. Officials also expressed doubts internally about the reliability of the equipment the industry uses to prevent blowouts.

The administration hadn't previously disclosed its estimates of the economic effect of the controversial halt, ordered after the April explosion at a Gulf of Mexico well. The documents doing so were filed in a New Orleans federal court by the Justice Department earlier this week as part of the latest round of litigation over the moratorium.

Spanning more than 27,000 pages, they provide an unusually detailed look at deliberations about how to respond to the legal and political opposition to the moratorium...


(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...

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Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 24, 2010, 02:11:45 PM
Even some Dems are Starting to wake up.

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Obama Is Failing Because He Doesn't Understand That He Can't Create Jobs
Douglas Schoen, The Daily Beast | Aug. 23, 2010, 10:54 AM | 2,489 |  43



Billions in stimulus money have failed to make the economy soar. Douglas Schoen on how Obama has hurt the recovery by flooding America with free cash.

Recent reports from the Federal Reserve, the Labor Department , and the Commerce Department clearly and demonstratively show that the Obama Administration’s policies have not succeeded – indeed they have failed in ways that are clear and unambiguous.

The Obama administration’s policies and programs are not producing real, long lasting results, and there has been no real growth.

Put another way, an unprecedented degree of federal government spending and intervention vis-à-vis the $787 billion dollar economic stimulus package, the $81 billion dollar bailouts of GM and Chrysler, and the enactment of health care and financial regulatory and reform bills have done nothing to stimulate our anemic recovery and have fundamentally failed at creating private sector jobs, or generating economic growth necessary for a sustainable, healthy recovery.

Indeed, they have done little more than generate an unsustainable national debt, which now exceeds $13 trillion. The Federal Reserve reported that the pace of recovery in the United States “has slowed in recent months” – with a growth rate of just 2.4 percent in the second quarter down from 3.7 percent in the first quarter of 2010, and an annual rate of 5 percent at the end of 2009.

Exports are down, lending by banks continues to contract, employers are reluctant to hire, and consumer spending is at a historically weak level for a recovery period.

Obama's $787 billion economic stimulus package has failed to live up to the lofty expectations and predictions of the administration, and has failed to create the amount of jobs necessary to significantly reduce the unemployment rate.

In February 2009, the administration released a report called "The Job Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan." The report, drafted by former Council of Economic Advisers chairwoman Christina Romer, predicted that if Congress passed a stimulus plan, unemployment would plateau below 8 percent last fall and by this month register at 7 percent.

But with total nonfarm payroll employment declining by 131,000 in July, and the unemployment rate remaining at 9.5% for the second consecutive month, it is clear that the stimulus package has created few new private sector jobs, and will probably not create any new economic opportunities for them any time soon. The economy lost 8.4 million jobs in 2008 and 2009. This year, private employers have added only 559,000 jobs.

At best, it produced short-term boosts to the economy through subsidization of the public sector, with government stimulus programs like Cash for Clunkers, Home Buyer Tax Credit and construction projects.

To be sure, these programs provided an incentive to buy cars and houses in the short-term. And indeed, there was a big spike in automobile purchases when the Cash for Clunkers program went into effect last July, allowing consumers to trade in their older-model vehicles for $4,500 rebates toward more fuel-efficient new cars between July 1 and November 1, 2009.

But it is still unclear whether it has had any effect on increasing demand in the long-term. Indeed, by the end of 2009, auto sales plunged 35% right back to where they were before the stimulus was enacted. Today, the automotive industry work force is 30 percent smaller than prerecession, as evidenced in the July jobs report.

And upon thorough examination, it is clear that not only have the Obama administration’s interventions in the auto industry failed to produce the desired long-term results, it is responsible for making the situation worse in the short-term.

Take, for example, the Administration’s auto industry intervention – adding $60 billion to the bailout, and making the government the majority shareholder in GM and the United Auto Workers (UAW) union the majority shareholder in Chrysler. To be sure, the Administration’s actions did help stabilize the auto industry. But the way that they did it added to the overall cost of the bailout, and substantially reduced automotive industry employment.

According to an audit prepared by the inspector general of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, President Obama’s auto Task Force pressed General Motors and Chrysler to close scores of  dealerships and accelerated job losses. Indeed, Neil M. Barofsky, the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program of the Treasury Department, has said that the Administration "made a series of decisions that may have substantially contributed to the accelerated shuttering of thousands of small businesses and thereby potentially adding tens of thousands of workers to the already lengthy unemployment rolls…ased on a theory and without sufficient consideration of the decision's broader economic impact.”

Meanwhile, "by reaching into virtually every sector of economic life,” argues Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg, “government is injecting uncertainty into the marketplace and making it harder to raise capital and create new businesses," while implementing various programs have discouraged hiring by increasing the cost of labor.

The tax increases and regulations associated with the health care reform and financial regulation bills have exacerbated uncertainty and have effectively discouraged consumer spending.

There is a general uncertainty about the implications of Obamacare and its "bewildering array of new government agencies, regulations and mandates, " as stated in a report by Republican Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, GOP Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas and the minority staff of the Joint Economic Committee.

Indeed, twenty states and the National Federation of Independent Business have filed a lawsuit against the health care overhaul because they face imminent harm from its mandates. Finally, the passage of the financial regulation bill, which was signed into law by President Barack Obama last month, has left our financial system even more vulnerable to abuse than it was before its passage. The big banks are still too big to fail, controlling a larger share of the nation’s deposits than before the crisis, and the bill failed to address reorganizing Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.

Meanwhile, none of the 533 new regulations, 60 studies and 93 reports included in the financial regulatory overhaul provide effective restrictions or controls on mortgage-backed securities and similar financial instruments that permitted giant banks to disguise predatory lending decisions from unknowing investors.

The net result of these failed policies is that consumers are reluctant to spend, entrepreneurs are reluctant to invest, and employers are reluctant to hire to the degree necessary to spur economic growth.

We need a bold new focus from the President and his party.

Put simply, they must abandon their failed policies and adopt a bold new commitment to fiscal discipline and targeted fiscal stimulus of the private sector and entrepreneurship.

They must put forth a set of focused initiatives aimed at reducing the debt and cutting spending, with an emphasis on tax cuts, fiscal stimulus, and a series of initiatives to stimulate and encourage job creation. Specifically, the Administration should:

Extend the Small Business Innovation Research program, and expand lending through the Small Business Administration’s loan program to encourage more start-ups and enable small businesses to hire and train more workers

Declare a payroll tax holiday for new businesses so they can invest in new jobs.

Jumpstart the economy by investing in green technology and create new jobs and make the United States a leader in clean energy manufacturing, especially solar, and expand the innovation and development of renewable energy.

Expand the federal research and development tax credit to businesses that invest in research and development, and increase research grants to small businesses that are developing new technologies.

Close tax loopholes for the rich to provide real tax reduction for middle-class and working families without increasing the deficit.

Create a National Infrastructure Bank as proposed by President Obama in his 2008 campaign. This Bank will take infrastructure decisions out of the hands of politicians and out of the world of pork barrel politics, end the infamous “bridges to nowhere,” and make infrastructure decisions that contribute to growth

Above all, the Obama Administration must accept the fact that ONLY private enterprise can create jobs – more stimulus money is not the answer.

Douglas Schoen is a political strategist and author of the upcoming book "Mad as Hell: How the Tea Party Movement is Fundamentally Remaking Our Two-Party System," to be published by Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins on September 14. This post originally appeared at the Daily Beast and is republished here with permission.



Tags: TheDailyBeast.com, Obama, Stimulus | Get Alerts for these topics »

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/stimulus-money-is-not-the-answer-2010-8#ixzz0xYmG994e
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 24, 2010, 02:25:29 PM
Sounds nice, but get ready to pay $7 a gallon for gasoline.  Hoax & Change

if anything, we should get rid of the EPA to help the economy.   


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DOT, EPA Set Aggressive National Standards for Fuel Economy and First Ever Greenhouse Gas Emission Levels For Passenger Cars and Light Trucks

Release date: 04/01/2010

Contact Information: Cathy Milbourn Milbourn.cathy@epa.gov 202-564-7849 202-564-4355 NHTSA Press Office: 202-366-9550



WASHINGTON - Responding to one of the first major directives of the Obama Administration, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today jointly established historic new federal rules that set the first-ever national greenhouse gas emissions standards and will significantly increase the fuel economy of all new passenger cars and light trucks sold in the United States. The rules could potentially save the average buyer of a 2016 model year car $3,000 over the life of the vehicle and, nationally, will conserve about 1.8 billion barrels of oil and reduce nearly a billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions over the lives of the vehicles covered.

This action is one important step in fulfilling the Obama Administration’s commitment to moving towards a clean energy, climate friendly economy.

“These historic new standards set ambitious, but achievable, fuel economy requirements for the automotive industry that will also encourage new and emerging technologies,” said Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. “We will be helping American motorists save money at the pump, while putting less pollution in the air.”

“This is a significant step towards cleaner air and energy efficiency, and an important example of how our economic and environmental priorities go hand-in-hand,” said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson. “By working together with industry and capitalizing on our capacity for innovation, we’ve developed a clean cars program that is a win for automakers and drivers, a win for innovators and entrepreneurs, and a win for our planet.”

DOT and EPA received more than 130,000 public comments on the September 2009 proposed rules, with overwhelming support for the strong national policy. Manufacturers will be able to build a single, light-duty national fleet that satisfies all federal requirements as well as the standards of California and other states. The collaboration of federal agencies also allows for clearer rules for all automakers, instead of three standards (DOT, EPA, and a state standard).

Today’s final rules, issued by DOT’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and EPA, establish increasingly stringent fuel economy standards under NHTSA’s Corporate Average Fuel Economy program and greenhouse gas emission standards under the Clean Air Act for 2012 through 2016 model-year vehicles.

Starting with 2012 model year vehicles, the rules together require automakers to improve fleet-wide fuel economy and reduce fleet-wide greenhouse gas emissions by approximately five percent every year. NHTSA has established fuel economy standards that strengthen each year reaching an estimated 34.1 mpg for the combined industry-wide fleet for model year 2016.

Because credits for air-conditioning improvements can be used to meet the EPA standards, but not the NHTSA standards, the EPA standards require that by the 2016 model-year, manufacturers must achieve a combined average vehicle emission level of 250 grams of carbon dioxide per mile. The EPA standard would be equivalent to 35.5 miles per gallon if all reductions came from fuel economy improvements.

Specifically, the new National Program:

Reduces carbon dioxide emissions by about 960 million metric tons over the lifetime of the vehicles regulated, equivalent to taking 50 million cars and light trucks off the road in 2030.

Conserves about 1.8 billion barrels of oil over the lifetime of the vehicles regulated.

Enables the average car buyer of a 2016 model year vehicle to enjoy a net savings of $3,000 over the lifetime of the vehicle, as upfront technology costs are offset by lower fuel costs

“We are delivering on our mission and President Obama’s call for a strong and coordinated national policy for fuel economy and greenhouse gas emission standards for motor vehicles, and we will do so in a way that does not compromise safety,” said NHTSA Administrator David Strickland.

“These are the first national standards ever to address climate change,” said EPA Assistant Administrator for Air and Radiation Gina McCarthy. “Over the coming years, America will witness an amazing leap forward in vehicle technologies, delivering fuel efficiency that will save us money and protect the environment.”

The joint final regulation achieves the goal set by President Obama to develop a National Program to establish federal standards that meet the needs of the states and the nation as a whole to conserve energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. President Obama first announced the effort last May with a broad coalition of automakers, the United Auto Workers, States, and the environmental community.

NHTSA and EPA expect automobile manufacturers will meet these standards by more widespread adoption of conventional technologies that are already in commercial use, such as more efficient engines, transmissions, tires, aerodynamics, and materials, as well as improvements in air conditioning systems. Although the standards can be met with conventional technologies, EPA and NHTSA also expect that some manufacturers may choose to pursue more advanced fuel-saving technologies like hybrid vehicles, clean diesel engines, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, and electric vehicles.

In conjunction with the United States, Canada is also announcing Light Duty Vehicle GHG-Emissions regulations today. U.S. EPA and NHTSA have worked closely with Environment Canada to ensure a common North American approach.

Climate change is the single greatest long-term global environmental challenge. Cars, SUVs, minivans, and pickup trucks are responsible for almost 60 percent of all U.S. transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions.


More information: http://www.epa.gov/otaq/climate/regulations.htm

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 24, 2010, 02:30:43 PM
240 - says were are diverting from talks on the economy and jobs.   ::)  ::)

Lets see how many libs comment in this thread. 

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Business leaders: Obama policies 'job-destroying'
By Julianne Pepitone, staff reporterJuly 14, 2010: 6:01 PM ET



NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The U.S. Chamber of Commerce slammed President Obama's economic policies Wednesday, saying administration officials "took their eyes off the ball" and "neglected" to focus on job creation.

A letter posted to the business group's site and a summit with 500 business leaders were the latest moves in an ongoing battle between big business and the Obama administration.

Two are at odds over the best way to keep the recovery from slipping into a double-dip recession. The Chamber believes tax cuts are key to job creation. The Obama administration, however, has focused on stimulus and spending to create jobs.

The Chamber said in its letter that the administration "vilified industries while embarking on an ill-advised course of government expansion, major tax increases, massive deficits and job-destroying regulations."

The letter also included "some different approaches to unlock frozen capital and jolt our economy back to life."

The six suggestions are: create a growth and jobs tax policy; restore fiscal health; expand trade and export-driven jobs; rebuild and expand infrastructure; ease regulatory burdens; and eliminate uncertainty for business owners.

Legislation 'causing uncertainty': In a speech at the jobs summit, Chamber president Tom Donohue focused on what he considers a glut of recent legislation, including financial reform and health reform.

"We must address the cumulative job-killing impact of over-regulation," Donohue said, stressing the uncertainty he considers rampant in U.S. businesses.

Donohue also said lawmakers were "spending at astronomical levels -- we're setting ourselves up to be the next Greece," a reference to the debt crisis plaguing the European nation.

Americans for Financial Reform, a group supporting the financial reform bill that the Senate is expected to pass this week, took issue with the Chamber.

"Attempts to kill accountability and transparency for the financial sector should come as no surprise given who pulls the strings for the Chamber: Wall Street," the group said in a statement.


0:00 /4:48Whitney: Reform will hurt banks

Separately, in its latest stimulus report, the White House's Council of Economic Advisers said stimulus has already fueled about 3 million jobs. That's in line with earlier ongoing predictions from Christina Romer, chairwoman of the council.

But in January 2009, Romer predicted the stimulus package - then just a proposal from the new administration - would keep the unemployment rate around 7% at the end of 2010.

A Labor Department report earlier this month said the American economy shed 125,000 jobs in June. More than 8 million jobs have been lost since the start of the recession.

Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve's latest economic forecast was more pessimistic when on Wednesday it issued the minutes of its June meeting. The Fed now predicts the unemployment rate would be between 9.2% to 9.5% this year, slightly higher than previous estimates.
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 24, 2010, 02:56:38 PM
Wake up you morons. 

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Small Business CEOs Reveal Why They're Not Hiring: Economic Contraction, Obama, And Healthcare
Mike "Mish" Shedlock | Aug. 24, 2010, 4:41 PM | 871 |  15
A A A   

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In response to Small Businesses are Not Hiring - Should They? I received a couple emails worth sharing. The CEO of a healthcare consulting company writes ....

Hello Mish

You ran a series of articles on small businesses, hiring and expansions. I thought I would add to it.

I run a small firm, with about 45 employees and 40 contractors. We have been growing pretty well, close to 80% topline numbers for the past 3 years. Our average salary is over $100,000. We have some innovative software we sell to the industry. We also offer operational improvement strategies and IT consulting.

We provide great healthcare insurance coverage to our employees. It is necessary in order to attract talent and I am in the talent business. Our healthcare costs went up 90% this year – and that is on a 6-figure number to begin with. We found only one insurer willing to provide us coverage, United Healthcare.

Another Atlas Shrugs - Small Business Owners Chime In

Every other provider pulled out of our segment of the small business market. Cigna, our prior carrier, refused to renew at the last minute on a technicality despite being our carrier for the past 3 years.

Our management team’s focus for two weeks was seriously diverted as we dealt with the consequences of this. Had we lost coverage altogether, we would have been out of business as our employees would go elsewhere.

Our staff is young and healthy, by and large. Average age is early 30s, in the healthcare consulting, software and technology industry. Only in a severely government distorted marketplace can a firm with a young and healthy staff that has had coverage for years face insurers pulling out or demanding a 90% hike.

We had plans to add one person to our R&D staff, a low 6-figure salary. That was shelved because of healthcare costs. Our software development cycle is slowed as a result.

How has the healthcare bill helped the economy? In this case, not one bit. And everyone of my employees has been hurt, because we switched mid-year, those who were part way into their deductible have to start all over again. That is a few 1000s for a number of employees. Because of a bill that passed that cost us money, and most of our employees money. No one is happy with this.

I have additional areas I would like to invest in. Areas that involve productivity gains, not just taking share from someone else, and not just for us. Many of the things I would like to do would reduce costs for my customers and build efficiencies in the healthcare industry as well.

One of our software products reduces the cost of clinical trials, and has saved millions of dollars in better planning. Another model we have developed reduces the cost of carrying inventory for bio/agritech firms. I believe it is the best in the world, developed by a Ph.D. out of Carnegie Mellon. It saves millions a year for large companies (Monsanto, Bayer Crop Science, etc. type of companies).

Productivity is the wealth of a nation.

However, thanks to Obama administration policies, we are pissing our edge away on dumb stuff which makes us hesitate to invest more. Thanks a lot, Congress.

The state government, California, (surprise, surprise, surprise) has intimated our customers. Several large companies are withholding taxes from our payments in case we need to pay sales tax on our services. We don’t. It is our responsibility to pay sales taxes under our contract anyway.

What can I do? Sue my customer?

How in the heck in this environment can a business owner feel good, create jobs, and expand?

It's no wonder small businesses are in a sour mood. I have so many other stories from other small business owners that I know. The theme is the same. We are all up against overseas competition, against taxes, against the government, against societal acrimony.

Many of my business executive associates are looking to cash out if they could find a buyer at a decent price. As my friend, a former mid-size credit union COO and small business owner, says whenever one of the “good guys” – people who understand how to start businesses that are productive - throws in the towel and cashes in … “Another Atlas shrugs.”

The business climate is freaking insane. I don’t blame the insurers too much. It takes a government to make a market this screwed up.

Thanks to you and others, I pay more attention to Washington, D.C. and state legislatures. I also call to protest and give money to fiscal conservative candidates.

Unfortunately this takes time away from my business. But do I have a choice?

Unions get to pay people full-time to lobby on their behalf. Me? I work long weeks. I feel bad for my family if I don’t spend more time with them, but I cheat my son if I don’t fight for a better world for him.

As always, your coverage of all topics, including public sector unions, is wonderful, a great service, and greatly appreciated. You have an impact on us who don’t have time to do this on our own, but care about our society and want to contribute. I have given to so many individual campaigns and efforts around the country this year, more than the rest of my years combined. You are making a difference, thanks.

"Healthcare CEO"

Nursery Wholesaler Chimes In

David, a nursery wholesaler in Oregon writes ...

Hello Mish

We are not hiring either, why should we?

My wife and I own a small wholesale nursery in Oregon. Nurseries were shining star of agriculture in Oregon and elsewhere for the last @ 20+ years.

The contraction is causing sales to drop industry wide. A few nurseries have gone bankrupt in the last year. One bankruptcy auction netted the owner $.07 on the dollar. The bank may now need to take the land to pay the debt. You want to talk about striking fear into the nursery industry? Well $.07 cents on the dollar will certainly do it!

Others who are still hanging on have watched their sales drop up to 80% from the peak. Yes 80%! No new houses = no new yard and street landscaping, plain and simple.

Competition is fierce as everybody is trying to unload plants before they are too big and must be thrown out or must be planted into a larger container (more expense). Why put more money into something that may not sell anyway?

Our sales are down about 30% from last year. We are selling some plants that would have sold 2 years ago prior to the debt crunch. Overcapacity is everywhere in our industry, prices are dropping to move material instead of dumping it out which is a total loss.

Here is the first rule in small business: Everyone else gets paid first and you get what is left over. I'm not surprised the State of Oregon is having increasing budget problems, I think we will see another downward revision in the state budget in next couple of months.

Sincerely,

David

For more of the problems facing Oregon and other highly unionized states, please see Dysfunctional Oregon

Thanks for sharing David, "Healthcare Consultant CEO".



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/small-business-ceos-reveal-why-theyre-not-hiring-economic-contraction-obama-and-healthcare-2010-8#ixzz0xYx4Q7eZ
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 24, 2010, 07:53:47 PM
Intel CEO: U.S. faces looming tech decline
by Declan McCullagh



http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20014563-38.html


________________________ ____________________



Intel chief executive Paul Otellini offered a depressing set of observations about the economy and the Obama administration Monday evening, coupled with a dark commentary on the future of the technology industry if nothing changes.

Otellini's remarks during dinner at the Technology Policy Institute's Aspen Forum here amounted to a warning to the administration officials and assorted Capitol Hill aides in the audience: Unless government policies are altered, he predicted, "the next big thing will not be invented here. Jobs will not be created here."  
 
Intel CEO Paul Otellini, who warned this week that the U.S. faces a huge tech decline.

(Credit: Intel) The U.S. legal environment has become so hostile to business, Otellini said, that there is likely to be "an inevitable erosion and shift of wealth, much like we're seeing today in Europe--this is the bitter truth."

Not long ago, Otellini said, "our research centers were without peer. No country was more attractive for start-up capital... We seemed a generation ahead of the rest of the world in information technology. That simply is no longer the case."

The phenomenon of technology executives advancing dismal predictions and offering pointed critiques of Washington politicking isn't new, of course.

For instance: In 2005, midway through the Bush administration, Microsoft's Bill Gates told a Washington audience that curbs on immigration and guest workers would provide a boost to research institutions in China and India. A year earlier, then-Intel CEO Craig Barrett warned that the U.S. must dramatically improve its education system.

That never happened. Nor did politicians follow Gates' advice to rethink laws that led to foreign engineers being kicked out of the country as soon as they finish their degrees.

And now, six years later with no significant reforms, it should come as no surprise that the predictions have become more dire.

Deep in a 'Do' loop

Otellini singled out the political state of affairs in Democrat-dominated Washington, saying: "I think this group does not understand what it takes to create jobs. And I think they're flummoxed by their experiment in Keynesian economics not working."  

Since an unusually sharp downturn accelerated in late 2008, the Obama administration and its allies in the U.S. Congress have enacted trillions in deficit spending they say will create an economic stimulus -- but have not extended the Bush tax cuts and have pushed to levy extensive new health care and carbon regulations on businesses.

"They're in a 'Do' loop right now trying to figure out what the answer is," Otellini said.

As a result, he said, "every business in America has a list of more variables than I've ever seen in my career." If variables like capital gains taxes and the R&D tax credit are resolved correctly, jobs will stay here, but if politicians make decisions "the wrong way, people will not invest in the United States. They'll invest elsewhere."

Take factories. "I can tell you definitively that it costs $1 billion more per factory for me to build, equip, and operate a semiconductor manufacturing facility in the United States," Otellini said.

The rub: Ninety percent of that additional cost of a $4 billion factory is not labor but the cost to comply with taxes and regulations that other nations don't impose. (Cypress Semiconductor CEO T.J. Rodgers elaborated on this in an interview with CNET, saying the problem is not higher U.S. wages but anti-business laws: "The killer factor in California for a manufacturer to create, say, a thousand blue-collar jobs is a hostile government that doesn't want you there and demonstrates it in thousands of ways.")  

"If our tax rate approached that of the rest of the world, corporations would have an incentive to invest here," Otellini said. But instead, it's the second highest in the industrialized world, making the United States a less attractive place to invest--and create jobs--than places in Europe and Asia that are "clamoring" for Intel's business.

The comments from Intel's chief executive echoed statements made a day earlier by Carly Fiorina, the former HP CEO turned Republican Senate candidate.

America's skilled-worker visa system is so badly broken and anti-immigration that "we have to start from scratch," Fiorina said, adding that too many government policies push jobs overseas instead of making U.S. companies competitive against international rivals.

"Our corporate tax rates are the second highest in the world," and Congress has repeatedly failed to make an R&D tax credit permanent, Fiorina told the Aspen audience. It's time to start "acknowledging the reality that companies go where they're welcome," she said. (The effective U.S. corporate income tax is 35 percent, far over the industrialized-nation average of 18.2 percent.)

Chris Marangi, associate portfolio manager at Gamco Investors in Rye, N.Y., said Tuesday: "Capital is agnostic. It doesn't have a religion. It doesn't have a philosophy. It goes where it finds the highest returns." The problem, Marangi said, is that many other "countries have a more friendly regulatory regime than we do."

. Declan McCullagh is the chief political correspondent for CNET. You can e-mail him or follow him on Twitter as declanm. Declan previously was a reporter for Time and the Washington bureau chief for Wired and wrote the Taking Liberties section and Other People's Money column for CBS News' Web site.

________________________ ________________________ __-


WHEN WILL YOU LEFTIST FREAKING MORONS WAKE THE HELL UP? ? ? ?
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Fury on August 24, 2010, 08:11:06 PM
That last article is a very good read. Something tells me the CEO of Intel knows more than the typical Dem jerk-off down in Washington when it comes to the economy. If they don't smarten up every American company that made its name here is going to leave.

The leftists are too fucking brain-dead to acknowledge that, though.  ::)
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 24, 2010, 08:19:30 PM
240, Straw, et al, say we are diverting attention with all the mosque talk from economic issues, so I started this thread and plan to update it frequently. 
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 25, 2010, 05:25:56 AM
August 25, 2010
Where Are the New Jobs?
By John Stossel

www.realclearpolitics.co m

________________________ __________________


"Corporate profits are soaring. Companies are sitting on billions of dollars of cash. And still, they've yet to amp up hiring or make major investments."

So writes The Washington Post about the recession's stubborn refusal to go away. The statisticians at the National Bureau of Economic Research declared the Great Recession over -- but tell that to people who can't find jobs. Today, businesses replace equipment and inventory, but they are reluctant to hire new workers. Investment that does occur aims at replacing the use of labor by adopting advanced technology. In a growing economy, that's a sign of progress. Freed-up workers are then available for new projects. But lately, those new projects aren't being launched.

The two wings of the establishment offer their usual remedies. Government-oriented types want more tax-financed "stimulus" spending, claiming last year's nearly trillion-dollar dose wasn't enough. That's dubious. As economist Mark Skousen writes, "(P)roduction and investment lead the economy into and out of a recession; retail demand is the most stable component of economic activity."

Business-oriented types want tax cuts. I'm sympathetic, but cuts should be accompanied by spending cuts, or the deficit will grow even uglier. There's no free lunch. Deficit spending must be covered by government borrowing, which takes capital that could be used for investment out of the private sector.

Why isn't the economy recovering? After previous recessions, unemployment didn't get stuck at close to 10 percent. If left alone, the economy can and does heal itself, as the mistakes of the previous inflationary boom are corrected.

The problem today is that the economy is not being left alone. Instead, it is haunted by uncertainty on a hundred fronts. When rules are unintelligible and unpredictable, when new workers are potential threats because of Labor Department regulations, businesses have little confidence to hire. President Obama's vaunted legislative record not only left entrepreneurs with the burden of bigger government, it also makes it impossible for them to accurately estimate the new burden.

In at least three big areas -- health insurance, financial regulation and taxes -- no one can know what will happen.

New intrusive rules for health insurance are yet to be written, and those rules will affect hiring, since most health insurance is provided by employers.

Thanks to the new 2,300 page Dodd-Frank finance regulatory act, The Wall Street Journal reports, there will be "no fewer than 243 new formal rule-makings by 11 different federal agencies." These as-yet unknown rules will govern lending to business and other key financial activity.

The George W. Bush tax cuts might be allowed to expire. But maybe not. Social Security and Medicare are dangerously shaky. Will Congress raise the payroll tax? A "distinguished" deficit commission is meeting. What will it do? Recommend a value-added tax?

Who knows? But few employers will commit to a big investment with those clouds hanging over our heads.

"As much as I might want to hire new salespeople, engineers and marketing staff in an effort to grow, I would be increasing my company's vulnerability to government," Michael Fleischer, president of Bogen Communications Inc., wrote in The Wall Street Journal.

Nothing more effectively freezes business in place than what economist and historian Robert Higgs calls "regime uncertainty."

"(A)ll of these unsettling possibilities and others of substantial significance must give pause to anyone considering a long-term investment, because any one of them has the potential to turn what seems to be a profitable investment into a big loser. In short, investors now face regime uncertainty to an extent that few have experienced in this country -- to find anything comparable, one must go back to the 1930s and 1940s, when the menacing clouds of the New Deal and World War II darkened the economic horizon."

Uncertainty created by Obama's legislative "successes" are comparable to the Depression and World War II? This does not bode well for job growth.

Higgs says: "Unless the government acts soon to resolve the looming uncertainties about the half-dozen greatest threats of policy harm to business, investors will remain for the most part on the sideline ... consuming wealth that might otherwise have been invested."

Copyright 2010, Creators Syndicate Inc.
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 25, 2010, 05:56:21 AM
Skip to comments.

The White House War on Jobs
Townhall.com ^ | August 25, 2010 | Michelle Malkin


________________________ ________________________ ______________________


The "Summer of Recovery" is looking more and more like the Beltway Chainsaw Massacre for America's workers.  As President Obama lolls on Martha's Vineyard with his well-heeled Chicago pals, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll shows that 72 percent of people are very worried about joblessness and 67 percent are very concerned about massive government spending.

After a nearly $1 trillion fiscal stimulus and several multibillion-dollar corporate and union bailouts, unemployment remains stuck near 10 percent nationwide; jobless claims rose again last week. One shudders to think how many more jobs will be on the chopping block after the vacationing president finishes "recharging his batteries."

The blame avoidance industry, of course, never takes a break. Capitol Hill Democrats blame George W. Bush. President Obama blames inaction by the, er, Democrat-controlled Congress. On Tuesday, Vice President Joe Biden derided GOP Leader John Boehner's speech on the Obama job-killing machine as a return to the past. Biden sneered about the "good old days" when Republicans held the majority in Washington. But laid-off, unemployed and endangered Americans in the health care sector, the auto industry, and the oil, mining, gas, and fishing industries are no doubt wondering: What's wrong with returning to the days when we had jobs and steady paychecks?

These are not the wealthy fat cats and Big Business titans Democrats love to demonize.

They're employees of companies like Assurant Health, which announced last week that it would slash 130 jobs at its offices in Milwaukee and Plymouth, Minn., to prepare for costly Obamacare mandates.

They're employees of medical device firms in Massachusetts, where officials say they'll be forced to cut back on operational costs and jobs thanks to a little-noticed Obamacare tax on their products that goes into effect in 2013.

They're employees of restaurants like White Castle and International House of Pancakes, whose executives say they will be forced into layoffs and premium hikes to cope with the federal law's $3,000-per-employee penalty on companies whose workers pay more than 9.5 percent of household income in premiums for company-provided insurance.

They're mom-and-pop enterprises across the country that must now deal with Obamacare's onerous Section 9006 tax-filing mandate. It requires them to file 1099 forms with the IRS for every vendor from whom they purchase $600 or more in goods. Nebraska GOP Sen. Mike Johanns calls it one of many "job-crushing provisions" that will bury small business in paperwork and legal costs.

They're the estimated 23,000 workers in the deepwater drilling industry whom the White House deliberately wrote off in pursuit of its junk science-based drilling moratorium.

They're the estimated tens of thousands of workers employed by car dealers that were shut down by Obama's auto czars at a time, as the TARP inspector general pointed out last month, "when the country was experiencing the worst economic downturn in generations and the government was asking its taxpayers to support a $787 billion stimulus package designed primarily to preserve jobs... -- all based on a theory and without sufficient consideration of the decisions' broader economic impact."

They're employees of Utah oil and gas companies whose leases have been pulled without cause by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. The Interior Department's own Inspector General rejected Salazar's explanation that the Bush administration had rushed the leases through. The Deseret News reports that "rescinding these leases has likely cost the state millions already. Officials in Uintah county estimate the county lost 3,000 jobs in 2009, and Duchesne lost 1,000 jobs."

They're employees of commercial and recreational fishing businesses in New England, who have organized a flotilla on Martha's Vineyard on Thursday to protest the Obama administration's restrictive environmental policies and stealth regulatory ocean grab.

The White House has invested mightily in creating a propaganda infrastructure to tout its "jobs saved or created." Taxpayers need a full, transparent accounting of how many jobs Team Obama has destroyed. Call it Wreckovery.gov.

________________________ ________________________ ________________________ _____


Great one by Michelle M. 

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Bindare_Dundat on August 25, 2010, 06:08:44 AM
240, Straw, et al, say we are diverting attention with all the mosque talk from economic issues, so I started this thread and plan to update it frequently. 

You know I always like your posts regarding the economy but the mosque shit was getting fucking lame really fast and dragged on waaaaay too long, I think there ae 20 different threads about it (at least).
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 25, 2010, 06:13:55 AM
You know I always like your posts regarding the economy but the mosque shit was getting fucking lame really fast and dragged on waaaaay too long, I think there ae 20 different threads about it (at least).

For me its not since i live here, but I get your point. 

But lets see how many on the left even want to discuss the economy.  I truly believe we are rapidly approaching the abyss on many levels. 

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 25, 2010, 06:31:39 AM




Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: MCWAY on August 25, 2010, 06:39:52 AM
240, Straw, et al, say we are diverting attention with all the mosque talk from economic issues, so I started this thread and plan to update it frequently. 

Are you kidding? The left will praise Allah, for diversion from the economic issues. If the Dems run on that (i.e. the stimulus, the "Summer of Recovery", ObamaCare, jobs, etc.), THEY'RE GOING TO GET MURDERED!!!
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 25, 2010, 06:41:09 AM
Ha ha ha ha.  Great one! ! ! ! !  ! !! ! ! ! ! !  !

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: MCWAY on August 25, 2010, 06:44:13 AM
Ha ha ha ha.  Great one! ! ! ! !  ! !! ! ! ! ! !  !



Add to that list, moving companies are busier than ever, as people lose their homes, left and right.
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 25, 2010, 07:03:14 AM
Missed completely and totally.

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/durable-goods-broadly-miss-expectations-push-10-year-244-lowest-january-2009 (http://www.zerohedge.com/article/durable-goods-broadly-miss-expectations-push-10-year-244-lowest-january-2009)

Not good. Orders "increased" by .3% which missed "expectations" of +2.8%.
Non-Defense Capital good excluding aircraft came in at an "unexpected" -8.0%.   Ouch.

Good thing that Stimulus was passed! Summer of Recovery!

Really, the Stimulus Bill was the answer to the question the economy didn't ask.
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 25, 2010, 07:12:48 AM
I wonder why no one will buy anything any more?  hhhhmmmm? ?? ? ? ?   Bushs' fault that everone thinks the economy will continue to get far worse in the future? 

________________________ _____________________


NEW HOME SALES PLUNGE 12.4%
Gregory White | Aug. 25, 2010, 10:00 AM | 262 |  7
A A A   


New home sales numbers came in lower than expected, down to an annualized 276,000.

That's a 12.4% drop over June, and a 32.4% drop over July 2009.

Markets fell immediately on the news, but have rebounded somewhat:

Dow down 0.62%
NASDAQ down 0.61%
S&P 500 down 0.82%
Also of interest, a massive glut in supply:

The median sales price of new houses sold in July 2010 was $204,000; the average sales price was $235,300. The seasonally adjusted estimate of new houses for sale at the end of July was 210,000. This represents a supply of 9.1 months at the current sales rate.

The consensus was for a slight improvement over June, at 340,000 annualized.

June home sales were an annualized 330,000, while May was at 267,000.

New home sales increased in June 23.6%, after falling 36.7% in May.

This comes after yesterday's massive 27.2% drop in existing home sales.

Read the full Department of Commerce release here >

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/new-home-sales-july-2010-8#ixzz0xcv2lHgx


Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Fury on August 25, 2010, 08:01:21 AM
I saw that yesterday Biden was again blaming the GOP for the economy. These fucking Democrats refuse to accept responsibility for their actions. 2006 = LONG TIME AGO. Will these cowards ever man up?
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 25, 2010, 08:06:53 AM
I saw that yesterday Biden was again blaming the GOP for the economy. These fucking Democrats refuse to accept responsibility for their actions. 2006 = LONG TIME AGO. Will these cowards ever man up?

Never.   Without blaming Bush they have nothing else.  They wasted 1 1/2 years on Health Care ignoring the economy and now we see the results.   
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Lord of the Roidz on August 25, 2010, 08:17:36 AM
I was thinking of an interesting theory...although a bit farfetched. We all know how George Soros made billions betting against the British Pound years ago, and almost destroyed the Bank of England. There's been a lot of speculation that Soros played a huge role in getting Obama elected. What if his plan is to have Obama intentionally destroy the U.S. economy while he bets against the U.S. dollar and the Dow and anything else that he can profit from as a result of the downfall of America. Wouldn't Obama's policies be the perfect playbook for that?
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 25, 2010, 08:20:57 AM
I was thinking of an interesting theory...although a bit farfetched. We all know how George Soros made billions betting against the British Pound years ago, and almost destroyed the Bank of England. There's been a lot of speculation that Soros played a huge role in getting Obama elected. What if his plan is to have Obama intentionally destroy the U.S. economy while he bets against the U.S. dollar and the Dow and anything else that he can profit from as a result of the downfall of America. Wouldn't Obama's policies be the perfect playbook for that?

Not far fetched at all. 
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: MCWAY on August 25, 2010, 08:45:50 AM


You and that Satan-worshipping metal. It's a wonder you have any brain cells left.

 ;D
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 25, 2010, 08:51:00 AM
You and that Satan-worshipping metal. It's a wonder you have any brain cells left.

 ;D

I'm blasting Rust in Peace in the office as we speak.

 


Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: GigantorX on August 25, 2010, 09:17:29 AM
I'm blasting Rust in Peace in the office as we speak.

 




Great Fucking Album.
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 25, 2010, 09:26:26 AM
Great Fucking Album.

Yeah, its up there with Reign in Blood, Kill em All, Ride the Lightening, Among the Living   
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: MCWAY on August 25, 2010, 11:02:01 AM



Start at 2:52,


This is music for the ones
With the funk in the trunk to blast the bass drum,
Some like the rock and heavy metal
Bang their heads while they worship the devil
They're going out on the crazy tip
I don't see how they can even dance to it
I think they need another taste
Of how good it can get when you drop that BASS!!"


Just for you, 333386!

 ;D
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 25, 2010, 11:20:20 AM


Start at 2:52,


This is music for the ones
With the funk in the trunk to blast the bass drum,
Some like the rock and heavy metal
Bang their heads while they worship the devil
They're going out on the crazy tip
I don't see how they can even dance to it
I think they need another taste
Of how good it can get when you drop that BASS!!"


Just for you, 333386!

 ;D

I don't worship the devil, I just like the speed, energy, thrash, craziness, agression, of Slayer/Magedeth etc.  

My best lifts always come from this song.  This song gives me mega pounds on any lift.   I get a hard on for this song, especially Angel of Death.  



and close to that.  



Listen to this before you lift and its like a bomb went off. 


 
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 25, 2010, 03:03:07 PM
WWWTTTTFFFF? ?  ? ? ?  ? ? ? ? ?  ? ? ? ? ?

HOW IS THE LEFT GOING TO SPIN THIS TURD? 

________________________ ________________________ _____

Bennet Bombshell: Trillions in Debt, ‘Nothing to Show for It’

http://www.nationalreview.com/battle10/244695/bennet-bombshell-trillions-debt-nothing-show-it-michael-sandoval

August 25, 2010 5:15 A.M. By Michael Sandoval
Tags: Colo.


________________________ ________________________ ____________


Sen. Michael Bennet’s recent appearance in Greeley, Colorado is sure to set political tongues wagging–Bennet is quoted as saying that though trillions of dollars of Federal debt has been incurred through spending since he was appointed to the Senate in January of 2009, “we have nothing to show for it”:

Michael Bennet, D-Colo,at a town hall meeting in Greeley last Saturday, Aug 21 said we had nothing to show for the debt incurred by the stimulus package and other expenditures calling the recession  the worst since the Great Depression. [...]

Regarding spending during his time in office he said, “We have managed to acquire $13 trillion of debt on our balance sheet” and, “in my view we have nothing to show for it.” Speaking of the debt, he said our debt almost equals the economy. Regarding the current job situation, Bennet said the situation has been dire for over a decade saying, “We have created no net new jobs in the United States since 1998” which were the last two years of the Clinton administration. Pointing to a slide showing budget expenditures, he said that currently 65 percent of the budget was for social security, Medicaid and Medicare expenditures and that we could not grow our way out of debt.

Regarding the expiration of the Bush tax cuts Bennet would not commit to a position on whether to extend them simply saying, “I hope we look at it comprehensively.”

When asked about a recent report showing that government employees make more than their private sector counterparts said, “This is a time when we need to restrain wages in the public sector.” He said we need to make sure “our wages are not growing faster than inflation or faster than our growth.” Bennet also received a question about whether he would support card check and declined to give a firm answer saying, “I have not been a sponsor of the employee free choice act and the bill as written will not come to the floor to a vote.” He also said, “I believe strongly in the right of workers to collectively bargain and organize free from intimidation.” [emphasis added]

The Greeley Tribune’s quote is identical, adding a laundry list of things that Bennet feels have not been “invested in” adequately (the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act apparently notwithstanding):

“We have managed to acquire $13 trillion of debt on our balance sheet,” he said. “In my view we have nothing to show for it. We haven’t invested in our roads, our bridges, our waste-water systems, our sewer systems. We haven’t even maintained the assets that our parents and grandparents built for us.”

Bennet’s votes, in support of President Obama’s spending plans–including ARRA, have resulted in billions of dollars spent per day, and trillions of dollars of new debt.

But even $10 billion in the most recent “edujobs” bailout may have no readily discernible impact on Colorado schools, despite the projections made by Bennet.

The Bennet campaign released a snippet of video it recorded from the speech, with Bennet addressing rural education:


A Denver Post fact check of the following ad from Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS concluded that the numbers add up to billions per day (whether or not the spending is a good idea):

Claim: “Since his appointment, Michael Bennet has voted to spend an average of $2.5 billion every day.”

Crossroads GPS television ad

Facts: Michael Bennet has, in fact, voted for legislation that if you add it all up and divide by the days he’s been in office, comes out to nearly $2.5 billion a day. [...]

Add all that up and it comes to $1.36 tillion.[sic] Divide by 568 (the days between Bennet’s Jan. 22, 2009 swearing-in and the Friday before the ad ran), and that’s $2.4 billion.


Vince Carroll of the Denver Post views Bennet’s campaign rhetoric as incompatible with his actual record:

Bennet, you may have noticed, is campaigning as a fiscal hawk. According to a recent report in this newspaper, the Colorado senator touts deficit reduction at town hall meetings as vital to the nation’s health.

To emphasize his seriousness, Bennet has sponsored the Deficit Reduction Act, which would cap the federal deficit at 3 percent of GDP after 2012 (when it would be capped at 4 percent), and supports a commission that will recommend a federal debt-reduction plan. Bennet also voted for “pay-as-you-go” rules that require offsetting revenue for any tax cuts or spending hikes.

If you’re partial to stern warnings about the growing national debt and grand schemes for shrinking it, Bennet is your man. But be sure to avert your eyes from his actual record.

Pay no attention to the contrast between Bennet’s green-eye-shade rhetoric and his drunken-sailor votes. Rest assured that 18 months of supporting one lavish spending and bailout bill after another provide no hint whatsoever of Bennet’s core fiscal philosophy.
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 25, 2010, 06:16:35 PM
Biden’s Fatal Conceit
Posted by Tad DeHaven



The White House’s misbegotten “Summer of Recovery” continued today with the release of another administration “analysis” that purportedly demonstrates the stimulus’s success in “transforming” the economy.

Vice President Joe Biden unveiled the report alongside Energy secretary Steven Chu and numerous businesses officials willing to serve as political props in return for Uncle Sam’s free candy. Biden bemoaned the nefarious “special interests” that were coddled by the previous administration. What does the vice president think those subsidized business officials attending his speech are called?

The money the White House has lavished on these privileged businesses isn’t free. The money comes from taxpayers—including businesses that do not enjoy the favor of the White House—who consequently have $100 billion (plus interest) less to spend or invest. Therefore, the fundamental question is: Are Joe Biden — an individual who has spent his entire career in government— and the Washington political class better at directing economic activity than the private sector?

Biden repeatedly stated that the “government plants the seed and the private sector makes it grow.” Because the government possesses no “seeds” that it didn’t first confiscate from the private sector, what the vice president is advocating is the redistribution of capital according to the dictates of the Beltway. This mindset exemplifies the arrogance of the political class, which at its core believes that free individuals are incapable of making the “right” decision without the guiding hand of the state.

Unfortunately for Joe Biden, the state’s hand guided the private sector into the economic downturn that the administration and its apologists would have us believe was a consequence of imaginary laissez faire policies. From the housing market planners at HUD to the money planners at the Federal Reserve, government interventions led to the economic turmoil that the perpetrating political class now claims it can fix.

Enough already.

The following are Cato resources that challenge the vice president’s breezy rhetoric on the ability of the federal government to direct economic growth:

•Energy Subsidies: The government has spent billions of dollars over the decades on dead-end schemes and dubious projects that have often had large cost overruns.
•Energy Regulations: Most federal intrusions into energy markets have been serious mistakes. They have destabilized markets, reduced domestic output, and decreased consumer welfare.
•Energy Interventions: The current arguments for energy intervention and energy subsidies fall short.
•High-Speed Rail: Policymakers are dumping billions of dollars into high-speed rail, even though foreign systems are money losers and carry only a small share of intercity passengers.
•Special-Interest Spending: Many federal programs deliver subsidies to particular groups of individuals and businesses while harming taxpayers and damaging the overall economy.
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 25, 2010, 06:57:43 PM
Predictable: Obama’s Cash For Clunkers…Hurting The Poor
 http://neoavatara.com/blog/?p=11577
________________________ ________________________




Everyone with a brain knew what would happen. Unfortunately, those controlling Washington, D.C. these days are of questionable intelligence.

What am I talking about? Obama’s ‘brilliant’ Cash-for-Clunkers program.

Now, let us not even debate whether the program was stimulative; I don’t think it was, the White House disagrees, and we both have evidence to prove otherwise. Let us leave that debate alone.

But one thing is for certain: the effect on the used car market today.  According to Edmunds.com, used car prices have skyrocketed over the past year, the most since the value of the market was being monitored.  On average, a used car costs 10.3% (or about $1,800) more today than a year ago.

Why?

Well, couple points from Edmunds.  “So many economic factors affect automobile sales and prices. It’s believed that the program delayed purchases prior to the program and also pulled sales forward while in place,” said Joe Spina, a senior analyst for Edmunds. “The program also eliminated inventory of older vehicles that were traded and then scrapped.”

Well, duh.  The answer is simple:  supply and demand.  The Federal government, through this program, did increase short term sales of new cars.  Whether anyone bought cars that otherwise would not have is questionable, but at least is debatable.  What isn’t debatable is that all of those cars scrapped…are now off the market.  And thus, the market of used cars has obviously shrunk…thus decreasing supply and increasing demand.

So why should we care?  Well, if you are rich or well off, you probably don’t care, in your shiny new car.  But there is a large swath of the population that never buys a new car; it is estimated that almost half of the U.S. adult population only buys used cars.  And stating the obvious, most of these people are in the lower middle to poor classes.

So, even assuming that Obama’s program helped stimulate some car sales, it as certainly made it harder for the poor and lower middle class in this country to afford decent transportation.

Now, if our leaders knew simple economics, they could have easily predicted this damaging result.  Oh well.

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 25, 2010, 08:35:26 PM
Financial reform bill calls for diversity
LA Times ^ | 8/25/2010 | Julia Love and Jim Puzzanghera



Each of the 30 federal financial agencies and departments are required to establish an office to boost hiring of and contracting opportunities for minorities and women. Critics say it will be burdensome and unnecessary.

Reporting from Washington —

The recently enacted financial reform legislation tries in numerous ways to change how Wall Street companies and their federal regulators act, but a little-noticed provision aims for something potentially more difficult and controversial — altering how they look.

To promote diversity in the largely white male world, the law requires each of the 30 federal financial agencies and departments, including the Securities and Exchange Commission and all 12 Federal Reserve banks, to establish an Office of Minority and Women Inclusion.

Those offices will have vaguely defined powers to boost diversity at their agencies and the companies they regulate and to increase federal contracting opportunities for minority- and women-owned businesses. Banks and other financial firms that fail to make "a good-faith effort to include minorities and women in their workforce" could lose their government contracts.

"This is a wake-up call for Wall Street: women, black Americans, Asian Americans, Latino Americans, they all pay for your bailouts," said Michael Yaki, a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. "Firms must take steps to be more reflective of America."

The provision, championed by Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), has been hailed as groundbreaking by minority and women's advocates. But banking industry leaders and some Republicans are concerned about potentially burdensome regulations and costly new oversight that they see as unnecessarily duplicating — and perhaps going well beyond — other federal diversity initiatives.

"This will destroy the financial industry," warned Diana Furchtgott-Roth, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute who was the Labor Department's chief economist under President George W. Bush.


(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 26, 2010, 07:29:46 AM
CEOs Speak Up
WWW.INVESTORS.COM
Posted 08/25/2010 06:45 PM ET


________________________ ________________________



Intel CEO Paul Otellini had harsh words for the Obama administration at a tech conference Monday night, but was anyone listening other than those in... View Enlarged Image

The Economy: Everyone keeps asking: When will America's businesses start expanding and hiring again? Funny thing is, no one listens when they tell us.

It may not have gotten a lot of press, but we found the comments of Intel CEO Paul Otellini this week at the Technology Policy Institute's Aspen Forum quite enlightening.

At a time when many CEOs are hunkered down and holding back, Otellini let go with both barrels, warning Americans, who have become used to being the center of the innovation universe, to lower their expectations.

Unless government policies change, and fast, he said, "the next big thing will not be invented here. Jobs will not be created here."

That's pretty tough stuff. But Otellini was just getting warmed up.

As CNET news reports, Otellini said that at one time "no country was more attractive for startup capital ... We seemed a generation ahead of the rest of the world in information technology. That is simply no longer the case."

The Intel chief was harsh on the massive spending by the White House and Congress — and on the failure to extend the Bush tax cuts, the takeover of the health care industry, and the threat of new taxes on businesses to remove carbon from the atmosphere.

"I think this group does not understand what it takes to create jobs," he said. "And I think they're flummoxed by their experiment in Keynesian economics not working."

If America's ruling class keeps going down this road, "people will not invest in the United States. They'll invest elsewhere."

Intel, the world's leader in semiconductor technology with $35 billion in sales and nearly 80,000 employees, is a good example.

"I can tell you definitively that it costs $1 billion more per factory for me to build, equip and operate a semiconductor manufacturing facility in the U.S.," he said. And 90% of that added cost, he said, is due to taxes and regulations that other countries don't have.

Otellini isn't alone in his frustration.

Earlier in the week, Illinois Tool Works CEO David Speer, whose company employs 60,000 worldwide, laid out his dilemma — and that of hundreds of other CEOs: "I could borrow $2 billion tomorrow for 3 1/2%," Speer said. "But what am I going to do with it?"

Good question. Money is cheaper and more plentiful than it's ever been, especially for big corporations. But they're all looking in their crystal balls and see little but gloom.

The anger's been building. In June, Ivan Seidenberg, CEO of Verizon Communications and head of the Business Roundtable, warned of a growing anti-business slant in both Congress and the White House. Tax hikes, regulations and constant policy shifts, he said, "harm our ability ... to grow private-sector jobs in the U.S."

Businesses make investment decisions based on the outlook three, four, five, even 10 years down the road. Even with 3% money, they can't make projects pencil out. They're just too risky now.

Not hard to see why.

Over the next decade, businesses expect soaring government spending, $13 trillion added to our national debt, more regulations, higher taxes on individuals, investors and businesses, and, oh yes, new laws that impose strict new rules on entire industries — as has already happened to Wall Street, the auto industry and health care.

And that catalogue of concern doesn't even include Social Security and Medicare, which will cost the U.S. $106 trillion over the long term and will both be technically bankrupt by 2020.

Yet Washington doesn't appear alarmed. As Vice President Joe Biden said Tuesday, "We're moving in the right direction."

That, in a nutshell, is what's scaring CEOs today. We have an ideologically driven party in power in Washington that can't seem to understand just how much of a mess they've made of our economy.

Until that changes, don't expect the economy to.


________________________ ________________________ ________

Summer of Recovery.   ::)  ::)  ::)
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 26, 2010, 08:48:18 AM
I wonder how many jobs this disgusting act will kill. 

Where is 240 now? 

________________________ ________________________ _______

http://gunowners.org/nws9504.htm

________________________ ________________________ _______

4/95 GOA Fights Proposed EPA Lead Ammo Ban 
    "GOA was instrumental in generating Congressional opposition to the EPA's lead bullet ban."
    -- Rep. Bill Emerson (R-MO)


AN OLD ADAGE states, "There is more than one way to skin a cat." Gun banning zealots have adopted a variation: "There is more than one way to gun control."

Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY) understands this well. "Gun's don't kill people," he writes, "bullets kill people." The Senator argues that firearms can last many lifetimes but ammunition, on the other hand, is essentially disposable. If the supply can be curtailed, firearms will be reduced to mere decorations.

While Sen. Moynihan and his devotees may have been quelled somewhat by the November elections, many still remain in Washington that are all too willing to pick up the slack. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), for one, appears eager to take up Moynihan's cause.

Under the Toxic Substance Control Act (TSCA) of 1976, the EPA is conducting comprehensive studies to determine the effect of lead on the environment. Included in these studies is a close look at the environmental impact of lead ammunition.

The EPA argues that as the lead bullet is dispersed from a firearm, it eventually finds its way into the ground, and therefore falls under its purview. This, along with the fact that the agency is predisposed to rule in favor of banning lead ammo, could spell bad news for gun owners. However, although it may come as a surprise to some at the EPA, a lot of people, including many Members of Congress, believe that the lead ban proposal goes well beyond the authority of the agency.
Congressional opposition

Rep. Bill Emerson (R-MO) has been battling the EPA for years on this issue. "The EPA is trying to ban lead ammo, and no matter which way you look at it, that equals gun control. It's very clear that the law-abiding gun owner is being attacked on every side," Rep. Emerson told The Gun Owners.

In an effort to thwart the ban, GOA worked with Rep. Emerson to mobilize Congressional opposition. Emerson wrote a letter to EPA Administrator Carol Browner, and GOA worked to get 52 Representatives to sign their names to it in the few days available for comment.

"We believe this is clearly an issue that falls outside the purview of the EPA," writes Emerson. "More importantly ... this proposal seriously infringes upon the right of American citizens afforded them in the Second Amendment. It is obvious to us that if lead ammunition is severely restricted or banned, then the EPA is effectively infringing on our right to keep and bear arms."

Emerson also challenged the agency's scientific data and its interpretation of TSCA. "The agency has done studies that they say prove lead is a major problem. Others have done studies which challenge the EPA's findings. But it's like the agency has a one-track mind: It wants to ban lead ammo," said Rep. Emerson.
GOA members make their voices heard

Congress is not alone in voicing opposition to the proposed ban. The EPA received so much E-mail from GOA members (in response to GOA FAX Alerts) that EPA Director of Chemical Management Division, John Melone, asked for a meeting with GOA Executive Director Larry Pratt (another example of how your calls, faxes and letters can influence Washington politics!)

In this meeting, Melone emphasized that the proposal was a Significant New Use Rule (SNUR) and would not affect lead ammo because it is considered an existing use. However, when Pratt questioned the EPA's motives for singling out ammunition for its studies, Melone admitted that a "significant increase" in the volume of lead in the market could be considered a "new use," and could therefore fall under severe restrictions or prohibition.

EPA Administrator Carol Browner also was compelled to respond officially, thanks in large part to GOA members. "[The] EPA has not banned, nor does it plan to ban, the manufacture or use of lead ammunition," says Browner in a written statement.

If that is true, then several questions arise, such as why does the EPA classify lead shot ammo as one of "five priority classes" which are candidates for being regulated if in fact the agency has no intention of regulating the industry? And why is the agency conducting its studies under the heading of "health risks to children"? If nothing else, the EPA will have laid the groundwork for prohibiting lead ammo because of a supposed threat to children.

Lest anyone get the impression that this battle is merely an intellectual or scientific debate, it would be helpful to point out just a few cases where environmental extremism is taking away guns, closing down businesses and disrupting people's lives.
GOA helps reopen Texas shooting range

In Fort Bend, Texas, the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission (TNRCC, a state version of the EPA) was a party in a suit filed against Bob Arwady, owner of a local shooting range.

The TNRCC claimed that lead bullets coming from the range were contaminating the environment by degrading the land and water in a drainage ditch behind the shooting barriers. Arwady "voluntarily" closed the range under the threat of a $25,000 fine for each round fired.

At that point GOA was made aware of the situation. GOA members in the area were contacted and encouraged to attend the TNRCC meeting on behalf of Arwady. So many people showed up at the hearing that a loudspeaker had to be placed outside the building because of the overflow.

A GOA alert also found its way into the hands of Dr. Peter Proctor, a board certified medical toxicologist. Subsequently, Dr. Proctor submitted a letter on behalf of Arwady, and volunteered to testify on his behalf.

In his research of over 5,000 scientific papers, Dr. Proctor "could find no reference to outdoor shooting ranges as significant sources of environmental lead." Dr. Proctor went on to say that the lead found in ammunition is entirely different than the lead associated with poisoning. In fact, many people have carried bullet fragments in their bodies for years without suffering any lead poisoning, Proctor noted.

Arwady also received assistance from Congressman Steve Stockman (R-TX) who wrote the TNRCC to voice his concerns about the state encroaching on individual property rights. Other legislators lending assistance to Arwady included pro-gun State Representatives John Culberson, Charles Howard and Mike Jackson, as well as State Senators Kenneth Armbrister and Drew Nixon.

The TNRCC, apparently a bit embarrassed over the incident, then denied being party to the suit brought against Arwady.

But Portia Poindexter, Fort Bend Assistant County Attorney, told the Houston Post that in fact, "the TNRCC is a necessary and indispensable party" to this case.

More recently, the TNRCC tried to change its tune altogether. It now claims the problem with the range is not an environmental issue, but with stray bullets hitting people. However, people being struck by stray bullets was not mentioned in the suit filed against Arwady.

Currently, the shooting range is preparing to re-open, which according to Arwady is due to GOA's involvement.

"When I asked GOA for help, they were quick to respond. GOA was the only organization that went to bat for me, generating pressure on the TNRCC to drop the case," said Arwady.
Gun manufacturers put on notice

Perhaps even more incredible is a situation that exists currently in California. Health and Safety Code Section 25249.5 requires a "warning before exposure to chemicals known to cause cancer or reproductive toxicity."

Acting in the 'public interest," the Pacific Justice Center, a so-called watchdog civil rights organization, eagerly interpreted the code to mean gun manufacturers were required to put warning labels on their firearms.

When a gun is fired, said William Verrick of the Pacific Justice Center, "the shooter and those around him are exposed to dangerous levels of lead." Consequently, the group has notified several gun manufacturers in other states that they are in violation of the code. But here again, studies have been done that contradict the California statute.

The DO-IT Corp., located in Denver, Iowa, is a manufacturer of lead fishing lure molds. According to company president and GOA member Jerry Bond, DO-IT underwent an industrial hygiene inspection to determine the impact on employees who were exposed to lead virtually the entire workday.

The test, conducted by the Iowa Bureau of Labor, included placing a breathing apparatus near the employees' heads, which was worn the entire workday. The results of the test showed that lead was "not detectable" in the air breathed by the employees.

The DO-IT study tested employees who work full-time in a lead manufacturing plant, an enclosed environment with an obviously high concentration of lead material. If they were not harmed by lead exposure, it can hardly be argued that shooters or people around shooters are in any toxic danger due to exposure.

In spite of these clear abuses of authority at the state level, the EPA adamantly asserts that it will not abuse its authority. That may be so, but history gives us no expectation that federal agencies are less intrusive than state agencies. Here are some steps you can take to help protect our gun rights from environmental agencies:
 
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 26, 2010, 08:50:48 AM
I wonder how many jobs this disgusting act will kill. 

Where is 240 now? 

________________________ ________________________ _______

http://gunowners.org/nws9504.htm

________________________ ________________________ _______

4/95 GOA Fights Proposed EPA Lead Ammo Ban 
    "GOA was instrumental in generating Congressional opposition to the EPA's lead bullet ban."
    -- Rep. Bill Emerson (R-MO)


AN OLD ADAGE states, "There is more than one way to skin a cat." Gun banning zealots have adopted a variation: "There is more than one way to gun control."

Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY) understands this well. "Gun's don't kill people," he writes, "bullets kill people." The Senator argues that firearms can last many lifetimes but ammunition, on the other hand, is essentially disposable. If the supply can be curtailed, firearms will be reduced to mere decorations.

While Sen. Moynihan and his devotees may have been quelled somewhat by the November elections, many still remain in Washington that are all too willing to pick up the slack. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), for one, appears eager to take up Moynihan's cause.

Under the Toxic Substance Control Act (TSCA) of 1976, the EPA is conducting comprehensive studies to determine the effect of lead on the environment. Included in these studies is a close look at the environmental impact of lead ammunition.

The EPA argues that as the lead bullet is dispersed from a firearm, it eventually finds its way into the ground, and therefore falls under its purview. This, along with the fact that the agency is predisposed to rule in favor of banning lead ammo, could spell bad news for gun owners. However, although it may come as a surprise to some at the EPA, a lot of people, including many Members of Congress, believe that the lead ban proposal goes well beyond the authority of the agency.
Congressional opposition

Rep. Bill Emerson (R-MO) has been battling the EPA for years on this issue. "The EPA is trying to ban lead ammo, and no matter which way you look at it, that equals gun control. It's very clear that the law-abiding gun owner is being attacked on every side," Rep. Emerson told The Gun Owners.

In an effort to thwart the ban, GOA worked with Rep. Emerson to mobilize Congressional opposition. Emerson wrote a letter to EPA Administrator Carol Browner, and GOA worked to get 52 Representatives to sign their names to it in the few days available for comment.

"We believe this is clearly an issue that falls outside the purview of the EPA," writes Emerson. "More importantly ... this proposal seriously infringes upon the right of American citizens afforded them in the Second Amendment. It is obvious to us that if lead ammunition is severely restricted or banned, then the EPA is effectively infringing on our right to keep and bear arms."

Emerson also challenged the agency's scientific data and its interpretation of TSCA. "The agency has done studies that they say prove lead is a major problem. Others have done studies which challenge the EPA's findings. But it's like the agency has a one-track mind: It wants to ban lead ammo," said Rep. Emerson.
GOA members make their voices heard

Congress is not alone in voicing opposition to the proposed ban. The EPA received so much E-mail from GOA members (in response to GOA FAX Alerts) that EPA Director of Chemical Management Division, John Melone, asked for a meeting with GOA Executive Director Larry Pratt (another example of how your calls, faxes and letters can influence Washington politics!)

In this meeting, Melone emphasized that the proposal was a Significant New Use Rule (SNUR) and would not affect lead ammo because it is considered an existing use. However, when Pratt questioned the EPA's motives for singling out ammunition for its studies, Melone admitted that a "significant increase" in the volume of lead in the market could be considered a "new use," and could therefore fall under severe restrictions or prohibition.

EPA Administrator Carol Browner also was compelled to respond officially, thanks in large part to GOA members. "[The] EPA has not banned, nor does it plan to ban, the manufacture or use of lead ammunition," says Browner in a written statement.

If that is true, then several questions arise, such as why does the EPA classify lead shot ammo as one of "five priority classes" which are candidates for being regulated if in fact the agency has no intention of regulating the industry? And why is the agency conducting its studies under the heading of "health risks to children"? If nothing else, the EPA will have laid the groundwork for prohibiting lead ammo because of a supposed threat to children.

Lest anyone get the impression that this battle is merely an intellectual or scientific debate, it would be helpful to point out just a few cases where environmental extremism is taking away guns, closing down businesses and disrupting people's lives.
GOA helps reopen Texas shooting range

In Fort Bend, Texas, the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission (TNRCC, a state version of the EPA) was a party in a suit filed against Bob Arwady, owner of a local shooting range.

The TNRCC claimed that lead bullets coming from the range were contaminating the environment by degrading the land and water in a drainage ditch behind the shooting barriers. Arwady "voluntarily" closed the range under the threat of a $25,000 fine for each round fired.

At that point GOA was made aware of the situation. GOA members in the area were contacted and encouraged to attend the TNRCC meeting on behalf of Arwady. So many people showed up at the hearing that a loudspeaker had to be placed outside the building because of the overflow.

A GOA alert also found its way into the hands of Dr. Peter Proctor, a board certified medical toxicologist. Subsequently, Dr. Proctor submitted a letter on behalf of Arwady, and volunteered to testify on his behalf.

In his research of over 5,000 scientific papers, Dr. Proctor "could find no reference to outdoor shooting ranges as significant sources of environmental lead." Dr. Proctor went on to say that the lead found in ammunition is entirely different than the lead associated with poisoning. In fact, many people have carried bullet fragments in their bodies for years without suffering any lead poisoning, Proctor noted.

Arwady also received assistance from Congressman Steve Stockman (R-TX) who wrote the TNRCC to voice his concerns about the state encroaching on individual property rights. Other legislators lending assistance to Arwady included pro-gun State Representatives John Culberson, Charles Howard and Mike Jackson, as well as State Senators Kenneth Armbrister and Drew Nixon.

The TNRCC, apparently a bit embarrassed over the incident, then denied being party to the suit brought against Arwady.

But Portia Poindexter, Fort Bend Assistant County Attorney, told the Houston Post that in fact, "the TNRCC is a necessary and indispensable party" to this case.

More recently, the TNRCC tried to change its tune altogether. It now claims the problem with the range is not an environmental issue, but with stray bullets hitting people. However, people being struck by stray bullets was not mentioned in the suit filed against Arwady.

Currently, the shooting range is preparing to re-open, which according to Arwady is due to GOA's involvement.

"When I asked GOA for help, they were quick to respond. GOA was the only organization that went to bat for me, generating pressure on the TNRCC to drop the case," said Arwady.
Gun manufacturers put on notice

Perhaps even more incredible is a situation that exists currently in California. Health and Safety Code Section 25249.5 requires a "warning before exposure to chemicals known to cause cancer or reproductive toxicity."

Acting in the 'public interest," the Pacific Justice Center, a so-called watchdog civil rights organization, eagerly interpreted the code to mean gun manufacturers were required to put warning labels on their firearms.

When a gun is fired, said William Verrick of the Pacific Justice Center, "the shooter and those around him are exposed to dangerous levels of lead." Consequently, the group has notified several gun manufacturers in other states that they are in violation of the code. But here again, studies have been done that contradict the California statute.

The DO-IT Corp., located in Denver, Iowa, is a manufacturer of lead fishing lure molds. According to company president and GOA member Jerry Bond, DO-IT underwent an industrial hygiene inspection to determine the impact on employees who were exposed to lead virtually the entire workday.

The test, conducted by the Iowa Bureau of Labor, included placing a breathing apparatus near the employees' heads, which was worn the entire workday. The results of the test showed that lead was "not detectable" in the air breathed by the employees.

The DO-IT study tested employees who work full-time in a lead manufacturing plant, an enclosed environment with an obviously high concentration of lead material. If they were not harmed by lead exposure, it can hardly be argued that shooters or people around shooters are in any toxic danger due to exposure.

In spite of these clear abuses of authority at the state level, the EPA adamantly asserts that it will not abuse its authority. That may be so, but history gives us no expectation that federal agencies are less intrusive than state agencies. Here are some steps you can take to help protect our gun rights from environmental agencies:
 
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 26, 2010, 10:21:05 AM
HealthMarkets has 70 layoffs, expects 180 more
Posted Tuesday, Aug. 24, 2010

By Sandra Baker


sabaker@star-telegram.com


________________________ ________________________ ___________________



HealthMarkets, the North Richland Hills-based seller of health insurance, laid off 70 employees this month and expects to trim 180 more positions by the end of the first quarter of 2011, according to a recent federal filing.

In the Securities and Exchange Commission filing, HealthMarkets blamed the layoffs on "dropping enrollment levels experienced by the company's insurance subsidiaries," along with national healthcare reform and "related legislative developments."


HealthMarkets provides insurance plans to the self-employed, individuals and small businesses.

The filing did not disclose where the Aug. 10 layoffs occurred, and the company declined to comment further.

The filing "contains all the relevant information regarding the recent change to our work force," spokeswoman Donna Ledbetter said.

The cuts will cost the company $7.5 million to $10 million in severance and other employee-related costs, according to the filing. It is also losing $100,000 by terminating leases on office space.

In February, HealthMarkets laid off 130 employees, or 10 percent of its work force, at its headquarters at 9151 Boulevard 26. At that time, the company said it had 960 employees there. In November 2008, it cut about 220 employees in Texas, Oklahoma and Connecticut.

The cuts planned for this year and next could occur through attrition, the filing said. Assuming the cuts take place, HealthMarkets will have eliminated 600 positions by early next year.

HealthMarkets has been moving from underwriting health insurance policies to also marketing policies underwritten by other insurers, including United HealthCare and Aetna. This year, it created a subsidiary, Insphere Insurance Solutions, to sell insurance products through independent agents.

According to SEC filings, HealthMarkets earned $11.2 million in the year's first six months, about the same as a year earlier.

In June, HealthMarkets said in a separate SEC filing that it would close subsidiary Insphere Securities, a registered investment adviser, by the end of September. It bought the company in April. Insphere Securities has sales offices in Utah, Nevada and Arizona.

HealthMarkets was acquired by private equity investors in 2006. It underwrites insurance issued through its subsidiaries Chesapeake Life Insurance, Mega Life and Health Insurance Co., and Mid-West National Life Insurance Co. of Tennessee.

Sandra Baker, 817-390-7727

Looking for comments?
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 26, 2010, 12:59:25 PM
The Corner
How Vindictive Is This Administration?
August 26, 2010 9:54 A.M. By Daniel Foster   

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/244814/how-vindictive-administration-daniel-foster

________________________ ________________________ _____


I’m not usually the conspiratorial type, but watch Gov. Chris Christie explain how the Obama administration disqualified the state of New Jersey from hundreds of millions in education funds because some clerk in Trenton turned in the wrong excel spreadsheet:
 
Democrats in Washington have already shown a willingness to withhold federal education dollars from states that don’t follow their preferred tactic for navigating the recession: giving teachers raises like it’s the Gay ’90s. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is more punishment for a state that committed the crime of balancing its budget.

But the Obama administration has made a serious mistake here: they’ve given Chris Christie an opening, a reason to take them on directly. And how does the old saying go? Never go up against a Sicilian, when political credibility is on the line?

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: BM OUT on August 26, 2010, 01:01:59 PM
If he got in in 2012 he would DESTROY Imam Obama.
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 26, 2010, 01:05:28 PM
If he got in in 2012 he would DESTROY Imam Obama.

Definately.  I like Christie alot.     

But then again, I would vote for the BTK or Zodiac Killer over Imam Obama in 2012, piss be upon him.   
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 30, 2010, 06:20:39 AM
Obamacare’s Bureaucracy Nightmare
FrontPage ^ | August 30, 2010 | Tait Trussell


________________________ ________________________ ___


We now see how the regulatory bureaucracy [1] works—or probably can’t work– and how it “may well push us into the single-payer health care system,” Grace-Marie Turner astutely pointed out Aug. 26 in the Detroit News. Turner is president of the Galen Institute, a research organization focusing on health policy. Under a single-payer system, the federal government would be the paymaster making the medical decisions.

Three influential House Democrats are now pushing [2] for a public option (single-payer). ModernHealh.com reported July 22. Rep. Pete Stark (D-Calif), chairman of the House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee, is leading the movement. The “public option offers lower cost competition to private insurance companies,” added Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif ) co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Il), is the third Member.

Even before a single-payer system could evolve, ObamaCare has the potential to topple from bureaucratic overload. Uncountable unelected and untested bureaucrats will be making life-affecting decisions. At this stage, not even experts who have pored over the 2,000-plus-word law know how many bureaucracies are hidden away in the ObamaCare statute. According to Politico no one can figure [3] out exactly how many new agencies ObamaCare will spawn once it comes into full effect. Congress authorized a “self-perpetuating bureaucracy, one that can expand on its own and make determinations far outside of the boundaries Democrats promised during the ObamaCare debate.”  

A Congressional Research Service Report, “New Entities Created Pursuant to the Patient Protection and Affordability Care Act (PPACA) is a dramatic eye-opener. Curtis W. Copeland earnestly attempted to compile [4] and briefly explain the pieces and parts of the regulatory jungle in a 40-page report in July. In his summary section, author Copeland, described as a specialist in American National Government, writes:

Some of these new entities are offices within existing cabinet departments and agencies, and are assigned certain administrative or representational duties related to the legislation. Other entities are new boards and commissions with particular planning and reporting responsibilities. Still others are advisory bodies that were created to study particular issues, offer recommendations, or both. Although PPACA describes some of these new organizations and advisory bodies in detail, in many cases it is impossible to know how much influence they would ultimately have over the implementation of the legislation.

This report describes dozens of governmental organizations or advisory bodies that are mentioned in PPACA but does not include other types of entities…(e.g. various demonstration projects, grants, trust funds, programs, systems, formulas, guidelines, risk pools, websites, ratings areas, model agreements, or protocols)….The precise number of new entities that will ultimately be created…is unknowable….PPACA significantly increased the appointment responsibilities of the Controller General of the United States, and it is unclear how the Government Accountability Office (GAO) will be able to independently audit entities whose members are appointed by the head of GAO.

Seemingly always conscious of racial matters, an example of the minority health provision that the CRS analysis mentions “requires the heads of six separate agencies within Health and Human Services to each establish their own offices of minority health.”

This astonishingly frank description of the law’s provisions reminds one of Shakespeare’s Act 3, Scene 4 when Lady Macbeth says “You have displaced the mirth…with most admired disorder.” A law perhaps admired by some in Congress, but certainly in disorder.

The Center for Health Transformation (CHT), founded by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, estimated 159 new [5] offices, agencies, and programs created by the health law, Politico reported Aug. 3. “Even in the few cases in which the PPACA set explicit creation dates for organizations, the consequences for missing these deadlines remain unknown.” The law’s provisions “vary dramatically in specificity.” It states a lot about some provisions, but a little about many other provisions. “Some have been authorized without any instructions on who is to appoint whom, when that might happen and who will pay.”

Gingrich’s CHT lists the sections of the law and page numbers for the 159 programs it finds in the ObamaCare law as well as the department or agency which would seem to logically oversee the specific provisions and programs. Matters to be regulated range from grants for women with postpartum [6] depression, to grants for long-term care ombudsmen, whose duties are vague. Five separate major programs deal with women’s health. Section 3509 (a), for instance, says PPACA “transfers all functions and authorities of the existing Office of Women’s Health of the Public Health Service. Located within the Office of he Secretary of HHS; no creation date specified…PPACA authorizes such sums as may be necessary for FY 2010 through FY 2014. Composition of the office not specified; headed by a director, who is appointed by and reports to the director of CDCP [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention].” No date specified for appointment of director.

For the Office of Minority Health, the CRS analysis says: “PPACA transfers existing office within the Office of Public Health and Science of the Office of Secretary. No transfer day specified. Composition of the office not specified. Office headed by Deputy Assistant Secretary for Minority Health, who shall report directly to the Secretary (of HHS). Office is to ‘retain and strengthen authorities…for the purpose of improving minority health and the quality of health care minorities receive and eliminating racial and ethnic disparities.’ Submit a report to ‘appropriate committees of Congress by 03/23/11 (and biennially) summarizing agency activities.’”

Section 3012 (a), as described briefly by the CRS, is called “Entities to be established by the President. The President shall establish…Interagency Working Group on Health Care Quality. No location or creation date specified….Composed of senior level representatives from HHS, CMS, NIH, CDCP, FDA, HRSA, AHRQ, SAMHSA, and ACF, 13 other specified departments and agencies, and any other agencies selected by the President…” (This large assemblage of “worker bees” is to report to Congress by 12/31/10 and annually thereafter.)

Copeland notes that in a number of cases, no mention is stated regarding the management, when a provision will cease to exist and the amount and timing of appropriations. These “may have significant implications for…agency discretion in the implementation of PPACA.” Elsewhere, he says, in other cases, PPACA provides a general description of the new organization, but permits substantial discretion regarding where the new entities are to be positioned…..Much more commonly, however, PPCAC does not indicate in either specific or general terms where the newly created entities are to be established…..Where specific duties are not delineated…those responsible for leading these organizations (and those responsible for appointing those leaders) appear to have substantial latitude in determining how the organizations will operate, and for what purposes.” In other words, faceless bureaucratic rule will be the order of the day.

Single-payer health care is financing the delivery of universal health care to an entire population through a single insurance pool, typically government regulated, according to wikipedia.org [7]. The disadvantages [8] of a single payer health system are the loss of choice, and inevitably increased expenses that are typical with government programs. We already have a single-payer system with Medicare, which certainly doesn’t cover everything, including routine dental care, dentures, hearing aids and exams for fitting hearing aids, cosmetic surgery, and acupuncture, for example. But we will spend about $375 billion [9] for it this year. In a National Bureau of Economic Research Study, authors comparing the U.S. and Canadian [10] Health Systems said that “while it is commonly supposed that a single-payer, publicly-funded system (as Canada has) would deliver better health outcomes …than a multi-payer system with a private component, their study does not support this view. Pap smears (for women) and PSA screenings (for men) were more frequent in the U. S. And the rate of cancer detection was higher in the U.S., for example. As George Will wrote in his July 11 column, “The new health care legislation is a step toward elimination, by slow strangulation, of private health insurance and establishment of government as the ‘single payer.’” [11]

A key bureaucrat in ObamaCare is Dr. Donald Berwick, who heads the federal Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and says he loves the single-payer [12] system, as reported July 27 by CNS News.com and others. Berwick was quoted as saying, like a single-minded bureaucrat, “I cannot believe that the individual health care consumer can enforce through choice the proper configurations of a system as massive and complex as health care. That’s for leaders (translation: know-it-all bureaucrats) to do.”

Before his election, Obama said. “I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care program. But as we all know, we might not get there immediately.” What makes us think he has changed his mind? And remember what Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), a fervent proponent of the public option, said in the health-care debate last December “What we are buying here” is a “starter home.” He said, “At some point in the near future [13] we’re going to have some sort of public option.”

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: GigantorX on August 30, 2010, 08:06:46 AM
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/dallas-fed-august-manufacturing-activity-comes-135-below-expectations-confirms-julys-plunge- (http://www.zerohedge.com/article/dallas-fed-august-manufacturing-activity-comes-135-below-expectations-confirms-julys-plunge-)

Another economic manufacturing report that doesn't look so hot.
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 30, 2010, 08:09:34 AM
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/dallas-fed-august-manufacturing-activity-comes-135-below-expectations-confirms-julys-plunge- (http://www.zerohedge.com/article/dallas-fed-august-manufacturing-activity-comes-135-below-expectations-confirms-julys-plunge-)

Another economic manufacturing report that doesn't look so hot.

That site is one of my favorites. 

Gigantor - did you see the interview I postd with the CEO from Intel on the costs to build a factory in Cali?     
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 30, 2010, 08:17:13 AM
With Used-Car Prices Up 10 Percent Over 2009, Buyers Need Shopping Discipline
www.edmunds.com


________________________ ________________________ _____



Car buyers on average paid $1,800 more for a used vehicle in July than they paid a year ago at this time, according to Edmunds.com data. That's a 10.3 percent increase, bringing the average cost of a 3-year-old vehicle to $19,248. The price of a Cadillac Escalade spiked nearly 36 percent. "A lack of confidence in the economy is driving more people to used cars, putting upward pricing pressure on a limited supply of vehicles," said Joe Spina, a senior analyst for Edmunds.

There's a tricky aspect to this analysis, because last summer was marked by a used-car buying frenzy spawned by the Cash for Clunkers program. Spina said the effects of that program are hard to isolate precisely. "So many economic factors affect automobile sales and prices. It's believed that the program delayed purchases prior to the program and also pulled sales forward while in place," he said. "The program also eliminated inventory of older vehicles that were traded and then scrapped." After the jump, take a look at the vehicles whose prices moved the most this July. The model years have been averaged. You can also get some advice on how to proceed in a (relatively) pricey used-car market.

Spina said that at this time last year, a troubled economy had consumers buying less- expensive fuel-efficient vehicles and trading in "gas guzzlers" through Cash for Clunkers (more formally known as the Car Allowance Rebate System). "Now, those who need trucks and large SUVs are buying them and in many cases are turning to used vehicles as a way to save money," he said. "Prices are high because this demand comes at a time when inventory is low as a result of the current shortage of lease returns and trade-ins for vehicles of this type." And, he said, while prices are indeed very high now, last year's prices were low, making the gains even more dramatic.

The point for used-car consumers is that it's more important than ever to do your homework before shopping, said Philip Reed, Edmunds' senior consumer advice editor. "For example, decide ahead of time how much you are willing to spend and keep yourself to that limit."

More guidance on how to make a smart used-car buy can be found in "10 Steps to Buying a Used Car."


________________________ ________________________ __

Another stupid program that failed and cost billions for no reason at all. 

It helped spike used car costs when said prices should be coming down.  Who did it harm?  Those in the middle and lower class. 
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 30, 2010, 08:31:47 AM
Obama Blows Off 3 Billion Wannabe Billionaires: William Pesek
By William Pesek - Aug 29, 2010 3:00 PM ET
Bloomberg Opinion


________________________ ________________________ _________

For a guy who talked big about re- engaging Asia, Barack Obama has a funny way of showing it.

Nobody doubts the U.S. president’s team is supremely busy juggling oil spills, Muslim cultural centers, convincing ignoramuses he has a birth certificate and averting recession. Yet there’s no excuse for blowing off last week’s Association of Southeast Asian Nations trade meeting in Vietnam.

It was a dreadful decision and its significance didn’t escape members of the fourth-biggest market for U.S. goods. This is no time for the U.S. to be taking the most dynamic economies for granted. Not with China becoming an ever-bigger player both in Asia and globally.

On any list of George W. Bush’s failings, ignoring Asia deserves a prominent mention. When his administration bothered with Asia, it was all terrorism all the time. There was little talk about potential, cooperation or partnership. Bush just wanted to know how many bad guys governments were rounding up.

He tried to make amends in the twilight of his presidency, naming a U.S. ambassador to Asean in 2008. Recently, Obama tapped that official, Scot Marciel, to be U.S. ambassador to Indonesia. Obama hasn’t bothered to name a new Asean envoy.

The U.S. missed a timely opportunity last week to confer with the economic ministers of Asean’s 10 members, along with counterparts from Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand and Russia.

Blowing Off Asia

At a time of global crisis, one the U.S. caused, does Obama really want to be sending a message of indifference to Asia? Coming a week after the announcement that China’s economy has surpassed Japan’s, the U.S.’s closest Asian ally, you would think the White House would be stepping up a charm offensive. Instead, it risks turning off the region.

“Confidence in the United States and its ability to lead and follow through on commitments is based on its economic well- being, and that status is being questioned by friends and competitors alike in Asia,” Ernest Bower, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, wrote in a recent report.

China’s rapid growth is slowly, but surely, chipping away at the U.S.’s importance. Granted, at almost three times China’s economy, the U.S. will long be a vital customer for Asia’s goods. Officials here also know that depending on growth in a developing economy is risky.

U.S. Brand

Yet neglecting future trade ties with the liveliest economies is just plain dumb. Asia is churning out a fast- growing number of billionaires and is home to 3 billion consumers who aspire to join them. The U.S. wants to be in on that process.

Obama must not forget just how much the 2008 meltdown damaged the U.S. brand. During Asia’s 1990s crisis, U.S. officials preached the free-market gospel. They told leaders to raise interest rates to support currencies, slash spending and debt, scrap subsidies and avoid bailing out industries. When the U.S. faced a crisis, it did exactly the opposite.

There’s also considerable grumbling over the dollar. True or not, the theory that the U.S. is devaluing to help exporters is making the rounds. That perception is a problem if you want China to let its currency strengthen. It doesn’t play well in Japan, where panic is rising over the strong yen.

Nor can the U.S. complain about corruption in Asia. Incestuous ties between Washington and Wall Street helped cause the U.S. crisis. Conflicts of interest between regulators and oil companies led to BP Plc’s devastating Gulf of Mexico leak. The U.S. has little moral high ground on dodgy dealings.

Corruption’s Cost

That’s a shame, considering the magnitude of Asia’s corruption fight. In Indonesia, for example, officials face an uphill battle to weed out graft and allow more of the nation’s people to benefit from 6 percent growth.

In the Philippines, the honeymoon enjoyed by Benigno Aquino, since becoming president in June, ended last week in gunfire. Eight Hong Kong tourists being held hostage in Manila died in a botched rescue attempt. The tragedy was emblematic of what plagues the nation’s economy.

The gunman was a former police inspector who was dismissed on allegations of extortion. The standoff’s surreal finale suggested a breakdown in the nation’s security apparatus, ineptness at many levels and weak diplomacy. Corruption is the common link in all these shortcomings.

Lost Opportunity

Obama got off to a good start, becoming the first U.S. leader to meet with Asean in November. Vietnam was the perfect opportunity to go further -- to discuss views on credit markets, North Korea’s provocations, China’s currency, Australia’s election, Russia’s growth prospects, and Japanese deflation.

This last topic is a growing concern. Not only have consumer prices fallen for 17 consecutive months, but Japan now has a leadership battle on its hands. Prime Minister Naoto Kan faces a challenge to remain head of the ruling party by veteran kingmaker Ichiro Ozawa. It’s the last thing Japan needs: its sixth prime minister in three years.

Obama’s team could have learned about all of this, and much more, if it had only shown up in Asia. It should do so as soon as possible.

(William Pesek is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this column: William Pesek in Tokyo at wpesek@bloomberg.net


________________________ ________________

He is too busying partying, golfing, drinking, and figring out how to get an umbrella threw a gate. 
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 30, 2010, 08:39:27 AM
August 11, 2010
The Conspiracy Against Economic Growth
By Louis Woodhill
www.realclearmarkets.com

________________________ _____________________

On July 11, Erskine Bowles, co-chairman of President Obama's Debt and Deficit Commission, made the following statement in a speech to the National Governors' Association annual meeting in Boston:

"We can't grow our way out of this. We could have decades of double-digit growth and not grow our way out of this enormous debt problem."

Mr. Bowles' assertion was widely reported. If you Google it, you get 2430 hits. The mainstream media treated it as a statement of the obvious, something that no reasonable person could disagree with. No one in the elite media said, "This is utter nonsense. Mr. Bowles should resign from the Debt Commission and devote his time to the study of arithmetic"-although this is, in fact, the logical response to Bowles' preposterous assertion.

Mr. Bowles' statement was almost certainly a reaction to the "Long Term Budget Outlook" (LTBO) released by the CBO on June 30. In the CBO's "Alternate Fiscal Scenario" (AFS) case (which they represented as being more realistic than their "Extended Baseline Scenario"), Federal debt as a percent of GDP rises from 62% in 2010 to 100% by 2023, and then to 146% in 2030. At the end of the projection period, in 2084, the national debt reaches 947% of GDP, with a budget deficit equal to 61.5% of GDP in that year alone. As the CBO rightly points out, such a budgetary path would be completely untenable.

Now, the minimum growth trajectory that would fit "...decades of double digit growth..." would be 10.0% economic growth for 20 years. If you plug these assumptions into the CBO's AFS case (keeping everything else the same), the faster growth would eliminate the budget deficit by the end of 2014 and pay off the entire national debt by the end of 2020. In fiscal year 2030, the Federal government would run a budget surplus of $16.6 trillion (in 2010 dollars), or 16.9% of that year's GDP. In fact, the interest on the government's accumulated surplus ($69.4 trillion in 2010 dollars, or 475% of 2010 GDP) would pay for more than 60% of government spending that year.

Now, why would a co-chairman of Obama's Debt Commission make such an absurd assertion, and why would no one in the elite media challenge it? I believe that it is because our political and media elites want a bigger, more intrusive, and more expensive government, and they want a Value Added Tax (VAT) to pay for it. Their strategy is to de-legitimize other alternatives-particularly faster economic growth-to the point where they cannot even be discussed.  

An example of this "conspiracy against growth" is the CBO's LTBO itself. The CBO assumes that economic growth over the next 74 years will average 2.16%. While the CBO considers the impact of various assumptions on the trajectory of the national debt, it does not consider (or even mention) the possibility of higher growth. This is particularly striking because over the 74-year period from 1935 to 2009, America's real annual economic growth averaged 3.73%.

The difference between 2.16% growth and 3.73% growth is enormous. If you increase the growth rate in the CBO's AFS case to 3.73% (again, holding everything else constant), instead of Federal debt rising steadily from 62% of GDP in 2010 to 87% in 2020, 146% in 2030, and 947% in 2084, the debt would peak at 67% of GDP in 2012 and then begin declining. Without any spending cuts and tax increases, it would fall to 60% in 2020 and 52% in 2030. By 2052, the entire national debt would be paid off.

In addition to the CBO and the mainstream media, the conspiracy against growth includes the Social Security Trustees. In their just-released "2010 Annual Report", the Social Security Trustees assume an economic growth rate of 2.25% over the next 74 years. While they do present a "Low Cost Case" that features (among other things), a real growth rate of 2.93%, they make no mention of this case in their "Conclusions". The solutions discussed are confined to tax increases and benefit cuts. Later in their report, the Trustees present "sensitivity analyses" of their projections (of doom) against eight different variables, but none of these is the one variable that would have the most impact-the rate of economic growth.

The Medicare Trustees' 2010 Annual Report uses the same economic assumptions as the Social Security report. The 38-page "Overview" of the Medicare report makes no mention of the tremendous impact that higher economic growth would have on our nation's ability to afford our Medicare program.

The Republicans running for Congress this year must expose and denounce the conspiracy against economic success. Prosperity is possible, but not if our economy grows at 2.25% per year or less. A "Prosperity Plan" comprising stabilizing the dollar, revoking the Federal Reserve's authority to pay interest on bank reserves, and tax reductions on work, savings, and investment would yield much higher rates of growth than those assumed in the gloomy CBO LTBO.

The Bush tax cuts must be made permanent for everyone. Beyond that, the corporate income tax, the capital gains tax, and the death tax should be repealed. These tax changes would reduce the Federal government's "tax take" from the LTBO AFS case level of 19.3% of GDP to perhaps 17.0% of GDP. The reduction in tax take would be less than predicted by static analysis, because the tax take rises significantly during economic booms. It is reasonable to expect that the Prosperity Plan would yield an economic growth rate averaging at least the 3.73% sustained by the U.S. from 1935 to 2009.

Plugging the revised tax and growth assumptions into the CBO's LTBO model (with no spending cuts), we see that, at first, the tax cuts cause the Federal debt to be higher in the Prosperity Plan (PP) case than in the AFS case. In 2012, the debt is 72% of GDP in the PP case against 69% in the AFS case. However, after that, the much higher rate of PP economic growth asserts itself.

By 2016, the debt levels in the two cases are the same, at 75% of GDP. In 2020, the PP case yields a debt-to-GDP ratio of 81%, vs. the AFS case's 87%. The PP case's debt-to-GDP ratio peaks at 98% in 2034, while the AFS case debt ratio (which is 177% of GDP at that point) just keeps growing. The PP case brings the budget into balance in 2061, at which point the AFS case is running a budget deficit equal to an absurd 35.3% of GDP. The PP case pays off the entire national debt by 2075.

America does not need higher taxes, it needs more economic growth. Prosperity is possible, but the Republicans must make a decisive, public break from the conspiracy against economic growth.


Louis Woodhill (louis@woodhill.com), an engineer and software entrepreneur, is on the Leadership Council of the Club for Growth.

________________________ _______________________

Like we have said Obama and the far left hate this nation and are trying to collapse the system. 
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Fury on August 30, 2010, 08:49:09 AM
Destroy then rebuild. That's what the far-left and their cronies in the MSM are aiming for.
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 30, 2010, 09:01:41 AM
Landrieu to White House: Lift drilling moratorium ASAP
By Bridget Johnson - 08/29/10 11:25 AM ET
www.thehill.com


________________________ ________________________ __
 
Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) implored the Obama administration Sunday to lift the offshore drilling moratorium, saying it was excessive and hurting Gulf Coast residents.

Landrieu said that a pause in operations, imposed in the wake of the BP oil spill, was necessary but that the moratorium needed to be lifted.

"A 6-month moratorium has put a blanket of fear and anxiety and it must be lifted as soon as possible," Landrieu said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

The senator said she was not fighting for "big oil," but for small businesses affected by the ban.

"We need to get back to work to build this region and we intend to do so," she said.


________________________ ______________________

Obama - destroying the nation any and all ways he can fathom. 

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 30, 2010, 09:10:22 AM
Jindal calls for greater 'urgency' from Obama on ending drilling moratorium
By Sean J. Miller - 08/29/10 08:31 PM ET

www.thehill.com
 
 
NEW ORLEANS – Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-La.) on Sunday blasted President Obama’s failure to revisit his ban on offshore oil drilling. 

“We don’t think the fact that they’re not doing their jobs in D.C. should cost thousands of Louisianans our jobs,” Jindal told reporters shortly after the president spoke at Xavier University in New Orleans.   

Obama’s speech on the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina addressed the rebuilding of New Orleans and his commitment to clean up the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico, but did not mention his administration’s decision to halt deepwater offshore exploration until Nov. 30.

The White House is reportedly considering an early end to the ban but Jindal wants to see a “greater sense of urgency” from the president. “The experts all agree, we can end this moratorium before six months," he said. "Let’s put our people back to work.”

Jindal said he was going to meet on Monday with former Florida Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), who co-chairs the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling Commission, to make that point. The first-term governor said he’s fine with increased inspections of the rigs off Louisiana's coast; “what we’re saying is, a one-size-fits-all moratorium doesn’t make sense.”

The Republican said the decision to ban further exploration in the wake of the explosion on BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig resulted from “confusion.”

“I don’t think they understood how the energy industry worked – I think they really thought that the rigs could simply flip a switch,” he said. “In the beginning, the administration suggested people file BP claims with unemployment claims. We made it clear that people want to go back to work.”

Jindal said he’s been in “constant contact” with the White House about the moratorium, as well as the ongoing hurricane recovery effort and the spill cleanup operation.

“I hope [they] now have a better understanding of what’s at stake, the jobs that are at stake,” he said. “Until they came down here, they didn’t understand the human impact in terms of the small businesses and jobs.”

The administration spent the week leading up to his trip to New Orleans touting the number of people displaced by the storm who have returned to the city since 2008, and the strides the schools have made.

But in his speech, Obama admitted more work needed to be done, and made a renewed commitment to helping the area recover from the disasters.

 “I wanted to come here and tell the people of this city directly: my administration is going to stand with you – and fight alongside you – until the job is done,” he said.

________________________ ________________________ _________

240 cant spin this crap anymore.  Both parties realize Obama is INTENTIONALLY destroying the nation. 
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 30, 2010, 09:14:53 AM
Energy Department watchdog notes woes with managing stimulus dollars
By Darren Goode - 08/15/10 10:30 PM ET
www.thehill.com


________________________ ________________________ _____________________


 
The Energy Department’s internal watchdog has mixed reviews of the department’s distribution and use of economic stimulus dollars, even as the White House touts the massive spending bill in the run-up to midterms.

President Obama’s planned tour Monday of ZBB Energy Corp.’s facilities in Menomonee Falls, Wis., is the latest in a series of stops this election season to highlight what the administration calls the effectiveness of federal clean energy stimulus investments.

But recent reports by DOE’s Inspector General (IG) have cited problems with the department’s distribution of the stimulus dollars and recipients’ use of them.

The IG reported Wednesday that DOE has given out about $2.7 billion of $3.2 billion in energy and conservation block grants provided in last year’s stimulus. But grant recipients had used only 8.4 percent of the total after more than a year.

Spending delays were “prevalent and widespread throughout the Program,” particularly by those receiving the largest grants of more than $2 million each, the report found.


DOE officials have pointed out that “spending rates have significantly increased since March 2010,” according to the IG report, which also noted that recipient spending “was not a leading indicator” of the program’s overall performance.

But the IG still concluded that rapid spending of the funds “was hampered by numerous administrative and regulatory challenges associated with implementing a new program” at the federal, state and local levels.

An Aug. 4 IG report indicated “a number of issues” needing to be addressed before the remaining $3.4 billion of $32.7 billion in contracts and grants for science, energy and environmental programs can be doled out.

As of July 9, the department had obligated 90 percent of that $32.7 billion. But less than half intended for a couple of major projects had been spent, and none of the programs covered under the stimulus plan had all funding obligated.

“We are particularly concerned that delays in the award process for two major Fossil Energy projects could result in the expiration of funds before all awards are made,” the report stated.

The day after the IG delivered its report to senior DOE officials, the department announced $1 billion in stimulus money was being awarded to the revised version of the long-planned and troubled “FutureGen” project, a prototype coal-fired power plant that would trap and store almost all of its carbon dioxide emissions.

But Mattoon, Ill., the town that was to house the FutureGen project, subsequently rejected the project revisions after seeing its role change and shrink.

DOE spokeswoman Stephanie Mueller said the department has “now made selections for all of our program areas and are highly confident we will meet the September 30 deadline of obligating Recovery Act funds.” She adds that the energy efficiency and conservation block grant program “has seen significant growth this summer,” with more than 4,000 projects now under way.

“And as project deployment continues to accelerate, the rate of payments to local communities has also increased, including a doubling of total payments between the first and second quarter of 2010,” Mueller said.

Early challenges with the block grant program — such as environmental reviews and technical staff support — “have now largely been addressed and grantees are moving forward with their projects,” she said.

Separately, while the administration overall has doled out the majority of its stimulus funds — including a $14.7 million tax credit to ZBB Energy Corp. — it still faces backlash from the renewable energy industry over the diversion of more than half of loan guarantees set aside for the industry in the stimulus.

Lawmakers — with the backing of the White House — have diverted for other priorities $3.5 billion of the $6 billion in DOE loan guarantees authorized in the stimulus.

Democratic congressional leaders and the Energy Department are promising to replenish the loan guarantees so projects in the pipeline aren’t affected.

“The Department recognizes the urgent need to avoid devastating teacher layoffs and to avert cuts in medical and social services for our most vulnerable citizens,” an Energy Department spokeswoman said in a statement. “At the same time, we recognize the need for continued investments in clean energy. In the short term, we have the resources to support a broad portfolio of clean energy technologies — even as we work with Congress and the White House to secure additional funding to invest in a clean energy economy."

Renewable energy groups are still somewhat skeptical given that it has been a year already since an initial $2 billion was diverted.

“They said, ‘OK, guys, don’t worry we will replenish it. We have plenty of time to get the funding back in there,’” said Monique Hanis, spokeswoman for the Solar Energy Industries Association. “I think that’s why we have been very vocal this time. Now there is definite concern.”

The $6 billion in lending authority would actually affect the development of 10 times that — roughly $60 billion — worth of projects, renewable energy industry groups argue.

Source:
http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/677-e2-wire/114365-energy-dept-watchdog-notes-problems-with-distribution-use-of-stimulus


________________________ ________________

Stim Bill = FAIL. 
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 30, 2010, 10:07:01 AM
Obama’s Old Deal
Why the 44th president is no FDR—and the economy is still in the doldrums.

 
by Michael HirshAugust 29, 2010


www.newsweek.com

________________________ ________________________ ___________________

 
 
Barack Obama was “incredulous” at what he was hearing, said one of his top economic advisers. The president had spent his first year in office overseeing the biggest government bailout of the financial industry in American history. Together with Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, he had kept Wall Street afloat on a trillion-dollar tide of taxpayer money. But the banks were barely lending, and the economy was still mired in high unemployment. And now, in December 2009, the holiday news had started to filter out of the canyons of lower Manhattan: Wall Street’s year-end bonuses would actually be larger in 2009 than they had been in 2007, the year prior to the catastrophe. “Wait, let me get this straight,” Obama said at a White House meeting that December. “These guys are reserving record bonuses because they’re profitable, and they’re profitable only because we rescued them.” It was as if nothing had changed. Even after a Depression-size crash, the banks were not altering their behavior. The president was being perceived, more and more, as a man on the wrong side of an incendiary issue.

And so, prodded forward by Vice President Joe Biden—the product of a working-class upbringing in Scranton, Pa.—the president began to consider getting tougher on Wall Street. “We kept revisiting it,” said the economic adviser (who recounted details of the meetings only on condition of anonymity). One big proposal the White House hadn’t adopted was Paul Volcker’s idea of barring commercial banks from indulging in heavy risk taking and “proprietary” trading. In Volcker’s view, America’s major banks, which enjoy federal guarantees on their deposits, had to stop putting taxpayer money at risk by acting like hedge funds. This had become a grand passion for Volcker, a living legend renowned for crushing inflation 30 years before as Fed chairman. He had long been skeptical of financial deregulation. Beyond the ATM, Volcker asked, what new banking products had really added to economic growth? Exhibit one for this argument was derivatives, trillions of dollars in “side bets” placed by Wall Street traders. “I wish somebody would give me some shred of neutral evidence about the relationship between financial innovation recently and the growth of the economy,” he barked at one conference.

Yet for most of that first year, Obama and his economic team had largely ignored Volcker, a sometime adviser. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and chief economic adviser Larry Summers still questioned whether Volcker’s proposals were feasible. Now Obama was pressing them—very gingerly—to reconsider. “I’m not convinced Volcker’s not right about this,” Obama said at one meeting in the Roosevelt Room. Biden, a longtime fan of Volcker’s, bluntly piped up: “I’m quite convinced Volcker is right about this!”

Obama’s cautious, late embrace of Volcker was all too typical. He had arrived in office perceived by some as the second coming of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Yet Obama hadn’t acted much like FDR in the ensuing months. Instead he had faithfully channeled Summers and Geithner and their conservative approach to stimulus and reform. Early on, Obama’s two key economic officials had argued down Christina Romer, the new chairwoman of the Council of Economic Advisers, when she suggested a massive $1.2 trillion stimulus to make up for the collapse of private demand. They opted for slightly less than $800 billion. “We believe that this is a properly sized approach to move the economy forward,” said Summers, who didn’t want to expand the federal deficit or worry the bond market. With the recession still darkening their outlook, Summers and Geithner also didn’t want to tamper too much with what they still saw as the economy’s engine room: Wall Street. Partly on their advice, the president “explicitly decided not to break up all big financial institutions,” said another top economic adviser, Austan Goolsbee.

After his first year, Obama felt he had done well overall on the economy.  Helped by Fed chairman Bernanke, his administration had brought the financial system back from the abyss—from another Great Depression, in effect—by shoring up the banks with hundreds of billions in new bailouts. The administration also pushed for a broad array of reforms. The giant bill Obama signed early in the summer of 2010 brought trillions of dollars in “dark” trading in over-the-counter derivatives into the open. It created new, tough watchdogs for credit-card and mortgage companies, as well as banks. It gave the government new powers to liquidate failing financial firms rather than bail them out.

The president proudly called the new law “the toughest financial reform since the one we created in the aftermath of the Great Depression.” What Obama left unsaid was that his administration had argued against many of the toughest amendments in the bill. And Wall Street, in the end, didn’t complain about it all that much. The biggest firms knew that much of what their powerful lobbyists had failed to block or water down in the bill could be taken care of later on. They’d still be able to influence the vast set of rules on capital, leverage, and other financial issues that would be written by regulators. Led by Summers and Geithner, Obama’s economic team resisted almost every structural change to Wall Street—in particular, Volcker’s plan (initially) and Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln’s idea to bar banks from swaps trading. The administration’s program for getting underwater mortgage holders out of trouble was also criticized as too modest. Obama’s team accepted “too many givens,” says a former senior career Fed official who asked to remain anonymous so as not to offend his former colleagues. Obama’s effort “certainly wasn’t like FDR’s because reform wasn’t driven by the White House,” says Michael Greenberger, a former senior regulator who did much to shape derivatives legislation behind the scenes. “If anything, during most of the journey the White House was a problem and Treasury was a problem.”

Obama’s aides claimed they were only making necessary compromises, placating the Republicans and centrist Democrats they needed to pass the law. And they did stand firm on creating a strong Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. But by midsummer of 2010 the Volcker rule that Obama finally backed was so full of exemptions—allowing banks to invest substantially in hedge and equity funds—that even Volcker expressed dismay. The fundamental structure of Wall Street had hardly changed. On the contrary, the new law effectively anointed the existing banking elite, possibly making them even more powerful. The major firms got to keep the biggest part of their derivatives business in interest-rate and foreign-exchange swaps. (JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Bank of America, and Morgan Stanley control more than 95 percent, or about $200 trillion worth, of that market.)

The same banks may end up controlling or at least dominating the clearinghouses they are being pressed to trade on as well. New capital charges, meanwhile, have created barriers to entry for new firms. This consolidation of the elites has in turn kept alive the “too big to fail” problem. “It makes it way tougher now to kiss somebody off when they get in trouble,” says the former Fed official. Eugene Ludwig, a former comptroller of the currency, believes the new law’s impact will be “profound” in changing the way banks do business. But he worries about a “skewing of the playing field” in favor of the big banks, putting community banks at a disadvantage.

The Obama administration also did little to use its bully pulpit to reorient pay packages at the big financial houses, where bonuses still often run in the tens of millions of dollars. Critics make the case that changing this pay structure would do more than punish those who helped spur the meltdown. It might also encourage some of America’s greatest minds to stay away from financial engineering, which contributes little of substance to the economy, and instead consider real engineering. Nor has the Justice Department launched prosecutions as it did after the S&L crisis, or during the insider-trading scandals of the ’80s, when Michael Milken and Ivan Boesky were led off in handcuffs. (One problem this time around, lawyers say, is that virtually everyone was complicit in the subprime-mortgage scam.)

Most significantly, Barack Obama, in contrast to FDR in the depths of the Depression, has failed as yet to restore confidence in the economy. A recent Associated Press poll showed him at his lowest point ever on that issue, with just 41 percent of Americans approving of his performance. It was little surprise last week when Republican House leader John Boehner, sensing blood in the water—and a possible speakership in his future—attacked the president’s economic team and called for the resignations of Geithner and Summers. (Both budget chief Peter Orszag and Romer had already announced over the summer they were leaving.)

Obama can hardly take all the blame for the surprising persistence of high unemployment and slow growth. Among the new headwinds beating the economy down in recent months was Europe’s currency crisis, for example. But the leadership question can’t be ignored. Financial and economic reform just never seemed to be a subject that kindled Obama’s passions, his critics say. (The White House strenuously disagrees: “Financial reform has been a top priority to the president since day one,” administration spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki told me.) For much of his first 18 months in office, Obama always seemed to be finding some new thing to focus on. He spoke about financial reform, but he often seemed to address it on the fly, as he was tackling other priorities, like health care. To be fair, Obama was also juggling two wars. Yet all in all, he seemed perfectly willing to leave things to his trusted lieutenants, Geithner and Summers, puzzling some Democratic allies on the Hill. “Doesn’t the president realize he’s got a big flank exposed here?” said one Democratic staffer pushing for tougher restrictions on Wall Street early in the summer of 2010.

There was so much passion and ambition in Obama’s words about fixing the economy, and so much dispassion and caution in his policy choices. Early in the Democratic primaries, in January 2008, Obama had stunned many of his supporters by praising Reagan as a transformational president—a contrast to the eight years of Bill Clinton, Obama added cuttingly. Reagan, Obama said, “put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it.” Yet at what would seem to be a similar historical inflection point—what should have been the end of Reaganism, or deregulatory fervor—President Obama seemed unprepared to address the deeper ills of the financial system and the economy. Several officials who have worked with the Obama team said the president’s heart was in health care above all else. “He didn’t run for president to fix derivatives,” says Greenberger. “And when he brought in Summers and Geithner, he just thought he was getting the best of the best”—good financial mechanics, in other words, who would “get the car out of the ditch,” to use one of Obama’s favorite metaphors.

But the administration had a much bigger job than that. The worst economic downturn since the Great Depression hadn’t occurred just because of a simple crash. An entire era had overreached—the markets-are-always-good, government-is-always-bad zeitgeist that defined the post–Cold War period. The very idea of government regulation and oversight had become heresy during this epoch. Washington policymakers came to ignore the key differences between financial and other markets, differences that economists had known about for hundreds of years. Financial markets were always more imperfect than markets for goods and other services, more prone to manias and panics and susceptible to the pitfalls of imperfect information unequally shared by investors. Yet that critical distinction was lost in the whirlwind of deregulatory passion that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union and other command economies. Finance, completely unleashed, had come to dominate the real economy rather than serve its traditional role as a supplier of capital to goods and services. Venture capital transmogrified into speculative fever. Innovative ways of financing new business ideas evolved into vastly complex derivatives deals, like subprime-mortgage-backed securities, that were often little more than scams.

All of these challenges required a fundamental rethinking of the U.S. and global economy. Yet those who were most aligned with the “progressive” side of the Wall Street reform issue remained, for the most part, on the outside of the administration looking in. Among them were Brooksley Born, the former chairwoman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. Summers and Geithner, by contrast, had been acolytes of Bob Rubin, the former Clinton Treasury secretary who, along with then–Fed chairman Alan Greenspan, had presided over many of the key deregulatory changes in the ’90s. And they convinced Obama that the financial system they themselves had done so much to nurture was, on the whole, fine. As long as there were greater capital reserves, leverage limits, and more regulatory oversight, Wall Street could remain intact. (Summers would continue to maintain, well after the crisis, that he had never been a full-blown advocate of deregulation; Geithner did not respond to a request to comment for this article, but previously told me that he was no creature of Wall Street and was simply doing as much as he could to constrain it.)

Obama was clearly not pushing very hard to be FDR or even his trust-busting relative Teddy Roosevelt. Now it looks like grim growth and unemployment numbers could extend all the way into 2012. Distracting himself with health care and other issues, Obama may have politically maneuvered himself out of the only major remedy that could bring unemployment down and growth up enough to assure his re-election: another giant fiscal stimulus. Today, after engendering Tea Party and centrist Democratic resistance to more government spending by pushing his health-care plan, the question is whether he has the political capital he may well need, in the end, to save his presidency. And after a two-year fight over financial reform, one other question still lingers: has Wall Street come out the big winner yet again?

Adapted from Capital Offense, by Michael Hirsh, a new book on the 30-year history behind the financial crash and ongoing economic crisis.

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Keep knee-padding you idiots.  The jig is up. 
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 30, 2010, 09:05:56 PM
Barack Obama is considering new stimulus
World Buzz News / Reuters ^ | August 31, 2010



Barack Obama, under pressure to restart the economic machine and Employment, announced Monday it had discussed with his advisers to new stimulus measures including tax breaks.

The U.S. president had just returned after ten days of vacation, appeared at the White House to show its concern about the economy that some experts fear a relapse into recession.

“My economic team is working hard on new economic measures could make a difference in terms of growth and employment in the short term and to improve our economic competitiveness in the long term,” the president said.

He listed a number of possible measures such as the extension of certain tax benefits for the middle class should be cut this year, an increase in public support to clean energy development and renovation of infrastructure.

He also cited “new measures of tax relief to encourage businesses to employ their capital to create jobs here in the United States.”

“INITIATIVES” TARGETED ”

The spokesman Robert Gibbs White House said the president would present in the coming days or weeks ahead of “Targeted Initiatives” to support the economy and he wanted them to be approved before Congress does to end the parliamentary session to focus on the midterm elections.

The pressure is on for the head of state ahead of elections of November 2, so that his recovery plan of 814 billion dollars he has voted in February 2009 did not significantly reduce unemployment.  

The jobless rate is close below 10% of the workforce. Some analysts expect an unemployment rate of 9.6% in August – the figures will be released on Friday – against 9.5% in July.

“In fact, there are too many companies still struggling, too many Americans who continue to seek work (…)”, said Barack Obama.


(Excerpt) Read more at worldbuzznews.com ...

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 31, 2010, 05:52:55 AM

Public sours on health care reform as midterms loom
Backing for the landmark law dropped by 7 percentage points in August, a new poll finds. | AP Photo

By JENNIFER HABERKORN | 8/31/10 6:37 AM EDT Updated: 8/31/10 7:33 AM EDT

________________________ ________________________ ______



A new poll shows that public support for health care reform dropped sharply in August – a dagger in Democrats’ hopes that their landmark legislation will help them in November’s midterm.  

The Kaiser Health Tracking Poll has support for the bill dropping seven percentage points in August – down to 43 percent – while opposition rose 10 points to 45 percent. That’s the weakest showing since May – and a far cry from the bump proponents had hoped to see as some of the law’s more consumer-friendly provisions kick in.

Democrats said throughout the year-long debate on Capitol Hill that support for the overhaul would increase once the bill passed and Americans were able to take advantage of some of its benefits. But it appears voters’ opinions of the legislation were set more firmly than anyone thought during the bruising political fight.

“Public opinion on health reform has been stuck in a fairly narrow band and is not changing dramatically,” said Drew Altman, president and CEO of the Kaiser Family Foundation. “And with concerns about the economy and jobs dominating the public’s agenda and local issues always so important in midterm elections, it is not clear that health reform will play a significant role at the polls in November.”

Respondents listed health care as the third most important factor in deciding how they’ll vote this fall — behind the economy and “dissatisfaction with government.”

Forty-two percent of respondents said health care reform will play an “extremely important” role in their ballot-box decisions, on par with the 41 percent who said the same thing in June.

About a third of voters say support for the health reform law would make it more likely that they’d vote for a candidate. But a third say it would make it less likely and a third say it wouldn’t make much of a difference. Those figures haven’t changed much since the law passed.

A series of insurance industry reforms, which Democrats pointed to as some of the most consumer friendly provisions of the law, are due to go into effect next month. They include a ban on lifetime or annual caps on insurance coverage and free preventive care on new insurance plans.

While many of these provisions have proven popular in polls, the popularity of the overhaul on the whole hasn’t improved. Plus, opposition to other provisions – namely, the requirement that nearly all Americans buy insurance coverage – has increased. The so-called “individual mandate” is opposed by 70 percent of the Kaiser poll’s respondents.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0810/41611.html#ixzz0yBgDDMBW

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Good job dems - spend a year and a half on a crap health care mess while the economy gets even worse. 
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 31, 2010, 07:00:32 AM
Advertise on NYTimes.com.Hedge Funds
Sorkin: Why Wall St. Is Deserting Obama
www.nyt.com

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August 31, 2010, 2:22 am

A letter from a hedge fund manager to his investors about Washington’s policies is stirring up controversy on a sensitive topic among the moneyed elite, The New York Times’s Andrew Ross Sorkin writes in his latest DealBook column.

The poison pen of Daniel S. Loeb took a jab recently at one of his former allies, the Obama administration, deploring the redistribution of resources and power that Wall Street has come to fear with the passage of the financial regulation overhaul.

Some say that they knew Obama would seek higher taxes and tighter regulation; that was O.K. What they say they did not realize was that they were going to be painted as villains. And as they grow to distrust government, they threaten to cut off investment in the United States.

By ANDREW ROSS SORKIN

Daniel S. Loeb, the hedge fund manager, was one of Barack Obama’s biggest backers in the 2008 presidential campaign.

A registered Democrat, Mr. Loeb has given and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Democrats. Less than a year ago, he was considered to be among the Wall Street elite still close enough to the White House to be invited to a speech in Lower Manhattan, where President Obama outlined the need for a financial regulatory overhaul.

So it came as quite a surprise on Friday, when Mr. Loeb sent a letter to his investors that sounded as if he were preparing to join Glenn Beck in Washington over the weekend.


“As every student of American history knows, this country’s core founding principles included nonpunitive taxation, constitutionally guaranteed protections against persecution of the minority and an inexorable right of self-determination,” he wrote. “Washington has taken actions over the past months, like the Goldman suit that seem designed to fracture the populace by pulling capital and power from the hands of some and putting it in the hands of others.”

Over the weekend, the letter, with quotations from Thomas Jefferson, Ronald Reagan and President Obama, was forwarded around the circles of the moneyed elite, from the Hamptons to Silicon Valley. Mr. Loeb’s jeremiad illustrates how some of the president’s former friends on Wall Street and in business now feel about Washington.

Mr. Loeb isn’t the first Wall Streeter to turn on the president. Steven A. Cohen, founder of the hedge fund SAC Capital Advisors and a supporter of the Obama campaign, recently held a meeting with Republican candidates in his home in Greenwich, Conn., to strategize about the midterm elections, according to Absolute Return magazine.

Other onetime supporters, like Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, also feel burned by the Obama administration, people close to him say.

That the honeymoon between Washington and Wall Street has turned to bitter recriminations is not news, given that the administration had long pledged to revamp Wall Street regulation in the wake of a crisis that rattled the global financial system.

Less than two years ago, Democrats received 70 percent of the donations from Wall Street; since June, when the financial regulation bill was nearing passage, Republicans were receiving 68 percent of the donations, according to an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan research group.

But what is surprising is that some of the president’s biggest supporters have so publicly derided his policies, even at the risk of hurting their ability to influence the party in the future. Issues like the carry-interest tax on private equity or the Volcker Rule have become personal.

Why so personal? The prevailing view is that bankers, hedge fund mangers and traders supported the Obama candidacy because he appealed to their egos.

Mr. Obama was viewed as a member of the elite, an Ivy League graduate (Columbia, class of ’83, the same as Mr. Loeb), president of The Harvard Law Review — he was supposed to be just like them. President Obama was the “intelligent” choice, the same way they felt about themselves. They say that they knew he would seek higher taxes and tighter regulation; that was O.K. What they say they did not realize was that they were going to be painted as villains.

That Wall Street view of itself as a victim has prompted much of the private murmurings and the unfortunate — or worse — outburst from Stephen A. Schwarzman, who likened the administration’s plan for taxes on private equity to “when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939.” Mr. Schwarzman later apologized for the “inappropriate analogy.”

Now Mr. Loeb, who manages about $3.4 billion at his firm, Third Point Partners, has articulated in a more thoughtful way what a lot of others in finance and business are saying.

“We have given a great deal of thought about the impact that public policy has on individual companies, industries and the economy generally,” he said. Third Point has sold its investments in big banks as a result of “regulatory headwinds”; got rid of its stake in Wellpoint, which Mr. Loeb described as “a statistically cheap stock owned by several hedge funds, but which we saw as being overly exposed to unpredictable government regulation”; and taken a short position against for-profit education companies as a result of “the government’s increased willingness to use its regulatory muscle.”

Mr. Loeb’s views, irrespective of their validity, point to a bigger problem for the economy: If business leaders have a such a distrust of government, they won’t invest in the country. And perception is becoming reality.

Just last week, Paul S. Otellini, chief executive of Intel, said at a dinner at the Aspen Forum of the Technology Policy Institute that “the next big thing will not be invented here. Jobs will not be created here.”

Mr. Otellini has overseen two big acquisitions in the last two weeks — the $7.7 billion takeover of the security software maker McAfee and the $1.4 billion deal for the wireless chip unit of Infineon Technologies. If he is true to his word, those deals will most likely lead to job cuts in the United States, not job creation.

Mr. Loeb declined to comment.

But it seems clear that he wrote the letter because so much of his fund’s investments were being driven by the impact of politics. It appears he is no longer betting that a chief executive will make his numbers; he’s betting on what legislation Congress will pass next.

Mr. Loeb, whose poison pen is legendary, usually targets obstinate corporate managers or rivals. In one such note to the chief executive of Star Gas Partners, Mr. Loeb wrote: “It is time for you to step down from your role as C.E.O. and director so that you can do what you do best: retreat to your waterfront mansion in the Hamptons where you can play tennis and hobnob with your fellow socialites.”

In his letter to investors, he took issue with a number of Washington initiatives, including the Credit Card Act of 2009 and a proposed “enterprise tax” that would be levied on hedge fund managers who sell their firms.

“So long as our leaders tell us that we must trust them to regulate and redistribute our way back to prosperity, we will not break out of this economic quagmire,” Mr. Loeb wrote.

“Perhaps our leaders will awaken to the fact that free market capitalism is the best system to allocate resources and create innovation, growth and jobs,” he continued. “Perhaps too, a cloven-hoofed, bristly haired mammal will become airborne and the rosette-like marking of a certain breed of ferocious feline will become altered. In other words, we are not holding our breath.”

Critics of Wall Street will rightfully complain that it was the actions of free market capitalists that prompted a push for regulation. On that point, Mr. Loeb does not entirely disagree.

“Many people see the collapse of the subprime markets, along with the failure and subsequent rescue of many banks, as failures of capitalism rather than a result of a vile stew of inept management, unaccountable boards of directors and overmatched regulators not just asleep, but comatose, at the proverbial switch,” he wrote. “It is easy to see why so many people have concluded that the entire system is rigged.”


________________________ ________________________ _____

Great article. 

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Fury on August 31, 2010, 08:18:07 AM
Good article. Obama is going to drive any jobs and companies right out of this country.

You should start posting these in their own threads again. They definitely got more views that way. This thread only has 227 or so views and I reckon most of those are from the same three people.  :-\
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 31, 2010, 08:26:11 AM
Good article. Obama is going to drive any jobs and companies right out of this country.

You should start posting these in their own threads again. They definitely got more views that way. This thread only has 227 or so views and I reckon most of those are from the same three people.  :-\

I don't want to spam the board with tons of articles and want to keep all these great articles in one place for later reference.   

either way, i plan on keeping this one going since by the time 2012 rolls around, it will have everything in it from beginng to end. 

But I get your point. 

________________________ ________________________ ______

Companies Say New US Pay Law A 'Logistical Nightmare'

Published: Tuesday, 31 Aug 2010 | 12:47 AM ET Text Size By: Jean Eaglesham and Francesco Guerrera in New York


www.cnbc.com


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US companies face a “logistical nightmare” from a new rule forcing them to disclose the ratio between their chief executive’s pay package and that of the typical employee, lawyers have warned.

 The mandatory disclosure will provide ammunition for activists seeking to target perceived examples of excessive pay and perks. The law taps into public anger at the increasing disparity between the faltering incomes of middle America and the largely recession-proof multimillion-dollar remuneration of the typical corporate chief.

S&P 500 chief executives last year received median pay packages of $7.5m, according to executive compensation research firm Equilar. By comparison, official statistics show the average private sector employee was paid just over $40,000.

Business sees the disclosure provision – buried in section 953(b) of the Dodd-Frank financial reform act – as a bureaucratic headache that may encourage false comparisons.

“We’re not debating the concept of disclosure – we think it’s a good thing,” said Larry Burton, executive director of the Business Roundtable, which represents chief executives of the biggest US companies. “But you can do more harm than good if you take a well-intended piece of policy and implement it badly. That’s the risk here.”

The rules’ complexity means multinationals face a “logistical nightmare” in calculating the ratio, which has to be based on the median annual total compensation for all employees, warned Richard Susko, partner at law firm Cleary Gottlieb. “It’s just not do-able for a large company with tens of thousands of employees worldwide.”

Pay experts said business had been caught off-guard by the measure, which was not one of the high-profile battlegrounds of the Dodd-Frank legislation. Companies are now gearing up to lobby the Securities and Exchange Commission, which has to write detailed provisions for the new rule.

The rule could also reward with a relatively low ratio those companies that outsourced low-paid work rather than keeping jobs in-house, lawyers said.

Robert Menendez, the senator who sponsored the provision, dismissed business fears. “Theidea behind the new rule is that sunlight is the best disinfectant,” said an aide. “Disclosure will help encourage fair pay for workers at a time when middle class pay has stagnated while CEO pay has skyrocketed.”
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 31, 2010, 09:28:43 AM
Record number in government anti-poverty programs
Enlarge By Paul Sakuma, AP
 

________________________ _______________


Close to 10 million receive unemployment insurance, nearly four times the number from 2007. Benefits have been extended by Congress eight times beyond the basic 26-week program.
 
 
COSTS RISE WITH CASELOADS
By Richard Wolf, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — Government anti-poverty programs that have grown to meet the needs of recession victims now serve a record one in six Americans and are continuing to expand.


More than 50 million Americans are on Medicaid, the federal-state program aimed principally at the poor, a survey of state data by USA TODAY shows. That's up at least 17% since the recession began in December 2007.


POLITICS: Welfare agencies boost voter rolls

"Virtually every Medicaid director in the country would say that their current enrollment is the highest on record," says Vernon Smith of Health Management Associates, which surveys states for Kaiser Family Foundation.

The program has grown even before the new health care law adds about 16 million people, beginning in 2014. That has strained doctors. "Private physicians are already indicating that they're at their limit," says Dan Hawkins of the National Association of Community Health Centers.

More than 40 million people get food stamps, an increase of nearly 50% during the economic downturn, according to government data through May. The program has grown steadily for three years.

Caseloads have risen as more people become eligible. The economic stimulus law signed by President Obama last year also boosted benefits.

"This program has proven to be incredibly responsive and effective," says Ellin Vollinger of the Food Research and Action Center.

Close to 10 million receive unemployment insurance, nearly four times the number from 2007. Benefits have been extended by Congress eight times beyond the basic 26-week program, enabling the long-term unemployed to get up to 99 weeks of benefits. Caseloads peaked at nearly 12 million in January — "the highest numbers on record," says Christine Riordan of the National Employment Law Project, which advocates for low-wage workers.

More than 4.4 million people are on welfare, an 18% increase during the recession. The program has grown slower than others, causing Brookings Institution expert Ron Haskins to question its effectiveness in the recession.

As caseloads for all the programs have soared, so have costs. The federal price tag for Medicaid has jumped 36% in two years, to $273 billion. Jobless benefits have soared from $43 billion to $160 billion. The food stamps program has risen 80%, to $70 billion. Welfare is up 24%, to $22 billion. Taken together, they cost more than Medicare.


INFOMOTION GRAPHIC: A historical look at the national debt
INTERACTIVE GRAPHIC: Getting a grip on government debt

The steady climb in safety-net program caseloads and costs has come as a result of two factors: The recession has boosted the number who qualify under existing rules. And the White House, Congress and states have expanded eligibility and benefits.

Conservatives fear expanded safety-net programs won't contract after the economy recovers. "They're much harder to unwind in the long term," says Michael Tanner of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.

Other anti-poverty experts say the record caseloads are a necessary response to economic hardship. "We should be there to support people when the economy can't," says LaDonna Pavetti of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal-leaning think tank.
 
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 31, 2010, 10:18:41 AM
Cost: Obamacare has killed the Dems, but they’re in denial
Washington Examiner ^ | 8/31/2010 | DAVID FREDDOSO



Jay Cost, over at RealClearPolitics:

"It would be difficult for any strong partisan to admit that such an accomplishment [as Obamacare] was so deeply unpopular. Yet the polling is pretty unequivocal on the relationship between the Democrats’ fortunes and the health care bill. It was during the health care debate that the essential building block of the Democratic majority – Independent voters – began to crumble. It was evident in the generic ballot. It was evident in the President’s job approval numbers. It was evident in Virginia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts.

Reconstructing the Democrats’ meme, we can fairly say that the economy is a huge problem for the party. Of this, there can be no doubt. We can also say that the stalled recovery denied the Democrats a chance to win back the voters they lost over health care. But the process and passage of health care reform were crucial elements in the story. That’s when the party started losing the voters it needs to retain control of the government."

I agree. Democrats — and especially President Obama — lost the public’s trust during and because of the health care debate. The polls show a huge shift in July 2009, when the first committee votes were taken on Obamacare.

This was the first crack in the windshield, and it has now spread everywhere. Independent voters have stopped giving Democrats the benefit of the doubt on a variety of other major issues — the stimulus, the war in Afghanistan, education (!), taxes, you name it. Obamacare has precipitated a dramatic loss of faith in Obama.


________________________ ______________

Everyones' costs are skyrocketing due to this disaster and everyone can rightfully place it on Obama, piss be upon him. 
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 31, 2010, 10:53:31 AM
More Loose-Lips At The White House, As Another Staffer Basically Admits Stimulus Doesn't Work
Joe Weisenthal | Aug. 31, 2010, 12:09 PM | 1,703 |  18



Obama Blasts GOP On Economy: "Drop The Blockade"And Now Even The Administration Is Talking About A Double DipHow Bad Is It For Obama? Look How He's Completely Lost The New York Times

Obama has been getting aggressive lately about calling out the Republicans and trying to blame the weak economy on them.

But there's a risk to this strategy: If the President keeps talking about how the economy is weak, then maybe people who thought the economy was okay (and apparently a fair number still do, as evidenced by August's Consumer Confidence Index) might get the idea that things aren't so hot. Maybe they'll think: Sure I have a job now, but just in case, I better retrench and cut up my credit card.

So it's for this reason that White House critics (mainly from the left) are frustrated by the "loose lips" on the part of some administration staffers.

Yesterday we mentioned Austan Goolsbee's comment about how the economy was at some risk of sliding into a double dip.

Now it's Press Secretary Robert Gibbs.

Everyone's picking on him for comments he made about the stimulus yesterday:

Asked if the stimulus bill was too small, [White House press secretary Robert] Gibbs says: "I think it makes sense to step back just for a second. ... Nobody had, in January of 2009, a sufficient grasp of ... what we were facing." He adds that any stimulus was "unlikely to fill" the hole the financial meltdown created.

"What the Recovery Act did was prevent us from sliding even into a deeper recession with greater economic contraction, with greater job loss than we have experienced because of it," he says.

This line makes Krugman angry. Why? Because, says the Nobel Laurreate, he was SCREAMING at the top of his longs in early 2009 that the stimulus needed to be much bigger (Megan McArdle calculated yesterday that Krugman probably would've needed a $4.5 trillion stimulus to be happy).

But beyond that, The White House just feels off-message, and Gibbs makes it hard to argue for more stimulus when he's saying that any stimulus was "unlikely" to solve the problem.

 Okay, then what does The White House actually want?

Tags: Barack Obama, Economy, White House, Stimulus | Get Alerts for these topics »

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/robert-gibbs-admits-economy-is-in-trouble-2010-8#ixzz0yCtqmd19
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 31, 2010, 01:34:31 PM
Obamanomics Failing to Create Jobs
By Peter Morici
www.realclearmarkets.com


________________________ ________________

With thousands of young college graduates moving in with parents and returning Iraq War veterans facing long-term unemployment, President Obama is scrambling for cover.

Irresponsible spending, largesse for big banks and subsidies for a broken health care system have busted the budget and failed to create jobs.

Economists expect the Labor Department to report on Friday the economy lost another 80,000 jobs in August after shedding 131,000 jobs in July.

Completion of the Census accounts for most of the loss, but the report will demonstrate that rewarding Democratic Party academics with new high paying regulatory jobs and general hostility toward business is causing America's largest enterprises to head for China and small businesses to wither and die.

The unemployment rate will likely creep up a bit closer to 10%, as more Americans drain their retirement accounts and endure the frustration of slammed doors in Barack Obama's jobs market.

In July alone, 381,000 adults chose to quit looking for work altogether, and that trend will continue in President Obama's land of dashed dreams and squandered opportunities.

Economists expect the private sector added about 100,000 jobs in August but that is an abysmal performance 14 months into a recovery from a deep recession.

The economy must add 13 million private sector jobs by the end of 2013 to bring unemployment down to 6%. President Obama's policies are not creating conditions for businesses to hire those 320,000 workers each month, net of layoffs.

Net of inventory adjustments, the economy's demand for goods and services is growing at only about 1% a year. The real potential is about 5% but with economic policies so ill conceived and with a president so ambivalent about private enterprises -- other than those run by Wall Street barons, Hollywood producers and union bosses -- that simply is not possible.

In the second quarter, consumer spending; investment in new structures, equipment and software; and government purchases added 4.4% to demand. But as imports grew much more rapidly than exports, the trade deficit tapped off 3.4%. The difference, 1%, is annual growth in demand for U.S.-made goods and services. That has been the pace since the recovery began in July 2009.

Businesses can accommodate up to 2% growth in demand just by improving productivity and not adding workers. Unless the rapid growth in imports can be curbed, the U.S. economy is headed for very slow growth and rising unemployment.
The president's economic policies -- more spending, taxes and regulation for Americans and appeasing foreign mercantilists like China -- is simply not working.

The massive permanent expansion in federal spending and regulatory oversight built into President Obama's budget is discouraging private hiring by raising fears of even higher taxes and yet more intrusive regulation.

Simply, higher taxes discourage purchases of non-essentials and high-line durable goods, like better appliances, more appointed automobiles and higher quality homes, and higher taxes and tougher regulation increase incentives to offshore production to China and other locations where those burdens are less and entrepreneurship is more welcome.

Prior to the 2008 crisis, President Bush spent 19.6% of GDP and the deficit was $161 billion; whereas two years into the economic recovery in 2011, President Obama's budget projects outlays at 25.1% of GDP and a $1.3 trillion deficit in 2011. The latter figures are like to be closer to 27% and close to $2 trillion if the president does not accomplish the 4% growth his budgets assume in stark contrast to the real world the rest of us struggle.

Too much spending will require new taxes, and not just pushing rates marginally above 50% on families earning $250,000. And, higher rates for those families will raise taxes on half the income earned by proprietorships -- those small and medium sized businesses the president is urging to create jobs.

Much of the $787 stimulus money was squandered on political hobby horses that create few jobs. For example, grants to build green buildings displace other, more cost-effective private construction and don't increase the amount of commercial space rented or built over the next several years. By delaying projects, those grants have slowed construction spending and killed jobs.

The biggest banks received more than $2 trillion in TARP and Federal Reserve assistance to clean up their balance sheets and recapitalize securities trading, while the 8,000 regional banks got little assistance and remain burdened by toxic real estate loans. Consequently, nearly 250 regional banks have failed, and small and medium sized businesses cannot get credit to expand.

In addition to credit, businesses need more customers to create jobs, and the trade deficit -- in particular, imports of oil and the imbalance with China -- cut a huge hole in demand for U.S. goods and services. Without addressing oil and China, other efforts to create jobs are futile.
The president's moratorium on deep water drilling, though popular with environmental fundamentalists, kills jobs by laying off workers in the oil, gas and supporting industries and by sending too many consumer dollars abroad that could be spent here.

Detroit has the technology to build much more efficient gasoline-powered vehicles now, and a shift in national policy to rapidly build these would reduce oil imports and create many jobs. Instead, the president proposes to replace stickers on cars that report gas mileage intelligent folks can understand with grade school letters -- A, B, C...

If we could only have those letter grades for the president's economic appointees, we might be better off

China's undervalued currency makes its products artificially cheap and deceivingly competitive on U.S. store shelves, but Beijing's promises of new flexibility on the yuan have not translated into meaningful revaluation. The president, like a provincial premier, stands patiently accepting Chinese largess -- bond financing for profligate spending in Washington.

If President Obama wants to fix the federal deficit and create jobs, perhaps he should spend less, get serious about better using and developing American energy resources and quit appeasing China.

Candidate Obama promised those things but President Obama's memory seems short on everything but the failings of presidents passed.


Peter Morici is a professor at the University of Maryland School of Business and former Chief Economist at the U.S. International Trade Commission.

________________________ ________________________ ____

morici is one of the best out there.  when he talks, I listen. 
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 31, 2010, 01:36:02 PM
Simply, higher taxes discourage purchases of non-essentials and high-line durable goods, like better appliances, more appointed automobiles and higher quality homes, and higher taxes and tougher regulation increase incentives to offshore production to China and other locations where those burdens are less and entrepreneurship is more welcome.

________________________ ________________________ ____

Why can't you leftists grasp this? 
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 31, 2010, 07:03:12 PM
EDITORIAL: Ohio battles bullies at Justice
Obama voting officials push ethnic grievances
By THE WASHINGTON TIMES
-


Voter Terry Penrod prepares to cast his absentee ballot at the Franklin County Veterans Memorial polling place Tuesday, September 30, 2008 in Columbus, Ohio.

Voters in this crucial swing state began casting absentee ballots Tuesday, a day after the Ohio Supreme Court and two separate federal judges cleared the way for a disputed early voting law that allows new voters to register and cast an absentee ballot on the same day from Tuesday through Oct. 6.
 
The Cuyahoga County, Ohio, Board of Elections today can stare down the increasingly rogue voting rights section of the U.S. Department of Justice, which continues to play ethnic politics nationwide. The state of Georgia recently forced the department to back off from its bullying tactics, and this Buckeye county should do the same.

Justice officials have threatened legal action against the county board unless it prints all its ballots in bilingual fashion. "With additional requirements for translators, community outreach, additional staffing and printing, the demand potentially would double the county's election costs," board member Rob Frost told Jennifer Rubin of the Weekly Standard. "The Justice attorneys said they were authorized to sue the county. ..."

The Justice Department's position is wrongheaded on several levels. First, the department bases its demand on Section 4(e) of the Voting Rights Act, which is meant to ensure ballot access for Puerto Rican natives who never learned English. Nothing in 4(e) requires that every ballot in a jurisdiction be printed in Spanish - but only that those Puerto Rican voters not be denied the right to vote due to an inability "to read, write, understand or interpret any matter in the English language." There's no reason to find the county noncompliant if most of its ballots are English-only, as long as its Spanish speakers have access to Spanish ballots upon request.

Second, as a purely practical matter, forcing Cuyahoga to print all its ballots in Spanish is overkill. According to Mr. Frost, Justice officials say only 6,334 people of Puerto Rican heritage in the county have limited English proficiency, and it's unclear how many of them are registered to vote. In a county of nearly a million registered voters, why burden all those ballots with Spanish when just one-half of 1 percent of voters need such special help?

The Cuyahoga board meets today at 2:30 p.m., with this dispute heading its agenda. It should take a cue from Georgia and tell the department to take a hike. Justice tried for more than a year to force the state to drop its requirement that people registering to vote verify citizenship. Faced with determined and legally correct insistence by Georgia officials that its law was perfectly allowable, Justice last month suddenly backed off. As columnist John Fund reported on Saturday, "no evidence existed that anyone had been barred from voting because they were incorrectly listed as a noncitizen."

The voting rights section at Justice is out of control. North Carolina voters now are suing because Justice refused to allow a black-majority town to adopt nonpartisan elections on the ground that the black voters would harm their own interests by choosing to do so. Pro-soldier watchdogs are fighting back against apparent Justice attempts to water down guarantees of military voting rights - attempts led by the same official, Rebecca Wertz, who has been pressuring Cuyahoga County. This is the same gang that bungled the now-infamous New Black Panther voter-intimidation case.

The lesson here is that the Obama Justice Department doesn't define the law; it politicizes it. If Cuyahoga fights back, courts should support the county.

© Copyright 2010 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 01, 2010, 05:10:44 AM
IBD Editorials
Entrepreneurs Know What Obama Doesn't
By DAVID J. THEROUX
Posted 08/31/2010 06:33 PM ET


________________________ ________________________ ___


With the economy still floundering and nearly one in 10 Americans out of work, it's time for the Obama administration to discard the ideological fiction that a wise and benevolent government can fix things. Being in power doesn't necessarily mean you understand problems or have solutions. The White House is striking out on both counts.

Nowhere was this more evident than at the "Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship" last spring.

Summit spokesman Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser and former White House speechwriter, set the proper tone, noting that "entrepreneurship is a fundamental American value, and it's also a force that has the ability to unlock opportunity for people around the world."

Rhodes said the summit was intended not to showcase government officials, but to "bring together entrepreneurs — social entrepreneurs ... around this question of how we can galvanize entrepreneurship on behalf of economic growth."

Then the parade of government officials began, including the secretary of Commerce, administrator of the Small Business Administration, director of the White House Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation, senior director for "global engagement" of the White House national security staff and others, with closing remarks by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

It was a classic example of "know-it-all" big government at its worst.

Innovators Needed

This should have come as no surprise. By now, it should be clear to most Americans — especially the "doers" who create jobs for others — that the White House is no fan of free enterprise.

In March, President Obama tipped his hand, excoriating the U.S. business community as "a corporate culture rife with inside dealing; questionable accounting practices and short-term greed." The real problem in America, according to the president, "is not that someone who doesn't look like you might take your job; it's that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit."

White House policies reflect this belief that business is self-centered and evil and government all-knowing and good.

The trouble is: Such attitudes and policies smother entrepreneurship, innovation and job creation, exactly what the U.S. economy so desperately needs, especially now.

Contrary to President Obama's view, the crucial factor for improving life in every society has been private enterprise, individuals who seek to uplift their lives and those of others. Entrepreneurship is neither created nor nurtured by government, nor reserved to the privileged; it springs from individuals and can be found even in the poorest communities in countries worldwide.

The White House economic team should be required to read "Lessons from the Poor: Triumph of the Entrepreneurial Spirit." In this book, Alvaro Vargas Llosa shows how countless millions of small-scale entrepreneurs in Africa, Asia and Latin America have created a vast range of products and services, not because of government, but despite the enormous burdens imposed by government bureaucracies and corruption.

Human Progress

Entrepreneurship can only be fully beneficial to society when people are free to channel their efforts into voluntary and cooperative ventures that create wealth. Where governments dominate society, enterprising individuals typically are stifled. Their talents and energies are misdirected into political patronage.

Instead of building competitive businesses they seek government favors — tariffs, subsidies and regulations — to impede others and raise costs for consumers. All of this serves to inhibit, misdirect and destroy wealth and job creation.

While the Obama White House may see greed in free-market entrepreneurial activity, it fails to recognize that all entrepreneurial creations are not motivated by financial considerations.

This is why entrepreneurship guru Peter Drucker ranked the Salvation Army among the most entrepreneurial organizations in America. "No one even comes close to it with respect to clarity of mission, ability to innovate, measurable results, dedication and putting money to maximum use," he says.

In their book, "The Voluntary City: Choice, Community, and Civil Society," David Beito, Peter Gordon and Alexander Tabarrok demonstrate that private business and social entrepreneurs, not government command-and-control, is what makes human progress possible.

This is another book the president and his staff should take on their next vacation, instead of their golf clubs. They might learn something and put an end to their destructive big-government policies.

• Theroux is founder and president of the Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif., and publisher of The Independent Review.



Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 01, 2010, 05:53:39 AM

Another Ugly Jobs Number: ADP Says The Private Sector SLASHED 10,000 Jobs In August
Joe Weisenthal | Sep. 1, 2010


The numbers: Another ugly jobs number. According to ADP, the private sector slashed a net 10,000 jobs in the month of august. Analysts were looking for the creation of 13,000 jobs, so not good. Small businesses slashed 6,000 jobs. Manufacturing fell by 6,000 in august.

This is the first time in several months that ADP has reported net job losses.

The odds that this Friday we'll see a negative print on the government jobs report on the private industry side (a headline negative number is a done deal, thanks to the Census), seems to be increasing.

US futures are still pointing up, however.

Click here for a guide to 15 key economic events happening in the future >

Background: This is a little morsel of a jobs report before Friday's big show. The ADP report is a semi-reliable predictor of what the government jobs data will show. It only looks at private sector hiring (this not skewed by Census). Analysts are looking for a paltry 13,000 new jobs.

Tags: Employment | Get Alerts for these topics » Short URL  Share:


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/august-adp-report-2010-9#ixzz0yHXJsetC
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 01, 2010, 06:39:24 AM
‘Clunkers,’ a classic government folly
By Jeff Jacoby
Globe Columnist / September 1, 2010

________________________ ________________________ _____


IN THE market for a used car? Good luck finding a bargain: The price of “pre-owned’’ vehicles has climbed considerably over the past year. According to Edmunds.com, a website for car buyers, a three-year-old automobile today will set you back, on average, close to $20,000 — a spike of more than 10 percent since last summer. For some popular models, the increase has been much steeper. In July, a used Cadillac Escalade was going for around $35,000, or nearly 36 percent over last July’s price.

Why are used-car prices rocketing? Part of the answer is that demand is up: With unemployment high and the economy uncertain, some car buyers who might otherwise be looking for a new truck or SUV are instead shopping for a used vehicle as a way to save money.

But an even bigger part of the answer is that the supply of used cars is artificially low, because your Uncle Sam decided last year to destroy hundreds of thousands of perfectly good automobiles as part of its hare-brained Car Allowance Rebate System — or, as most of us called it, Cash for Clunkers. That was the program under which the government paid consumers up to $4,500 when they traded in an old car and bought a new one with better gas mileage. The traded-in cars — which had to be in drivable condition to qualify for the rebate — were then demolished: Dealers were required to chemically wreck each car’s engine, and send the car to be crushed or shredded.

Congress and the Obama administration trumpeted Cash for Clunkers as a triumph — the president pronounced it “successful beyond anybody’s imagination.’’ Which it was, if you define success as getting people to take “free’’ money to make a purchase most of them are going to make anyway, while simultaneously wiping out productive assets that could provide value to many other consumers for years to come. By any rational standard, however, this program was sheer folly.

No great insight was needed to realize that Cash for Clunkers would work a hardship on people unable to afford a new car. “All this program did for them,’’ I wrote last August, “was guarantee that used cars will become more expensive. Poorer drivers will be penalized to subsidize new cars for wealthier drivers.’’ Alec Gutierrez, a senior analyst for Kelley Blue Book, predicted that used-car prices would surge by up to 10 percent. “It’s going to drive prices up on some of the most affordable vehicles we have on the road,’’ he told USA Today. In short, Washington spent nearly $3 billion to raise the price of mobility for drivers on a budget.

To be sure, Cash for Clunkers gave a powerful jolt to car sales in July and August of 2009. But it did so mostly by delaying sales that would otherwise have occurred in April, May, and June, or by accelerating those that would have taken place in September, October, or later. “Influencing the timing of consumers’ durable purchases is easy,’’ Edmunds CEO Jeremy Anwyl wrote a few days ago in a blog post looking back at the program. “Creating new purchases is not.’’ Of the 700,000 cars purchased during the clunkers frenzy, the estimated net increase in sales was only 125,000. Each incremental sale thus ended up costing the taxpayers a profligate $24,000.

Even on environmental grounds, Cash for Clunkers was an exorbitant dud. Researchers at the University of California-Davis calculated that the reduction of carbon dioxide attributable to the program cost no less than $237 per ton. In contrast, carbon emissions credits cost about $20 per ton in international markets.

Using Department of Transportation figures, the Associated Press calculated that replacing inefficient clunkers with new cars getting higher mileage would reduce CO2 emissions by around 700,000 tons a year — less than Americans emit in a single hour. Likewise, the projected reduction in gasoline use amounted to about as much as Americans go through in 4 hours. (And that’s only if you assume — contrary to historical experience — that fuel consumption decreases when fuel efficiency rises.)

When all is said and done, Cash for Clunkers was a deplorable exercise in budgetary wastefulness, asset destruction, environmental irrelevance, and economic idiocy. Other than that, it was a screaming success.

Jeff Jacoby can be reached at jacoby@globe.com.
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 01, 2010, 02:27:09 PM
Administration Tries and Fails To Pull a Fast One (Drilling Moratorium)
American Thinker ^ | September 1, 2010 | Clarice Feldman


________________________ ________________________ _______________



Having been enjoined by Judge Feldman (no relation) from trying to halt oil drilling based on inadequate scientific basis, the Administration's Secretary Salazar, tried to pull a fast one by simply issuing another moratorium. Judge Feldman has refused to play along:


The federal judge who struck down the Obama administration's initial six-month moratorium on deepwater oil-drilling dealt the government another blow on Wednesday.


U.S. District Court Judge Martin Feldman denied the government's request to throw out a suit challenging the drilling halt that had been filed by offshore-oil-service companies. Justice Department lawyers had argued the lawsuit was moot because the Interior Department imposed a new, temporary drilling ban on July 12, replacing a May 28 order that Judge Feldman had struck down in June.


But Judge Feldman ruled that Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's second moratorium order "is substantially the same as the first one" and "applies to the exact same rigs, to the exact same deepwater drilling, for the exact same time period."


Judge Feldman also noted that in crafting the second moratorium, Mr. Salazar appeared to have relied heavily on documents and data that he had at the time of the first moratorium order.


Who's dumber, Salazar or the Department of Justice lawyers making such frivolous claims?

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 01, 2010, 06:42:37 PM
Outgoing Obama Aide Admits: Stimulus Failed Because We Didn't Understand The Recession

Joe Weisenthal | Sep. 1, 2010, 8:29 PM | 940 |  19


You have successfully emailed the post. As she prepares to leave The White House, outgoing economic advisor Christina Romer has delivered something of a valedictory speech to the National Press Club. The title: Not My Father's Recession.

For Romer, her Father's recession was the one in the early 80s, when unemployment surged above 10%, and Romer's own father got laid off.

But the title basically tells you what you need to know: It's different this time -- this recession was not anything like the Fed-induced recession of her father -- and the old recovery playbook could not possibly go as anticipated.

Here's the key part of the text, via Brad DeLong's blog:

But compared with the problems we face, the turnaround has been insufficient....

In a report that Jared Bernstein and I issued during the transition, we estimated that by the end of 2010, a stimulus package like the Recovery Act would raise real GDP by about 3 1⁄2 percent and employment by about 31⁄2 million jobs, relative to what otherwise would have occurred. As the Council of Economic Advisers has documented in a series of reports to Congress, there is widespread agreement that the Act is broadly on track to meet these milestones....

What the Act hasn’t done is prevent unemployment from going above 8 percent, something else that Jared and I projected it would do. The reason that prediction was so far off is implicit in much of what I have been saying this afternoon. An estimate of what the economy will look like if a policy is adopted contains two components: a forecast of what would happen in the absence of the policy, and an estimate of the effect of the policy. As I’ve described, our estimates of the impact of the Recovery Act have proven quite accurate. But we, like virtually every other forecaster, failed to anticipate just how violent the recession would be in the absence of policy, and the degree to which the usual relationship between GDP and unemployment would break down.

Read the whole thing here.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/chrstina-romer-not-my-fathers-recession-2010-9#ixzz0yKewyqRL
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Kazan on September 01, 2010, 06:47:00 PM
Oh gee,Stimulus Failed Because We Didn't Understand The Recession, I feel much better now. Good thing they are in charge ::)
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 01, 2010, 06:49:18 PM
Oh gee,Stimulus Failed Because We Didn't Understand The Recession, I feel much better now. Good thing they are in charge ::)


It was just more lies Obama told to get elected. 
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Skip8282 on September 01, 2010, 06:56:09 PM
An estimate of what the economy will look like if a policy is adopted contains two components: a forecast of what would happen in the absence of the policy, and an estimate of the effect of the policy. As I’ve described, our estimates of the impact of the Recovery Act have proven quite accurate. But we, like virtually every other forecaster, failed to anticipate just how violent the recession would be in the absence of policy, and the degree to which the usual relationship between GDP and unemployment would break down.


This is the same thing we were trying to tell the clowns who supported the healthcare bill.  It's like trying to reason with a fucking wall.
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 01, 2010, 07:03:11 PM
But again - if she got the 2nd part wrong, than why should we feel ok with the fact she says the plan is working according to her models? 


We wasted a trillion dollars on basically what amounts to a half measure because they read the economy wrong.  Sorry, I have posted many clips from Schiff, Celente, Chapman, detailing what was occuring and they were proven right.  So there is no excuse for this nonsense from the Admn.
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 02, 2010, 06:47:29 AM
Economist Christina Romer serves up dismal news at her farewell luncheon

By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 1, 2010; 10:40 PM


________________________ ________________________ _________



Lunch at the National Press Club on Wednesday caused some serious indigestion.

It wasn't the food; it was the entertainment. Christina Romer, chairman of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, was giving what was billed as her "valedictory" before she returns to teach at Berkeley, and she used the swan song to establish four points, each more unnerving than the last:

She had no idea how bad the economic collapse would be. She still doesn't understand exactly why it was so bad. The response to the collapse was inadequate. And she doesn't have much of an idea about how to fix things.  

What she did have was a binder full of scary descriptions and warnings, offered with a perma-smile and singsong delivery: "Terrible recession. . . . Incredibly searing. . . . Dramatically below trend. . . . Suffering terribly. . . . Risk of making high unemployment permanent. . . . Economic nightmare."

Anybody want dessert?

At week's end, Romer will leave the council chairmanship after what surely has been the most dismal tenure anybody in that post has had: a loss of nearly 4 million jobs in a year and a half. That's not Romer's fault; the financial collapse occurred before she, and Obama, took office.

Romer had predicted that Obama's stimulus package would keep the unemployment rate at 8 percent or less; it is now 9.5 percent. One of her bosses, Vice President Biden, told Democrats in January that "you're going to see, come the spring, net increase in jobs every month." The economy lost 350,000 jobs in June and July.  

But she was the president's top economist during a time when the administration consistently underestimated the depth of the economy's troubles - miscalculations that have caused Americans to lose faith in the president and the Democrats.  

This is why nearly two-thirds of Americans think the country is on the wrong track - and why Obama's efforts to highlight the end of U.S. combat in Iraq and the resumption of Middle East peace talks have little chance of piercing the gloom as voters consider handing control of Congress back to the Republicans.

Romer's farewell luncheon had been scheduled for the club's ballroom, but attendance was light and the event was moved to a smaller room. Romer, wearing a green suit, read brightly from her text - a delivery at odds with the dark material she was presenting. When she and her colleagues began work, she acknowledged, they did not realize "how quickly and strongly the financial crisis would affect the economy." They "failed to anticipate just how violent the recession would be."

Even now, Romer said, mystery persists. "To this day, economists don't fully understand why firms cut production as much as they did or why they cut labor so much more than they normally would." Her defense was that "almost all analysts were surprised by the violent reaction."

That miscalculation, in turn, led to her miscalculation that the stimulus package would be enough to keep the unemployment rate from exceeding 8 percent. Without the policy, she had predicted, unemployment would soar to 9.5 percent. The plan passed, and unemployment went to 10 percent.

No wonder most Americans think the effort failed. But Romer argued, a bit too defensively, against the majority perception. "As the Council of Economic Advisers has documented in a series of reports to Congress, there is widespread agreement that the act is broadly on track," she declared. Further, she argued, "I will never regret trying to put analysis and quantitative estimates behind our policy recommendations."

But the problem is not that Romer did a quantitative analysis; the problem is that the quantitative analysis was wrong. Inevitably, this meant that, as she acknowledged, "the turnaround has been insufficient."

And what to do about this? Here, Romer became uncharacteristically hesitant to make predictions. She suggested some "innovative, low-cost policies." But the examples she cited - a "national export initiative," new trade agreements and a "pragmatic approach to regulation" - aren't exactly blockbusters.

"The only sure-fire ways for policymakers to substantially increase aggregate demand in the short run are for the government to spend more and tax less," she said. But asked about the main Republican proposal, extending George W. Bush's tax cuts for those earning more than $250,000, Romer replied that doing so would be "fiscally irresponsible."

The truth is that the Obama administration is pretty much out of options. Any major new effort would be blocked by Republicans, who have few alternatives of their own. "What we would all love to find - the inexpensive magic bullet to our economic troubles - the truth is it almost surely doesn't exist," Romer admitted.

The valedictory was becoming more of an elegy. At the end of the depressing forum, the moderator read a question submitted by a member of the audience: "You seem like you'd be a lot of fun at parties. Are you?"

The economist blushed. "You'll have to just take it for granted," she said.

Like 8 percent unemployment.


________________________ ________________________ ___

Ouch - even the libs are realizing the failures. 
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 02, 2010, 01:12:16 PM
Christina Romer's True Confessions
American Thinker ^ | Sept 2, 2010 | Ed Lasky





Christina Romer, the departing chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisors, was at a complete loss of words when it came to explaining the state of the economy when she appeared at her valedictory lunch before her returns to her teaching sinecure at Berkley. Dana Milbank of the Washington Post comments:

She had no idea how bad the economic collapse would be. She still doesn't understand exactly why it was so bad. The response to the collapse was inadequate. And she doesn't have much of an idea about how to fix things.

What she did have was a binder full of scary descriptions and warnings, offered with a perma-smile and singsong delivery: "Terrible recession. . . . Incredibly searing. . . . Dramatically below trend. . . . Suffering terribly. . . . Risk of making high unemployment permanent. . . . Economic nightmare."

Recall, this is the expert chosen by Obama to help oversee the economy. Ms. Romer predicted that the Obama stimulus package would keep the unemployment rate at 8 percent or less; it is now 9.5 percent. We are more in debt than ever before, no matter how that debt is measured -- in absolute terms, as a percent of GDP, or as a percent of the federal budget (assuming the Democrats would be responsible enough to actually pass one before the midterms).

In the spirit of confession, she admitted Obama's team was unprepared.

When she and her colleagues began work, she acknowledged, they did not realize "how quickly and strongly the financial crisis would affect the economy." They "failed to anticipate just how violent the recession would be."

Even now, Romer said, mystery persists. "To this day, economists don't fully understand why firms cut production as much as they did or why they cut labor so much more than they normally would." Her defense was that "almost all analysts were surprised by the violent reaction."

That miscalculation, in turn, led to her miscalculation that the stimulus package would be enough to keep the unemployment rate from exceeding 8 percent. Without the policy, she had predicted, unemployment would soar to 9.5 percent. The plan passed, and unemployment went to 10 percent.

Perhaps I, a humble economics major from Northwestern University and a holder of an MBA from the same, might offer some suggestions to why the economy is failing: anti-business rhetoric from Barack Obama and Democratic leaders; pro-union policies , ObamaCare, and rules and regulations that depress hiring; the prospects for cap and tax and anti-trade policies that put a clamp on the animal spirits that are needed to give a pulse to the economy. And let us not forget about the wide range of steep tax increases that are coming on New Year's Day 2011. Those won't help, Ms. Romer, and those are the responsibility of the administration where she held a powerful position.  

Perhaps, the ideas behind Keynesian economics, so beloved by liberals because it encourages spending and sanctions big debt, have to be reconsidered.

Are we shocked that the team Obama assembled to run the economy (heralded as the best and the brightest by the courtier media) are so clueless when it comes to the real world? After all, so few of them-including Barack Obama-have any experience in the real world of business and industry.

Maybe Professor Romer will have time when she returns to her cosseted academic life to consider some of these factors that might account for the economy's troubles. Hopefully, she can teach her students better than she helped run the economy.

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 03, 2010, 07:13:36 AM
120 Days to Go Until the
Largest Tax Hikes in History
From Ryan Ellis on Friday, September 3, 2010 6:00 AM


________________________ ________________________ _________________

     
In just 120 days, the largest tax hikes in the history of America will take effect.  They will hit families and small businesses in three great waves on January 1, 2011:
 

First Wave: Expiration of 2001 and 2003 Tax Relief

In 2001 and 2003, the GOP Congress enacted several tax cuts for investors, small business owners, and families.  These will all expire on January 1, 2011:

Personal income tax rates will rise.  The top income tax rate will rise from 35 to 39.6 percent (this is also the rate at which two-thirds of small business profits are taxed).  The lowest rate will rise from 10 to 15 percent.  All the rates in between will also rise.  Itemized deductions and personal exemptions will again phase out, which has the same mathematical effect as higher marginal tax rates.  The full list of marginal rate hikes is below:

- The 10% bracket rises to an expanded 15%

- The 25% bracket rises to 28%

- The 28% bracket rises to 31%

- The 33% bracket rises to 36%

- The 35% bracket rises to 39.6%

Higher taxes on marriage and family.  The “marriage penalty” (narrower tax brackets for married couples) will return from the first dollar of income.  The child tax credit will be cut in half from $1000 to $500 per child.  The standard deduction will no longer be doubled for married couples relative to the single level.  The dependent care tax credit will be cut.

The return of the Death Tax.  This year, there is no death tax.  For those dying on or after January 1 2011, there is a 55 percent top death tax rate on estates over $1 million.  A person leaving behind two homes and a retirement account could easily pass along a death tax bill to their loved ones.

Higher tax rates on savers and investors.  The top capital gains tax will rise from 15 percent this year to 20 percent in 2011.  The top dividends tax rate will rise from 15 percent this year to 39.6 percent in 2011.  These rates will rise another 3.8 percent in 2013.

Second Wave: Obamacare

There are over twenty new or higher taxes in Obamacare.  Several will first go into effect on January 1, 2011.  They include:

The Tanning Tax.  This went into effect on July 1st of this year.  It imposes a new, 10% excise tax on getting a tan at a tanning salon.  There is no exemption for tanners making less than $250,000 per year.

The “Medicine Cabinet Tax” Thanks to Obamacare, Americans will no longer be able to use health savings account (HSA), flexible spending account (FSA), or health reimbursement (HRA) pre-tax dollars to purchase non-prescription, over-the-counter medicines (except insulin).

The HSA Withdrawal Tax Hike.  This provision of Obamacare increases the additional tax on non-medical early withdrawals from an HSA from 10 to 20 percent, disadvantaging them relative to IRAs and other tax-advantaged accounts, which remain at 10 percent.

Brand Name Drug Tax.  Starting next year, there will be a multi-billion dollar tax assessment imposed on name-brand drug manufacturers.  This tax, like all excise taxes, will raise the price of medicine, hurting everyone.

Economic Substance Doctrine.  The IRS is now empowered to disallow perfectly-legal tax deductions and maneuvers merely because it judges that the deduction or action lacks “economic substance.”  This is obviously an arbitrary empowerment of IRS agents.

Employer Reporting of Health Insurance Costs on a W-2.  This will start for W-2s in the 2011 tax year.  While not a tax increase in itself, it makes it very easy for Congress to tax employer-provided healthcare benefits later.

 

Third Wave: The Alternative Minimum Tax and Employer Tax Hikes

When Americans prepare to file their tax returns in January of 2011, they’ll be in for a nasty surprise—the AMT won’t be held harmless, and many tax relief provisions will have expired.  The major items include:

The AMT will ensnare over 28 million families, up from 4 million last year.  According to the left-leaning Tax Policy Center, Congress’ failure to index the AMT will lead to an explosion of AMT taxpaying families—rising from 4 million last year to 28.5 million.  These families will have to calculate their tax burdens twice, and pay taxes at the higher level.  The AMT was created in 1969 to ensnare a handful of taxpayers.

Small business expensing will be slashed and 50% expensing will disappear.  Small businesses can normally expense (rather than slowly-deduct, or “depreciate”) equipment purchases up to $250,000.  This will be cut all the way down to $25,000.  Larger businesses can expense half of their purchases of equipment.  In January of 2011, all of it will have to be “depreciated.”

Taxes will be raised on all types of businesses.  There are literally scores of tax hikes on business that will take place.  The biggest is the loss of the “research and experimentation tax credit,” but there are many, many others.  Combining high marginal tax rates with the loss of this tax relief will cost jobs.

Tax Benefits for Education and Teaching Reduced.  The deduction for tuition and fees will not be available.  Tax credits for education will be limited.  Teachers will no longer be able to deduct classroom expenses.  Coverdell Education Savings Accounts will be cut.  Employer-provided educational assistance is curtailed.  The student loan interest deduction will be disallowed for hundreds of thousands of families.

Charitable Contributions from IRAs no longer allowed. Until this year, a retired person with an IRA could contribute up to $100,000 per year directly to a charity from their IRA.  This contribution also counts toward an annual “required minimum distribution.”  This ability will no longer be there.




Read more: http://www.atr.org/days-thebr-largest-tax-hikes-history-a5370##ixzz0yTYo4HiG
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 03, 2010, 12:00:07 PM
Study: Cash For Clunkers Was A Wash
 Source: NPR


The government's "cash for clunkers" program boosted auto sales by 360,000 during the two months it was in place, according to a new study.

But in the seven months that followed, sales were down by 360,000 compared with what they would have been without the program, the study found.

The implication: The program didn't bring new buyers into the market. But it encouraged people who would have bought a car anyway to make their purchase a few months sooner.

Under the program, the government paid people about $4,000 to trade in old cars for newer, more fuel efficient ones.

Read more: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/09/02/129608251/cas... 
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 04, 2010, 05:19:36 AM
UPDATE 2-Taxpayers likely to face initial loss on GM IPO-sources

* Treasury to sell first shares below break-even-sources

* 61 pct Treasury sale could take several years-sources

* Taxpayer break-even is around $70 bln GM market value (Adds details on government stake, GM Q2 results, pension shortfall)

By Clare Baldwin, Soyoung Kim and Kevin Krolicki

NEW YORK/DETROIT, Sept 3 (Reuters) - The U.S. government is likely to take a loss on General Motors Co [GM.UL] in the first offering of the automaker's stock, six people familiar with preparations for the landmark IPO said.

Subsequent offerings of the government's holdings may be profitable depending on how investors trade the newly listed stock, the sources said.

But the question of whether taxpayers are ultimately made whole on GM's $50 billion bailout could be left open for years, the people said.

It could take more than three years for the Treasury to sell down its remaining stake in GM after the IPO, one person said. That would push a final accounting into the next presidential term.

A decision to price the initial GM shares below the cost to taxpayers would follow the usual Wall Street practice of giving the first investors in a new stock a discount, but it could also help allay investor concern in the face of the slow recovery of the U.S. economy and flat auto sales.

Preparations for GM's IP0 remain confidential. Both GM and the U.S. Treasury have declined to comment, citing restrictions by U.S. securities regulators.

The Obama administration has pledged to exit its investment in GM as quickly as possible while holding out the prospect that taxpayers could ultimately be paid back in full.

Treasury spokesman Mark Paustenbach declined to comment. GM spokesman Tom Wilkinson also declined to comment.

GM plans to begin a roadshow for its IPO immediately after the Nov. 2 U.S. midterm congressional elections, paving the way for a stock debut on Nov. 18, sources have said. [ID:nN01172283]

GM in August filed paperwork for an IPO that could potentially be worth as much as $20 billion, making it one of the biggest IPOs of all time.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is now reviewing the automaker's S-1 filing.

Analysts and potential investors have projected a market value for GM of between $50 billion to around $90 billion, based on projections for the automaker's cash flow, comparisons with rival Ford Motor Co (F.N) and trading in bonds in the old GM which are convertible into shares in the new company.

A market value at the high end of that range would be above the roughly $70 billion in market capitalization that GM needs to achieve for the U.S. government to break even on its $43 billion remaining investment in the automaker.

But IPOs typically price at a discount of 10 percent to 15 percent to theoretical fair value to reward investors for taking a risk on a new issue and pave the way for future stock floats. In tough market conditions, that discount can be even larger.

"You have to sell people on the notion that there is an upside to what they are buying," one of the sources said.

Another of the sources said the discount could be as much as 20 percent on the GM IPO compared with the U.S. Treasury's break-even point.

Preparations for the GM stock offering remain in the early stages. A number of the sources cautioned that the size and value of the deal and the size of the stake to be sold by the U.S. government have not been determined and will not be set for weeks.

GOVERNMENT STAKE IN 'GOVERNMENT MOTORS'

The U.S. government pumped $49.5 billion worth of taxpayer money into the automaker and took nearly 61 percent of its common stock.

GM has paid back $6.7 billion in debt to the Treasury and returned another $700 million in interest and dividends. The U.S. government also holds $2.1 billion in perpetual preferred shares in the automaker.

That leaves the government with a roughly $40 billion investment in the GM common stock that will debut in an IPO along with a new class of preferred shares that will convert into common shares under a mandatory provision.

In the days leading up to GM's August S-1 filing, Republican Senator Charles Grassley asked a special Treasury Department watchdog for an analysis of the GM IPO and how much money would be returned to taxpayers.

In its pitch to potential investors, GM will tout its global reach, recent gains in quality and pricing in its home market, and its sharply lower cost of operations after its 2009 bankruptcy, sources have said.

GM's $1.3 billion second-quarter profit was its biggest since 2004, when industry-wide U.S. sales were near 17 million vehicles compared with the 11.5 million sales rate of August.

But GM will have to address investor concern that growth in industry car sales in the U.S. in the second half of 2010 and into 2011 will likely be slower than analysts had expected just a few months ago.

At the same time, GM will have to confront a pension shortfall that remains a liability from its pre-bankruptcy operations.

GM eliminated about $40 billion in unsecured debt and other obligations in bankruptcy, but the automaker still needs to address a pension shortfall estimated at about $26 billion.

A successful IPO would be a political victory for the Obama administration and would help GM distance itself from critics who dubbed it "Government Motors" after its bailout. (Reporting by Clare Baldwin and Soyoung Kim in New York and Kevin Krolicki in Detroit; editing by Carol Bishopric)

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 06, 2010, 06:23:17 PM
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20100906/D9I2DUV01.html



Obama calling for more infrastructure spending
 
 
 Email this Story

Sep 6, 8:33 AM (ET)

By JULIE PACE


________________________ ___________-
 

WASHINGTON (AP) - Vowing to find new ways to stimulate the sputtering economy, President Barack Obama will call for long-term investments in the nation's roads, railways and runways that would cost at least $50 billion.

The infrastructure investments are one part of a package of targeted proposals the White House is expected to announce in hopes of jump-starting the economy ahead of the November election. Obama will outline the infrastructure proposal Monday at a Labor Day event in Milwaukee.

While the proposal calls for investments over six years, the White House said spending would be front-loaded with an initial $50 billion to help create jobs in the near future.

The goals of the infrastructure plan include: rebuilding 150,000 miles of roads; constructing and maintaining 4,000 miles of railways, enough to go coast-to-coast; and rehabilitating or reconstructing 150 miles of airport runways, while also installing a new air navigation system designed to reduce travel times and delays.

Obama will also call for the creation of a permanent infrastructure bank that would focus on funding national and regional infrastructure projects.

Administration officials wouldn't say what the total cost of the infrastructure investments would be, but did say the initial $50 billion represents a significant percentage. Officials said the White House would consider closing a number of special tax breaks for oil and gas companies to pay for the proposal.

Obama made infrastructure investments a central part of the $814 billion stimulus Congress passed last year, but with that spending winding down, the economy's growth has slowed. Officials said this infrastructure package differs from the stimulus because it's aimed at long-term growth, while still focusing on creating jobs in the short-term.

In a Labor Day interview on CBS'"Early Show," Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said the plan Obama was to unveil Monday would "put construction workers, welders, electricians back to work ... folks that have been unemployed for a long time."

With the unemployment rate ticking up to 9.6 percent, and polls showing the midterm elections could be dismal for Democrats, the president has promised to unveil a series of new measures on the economy.

In addition to Monday's announcement in Milwaukee, Obama will travel to Cleveland Wednesday to pitch a $100 billion proposal to increase and make permanent research and development tax credits for businesses, a White House official said.

While the idea is popular in Congress, coming up with offsetting tax increases or spending cuts has been a stumbling block. Similar to his proposal to pay for the infrastructure investments, Obama will ask lawmakers to close tax breaks for oil and gas companies and multinational corporations to pay for the plan.

Other stimulus measures the administration is considering include extending a law passed in March that exempts companies that hire unemployed workers from paying Social Security taxes on those workers through December. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has proposed extending the exemption an additional six months.

Obama is also continuing to prod the Senate to pass the small business bill that calls for about $12 billion in tax breaks and a $30 billion fund to help unfreeze lending. Republicans have likened the bill to the unpopular bailout of the financial industry. And the president wants to make permanent the portion of George W. Bush's tax cuts affecting the middle class.

Wary of the public's concern over rising deficits, the administration insists a second stimulus plan, similar to last year's $814 billion bill, is not in the works.

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 07, 2010, 05:30:30 AM
The Looming Obama Depression
Townhall.com ^ | September 5, 2010 | Kevin McCullough


________________________ ________________________ __________________



The longer President Obama refuses to acknowledge the direction of our nation's economy the greater the impact will be when the looming depression that awaits is named in his honor. For a leader who has had the advantages of an Ivy League education, he seems to be an excessively poor student of history. But in 120 days no one will be able to dispute that the economic mess the United States finds herself in belongs to anyone except President Barack Hussein Obama.

The basis of this reality is rooted in two truths that became quite pronounced this week. The first is that President Obama is ignoring the very real direction the nation is headed. The second is that he is purposefully ignoring the impact his looming historic tax increases will have. Both are contributing to the pessimism that overarches the morale and tone of the entrepreneurial framework of the future.

This week President Obama took to the White House press corps and by extension to the nation to claim that the nation saw job growth of 67,000 jobs in August. Even if this number was real it would be a pitifully tiny percent of the 14,885,000 who are both on unemployment (1 in 10 Americans) as well as those 23,768,000 who are underemployed (working but not earning enough for basic needs - 1 in 5 families).

The bigger problem for the president however is that the number isn't real. The fact is the nation saw 114,000 people added to the unemployment lines in August and the net jobs lost for the month sat at 54,000. In all the "summer of recovery"--as both President Obama and Vice President Biden pronounced it--saw 238,000 more jobs disappear. Telling the nation that his plans have taken the economy in the right direction, and implying that the nation is seeing a recovery in the area of employment is either willfully dishonest, or painfully, even treacherously naive. At the rate of this "recovery" another 317,333 workers could be sitting on the sidelines before the end of the year.

Additionally we are now on track to see the single largest collection of tax increases ever proposed take the Obama economy even further into the tank. In less than 120 days President Obama's plan to add a collective 18.6% to the federal tax burden will continue the economic downward spiral into record breaking depression-era territory. And remember he repeatedly said--on the campaign trail--that he should be elected expressly to prevent the nation's economy from complete deterioration.

Instead unemployment that was growing in the transition from Bush to Obama has exploded to double what it was under Bush. Even worse this means that while 14,885,000 Americans are claiming unemployment assistance, some 23,768,000 families are presently struggling through work that they have but are unable to meet their basic needs.

And about the time we are belting out Auld Lang Syne this holiday season, President Obama will raise all five income levels of tax categories between 3-5%.

Ironically the President will be raising the rate on the category that is home to seventy-five percent of all small businesses in America by the largest increase.

I call it ironic because it is the small business community in America that hires 2 out of every 3 new workers in America.

Eventually it all adds up.

The president is not pushed on this issue by the press. The president's team pretends that these realities do not exist. The president himself is willing to perpetuate the false notion that the stimulus package set up a "recovery summer" that in truth ended up in greater pain than it began with.

None of this takes into effect the additional costs that will be incurred by taxpayers when the full implementation of President Obama's control of one-sixth of the economy through the manipulation of how we receive health care benefits kicks in. And not that it has great likelihood of passing this year, but if by some miracle it did, the Obama tax penalties that would be incurred by every citizen in the nation under the proposed "Cap & Trade" legislation would add even greater misery to the growing pile.

All of these pending tax increases will be put into effect against well more than 95% of American tax-payers. Speaking of which that certainly contradicts his most famous campaign line.

In 1929 Irving Fisher observed that a number of trends led to the worst depression of our nation's history.

How many of these fit in today's scenario:

Debt liquidation and distress selling

Contraction of the money supply as bank loans are paid off

A fall in the level of asset prices

A still greater fall in the net worths of business, precipitating bankruptcies

A fall in profits

A reduction in output, in trade and in employment.

Pessimism and loss of confidence

Hoarding of money

A fall in nominal interest rates and a rise in deflation adjusted interest rates.

President Obama is ignoring and misrepresenting the rate of growth (or lack thereof) in the job numbers, and his economic team has laid the groundwork for the harshest attack on small businesses and every family in America that pays taxes effective January 1, 2011.

By every indicator this pundit can see, we are poised for tragedy... and I didn't get an Ivy League education!



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 07, 2010, 06:06:19 AM
Small businesses feel squeezed by Obama policies

By V. Dion Haynes
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 6, 2010; 12


________________________ ________________________ _____

Last year, even as he struggled through the worst of the recession, Chris Upham said revenue at his District-based real estate and construction businesses doubled -- allowing him to hire two agents.

But Upham said he hasn't increased his staff thus far in 2010 and he doesn't expect to for the remainder of the year.

That's because his taxes rose sevenfold. And he said he anticipates they'll increase again if the Bush tax cuts for people earning $250,000 and above expire at the end of the year.

As small businesses try to plot their recovery, attention is turning to what many owners consider burdensome policies -- higher taxes, new accounting procedures and health-care mandates. Even as the government tries to help with an array of small-business initiatives, many owners say the intervention is as much a hindrance to hiring as the faltering economy.

Their perceptions are important because the Obama administration is counting on small-business owners like Upham, whose ranks represent more than half the U.S. workforce, to jump-start the economy, much like they did after downturns in the early 1990s and 2001.

"We did well last year, hired two people, but the taxes ate through the income we had," Upham said.

Upham said business picked up substantially with the Obama tax credit for first-time home buyers before dropping off when it ended. With the administration efforts, he said, he feels like he's taking one step forward and two backward.

"It seemed like we were moving up, [and now] consumer confidence is down," he added. "What I want government to do is not raise taxes -- decrease them to allow us extra money for hiring."

The White House appears poised to respond to a growing backlash from businesspeople about the crush of higher taxes. Among the ideas being explored were a temporary payroll-tax holiday and permanent extension of the expired research-and-development tax credit, ways to offset the impending elapse of tax cuts for the top 2 percent of households.

"I will be addressing a broader package of new ideas next week," President Obama said Friday at a news conference held to comment on the Labor Department's August unemployment data. The report showed weak economic growth -- 67,000 private sector jobs added in August, down from 107,000 in July -- and that the jobless rate ticked up to 9.6 percent from 9.5 percent.

The conventional wisdom is that small businesses would be willing to expand their payroll if capital were more readily available to them. Small businesses suffered more in the credit crunch than their larger counterparts because they rely almost solely on banks for their financing.

Last year, the Obama administration allocated hundreds of millions of dollars to increase loan guarantees and to reduce borrower fees for small businesses, classified by the government as firms with 500 employees or fewer. The program proved to be wildly popular: Before the money ran out last spring, the number of loans approved soared 90 percent.

"There's a direct correlation between access to capital and job growth," said Molly Brogan, spokeswoman for the National Small Business Association. "If people are able to get loans and financing, they're able to grow their business and that includes creating new jobs."

Obama, who wants to revive the program, last week urged Senate Republicans to support a Democratic proposal to cut taxes for small businesses and establish a $30 billion loan fund providing them easier access to credit.

"There's one thing we know we should do -- something that should be Congress's first order of business when it gets back -- and that is making it easier for our small businesses to grow and hire," Obama said in a Rose Garden speech. "We know that in the final few months of last year, small businesses accounted for more than 60 percent of the job losses in America."

Yet to date, existing loan programs haven't yet spurred much hiring. Surveys conducted by the National Federation of Independent Business and the National Small Business Association show owners much less optimistic in recent months about their prospects of hiring and growing than they were late last year and earlier this year.

Even supporters of loans say the government investment likely won't pay off until consumers start spending and business owners start feeling more confident. "If everyone is saving and not spending and their clients are hurting economically, small businesses have to be a bit more cautious" about hiring, Brogan said.

In the Washington region, hiring is picking up at small businesses experiencing an increase in demand for their goods and services. For Luc Brami, principal of Gelberg Signs in Northwest Washington, and Craig Savarick, director of executive recruiting firm Capital Search Group in Vienna, an incentive came in the form of an Obama initiative: a temporary exemption from payroll taxes on every unemployed person they hired.

"For four people we hired, it will be a $9,000 savings," Brami said.

"We got a [tax] break and put it back into the company," he added. "We can buy equipment and get a credit, too."

In all, the administration has implemented about a dozen small-business programs, including a health-care tax credit; more opportunities for women business owners to receive government contracts; and cuts in capital gains taxes.

"Our view is that the financial crisis put multiple barriers in the way of small businesses and the appropriate policy response has to be aggressive and multifaceted instead of looking for one silver bullet," said Gene Sperling, counselor to Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner on small-business issues.

But Brian Bethune, chief U.S. financial economist at IHS Global Insight, asserts that the initiatives coupled with numerous other new regulations are making owners feel overburdened, overregulated and less secure about the economy.

"They may see it as more interference," Bethune said, "they see it as bureaucratic intrusion."

Some business owners and advocates complain that some of the programs contradict one another. Stephanie Cathcart, spokeswoman for the National Federation of Independent Business, said benefits from the payroll tax exemption business owners use when they hire unemployed people are mitigated by provisions in the health-care overhaul law that reduce a tax credit when businesses hire.

"It's counterintuitive," she said. "Frankly, a lot of these initiatives fall short."

Brogan of the National Small Business Administration said a new accounting regulation dramatically increases the requirements associated with providing documentation to the government on businesses' vendors, a rule that on average will multiply the average number of 1099 tax forms an owner files every year to 86 from 10.

"This will take the money they'd spend to hire a part- or full-time employee and give it to accountants," she said.

Dinesh Sharma, president of government contracting firm Washington Business Group in Chantilly, said he ruled out using the payroll tax exemption, believing the savings couldn't justify the tens of thousands of dollars he'd spend in salary and health insurance for a new employee.

"We're not large enough to hire someone just to take the benefit of a small tax break," he added. "The burden is more than the benefit."
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: GigantorX on September 07, 2010, 09:41:17 AM
This is reminding of the style of warfare during World War I. We just keep sending wave upon wave of "soliders" into the teeth of the enemy and they are slaughtered for literally a few hundred yards, maybe less. Each successive battle is then fought the same exact way with the ending of each engagement the exact same as the last. This worked in past recessions as taxes were cut, debt (both public and private) was loaded up on, money was kept cheap, interest rates of all kinds were dropped, wars were started and the U.S. consumer was kept afloat by bubble after bubble covering up the economic deterioration underneath. Victory is declared no matter what for propaganda purposes to keep the conscripts in line and the peasants in good spirits and distracted. But eventually, the reality surfaces and one side has to simply quit out of sheer exhaustion and lack of men and material.

They keep coming the same old way and they keep getting beat the same old way.
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 07, 2010, 09:43:34 AM
Yup.  God forbid we do anything to attract foreign investment, build factories and production, build more of what we consume, and stop fleeicng taxpayers.  no, we can't try that for once.   ::)  ::)
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: GigantorX on September 07, 2010, 10:41:19 AM
Yup.  God forbid we do anything to attract foreign investment, build factories and production, build more of what we consume, and stop fleeicng taxpayers.  no, we can't try that for once.   ::)  ::)

Victory is always one more thrust away!
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 07, 2010, 10:42:27 AM
Victory is always one more thrust away!

Hhhhmmm, sound like what I tell me GF. 
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 07, 2010, 10:51:21 AM
11 Signs That "Recovery Summer" Will Be Obama's "Mission Accomplished"
Gus Lubin and Joe Weisenthal | Sep. 7, 2010, 11:51 AM | 15,676 |  28

________________________ ________________________ ____________


This was supposed to be a summer of recovery.

In fact, The White House even branded it "Recovery Summer."

But with the summer officially over, we now know that there wasn't much of a recovery at all, and the whole branding of it may go down as Obama's "Mission Accomplished" moment.

Domestic vehicle sales -- STALLED
June: 11.1 million sold
August: 11.4 million sold

Details: Total sales are stalled. Domestic sales are dropping, posting the worst August in 27 years. Cash For Clunkers is looking more and more like a miss.


Factory orders -- STALLED
May: $412 billion total orders
July: $410 billion total orders

Details: Not counting aircrafts, July data would mark a 1.5% drop, the worst in 16 months. After leading the recovery for months, anufacturing is stalling and starting to contract.
Retail Sales -- STALLED
May: $362 billion

July: $363 billion

Details: A 0.4% rebound in July makes up ground from a 0.3% loss in June, but no one's forgetting the big 0.5% drop in May.
Housing starts -- STALLEDMay: 588,000

July: 546,000

Details: 1.7% gains in July marked a modest recovery. But single family housing starts fell 4.3% -- a negative indicator for home prices.
New home sales -- GETTING WORSEMay: 281,000

July: 276,000

Details: Demand hit an all-time low in July. Average months of supply also climbed for the month. These numbers suggest residential investment will be a drag on GDP for Q3.
Consumer sentiment -- STALLEDConsumer Sentiment Index June: 76

Consumer Sentiment Index August: 70

Consumer Board Index June: 54

Consumer Board Index August: 53

Details: Consumer sentiment dropped in June and July on bad economic news. Negative sentiment slowed or reversed in August.

Job creation -- STALLED
June: -125,000 non-farm payroll

August: -54,000 non-farm payroll

Details: The August jobs report actually helped the market, as the private sector created 67,000 jobs. Job loss was less than expected following the census surge. Overall it's a mixed picture.


Unemployment -- STALLEDJune: 9.5%

August: 9.6%

Details: With the census surge come and gone, unemployment is stuck at 9.6%. It's hard to say what how encouraged and discouraged workers are affecting the number.


Manufacturing index -- IMPROVINGMay PMI: 59.7

August PMI: 56.3

Details: August showed a stellar improvement in the ISM manufacturing index, up to 56.3 from 55.5, when analysts expected a fall to 53.0.
ISM Non-manufacturing index -- ROLLING OVERJune: 53.8%

August: 51.5%

Details: This measure of the service industry hit its lowest level since January.
Stock market -- IMPROVINGJune 1: 10,024

Sept. 7 (open): 10,320

Details: The Dow Jones Industrial Average is up nearly 3% since Memorial Day. Big gains in July melted away in August, before closing the summer with a surge.

Now as for how we're doing right now...Check out 10 details from the August jobs report >
Tags: Economy, Features | Get Alerts for these topics »

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/grading-recovery-summer-2010-9#ixzz0yrpNCcRK
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 07, 2010, 01:27:55 PM
Obama's Apology Tour
by Gordon G. Chang Info
www.thedailybest.com


http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-09-05/economic-advisor-larry-summers-shouldnt-go-to-china/


________________________ ________________


Gordon G. Chang is a Forbes.com columnist and the author of The Coming Collapse of China and Nuclear Showdown: North Korea Takes on the World, focusing on nuclear proliferation and the North Korean crisis. He has lived and worked in China and Hong Kong for almost two decades.
 
The president sent economic adviser Larry Summers to China, repeating a similar trip last March that made the U.S. look weak. Gordon G. Chang on how Obama's making the same mistake twice.

National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers and Deputy National Security Adviser Thomas Donilon arrived in Beijing yesterday to put relations with China back on track. Their visit is scheduled to end Wednesday.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       
At the top of Washington’s agenda are two items.  First, there is Beijing’s predatory fixing of the value of the renminbi. China had raised hopes on June 19 when it announced it would increase exchange rate “flexibility.” Up until then, the Chinese central bank had pegged the value of the renminbi to the dollar.  Since the widely welcomed change, the currency has appreciated less than 0.3% against the greenback, however. Many analysts believe the yuan, as the renminbi is informally known, is undervalued by as much as 40%. Beijing has, throughout the years, manipulated the value of its currency to boost exports.

Second, the American delegation is expected to raise the issue of China’s increasingly close economic relations with Iran. The concern is that Chinese enterprises and financial institutions will be “backfilling,” rushing in to take up commercial opportunities abandoned by companies and banks complying with international sanctions. Beijing voted for Security Council measures in June but has criticized Washington’s additional sanctions, which have been followed by the European Union, Canada, Australia, and Japan.

There are, of course, a host of other agenda items, from troubled military ties to Beijing’s claims to the South China Sea to China’s relations with North Korea. Chinese diplomats will undoubtedly raise the “T” issues, Taiwan, Tibet, and trade.

On Wednesday, we are sure to hear expressions of progress as the two sides wrap up discussions, but real forward movement seems unlikely. First, Beijing and Washington have irreconcilable goals. Chinese leaders recognize this and talk about the nature of their differences with us. American officials, on the other hand, still cannot bring themselves to have honest conversations, even in private.

The Chinese will see this as the Apology Tour, the Sequel.

Second, Washington seems intent on pursuing counterproductive tactics. In early November, for instance, Jeffrey Bader, the top Asia official on the National Security Council, publicly said no important issue in the world could be solved without China’s cooperation. In effect, Bader, now in Beijing as part of the Summers-Donilon delegation, gave the Chinese a veto over American foreign policy. So it should come as no surprise that they were especially uncooperative during President Obama’s November summit in Beijing.

Just weeks after that, the Chinese went on a bender, adopting obstructionist tactics at the Copenhagen climate change conference in December. China’s officials then made hostile comments—and specific threats—on matters ranging from minor arms sales to Taiwan to a literally back-door visit by the Dalai Lama to the White House.

So what did President Obama do? He sent two senior officials, Bader and Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg, to Beijing in March. The Chinese saw the visit as a sign of weakness and said the pair had come to apologize to China, a theme echoed in official media. Of course, neither of the Americans made apologies to China, but Beijing was in no mood to talk to them in earnest.

In fact, Beijing during the Bader-Steinberg visit staked out even more aggressive positions. For instance, the Chinese for the first time labeled their ludicrous claims to the entire South China Sea as a “core interest” of their nation.

Obama’s good-hearted initiative had backfired, apparently encouraging the very behavior he sought to prevent. Yet what is the president doing now? He is sending even more officials to Beijing. The Chinese will see this as the Apology Tour, the Sequel. The White House is just not learning from its mistakes.

Now would be a good time for the Obama administration to change course. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Sander Levin will begin hearings on China’s exchange rate on September 15. The early betting is that he will report out the Tim Ryan bill, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has made it clear she wants legislation soon. In the Senate, Chuck Schumer’s legislative proposals have attracted bipartisan support with as perhaps as many as 70 of his colleagues on his side.

Beijing needs to be concerned that a weakened Obama will be in no position to veto legislation targeting the renminbi. China is increasing its dependence on the American market—last year 115.7% of its overall trade surplus related to sales to us, up from 90.1% in 2008. Currency legislation, in short, could add to the woes of the weakening Chinese economy.

And on Iran, it seems much of the international community is lining up behind U.S. sanctions.  Reports that the “atomic ayatollahs” are close to weaponizing their uranium is, naturally, drawing the world against the Islamic Republic. Iran and its allies—Beijing is now Tehran’s primary backer—look like they might get run over by the global momentum.

So, at this moment the Chinese have many more reasons to come talk to us than we have to go see them.


Gordon G. Chang is a Forbes.com columnist and the author of The Coming Collapse of China and Nuclear Showdown: North Korea Takes on the World, focusing on nuclear proliferation and the North Korean crisis. He has lived and worked in China and Hong Kong for almost two decades.


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Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 08, 2010, 08:10:17 AM

Obama's Argument For Ending Bush Tax Cuts Is Completely Disingenuous
Joe Weisenthal | Sep. 8, 2010, 10:28 AM | 525 |  16

________________________ ________________________ _

Sorry: Obama Flatly Rejects Bush Tax Cut Extension For The RichObama's New Business Tax Break Is A Gigantic Version Of Cash-For-ClunkersDeparted Obama Aide Now Says Ending Bush Tax Cuts Will Make Unemployment WORSE
Why won't Obama support an extension of the Bush tax cuts?

Smartly, he takes a conservative line. He says we can't afford the $700 billion deficit hit that would come about if we kept the tax cuts in play.

Granted, this line won't convince anyone, even deficit hawks, but still it sounds plausible.

But seriously, what evidence is there of this? On what basis does he conclude that $700 billion is unaffordable?

The truth is that there is no evidence that this would be a budgetary dealbreaker. We owe trillions upon trillions already, and everyone knows this, and we have problem borrowing money.

So that can't really be the reason. There's got to be another reason for this stance. Class politics? Maybe, but we're not sure the eat the rich strategy even flies right now, so honestly we're stumped.

Anyway, Obama is speaking today on his latest burst of mini-stimulus ideas. We'll learn more.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/obamas-argument-for-ending-bush-tax-cuts-is-completely-disingenuous-2010-9#ixzz0yx1csnRn

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 10, 2010, 07:30:16 AM
Homebuyer tax credit: 950,000 must repay
By Les Christie, staff writerSeptember 9, 2010: 2:40 PM ET
http://money.cnn.com/2010/09/09/real_estate/who_repays_tax_credit/index.htm



________________________ ________________________ ______________


NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Nearly half of all Americans who claimed the first-time homebuyer tax credit on their 2009 tax returns will have to repay the government.

According to a report from the Inspector General for Tax Administration, released to the public Thursday, about 950,000 of the nearly 1.8 million Americans who claimed the tax credit on their 2009 tax returns will have to return the money.

The confusion comes because homebuyers were eligible for two different credits, depending on when their homes were purchased.

Those who bought properties during 2008 were to deduct, dollar for dollar, up to 10% of the home's purchase price or $7,500, whichever was less. The catch: The money was a no-interest loan that had to be repaid within 15 years.

Had they waited to buy until 2009, they could have gotten a much sweeter deal. Congress extended the credit and made it a refund rather than a loan.

Now, the IRS is developing a strategy for separating the 2009 taxpayers who are required to repay the credit from those who are not.

A review by the Inspector General earlier this year found that the IRS could not easily distinguish between home purchases made in 2008 and 2009. That heightened concerns that some claims could be erroneous or even fraudulent, that buyers could, for example, claim their purchase came later than it actually occurred.

Thursday's release reported that 73,000 claims, more than 4% of the 1.8 million homebuyers who received the credit, had incorrect purchase dates recorded by the IRS.

Some of the inaccuracies counted against the taxpayers, Nearly 60,000 were listed as purchasing in 2008 (meaning they had to repay the credit) or had no purchase dates at all, rather than their correct 2009 purchase dates, which would free them of the obligation to pay it back.

It is also taking a look at all those deceased taxpayers who received credits.

The inspector general reported that 1,326 single people listed as dead by the Social Security Administration claimed more than $10 million in credits. The IRS threw out 528 of those 1,326 claims, saving $4 million.
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 10, 2010, 01:30:51 PM
The Corner
No Place for Entrepreneurship in Obama’s Economy
September 9, 2010 3:20 P.M. By Samuel R. Staley

________________________ ________________________ _________


President Obama did a great service to the public on Wednesday when he outlined his vision for economic policy before a friendly audience in Parma, Ohio (near Cleveland). He mixed populist rhetoric stoking the middle class with empty overtures to entrepreneurs and, in the process, demonstrated a complete lack of understanding about how market economies operate.

He started out with the inclusive rhetoric that sucked many moderates and Blue Dogs into his presidential campaign in 2008:

You know, in the fall of 2008, one of the last rallies of my presidential campaign was right here in the Cleveland area.  (Applause.)  It was a hopeful time, just two days before the election.  And we knew that if we pulled it off, we’d finally have the chance to tackle some big and difficult challenges that had been facing this country for a very long time.

We also hoped for a chance to get beyond some of the old political divides — between Democrats and Republicans, red states and blue states — that had prevented us from making progress.  Because although we are proud to be Democrats, we are prouder to be Americans — (applause) — and we believed then and we believe now that no single party has a monopoly on wisdom.

We have now learned, two years into his presidency, that the inclusiveness was really about evangelical conversion to progressive views on politics and the economy. Private businesses and entrepreneurs are fine as long as their investments, time, commitment and resources are directed toward social ends (as defined by progressive politicos). This becomes clear when Obama says:

But in the words of the first Republican President, Abraham Lincoln, I also believe that government should do for the people what they cannot do better for themselves.  (Applause.)  And that means making the long-term investments in this country’s future that individuals and corporations can’t make on their own:  investments in education and clean energy, in basic research and technology and infrastructure.  (Applause.)

So, government is responsible for directing the economy. John Kenneth Galbraith would be pleased, as a key implication of this view is that government must be elevated to a senior position in a rough partnership between the private sector and organized labor. It’s not much of a step, then, for the president to take this to the next level, making quite clear that private business should not be focused on creating value (through the pursuit of profits) but on pursuing non-economic objectives and redistributing wealth. He continues:

That means making sure corporations live up to their responsibilities to treat consumers fairly and play by the same rules as everyone else.  (Applause.)  Their responsibility is to look out for their workers, as well as their shareholders, and create jobs here at home.

And that means providing a hand-up for middle-class families — so that if they work hard and meet their responsibilities, they can afford to raise their children, and send them to college, see a doctor when they get sick, retire with dignity and respect.  (Applause.)

Indeed, Obama believes fundamentally that the middle class owes its existence to the government, not to wealth-creating entrepreneurs or businesses. Without skipping a beat, the president fails to recognize (let alone acknowledge) the difference between a truly free market, where individuals decide how to invest their resources, and a government-directed one that sets collective priorities which require individuals to tow the line for specific policy objectives implicitly defined by the political class:   

That’s what we Democrats believe in — a vibrant free market, but one that works for everybody.  (Applause.)  That’s our vision.  That’s our vision for a stronger economy and a growing middle class.  And that’s the difference between what we and Republicans in Congress are offering the American people right now.

Missing in most of the popular analysis of Obama’s economic policy perspective is the way his personal experience has fundamentally framed the way he looks at the world. He provided a convenient glimpse into this in Parma:

You see, Michelle and I are where we are today because even though our families didn’t have much, they worked tirelessly — without complaint — so that we might have a better life.  My grandfather marched off to Europe in World War II, while my grandmother worked in factories on the home front.  I had a single mom who put herself through school, and would wake before dawn to make sure I got a decent education.  Michelle can still remember her father heading out to his job as a city worker long after multiple sclerosis had made it impossible for him to walk without crutches.  He always got to work; he just had to get up a little earlier.

Yes, our families believed in the American values of self-reliance and individual responsibility, and they instilled those values in their children.  But they also believed in a country that rewards responsibility; a country that rewards hard work; a country built on the promise of opportunity and upward mobility. 

 They believed in an America that gave my grandfather the chance to go to college because of the GI Bill; an America that gave my grandparents the chance to buy a home because of the Federal Housing Authority; an America that gave their children and grandchildren the chance to fulfill our dreams thanks to college loans and college scholarships.

It’s hard to ignore that all the “rewards” explicitly identified by Obama are directly tied to government programs, not entrepreneurial investment that creates new wealth. For Obama, economic policy — and the economy more generally — is about redistribution . . . and spending.

What’s also startling is the degree to which this president’s economic literacy reaches little further than the superficial (and incorrect) numbers the mandarins in the White House spit out uncritically from their econometric models. (For a more thorough critique of this process, see my article “Naive Statistics” in National Review, November 2, 2009.)

Entrepreneurship really doesn’t exist in the economic lingo (or policy) of this presidency. In Obama’s world, businesses and entrepreneurs are merely variables to be manipulated by the political class.

— Samuel R. Staley is Robert W. Galvin Fellow and director of Urban & Land Use Policy at the Reason Foundation.
 
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 12, 2010, 07:01:29 AM
Americans have good reason not to believe in Obamanomics

By George F. Will
Sunday, September 12, 2010; A25




Looking back with pride, the British are commemorating the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, when Churchill said of the pilots fighting the Luftwaffe: Never "was so much owed by so many to so few." Looking ahead with trepidation, Americans are thinking: Never have so many of us owed so much.

Actually, they owed slightly more when the recession began, when household consumer debt was $2.6 trillion. The painful but necessary process of deleveraging is proceeding slowly: Such debt has been reduced only to $2.4 trillion. Add to that the facts that the recession has reduced household wealth by $10 trillion and that only 25 percent of Americans expect their incomes to improve next year. So they are not spending, and companies, having given the economy a temporary boost last year by rebuilding inventories, are worried. Hence, rather than hiring, companies are sitting on cash reserves much larger than the size of last year's $862 billion stimulus.

Democrats who say that another stimulus is necessary for job creation but who dare not utter the word "stimulus" are sending three depressing messages: The $862 billion stimulus did not work; the public so loathes the word that another stimulus will not happen; therefore prosperity is not "just around the corner," as Herbert Hoover supposedly said (but did not). Consumers and businesses are responding to those messages by heeding Polonius's advice in "Hamlet": "Neither a borrower nor a lender be." Hoover -- against whom Democrats, those fountains of fresh ideas, have been campaigning for 78 years -- is again being invoked as a terrible warning about the wages of sin. Sin is understood by liberals as government austerity, which is understood as existing levels of government spending, whatever they are, whenever. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner recently said that Germans favoring reduced rather than increased state spending sounded "a little bit like Hoover." Well.

Real per capita federal expenditures almost doubled between 1929, Hoover's first year as president, and 1932, his last. David Kennedy, in "Freedom from Fear," the volume in the Oxford history of the American people that deals with the Depression, writes of Hoover:

"He nearly doubled federal public works expenditures in three years. Thanks to his prodding, the net stimulating effect of federal, state and local fiscal policy was larger in 1931 than in any subsequent year of the decade." Barack Obama has self-nullifying plans for stimulating the small-business sector that creates most new jobs. He has just endorsed tax relief for such businesses but opposes extension of the Bush tax cuts for high-income filers, who include small businesses with 48 percent of that sector's earnings. The stance of other Democrats seems to be that the Bush cuts were wicked in conception, reckless in execution -- and should be largely, and perhaps entirely, extended.

Does this increase anyone's confidence? About as much as noting the one-year anniversary of the end of another of the administration's brainstorms.

The used-car market is an important mechanism for redistributing wealth to low-income persons: The price of a car drops when it is driven out of the dealership, but much of its transportation value remains when it enters the used-car market. Unfortunately for low-income people, the average price of a three-year-old automobile has increased more than 10 percent since last summer. This is largely because the Car Allowance Rebate System, aka "Cash for Clunkers," which ended in August 2009, cut the supply of used cars.

Cash for Clunkers provided up to $4,500 to persons who traded in a car in order to purchase a new car with better gas mileage, but it stipulated that the used car had to be scrapped. The Boston Globe's Jeff Jacoby reports that a study by Edmunds.com shows that all but 125,000 of the 700,000 cars sold during the clunkers program would have been bought even if no subsidy had been available. If this is so, each incremental sale cost taxpayers $24,000.

Even on environmental grounds the program was, Jacoby argues, "an exorbitant dud": The reduction in carbon dioxide from removing older cars from the road cost, according to research at the University of California at Davis, $237 a ton (the international market prices carbon emissions credits at about $20 a ton) and the new higher-mileage cars mean a reduction of carbon dioxide emissions of less than what Americans emit every hour.

Obama is desperately urging consumers and investors to have confidence in his understanding of economics. They may, however, remember his characteristic certitude that "cash for clunkers" was "successful beyond anybody's imagination."

georgewill@washpost.com

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Fury on September 12, 2010, 07:30:59 AM
That article you posted where it explained how Volcker went ignored while scumbags like Geithner were listened to says it all.
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: GigantorX on September 12, 2010, 12:59:38 PM
That article you posted where it explained how Volcker went ignored while scumbags like Geithner were listened to says it all.

Volcker was added to Obama's "Economics Council" because of his connection to Reagan, plain and simple. He was never listened to nor was he brought in to be listened to.
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 12, 2010, 01:21:44 PM
Volcker was added to Obama's "Economics Council" because of his connection to Reagan, plain and simple. He was never listened to nor was he brought in to be listened to.

Same with Buffet. 

I posted a video with Buffet disagreeing with Cap & Trade, ObamaCare, Card Check, etc, and the kneepadders went silent. 
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 12, 2010, 01:24:46 PM
Linda Chavez: Obama hasn't yet learned his economic lesson
By: Linda Chavez
Examiner Columnist

________________________ ________________--



September 10, 2010 President Obama was in full campaign mode this week as he delivered a stump speech on the economy in Cleveland. But the magic is gone.

He's no longer the silver-tongued orator who could make us feel good about ourselves and the prospects for our country -- which was key to his victory in 2008. Now he's just another partisan hack blaming the other party for his own failure of leadership.

Instead of changing his tone and rhetoric, the president should be focused on changing his policies. But he seems incapable of any new thinking on what to do about the ailing economy.

His only solution is to spend more. He's now touting a new economic stimulus: $50 billion in supposed infrastructure spending, which he's coupled to some targeted tax breaks for businesses. But few people -- including those vulnerable members of Congress in his own party -- are buying his plan, for good reason.

If nearly a trillion dollars in stimulus spending couldn't create enough jobs to drop the unemployment rate to under 9 percent, how could adding $50 billion more for infrastructure improvements make a difference? The problem with the president's new plan is the same as it was with the old one.

Government doesn't "create" jobs. Government only grows at the expense of taxpayers, siphoning off money that could be put to better use in the private sector.

Nor is the president's plan to give a few targeted tax breaks to business any more likely to create permanent jobs. The president's plan is just another attempt to micromanage the economy. Instead of enacting an across-the-board tax cut -- or simply keeping in place the Bush tax cuts that are due to expire -- he is proposing specific tax breaks that he hopes will motivate certain kinds of business behavior.

The top corporate tax rate in the U.S. is 39 percent, one of the highest in the industrialized world. Instead of lowering the top rate to that of, say, Germany's or the United Kingdom's, both of which are below 30 percent, the president is proposing to allow businesses to write off certain expenses.

He'd like to make permanent a tax credit for research and development, and he'd allow businesses to write off 100 percent of their capital investments in 2011 instead of writing them down over several years.

But businesses don't make decisions about expanding their workforce on the basis of one-year write-offs. If the president had even an iota of business experience, maybe he'd understand that.

One-year tax breaks may improve the short-term bottom line for corporations, but successful businesses operate on a longer time horizon. Do the president and his advisers really believe that a company that receives a one-year $5 million write-off will go out and hire 100 new employees as a result? Not likely, especially since the cost of employing those workers will continue to rise long after the tax benefits have disappeared.

A tax rate cut, however, can motivate hiring.

If a company knows that its tax bill is going down permanently, it may well be motivated to spend that money in hiring more people or in making capital improvements (which creates jobs for workers employed by other companies). But no responsible CEO would make such a decision on the basis of a one-time credit or write-off.

But cutting taxes is only half the solution. Tax cuts that produce real economic growth lead to higher revenues. But cutting government spending is by far the most important thing we can do to improve the economy. And those cuts need to come at the state and local as well as the federal level.

Cadillac pensions and benefits for public employees are bankrupting states like California. And entitlement spending at the federal level must be brought under control -- as painful as it will be to do so. But few politicians in either party want to tackle Social Security or Medicare reform -- Reps. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., Mike Pence, R-Ind., and a handful of others in the GOP are the exceptions.

We cannot tax and spend our way out of the current economic mess. American voters understand that. Now it's time for the politicians, especially the president, to get the message.

Examiner Columnist Linda Chavez is nationally syndicated by Creators Syndicate.
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 12, 2010, 01:47:31 PM
New economic chairman: Unemployment rate 'going to stay high' in near term
The Hill ^ | 9-12-10 | Sam Youngman and Bridget Johnson



________________________ ___________-




President Obama's new chairman of the Council of Economic Affairs (CEA) said Sunday that the national unemployment rate will not decrease significantly anytime soon.

Austan Goolsbee, who Obama announced on Friday will replace Christina Romer as head of the CEA, told "Fox News Sunday" that the president is doing all he can to help the economy, but the recession was so deep, it will take some time for employment numbers to recover.

"I don't think the unemployment rate will be coming down significantly at any time in the near future," Goolsbee said.

Unemployment for the nation reached 9.6 percent in August, and Goolsbee and other White House officials regularly concede they expect it to get worse before it gets better.

Goolsbee echoed that forecast on ABC's "This Week" Sunday. "It's going to stay high," he said of the unemployment rate. "This recession is the deepest in our lifetimes, the deepest since 1929. If you take the people thrown out of work in the 1982 recession, the 1991 recession, the 2001 recession, not only is this bigger, this is bigger than all of those combined. So more than 8 million people lost their jobs.

"It's going to take a significant push on our part and time before that comes down," he said. "I don't anticipate it coming down rapidly."

Goolsbee, in his first interview since Obama named his as chairman of the CEA, defended Obama's handling of the economy, specifically the president's call for ending tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.


(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 13, 2010, 05:20:29 AM
Who's being 'reckless'?
By Ralph R. Reiland
Monday, September 13, 2010
www.realclearpolitics.co m


Ralph R. Reiland is an associate professor of economics at Robert Morris University and a local restaurateur. He can be reached via via e-mail.

________________________ _______________________

With 15 million workers unemployed and another 11 million underemployed, President Obama decided last week that the answer was to increase the amount of anti-rich red meat that he's throwing around.

At a Labor Day rally in Milwaukee, Mr. Obama declared that the United States "didn't become the most prosperous country in the world by rewarding greed and recklessness."

He didn't say whether we became the most prosperous country via income redistribution and mandatory wealth spreading.

He also didn't say whether the "greed" accusation applied to guys like Jay-Z and Big Ben or just to the regular capitalists and entrepreneurs who run America's car-repair shops and jewelry stores on Main Street.

He also didn't say whether his definition of "recklessness" includes the nonstop and decentralized risk-taking that's inherent in a free-enterprise economy, a system rooted in what Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter called "creative destruction."

Schumpeter was being positive. The endless string of winners and losers, the bankruptcies and newly formed companies, are essential components of an efficient and growing economy based on private property, limited government and individual freedom.

For various types of central planners, this process of decentralization and freedom looks way too messy and uncontrolled -- much too prone to "recklessness."

Mr. Obama also declared that "anyone who thinks we can move this economy forward with a few doing well at the top, hoping it'll trickle down to working folks running faster and faster just to keep up -- they just haven't studied our history."

In fact, the history of the 1960s and 1980s shows that the benefits of cuts in top marginal income tax rates clearly trickled down to help "working folks" in the form of more jobs, less unemployment, less poverty, less inflation and higher wage growth.

The John F. Kennedy income tax cuts of 30 percent that were enacted in 1964, cutting the top marginal federal income tax rate from 91 percent to 70 percent, were followed by several years of 5 percent real gross domestic product growth per year, dropping the unemployment rate from 5.2 percent in 1964 to 3.5 percent in 1969, a lower jobless rate than the 4.0 percent unemployment rate that's generally defined as "full employment."

Similarly, the Reagan income tax cuts produced real average annual GDP growth of 3.2 percent from 1981 to 1989, a higher growth rate than what existed before and after the Reagan years, i.e., 2.8 percent average real annual growth in the pre-Reagan years from 1974 to 1981 and 2.1 percent growth in the post-Reagan years from 1989 to 1995.

Following the Reagan cut in the top marginal federal income tax rate from 70 percent to 28 percent, unemployment was cut in half, from 9.7 percent in 1982 to 5.3 percent in 1989.

And the poor? The real income, adjusted for inflation, of the poorest fifth of U.S. households increased by 12 percent in the Reagan era, reversing a 17 percent decline in their average real income from 1979 to 1983 before Reagan's pro-growth tax cuts kicked in.

The poverty population in the U.S., after growing by 7 million in the late 1970s, dropped by 4 million in the 1980s. The real median income, adjusted for inflation, of black households increased by 17 percent from 1982 to 1989, reversing a 10 percent decline from 1978 to 1982.

Obama's strategy? Raise taxes on "the rich" during a recession for "fairness." That's a clear policy of economic and political "recklessness."
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: MM2K on September 13, 2010, 06:44:19 PM
Quote
Mr. Obama also declared that "anyone who thinks we can move this economy forward with a few doing well at the top, hoping it'll trickle down to working folks running faster and faster just to keep up -- they just haven't studied our history."

What????!!! That's the way the world works deufus!!!!
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 13, 2010, 06:48:21 PM
What????!!! That's the way the world works deufus!!!!

In Obama's mind, you give the whinos, deadbeats, drug addicts, and dope dealers all the money and prosperity follows.   
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 14, 2010, 05:47:13 AM
Obama to kill more jobs
Americanthinker.com ^ | September 13, 2010 | Joseph Mason


________________________ _____________


The latest job killing initiative by Barack Obama: focus new taxes on the oil and gas industry.

Just last week, President Obama explicitly targeted the industry for two massive tax hikes. First, he'd ban oil and gas companies from using the "Section 199" tax credit, a measure for domestic manufacturers enacted in 2004 to boost US employment. (The Senate is set to vote this week on its version of the ban.) Second, he wants to end "dual capacity" protection for US energy firms.

Without this shield against double taxation on foreign revenues, American companies would be competing on an uneven global playing field. Again, Obama aims directly and specifically at the US oil and gas industry.

Yet, by the federal government's own economic model, these tax hikes would lead to huge, immediate job losses. I ran the numbers through the Commerce Department's RIMS II model; it shows, under the proposed changes to Section 199 and dual capacity, Americans would almost immediately lose more than 150,000 stable, private-sector jobs.

By repealing the tax credit US-based companies claim on the taxes they pay abroad, Obama's "stimulus" plan would effectively double-tax American businesses -- driving investment to foreign competitors that don't face the same tax burden.

Again, Obama is enriching foreign oil companies at the expense of domestic ones. He has done this previously when he extended billions in loans to the Brazilian oil company Petrobras with extensive offshore oil programs through the U.S. Export-Import Bank, while trying to kills off offshore oil exploration in the Gulf by our companies.

Obama did it again this past week when the Ex-Im bank extended another billion in loans to support Mexican oil development in the Gulf. Obama seems to relish the opportunity to redistribute power and wealth to foreign countries and companies at our expense.

Why?

As Dinesh D'Souza writes, not only is Barack Obama the most anti-business President in American history but he seems to relish the opportunity to enrich and empower foreign companies at the expense of American ones. D'Souza speculates this is a legacy of Obama's immersion in foreign cultures as a child and the anti-colonial views of his father. American companies were seen as greedy and rapacious. His father railed against neo-colonialism where foreign companies replaced foreign government officials as the ruling power in the third world. His Indonesian stepfather worked for an American oil company in Indonesia and earned far less and lived a lesser lifestyle than American executives posted there. Also, Obama feels Americans use too much energy and that the lesser-developed nations should be entitled to use more, at our expense. What better way than to extend our tax dollars to foreign oil companies?

This strategy also is a way to further to enrich promoters of green schemes that benefit Democratic donors. The stories are accumulating of politically connected Democrats plugged into green schemes that depend on government powers that be, since the economics don't exist-being showered with government money-that they recycle into Democratic campaigns.

America, Obama is just not into us.

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 14, 2010, 10:00:55 AM
Senate defeats plan to strip filing requirement from health law
By Alexander Bolton - 09/14/10 12:47 PM ET
www.thehill.com

________________________ ________________________ ________
 
The Senate on Tuesday defeated an effort to strip a controversial tax-reporting provision from the sweeping healthcare law Congress passed earlier this year.

Lawmakers voted 46 to 52 to block an amendment sponsored by Sen. Mike Johanns (R-Neb.) that would have saved businesses and nonprofit groups from having to report an array of small and medium-sized purchases to the Internal Revenue Service.

A handful of Democrats voted for the Johanns proposal, including Sens. Evan Bayh (Ind.), Michael Bennet (Colo.), Blanche Lincoln (Ark.), Ben Nelson (Neb.), Mark Pryor (Ark.), Mark Warner (Va.), and Jim Webb (Va.).

The vote puts the Senate on track to pass small-business assistance legislation this week or early next week.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business groups had lobbied furiously in favor of the Johanns amendment. Business groups argue the new requirements impose a heavy cost on small businesses and will harm the economy.

The provision, which is estimated to raise $17 billion over 10 years to pay for a new prevention and public healthcare fund, requires businesses and other groups to file 1099 tax forms to report purchases from a single supplier that total more than $600 in a year.

Senators also blocked an alternative to Johann’s amendment sponsored by Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.). Nelson’s proposal would have increased the reporting threshold to $5,000 and eliminated the requirement for businesses with fewer than 25 employees.

Nelson’s amendment failed by a vote of 56 to 42, four votes short of the 60 needed to cut off debate.

Republicans expressed concerns over the Nelson alternative because it would have been paid for by repealing a tax break for large oil-and-gas producers.

Senate Republicans said they were not surprised the Johanns amendment did not attract more votes, citing staunch opposition from President Obama.

"The White House does not want to set the precedent of rewriting the healthcare bill," said a GOP aide. "They don't want to admit they made any mistakes in the bill before the election."

Democratic leaders scheduled the vote on the Johanns amendment to secure the support of Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) to advance the small-business bill. Voinovich had demanded consideration of the small-business reporting provision before agreeing to a final vote on the broader bill.

The legislation would provide $12 billion in tax cuts to small businesses and set up a $30 billion Small Business Lending Fund. It would allow businesses to write off up to $500,000 in capital investments and 50 percent of the cost of new equipment. It would also increase to $10,000 the tax deduction for small business start-ups.

Julian Pecquet contributed to this story.

This story was posted at 11:59 a.m. and updated at 12:47 p.m.

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 15, 2010, 08:28:49 AM
Study: Tax moves could 'cripple' US industry (oil)
Oil and Gas Journal ^ | Sep 14, 2010 | OGJ editors


________________________ ________________________ _______


This article was updated on Sept. 15 to reflect legislative developments.

By OGJ editors HOUSTON, Sept. 14 -- Proposals by the Obama administration to kill two tax provisions important to oil and gas companies would do economic harm worth more than the revenue they would raise for the government, according to a study commissioned by the American Energy Alliance.

Louisiana State University Prof. Joseph R. Mason, who conducted the study, concludes that ending “dual-capacity” tax provisions and denying oil and gas companies use of a tax deduction available to other industries since 2004 “could cripple the oil and gas sector.”

Under current dual-capacity tax law, companies with income outside the US can lower US income taxes by the amounts they pay in income taxes to other governments. The administration proposes to adjust dual-capacity rules so as to slash the value of the credit.

The move would impose double-taxation on much foreign income and hurt the abilities of international oil companies based in the US to compete abroad.

The other proposal would prevent US oil and gas companies from using a deduction enacted in Sect. 199 of the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 to bring overall tax rates of US manufacturers in line with those of non-US competitors.

Together, Mason says, the moves would cut US economic output by $341 billion and wages by almost $68 billion over the next decade. They would eliminate 154,000 jobs in 2011 and a further 115,000 jobs over the rest of the decade.

Mason points out that the losses he projects exceed the $210 billion that some analysts have estimated would flow to the US Treasury as a result of the tax changes.

And Mason says those analyses don’t account for “the inexorable reality that US corporations will respond to higher taxes by restricting domestic production and moving operations elsewhere in the world.”

The Senate on Sept. 14 rejected an attempt by Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) to deny use by the five largest oil companies of the Sect. 199 deduction. Nelson made his proposal as an amendment to legislation to provide incentives to small businesses.

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 26, 2010, 07:11:07 PM
 Professor: Obama Has Caused ‘Irreparable harm’ to Gulf Coast Economyby Capitol Confidential

www.biggovernment.com

________________________ ____________

Obama administration policies have caused “irreperable harm” to the Gulf Coast economy, stifling the energy sector and culling employment within it to a degree previously underestimated by the administration itself.

That is the conclusion drawn by Louisiana State University economics professor, Dr. Joseph Mason, author of a new critique of the Obama administration’s Inter-Agency Economic Report released last week estimating losses due to the deepwater drilling moratorium currently in effect.  According to Dr. Mason, that report understated the ban’s impact on job losses by as much as 60 percent.

During a conference call Tuesday, Mason criticized the administration’s methodology for calculating the economic effects of the ban, and said the administration used inflated, flawed logic to calculate its valuation of economic offsets—such as unemployment wages—and their counter effects on the economic downturn. He said the report was inaccurately rosy in describing the Gulf States’ economic recoveries following the BP spill.

“Those states have been irreparably harmed,” Mason said. “Essentially all of these economies have taken the summer off and are trying to get back to the baseline.”


Mason said the Obama administration’s approach, harming business activity in the name of environmental defense, was part of a broader trend of stifling economic growth. He said administration officials did not approach him for advice on their analysis and that no serious forecasting was conducted prior to the ban.

“I find it quite honestly shocking that an economic analysis was not undertaken prior to the policy being put into effect,” Mason sad. “[T]here’s been a growing influence in the Environmental Protection Agency over roughly the last decade to undertake environmental policy without economic consideration whatsoever.”

The critique comes at a time when the Obama administration has also been taking fire for pursuing tax hikes that would target the energy sector.  On Wednesday, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce held a conference call during which these proposed tax hikes were discussed.  Speaking on the call were Dr. Daniel Yergin and David Hobbs of IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates, co-authors of a new report detailing how U.S. tax policy impacts the competitiveness of American companies, globally.

According to Hobbs, legislative proposals such as the possible tax changes could exacerbate disadvantages already experienced by U.S. companies, making them less competitive than companies from other countries analyzed in that report. Yergin and Hobbs say that is because companies from countries such as Canada, China, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Russia, and the United Kingdom pay less tax on repatriated income than do American companies.  This in turn gives them a competitive advantage, which would presumably be expanded were the proposals being pursued in fact implemented.

Were such changes pursued, said one industry expert, it would be more bad news for energy workers, many of whom live along the Gulf Coast.  ”And apparently,” that expert added, “they’ve had more bad news than the government itself either thought or wanted people to believe.”
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 26, 2010, 08:19:25 PM
Six months of ObamaCare: Two Minnesota insurers stop selling individual policies
hot air ^ | September 24, 2010 | Ed Morrissey




If you like your policy, you can keep your policy meets We have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it right here in Minnesota as ObamaCare hits its six-month mark.

Two major insurers have decided to suspend sales of individual policies rather than run the compliance gauntlet in the health-care overhaul bill...


Instead of relieving the uncertainty by passing ObamaCare, the administration and Congress has made the environment so uncertain that insurers can’t even sell their plans — regardless of whether they comply with the mandates...


The largest plan being discontinued came from an organization that publicly campaigned for ObamaCare passage — the AARP. Their MedicareRX Saver plan, which offered a lower-cost premium in return for reduced coverage, will shut down in a week. Consumers will get routed to their more-expensive Preferred plan, which costs almost 15% more.


(Excerpt) Read more at hotair.com ...
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 28, 2010, 07:31:16 AM
Obama Kneecaps Airlines (but after November Congress could overturn this--- and a lot more)
Human Events ^ | 09/27/2010 | Connie Hair



________________________ ________________________ ______




The Obama administration set Big Labor on the easy road to cannibalize the airline and rail industries and last week Senate Democrats stamped their imprimatur on the deal -- at a time when taxpayers are getting full view of the cost of out of control unions bankrupting state and local governments and destroying public education.

The Senate used the Congressional Review Act (CRA) in an attempt to overrule Obama appointees at the National Mediation (NMB) board which changed a 75-year rule that required a majority of employees in a rail or airline company to vote to unionize.

The motion to proceed to the resolution of disapproval regarding labor union regulations was shot down by a vote of 43-56 with all 41 Republicans standing firm against the latest Obama Big Labor giveaway.

"It's an incredible outrage the way this whole scenario has played out. The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee that confirmed the new people on the National Mediation board were utterly sandbagged, completely and dishonestly in my opinion," Brett McMahon, spokesman for the Association of Builders and Contractors told HUMAN EVENTS. "They were told nothing's going to change, nothing has changed in 75 years since this board has been in place and any actual rulemaking has taken place."

"Immediately upon assuming office, literally it was within days of assuming office, they went in and changed the rule," McMahon said. "What's very, very important I think for people to understand is the difference between the rules that govern railways and the airlines and then everybody else that's governed by the National Labor Relations Act (NRLA)."

The NRLA provides a mechanism whereby disgruntled current union members and other employees have a written and voting process where they can decertify the union as their collective bargaining representative and then de-authorize it if they so choose and actually eliminate the unions.

The Railway Labor Act (RLA) makes it practically impossible to decertify a union once the certification has taken place.

"Once a union is designated there is a two-year period of time where the NMB will not entertain any other requests for representation. It's a two year bar of other unions or individuals trying to become the representative. Beyond that even after the two years is up, the procedures for what we call decertifying union are available but very complicated and convoluted under the NMB process," Roger Briton told HUMAN EVENTS. Briton is a law partner with Jackson Lewis, LLP, with decades of experience in RLA matters.

"There is a fairly straightforward process at the NLRB in other industries and as part of this rulemaking change the U.S. Chamber of Commerce asked the NMB to adopt the basically straightforward NLRB decertification rules and the NMB refused to do so," Briton said. "While it is technically possible and has happened only a couple of times in the last 25 years, it is for all intents and purposes almost impossible to accomplish."

The tradeoff for the difficulty in disbanding the unions once certified was the requirement that a majority of eligible voters must vote in favor of unionization. Employees not voting were counted as a "no" vote. And the RLA has a slower, more deliberative process.

"It was in the public interest for maintaining public transportation services," Briton said. "If a union and an airline are negotiating, under the RLA there are long, drawn-out procedures for those negotiations which are designed as a practical matter to prevent strikes in most situations. Doesn't always work but in a large number of disputes, they get resolved because the procedures of the Railway Labor Act are long and drawn out. In the other statute the procedures are somewhat substantially more abbreviated so the possibility of a strike is more common."

"The Railway Labor Act is considered to be a positive development for the airlines and railroads that are covered by it," Briton added.

Now that check and balance has been removed by the Obama administration.

"It used to be that people who did not vote were counted as no votes. Under the new system if you don't vote your vote doesn't count one way or the other. It makes it easier for the union to win an election if they count the votes of the people participating," Briton said. "It opens the door that if only a small number of people participate and the union wins the majority of people who choose to participate the union can be certified."

The rule was challenged in court by a the Air Transport Association and Delta Airlines. It again comes down to the courts.

"This rule change actually only went into effect in the last couple of weeks. There has been litigation by the Air Transport Association to enjoin the rule change. That lawsuit was dismissed," Briton said. "There is no legal challenge pending to the rule change."

Now Delta is facing unionization under the more lax rules of over 20,000 flight attendants with no clear way to undo the damage if employees decide unionization was a disaster. Voting commences September 29, 2010, just after midnight. Polls will close November 3, 2010 at 2:00 p.m., with the votes being counted shortly thereafter.

McMahon said he sees court challenges forthcoming from individual employees who are being forced to join unions with no clear exit strategy.

"I'm sure there'll probably be employees who'll bring suit afterwards. It's a 2-1 ruling from NMB that affects so many people and so many industries, and an impact that is just patently unfair and par for the course union stuff," McMahon said.

The silver lining is that Congress knows there is a Congressional Review Act and they've shown they can use it.

The CRA empowers Congress to review and overrule regulations issued by government agencies. Like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) or the NMB. Or Obamacare. Both the House and Senate are required to pass a resolution of disapproval (not subject to filibuster) and the President must sign off on the measure.

President Obama could spend the next two years leading up to 2012 vetoing popular legislation that would dismantle his unpopular agenda.

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 28, 2010, 10:03:22 AM
EPW report : New EPA rules will cost more than 800,000 jobs (And destroy cement/boiler industries)
Hotair ^ | 09/28/2010 | Ed Morrissey


________________________ ________________________ ________________________ ______________________



Actually, it’s not just the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee’s minority contingent that fears the loss of nearly a million jobs from new EPA rules on greenhouse gases and other emissions issues. It’s also groups like the United Steel Workers, Unions for Jobs and the Environment, and experts like King’s College Professor Ragnar Lofstedt. Hot Air got an exclusive look at a report that the EPW minority staff will release later this morning detailing the economic damage that an activist EPA will do to the American economy, and which will come at perhaps the worst possible time, both economically and politically.

The executive summary spells out the stakes involved in the effort to rein in the EPA:

•New standards for commercial and industrial boilers: up to 798,250 jobs at risk;
•The revised National Ambient Air Quality Standard for ozone: severe restrictions on job creation and business expansion in hundreds of counties nationwide.
•New standards for Portland Cement plants: up to 18 cement plants at risk of shutting down, threatening nearly 1,800 direct jobs and 9,000 indirect jobs;
•The Endangerment Finding/Tailoring Rules for Greenhouse Gas Emissions: higher energy costs; jobs moving overseas; severe economic impacts on the poor, the elderly, minorities, and those on fixed incomes; 6.1 million sources subject to EPA control and regulation; and

In fact, the new regulations threaten to put entire industries out of business. The new standard for boilers, titled “National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants for Major Sources: Industrial, Commercial, and Institutional Boilers and Process Heaters” and called the Boiler MACT, creates a standard that literally no producer in the US meets at the moment. The industry group Industrial Energy Consumers of America (IECA) represents end-user firms that employ 750,000 in various industries, and they concur:

IECA members have 6 units that were part of the best performing units and none can comply with the standards based on the best performing units. Based on the analysis of the data EPA used to develop these standards, it appears that none of the coal-fired boilers in the source category can meet the proposed standards.

What happens when the installed boilers don’t meet the new standard? Factories and other facilities will have to close, putting jobs in danger and firms already hammered by the recession will lose production days — which will destroy jobs. That’s why the United Steel Workers have sounded the alarm, insisting that the EPA’s proposal will mean disaster:

“Tens of thousands of these jobs will be imperiled. In addition, many more tens of thousands of jobs in the supply chains and in the communities where these plants are located also will be at risk.”

Nor are steelworkers the only group at risk. New industrial standards for Portland cement threaten to stop all American production in the name of environmental protection — and send the work overseas to China, where ironically the standards are more lax and more pollution will result:

“So rather than importing 20 million tons of cement per year, the proposed [rule] will lead to cement imports of more than 48 million tons per year. In other words, by tightening the regulations on U.S. cement kilns, there will be a risk transfer of some 28 million tons of cement offshore, mostly to China.” – Professor Ragnar Lofstedt, Kings College (London)

Again, no facility in the US meets the standards proposed by the EPA. Imposition of these standards would at least temporarily close almost 20 percent of all American cement producers and reduce long-term cement production from 8-15%. The cement that will be needed for construction demand will have to be imported, primarily from China, which is expanding their cement production using environmental standards significantly below current American standards. In other words, we can expect more pollution, not less — just outsourced along with the jobs in the industry.

Watch for the full report later today at the EPW Minority Caucus website.

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 30, 2010, 05:07:21 PM
Obama's Economic Council may be on the way out, but the damage is done.
 Team Summers presided over the greatest wealth redistribution from the poor and middle class to the rich in U.S. history...


Good Bye Larry
By L. Randall Wray
http://www.benzinga.com/life/politics/10/09/501534/good...


 

Isn't it remarkable that President Obama's economic team is suddenly itching to return to academia? The latest economic advisor to give in to the clarion call of the classroom is Larry Summers, following closely on the heels of Christina Romer, who surprised her department chair by announcing that she'd be teaching this year. To be sure, in Summers's case, it is not so clear that his Harvard colleagues are looking forward to his return—as President of the university he offended most of the faculty by arguing that women are inherently inferior when it comes to science. That was by no means the first time he behaved like a bull in a china shop. As chief economist at the World Bank he had argued that developing nations ought to serve as toxic waste dumping grounds for rich countries. He also wrongly claimed that California's energy crisis in 2000 was caused by excessive government regulation—rather than by fraudulent dealings of Enron.

Still in terms of the real damage he has done, nothing comes close to his actions when he was serving Wall Street's beck and call in the administration of President Clinton. He lobbied for repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, letting banks get more involved in the securities business that blew them up in 2007. He also opposed regulation of the derivatives market, attacking the head of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission , Brooksley Born—perhaps the only member of the Clinton administration who had any sense about financial markets. Summers helped to ban the federal government from regulating credit default swaps, and helped to deregulate the commodities markets. Most importantly, he helped to make it possible for pension funds to speculate in commodities like food and oil. Thus, he contributed directly to the speculative frenzy that drove up gas prices at the pump, and inflated food prices that brought on starvation around the globe.

Wall Street immediately rewarded Summers with $8 million in consulting and speaking fees. Most amazing of all, President Obama thanked him for helping to create the global crisis by appointing him as top economic advisor in his administration. Summers was the gift that just kept on giving—to Wall Street. He helped to devise the bail-out that spent, lent, or guaranteed more than $20 trillion to rescue the financial sector. Whilst providing barely a few peanuts for main street.


(snip)

Two years on, there is still no hint that Obama wants change. Voters are tired of audacity. They were promised the audacity of hope, not the audacity to continue to shift income to the wealthy. And yes, the data are out. President Obama is presiding over the biggest wealth redistribution in favor of the rich the US has ever seen. Forty million Americans are on foodstamps; forty four million are living below the poverty line. And the rich are richer than ever before. This is not a coincidence—it was the Clinton strategy of shifting an ever larger share of GDP and corporate profits to the financial sector. The economy has collapsed under the weight of all that finance. And yet we still see no evidence that the President plans to change course.

http://www.benzinga.com/life/politics/10/09/501534/good... 
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 05, 2010, 07:12:09 AM
Middle Class to Suffer Most From Bank Rules: Whitney
CNBC ^ | 10/05/2010 | Jeff Cox




________________________ ________________________ ______



As new regulations push banks toward safer investments and lending practices, the middle class will suffer the most, banking analyst Meredith Whitney told CNBC.

The 26 percent of mostly low-income Americans who don't have bank accounts—as well as the wealthy—are only marginally affected by tighter credit from more stringent banking regulations, Whitney said.

But those in the middle class who have relied on access to credit will suffer as banks that "can't price risk now" become increasingly afraid to make loans.


(Excerpt) Read more at cnbc.com ...
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 05, 2010, 09:57:38 PM
Skip to comments.

Cap and trade will cost Tennessee 52,000 jobs, each Tennessee family $1,000
Tennessee Center for Policy Research ^ | 10/04/2010 | TCPR






Think Tank Warns Against Impact of Looming Cap & Trade Legislation Report shows how proposed energy regulations could harm Tennessee's economy

NASHVILLE - The Tennessee Center for Policy Research, the state’s premier free market think tank, released a policy report today demonstrating the impact that cap and trade legislation could have on Tennessee’s economy.

It is widely expected that Congress will attempt to pass some form of cap and trade in its lame-duck session after the November elections. The House of Representatives already passed one version of cap and trade in June 2009, and the Senate could pass the same legislation or take up a similar proposal when it reconvenes.

Using estimates released by the American Council for Capital Formation and the National Association of Manufacturers, the policy report, titled Cap & Trade: A Lame (Duck) Proposal, details how the proposed legislation would impact Tennessee. Among the additional costs Tennesseans could face include: By 2030, gas prices could rise as much as 27 percent, electricity as much as 64 percent, and natural gas as much as 73 percent; The average Tennessee household’s disposable income could decline by more than $1,100 per year; The legislation could cause Tennessee to lose as many as 52,000 jobs and lose $9.8 billion annually; Schools, universities, and hospitals could face a 20 to 30 percent increase in energy costs, causing tuition and healthcare costs to skyrocket. “Not only would cap and trade fail to fix those environmental problems that actually do exist, it would wreak havoc on the Tennessee economy,” said TCPR president Justin Owen.

The policy report offers a more effective and efficient approach to address environmental concerns without devastating the national and state economies.

“The real solution is free market environmentalism,” said Allyn Milojevich, TCPR research fellow and author of the report. “A system of well-defined property rights and tort law can correct our environmental woes and actually improve, not hamper, the economy.”

The report can be viewed online at www.tennesseepolicy.org or downloaded in PDF format by clicking here.

The Tennessee Center for Policy Research is an independent, nonprofit, and nonpartisan research organization committed to achieving a freer, more prosperous Tennessee by advancing free markets, individual liberty, and limited government.

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 06, 2010, 11:39:03 AM
New high gas mileage standard could make vehicles cost more, less safe
The Daily Caller ^ | 2:40 AM 10/06/2010 | Caroline May



Posted on Wednesday, October 06, 2010 9:41:39 AM by facedodge

Want pigs to fly, Brussels sprouts to taste like Twinkies, and Justin Bieber to get a haircut? By the government’s logic, just make a rule mandating that it must be so and…voila! All of a sudden beachfront property can now to be purchased in Kansas!

The Transportation Department and Environmental Protection Agency suggested Friday that by 2025 new vehicle fleets would need to meet a high gas mileage standard of between 47 mpg and 62 mpg. The administration’s plans for the country’s future fuel efficiency standards are extremely aggressive — so aggressive that some experts wonder whether the mandates are even attainable.

Despite panic by some, Charlie Territo, senior director of communications for the Alliance of Auto Manufacturers, says that it is important to keep in mind that the mileage standards are not definite, as Friday’s announcement was merely a preliminary notice of intent.

According to Territo, the rule making process will be a long one, but there will be consequences for the average consumer. “Anytime you add technology to a vehicle you add cost,” he told The Daily Caller. “And the types of technologies that would need to be added to a vehicle to meet those standards could have the potential to price consumers out of the market all together.”

Even without the government’s insistence, auto manufacturers already work exceptionally hard at innovating and improving their products’ capabilities. Spokesman Matthew Russell, for example, told TheDC that since the late 1970s BMW has been working to do just that. “We have a comprehensive program in place already, which is designed to extract the maximum balance of performance and efficiency from several different energy sources, so not just gasoline but diesel, hybrid technology, and even hydrogen where applicable,” Russell said.

An industry observer told TheDC that in order to meet the mileage range the government could demand, people will have little choice but to buy electric cars. “It’s great, it’s a great thought, and we hope we get there, but you have issues of range, you have issues of infrastructure, and you have issues of cost. Now if, if gas stays around the three dollar a gallon range, people are not going to go rush to pay thousands of dollars more per vehicle. It’s going to be very, very difficult,” the industry observer said.

Sam Kasman, the general council for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told TheDC that the goal is far too high to be realistic. “Frankly I think they are in fantasy land,” he said. “To one extent I expect they are placing a very heavy bet on electric vehicles, but it is easy for them to bet because they are betting with our money, not their own.”

Beyond whether a 62 mpg car is fathomable, the fact remains, cars that are able to attain such high gas mileage tend to be lightweight and dangerous. Insurance Institute for Highway Safety spokesman Russ Rader told TheDC that safety is always harmed with ratcheting up a vehicle’s fuel efficiency. “If the rules lead to incentives for people to buy smaller, lighter vehicles, then, we’re trading more crash deaths for better fuel economy. That’s the bottom line,” he said.

Automakers hope to maintain safety and the same wide range of consumer choice Americans currently enjoy, while at the same time meeting the government’s expectations. Territo says that auto manufactures in the past have been able to have their voices heard in the rule making process.

“The goal is to ensure that consumers continue to have a wide variety of vehicles,” said Territo. “And the way that can be done is to give manufacturers the right amount of lead time to do it. The more realistic the standards are the better the chance they have of meeting it with the least possible impact on the consumer.”

The administration hopes to have a proposal by September 2011 and a final rule by July 2012.

Read more:

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 06, 2010, 01:12:46 PM

David Freddoso: Obama's line on the stimulus: Everything is absolutely fine
By: David Freddoso
Online Opinion Editor


________________________ ________________________ ___


October 5, 2010 There was hardly any waste or fraud in the stimulus package. Not only that, it's hitting all of its job creation targets.

That's the message the White House released on Friday with its new report on the $814 billion measure, whose cost exceeds that of seven years of war in Iraq.

And for all of you wingnut doubters out there -- Paul Krugman, for example -- the stimulus isn't a failure. It's working just fine. "We continue to show consistent progress on your commitment to create or save 3.5 million jobs by the end of calendar year 2010," Vice President Biden wrote.

That's one way of thinking about the stimulus. Then there's the way the nation thinks about it. This week's Washington Post/ABC News poll shows that 68 percent believe that stimulus funds have been "mostly wasted." With two-thirds of the money already out the door, the same number believes the economy is either "getting worse" or "staying the same," and 90 percent view its current state as "not so good" or "poor."

Whatever its economic merits, the White House has been utterly routed on the stimulus as a political issue. The stimulus now appears in nearly every Republican campaign ad. Democrats prefer not to discuss it -- if they have to, they usually avoid the dreaded "S-word" and stick to "Recovery Act."

Who knew that giving away free money could become such a political loser? President Obama has attributed the setback to the difficulty inherent in proving any negative. The implication is that if we hadn't passed his stimulus, unemployment would be at 11 or even 15 percent, instead of the current 9.6 percent.

This form of argument has a poor track record: "If we hadn't started a war in Iraq, the terrorists would be attacking us here." But what if this isn't a messaging problem at all? What if borrowing hundreds of billions of dollars, filtering them through the federal and state bureaucracies, and then redistributing them is just a lousy way of creating jobs?

This isn't just a question of all the dubious projects you've read about, such as the bridge in Hillsborough, N.H., that literally does not cross the river, or the wheelchair ramps in Wayne, N.J., that are not attached to sidewalks, or those for studying what happens when monkeys get high on cocaine. This is about a possibly faulty concept to which both parties return in economic hard times, despite its repeated failure. (Don't forget that President George W. Bush signed two stimulus packages, neither of which is credited with boosting the economy.)

Even if the stimulus does "create or save" 3.5 million jobs -- and based on the job numbers this year, it would have to be mostly "save" -- it will have done so at the cost of $233,000 per job.

If you have been in your current job for years, and your salary is significantly below $233,000, do you think it would cost your employer that much just to avoid laying you off? Or think of it this way: Is that $233,000, in the government's hands, somehow more capable of creating a job than it would be in the hands of an investor, a small business or a large corporation?

Supply-side economists were mostly ignored last year when they argued that any economic benefit from a stimulus package is offset when the government taxes, borrows or prints the money for it. That unless the money comes from a vault or from someone's mattress, and is literally being put to no use at all, its reintroduction into the economy is a wash, the equivalent of scooping water from the deep end of the pool and redistributing it to the shallow end.

Maybe we should have listened then, when we were $814 billion richer.

David Freddoso is The Examiner's online opinion editor. He can be reached at dfreddoso@washingtonexaminer.com.



Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/Obama_s-line-on-the-stimulus_-Everything-is-absolutely-fine-1121910-104370693.html#ixzz11byPQuCl
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 06, 2010, 01:22:24 PM
Even if the stimulus does "create or save" 3.5 million jobs -- and based on the job numbers this year, it would have to be mostly "save" -- it will have done so at the cost of $233,000 per job.  
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 07, 2010, 07:10:23 AM
Little-Noticed Bill Could Make It Harder To Challenge Foreclosures
 
The Huffington Post   |  William Alden First Posted: 10- 7-10 08:52 AM   |   Updated: 10- 7-10 08:52 AM


Read More: Banks, Foreclosure Challenges, Foreclosure Fraud, Foreclosure Lawsuits, Foreclosure Moratorium, Foreclosures, Gmac, Mers, Notary, Out-Of-State Notarization, Business News

Challenging foreclosures could become more difficult for homeowners if the president signs a bill that passed through the Senate last week. The little-noticed bill comes at a time when the validity of foreclosure proceedings across the nation have been called into question.

The House passed the bill in April, and its brisk journey through the Senate has drawn scant attention, Reuters reports. If signed into law, it would require courts to accept certain documents that have been notarized out of state, streamlining foreclosure proceedings and stripping homeowners of one legal method of challenging a foreclosure. The legislation would come just as a foreclosure validity crisis is mounting: GMAC, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America have admitted to not properly reviewing some of their foreclosure documents.

The foreclosure controversies that have emerged in recent weeks throw doubts on the larger foreclosure system. A non-bank entity, Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, has been initiating foreclosures, the Washington Post reports, exercising an authority that judges have ruled it does not have. In response to the mounting scandal, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) called on Tuesday for an investigation into foreclosure fraud. "This is a very big deal," she told HuffPost.

Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner told Reuters the timing of the bill's passage was "suspicious," implying that mortgage companies might have engaged in behind-the-scenes lobbying.

Get HuffPost Business On Twitter, Facebook, and Google Buzz! Know something we don't? E-mail us at huffpostbiz@gmail.com


 
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 07, 2010, 11:05:05 AM
Delays to Tax Tables May Dent Paychecks (higher witholding for everyone in 2011)
Wall Street Journal ^ | October 7, 2010 | LAURA SAUNDERS


________________________ ________________________ _______________________


Lack of congressional action on 2011 income taxes may force the Treasury Department to make unprecedented moves to prevent U.S. workers from seeing large tax increases in their January paychecks.

The issue: 2011 tax-withholding tables. Treasury officials usually release the tables, which determine the take-home pay of millions of wage-earners, by mid-November because it takes payroll processors weeks to adjust their systems before Jan. 1.

But congressional leaders recently postponed voting on taxes until after the election and lawmakers don't reconvene until Nov. 15. The Senate is scheduled to take up several nontax issues when it returns and is expected to leave for Thanksgiving soon after, possibly pushing a vote on taxes into December.

"Things get very dicey after the first of December" because of employers' need to know the 2011 rates, said Michael Graetz of Columbia University Law School, a former Treasury official.

Lawmakers' recent track record on dealing with tax matters doesn't inspire confidence that they will act with dispatch. Congress has yet to resolve the estate tax, which expired at the end of last year and is set to snap back to high rates come January. Nor has it tackled the alternative minimum tax for 2010, a levy that is set to hit 32 million taxpayers this year, compared with five million last year.

Some Capitol Hill tax staffers have suggested that the Treasury could set 2011 withholding at current levels for joint filers earning less than $250,000 ($200,000 for single filers), on the assumption that Congress seems likely to enact this change. Others have suggested that if Congress doesn't act in time, Treasury officials might consider a one- or two-month grace period in which it maintains current tables until Congress passes tax legislation.


(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 07, 2010, 01:42:06 PM
72,000 stimulus payments went to dead people
By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER, Associated Press Writer Stephen Ohlemacher, Associated Press Writer
www.yahoo.com

________________________ ________________________ _

 
WASHINGTON – A government investigator says 89,000 stimulus payments of $250 each went to people who were either dead or in prison.

The Social Security Administration's inspector general said in a report Thursday that $18 million went to 72,000 people who were dead. The report estimates that a little more than half the payments were returned.

The report said $4.3 million went to a little more than 17,000 prison inmates.

The payments were part of the government's massive economic recovery package enacted in February 2009. Under the law, the $250 payments were sent to about 52 million Social Security recipients and federal retirees.
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 07, 2010, 06:09:48 PM
EPA to drain $1 trillion from economy--Obama's new ozone policy is full of holes (Another outrage)
The Washington Times ^ | October 7, 2010 | Editorial


________________________ ________________________ _________


The zealots at the Environmental Protection Agency are poised to suck a trillion dollars and 7 million jobs out of the economy with an unnecessary and destructive change to pollution rules. Less than two years ago, the EPA set a ground-level ozone standard of 75 parts per billion (ppb), but Obama administration officials are looking to impose an even lower standard of 60 ppb by fiat. That seemingly small change will have sweeping effects throughout the economy.

Ozone is created when harmful emissions from cars and factories react with sunlight to create one of the building blocks of smog. Reasonable limitations on such pollutants are appropriate, but what the EPA proposes is far from reasonable. The likely standard is so low it approaches the natural background level of ozone found in many areas of the country. There is no new science compelling President Obama's team to change the rules, but they will have a significant impact on businesses still struggling to meet 2008 targets. Manufacturing plants already meet strict standards, but many will be forced to install expensive new equipment to reach the EPA's proposed levels. As all of the easy fixes for cleaning up emissions have been implemented already, incremental reductions come with a steep price tag. In the current rocky economy, imposing new costs is only going to thwart recovery.


(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 07, 2010, 06:11:57 PM


Beef Industry: U.S. May Need ‘Strategic Hamburger Reserve’ after Obama EPA Implements...
CNSNews ^ | October 7, 2010 | Chris Neefus


________________________ ________________________ __-





Complete title: Beef Industry: U.S. May Need ‘Strategic Hamburger Reserve’ after Obama EPA Implements New Regulations

Washington (CNSNews.com) – According to a representative of the cattle and beef industry, America may need a “strategic hamburger reserve” if the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) implements proposed new reguilations for cattle producers.

“From where I sit, (the Obama administration) appears to be aimed at destroying the cattle industry in America as we know it,” Tamara Thies, the chief environmental counsel at the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, said on Capitol Hill last week.  

“It is ironic that as we work to become less dependent on foreign oil, Obama policies are likely to make us more dependent on foreign beef. Maybe we’ll need to start a strategic hamburger reserve after the Obama administration is finished with us.”

Thies' comments came at a hearing conducted by the House Republicans’ Rural America Solutions Group about the EPA’s proposed regulations on the industry, which include the toughest dust regulations in history – one which would significantly impact the rural economy by imposing steep fines on cattle producers who, Thies said, most likely cannot afford them.

“It is unlikely these realities are lost on the EPA, making one wonder if the real goal of the agency is to do away altogether with economic activity throughout the bread basket of this country and turn it into a vast national park,” she added.

The forum was held by Reps. Frank Lucas (R-Okla.), ranking member on the House Agriculture Committee; Sam Graves (R-Mo.), ranking member of the House Small Business subcommittee; and Doc Hastings (R-Wash.), ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, to consider several of the new proposed EPA regulations.

In a periodic review of its National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS), which allow the EPA to regulate certain forms of particulate matter in the air, the EPA determined that it might raise the standard so that only 65-85 µg/m3 of dust would be permitted in the air (as opposed to 150 µg/m3). Violating the proposed new NAAQS standards can result in civil penalties under the Clean Air Act.

The EPA published that draft policy assessment in the July 8, 2010 issue of the Federal Register.

“(EPA) is preparing to issue a proposed regulation that is twice as stringent as the current dust standard, and is more stringent than background levels of dust in many parts of the U.S,” Thies told the congressmen.

“Incredibly, we are talking about dust kicked up by tilling fields and harvesting crops, cattle movements, and pickups driving down dirt roads,”she said. “For agriculture, the current standard is already very difficult and costly to meet—doubling it would be virtually impossible.”

That new proposal also alarmed 75 members of Congress who represent rural districts, including Reps. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin (D-S.D.), John Spratt (D-S.C.), and Bobby Bright (D-Ala.), who sent a letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson on Sept. 27 urging the agency to “refrain from going down this path” on dust regulation.

“Considering the administration’s claim that it is focusing on revitalizing rural America and rural economic development, a proposal such as this would have a significant negative impact on those very goals,” they wrote. “We are hopeful that common sense will prevail and the EPA will refrain from causing extreme hardship to farmers, livestock producers, and other resource-based industries throughout rural America.

“Whether it is livestock kicking up dust, corn being combined, or a pickup driving down a gravel road, dust is a naturally occurring event in rural areas. Common sense requires the EPA to acknowledge that the wind blows dust around in these areas, and that is a fact of life.”

Jackson did not attend the forum on Capitol Hill last week despite receiving an invitation. A spokesperson for the EPA indicated they would have a reaction about why they were proposing these rules in a difficult economy, but did not do so by press time.

The dust regulation is one of several new proposals the EPA is considering, including regulating ammonia emissions from cattle operations; nationalizing standards for soil phosphorus levels, which determine where farmers can use manure; regulating greenhouse gas emissions; and greater regulation of farming on the Chesapeake Bay watershed.

“The fact is, the EPA is waging an unprecedented war to end modern production of animal agriculture,” Thies said in her testimony.

“EPA exhibits reckless indifference to scientific fact and, instead, imposes stringent regulations based on nothing more than its biased anti-animal agriculture agenda that will leave many cattle operations with no recourse but to shut down and eliminate jobs,” she added.

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 07, 2010, 06:22:14 PM
Dollar set for sharp decline, Goldman forecasts
The Telegraph ^ | 10/7/2010 | Richard Blackden




Dollar will embark on a sharp decline over the next 12 months, Goldman Sachs forecast on Wednesday, as policy makers in Washington look poised to press the trigger on another round of printing money.

The investment bank expects the dollar to drop to $1.79 against the pound in six months and $1.85 in 12 months. Sterling closed at $1.5891 in London yesterday. The euro won’t be spared either, with the dollar’s slump forcing it to $1.50 six months from now and $1.55 in a year’s time.

Powered by President Obama’s stimulus package and a rebound in inventories, the US recovery peaked in the final three months of last year and has been slowing ever since.

As the summer delivered a diet of weak economic data, the conviction has strengthened among a growing number of officials at the Federal Reserve that it should risk another bout of quantitative easing - printing money to inject into the economy.

“More QE is seen as a co-ordinated effort to get the dollar lower,” said Thomas Stolper of Goldman Sachs. “It makes sense for the US.”

Separately, Goldman’s chief economist, Jan Hatzius, warned that the world’s biggest economy faces a “fairly bad” or a “very bad" scenario


(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 08, 2010, 09:22:57 AM
BUMP 

Assuming we are all still here in 2 years, I plan to keep this thread going so that when you guys decide who to vote for in 2012 - you can review the record of this admn in intentionally destroying the nation. 

when the question is asked "Are you better off now than you were 4 years ago", all of you will be asked to review this thread again. 
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 08, 2010, 09:35:54 AM
wnep.com /news/countybycounty/wnep-scr-mercy-hospital-for-sale,0,5633203.story

WNEP
Mercy Health Partners for Sale
By Jon Meyer

3:40 PM EST, October 6, 2010


________________________ ________________________ ________


Mercy Hospital in Scranton is up for sale.

Those who run the place and all other Mercy facilities in our area said Wednesday they are already in talks with organizations interested in buying.

Mercy Health Partners hopes to have a buyer by the end of the year.

Officials said there are numerous reasons for the sale. One big one is the heath care reform bill signed into law this year.

The potential sale includes Mercy Hospital in Scranton, Mercy Tyler Hospital in Tunkhannock and Mercy Special Care Hospital in Nanticoke.

For almost a century there has been a Catholic hospital in Scranton. Now it looks like that will be coming to an end.

The Sisters of Mercy first opened Mercy Hospital in Scranton in 1917. Now the facility and all other Mercy locations in the area are up for sale.

"There is always sadness and mourning when you think of letting go of anything but the Sisters of Mercy are strongly supportive of this decision because we do understand the realities of health care and we do think it's best for the community," said Sister Marie Parker of Mercy Health Partners.

She and Mercy Health Partners CEO Kevin Cook said they are already in talks with potential buyers.

They said Mercy isn't struggling but, they added, now is the time to make a sale.

"We are in position of strength and it's always better to make a move for the future from that position," Sister Marie Parke added.

"Actually we're doing well. We're ahead of budget for the year. It's more that when we look out over the landscape of health care over the next five years and the needs of these facilities, the needs of this community, we understand a different level of investment will be needed than what we can do on our own," Cook said.

They said much of that required investment is the result of the health care reform bill passed in Washington.

The CEO said it means the need for more spending and less federal reimbursements.

"Health care reform is absolutely playing a role. Was it the precipitating factor in this decision? No, but was it a factor in our planning over the next five years? Absolutely," Cook added.

"It's one of the few hospitals we always came to. My wife just came from there right now," said one long-time patient.

Those who have used Mercy for years said they have gotten used to the Mercy way.

Mercy officials won't say what potential buyers are in current negotiations.

They said they are committed to finding a new owner that honors the values of the Sisters of Mercy.

The potential sale should be done by the end of the year and will apply to all Mercy facilities in northeastern Pennsylvania.

Copyright © 2010, WNEP-TV

 
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 08, 2010, 01:32:22 PM
Obama transition adviser undermined Fannie Mae oversight as lobbyist (Anyone surprised?)
Hot Air ^ | November 17, 2008 | by Ed Morrissey



________________________ ________________________ _________



Thomas Donilon, named by Barack Obama as an adviser to his transition team, oversaw lobbyist efforts to undermine OFHEO’s regulatory efforts over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. ABC News reports on Donilon’s history and his participation in painting a much rosier picture than reality provided for Fannie Mae’s board. The Obama rebuttal will sound familiar to those who recall Jim Johnson’s involvement with Obama’s campaign: One of Obama’s top transition team members, Thomas Donilon, oversaw an aggressive, backdoor lobbying campaign by mortgage giant Fannie Mae to undermine the credibility of a probe into the firm’s accounting irregularities, according to a 2006 government report on the company. The effort — which reportedly included attacks on the funding for the oversight agency, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, and an attempt to launch a separate investigation into OFHEO itself — was ultimately unsuccessful, and regulators eventually discovered top Fannie Mae executives had been manipulating the company’s financial reporting to maximize their bonuses


(Excerpt) Read more at hotair.com ...
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 08, 2010, 02:11:16 PM
Health care: Microsoft ending 100% coverage for employees (Anticipating rising health-care costs)
Tech Flash ^ | 10/08/2010 | Todd Bishop


________________________ ________________________ ______________________


Microsoft's gold-plated employee health-care benefits are losing a bit of their gleam. The company told its employees today that they will be required to start contributing to their health care coverage beginning in two years. Microsoft is currently among a relatively small number of large U.S. corporations -- and one of very few tech giants -- that pay all of their employees' health-care premiums.

"We can confirm that Microsoft has begun to evolve its employee health care benefit," the company said in statement. "There will be no changes for the next two years, but in 2013, employees will contribute to their health care."

Although Microsoft is unusual in paying for 100 percent of health-care benefits, the risk in requiring contributions is that full coverage might have been a factor keeping some employees at the company, or persuading talented recruits to join. However, the company said "a guiding principle in this evolution is that Microsoft will continue to offer market-leading health and wellness benefits that rank among the best in the country."

The move appears to anticipate rising costs under U.S. health-care reform initiatives, said insurance agent Jonathan Hanson of Hanson Benefits in Kirkland, who specializes in employee benefits.

Microsoft's health-care benefits have traditionally been "very rich" compared with those offered by most corporations, Hanson said. He likened the forthcoming contribution requirement to telling people who get free Jaguars that they're going to need to start paying for part of the car's air conditioning.
 

Microsoft didn't quantify the changes as part of its public statement, but Mary Jo Foley of ZDNet reports that there will be out-of-pocket maximums starting between $1,000 and $2,500 for catastrophic illnesses. She reports that the company is encouraging employees to set up health savings accounts.

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 09, 2010, 05:52:32 AM
Obama's Takedown of Industrial America
By Fred N. Sauer
www.americanthinker.com


________________________ ____________




Obama's industrial policy is designed to make America non-competitive in the world economy, destroy millions of jobs, and devastate our manufacturing and industrial capacities. No one will want to invest here, and fewer and fewer U.S. companies will be exporting goods "Made in America." And we have a fierce competitor called China.

How far down this road we already are can be seen in the following data:

During this ten-year period, total exports from the United States to China totaled $424 billion, while exports from China to the United States totaled $2.163 trillion, resulting in a U.S. net trade deficit with China of $1.793 trillion. A symbol of China's takeover of manufacturing is Wal-Mart, one of the largest U.S. importers of Chinese-made goods. 

... US based Wal-Mart was responsible for $27 billion dollars in U.S. imports from China in 2006 and 11% of the growth of the total U.S. trade deficit with China alone eliminated nearly 200,000 U.S. jobs in this period. 


But how has China accumulated such a large trade surplus with the U.S.? To answer this vital question, it's critical to understand the currency exchange market's impact on trade. Suppose you want to buy something from China. You need to first buy some of their currency, called the yuan. Now, suppose thousands of people want to buy goods from China. So a whole lot of people start to exchange dollars for yuan in order buy Chinese goods. The same thing happens here: if you and all your neighbors try to buy the same currency, its price increases.  If you are on the other side of this, such as a Chinese citizen holding his or her currency in the yuan, and you want to exchange the yuan for dollars, then you will be able to get more dollars for your yuan as it increases in value. This increase in the value of the yuan makes American goods priced in dollars cheaper for the Chinese to purchase.


As we are increasingly surrounded and overwhelmed by the "Made in China" label, we have come to understand that China's principal economic advantage is "cheap labor."


And it is also clear that they are using this cheap labor to acquire world-class manufacturing and industrial production facilities to help export more and more of this "cheap labor." Thus, they create a virtuous cycle that continues as long as their labor remains cheap.


Here is some data on the long-term growth or decline of manufacturing as a percentage of gross domestic product of the two nations:





This data shows that Chinese manufacturing increased as a percentage of GDP from 37% to 41%, while the United States manufacturing sector decreased as a percentage of GDP from 24% to 13%.


Normally, economic forces of trade surpluses and deficits tend to cause a self-correction of either condition. With respect to America, the more we buy from China, the more their currency increases in value, and therefore, the higher and higher go the prices in dollars of what you want to buy in China. Eventually it goes so high that you no longer want to buy it there. Maybe it becomes so high that it is cheaper just to buy goods that are "Made in America."


If you are in China and the yuan keeps increasing in value compared to the U.S. dollar, then the price of American goods becomes cheaper, and it's more likely that someone from China will buy goods imported from America.


All the long-term data we have presented suggests that the self-correcting mechanism is not working as it should, or maybe not at all. What is the reason behind the failure of the system to correct itself?


Here is how China attacks our manufacturing economy and destroys jobs, if they are not already destroyed by the Democratic Party's industrial policies. The Chinese government never allows the increasing value of the yuan to reach the hands of its labor forces and/or the consumers of their economy. Thus, wages don't go up, purchasing power doesn't go up, and the Chinese consumer doesn't get an increase in spendable income.


To prevent all this from happening, the Chinese government strips off the appreciated value of the yuan and retains control over it. The most important technique they use is currency sterilization. 


But surging capital inflows can also be something of a double-edged sword, inflicting rather less welcome and destabilizing side-effects, including a tendency for the local currency to gain in value, undermining the competitiveness of export industries and potentially giving rise to inflation.


To ease the threat of currency appreciation of inflation, central banks often attempt what is known as the "sterilization" of capital flows. In a successful sterilization operation, the domestic component of the monetary base (bank reserves plus currency) is reduced to offset the reserve inflow, at least temporarily. The classical form of sterilization, however, has been through the use of open market operations -- that is, selling Treasury bills and other instruments to reduce the domestic component of monetary base.   


With comparatively little expansion of the Chinese domestic economy because of the appreciation of the yuan not being passed through very far as increased wages, prices tend not to rise as much as they otherwise would have if the appreciation had reached the Chinese consumers. And likewise, because prices tend not to go up, Americans continue to see cheap "Made in China" goods and continue to purchase them to the detriment of "Made in America" goods.


The Chinese permanently suppress the cost of labor in the export sectors of their economy to achieve a permanent cost advantage in pricing their export goods.


This scheme produces another very considerable side-effect. The Chinese use the appreciated value of the yuan that is stripped off from consumers to buy United States Government Treasury Securities. By doing this, China has become America's largest foreign creditor. They are buying our rapidly increasing government debt with the surplus value of yuan which results from all our purchases of Chinese exports.


Yes, China's policy of artificially suppressing the cost of Chinese labor helps China destroy the manufacturing sector and manufacturing jobs in America and subsidizes China's acquisition of U.S. Treasury Securities -- approximately $800 billion's worth. 


This is like having a double-barreled gun at your head. If the Chinese ever get unhappy about holding all these Treasury Securities and start to dump them on the open market, they could make interest rates soar in America. This would impose a terrible burden on our economy and result in even more job losses.


So the suffering American economy and its workers are facing four grave threats simultaneously. 


First, U.S. industrial policies by the radical Democrats have imposed terrible burdens on the U.S. economy that are making it more and more inefficient through high non-competitive labor costs, carbon regulation, artificially high energy costs, and numerous government mandates.


Here is a summary of recent aspects of our industrial policy as proffered by the ruling Democratic Party:


�-�Huge and ineffective stimulus expenditures


�-�A 3.0-trillion-dollar increase in our national debt in two years


�-�Unemployment at 9.6%


�-�A job-killing moratorium on drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska


�-�Adoption of a tax on energy use called Cap and Trade


�-�The EPA aggressively regulating emissions resulting from the combustion of carbon fuels


�-�The EPA working to regulate fluids used in the production of abundant shale-sourced natural gas


�-�Elimination of the secret ballot (card check) in proposed unionization to increase union power and high-cost labor in our economy


�-�Imposition of costly health mandates on small businesses


�-�Increasing domestic taxes on business earnings made and taxed in foreign countries


This list is sufficiently comprehensive for anyone to get the picture, especially if he or she is in business. 


Second, industrial policies by the Chinese government to permanently suppress their labor costs to subsidize the growth of their manufacturing sector have resulted in an ongoing disadvantage for the American manufacturing sector. 


Third, the fiscal policies of the radical Democrats have resulted in massive deficit spending which has increased the U.S. national debt to over $13 trillion from over $10 trillion in just two years. And there is the certainty of more deficit spending to come as long as they control government. They haven't even passed a budget for the current fiscal year. All of this spending will eventually put tremendous upward pressure on interest rates. You only have to review the economic history of the period of the late 1970s and early 1980s, when rates on U.S. Treasury Securities peaked at over 15%. Rates anywhere near this zone will crush the economy because of the much greater proportion of government debt to GDP that exists today as opposed to the earlier period.


Finally, policies of the Chinese government that transfer the appreciation of the yuan into purchases of more U.S. government debt gives them the capability to hold America hostage to any and all of their policies.


We were the world's greatest economy when the only thing we bought from the Chinese was "firecrackers." Why are we doing this?


There is no free trade in manufactured goods unless there is free trade in the corresponding currencies of the trading partners. Without free trade in the yuan, the Chinese are effectively imposing a huge tariff on the American economy and its workers by artificially suppressing the prices of Chinese exports to America. And the radical Democratic government doubles this burden by crushing the economy with mandated costs and inefficiencies. 


Are we going to let both of them get by with it? If the Chinese don't freely float their currency, we need to impose a currency equalization tax to offset their subsidized low export prices. 


Fred N. Sauer is an American patriot, St. Louis resident, and businessman whose blog can be found at www.americasculturalstud ies.com.

Page Printed from:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/10/obamas_takedown_of_industrial.html at October 09, 2010 - 07:50:43 AM CDT
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 09, 2010, 03:46:46 PM
U.S. Won’t Recover Lost Jobs Until March 2020 At Current Pace 
By Ed Carson     
Fri., Oct. 08, 2010 12:18 PM ET 
Tags: Jobs - Economy - Employment - Hiring - Private Sector - Stimulus


________________________ _______-


The U.S. economy lost 95,000 jobs in September, far worse than expectations for no change in employment. More Census-related temp jobs ended, as expected, but state and local governments slashed staff far more than predicted.

So far in 2010, the U.S. has added just 613,000 jobs — for a monthly average of 68,111.

Employment bottomed in December 2009 at 129.588 million — two years after peaking at 137.951 million. At this year’s pace, the U.S. won’t recoup all those 8.36 million lost jobs* until March 2020 — 147 months after the December 2007 high.

That would obliterate the old post-World War II record of 47 months set in the wake of the 2001 recession.

The current jobs slump also is the deepest of any in the post-war era, with payrolls down as much as 6.1%. They are still 5.6% below their December 2007 level.

With state and local governments likely to shed workers for at least the next year or two as budget woes continue, the hiring burden will fall entirely on the private sector.

Private employers did add 64,000 workers last month, but that was a little less than consensus forecasts and far below what’s needed.

The U.S. needs to create 125,000-150,000 jobs each month just to absorb new workers and prevent unemployment from rising. So returning to the old peak employment a decade later would hardly suggest a healthy labor market.

(Unemployment held at 9.6% last month as the separate household employment survey reported an increase in jobs. But the underemployment rate rose 0.4 point to 17.1%, matching the 2010 high.)

The bottom line: It’s quite possible that the next recession will hit before the U.S. returns to old employment highs.

*The Labor Department said employers may have cut 366,000 jobs more than previously reported in the year through March 2010. A final estimate will be issued in February. That suggests job losses were deeper than expected in 2009 and/or early 2010 hiring was weaker than previously expected. Both would suggest an even-longer return to full employment.

 
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 11, 2010, 06:03:16 AM
REVIEW & OUTLOOK
OCTOBER 10, 2010.
Shutting Up Business - Democrats unleash the IRS and Justice on donors to their political opponents.
www.wsj.com


________________________ _____________


If at first you don't succeed, get some friends in high places to shut your opponents up. That's the latest Washington power play, as Democrats and liberals attack the Chamber of Commerce and independent spending groups in an attempt to stop businesses from participating in politics.

Since the Supreme Court's January decision in Citizens United v. FEC, Democrats in Congress have been trying to pass legislation to repeal the First Amendment for business, though not for unions. Having failed on that score, they're now turning to legal and political threats. Funny how all of this outrage never surfaced when the likes of Peter Lewis of Progressive insurance and George Soros helped to make Democrats financially dominant in 2006 and 2008.

Chairman Max Baucus of the powerful Senate Finance Committee got the threats going last month when he asked Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Douglas Shulman to investigate if certain tax exempt 501(c) groups had violated the law by engaging in too much political campaign activity. Lest there be any confusion about his targets, the Montana Democrat flagged articles focused on GOP-leaning groups, including Americans for Job Security and American Crossroads.

 
Associated Press
 
Max Baucus
.
Mr. Baucus was seconded last week by the ostensibly nonpartisan campaign reform groups Democracy 21 and the Campaign Legal Center, which asked the IRS to investigate whether Crossroads is spending too much money on campaigns. Those two outfits swallowed their referee whistle in the last two campaign cycles, but they're all worked up now that Republicans might win more seats. Crossroads GPS, a 501(c)(4) affiliate of American Crossroads supported by Karl Rove, is a target because it has spent millions already in this election cycle.

Last Tuesday, the liberal blog ThinkProgress, run by the Center for American Progress Action Fund, reported that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce had collected some $300,000 in annual dues from foreign companies. Since the money went into the Chamber's general fund, the allegation is that it could have been used to pay for political ads, which would violate a ban on foreign companies participating in American elections. The Chamber says it uses no foreign money for its political activities and goes to great lengths to raise separate funds for political purposes.

That didn't stop President Obama from raising the issue in a Maryland speech last week, saying that "groups that receive foreign money are spending huge sums to influence American elections." Within hours of the ThinkProgress report, the bully boys at MoveOn.org asked the Department of Justice to launch a criminal investigation of the Chamber. In a letter to the Federal Election Commission, Minnesota Senator Al Franken expressed his profound concern that "foreign corporations are indirectly spending significant sums to influence American elections through third-party groups." From the man who stole his Senate election in a dubious recount, this is rich.

Even Mr. Franken admits in his letter that the Chamber's commingling of funds in its general accounts is not "per se illegal," but apparently he thinks it's fine to unleash federal investigators because the Chamber cash might contribute to the defeat of fellow Democrats.

The outrage over the Chamber is especially amusing considering the role of foreigners in U.S. labor unions. According to the Center for Competitive Politics, close to half of the unions that are members of the AFL-CIO are international. One man's corporate commingling is another's union dues.

Unions and liberal groups are hardly cash poor this year in any case. The Campaign Media Analysis Group looked at the combined spending of candidates, their parties and outside groups and found that Democrats outspent Republicans $47.3 million to $40.8 million in a recent 60-day period.

Democrats claim only to favor "disclosure" of donors, but their legal intimidation attempts are the best argument against disclosure. Liberals want the names of business donors made public so they can become targets of vilification with the goal of intimidating them into silence. A CEO or corporate board is likely to think twice about contributing to a campaign fund if the IRS or prosecutors might come calling. If Democrats can reduce business donations in the next three weeks, they can limit the number of GOP challengers with a chance to win and reduce Democratic Congressional losses.

The strategy got a test drive in Minnesota earlier this year after Target Corporation donated $100,000 cash and $50,000 of in-kind contributions to an independent group that ran ads supporting the primary candidacy of Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer. MoveOn.org accused the company of being anti-gay, organized a petition, and crafted a TV ad urging shoppers to boycott Target stores. Target made no further donations, and other companies that once showed an interest have since declined to contribute.

***
Then there's the curious reference to the tax status of Koch Industries by White House chief economist Austan Goolsbee. In a late August conference call with reporters, Mr. Goolsbee cited the closely-held Koch as an example of "really giant firms" that pay no corporate income tax because they file under other tax rules. But how in the world would Mr. Goolsbee know Koch's tax status? Could his knowledge be related to the White House-liberal campaign against Koch for contributing to Americans for Prosperity, a group that is supporting free-market candidates for Congress this year?

In an August 9 speech, Mr. Obama personally trashed Americans for Prosperity, hinting that it was funded by "a big oil company." He had to mean Koch, which makes no secret of its support for Americans for Prosperity.

The White House didn't respond to queries about Mr. Goolsbee's remark for weeks until GOP Senators requested an investigation. The Treasury's inspector general for tax matters has since announced such a probe, and last week White House spokesman Robert Gibbs finally got around to explaining that Mr. Goolsbee's statement "was not in any way based on any review of tax filings" and that he won't use the example again.

We're glad to hear it, but pardon our skepticism given the ferocity of this White House-led campaign against businesses that donate to political campaigns. Faced with electoral repudiation as the public turns against their agenda, Democrats are unleashing government power to silence their political opponents. Instead of piling on, the press corps ought to blow the whistle on this attempt to stifle political speech. This is one more liberal abuse of power that voters should consider as they head to the polls.
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 11, 2010, 06:40:00 AM
Shootout at the EPA Corral: Texas takes aim at the White House's illegal carbon rules
Wall Street Journal ^ | OCTOBER 10, 2010


________________________ ________________________ _


If Democrats take a drubbing in November, the Obama Administration is likely to turn to regulation to achieve its "transformational" agenda. Which is all the more reason to cheer on Texas as it pushes back against the EPA's illegal attempt to rewrite the nation's clean air laws.

To wit, the Lone Star State is resisting the Environmental Protection Agency's decision to regulate carbon under the clean air laws of the 1970s. These regulations will be damaging enough on their own. But the EPA and chief Lisa Jackson are also threatening to punish Texas and other green dissenters with a de facto moratorium on any major energy or construction projects. Just what the economy needs.

Under the Clear Air Act, the EPA's national office chooses priorities, but state regulators run the relevant programs and issue the necessary permits. When orders from HQ change, as with carbon over the last year, states get three years to revise their "implementation plans." But in August, Ms. Jackson decided that the law posed too long a climate wait and decreed that if these plans aren't updated by an arbitrary January 2011 deadline, her office will override the states and run the carbon permitting process itself.

Put bluntly, this coercion is illegal. As badly as Ms. Jackson has abused clean air laws to go after CO2, she can't by regulatory fiat usurp the law's statutory language about the federalist balance of power between Washington and the states. Texas filed an unusual lawsuit last week with the D.C. appeals circuit calling it an "ultra vires" act—literally, "beyond the powers"—and requesting an emergency stay of the EPA's regulations because of the imminence of irreparable harm.

No major construction project in America can go forward without EPA air quality and pollution permits


(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 11, 2010, 09:44:09 AM
Bump 
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 11, 2010, 10:03:03 AM
Obama's Huge New Tax
 By Lurita Doan
 10/11/2010
www.townhall.com

________________________ ________________________ __________________

 
Pity the poor entrepreneur and small business owner in America now getting socked, with the mother of all taxes, by a government that has become either hostile, or indifferent, to understanding what it takes to build a business, grow a company and hire more workers. I'm not talking about new fees, but about a much greater confiscatory tax, imposed without any real debate or consideration--the confiscation of time.

Nearly every Obama administration initiative demands new, more complicated reporting and compliance filings on small businesses and entrepreneurs that are already overburdened with a mish-mash of reporting requirements that suck away an entrepreneur's time and energy. 2008 compliance costs for a small business, according to a recent SBA Report, was approximately $10,000 per employee. But, the Obama Administration has added new, and far more onerous, reporting demands that are likely to treble those costs to $30,000 per employee. Facing such huge, and hidden, costs of compliance, is there any wonder small businesses are not hiring as they have in the past?

Consider, for example, one of the new reporting requirements contained in Section 9006 of the disastrous Obama healthcare bill which requires all small companies to file 1099s for any purchase over $600, to include anything from office supplies to electricity to independent contractors. As a result, small businesses may need to hire a full-time compliance officer that does nothing but file these new forms and reports.

But that is just the start. For example, Section 1512 of the Recovery Act (ARRA) requires that a report with a minimum of 12 data points be submitted quarterly for each Recovery Act project over $25,000. A separate report has to be submitted if the business worked as a subcontractor on any ARRA project. This report is separate from and in addition to the mandatory, contractual reports submitted monthly to the government contracting officer on each project and, separate from and in addition to, the quarterly program reviews provided for agency leaders. Of course, if the business performs ARRA work at the State level, many of those states have additional reporting requirements for businesses who are working on federally funded stimulus projects within the state.

Small business already struggles because the federal government’s reporting requirements are a moving target. Businesses must track the unusually frequent changes in government-issued guidance regarding reporting requirements. For example, since issuing the first reporting requirements for ARRA in February 2009, these requirements have changed nine times in the past 19 months, in March 2009, April 2009, June 2009, September 2009, November 2009, December 2009, April 2010, May 2010 and most recently in September 2010.

Each “update” to the reporting requirements issued by OMB is followed by an ancillary memo issued within each federal agency by each agency’s Chief Acquisition Officer.

Businesses, especially small businesses, may spend large segments of the workday tracking reporting requirement changes. Businesses must do this because a clerical error, which could be interpreted by the oversight community as fraud, carries severe penalties, and the burden of proof of innocence falls on the business.

Taxes take many forms. More damaging, than canceling the Bush tax cuts, more damaging than the changing definition of who is considered “rich”, more disturbing than Obama Administration's complete lack of understand of what it takes to grow a business and an economy, is the fact that time is money, so the new, burdensome and intrusive reporting requirements demanded by Obama's flawed policies puts a tax burden of time on all businesses.

Under the guise of “accountability” and the lure of “transparency”, the Obama Administration continues to bombard businesses with additional, ill-thought reporting requirements. Few legislators and few members of the Obama Administration have ever experienced first-hand, the struggles of entrepreneurship--what Jerry McGuire calls "an up-at-dawn, pride-swallowing siege," of trying to win a customer's business, be competitive and succeed. The Administration, clearly, does not understand or does not care about the true cost to business of their self-serving actions.

Peter Drucker, the management guru once said: “if you’re meeting, you’re not working”. Perhaps the corollary is that when a business is “reporting”, then they aren’t really working either.

Make no mistake: well-reasoned reports aid in accountability and transparency and are essential to ensure that taxpayer dollars are spent wisely by the government. But this is not happening in the Obama Administration. The President Obama once promised he would not raise taxes on the middle class. Yet, fees, fines and mandatory purchases are “onerous, rigorous demands” which, according to Webster, qualify as taxes.

Obama has demanded the one commodity which is in limited supply, and which can never be reproduced once spent—time. Obama wastes our time--and that tax is the greatest of all.
Lurita Doan
Lurita Alexis Doan is an African American conservative commentator who writes about issues affecting the federal government.

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: 225for70 on October 11, 2010, 10:21:33 AM
The CFTC has finally come through with its new rules on retail foreign exchange, which come into effect on October 18th, 2010 (Q&A about the new rules can be found here). Despite fears to the contrary, the CFTC will not be cutting permissible leverage in retail forex trading down to 10:1. The people have been heard! There was so much contrary opinion against that move from traders and brokers that the regulators were forced to rethink the plan.
That said, the CFTC will, however, be restricting leverage to no more than 50:1 (2% margin requirement) on the major currencies (5% on regional currencies). This is basically taking the NFA restriction put in place last year for 100:1 max leverage and tightening it up. I’m sure that’s going to have some folks up in arms, but the reality is that most of your better traders never go much beyond 10:1 actual leverage.

The proposed Ruling will hurt the US retail foreign exchange industry big time, as the new Rules hurt traders significantly and make Other global Foreign Exchange dealers move completive. Many traders are already trading with firms in the united kingdom and Australia as a result.  

The new changes will likely hurt the growth of the industry and Jobs will be lost, as a result...and headed overseas like most jobs..
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: 225for70 on October 11, 2010, 11:44:31 AM
Dear Getbigger,

As you may know, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the National Futures Association (NFA), which determine leverage (and the resulting margin) requirements for futures and forex trading, have established new forex leverage and maintenance requirements. We want to be sure you are aware of these changes.

What you need to know:
These new requirements, which will take effect Sunday October 17, 2010, at 5 p.m. EDT (4 p.m. CDT), will impact all of your current open forex positions, as well as any new forex positions you open on or after October 17.
The maximum leverage requirements on all major currency pairs will decrease due to the rule revisions. Major currency pairs will change from 100:1 to 50:1 maximum leverage (from 1% to 2%). Exotic or minor pairs will change from 25:1 to 20:1 maximum leverage (from 4% to 5%).
Major pairs consist of any pair with two of the following currencies: Australian dollar (AUD), British pound (GBP), Canadian dollar (CAD), Danish krone (DKK), Euro (EUR), Japanese yen (JPY), New Zealand dollar (NZD), Norwegian krone (NOK), Swedish krona (SEK), Swiss franc (CHF), or US dollar (USD). All other pairs are considered by the NFA to be exotic and are subject to the higher margin requirement.
For a listing of all currency pairs that thinkorswim by TD Ameritrade offers, please go to thinkorswim.com and choose "Rates, Commissions & Fees" (under the "Why thinkorswim" tab).
You will also need to maintain a 100% equity-to-margin ratio (risk level) at all times.
Liquidation of positions will occur once daily, at 5 a.m. EDT (4 a.m. CDT), if the risk level in your account falls to less than 100%, and intraday if the equity-to-margin ratio in your account falls to 25% or below, whichever comes first.
What you need to do:
To avoid the liquidation of any forex position due to insufficient funds, please be sure that your forex account has the necessary funds at the close of trading on Thursday, October 14, 2010.
This is necessary to ensure funds will be credited to your account by October 17, 2010, at 5 p.m. EDT (4 p.m. CDT).
For more information, visit thinkorswim.com and choose "Rates, Commissions & Fees" (under the "Why thinkorswim" tab).

If you have any questions, or if we can be of any assistance, please feel free to give us a call at 866-839-1100, option 7 or email us at support@thinkorswim.com.

Thank you for choosing thinkorswim by TD Ameritrade. Please rest assured that we value your business and will continue to do everything we can to make your trading experience a positive one.

Sincerely,

thinkorswim


Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 11, 2010, 11:47:36 AM
This is not even my area of expertise, but it sounds to me like the govt is sending trading desks and offices overseas, and essentially capital, to other more friendly places. 

Considering capital is the basis for future lending and investment, this seems like another job destroyer since banks will not have the capital of the these accounts to use as the reserves for lendning. 
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: 225for70 on October 11, 2010, 12:04:52 PM
This is not even my area of expertise, but it sounds to me like the govt is sending trading desks and offices overseas, and essentially capital, to other more friendly places.  

Considering capital is the basis for future lending and investment, this seems like another job destroyer since banks will not have the capital of the these accounts to use as the reserves for lending.  

exactly..

Why make an entire industry less competitive? It's not only this recent capital requirement changes that are hurting this growing industry. Also US traders aren't allowed to hedge there positions, if they want to take some risk off the table. Foreign exchange dealers outside the US definitely have an unfair advantage over there us counterparts.

These changes are going to make many traders open up accounts overseas..Typically Forex is less volatile than other Financial instruments, so a large amount of capital is essentially a requirement.

This change in Capital requirements, can essentially cut earnings of some traders by 50%..
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 11, 2010, 12:09:11 PM
exactly..

Why make an entire industry less competitive? It's not only this capital requirement changes, it's also hedging rules which aren't favorable as well.

This change is going to make many traders open up accounts overseas..Typically Forex is less volatile than other Financial instruments, so a large amount of capital is essentially a requirement.

This change in Capital requirements, can essentially cut earnings of some traders by 50%..


Just another idiotic move by the govt.  Unreal - what are they trying to send everything overseas at this point? 
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: 225for70 on October 11, 2010, 12:15:11 PM
Just another idiotic move by the govt.  Unreal - what are they trying to send everything overseas at this point?  

There are roughly 3 trillion forex transactions daily..It's the largest market in the world..It was also growing leaps and bounds in the US. I would advice Forex traders to trade with an Australian, or UK based dealers at this point.  Or perhaps start trading Currency futures.

However, trading currency futures usually involves higher commissions that spot Foreign exchange..

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 11, 2010, 12:21:20 PM
There are roughly 3 trillion forex transactions daily..It's the largest market in the world..It was also growing leaps and bounds in the US. I would advice Forex traders to trade with an Australian, or UK based dealers at this point.  Or perhaps start trading Currency futures.

However, trading currency futures usually involves higher commissions that spot Foreign exchange..



And guess what - all those capitals gains tax receipts are now going bye bye. 


what a farce. 
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: 225for70 on October 11, 2010, 12:31:07 PM
And guess what - all those capitals gains tax receipts are now going bye bye. 


what a farce. 

Yes, if you hold over a year you will have to pay capital gains, Which looks like may be headed north. If your using Margin you may want to focus on shorter time frame..As you'll may have a Negative Roll...In example if you sell the Aud/USD currency pair, you have a negative roll..

In example the aussie dollar is yielding 3.75%.

While the USD/ the us dollar is yielding .25%...

So you'll have to pay the difference since you are selling the pair of 3.75%-.25%, so you'll have to pay a carried interest charge of 3.50%...

However, if you bought the AUd/USD...you would have a positive roll..And incur interst of 3.50%
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: 225for70 on October 11, 2010, 12:35:39 PM
Yes, if you hold over a year you will have to pay capital gains, Which looks like may be headed north. If your using Margin you may want to focus on shorter time frame..As you'll may have a Negative Roll...In example if you sell the Aud/USD currency pair, you have a negative roll..

In example the aussie dollar is yielding 3.75%.

While the USD/ the us dollar is yielding .25%...

So you'll have to pay the difference since you are selling the pair of 3.75%-.25%, so you'll have to pay a carried interest charge of 3.50%...

However, if you bought the AUd/USD...you would have a positive roll..And incur interst of 3.50%


Everyone last year was using the USD dollar as a vehicle to finance the purchase of higher yielding currencies as the Aussie, New Zealand dollar..

They were pocketing the difference in interest rates..They call this a carry trade, and many Japanese people did this with the yen for years and years..

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 11, 2010, 12:39:06 PM

Everyone last year was using the USD dollar as a vehicle to finance the purchase of higher yielding currencies as the Aussie, New Zealand dollar..

They were pocketing the difference in interest rates..They call this a carry trade, and many Japanese people did this with the yen for years and years..



What is funny is that the guy who just got the Nobel in economics obama picked for the Fed Reserve is a dove as far as money printing goes and is probably all in favor of the continued fall of the dollar to keep up this ponzi scheme economy we have gotten ourselves into.   
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: 225for70 on October 11, 2010, 12:52:27 PM
What is funny is that the guy who just got the Nobel in economics obama picked for the Fed Reserve is a dove as far as money printing goes and is probably all in favor of the continued fall of the dollar to keep up this ponzi scheme economy we have gotten ourselves into.  

http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Economist-Mom/2010/1011/Easier-to-win-a-Nobel-Prize-than-get-Senate-approval

He won the noble prize for that.... :D

Diamond wrote a paper in the early 1980s that found that unemployment compensation can lead to better job matches. Workers “become more selective in the jobs they accept” because of the employment aid. And, that makes for better matches and increases efficiency, he found.

Thank you captain Obvious. A nobal prize for that.
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Kazan on October 11, 2010, 02:20:16 PM
Obama should be know as the anti-Midas, because everything he touches turns to shit
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 11, 2010, 02:52:35 PM
Obama should be know as the anti-Midas, because everything he touches turns to shit

Notice how not one obama fan can challenge this thread. 
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 12, 2010, 07:02:51 AM
What is CSA 2010 And How it Affects Truck Drivers.
What is CSA 2010 and how does it apply to truck drivers.
http://www.smart-trucking-jobs.com/csa2010.html

Tens of thousands of drivers will lose their Jobs when CSA rating system is implemented.
[/color]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Beginning July 2010, the FMCSA will implement Comprehensive Safety Analysis or CSA - an initiative aimed at improving large truck and bus safety, and ultimately reducing commercial motor vehicle related crashes, injuries and fatalities.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Update

WASHINGTON-The federal government's new proposed Comprehensive Safety Analysis of how it rates trucking companies and drivers is being delayed, much to the relief of the trucking industry.

Dubbed CSA 2010, the new program is now going to be rolled out in phases, starting Nov. 1 and into next year. So the program effectively now becomes CSA 2011.



The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) originally planned to begin implementation of their new safety overhaul, CSA 2010, in July 2010 and to have all states fully functional by December. It now appears full implementation could be delayed until spring, or even summer, of 2011.




The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has announced that full implementation of CSA 2010 will be delayed to 2011. The agency’s original plan was to begin implementing the program in July 2010 and to have all states fully functional by December of this year. It now appears that although certain phases of CSA 2010 will begin this fall, full implementation will not be completed until spring or perhaps summer of 2011.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As proposed in CSA 2010, the roadside performance of individual drivers will have a much greater impact on their own record, while at the same time critically affecting their carrier's safety rating as a whole.



CSA2010 will effect pay packages, hiring and firing, areas of employment screening and background checks, CDL certifications, in house training and more.




What do you think of CSA 2010. How do you think it will effect you and your trucking job? Please leave your comments here. Please feel free to leave any comments you have.




The United States Federal Motor Carriers Safety Administration (FMCSA) plans to implement a new safety initiative, known as Comprehensive Safety Analysis 2010 (CSA2010). The initiative is slated to launch its first phase next summer. Its goal is to achieve a greater reduction in large truck and bus crashes, injuries, and fatalities, while maximizing the resources of FMCSA and its State partners.




<<<<< Please subscribe to my free newsletter just fill in the block to the left.




The new CSA 2010 approach will:


*Directly monitor the safety and performance of individual drivers



*Address problem drivers based on their records across multiple employers



*Hold both motor carriers and drivers responsible for safety and performance




How Does CSA 2010 Driver Enforcement Process Work?



The driver enforcement process provides FMCSA with the tools to identify problem drivers and to verify and address the issues. the new Driver Safety Measurement System enables Safety Investigators (SI) to evaluate roadside performance of drivers across employers over a 3-year period. Using this system, SIs can identify "high profile" drivers with overall poor safety histories, who work for carriers that have been identified as requiring a CSA2010 investigation. If the investigation results verify the driver violation(s), FMCSA takes an enforcement action against that driver,such as a Notice of Violation or a Notice of Claim.




CSA 2010 Driver Safety Enforcement Approach



*Focuses on driver enforcement for serious rule violations,such as driving while disqualified,driving without a valid commerical driver's license,making a false entry on a medical certificate, committing numerous hours of service violations.


*Enforcement action will be taken directly against the driver for these violations. If the carrier is also determined to be a responsible party, it may also receive enforcement action.



* Looking ahead, FMCSA plans to identify and intervene with unsafe drivers beyond the pool of drivers that are addressed in conjunction with motor carrier interventions.




Don't be one of the thousands of drivers that lose their job. Your DAC Report(read more on dac) is your life make sure your driving record is correct and if not begin now to correct the errors.

Most motor carriers and drivers haven't heard of CSA 2010, yet it is quite massive in its scope, and represents a major change in the way the FMCSA audits companies.



Perhaps the most profound change, and how this affects individual drivers are going to be audited and each will be given a personal safety rating. This personal safety rating will determine weather or not the driver is considered eligible to continue driving or requires some sort of intervention.



CSA 2010 intends to use new data--such as information from police accident reports about driver-related factors contributing to a crash--and improve existing data sources--by, for example using its database of licensed commercial drivers to identify all drivers with convictions for unsafe driving practices, as well as the carriers they work for--to enable a more precise assessments of safety problems.



CSA 2010 will support evolving and new enforcement and compliance efforts. For example:



1. Carriers from Canada and Mexico that operate in the United States under open border agreements will be rated under CSA 2010 in the same way as U.S. carriers.



2. Violations found through audits of new entrants will be used in the CSA 2010 safety measurement system



3. Data sources related to 7 Core Behavioral Areas of CSA 2010 will be developed to focus attention on drivers qualifications, a key FMCSA policy area.




It is anticipated that full implementation of CSA 2010 by FMCSA will begin on or around July 1, 2010.




16 violations that FMCSA has determined will result in an automatic audit failure.






The list includes:



1) Failure to implement an alcohol and/or controlled substances testing program.


2) Using a driver known to have an alcohol content of 0.04 or greater to perform a safety-sensitive function.



3) Using a driver who refuses to submit to an alcohol orr controlled substance test required under part 382.



4) Using a driver known to have tested positive for a controlled substances.



5) Failing to implement a random controlled substances and/or alcohol testing program.



6) Knowingly using a driver who does not possess a valid commercial drivers license.



7) Knowingly allowing, requiring, permitting, or authorizing an employee with a commercial driver's license which is suspended revoked, or canceled by a state or who is disqualified to operate a commercial motor vehicle.



8) Knowingly allowing, requiring permitting, or authorizing a driver to drive who is disqualified to operate a motor vehicle.



9) Operating a motor vehicle without having in effect the required minimum levels of financial responsibility coverage.



10) Operating a passenger-carrying vehicle without having in effect the required minimum levels of financial responsibility coverage.



11) Knowingly using a disqualified driver.



12) Knowingly using a physically unqualified driver.



13) Failing to require a driver to make a record of duty status.



14) Requiring or permitting the operation of a commercial motor vehicle declared "out of service" before repairs are made.



15) Failing to correct out-of-service defects listed by truck drivers in a driver vehicle inspection report before the vehicle is operated again.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
16) Using a commercial motor vehicle not periodically inspected.


A carrier who fails an audit is notified within 45 days and given 60 days to correct the problem or lose its operational authority. Passenger carriers and HazMat haulers are given only 45 days to correct violations.



FMCSA will check compliance with requirements related to insurance, accidents reports, equipment and maintenance records, driver qualifications, CDL, license standards,truck drivers records of duty status,drug an alcohol testing, and hazardous materials, if applicable.




Under these new rules a carrier automatically fails if an auditor finds a single occurrence of these violations. The FMCSA looked back at audits conducted in a recent five year period and estimated that 47.9% would have been failures under the new rules.




So you can see that the CSA initiative represents a major change for carrier and drivers. It is important to note that the FMCSA is collecting data right now for the purpose of scoring its initial audits next year. That's right. Even though the initiative is one year away, what companies and drivers are doing right now will be factored into the CSA 2010 audit.




CSA 2010 will be looking at the last 36 months of your driving record including roadside inspections to determine your safety score. So what you do now will affect your safety rating when CSA 2010 is implemented.



Violations that occur in the last 12 months will have the point value tripled in the calculation of your safety score.



CSA 2010: The Point System




FMCSA officials have assigned point values for various violations that truckers may have noted on inspections or on crash reports. Here’s a list of some of the point values.




Violation(reg)


* Following too close – 392.2 ----------- 5 Points




* Violating OOS order – 392.5(c)(2)--------10 Points



* 60/70-hour rule – 395.1(o)---------------7 Points




* Failure to include driver signature or certification in duty status records – 395.8(d)(5)--------------------------2 Points




* Failure to list main office address in duty status records – 395.8(d)(7------2 Points




* Driver failing to retain previous * 7 days’ logs – 395.8(k)(2)---------------5 Points



* No medical certificate – 391.41(b)(3)----1 Points



* Inoperative tail lamp – 393.9(a)---------6 Points



* Failure to display current CVSA Decal: Permanent Authority – 365.511------------4 Points



* Periodic inspection – 396.21-------------4 Points



The full list of violations can be found Here starting on Page 36.







States now testing, Colorado, Georgia, Missouri, Minnesota, Montana, New Jersey and Kansas.



Here are a few things you can do now to help start preparing you for what is coming this summer.

1) Operate your truck legally, pay special attention to your hours of service.

2) Don't speed, tailgate, weave in and out of traffic or do anything else that would cause you to be singled out for a roadside inspection.
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 12, 2010, 07:47:49 AM
Obama Administration Gave General Electric—Parent Company of NBC--$24.9 Million in ‘Stimulus’ Grants
Monday, October 11, 2010
By Fred Lucas

www.cnsnews.com

________________________ ________________________ _________



President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden react to cheers as they arrive in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Tuesday, March 23, 2010(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

(CNSNews.com) - The Obama administration gave corporate giant General Electric—the parent company of NBC--$24.9 million in grants from the $787-billion economic “stimulus” law President Barack Obama signed in February 2009, according to records posted by the administration at Recovery.gov.

Despite getting $24.9 million from U.S. taxpayers, GE decreased its U.S.-based employees by 18,000 in 2009, according to the company’s 2009 annual report.

According to Standard & Poor's, GE took in $156 billion in revenue in 2009.

GE was the primary recipient of 14 stimulus grants, a spokeswoman for Recovery.gov confirmed to CNSNews.com. These 14 grants provided GE with $24.9 million in tax dollars. On four additional stimulus grants, the primary recipient of the federal money hired GE as a contractor. Recovery.gov is the administration’s website that tracks stimulus expenditures.

At the end of 2008, GE employed 152,000 U.S. workers, according to its 2009 annual report. But at the end of 2009, according to the report, it employed only 134,000 U.S. workers, a decline of 18,000 workers.

The Energy Department provided GE with 9 stimulus grants, the Department of Health and Human Services provided the company with 3, and the Justice Department and the Commerce Department each gave the company 1 stimulus grant.

All of these federal stimulus grants went to GE’s Global Research Center.

The earliest of the stimulus grants went to GE in July 2009 and the latest in April 2010.

CNSNews.com asked a GE spokesperson if the company contested Recovery.gov’s representation that GE had received 14 stimulus grants worth $24.9 million, and also whether the company now employed more or fewer workers as a result of receiving the grants.

In an e-mail response, GE spokeswoman Anne Eisele said, “I’m afraid I must politely decline to comment.”

What did all the money to GE go for? Recovery.gov posts brief explanations of each grant. For example, the Department of Justice gave GE $999,955 in stimulus money. “The goal of this program,” said Recovery.gov, “is to develop a comprehensive reasoning system for event and scenario recognition for an intelligent video system.”

In addition to the $24.9 million it received in stimulus grants, GE was also awarded $5 million in federal contracts under the economic stimulus law. These contracts were payment for services provided by the company.


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Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 12, 2010, 08:07:45 AM
10 Reasons Why Ordinary Hard-Working Americans Are About To Really Start Feeling The Squeeze
Economic Collapse ^ | 10/12/10



American families better get ready to tighten their belts again. There is every indication that we are all going to really start feeling the squeeze in the months ahead. The price of gas is starting to spike again. The price of food is moving north. Health insurance premium increases are being announced coast to coast and a whole slate of tax increases is scheduled to go into effect in 2011. Meanwhile, household incomes are down substantially all over the nation and the U.S. government is indicating that there will not be an increase in Social Security benefits for the upcoming year once again. So if the cost of most of the basic things in our monthly budgets is going up and our incomes are going down what does that mean? It means that average American families are about to be squeezed like nothing we have seen in decades.

The reality is that it is getting really hard to make it out there. Not only do most households have both parents working, but in many cases both parents are getting second or even third jobs. Things have gotten so bad that millions of Americans have felt forced to turn to the government for assistance just to survive.

It can be really disheartening to come to the end of the month and realize that despite your best efforts you have less money than you did at the beginning of the month. But that is where millions upon millions of American families now find themselves.

The economic despair in the air is almost palpable. Already hordes of Americans are truly and honestly hurting and things are only going to get worse.

The following are ten reasons why ordinary hard-working Americans are about to really start feeling the squeeze....

#1 Gas prices are going up again. AAA says that the average price of a gallon of regular gasoline in the United States was $2.80 on Sunday. That is 32.6 cents higher than it was during the same time period in 2009. As oil and gas prices continue to go up, that is also going to have a significant impact on utility bills for American families this winter.

#2 The price of food is poised to rise substantially. Bloomberg is reporting that the the cost of meat in the United States is going nowhere but up. But meat is not the only thing that you will soon be paying much more for at the supermarket. Wheat, corn, soybeans and almost every other major agricultural commodity is absolutely soaring this fall. As this continues, it is inevitable that ordinary Americans will see much higher food prices at their local grocery stores.

On a previous article, a reader named Erica left a comment in which see detailed the stunning food inflation that she is seeing where she lives....

Food inflation is real, and it is here. Just yesterday I compared my receipt from a grocery run to prices I have from the same exact store from September 15, 2009. Bacon? Up 52% to $13.69 from $8.99 for 4 lbs. Butter? Up 73% to $9.99 from $5.79 for 4 lbs. Pure vanilla extract up 14% to $6.79 from $5.95. Chopped dried onions up a mere 2% but minced garlic (wet) was up 32%.

#3 It looks like those receiving Social Security are not going to be seeing cost-of-living increases again. The Associated Press is reporting that the U.S. government is expected to announce some time this week that the tens of millions of Americans that receive Social Security will go through yet another year without an increase in their monthly benefit payments. You see, Social Security cost-of-living adjustments are tied to the official government inflation numbers, and according to the U.S. government there is basically very little inflation right now. Of course we all know that is a lie, but it is what it is.

#4 The cost of health care continues to soar into the stratosphere. Americans already pay more for health care than anyone else in the world, and yet costs continue to spiral out of control. The cost of health care increased a staggering 9.6% for all U.S. households from 2007 to 2009. Now, health insurance companies from coast to coast are announcing that they must raise health insurance premiums substantially due to the new health care law that Barack Obama and the Democrats have pushed through. So in 2011 it looks like the average American family is going to have to carve out an even bigger chunk of the budget for health care.

#5 American families could desperately use a recovery in the housing industry, but that is simply not going to happen. Foreclosure-Gate is getting worse by the day, and it threatens to bring the U.S. real estate industry to a complete and total standstill. If it is ultimately proven that the paperwork for millions of mortgages in the United States is seriously deficient, it could push hordes of mortgage lenders into bankruptcy and render mountains of mortgage-backed securities nearly worthless. Regardless, it is now going to be much more difficult to get a mortgage, much more difficult to buy a home and much more difficult to sell a home. We could very well be looking at the next stage of the housing crash. Ordinary Americans could end up losing trillions more in home equity.

#6 More Americans than ever find themselves unable to pay their bills, and an increasing number of frustrated creditors are actually resorting to wage garnishment. Yes, you read the correctly. Creditors are starting to ruthlessly go after the weekly paychecks of debtors.

The following is an excerpt from a recent New York Times article that discussed the rise of wage garnishment as a weapon against debtors....

After winning, creditors can secure a court order to seize part of the debtor’s paycheck or the funds in a bank account, a procedure called garnishment. No national statistics are kept, but the pay seizures are rising fast in some areas — up 121 percent in the Phoenix area since 2005, and 55 percent in the Atlanta area since 2004. In Cleveland, garnishments jumped 30 percent between 2008 and 2009 alone.

So if you are getting behind on your debt, you better watch out - your creditors may soon decide to garnish your wages.

#7 Americans now owe more on student loans than they do on credit cards. As hard as that is to believe, that is actually true. Americans now owe more than $849 billion on student loans, which is a new all-time record.

Student loan payments can be absolutely crippling to a household budget. This is especially true for young Americans that have just gotten out of school. Sadly, student loan debt is nearly impossible to get rid of. Once you are committed, it will follow you around for the rest of your life.

#8 Even as expenses rise, incomes are down from coast to coast. Median household income in the U.S. declined from $51,726 in 2008 to $50,221 in 2009. There are very few areas that have not been affected. In fact, of the 52 largest metro areas in the United States, only the city of San Antonio did not see a decline in median household income during 2009.

#9 If all of this was not bad enough, now there are rumblings that the U.S. Federal Reserve is actually thinking that we need more inflation. A number of top Federal Reserve officials have come out recently and have publicly supported the notion that the Fed needs to purposely create more inflation in order to stimulate the economy. Of course what they don't tell the American people is that inflation is a hidden tax on every single dollar in our wallets and in our bank accounts. More inflation would be really bad news for ordinary Americans, because they are already having a tough time getting their dollars to stretch far enough.

#10 Apparently the U.S. government (and many state and local governments) think that this is a great time to stick it to the American people by hitting them with a slew of new taxes. There are so many tax increases scheduled to go into effect in 2011 that it is hard to keep track of them all. In fact, there are many (myself included) that are calling 2011 "the year of the tax increase". But the Americans that are going to get it the worst of all are those that are going to get hit with the Alternative Minimum Tax. One out of every six American households is going to be hit with a tax increase averaging $3,900 (thanks to the AMT) and most of them don't even know that it is coming.

So did you think that 2010 was bad?

Well, you haven't seen anything yet.

2010 was a Sunday picnic compared to what is coming.

Get ready to get squeezed.

Get ready for higher food prices, higher gas prices, higher health insurance premiums and higher taxes.

Get ready to try to do a lot more with a lot less.

Inflation is already here, but it is going to get a whole lot worse. Meanwhile, the U.S. government (along with state and local governments) is going to continue to have a voracious appetite for more revenue.

Average Americans are going to be squeezed until they have nothing left to give. Then they are going to be squeezed just a little bit more.

Are you ready?

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Kazan on October 12, 2010, 08:44:34 AM
(http://roguejew.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/obamatouch.jpg)
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 12, 2010, 08:47:43 AM
KAZAN - did you see the article about GE? 
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Kazan on October 12, 2010, 08:50:48 AM
GE is up to its eye's in CAP and TRADE, Obama rewarding his crony's
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 12, 2010, 08:53:58 AM
GE is up to its eye's in CAP and TRADE, Obama rewarding his crony's

And yet the average dolt is still clueless.  That GE article is something no one on this board can spin. 

But hey - lets trash every GOP female nominee! 
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Fury on October 12, 2010, 09:23:55 AM
Barack Obama: "I don't understand why they think I'm anti-business."
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 13, 2010, 06:21:14 AM

Congressional report: “The War on Western Jobs”
By: Mark Hemingway
Commentary Staff Writer
09/30/10 1:10 PM EDT


________________________ ________________________ ___


The Congressional Western Caucus, headed by Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., and Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, have just released a report titled “The War on Western Jobs.” From the report’s introduction:

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the West reported the highest regional jobless rate in August,  at 10.8 percent.  The western region has maintained the highest regional unemployment for the past year. At the same time, six of the top twelve states with the largest declines in the employment to population ratio since the recession began in 2007 are western states.  According to The Associated Press Economic Stress Index, 3 of the top 5 states showing the most stress in June were western states: Nevada, California, and Arizona.

There’s a lot of reasons that job numbers are flagging in the West, but the purpose of the report is to identify the ways which Washington, D.C.  is exacerbating the situation. “Instead of making it easier for western businesses and communities to create new jobs, this Administration enforced an anti-business, anti-multiple use agenda that only makes the situation worse,” said Barraso.To that end, the report focuses at 10 areas where the Obama administration is making things worse:

1. Taxing energy use

2. Federalizing all surface water within the 50 states and territories

3. Restricting access to America’s vast reserves of affordable, American oil and natural gas

4. Imposing “one size fits all” mandates on western communities

5. Putting a priority on protecting species over American jobs

6. Blocking a multiple-use policy in our National Forests

7. Over-regulating coal

8. Seizing additional private western lands and placing them under control of the federal government

9. Requiring new federal permitting requirements into new areas of the western economy

10.Stopping domestic mining in favor of the importation of foreign minerals

You download the report here.



Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/congressional-report-the-war-on-western-jobs-104091063.html#ixzz12FEIbry8

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 13, 2010, 08:42:40 AM
Is there a doctor in the house? Obamacare will worsen the physician shortage Congress helped create
NY Daily News ^ | 10/13/2010 | Dr. Marc Siegel




There is a new disease spreading like a cancer in doctors' offices and hospitals throughout the U.S. I have named it Doctor Unavailability Syndrome (DUS). It is characterized by a rising shortage of doctors, both specialists and primary care, as well as the growing inability of the doctors we do have to take care of patient needs.

What good is a shiny new insurance card if there is not a physician available to see you?

This disease can be traced back to 1997, when Congress, anticipating a doctor surplus, included a section in its budget-balancing law that froze the number of Medicare-sponsored residency positions.

But instead of a surplus, a shortage soon developed, and has worsened over the years, now reaching epidemic proportions. The Association of American Medical Colleges Center for Workforce Studies just reported an anticipated shortage of 90,000 doctors of all kinds over the next decade, with half of them being primary care physicians and the other half surgeons and specialists.

The report suggests that Medicare should support at least a "15% increase in GME (Graduate Medical Education) positions, allowing teaching hospitals to prepare another 4,000 physicians a year to meet the needs of 2020 and beyond."

Don't count on this proposed subsidy happening any time soon. Instead, the new health care law, known ironically as the Affordable Care Act, is promoting and extending the kind of low co-pay and low deductible insurance that is easy to overuse, overwhelming doctors further and leading to an upward spiral of health care costs.

The doctors we do have are beleaguered and many are dropping out, increasing overall unavailability. As Obamacare adds 32 million uninsured - including 16 million on Medicaid - to the rolls over the next decade...


(Excerpt) Read more at nydailynews.com ...
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 14, 2010, 06:27:21 AM
Skip to comments.

Value-Added Tax Could Cost 850,000 Jobs: Retail Group
CNBC ^ | 14 Oct 2010 | Christina Cheddar Berk



________________________ ________________________ ____


The National Retail Federation is trying to put some numbers behind its argument against a value-added tax, which is one option being considered by a presidential commission looking into ways of reducing the ballooning federal deficit.

The retail industry's trade group said a study it commissioned estimates a European-style VAT would result in the loss of 850,000 jobs in its first year, reduce the US gross domestic product for three years, and cut retail spending by $2.5 billion over its first decade.

The study, which was conducted by Ernst and Young and economic research firm Tax Policy Advisers, concluded that although lower deficits would have positive long-run effects for the economy, most Americans would be worse off due to the VAT.

Talk of a VAT has surfaced in recent months as a way of dealing with the rising federal deficit, which is currently at its highest share of GDP since World War II.

Although policymakers who are considering such a measure have not offered specifics about what a VAT would look like, the calculations in the study were based on a "narrow-based" VAT similar to VATs in other countries. In order to achieve the goal of reducing the annual federal deficit by 2 percent of GDP, the VAT would need to be 10.3 percent.

The study also assumed the VAT would be applied to most consumer goods and services but would exempt sales of homes, rent, groceries medicine, health care, financial services and education to ease the tax's regressive impact on low-income families.

"In the face of an economy that continues to struggle, immediate enactment of an add-on VAT would pose serious risk. The drop in retail spending, jobs, and GDP under an add-on VAT has the potential to further weaken the economy in the near term, rather than strengthen it," the study's authors wrote.

The study also notes that other countries have reduced, not increased, their VATs in the face of the recent economic downturn.

The authors expect retail spending would fall by 5.0 percent, or almost $260 billion, as consumers adjust to the tax.

It's also assumed that the VAT would be in additional to other taxes, which means middle-income families would get hit the hardest. It is estimated a family of four making roughly $70,000 a year would pay $2,400 a year in value-added taxes. That would increase their tax burden by 100 percent.

A family making $100,000 would pay $2,800 in VAT, or an increase of more than 40 percent to of their current federal income tax liability.

Meanwhile, families earning $40,000 would pay $1,800 in VAT. Currently families at that income level don't have a federal income tax liability.

"This report has found that a VAT would have negative economic consequences for most working Americans alive today," said NRF President and CEO Matthew Shay. "If Congress wants to reduce the deficit, the solution is to cut spending, not create a new tax."

In August, the NRF commissioned a survey by BIGresearch that found nearly two-thirds of Americans expect a VAT would impact their spending.

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 14, 2010, 06:32:53 AM
How Obama is Invading Your Home
By Ben Lieberman October 11, 2010
Originally published in The New York Post

________________________ ________________________ ____


The Obama administration isn't satis fied giving the American public vast things we don't want — from stimu lus packages to bailouts to ObamaCare: It's a small-scale nuisance, too — witness its attempt to redesign home appliances.

In the pipeline are dumb regulations for almost everything that plugs in or fires up in your home.

Just weeks after taking office, the president ordered the Energy Department to speed up the process of issuing harsh new energy-efficiency standards for appliances. Since then, the agency boasts, it "has issued or codified new efficiency standards for more than 20 different products," and still more are on the way.

These regulations are sure to raise the price of appliances — often by more than consumers are ever likely to earn back in the form of energy savings. And some will make the product perform well.

The administration is meddling with every room in the house:

The basement:New standards are in the works for water heaters and furnaces. For water heaters, the Energy Department estimates price hikes from $67 to $974, depending on size and type.

The bathroom:The same 1992 law that gave us those awful low-flush toilets also restricted the amount of water showerheads could use to 2.5 gallons per minute. Some consumers who disliked the resulting weak trickle opted for models with two or more showerheads, each using the maximum 2.5 gallons. But Team Obama has now eliminated this "loophole" by requiring that the total flow must comply with the limit.

The kitchen: Think remodeling a kitchen is expensive now? Pending regulations target refrigerators, dishwashers, microwaves, ovens and ranges.

For refrigerators (at least), this is a clear case of overkill. The American fridge has already been hit by several rounds of tighter standards, with each new rule saving less energy than the last — but boosting the price and compromising performance and reliability. Even the Energy Department admits that most consumers will lose money on its latest refrigerator regulation.

The laundry room:New standards are on the way for washers and dryers. When the last clothes-washer regulation hit in 2007, Consumer Reportslamented that several ultra-efficient models "left our stain-soaked swatches nearly as dirty as they were before washing" and that "for best results, you'll have to spend $900 or more." The Obama rules will probably mean even worse news.

Any air-conditioned room:Both central air conditioners and window units are scheduled for new regulations. When the Energy Department rolled out its last round of central-AC rules back in January 2001 (one of those last-minute Clinton administration "midnight" regulations), it admitted that many homeowners would never recoup the added up-front costs. The new standards will follow the same "logic" — and thus should make for another lousy deal.

The Obama regulations come on top of all the past ones, including the worst one of all — the Bush-era requirement that will effectively ban incandescent light bulbs starting in 2012.

In nearly every case, consumers who want more efficient appliances — or those compact fluorescent light bulbs — are free to buy them. Energy-use labels tell you everything you need to know to make comparisons. All the federal rules do is is to force the government's preferred choice on everyone.

Government "of the people, by the people, and for the people" is busy enacting a bunch of things the people don't want, including these appliance regulations. Add them to the growing list of Obama (and Bush) measures ripe for repeal.


» See All Media Appearances ..Competitive Enterprise Institute
1899 L ST NW Floor 12, Washington, DC 20036
Phone: 202-331-1010 | Fax: 202-331-0640
©2001-2010 Competitive Enterprise Institute
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 14, 2010, 07:07:14 AM
Obamacare Sticker Shock: Taxing Over 15,000 Medicines
by  Connie Hair

10/14/2010




Nancy Pelosi warned us we’d have to pass Obamacare to find out what’s in it.  And what we’re finding we don’t like at all.

Higher insurance premiums are hitting families hard.  Medicare Advantage has been decimated.  Millions will be forced into government-run Medicaid where long lines and rationing await.

If we like our insurance -- too bad.

Beginning January 1, 2011, more than 15,000 over-the-counter (OTC) health care items will require a prescription (and that means a doctor’s visit) for tax-free reimbursement.

Under Obamacare, OTC drugs cannot be reimbursed tax-free from Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) or Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs) without a government bureaucrat-required permission slip.
 
In response to new Internal Revenue Service (IRS) guidance (the IRS is the Obamacare enforcement agency), the Special Interest Group for IIAS Standards (SIGIS) released a new list of OTC medications that will require a prescription for a tax-free withdrawal from an HSA or an FSA under Obamacare.   SIGIS is an industry group for health care debit card transactions and merchants.  According to SIGIS, 15,000 OTC health care items are barred from purchase by these accounts without prescription.

Below is a partial list of the OTC item categories:
 
Acid Controllers
Allergy and Sinus medicine
Antibiotics
Anti-Diarrheals
Anti-Gas Products
Anti-Itch and Insect Bite
Anti-Parasitic Treatments
Baby Rash Ointments/Creams
Cold Sore Remedies
Cough, Cold, and Flu
Digestive Aids
Motion Sickness
Pain Relievers
Respiratory Treatments
Stomach Remedies

The detailed SIGIS Eligible Products List will be published on December 15, 2010.
 
As of May 2010, approximately 10 million people were covered under HSA plans for their family’s health care needs.   The non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation estimates this provision of Obamacare will cost families $5 billion.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Connie Hair writes daily as HUMAN EVENTS' Congressional correspondent. She is a former speechwriter for Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) and a former media and coalitions advisor to the Senate Republican Conference. You can follow Connie on Twitter @ConnieHair.

You can also follow Connie Hair and Human Events on FACEBOOK.
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 14, 2010, 07:48:59 AM
Updated: Thu., Oct. 14, 2010, 4:52 AM 
O's new Gulf gambit
Last Updated: 4:52 AM, October 14, 2010
www.nypost.com


________________________ ________________________ ________________


Look -- it's an October Mini-Surprise!

It's midterm-election time, the Democrats are cratering -- and Inte rior Secretary Ken Salazar this week announced that he's lifting the moratorium that the White House imposed on deepwater offshore-oil and gas drilling after the Gulf of Mexico spill.

The move came six weeks earlier than expected, and followed the promulgation of some new safety rules said to ensure against future well blowouts.

"I have decided that it is now appropriate to lift the suspension," said Salazar, adding: "We are open for business."

And of course it's just a coincidence that there are US Senate races in Louisiana and Florida as Democrats fight to maintain control of that body.

As for being open for business -- well, what Salazar did not say is that it will be some time before any actual drilling begins. Like weeks -- and maybe even months.

And it will likely be years before drilling resumes to pre-spill levels.

Which is why Sen. Mary Landrieu, a Louisiana Democrat who's so furious about the moratorium that she's single-handedly been blocking the White House nomination of Jack Lew as budget director, isn't ready to sign on.

Indeed, she said, she's not going to let Lew's nomination proceed until Congress reconvenes next month -- by which time "I will have had several weeks to evaluate if [this] lifting of the moratorium is actually putting people back to work."

From the outset, the White House came under heavy criticism from area legislators for the moratorium, which idled 33 rigs and is estimated to have killed as many as 12,000 local jobs.  

And a panel of experts whose views were used to justify the suspension publicly complained that their position had been misrepresented by the White House -- they'd actually opposed the ban.

Back then, though, emotion ruled -- and Team Obama was trying to mollify the environmental lobby.

Now it's October; votes matter more.

But will the voters be fooled?

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 14, 2010, 10:35:55 AM
New pay bill could spell big trouble for businesses
October 13, 2010 | Jared Bilski

http://www.whatsnewinbenefitsandcompensation.com/new-pay-bill-could-spell-big-trouble-for-businesses/?ur=1X2EWF56

________________________ ________________________ ____


This post is in: Employment Law, FLSA, Top Story


Heads up: The Paycheck Fairness Act (PFA) is back on the table. Should it pass, the PFA will likely make employers’ lives much harder.
Where it could hurt you

The Society for Human Resource Management recently highlighted four major areas of concern for companies. The bill would:

• make employers liable for unlimited punitive damages under the Fair Labor Standards Act – even for unintentional pay disparities

• eliminate current limits on the amount of back pay and punitive and compensatory damages employees can receive

• wipe out the requirement that employees must give written consent to become a party in an Equal Pay Act class action – setting the stage for more class action lawsuits against employers, and

• limit an employer’s flexibility to pay workers based on current law criteria (cost-of-living differences among geographic locations, different work responsibilities, etc.)

The bill has been criticized by business groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and opponents feel the unlimited damages provision has the potential to destroy smaller businesses.



Tags: Chamber of Commerce, Equal Pay Act, Fair labor standards act, law, The Paycheck Fairness Act




Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 14, 2010, 11:24:34 AM
www.politico.com
Medicare: Reform may cost seniors
By: Jennifer Haberkorn
October 13, 2010 12:00 PM EDT


________________________ ___________________


A Medicare official concedes that seniors may have to dig deeper into their wallets next year thanks to the health care law.
 

The new analysis obtained by POLITICO finds the health care overhaul will result in increased out-of-pocket costs for seniors on Medicare Advantage plans.

Richard Foster, the actuary for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, also tells Senate Republicans that the overhaul will result in “less generous benefit packages” for Medicare Advantage plans next year. Foster is independent from the administration and non-partisan.

Democrats have long contended that Medicare Advantage plans – private insurance alternatives to Medicare – overpay private insurers, increasing premiums for everyone, and needs to be reformulated.

But Republicans say dramatic changes to the program mean some seniors won’t be able to keep their plans – a promise President Barack Obama made during the reform debate – and the GOP has made the issue part of its attempt to roll back the health law.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, says the administration is trying to downplay the effects of the overhaul on the Medicare Advantage plans.

“Painting a rosy picture of Medicare Advantage options denies the facts from the government’s own chief actuary,” he said in a statement to POLITICO. “And it’s a disservice to the 11 million current beneficiaries who count on this popular program.”

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius says, in a separate letter sent recently to Grassley, the changes in the health care overhaul will end up strengthening the program.

“Next year, seniors will have new benefits, new protections against fraud, and better Medicare Advantage choices with meaningful differences at affordable premiums, and more beneficiaries will participate in the program,” she wrote.

Sebelius says that the remaining Medicare Advantage plans have higher standards to meet, stemming from a 2008 Medicare law. In addition, 99.7 percent of Medicare beneficiaries who have access to an Advantage plan this year will have it next year and that premiums are expected to decline by 1 percent next year.

Foster says the additional costs seniors face will be partially offset by other pieces of the law, including reduced cost sharing for Medicare Parts A and B, lower Part B premiums and the filling of the prescription drug donut hole.

Last week, Grassley’s office highlighted an error Sebelius made in a speech to a gathering of AARP members. She incorrectly said the number of Medicare Advantage plans would increase next year. HHS later changed the written copy of the speech online without highlighting the change, which angered Grassley.

“Despite making a limited correction last week to an earlier speech delivered in Florida, the administration refuses to set the record straight appropriately,” Grassley said.

“But a new letter from Medicare’s chief actuary is nonpartisan and indisputable. Seniors enrolled in Medicare Advantage will pay more out of their own pockets as a result of the new health care law. Their costs will go up by hundreds of dollars on average in the coming years, by $346 in 2011 to a high of $923 in 2017.”

CLARIFICATION: The cost estimate came from the office of the actuary for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, an independent, non-partisan office.
 
 
© 2010 Capitol News Company, LLC


________________________ ________________________ ______________


FUCK YOU EVERYONE WHO SUPPORTED THIS! 
 
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 14, 2010, 11:26:02 AM
“But a new letter from Medicare’s chief actuary is nonpartisan and indisputable. Seniors enrolled in Medicare Advantage will pay more out of their own pockets as a result of the new health care law. Their costs will go up by hundreds of dollars on average in the coming years, by $346 in 2011 to a high of $923 in 2017.”


________________________ ___


More liberal lies coming to fruition. 
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 14, 2010, 04:20:12 PM

Published on The Weekly Standard (http://www.weeklystandard.com)



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Barack Obama’s War on Jobs
The Democrats are the party of no jobs.
October 14, 2010 12:00 AM


________________________ ___________________



Last week’s anemic jobs report came as a sobering reminder that America’s economic malaise shows little sign of slowing. Overall non-farm payrolls shrunk by 95,000 in September, while private sector hiring decelerated for the third consecutive month. High unemployment is now an acute national headache that won’t go away.

As the economy suffers this employment migraine, its causes come into sharper focus. Instead of providing relief, President Obama and his party have aggravated an already grim employment picture.

Job creators apparently pushed the pause button. Why?

Obviously a host of factors contribute to the equation.  But two reasons – both produced in Washington – deserve mention: uncertainty and divisive rhetoric. President Obama and the Democrats in Congress peddle large dollops of both.  Together they produced the real party of no: The Party of No Jobs.

First, consider uncertainty. Businesses cannot plan effectively in the current environment. 

Doubt about future tax policy is a case in point.  The Democratic majority adjourned to campaign without providing any clarity.  No one knows what a post-election lame duck session might concoct. As a result, income taxes, capital gains, dividends and a host of other expiring business incentives are all hostage to congressional fiat.

It’s possible nothing happens this year – meaning, major tax increases on income, savings and investments on January 1.  Uncertainty on the tax front is higher than it’s been in at least the last decade. Job creation suffers in this environment.

Health care and environmental regulation also contribute to the uncertainty. The Obama administration continues to implement portions of the health care law.  We hear new stories every day about premium increases and employers changing coverage.  Major upheaval in this sector of the economy also clouds the jobs picture.

Questions about the Democrats’ plans on the environmental regulatory and legislative front produce even more doubt. The administration’s alacrity when it comes to using the power of Washington to step into the affairs of private business is well known.  The White House might even redouble its efforts to impose new requirements in the air, water, and energy producing sectors, particularly if Democrats lose the majority in Congress.

But uncertainty is only one front in this war. The president’s own rhetoric also creates unnecessary and harmful divisions – an “us” vs. “them” mentality that polarizes the country.  Taking on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over allegedly using foreign money for campaign contributions is just the most recent example.

Speaking at the World Business Forum in New York last week, former General Electric CEO Jack Welch summed up the view of many in corporate America, saying the Obama administration is “just plain anti-business.”

Americans want a president that brings the country together, a leader who tries to unify, not divide. But, instead, Obama serves up fiery, campaign-like speeches fingering business leaders as boardroom bogeymen, not job creators. 

Public policy is often a zero sum game; it produces winners and losers. But it’s not necessary for the president and Democrats in Congress to blame everything that ails us on “big oil,” “Wall Street,” “greedy insurance companies” or “the rich.”

That kind of rhetoric might have a place in an election, but this president and his allies in Congress brought the permanent campaign to daily governing. This is very jarring to many Americans.

The tone and language may be appropriate for a liberal community organizer, but not the leader of the free world – someone that wants to spur economic confidence and increase business investment that produces jobs.

The Democrats’ war on jobs is also producing a political backlash of historic proportions. Last week Gallup noted that 54 percent of likely voters now identify as conservative – up from 42 percent in the last midterm election.  And 57 percent of likely voters identify as Republicans (including those who say they lean toward the GOP), compared to 45 percent in 2006.

But beyond politics, uncertainty and divisive rhetoric produce other, more pernicious, job-killing results.  News reports over the last month also show that American companies are sitting on record amounts of cash.  Instead of investing in creating new employment, many keep their money idle, waiting to see if the fog of political war will ever lift.

The November election should clear up some of this uncertainty.  Voters may collectively clip the wings of the Democrats, thus avoiding the most extreme excesses of the current one party rule in Washington. But the current occupant of the White House also needs to understand that an economy will not produce jobs when the president wages war against those that create them.
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: 225for70 on October 14, 2010, 04:26:51 PM
The only thing left for Obama to do to kill the economy is Pass some Cap N trade scam.


Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 14, 2010, 04:28:49 PM
The only thing left for Obama to do to kill the economy is Pass some Cap N trade scam.




That will really screw us over and cause energy price inflation like we have never seen, which in essence will lead to massive food and goods inflation and cost increases.   
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 14, 2010, 04:33:27 PM
CNSNews.com

Democrats’ Cap-and-Trade Bill Creates ‘Retrofit’ Policy for Homes and Businesses
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
By Matt Cover


________________________ _________________


House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) (AP Photo)(CNSNews.com) – The 1,400-page cap-and-trade legislation pushed through by House Democrats contains a new federal policy that residential, commercial, and government buildings be retrofitted to increase energy efficiency, leaving it up to the states to figure out exactly how to do that.
 
This means that homeowners, for example, could be required to retrofit their homes to meet federal “green” guidelines in order to sell their homes, if the cap-and-trade bill becomes law.
 
The bill, which now goes to the Senate, directs the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to develop and implement a national policy for residential and commercial buildings. The purpose of such a strategy – known as the Retrofit for Energy and Environmental Performance (REEP) – would be to “facilitate” the retrofitting of existing buildings nationwide.
 
“The Administrator shall develop and implement, in consultation with the Secretary of Energy, standards for a national energy and environmental building retrofit policy for single-family and multi-family residences,” the bill reads.
 
It continues: “The purpose of the REEP program is to facilitate the retrofitting of existing buildings across the United States.”
 
The bill leaves the definition of a retrofit and the details of the REEP program up to the EPA. However, states are responsible for ensuring that the government’s plans are carried out, whatever the final details may entail.
 
“States shall maintain responsibility for meeting the standards and requirements of the REEP program,” the bill says.
 
States may contract with private agencies to oversee the retrofitting and measuring of improved efficiency and environmental friendliness of houses and other buildings, making sure that private citizens have a variety of choices for retrofitting their homes.
 
“States and local government entities may administer a REEP program in a manner that authorizes public or regulated investor-owned utilities, building auditors and inspectors, contractors, nonprofit organizations, for-profit companies, and other entities to perform audits and retrofit services,” reads the bill.
 
It further says, “A State or local administrator of a REEP program shall seek to ensure that sufficient qualified entities are available to support retrofit activities so that building owners have a competitive choice among qualified auditors, raters, contractors, and providers of services related to retrofits.”
 
In fact, individual homeowners are even allowed to retrofit buildings themselves. The bill gives specific protection to individual owners’ rights to choose who inspects and retrofits their property.
 
“Nothing in this section is intended to deny the right of a building owner to choose the specific providers of retrofit services to engage for a retrofit project in that owner’s building.”
 
Even though Congress says the states are responsible for carrying out the retrofits, the EPA and the Department of Energy will establish the guidelines and rules for doing so.
 
“The Administrator, in consultation with the Secretary of Energy, shall establish goals, guidelines, practices, and standards for accomplishing the purpose stated in subsection (c) [the retrofits],” the bill says.
 
The program would involve a system of certified auditors, inspectors, and raters who inspect homes and businesses using devices such as infrared cameras (which measure how much heat a building is giving off) to measure their energy efficiency.
 
The results of these energy audits would then be used to determine what retrofits need to be performed. The audits would examine things like water usage, infrared photography, and pressurized testing to determine the efficiency of door and window seals, and indoor air quality.   

Those retrofits would be performed by licensed retrofit contractors using government-approved methods and resources including roofing materials that reflect solar energy.
 
“uilding retrofits conducted pursuant to a REEP program utilize, especially in all air-conditioned buildings, roofing materials with high solar energy reflectance,” the legislation states.
 
After the retrofitting is complete, the government – state, local, or federal – will come back and re-inspect the house to determine how much energy has been saved and whether the retrofit is up to federal government standards.
 
“Determination of energy savings in a performance-based building retrofit program through — (A) for residential buildings, comparison of before and after retrofit scores,” the proposal states.
 
To help pay for the cost of these retrofits, states and localities may provide loans, utility rate rebates, tax rebates, or implement retrofit programs on their own. In fact, the government will even pay up to 50 percent of the cost of a retrofit through financial awards to individual home and building owners.

“PERCENTAGE.—Awards under clause (i) shall not exceed 50 percent of retrofit costs for each building,” reads the bill.
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 15, 2010, 04:43:00 AM
Obama’s Healthcare Rules Will Shut Down Catholic Hospitals Nationwide
biggovernment.com ^ | 10/14/2010 | Warner Todd Huston



________________________ ________________________ ___________________


Obama’s Healthcare Rules Will Shut Down Catholic Hospitals Nationwide


Some of Obamacare’s most destructive forces are quickly becoming common knowledge. We have, for instance, become painfully aware that Obama’s claim that we all could keep our plans and doctors “if you like them” is an outright falsehood as some people are already losing their coverage.


It is also becoming clear that companies will be dropping plans all over the place making a lie of the idea that plans will be cheaper and easier to get once Obamacre comes into force. Another aspect of the destructive nature of this top down-style of “healthcare” is that once government takes over the system Democrats will assume they have the power to force religious-based healthcare providers to perform abortions and this will cause thousands of facilities to close down.

This will, of course, make care even harder to get in many cities across the nation as hospital beds are lost in great numbers.

In fact, we are already seeing this disastrous situation of closing hospitals playing out in Scranton, Pennsylvania where three Catholic-operated hospitals are likely going to be shut down and/or sold off because of the negative affects Obamacare will have on these facilities.

Kevin Cook, the CEO of Mercy Health Partners, the company that operates these three hospitals, told WNEP TV News that Obamacare “absolutely” playing a role in the decision to sell off the facilities.

“Health care reform is absolutely playing a role.” Cook said. “Was it the precipitating factor in this decision? No, but was it a factor in our planning over the next five years? Absolutely.”

Almost immediately Obama associate Carol Keehan of the Catholic Health Association came out to slam Mr. Cook. Keehan’s press release says in part: “Reports that health reform is the primary motive behind the sale are completely false, misleading and politically motivated. Deliberations to sell the facilities began well before the Affordable Care Act became law and did not hinge on enactment of the legislation.”

The CHA is a for profit company that works for some Catholic hospitals as a sort of trade association and Keehan is a close associate of the president and a prominent supporter of Obamacare. Keehan was even a recipient of one of the 21 pens that Obama used to sign the Orwellian named Affordable Care Act — much to the chagrin of Catholic Bishops.

This Keehan apostate is constantly put forth by the Old Media as some representative of Catholic hospitals. Worse few Old Media outlets note that she is an Obamacare activist and Obama associate.

As Jeffery Lord of the Spectator says, “In other words, Sister Carol is not just some kindly nun who reminds you of the nun whacking your knuckles in grade school for this or that offense. No, in the world of Washington Sister Carol is a powerhouse lobbyist — make that a liberal social justice lobbyist — with a clear set of political skills and a very, very high-powered set of very elite friends.”

For instance, back in March the AP passed off a false news story attempting to mislead the public into thinking that Catholic hospitals supported Obama’s healthcare bill. AP then reported the support of Obamacare announced by the CHA, an independent group that does not represent the Catholic Church nor Catholic hospitals per se, and conflated that announcement to a claim as if all Catholic hospitals and therefore the Church itself were standing behind Obama’s take over of the nation’s healthcare system.

AP reported the announcement by the CHA and made as if it somehow represented “Catholics,” but this group has no official relationship with the Catholic Church, nor does it represent any groups of religious Catholics, nor serve as a source for Catholic teaching or doctrine. Needless to say the CHA also does not represent all Catholic hospitals but only the few that have paid to join her association.

The costs that Obamacare will force upon hospitals isn’t the only problem for Catholic-based healthcare. Obama, his party, and their pro-infanticide supporting associates also intend to force Catholic and other religious based healthcare facilities to perform abortions whether it violates their consciences or not.

Recently former Senator Rick Santorum (R, Penn) raised this point in an editorial for Philly.com. Santorum cites a new effort by the ACLU to get Dr. Donald Berwick, Obama’s controversial abortion supporting recess appointment to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, to force all healthcare providers to perform abortion procedures.

Santorum rails against this effort saying: “This abuse of conscience betrays American principles that go back at least to the country’s founding, when George Washington respected the pacifist consciences of Quakers. Similarly, since Roe v. Wade and under both political parties, Congress has passed laws that respect the consciences of health-care workers.”

This effort to force all healthcare providers to provide abortion is a serious threat to the nation’s healthcare system.

By 2005 there were over 615 Catholic hospitals, some 400 healthcare centers, and over 1,500 specialized healthcare homes. These facilities employ almost 600,000 employees and accounted for more than 20% of all hospital admissions. And this is just the Catholic oriented healthcare facilities.

As the realities of the strict, anti-religious qualities of Obamacare dawns on people and as the government begins to crack down on religious organizations forcing them to obviate their consciences the eventual result will be the end of religious-based healthcare institutions. This will leave millions of Americans underserved and will also leave their health in danger.

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 15, 2010, 05:02:58 AM
Stop Bashing Business, Mr. President
If we tried to start The Home Depot today, it's a stone cold certainty that it would never have gotten off the ground.
By KEN LANGONE
www.wsj.com


________________________ _____________________



Although I was glad that you answered a question of mine at the Sept. 20 town-hall meeting you hosted in Washington, D.C., Mr. President, I must say that the event seemed more like a lecture than a dialogue. For more than two years the country has listened to your sharp rhetoric about how American businesses are short-changing workers, fleecing customers, cheating borrowers, and generally "driving the economy into a ditch," to borrow your oft-repeated phrase.

My question to you was why, during a time when investment and dynamism are so critical to our country, was it necessary to vilify the very people who deliver that growth? Instead of offering a straight answer, you informed me that I was part of a "reckless" group that had made "bad decisions" and now required your guidance, if only I'd stop "resisting" it.

I'm sure that kind of argument draws cheers from the partisan faithful. But to my ears it sounded patronizing. Of course, one of the chief conceits of centralized economic planning is that the planners know better than everybody else.

But there's a much deeper problem than whether I am personally irked or not. Your insistence that your policies are necessary and beneficial to business is utterly at odds with what you and your administration are saying elsewhere. You pick a fight with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, accusing it of using foreign money to influence congressional elections, something the chamber adamantly denies. Your U.S. attorney in New York, Preet Bahrara, compares investment firms to Mexican drug cartels and says he wants the power to wiretap Wall Street when he sees fit. And you drew guffaws of approving laughter with your car-wreck metaphor, recently telling a crowd that those who differ with your approach are "standing up on the road, sipping a Slurpee" while you are "shoving" and "sweating" to fix the broken-down jalopy of state.

View Full Image

Associated Press
 
President Barack Obama during a September 20th town hall.


That short-sighted wavering—between condescending encouragement one day and hostile disparagement the next—creates uncertainty that, as any investor could tell you, causes economic paralysis. That's because no one can tell what to expect next.

A little more than 30 years ago, Bernie Marcus, Arthur Blank, Pat Farrah and I got together and founded The Home Depot. Our dream was to create (memo to DNC activists: that's build, not take or coerce) a new kind of home-improvement center catering to do-it-yourselfers. The concept was to have a wide assortment, a high level of service, and the lowest pricing possible.
We opened the front door in 1979, also a time of severe economic slowdown. Yet today, Home Depot is staffed by more than 325,000 dedicated, well-trained, and highly motivated people offering outstanding service and knowledge to millions of consumers.

If we tried to start Home Depot today, under the kind of onerous regulatory controls that you have advocated, it's a stone cold certainty that our business would never get off the ground, much less thrive. Rules against providing stock options would have prevented us from incentivizing worthy employees in the start-up phase—never mind the incredibly high cost of regulatory compliance overall and mandatory health insurance. Still worse are the ever-rapacious trial lawyers.

Meantime, you seem obsessed with repealing tax cuts for "millionaires and billionaires." Contrary to what you might assume, I didn't start with any advantages and neither did most of the successful people I know. I am the grandson of immigrants who came to this country seeking basic economic and personal liberty. My parents worked tirelessly to build on that opportunity. My first job was as a day laborer on the construction of the Long Island Expressway more than 50 years ago. The wealth that was created by my investments wasn't put into a giant swimming pool as so many elected demagogues seem to imagine. Instead it benefitted our employees, their families and our community at large.

I stand behind no one in my enthusiasm and dedication to improving our society and especially our health care. It's worth adding that it makes little sense to send Treasury checks to high net-worth people in the form of Social Security. That includes you, me and scores of members of Congress. Why not cut through that red tape, Mr. President, and apply a basic means test to that program? Just make sure that money actually reduces federal spending and isn't simply shifted elsewhere. I guarantee you that many millionaires and billionaires will gladly forego it—as my wife and I already do when we forward those checks each month to charity.

It's not too late to include the voices of experienced business people in your efforts, small businesses owners in particular. Americans would be right to wonder why you haven't already.

Mr. Langone, a former director of the New York Stock Exchange and co-founder of Home Depot, is chairman of Invemed Associates.

Copyright 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 15, 2010, 09:06:37 AM
Democrats hurting business, economy
Comments

October 15, 2010

BY STEVE HUNTLEY


________________________ _____________________


Gesturing toward the magnificent steel, glass and concrete towers of Chicago's Loop during a conversation with the Chicago Sun-Times editorial board, Mayor Daley noted that "almost 95 percent" of the skyscrapers were private-sector constructions. Then he declared this self-evident truth: "I don't think Democrats realize how important business is to our economy and to our cities."

While Democrats have long struggled under the mantle of being anti-business, President Obama and the Democratic Congress have acted as if they're not particularly bothered by it. They pushed tax and fee increases, imposed new regulations through thousand-plus page bills and bureaucratic fiat and bashed Wall Street, bankers, insurers and other businesses that dared question their agenda.

» Click to enlarge image Steve Huntley




Democrats talk a good game about small business, but actions speak louder than words. Obama and the Democrats are pushing a tax increase that would hit 50 percent of small enterprise income and their massive health-care law saddles business with a flood of tax-filing paperwork for expenditures as low as $601.


Such government meddling in the economy and the threat of more have injected so much uncertainty into economic planning that businesses small and large are hesitant to invest until they get a clearer picture of the tax and regulatory environment. Democratic policies haven't reduced unemployment. Their stimulus did more to protect government jobs than lay the foundation for robust private-sector job creation.

It's no wonder that an alarmed business community is pushing back this election cycle, funneling campaign contributions to candidates and independent groups rallying around a pro-growth and jobs-creation agenda.

The White House response has been again to demonize its opponents. Obama accused the U.S. Chamber of Commerce of using foreign money to fund campaign activities -- a criminal act. The basis for this accusation? An unsubstantiated allegation on a left-wing blog. Recall how Democrats lambasted Republicans for taking their lead from Rush Limbaugh? Well, here's the president of the United States passing along an outrageous, unfounded bit of Internet character assassination.

An independent watchdog group, FactCheck.org, said there was "no evidence" backing this charge, as did several major media outlets not known for Republican leanings, such as the New York Times.

When challenged about the weakness of the accusation on the CBS program "Face the Nation," presidential adviser David Axelrod said, "Well, do you have any evidence it's not true?" In other words, the chamber is guilty of a crime until proved innocent. Thank you for your lesson on American civics, Mr. Axelrod. As the FactCheck organization notes, others such as the extreme left-wing group MoveOn.org have followed Axelrod's unscrupulous tactic.

The fact is that liberal and conservative, Democratic and Republican groups take money under rules that don't require them to reveal donors. Some, like the chamber and the big unions, do collect contributions from foreign sources but don't use them for U.S. electioneering.

The Democrats are raising this red herring in a desperate attempt to distract the voters from their failed economic policies, the 9.6 percent unemployment rate, slowing GDP growth and the vastly unpopular ObamaCare.

Obama, with a background in community organizing, the university classroom and politics, staffed his administration mostly with like-minded folks with little business background. It's too bad -- for the economy as well as his current political predicament -- that Obama, during his time in Chicago, didn't learn from Daley a fuller appreciation of the vital role of business in a vibrant economy.

Comment at suntimes.com.

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 16, 2010, 06:53:00 AM
A Shovel-Unready President
By Jonah Goldberg


________________________ _________________

Back in early 2009, President-elect Barack Obama was asked on Meet the Press how quickly he could create jobs. Oh, very fast, he said. He'd already consulted with a gaggle of governors, and "all of them have projects that are shovel-ready." When Obama revealed the members of his energy team, he explained that they were part of his effort to get started on "shovel-ready projects all across the country." When he unveiled his education secretary, he assured everyone that he was going to get started "helping states and local governments with shovel-ready projects."

In interviews, job summits, and press conferences, it was shovel-ready this, shovel-ready that. Search the White House website for the term "shovel-ready" and you'll drown in press releases about all the shovels ready to shove shovel-ready projects into the 21st century, where no shovel is left behind.

Only now it turns out that the president was shoveling something all right when he was talking about shovel-ready jobs - a whole pile of steaming something.

In the current issue of The New York Times Magazine, Obama admits that there's "no such thing as shovel-ready" when it comes to public works.


It's not that Obama was lying when he said all that stuff. It's just that he didn't know what he was talking about. All it took was nearly a trillion dollars in stimulus money and 20-plus months of on-the-job training for him to discover that he was talking nonsense.

It seems to me that, if I were president, and I not only staked vast swaths of my credibility but gambled the prosperity of the country generally on this concept of "shovel-ready jobs," I might be a bit miffed with the staffers who swore that shovel-ready jobs were, like, you know, a real thing.

And yet, if you read Peter Baker's Obama profile, it's clear that Obama isn't mad about that. In fact, he still thinks he got all the policies right. Baker writes that Obama is "supremely sure that he is right," it's just that the president feels he didn't market himself well.

"Given how much stuff was coming at us," Obama explains, "we probably spent much more time trying to get the policy right than trying to get the politics right. There is probably a perverse pride in my administration - and I take responsibility for this; this was blowing from the top - that we were going to do the right thing, even if short-term it was unpopular. And I think anybody who's occupied this office has to remember that success is determined by an intersection in policy and politics and that you can't be neglecting of marketing and PR and public opinion."

This is an old progressive lament: Our product is perfect, we just didn't sell it convincingly to the rubes.

But wait a second. If they spent "much more time trying to get the policy right," how come nobody said, "Uh, Mr. President, these ‘shovel-ready jobs' you keep talking about? They're sort of like good flan - they don't exist."

Let's not dwell on such things. Besides, Obama has already said that his problems come from "neglecting marketing and PR and public opinion." Indeed, that, and only that, explains why people think he looks like "the same old tax-and-spend liberal Democrat."

The only problem with that: facts. Obama's health-care plan raises taxes on Americans (though Obama says this is not so, they're merely mandatory fees and premiums) and will cost trillions. He wants to raise taxes on "the rich" - defined so that a cop married to a nurse might well count as rich - and on small businesses.

Meanwhile, Washington is now spending 23 percent more than it did two years ago. As the Washington Post recently editorialized, Congress's "emergency" bailout to avoid "a teachers crisis" was a fraud to simply transfer billions to the teachers' unions in advance of the midterms.

And then, of course, there's the stimulus that paid for all of those "shovel-ready jobs" that Obama now admits never existed. Los Angeles County deployed $111 million in stimulus money to "save" 55 jobs at the cost of $2 million apiece. The White House has spent $192 million on road signs that brag about how the construction delays ahead were paid for by the stimulus. Meanwhile, unemployment is a full three percentage points higher during Obama's "recovery" than it was during the "worst recession since the Great Depression."

Maybe it's unfair for people to think Obama is just another tax-and-spend Democrat. After all, some tax-and-spend Democrats are actually competent at it.

www.realclearpolitics.co m

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 18, 2010, 05:47:36 AM
All dressed up, nowhere to go
As the government and energy firms butt heads over spill risks, rigs stand idle and hundreds have lost jobs
By JENNIFER A. DLOUHY
HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Oct. 18, 2010, 12:15AM



Sources: ODS-Petrodata, the Shallow Water Energy Security Coalition, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and Regulation

________________________ _____________________



WASHINGTON — Offshore drilling regulators and energy companies are at loggerheads over a requirement that the firms plan for nightmare scenarios about possible oil spills, with the standoff slowing permits for new shallow-water wells.

Now that the Obama administration has lifted its moratorium on deep-water drilling, the dispute threatens to hold up some of those projects, too.

At issue is the government's mandate that companies seeking to drill offshore must describe the "worst case discharge" of oil and gas from their proposed wells. That single calculation dictates a cascade of other requirements - including how much insurance companies must carry and the amount of response equipment they must reserve to clean up such a spill.

But offshore operators and government regulators have been at odds over how to arrive at the numbers - which are, at best, subjective predictions based on a broad assortment of factors, from how much of a geological formation might be exposed to the number of oil and gas zones at a proposed well.

"It's not an exact science, and there's a lot of engineering judgment that goes into it," said Randy Stilley, CEO of Seahawk Drilling, a shallow-water contractor based in Houston. "If I pick 10 different reservoir engineers, they'll probably give you 10 different numbers. So trying to get agreement on the right number is not an easy thing to do."

Even though oil companies and regulators generally use the same mathematical formula to estimate the worst-possible flow of oil from a proposed well, they are plugging in different data for those calculations. It can take weeks of meetings, exchanged notes and new calculations before a consensus is reached.

Approval pace lags

The disputes are at the heart of a major slowdown in the government's permitting of new shallow-water drilling, which was allowed to continue even though a moratorium blocked exploration in deeper depths from late May until it was lifted last week.

Since the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded April 20, federal regulators have given the green light to 12 new shallow-water wells, with another 10 applications pending.

Despite a flurry of recent approvals - with six new permits issued since Sept. 28 - the pace still lags behind historic levels. Before the oil spill - and the new worst-case discharge requirements - the government was permitting an average of 16.8 wells per month in 2008 and 8.5 each month in 2009, when the recession drove demand down. During the first quarter of 2010, before the oil spill in the Gulf , the government was approving an average of 10.3 wells each month.

Industry officials say the result has been idled rigs and workers - with an estimated 500 direct jobs lost since the oil spill. Roughly one-quarter of the shallow-water drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico are not working.

At Seahawk, Stilley said the slow flow of new well permits has forced the idling of 14 rigs out of a 20-vessel fleet and the furlough of at least 150 employees - roughly 25 percent of the company's workforce. The company is selling one of its rigs to an India-based oil service firm, and Stilley warns that Seahawk will get rid of others if work doesn't pick up soon.

"We just don't think we're going to be able to put all of our rigs back to work in the U.S.," he said, adding that it could take years "to get back to a more normal level of permitting activity."

With daily carrying costs of about $3,000 to $4,000 to maintain even idle stacked rigs, Stilley said any sale is an instant cash boost to the company's balance sheet - and the plugging of an economic drain on the company.

The pace of permitting became a major issue this summer, when oil companies and regulators at the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement were still adapting to new mandates imposed since the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

Confusion over rules

Michael Bromwich, the bureau director, acknowledged that the new rules - especially the requirement for the worst-case discharge estimate - were not clear enough.

"Companies had not dealt with it in the way that they needed to, nor had we put out clear guidance on the way that they needed to," he said.

But Bromwich said regulators have made big strides in clearing up the confusion. And he credits the shifting of 20 bureau workers from other divisions to a permit-vetting team of about 40 with helping to ease the backlog recently.

"This is going to continue to be an evolving process," Bromwich said. "We're not going to have 100 percent clarity immediately, but we've made an enormous amount of progress over the last several weeks."

In a bid to further streamline the process, the industry's Shallow Water Energy Security Coalition has proposed a tiered review plan that would step up regulatory requirements along with increases in risk factors at proposed wells. For instance, the regulatory hurdles could grow for projects tapping a thicker pay zone or expected to encounter higher pressures. Less risky projects would have to meet fewer demands.

"Our whole goal is to find a consistent, more expeditious way to process these permits and still meet the regulatory requirements," said Kalil Ackal, a drilling manager for Arena Offshore, based in The Woodlands . "We know better than to say, 'Just trust our numbers.' "

Instead, Ackal said, the shallow-water advocates are trying to peg regulatory decisions to "simple, objective, verifiable factors" for proposed wells.

Bromwich said he is considering the tiered review ideas, "and if they have merit, technically, we hope to be able to embrace at least some of them."

'Significant' numbers

American Petroleum Institute leaders say they want to ensure that the bureau has enough resources to swiftly review applications for new wells, now that the deep-water moratorium has ended. "Our big concern is that BOEM is going to be flooded with permits," said Robin Rorick, an API analyst.

Another factor, Rorick said, is making sure that regulators are making "appropriate" predictions about the potential worst-case discharge from wells, since higher estimates drive up requirements for how much oil spill response equipment needs to be reserved and how much money or insurance coverage companies must prove they have before being allowed to drill.

So far, higher estimates have pushed at least one shallow-water operator into a higher financial responsibility category, as required under federal law, according to officials with knowledge of the matter. At the smallest possible hike, from a minimum $35 million threshold to the next level - $50 million - that translates to an extra $1.5 million a year in payments to the insurer that issues a financial responsibility certificate guaranteeing the money.

"Those numbers are significant, in terms of planning," especially for small operators, Rorick said. "They've budgeted for $35 million coverage, and now, to go to $50 million is not insignificant."

Rorick said the energy companies are factoring in those higher certificate costs when deciding whether to drill. "The (certificate of financial responsibility) amounts get into a company's business decisions - and whether or not it's worthwhile to drill that well," he said.

Bromwich said his agency won't be rushed and insisted that meeting historic approval levels shouldn't be an artificial goal for regulators.

jennifer.dlouhy@chron.com

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 18, 2010, 06:13:28 AM
Obama’s Job-Killing Regulations
Townhall.com ^ | October 18, 2010 | Lurita Doan



________________________ ________________________ __________


Barack Obama has a credibility problem. Obama has overpromised and under-delivered on countless issues such as the economy, job creation, healthcare reform and transparency. And, after 19 months of teleprompted platitudes, Obama has surrendered all credibility regarding the economy and Americans are skeptical of his latest promises.

For many Americans this has been the summer of discovery, not recovery. The rosy glow from electing the first African American president has faded and the failures and the flaws of Obama’s economic policies and Obama’s economic team have been exposed.

Americans are painfully aware that the 3.5 million jobs that Obama promised have not been created. Americans are painfully aware that the 3.5 million jobs weren’t saved either. Americans have seen that the shovel ready projects weren’t very ready and that transparency is a lot easier to talk about than to achieve. But what is most likely apparent to all Americans is that Obama has made mistakes.

Any experienced CEO knows that mistakes happen, that oftentimes plans don’t materialize as anticipated, and a course correction is required to save the enterprise. But Obama does not seem to have learned this lesson. As recently as last week, the President is still stumping, still trying to convince Americans that his economic recovery policies are working.

What’s hard to figure out is why Obama persists in using la-la land language to describe the outcomes of his economic policies.

I find myself wondering: is it possible that Obama actually believes the tripe that’s printed on his teleprompter? Is it possible that Obama hasn’t read any of the Bureau of Labor Statistic reports for the past 19 months, or the consumer price indices, or the CBO estimates, or the GDP indices, or the GAO reports or the Treasury department reports of the weekly sales of tens of billions of treasuries?

Or could his economic advisors have been assuring him that matters will improve? And he believed them?

Since July, most of the architects of the Obama Administration economic strategy for recovery have resigned. Consider: Peter Orszag, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Christina Romer, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, Larry Summers, Director of the National Economic Council and Herb Allison, the TARP Bailout Czar.

While some may try to sugar coat the reasons for their departures, preferring perhaps to believe that these departures are just the inevitable transition attrition at the two year point, or that the pressure, tensions, and the clash of strong personalities caused an unending jockeying for power among various members of the President’s economic team, these seem to be secondary reasons. The painful reality is that despite their top-tier academic credentials, the economic policy team didn’t live up to expectations and their economic policies didn’t work.

We’ve come a long way since December 2008 when Obama named his “dream team” of economic advisors, claiming to have selected “leaders who could offer both sound judgment and fresh thinking, both a depth of experience and a wealth of bold, new ideas”.

Instead, what Americans have seen is failed leadership at all levels of the Obama Administration’s economic policy team and a lack of innovation. The team may have had its internal squabbles, but they were united in their flawed beliefs that more government intervention, subsidies and control would be the cure to all economic ills. They were wrong and the country has suffered as a result.

So, what message are they now sending to our nation, facing the most severe, turbulent economic crisis in its history, when the team the president entrusted with charting the ship of state to calmer waters, jumps ship? No matter how the White House may try to sugar coat it, one can’t help thinking the president’s economic advisors are cutting their losses and hope to escape before being exposed.

There is a delusional quality to the ideology and the language used by the Administration. When Larry Summers coined the phrase “Summer of Recovery”, was he trying to ‘spin” the failed policies? Was he simply crafting a sound byte to give Dems cover while campaigning at home? Or was he delusional since he had access to all the data indicating the contrary?

There comes a point—and we seem to have reached that point—where the Obama Administration’s statements simply aren’t credible and our president, who reads them off the teleprompter each day, isn’t credible either. The president can continue to capture prime time TV to address Americans, but until he admits that his policies aren’t working, and some changes are going to have to be made, Obama will not be credible and will not be trusted by many Americans.

The departure of almost all of the leadership of Obama’s economic team provides the perfect opportunity for the president to do a course correction. As the Chinese say: it’s never too late to turn back on the wrong road.

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 18, 2010, 11:56:40 AM
Gallup: Next unemployment report will be worseS
by Ed Morrissey
www.hotair.com

________________________ ____


Gallup’s mid-month report on national unemployment gives a mixed outlook on joblessness, which winds up being mainly negative.  The surge in unemployment they found in September continued into October, but the number of long-term unemployed dropped slightly, as did part-time workers looking for full-time employment.  They expect a bigger number for the jobless rate on November 5th from the Department of Labor, perhaps into double digits:

Unemployment, as measured by Gallup without seasonal adjustment, is at 10.0% in mid-October — essentially the same as the 10.1% at the end of September but up sharply from 9.4% in mid-September and 9.3% at the end of August. This mid-month measurement confirms the late September surge in joblessness that should be reflected by the government’s Nov. 5 unemployment report. …
The decline in part-time workers wanting full-time work has led to a situation in which underemployment is declining even as unemployment is increasing. The 18.6% mid-October underemployment figure (the sum of the 10.0% unemployed and the 8.6% employed part time but wanting full-time work) is down slightly from 18.8% at the end of September and is the same as the reading in the middle of last month. …

In this regard, Gallup modeling suggests the government’s unemployment rate report for October will be in the 9.7% to 9.9% range when it is released Nov. 5. The government’s last report showed the U.S. unemployment rate at 9.6% in September on a seasonally adjusted basis, as Gallup anticipated. In addition to seasonal adjustments, the official unemployment rate is likely to be held down by a continued exodus of people from the workforce. It is easy for potential workers to become discouraged when the unemployment rate is expected to remain above 9% through the end of 2011.

Even the good news about the decline of underemployment is suspect, Gallup notes.  Because the topline unemployment figures keep rising, it appears that the decrease isn’t coming from part-timers finding full-time jobs.  Instead, they could be losing their jobs and dropping out of the workforce figures.

This will have little impact on the upcoming elections, of course, and for a couple of reasons.  First, the Gallup poll won’t get a whole lot of attention, even though it has shown to be a fairly reasonable indicator of overall results.  Second, the kind of unemployment the poll projects is close enough to already-known results to give it only a limited impact on midterm races and perceptions of the Obama administration’s economic policies.  Moving back to double digits might have more impact on electorate psychology, but that expectation may already be baked into the midterm cake.  And, of course, the actual DoL report won’t come out until three day after the election anyway.

Still, it’s worth keeping a close eye on the Gallup indicators as we move closer to the holiday season.  Gallup does not adjust figures for seasonal demand, which means that we should see an increase in employment soon if retailers expect to see a decent Christmas shopping season.  Some are predicting a mildly better season this year in both spending and employment:

Retailers are expected to add between 550,000 and 650,000 jobs nationally this holiday season, according to a forecast from the national outplacement firmChallenger, Gray and Christmas.

That’s more than the 501,400 added last year, but it’s still well below the 720,800 added in 2007, just as the recession was beginning.
Most of that will come at large retailers, though.  Small businesses won’t be hiring, but may expand hours for existing staff instead:
Much of the holiday hiring is taking place at national chains including Macy’s, Kohl’s and Toys R Us. Some smaller local retailers say they won’t be adding any more workers but could give current employees more hours.

That follows from better-than-expected retail numbers from September, announced last week.  It’s not recovery levels, but it’s better than the direction those indicators had been heading over most of the year.
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 18, 2010, 12:38:59 PM
U.S. To Train 3,000 Offshore IT Workers
http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/integration/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=226500202


$22 million, federally-backed program aims to help outsourcers in South Asia become more fluent in areas like Java programming—and the English language.

By Paul McDougall
InformationWeek
August 3, 2010 01:59 PM


________________________ ________________________ ___



Despite President Obama's pledge to retain more hi-tech jobs in the U.S., a federal agency run by a hand-picked Obama appointee has launched a $22 million program to train workers, including 3,000 specialists in IT and related functions, in South Asia.

Following their training, the tech workers will be placed with outsourcing vendors in the region that provide offshore IT and business services to American companies looking to take advantage of the Asian subcontinent's low labor costs.

David Fox, CEO of Agistix, talks about the company's logistics and supply chain management software as a service. The service gives customers visibility over their global supply chains, with built-in analytics and reporting features.Under director Rajiv Shah, the United States Agency for International Development will partner with private outsourcers in Sri Lanka to teach workers there advanced IT skills like Enterprise Java (Java EE) programming, as well as skills in business process outsourcing and call center support. USAID will also help the trainees brush up on their English language proficiency.

"To help fill workforce gaps in BPO and IT, USAID is teaming up with leading BPO and IT/English language training companies to establish professional IT and English skills development training centers," the U.S. Embassy in Colombo, Sri Lanka, said in a statement posted Friday on its Web site.

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"Courses in Business Process Outsourcing, Enterprise Java, and English Language Skills will be offered at no charge to over 3,000 under- and unemployed students who will then participate in on-the-job training schemes with private firms," the embassy said.

USAID is also partnering with Sri Lankan companies in other industries, including construction and garment manufacturing, to help create 10,000 new jobs in the country, which is still recovering from a 30-year civil war that ended in 2009.

But it's the outsourcing program that's sure to draw the most fire from critics. While Obama acknowledged that occupations such as garment making don't add much value to the U.S. economy, he argued relentlessly during his presidential run that lawmakers needed to do more to keep hi-tech jobs in IT, biological sciences, and green energy in the country.

He also accused the Bush administration of creating tax loopholes that made it easier for U.S. companies to place work offshore in low-cost countries.

As recently as Monday, Obama, speaking at a Democratic fundraiser in Atlanta, boasted about his efforts to reduce offshoring. The President said he's implemented "a plan that’s focused on making our middle class more secure and our country more competitive in the long run -- so that the jobs and industries of the future aren’t all going to China and India, but are being created right here in the United States of America."

Obama in January tapped Shah to head USAID. At the time of his appointment, Shah—whose experience in the development community included senior positions at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation—said the organization needed to focus more on helping developing nations build technology-based economies. "We need to develop new capabilities to pursue innovation, science, and technology," said Shaw, during his swearing in ceremony.

Sri Lanka's outsourcing industry is nascent, but growing as it begins to scoop up work from neighboring India.

In addition to homegrown firms, it's attracting investment from Indian outsourcers looking to expand beyond increasingly expensive tech hubs like Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Mumbai. In 2007, consultants at A.T. Kearney listed the country as 29th on their list of the top 50 global outsourcing destinations.




Emerging technology always comes with a learning curve. Here are some real-world lessons about cloud computing from early adopters. Download the latest all-digital issue of InformationWeek for that story and more. (Free registration required.)


________________________ ________________________ _________
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 18, 2010, 12:56:56 PM
Updated: Mon., Oct. 18, 2010, 5:19 AM 
Killing Marcus Welby
By SCOTT GOTTLIEB

Last Updated: 5:19 AM, October 18, 2010


________________________ ________________________ ____




If ObamaCare really called for the creation of "death panels," the first victim of these in vented tribunals would have been Marcus Welby MD, the character in the hit 1960s television show that followed the daily dramas of a small-town family doctor.

The health legislation doesn't call on government tribunals to euthanize seniors, as some fanciful critics claim, but the bill does kill off private-practice medicine.

ObamaCare envisions that doctors will fold their private offices to become salaried hospital employees, making it easier for the federal government to regulate them and centrally manage the costly medical services they prescribe. To get this control, ObamaCare creates "Accountable Care Organizations," which are basically hospitals coupled with local doctor networks that the hospital owns.

Under ObamaCare, an ACO is supposed to take "accountability" for local Medicare patients, who in turn get most care from providers working inside the ACO's network. To encourage efficiency and cost-cutting, an ACO can share in the savings it achieves from more closely managing its assigned pool of patients. The idea is to give doctors a financial incentive to better coordinate care and reduce their use of costly medical services.

The ACO concept was coined in 2006 by the same Dartmouth health researchers who famously found that higher Medicare spending doesn't correlate with better medical outcomes. Their data was controversial. Some experts refuted the findings. Even so, it became the intellectual foundation for ObamaCare's vision of "bending the cost curve" -- that you can improve medical outcomes by cutting Medicare spending. The ACOs have become Washington's most fashionable vehicle for pursuing that prophecy.

In many ways, the ACO concept builds on the 1990s approach to "capitation," in which health-maintenance organizations gave doctors a lump sum to care for a group of patients. This arrangement put a financial onus on doctors to cut costs. The concept lowered spending but was unpopular with patients, leading to a backlash against managed care.

Even if the Obama team dresses up the same concepts in a new acronym, their regulatory impulse to tightly manage how these organizations operate tilts the ACOs into the hands of hospitals. It forces doctors to sell their medical practices to these networks if the physicians want to maintain what they're paid by Medicare.

Obama's health-care czar, Nancy Ann DeParle, laid bare this financial coercion. Writing recently in the "Annals of Internal Medicine," she said that "the economic forces put in motion by [the Obama health-care plan] are likely to lead to vertical organization of providers and accelerate physician employment by hospitals and aggregation into larger physician groups." Physicians, she said, "that accept the challenge will be rewarded in the future payment system" as ObamaCare "reforms" how doctors are paid under Medicare.

The Obama plan contains other economic forces that will drive such "vertical integration" in which doctors become employees of hospitals and health plans. For one, under ObamaCare, health plans will see their revenue (premiums) and costs (medical benefits) largely fixed by government regulation. So the only way health plans can improve their profits is by cheapening the product that they provide, in other words, holding down the cost of the health coverage that they offer.

In turn, the only way to cheapen health coverage is to control the medical services consumers can access. The only way to tightly control the use of medical services is to exert more leverage over the doctors who order the tests and treatments. That means health plans will need to maintain tight networks of providers to exert more control over doctors -- or else own the physicians outright. So expect to see health plans doing their own "vertical integration" -- buying out medical practices, just like hospitals are doing.

According to a recent survey of health executives, 74 percent said their hospitals or health systems plan to employ more physicians over the next 3 years, and 61 percent plan to acquire medical groups. The doctor-recruitment firm Merritt Hawkins said that 45 percent of physician job searches last year were for direct employment of a doctor by a hospital, up from 23 percent in 2005.

In 2005, more than two-thirds of medical practices were doctor-owned, a share that was largely constant for many years. By next year, the share of practices owned by physicians will probably drop below 40 percent, according to data from the Medical Group Management Association. Hospitals or health plans will own the balance of doctor practices.

So the next time you see your doctor, it may be far from home, in an office park built by your nearest hospital. Thanks to ObamaCare, Marcus Welby is taking down his shingle. He's becoming an employee of General Hospital.

Scott Gottlieb, a physician and American Enterprise Institute resi dent fellow, is a partner in a firm that invests in health-care compa nies.

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 18, 2010, 01:28:44 PM
The Obama Debt Tracker - more than $3 trillion of new national debt in 21 months
The United States Department of the Treasury ^ | Monday October 18, 2010 | The United States Department of the Treasury



________________________ ________________________ _

Since President Barack Hussein Obama was inaugurated into office a bit less than 21 months ago, Obama, Pelosi, and Reid have increased the total combined national debt by more than three trillion dollars:


Date                   Debt Held by the Public         Intragovernmental Holdings   Total Public Debt Outstanding



01/20/2009         6,307,310,739,681.66         4,319,566,309,231.42         10,626,877,048,913.08
10/18/2010         9,059,271,396,291.56         4,606,655,246,964.40         13,665,926,643,255.96



In this time period, the debt has increased precisely $3,039,049,594,342.88, and worst of all, the overwhelming bulk of this is debt held by the public which has been borrowed from foreign governments like the communist Chinese.


This is an absolutely mind-blowing increase of roughly one trillion dollars every seven months, or approximately $4.8 billion each and every single day. Three trillion dollars is a bit less than $10,000 for every single man, woman, and child in the United States.



And given that true economic recovery appears to be nowhere in sight and the federal reserve continues to endlessly monetize the debt and pump countless billions into the markets via quantitative easing, it is pretty much a certainly that the next trillion dollars of debt will be accumulated by the middle of next year.

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 18, 2010, 02:51:52 PM
Boeing To Raise Employee Costs Thanks To Obamacare
By Carole on Oct 18, 2010 | Comment »


________________________ ________________________ ___


 Aircraft manufacturer Boeing Comany is the latest mega employer claiming the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare) is part of why its employees will have to pay more for their medical benefits next year. In a letter mailed to employees late last week, Boeing said deductibles and copayments are going up significantly for some 90,000 non-union workers due in part to the effects of the new law. (source)

Continued...

President Obama and his fellow Democrats who pushed the unpopular legislation through Congress have stated repeatedly that the law would bring down individuals' costs for health insurance. Meanwhile the debate over the obscenely expensive bill raged on with Republican lawmakers and the majority of the American people speaking out against the far-reaching government power grab disguised as reform. Announcements like Boeing's are proving the opposition right.

Boeing joins other companies like 3M which earlier this month announced it will stop offering its health insurance plan to their 23,000 retirees in response to Obamacare's passage. (source)

While Boeing cited two additional reasons for the cost shift including untamed health care inflation and lifestyle issues such as being overweight, company spokeswoman Karen Forte said the company is concerned that its relatively generous plan will get hit with a new tax under the law in 2018.

Tags: 3m, boeing, employer, health care, karen forte, obabacare, obama, patient protection and affordable care act, unemplyment
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 18, 2010, 03:10:19 PM
Citing health care law, Boeing pares employee plan
By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR, Associated Press Writer Ricardo Alonso-zaldivar, Associated Press Writer – 6 mins ago


________________________ _____


WASHINGTON – Aerospace giant Boeing is joining the list of companies that say the new health care law could have a potential downside for their workers.

In a letter mailed to employees late last week, the company cited the overhaul as part of the reason it is asking some 90,000 nonunion workers to pay significantly more for their health plan next year. A copy of the letter was obtained Monday by The Associated Press.

"The newly enacted health care reform legislation, while intended to expand access to care for millions of uninsured Americans, is also adding cost pressure as requirements of the new law are phased in over the next several years," wrote Rick Stephens, Boeing's senior vice president for human resources.

Boeing is the latest major employer to signal a shift for its workers as a result of the legislation, which expands coverage to more than 30 million uninsured people and ranks as President Barack Obama's top domestic achievement. Earlier, McDonald's had raised questions about whether a limited benefit plan that serves some 30,000 of its employees would remain viable under the law. That prompted the administration to issue the plan of a waiver from certain requirements under the law.

Spokeswoman Karen Forte said the Boeing plan is more generous than what its closest competitors offer, and the company was concerned it would get hit with a new tax under the law.

The tax on so-called "Cadillac" health plans doesn't take effect until 2018, but employers are already beginning to assess their exposure because it is hefty: at 40 percent of the value above $10,200 for individual coverage and $27,500 for a family plan.

"We want to manage our costs so this tax doesn't apply to our plan, but that's down the road," said Forte. "If this health care law hadn't passed, would we be making changes to the health care benefit? Absolutely. For competitive reasons."

In the letter to Boeing employees, Stephens said out-of-control health care inflation is hampering Boeing's ability to compete with other manufacturers. Its major civilian aviation competitor, Airbus, is based in Europe, where governments shoulder the burden of health care costs.

Stephens also cited lifestyle issues, such as people who are overweight and do not adequately exercise, as a the third major reason for the cost shift. The health care law ranked second among the three, ahead of lifestyle factors.

Boeing said annual deductibles and copayments will increase for all its plans next year.

Deductibles, the share of medical costs that employees pay annually before their plan kicks in, will go up to $300 for individuals, an increase of $100. For families, the new deductible will be $900, an increase of $300.

In addition, Boeing is instituting a copayment of 10 percent after the deductible has been met. The copayment will rise to 20 percent in 2012.

Those changes will reduce the value of the Boeing plan, but it's unclear whether that will allow the company to escape the tax looming in 2018.

"It's certainly going to help," said Forte. But "we are still slightly above market in what we offer to our employees."


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Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 19, 2010, 05:19:58 AM
October 19, 2010
The EPA'S Odd View of 'Consumer Choice'
By Patrick Michaels
www.realclearpolitics.co m

________________________ _____________

Earlier this month, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed in a "Notice of Intent" that passenger vehicle fuel economy average as much as 62 miles per gallon 14 years from now. The agency was able to arrive at this lofty mark by conveniently ignoring everything we know about the state of automotive art and the marketplace today.

For one thing, the average passenger car is going to have to get a lot more than 62 mpg to meet EPA's standard. People are still going to need trucks, vans, and high-volume vehicles that will fall far short of the 62-mpg standard. As a result, what is today's Honda Civic or Ford Fusion is somehow going to have to crank out about 80 miles per gallon.


Today, the vaunted hybrid versions of those cars generally deliver 35-40 mpg if driven with a very light touch. ("Your mileage will vary.")

The current mileage champion, at 50 mpg, is the third-generation Toyota Prius. But don't look for that design to meet EPA's prospective standard; it's just too heavy to squeeze much more juice out of the gas.

To bolster its 62-mpg proposal, EPA produced a numbing 245-page analysis of prospective automotive technologies -- many of which don't exist, the rest of which have been rejected by consumers. The report doesn't mandate any one technology, but instead offers a myriad of pipe-dream possibilities.

Why aren't these technologies widely available now? Excellent question -- especially because this isn't the government's first attempt to command the 80-mpg passenger car.

In 1993, the Clinton administration grandiosely announced the "Program for a New Generation of Vehicles" (PNGV), which showered the then-Big Three with about a billion bucks to produce a fuel-sipper. It never appeared.

The technological solutions proposed then really aren't very different from what we see now. Cost and acceptability were the two factors that condemned the PNGV to failure, and things haven't changed enough to expect a different result today.

A non-participant in PNGV, Honda, decided to throw every fuel-saving technology it could muster into one platform. It hit 66 mpg with the 2000 Insight, a frameless 1,850-pound aluminum vehicle that seats two.

Consumer demand? An average of 2,250 sold annually in the six years it was offered.

Despite the relative success of Toyota's Prius, the fact is that people just aren't flocking to hybrid vehicles. Their lack of appeal mainly has to do with price; people just don't want to pony up an additional cost that may take more than 10 years to recoup at the gas pump.

Despite this history, EPA thinks there will be a massive shift to subcompact cars in the next six years. Instead of the Accord, you get the Fit. Camrys turn into Yarises. Consumer preferences magically change.

Indeed.

EPA forecasts that despite their current unpopularity, hybrid sales will grow by orders of magnitude. Especially large numbers of Honda-style hybrids are predicted to be purchased (despite the fact that hybrid customers clearly prefer the heavier Toyota and Ford versions).

Sales of "plug-in" hybrids also supposedly will take off. These are vehicles that can run on battery power alone for 20-40 miles, and then (as in the new Chevrolet Volt) a gas engine kicks in as a generator. EPA is also counting on pure electric vehicles, with a range of up to 100 miles before they must be charged -- a process that takes hours at special charging stations on the street or overnight at home.

Drive the Chevy Volt more than 30 or so miles and it will be powered by a generator -- not a motor -- inefficiently powering a 3,500-pound car. No one knows the true fuel economy, but it's not even likely to beat the Prius in real-world driving. That leaves us a long way from 80 mpg.

(The above information about the Volt was what I was told by a GM engineer at the Detroit auto show last January, while sitting in the very car. GM revealed on Oct. 10 that the internal combustion engine indeed will drive the wheels at high speed. This is no breakthrough automobile; on the freeway it is a conventional hybrid.)

Then there's the heavily subsidized, all-electric Nissan Leaf. The company's president, Carlos Ghosn, says he will be happy to produce them as long as Uncle Sam guarantees him a profit on a vehicle that simply can't stand on its own four wheels. The electricity that charges it probably comes from the combustion of fossil fuels, which emit greenhouse gases. Calculating the actual mpg of this car is therefore complicated at best.

So far as one can tell from EPA's 62-mpg proposal, the agency thinks that in a mere 14 years Americans will buy hybrids that they can't stand, subcompacts that families hate, an electric car that can only run 30 miles before it likely becomes more inefficient than its conventional counterpart, and a 100-mile electric car that requires hours of charging once it runs out of juice.

This piece appeared here and is reprinted with permission.
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 19, 2010, 05:29:58 AM
ObamaCare will
clog system
Updated 8h 40m ago
By Marc Siegel
www.usatoday.com

________________________ ____________________


 A month ago, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius sent a letter to the
president of America's Health Insurance Plans stating that the impact on insurance premiums from
"the new consumer protections and increased quality provisions" of the new health reform law "will
be minimal ... no more than 1% to 2%." Sebelius warned Karen Ignagni that there would be "zero
tolerance" for insurers blaming unjustified premium increases on the new law. Talk about subtle.

 Sebelius' threat, though, obscures a larger problem:
 
The new health care law mandates and extends the kind of insurance that breeds overuse, thereby
driving up costs and premiums. And here I thought the reform intended to reduce costs.

As the details of this massive government-led health care overhaul begin to trickle out, let me be clear (to
borrow the president's go-to phrase): The medical system is about to be overwhelmed because there
are no disincentives for overuse.

A free-for-all

ObamaCare was lauded by many for covering all Americans with pre-existing conditions. That's not
the issue. We're going to get into trouble because of the kinds of coverage that the new law mandates.
There are no brakes on the system. Co-pays and deductibles will be kept low, and preventive services
will have no co-pays at all. That sounds like a good deal for patients, yes? But without at least a pause to
consider necessity and/or cost, expect waiting times to increase, ERs to be clogged and longer lead
times needed to make an appointment.

Patients with new Medicaid cards who can't find a doctor will go where? To emergency rooms. The
escalating costs of these visits (necessary and unnecessary) will be transferred directly to the
American public, both in the form of taxes as well as escalating insurance premiums.

Beginning in 2014, insurance exchanges will be set up in every state so that individuals can choose a health insurance plan. This will help control costs, right? Wrong. Don't expect to find individually tailored plans or those with higher deductibles or
co-pays. They won't be there because they can't receive the government stamp of approval.

In the new system, my patients will be able to see me as often as they'd like. But will they get the same
level of care? I don't think so. I anticipate that more expensive chemotherapies and cardiac stents or
transplants, for instance, will have a tougher time being approved, as is already the case in Canada.

Over on the public side, the new Independent Payment Advisory Board — established by the health
reform law to "recommend proposals to limit Medicare spending growth" — will advise Medicare
that some treatments are more essential and more cost-effective than others. I believe that value
judgments inevitably will have to be made, reducing my options as a practicing physician. Private
insurers will follow suit, as they often do.

During the battle over this reform, you often heard, even from President Obama, that you'd be able to
keep the plan you have. What he didn't say — but what we now know — is that because of this new
law, the private markets will have to remake their plans, that the costs will rise and that the plan you
were told you could "keep" is in all likelihood no longer available. But when your plan changes,
backers of reform will simply blame it on those evil private insurance companies.

The truth is, private health insurance is a low-profit industry, with profit margins of 4% compared with
over 20% for major drug manufacturers. With the additional costs of no lifetime caps and no
exclusion for pre-existing conditions, these companies will be compelled to raise their
premiums in order to stay in business. The individual mandate is supposed to be the tradeoff
by providing millions of new customers, but there is no guarantee that this additional volume will
preserve profits with all the new regulations. This is what occurred in New York state in 1992, when a
new law denied exclusion on the basis of pre-existing conditions.

Every scratch or dent

None of this is terribly surprising. I mean, imagine if your car insurance covered every scratch or dent.
Wouldn't you expect your premiums to rise to meet the expanded coverage? And wouldn't you expect
your auto repair shops to become clogged with cars that didn't really need to be repaired, competing for
time and space with other cars with broken transmissions or burnt-out motors?

If we want lower insurance premiums, we will need to return to a system that favors high deductible,
high co-pay catastrophic-type insurance with a built-in disincentive for overuse, such as the kind
that some employers have provided as an option up until now. Patients could pay for office visits from
health savings accounts or other flexible spending tax shelters. More than 10 million Americans
already have such accounts.

Unfortunately, the new law is taking us away from the kind of insurance that compels patients to have
more skin in the game. As a result, we'll all pay in the long run — both financially and with less
efficient, perhaps even lower quality, care.

The kind of insurance the new law mandates will, over the years, wear out the health care system in
the same way that overuse in orthopedics wears out an elbow or knee joint. This won't be fun for
doctors or, most important, for patients.

Marc Siegel is an associate professor of medicine and medical director of Doctor Radio at NYU Langone Medical Center.

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 19, 2010, 07:07:07 AM
New York Fed Chief Says The Economy Is Garbage, And That There Won't Be A Jobs Recovery For Years
The Business Insider ^ | 10-19-2010 | Joe Weisenthal



New York Fed Chief Says The Economy Is Garbage, And That There Won't Be A Jobs Recovery For Years

Joe Weisenthal
Oct. 19, 2010, 9:40 AM

Here's your first of many Fed speeches for the day, courtesy of NYFRB CEO Dudley:

----------------

Remarks at the Quarterly Regional Economic Press Briefing, New York City

Good morning and welcome once again to the New York Fed's Quarterly Regional Economic Press Briefing. As always, I am pleased to have this opportunity to talk with the journalists covering our region—and through you, to the people in our District. This morning I will focus on regional economic conditions, with particular attention to the housing sector in the nation and especially the Second Federal Reserve District, which covers New York, northern New Jersey, Fairfield County, Connecticut; Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. My colleagues will follow my remarks and provide more detail. As always, what I have to say reflects my own views and not necessarily those of the Federal Open Market Committee or the Federal Reserve System.

National Economic Conditions To provide context, let me start with a few comments about national economic conditions. As I discussed in a recent speech, the long and deep recession that ended in June 2009 has been followed by a very tepid recovery. Since June 2009, economic activity has grown—but only slowly from levels far below the productive capacity of the economy.

In recent months, the momentum of the recovery has slowed. For example, after rising at a 3.25 percent annual rate during the second half of 2009, there has been a progressive slowing—to a 2.75 percent annual rate during the first half of 2010 and, most likely, to an even slower rate when the third-quarter real gross domestic product (GDP)

[snip].


(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 19, 2010, 09:19:05 AM
Obama administration to press bans on all cell-phone use while driving?; Update: Poll added
Hot Air ^ | 11:36 am on October 18, 2010 | Ed Morrissey


________________________ ________________________ ______________________


We must have solved all our other problems if the Obama administration is aiming at cell-phone use while driving. In his interview with Bloomberg, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood says he may push for an all-out ban on the practice, even when conducted by “hands-free” technology, depending on the results of research LaHood is authorizing. Perhaps he should also research jurisdiction and enforcement as well (via The Week):

LaHood, whose campaign against texting and making calls while driving has led to restrictions in 30 states, says his concerns extend to vehicle information and entertainment systems such as Ford Motor Co.’s Sync and General Motors Co.’s OnStar.

“I don’t want people talking on phones, having them up to their ear or texting while they’re driving,” LaHood said in an interview this week. “We need a lot better research on other distractions,” including Bluetooth-enabled hands-free calls and the in-car systems, he said.

Even without a ban, which would have to be implemented by individual states, LaHood’s escalating campaign may limit the growth of vehicle features such as Sync, being added by automakers to attract younger buyers. His push also may reduce calls made from vehicles and the revenue of mobile-phone companies such as Verizon Wireless and AT&T Inc.

LaHood, 64, said even hands-free phone conversations are a “cognitive distraction.” Calling for a ban on hands-free communications is a possible outcome of research under way at the Transportation Department’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration into all driver distractions, Olivia Alair, a department spokeswoman, said.


(Excerpt) Read more at hotair.com ...
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Kazan on October 19, 2010, 09:22:29 AM
While I agree that talking/texting while driving is stupid, this is a state issue and federal government needs to back the fuck off. I'm getting tired of these unelected officials and government created department making policy
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 19, 2010, 09:24:15 AM
“I don’t want people talking on phones, having them up to their ear or texting while they’re driving,” LaHood said in an interview this week. “We need a lot better research on other distractions,” including Bluetooth-enabled hands-free calls and the in-car systems, he said.  

________________________ _____________


>:(   >:(
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Kazan on October 19, 2010, 09:28:49 AM
“I don’t want people talking on phones, having them up to their ear or texting while they’re driving,” LaHood said in an interview this week. “We need a lot better research on other distractions,” including Bluetooth-enabled hands-free calls and the in-car systems, he said.  

________________________ _____________


>:(   >:(

Oh he doesn't want, where exactly did this guy get that kind of power?
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 19, 2010, 09:30:49 AM
Oh he doesn't want, where exactly did this guy get that kind of power?

Its called - FUCK YOU KAZAN - YOU DON'T MATTER - DO AS I SAY OR ELSE!
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Kazan on October 19, 2010, 11:14:41 AM
Its called - FUCK YOU KAZAN - YOU DON'T MATTER - DO AS I SAY OR ELSE!

That in it self is the point, as long as we the people allow them to do this shit they will.
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 19, 2010, 02:30:42 PM
DEMOCRATS’ NEW MISFIRE ON HEALTH CARE
18 October 2010
www.thedailybeast.com

________________________ _____________________

It’s probably too late to save the party from electoral disaster next month. But Obama and the Democrats can turn health care from an albatross into a positive for 2012 by flipping their script on the issue, says Douglas E. Schoen.

By Douglas Schoen
The Daily Beast

Earlier this year, top Democrats forecast boldly that once the president’s health-care bill passed, seemingly reluctant Americans would support the legislation.

They were wrong.

Back then, I wrote with Pat Caddell that ignoring the growing public opinion against the bill meant that the Democrats risked “unmitigated disaster” this fall.

Just a month before the midterm elections, the polls have demonstrated that my prediction was closer to the mark than that of the White House, and the administration and the Democrats are suffering as a result.

At least half, if not more, of the American people favor repealing the bill, according to a recent Rasmussen poll of likely voters, and other polling has echoed that finding.

Right now, almost all the Democrats who voted against the bill are campaigning against it. And most Democrats who voted for the legislation are distancing themselves as much as they can.

Both groups are avoiding talking about what the electorate wants and requires: a smart, reasonable, and rational discussion about health care in the next two years.

But by changing their dialogue fundamentally on health care, the Democrats can turn what almost certainly will prove to be an electoral disaster this year into a positive going forward—both for congressional Democrats and President Obama, as he approaches 2012.

The health-care reform bill actually contains a number of components that are popular on a bipartisan basis, and can be emphasized—both in the waning days of the campaign, and in the future—as long as the Democrats fundamentally change their approach to the issue. 
Only with a different type of dialogue, message, and policies can they regain the high ground on health care and do what the American people want: contain costs, provide high-quality care, and take steps to rein in excesses in the system.


The American people do want insurance reform that prevents insurance companies from dropping coverage for people who become very ill. And they don’t want insurance companies to deny coverage to patients with preexisting conditions, which will be prohibited as of 2014.

The majority of Americans support a number of long-overdue reforms included in the bill that allow families to get free preventive check-ups with their doctor and young adults to stay on their parents’ insurance plans, and eliminating the “doughnut hole” in Medicare prescription drug coverage.

There’s no need for the Democrats to run away from these popular elements of the bill, if they are put in the appropriate issue frame.

But if they are to have a meaningful dialogue on health care, the Democrats must talk not only about these popular initiatives, but also about what they have done and will do to curtail costs, as well as to develop new drugs.

Put simply, the Democrats must talk about health care within the context of fiscal discipline and budgetary restraint, specifically referencing the work of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, a bipartisan commission chaired by former Sen. Alan Simpson (R-WY) and former Clinton chief of staff Erskine Bowles that has been charged with addressing the nation’s overall budget problems.

The party must exhibit a willingness to take on all aspects of spending and make clear that the administration is committed to entitlement reform while addressing the large-scale fiscal problems facing the nation.

But beyond that the Democrats must put forth a national strategy that facilitates and encourages private sector innovation as one of the critical ways to resolve our economic crisis and create a path that ensures long-term economic opportunities are facilitated, as well as developing the cutting-edge technologies and new drugs we need to help cure chronic, debilitating, and frequently fatal diseases.

If the Democrats can succeed in doing this in a way that makes it clear that they have a positive and optimistic agenda, they will be able to achieve two goals the American people regard as fundamental:

Address costs in a serious and sustained manner.

They can talk about cost containment in several ways.

The Democrats should talk about reducing insurance costs—not simply by bashing insurance companies but by working with them constructively, as part of a public-private sector initiative.

To that end, IBM CEO Samuel Palmisano recently met with Obama and offered to work, free of charge, to reduce health-care waste, fraud, and costs by $900 billion. The Obama administration turned down this offer flat, for reasons best known to itself.

To be fair, the new health-care law did attempt to contain Medicare costs through a new body called the Independent Payment Advisory Board, which has gotten little attention to date.

Medicare cost containment is critical, and the IPAB has the opportunity to become a model of bipartisanship, efficacy, and accountability to average voters by functioning as the body to rein in Medicare’s cost growth.

Finally, there needs to be a commitment to and a mechanism that takes the recommendations of the bipartisan budget commission and the IPAB and make them operational.

The bottom line remains that unless the Democrats are able to become credible advocates for cost containment, they will not succeed politically, and they certainly will not begin to have any success in doing what the American people regard as fundamental: reining in costs.

Health-care reform has been an unmitigated disaster to date, that’s for sure. But it does not have to be that way going forward.

With an emphasis on those aspects of the bill that work, an acknowledgement that the health-care reform needs to be fundamentally recast to encourage innovation and the development of new drugs, and by putting cost containment at the center of all efforts going forward, the Democrats have the chance to recast an initiative that could well play a major role in costing them control of the House and the Senate next month.

Douglas Schoen is a political strategist and author of the upcoming book Mad as Hell: How the Tea Party Movement is Fundamentally Remaking Our Two-Party System to be published by Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins on September 14. Schoen has worked on numerous campaigns, including those of Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Michael Bloomberg, Evan Bayh, Tony Blair, and Ed Koch.

See Related: LOCAL POLITICS
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 20, 2010, 05:43:32 AM

Arthur Brooks: Top 10 ways government kills jobs in America
By: Arthur Brooks
OpEd Contributor


________________________ ________________________ ___________


October 19, 2010


Our politicians all seem to agree on at least one thing: There will be no recovery unless America gets back to work.

But that’s often where the agreement ends.  Once you move on to discuss how to get America back to work, opinions begin to diverge.

In general, the worst thing for job creation is a poor entrepreneurial climate.  Such a climate is brought on by the large fiscal debt, unpredictable health care costs, and a generally anti-business and pro-regulation approach by government.

In the run-up to the midterm elections, all of us should be thinking about “climate change”—about the best ways to create jobs in our nation.  We’ll hear lots of talk about recovery and stimulus, about fairness and equity, the future and change.

As we listen to the rhetoric, remember the reality.  These are the Top job killers in America.

1.      Uncertainty and business: What you don’t know can (and does) hurt you.  Businesses plan around rules.  And they are unlikely to invest if they can’t be reasonably sure about what the rules will be.  When things are uncertain, businesses hold back cash to protect themselves—and this kills jobs. My colleague Allan Meltzer has made this point in two recent WSJ op-eds: “High uncertainty is the enemy of investment and growth,” he declares in one.  “The most important restriction on investment today is not tight monetary policy, but uncertainty about administration policy,” he argues in the other.

2.      Uncertainty and the consumer: Uncertainty isn’t just bad for companies—it’s bad for consumers, too. If I think government policy may provoke a double dip in the economy and my job is on the line, there’s no way I’m going out to buy a new car.  For that matter, even the possibility of a huge gas tax would make me less likely to make a car purchase decision. All this kills jobs.

3.      High corporate taxes: Americans are shocked to learn that we have some of the highest corporate taxes in the world.  In fact, Japan is the only developed country with a higher corporate tax rate than the United States. Whether we like it or not, the corporate tax is a tax on jobs. It makes it more expensive for firms to function, which costs jobs. But even worse, it drives companies to find more tax-friendly environments in other countries.

4.      Unhealthy health insurance costs: The high health insurance costs associated with hiring new workers hits small businesses particularly hard, according to AEI economist Aparna Mathur. Government health mandates specify exactly what kinds of coverage have to be included in insurance policies.  This makes increasing headcount a costly exercise, and so kills jobs. One major CEO told me recently that his hiring was stunted by the new mandate to cover workers’ kids up to age 26.

5.      The threat of unionization: In a global economy, it’s fairly simple for a lot of firms to avoid unionization: They can move overseas and take their jobs with them. Policies that favor unions make this decision more attractive.

6.      Inability to hire and fire: In Europe, government regulations and employment protection laws reduce the flexibility of firms to downsize their operations when they need to.  They also discourage those same firms from upsizing their operations when they would otherwise do so, and are thus a job killer. This is why Spain has a 20% unemployment rate (and about 40% among workers under 25). Restrictions on firing are a job killer.

7.      Trade restrictions: Free trade favors consumers everywhere, and benefits workers in industries where America has a comparative advantage. Tariffs and other barriers benefit industries that are already in decline. This is why economists always tell us that over the long run, trade barriers slow modernization are a net job killer.

8.      Credit: Poor credit access especially hurts new and young firms that are eager to expand their operations.  The new Consumer Financial Protection Agency could make matters worse by expanding burdensome regulation of these financial markets, killing jobs in the process.

9.      Increasing unemployment insurance: Everyone wants to ease the burden on the unemployed, so it is tempting to extend unemployment insurance, as our government has recently—today, to as much as 73 additional weeks. Unfortunately, this kills jobs and economic recovery. Harvard economist Robert Barro estimates that if unemployment insurance had not been expanded, the unemployment rate would now be 6.8% rather than 9.5%.

10. Encouraging frivolous lawsuits: This increases the costs of doing business in America, with one study estimating that we waste as much as $900 billion a year on excessive tort litigation—that’s 6.5 percent of GNP or $12,000 annually for a family of four. As a result, company capital that could be used for expansion and job creation goes to the trial lawyers instead. And like so many anti-business measures, such litigation drives up costs for consumers, which reduces demand and kills jobs even more.

Arthur Brooks is president of the American Enterprise Institute and author of The Battle: How the fight between free enterprise and big government will shape America’s future.



Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/OpEd-Contributor/Arthur-Brooks-Top-10-ways-government-kills-jobs-in-America-105302968.html#ixzz12u0coDBf

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 20, 2010, 06:09:04 AM
THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION’S RECORD FROM THE OUTRAGEOUS TO THE ABSURD


________________________ ________________________ _______________


$26.2 Trillion:   Projected Federal Debt In 2020 Due To Obama’s Binge Spending. (OMB, 7/23/10)

$13.6 Trillion:   Current National Debt. (U.S. Treasury Department, Accessed 10/19/10)

$8.5 Trillion:     Cumulative Deficits Caused By President Obama’s Proposed Budget, FY2011-2020. (OMB, 7/23/10)

$3.9 Trillion:     Total Cost Of The Democrats’ Tax Hike To Taxpayers. (Joint Committee On Taxation, 8/6/10)

$3.0 Trillion:     Amount Added To The National Debt Since Obama Took Office. (U.S. Treasury Department, Accessed 10/19/10)

$2.5 Trillion:     True Cost Of ObamaCare Once Fully Implemented. (Sen. Max Baucus, Floor Remarks, 12/2/09)

$1.42 Trillion:   Federal Budget Deficit For FY2009 – Highest In U.S. History. (Congressional Budget Office, 10/7/10)

$1.29 Trillion:   Federal Budget Deficit For FY2010 – Second Highest In U.S. History. (Congressional Budget Office, 10/7/10)

$868.4 Billion:  American Debt Held By China. (U.S. Treasury Department, Accessed 10/19/10)

$831 Billion:     Net Interest Payment On Our National Debt In 2020 Due To Obama’s Budget. (OMB, 7/23/10)

$814 Billion:     Price Tag Of Obama’s Failed Stimulus. (Bloomberg, 8/20/10)

$575 Billion:     Amount Of Medicare Cuts In ObamaCare. (CMS Chief Actuary Richard S. Foster, Memo, 4/22/10)

$569.2 Billion:  Amount Of Taxes In ObamaCare. (Letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, 3/18/10)

$10 Billion:      The Cost Of The Teacher Union Bailout. (The Washington Post, 10/8/10)

$54 Million:      Amount Of Stimulus Funds Spent On A Napa Valley Wine Train. (ABC News’ “Good Morning America,” 2/2/10)

41.8 Million:     Number Of Americans Receiving Food Stamps. (Bloomberg, 10/5/10)

40 Million:        Number Of Businesses That Will Be Burdened By The Onerous IRS 1099 Requirement. (The Washington Post, 8/29/10)

$18 Million:      Cost Of The Stimulus Website Recovery.org. (ABC News’ “The Note“ Blog, 7/8/09)

14.8 Million:     Unemployed Americans. (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 10/8/10)

9.5 Million:       Americans Working Part-Time For Economic Reasons. (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 10/8/10)

6.1 Million:       Americans Unemployed For Longer Than 27 Weeks. (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 10/8/10)

5.4 Million:       Number Of Properties Receiving Foreclosure Filings Since Obama Took Office. (RealtyTrac, Accessed 10/19/10)

3.8 Million:       Increase In the Number Of People Who Were In Poverty In 2009 Over 2008. (NPR, 9/16/10)

2.6 Million:       Jobs Lost Since Stimulus Was Passed. (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 10/8/10)

2.3 Million:       Private Sector Jobs Lost Since Stimulus Was Passed. (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 10/8/10)

1.2 Million:       Americans That Have Given Up Looking For Work. (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 10/8/10)

964,900:            Number Of Jobs That Could Be Lost Per Year Under Cap And Trade. (Tax Foundation, 3/09)

89,000:             The Number Of Stimulus Checks Sent to Dead Or Incarcerated People. (The Wall Street Journal's Washington Wire" Blog, 10/7/10)

$43,000:            Your Share Of The National Debt. (“The Daily History Of The Debt Results,” TreasuryDirect, Accessed 10/19/10; U.S. Census Bureau, www.census.gov, Accessed 10/1910)

23,000:             The Number Of Jobs Obama Knew His Drilling Moratorium Could Kill. (The Wall Street Journal, 8/21/10)

22,000:             Number Of Seniors In MA, NH And ME That Will Lose Their Medicare Advantage Plans As A Result Of ObamaCare. (The Boston Globe, 9/28/10)

$1,761:             Cost To American Families Per Year As A Result Of Cap And Trade. (CBS News' "Taking Liberties" Blog, 9/16/09)

$1,540:             The Amount Of The Tax Hike The Average Middle Class Family Will See As A Result Of The Dems’ Tax Hike. (Tax Foundation, 8/1/10)

1099:                The IRS Form Every Business Will Have To File After Doing $600 Worth Of Business With A Vendor. (CNNMoney.com, 5/5/10)

100:                  Percent Of GDP That Our National Debt Will Rise To In 2012. (Office Of Management And Budget, 7/23/10)

83:                    Number Of Fundraisers Obama Has Attended As Of 10/12/10. (CBS News' Mark Knoller’s Twitter Feed, Accessed 10/19/10; CBS News, 8/16/10)

80:                    Percent Of Small Businesses That Could Be Forced To Change Health Care Plans As A Result Of ObamaCare. (The Washington Post, 6/15/10)

79:                    Percent Of Stimulus Funds For Wind, Solar And Geothermal Energy Projects That Went To Foreign Firms. (Investigating Reporting Workshop/ABC’s World News Tonight/Watchdog Institute, 2/8/10)

68:                    Percent Of Americans Who Think The Stimulus Was A Waste. (The Hill's “Briefing Room” Blog, 10/5/10)

60:                    The Percent Of Young Voters Who Are “More Cynical About Politics” Now Than When Obama Was Elected. (The Huffington Post, 9/15/10)

58:                    Percent Of Ohioans Who Say Obama’s Frequent Visits To The State Make No Difference In How They’ll Vote. (The Hill, 10/19/10)

53:                    Rounds Of Golf Played By President Obama Since Taking Office. (CBS News' Mark Knoller’s Twitter Feed, Accessed 10/19/10; CBS News' Mark Knoller’s Twitter Feed, Accessed 10/19/10 )

49:                    Visits To The White House By Andy Stern, Former President Of SEIU. (WhiteHouse.gov, Accessed 10/19/10)

37:                    Number Of Town Halls Obama Has Done Since Taking Office. (CBS News’ Mark Knoller’s Twitter Feed, Accessed 10/19/10)

33.3:                 Average Number Of Weeks It Takes An Unemployed Worker To Find A Job. (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 10/8/10)

30:                    Number Of Waivers Granted To Businesses So That The White House Could Avoid Admitting ObamaCare Was Making People Lose Their Health Care Plans. (USA Today, 10/7/10)

27:                    Percent Increase In Premiums By Some Insurers In Colorado As A Result Of ObamaCare. (The Denver Post, 9/20/10)

25:                    DVDs Given To The UK’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown On His First Visit. (The Daily Mail (UK), 3/9/10)

20:                    Straight Months That Food Stamp Participation Has Hit A Record. (Bloomberg, 10/5/10)

17.1:                 Percent Of Americans Either Unemployed Or Working Part-Time For Economic Reasons. (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 10/8/10)

14:                    Straight Months With Unemployment Above 9.5%. (Bureau Of Labor Statistics, 10/8/10)

9:                     Number Of Vacations Taken By President Obama. (CBS News, 8/19/10)

4:                     Out Of 10 Likely Voters Who Once Backed Obama But Are Less Supportive Or No Longer Support Obama.  (Bloomberg, 10/12/10)

2:                     Place In The Line Of Succession That Joe Biden Believes He Is In (Hint: He’s #1). (CBS News’ Mark Knoller’s Twitter Feed, Accessed 10/19/10)

2:                     Visits To The White House By Actor George Clooney. (E! Online, 10/12/10)

1:                     Number Of White House Investigations. (CBS News, 10/6/10)

1:                     Teacher Union Bailout To Motivate Teacher Unions For Midterm Elections. (The Washington Post, 10/8/10)

0:                     Other People Obama Will Have Left To Blame For His Failures In 2012. (The American People, 11/6/12)



Read more: http://www.gop.com/index.php/briefing/comments/obama_by_the_numbers#ixzz12u77B7Fg
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 21, 2010, 01:47:43 PM
Fannie, Freddie bailout could nearly double in size

By Zachary A. Goldfarb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 21, 2010; 1:53 PM


________________________ ________________________ _____________________




The federal bailout for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could nearly double in size during the next three years, according to projections from the companies' federal regulator.

Fannie and Freddie, the federally controlled mortgage finance giants, will need as much as $215 billion more from taxpayers in the next three years to meet their financial obligations, the Federal Housing Finance Agency said Thursday, but much of that money would automatically be returned to the government.

The growing taxpayer infusions will cover losses Fannie and Freddie suffer on home loans, as well as payments the companies must make to the U.S. Treasury in exchange for a federal guarantee to provide cash to keep the companies solvent.

Over time, the majority of funds flowing to Fannie and Freddie from taxpayers will go to pay that dividend. As a result, most of the additional funds that go to the companies from taxpayers will ultimately be paid back. An Obama administration official said this arrangement is not being reconsidered at this time.

To date, the Treasury has injected $148 billion into Fannie and Freddie, $13 billion of which has been returned to the government. Under the worst case, in which the country enters a second recession, the total infusion would be $363 billion in three years. In this situation, after dividends are paid back to the Treasury, the total cost of the bailout would be $259 billion.

Under a more moderate possibility, in which housing prices decline a little, stay flat for a while and then slowly rise, the total taxpayer bailout would be $238 billion. After dividends are paid back, the total cost would be $154 billion.

The projections of additional bailouts for Fannie and Freddie are in sharp contrast to recent discussions by the Obama administration about how the bank rescue known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program, originally valued at $700 billion, is expected to cost taxpayers less than a tenth of that.

Fannie and Freddie were seized by their federal regulator in September 2008 as the crisis in the housing market threatened to topple them. The Bush administration pledged $200 billion to keep them solvent. Early on, the Obama administration doubled that number to $400 billion, then late last year made a pledge of unlimited support.

The companies play a central role in the housing market, buying or guaranteeing most home loans. With the collapse of the private market for home loans, they have been essential to keeping interest rates low and the housing market from declining more.

But they also are deeply controversial and were one of the causes of the financial crisis. The Obama administration is set to release a proposal to overhaul or replace them in January. That decision ultimately will be made by the administration in concert with Congress.

"In the most likely economic scenario, nearly 90 percent of the losses at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are already behind us, and that almost all of those losses are attributable to mortgages that were already on those businesses' books prior to" the government seizing them, said Jeffrey Goldstein, Treasury undersecretary for domestic finance, in a statement. "But that news should not distract us from the pressing need for reform so that taxpayers aren't put on the hook in the future. From the beginning, the Obama Administration has made clear that the current structure of the government's role in housing finance, while necessary in the short-term to provide critical support to a still-fragile housing market, is simply not acceptable for the long-term."

An administration official said the dividend - 10 percent - is a fair price for the companies to pay in exchange for taxpayer support and would be reexamined only in the context of an overall revamp of housing finance policy next year.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency made the projections based on stress tests similar to those that were applied to the largest banks last year. In the best case, housing prices would start to recover immediately and there would be minimal additional costs to taxpayers.

"These projections are intended to give policymakers and the public useful snapshots of potential outcomes for the taxpayer support of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac," said FHFA acting Director Edward J. DeMarco. "These are not predictions; the results reflect the potential effects of a limited set of hypothetical changes in house prices, a key variable driving credit losses for the enterprises."

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 22, 2010, 06:43:02 AM
WOLF: Obamacare's Unkeepable Promises
Utopian vision was a fraud from the beginning
By Dr. Milton R. Wolf
-
The Washington Times
5:57 p.m., Thursday, October 21, 2010



________________________ ________________________ _____________________



We are witnessing the unmistakable collapse of an American presidency. While this may not yet be irreversible, it certainly was predictable and preventable. Chief among its causes has been the unbridled hubris that prompted this president to force Obamacare, the government takeover of the finest health care system in the world, against the clear will of "we the people" while turning his back on the free-market principles that once made us the most prosperous nation on earth.

A diminished president, even - or perhaps especially - if his fate is self-inflicted, is not good for America and should not be pleasing to any patriot regardless of his or her political leanings. It certainly is not pleasing to me, as this president is my cousin. But as a physician who took an inviolate oath to my patients, I am duty-bound to take this stand, particularly after watching Barack Obama make so many unkeepable Obamacare promises:

c Obamacare would reduce our deficit. We were to believe that millions of Americans would be added to the insurance rolls, that medical care would not suffer, and somehow, almost magically, costs would go down. We might as well promise it will never rain on weekends. Gravity caught up to this wishful thinking, and even the president's own actuary now admits the overhaul will increase, not decrease, the deficit.

c Obamacare would allow you to keep your doctor and your current insurance. How can you keep your doctor if your doctor can't keep his practice? The New England Journal of Medicine reported a survey that showed nearly half of America's doctors are being forced to consider leaving their practice if Obamacare is implemented. And businesses already are finding they can no longer provide the same insurance policies to their employees that they had before Obamacare. Oklahoma's Republican Sen. Tom Coburn, also a physician, estimates 90 million Americans will lose their current insurance policies because of the takeover. Millions of them will be forced into Medicaid and government exchanges.

c Obamacare would not jeopardize senior citizens' care. The continued viability of Medicare Advantage is in serious jeopardy because of Mr. Obama's Medicare cuts to pay for other parts of his health care overhaul. Companies already are announcing that they can no longer offer this very popular free-market Medicare reform. What's more, fewer doctors are able to accept Medicare patients with the downward pressure on reimbursement levels, currently stuck at 1980s levels. Too often, physicians' practices cannot survive being in business with the federal government. Already, 42 percent of doctors do not accept Medicare, and that number is increasing. Your shiny government-issued Medicare card is meaningless without doctors who will accept it.

c Obamacare would not ration health care. The president promised time and time again that he would not ration health care, and then promptly, under the cloak of a recess appointment, installed as the head of Medicare a man who would do it for him. Dr. Donald Berwick has announced unambiguously and with glee many times over that he will indeed ration America's medical care (in addition to his own bizarre promises to redistribute your wealth) but he assures us that he's our intellectual better, so it will be fine. He also declares he's "romantic" about the British-government-run system and specifically admires how the British purposefully undersupply medical needs to alleviate "bottlenecks." They've been alleviated all right. Britain's colon cancer mortality rate, for example, is 40 percent higher than America's; breast cancer 88 percent higher; prostate cancer a staggering 604 percent higher. All those unnecessary deaths unburden the system of patients seeking care. Some might call this rationing. Mr. Berwick, by the way, created his own health care golden parachute to assure that he and his wife would never be forced to submit themselves to the Medicare rules he creates. How convenient.

c Obamacare would not raise taxes on anyone earning less than $250,000 a year.

"I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes." New excise taxes on pharmaceuticals and medical products will, of course, by necessity be passed on to the patients who depend on these lifesaving medicines, pacemakers, MRI machines or even tongue depressors. Even more flagrant, there are new Obamacare taxes on everything from tampons to tanning salons, from gold to the sale of your home.

c Obamacare would create 4 million new jobs, 400,000 almost immediately. Not to be outdone, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi added this grand promise of her own. However, since the health care takeover was signed into law, no such jobs boom has occurred.

c Obamacare hearings would be held in public. Unlike the other promises, this one could have been kept and in fact may have prevented all these other catastrophic failures, but sadly, it was wantonly ignored by this president. Candidate Obama pledged eight times to hold health care hearings in public. Invite the C-SPAN cameras, he said, because open hearings would allow Americans to know who was on their side. Indeed it would have.

Mr. President - Barack - I offer to you the next best thing. Let's you and I hold a public discussion on America's health care for those C-SPAN cameras once and for all. I know your administration is desperately attempting the full-court press to promote your health care reform as it continues to suffer badly in all the polls, and you with it. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius even said Americans need "re-education." Let's finally give Americans the honest and cordial discussion they deserve. You know that I have dedicated my life to serving patients, and nowhere will you find a person who will be more respectful to you. You also know I hold nothing against you personally. I understand you may feel, as a lawyer, that you're a little out of your element discussing health care with a physician, so I urge you to bring Dr. Berwick along. America deserves to hear, at least one time, from the man who holds more health care power over them than even a U.S. Supreme Court justice.

Until then, what should we do? We must defund, repeal and replace Obamacare before it defunds America, destroys the finest health care system in the world and replaces it with a European social-welfare government-run version.

Can we really repeal Obamacare? Let me be clear. Yes, we can.

First, in 2010, elect candidates who understand that health care freedom - like our other freedoms - saves lives. Elect candidates who pledge to first defund Obamacare immediately and then will vote for its repeal. Second, let's convince this president that it's in the nation's best interest - and his own - to undo this unholy government takeover that bears his name. If we cannot, then in 2012, let's find a president who will.

Dr. Milton R. Wolf is a board-certified, practicing diagnostic radiologist and cousin of President Obama's. He is also a member of Docs4PatientCare.

© Copyright 2010 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 24, 2010, 06:07:35 PM
CBO Confirms: ObamaCare Discourages Work 
By Jed Graham     
Fri., Oct. 22, 2010 4:56 PM ET
 

________________________ ___________________-


Congressional Budget Office director Doug Elmendorf said Friday that ObamaCare includes work disincentives likely to shrink the amount of labor used in the economy.

In a speech on ObamaCare’s economic impact outside the health care sector, Elmendorf said that those effects will primarily be related to the labor market and “will probably be small.”

Factoring in additional demand for workers in health care and insurance, CBO estimates that “the legislation, on net, will reduce the amount of labor used in the economy by roughly half a percent,” he said.

The reason: The expansion of Medicaid and new health insurance subsidies will reduce “the amount of labor that workers choose to supply.”

(For perspective, half a percent of current payrolls is 651,000 jobs, though the impact would show up in both fewer jobs and fewer hours worked.)

The conclusion isn’t a surprising one; any extra support from the government takes some pressure off of workers to provide for themselves. However, ObamaCare’s progressive subsidies, i.e. more generous for those who earn less, carry more of a disincentive than the flat, universal benefit favored by some Republicans.

As Capital Hill has noted previously, work disincentives will be particularly strong for older workers because both health care premiums and the law’s subsidies grow much bigger with age.

Further, the new health law will give some older households without access to employer care a big incentive not to earn too much. That’s because earning more than 400% of the poverty level would make them ineligible for subsidies that may be well in excess of $10,000 for couples.

Consider this example of a single individual age 62 in a high-cost area and no access to employer care. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s Health Reform Subsidy Calculator:

* At 200% of the poverty level, or $23,000 in income in 2014, an individual would get $10,750 in premium subsidies.

* At 400% of the poverty level, or $46,000, an individual would get $7,830 in premium subsidies.

* And at 401% of the poverty level, an individual would get no government support.

For workers turning 62 and becoming eligible for Social Security, ObamaCare will make early retirement somewhat more likely because the total package of benefits at that age will be much more valuable starting in 2014 than it is currently. What’s more, health care benefits will be a bit richer for those who give up a higher paying salary for a more modest Social Security check.

Just how much of a difference this extra dollop of government transfers will make to retirement decisions is hard to know. But the reason it should be a concern is that even before ObamaCare and the recent recession, half of all workers claimed retirement benefits at age 62 and the average age of collection was roughly 63.

While Democrats argue that the new health care subsidies are a moral imperative, the risk is that they will work against one of the most constructive approaches to reining in unsustainable entitlement spending on seniors: getting them to work longer and rely on the safety net later.

Once the labor market recovers and the retirement of the baby boomers begins to exert long-expected strains on the work force, tailoring the safety net to incentivize longer careers would reap economic dividends and additional tax revenue. Most importantly, delayed retirement could provide a needed boost to personal finances.

Paradoxically, as life expectancy increases, government safety nets that encourage retirement at 62 will put seniors at growing risk of outliving their savings and being left to scrape by on an insufficient Social Security check in very old age.

Consider that after a 30% penalty — the impending reduction for retiring at 62 — a single person retiring now after a full career earning $30,000 a year would receive only a poverty-level benefit.

Early retirement penalties are the crack in Social Security’s foundation that makes additional benefit cuts untenable in very old age.

That is why there is only one approach for reforming Social Security that can produce both an affordable and an effective safety net: Scaling back income support in the initial years of retirement to avoid benefit cuts in very old age.

That was true before ObamaCare, and tilting Social Security’s incentives in favor of delayed retirement has become even more critical now that early retirement benefits, in totality, are about to become even richer.

While it makes sense to reduce the incentive for retiring too early and to encourage longer careers, up until now the only cost-saving ideas for doing so would cut away critical parts of the safety net.

For example, if the retirement age were raised to 70, retirees who opt for benefits at 62 would face a 43% benefit cut for life.

Some suggest raising the earliest age for benefits to 65 in tandem with a hike in the retirement age to 70, keeping the maximum penalty at 30%. Yet this approach could still leave those who retire at 65 and outlive their savings to scrape by on an insufficient Social Security check. It also would pull away the floor of income support for those who may depend on Social Security early in their 60s.

What is more, a retirement age of 70 is probably a nonstarter politically, because the burden would fall so much more heavily on lower earners who aren’t enjoying the same gains in life expectancy.

In a new book, “A Well-Tailored Safety Net: The Only Fair and Sensible Way to Save Social Security,” I offer an alternative.

(The book does not reflect the editorial view of IBD.)

Under a new provision called Old-Age Risk-Sharing, the maximum benefit cut would come in the first year of retirement and fully unwind over 20 years to ensure a robust safety net in very old age, when almost everyone will depend on it.

To learn more, please read about what I told President Obama’s fiscal commission.

 
http://blogs.investors.com/capitalhill/index.php/home/35-politicsinvesting/2154-cbo-confirms-obamacare-discourages-work

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 25, 2010, 08:27:03 AM
Obama aims to toughen big-vehicle mileage rules
The White House is pushing for tougher fuel-economy rules to cut dependence on oil and greenhouse gas emissions.

(Gerry Broome/Associated Press/File 2008)
Associated Press / October 25, 2010


________________________ ________________________ ___________________


 
WASHINGTON — Future tractor-trailers, school buses, delivery vans, garbage trucks, and heavy-duty pickup trucks would have to use less energy under fuel-efficiency rules proposed by the Obama administration — the first ever for such vehicles.

The Environmental Protection Agency and the Transportation Department are moving ahead with a proposal for medium- and heavy-duty trucks, beginning with those sold in the 2014 model year and into the 2018 model year.

The plan is expected to call for about a 20 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and fuel consumption for long-haul trucks, said people familiar with the plan. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they did not want to speak publicly before the official announcement, expected today.

Overall, the proposal is expected to seek reductions of 10 to 20 percent in fuel consumption and emissions, depending on vehicle size. Large tractor-trailers tend to be driven up to 150,000 miles a year, making them candidates for improved mileage.

The rules would cover big-rig tractor-trailers, “vocational trucks’’ such as garbage trucks and transit and school buses, and work trucks such as heavy-duty versions of the Ford F-Series, Dodge Ram, and Chevrolet Silverado.

The White House has pushed for tougher fuel standards as a way of reducing dependence on oil and cutting greenhouse gas emissions, which are linked to global warming.

New cars, pickup trucks, and SUVs would need to reach 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016, and the government is developing plans that could push the standards to 47 to 62 miles per gallon by 2025.

Medium-duty and heavy-duty trucks are much less fuel-efficient than conventional automobiles; tractor-trailers typically get about 6 to 7 miles per gallon, while work trucks can achieve 10 to 11 miles per gallon. But they still consume about 20 percent of the transportation fuel used in the United States.

Margo Oge, director of the EPA’s Office of Transportation and Air Quality, last week told reporters that the proposed rules would be a “win-win situation for the country, the economy, climate change, and energy security.’’

She declined to release details.

Improvements in fuel efficiency are expected to be achieved through a combination of more efficient engines, improved aerodynamics, and better tires.

© Copyright 2010 Globe Newspaper Company.


________________________ ________________________ ________________________ __

More crap - this is going to drive the costs of these vechicles through the damn roof unless the tech is there. 

More incompetence. 
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 25, 2010, 02:50:35 PM
The roots of Obama's demise
www.washingtonpost.com
By Marc A. Thiessen
Monday, October 25, 2010;



________________________ ________________________ ___
 


The decline of the Obama presidency can be traced to a meeting at the White House just three days after the inauguration, when the new president gathered congressional leaders of both parties to discuss his proposed economic stimulus. House Republican Whip Eric Cantor gave President Obama a list of modest proposals for the bill. Obama said he would consider the GOP ideas, but told the assembled Republicans that "elections have consequences" and "I won." Backed by the largest congressional majorities in decades, the president was not terribly interested in giving ground to his vanquished adversaries.

He may rue that decision next Tuesday. Whether the midterm elections are a tidal wave that sweeps Democrats out of power on Capitol Hill or simply result in major losses for the president's party, one thing is clear: The stimulus will play a major role in determining the outcome.

The legislation has not kept the unemployment rate below 8 percent, as the White House promised -- but it has been an electoral boon to Republicans, and an albatross around the necks of many Democrats who voted for it. It might have been a different story had Obama handled the stimulus differently. In January 2009, Republicans were running scared -- still reeling from the thumping they received in the past two elections, and afraid to so much as criticize the new Democratic president with stratospheric approval ratings.

In these circumstances, the president could have easily co-opted the GOP by making it a partner in crafting the stimulus. He could have told Republicans: Take half of the money and use it for tax relief, spending, or both. Indeed, Republicans introduced several alternative stimulus bills that cost half as much as Obama's ("twice the jobs at half the cost" was the GOP mantra). Had Obama really wanted to be the first "post-partisan" president, he could have incorporated one of these alternatives into his final stimulus legislation.

If Republicans had gone along, they would have had to defend the stimulus for the next two years. If they had refused, they would have been in no position to criticize a bill that they had turned down the opportunity to help shape. If the stimulus worked, both sides could have taken credit. And if it failed, reaching out to Republicans would have inoculated the president from the resulting criticism. Had he given them half the booty, they would have shared half the blame.

Would Republicans have accepted hundreds of billions in new government spending in exchange for including pro-growth tax relief and other GOP proposals? The offer would likely have split the party, with a significant number supporting the bill. The grass-roots movement for fiscal discipline had not yet been born, and many of the same Republicans who voted in favor of the "Bridge to Nowhere" would have gladly compromised with the popular new Democratic president. The stimulus would probably have passed with significant bipartisan support, instead of near-unanimous Republican opposition.

But Obama was not interested in compromise. He decided to go it alone. He picked off a few easy GOP votes and rode roughshod over the rest of the Republicans to pass a maximalist bill over their objections. That may have seemed like a good idea at the time. But looking back now, a week from the midterm elections, the wisdom of his approach is hard to discern.

The stimulus united Republicans for the first time in opposition to the president. It gave rise to the Tea Party movement that has fundamentally transformed the nation's political landscape in the GOP's favor. It changed Obama in the eyes of millions of Americans from the first "post-partisan" president into what many now perceive as (to quote Obama himself) "the same old tax-and-spend liberal Democrat." And his subsequent decision to ram Obamacare through Congress over unanimous Republican opposition sealed this impression, which voters will carry into the voting booth next Tuesday.

Almost two years later, the president still doesn't get it. In a recent New York Times profile, Obama says the lesson of his political setbacks is that "you can't be neglecting of marketing and PR and public opinion." Obama's problem was not marketing and PR -- it was his insistence on imposing big government liberalism on Americans against their will, and his failure to anticipate the blowback this approach would produce.  

Will Obama figure this out after next Tuesday? Even if he does, it will be too late. Should next week's elections turn out the way most pollsters predict, Republicans will have no incentive to compromise with Obama on expanding the size of government. To the contrary, newly elected Republicans will arrive with a clear mandate to cut spending and restore fiscal discipline. If they fail to follow this mandate, they will likely have very short tours in Washington.

In January 2009, Republicans were on their heels, ready to compromise with the president. In January 2011, Republicans will likely be energized and emboldened to roll back Obama's most egregious initiatives. The president was right. Elections do have consequences.

Marc A. Thiessen is a visiting fellow with the American Enterprise Institute and writes a weekly column for The Post.

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 25, 2010, 06:17:22 PM
Great damn clip.   WWWAAAKKKEEE   UUUPPPPP

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 27, 2010, 06:40:56 AM
Employers in U.S. Start Bracing for Higher Tax Withholding
By Timothy R. Homan - Oct 27, 2010 
www.bloomberg.com


________________________ ________________________ _______________


U.S. President Barack Obama and most Democrats want tax cuts extended for middle-income earners and to end for the wealthiest Americans, the top 2 or 3 percent of earners. Photographer: Joshua Roberts/Bloomberg

Employers in the U.S. are starting to warn their workers to prepare for slimmer paychecks if Congress fails to vote on an extension of Bush-era tax cuts.

“I’ve been doing payroll for probably close to 30 years now, and never have we seen something like this where it gets that down to the wire,” said Dennis Danilewicz, who manages payroll services for about 14,000 employees at New York University’s Langone Medical Center. “That’s what’s got a lot of people nervous. All we can do is start preparing communications with a couple of different scenarios.”

Lawmakers won’t start debating whether to extend the cuts, which expire Dec. 31, until after the Nov. 2 elections. Because it takes weeks to prepare withholding schedules, the Internal Revenue Service will probably have to assume the cuts will expire and direct employers to increase payroll deductions starting Jan. 1, experts say.

“We’re kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place,” said Ron Moser, head of human resources for the school district of Kenmore-Town of Tonawanda, New York, which pays about 1,900 teachers, custodians and aides each month. In upstate New York, where winter heating costs are among the highest in the country, many school employees earn between $20,000 and $40,000 a year, he said, and losing $50 in a paycheck is “a significant dollar amount.”

Employees Calls

“We’re starting to get the calls” from employees asking what they need to do for the next tax year, Moser said.

President Barack Obama and most Democrats want tax cuts extended for middle-income earners and to end for the wealthiest Americans, the top 2 or 3 percent of earners. Republicans want tax cuts extended for everyone, arguing that an increase makes little sense as the economy recovers from the worst recession since the 1930s. Tax cuts went into effect in 2001 and 2003.

For Moser, the challenge of the moment is keeping people in the Buffalo suburb, home to about 78,000 residents, calm about what will happen in January. The area has several manufacturing employers -- including 3M Co., General Motors Co. and Praxair Inc. -- and unemployment is 7.6 percent, lower than the national rate of 9.6 percent. Still, many people are worried, he said.

“The bulk of our employees don’t understand” the coming tax debate in Congress, Moser said. “When they see this type of thing happening they go into panic mode. They don’t follow what’s going on.”

June 2001 Rates

If Congress fails to act, income tax rates will revert to higher levels dating from June 2001.

For a married couple with an income of $80,000, that would drain an extra $221.48 in withholding from a semi-monthly paycheck, according to calculations by the Tax Institute at H&R Block. Married individuals earning $240,000 a year would lose an additional $557.78 to withholding in a single semi-monthly paycheck. The Tax Institute at H&R Block calculated federal tax rates for single-income earners and married taxpayers without children.

Paychecks could shrink in January and into February, depending on how long it takes Congress to act.

January could well be a time of “sticker shock” for salaried employees and their employers, said Kathy Pickering, executive director of the Tax Institute, an independent research division at Kansas City, Missouri-based H&R Block Inc.

“If the laws get passed late in December, it’s just necessarily going to take one to three weeks to get those payroll tables updated and implemented into the system,” Pickering said.

Blow to Spending

Allowing the tax cuts to expire, even temporarily, would deal a blow to disposable income and could curtail the consumer spending that accounts for about 70 percent of the economy, said Alec Phillips, a Washington-based economist at Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

“The longer the expiration lasts, the more significant the impact will be,” he said.

Economists raised estimates for consumer spending in the third quarter to 2 percent from 1.9 percent, according to the median forecast on a Bloomberg News survey this month. Spending rose at a 2.2 percent pace in the second quarter. The Commerce Department will release third-quarter data on Oct. 29.

Making a withholding-rate change could take longer for small businesses that don’t outsource payroll services, experts said. If a business can’t react fast enough, employees could recoup any over-withholding by filing a new W-4 tax form to temporarily lower their federal withholding rate.

Another option is to wait until 2012 when workers file their tax returns for the previous year.

Taxpayer Strategy

Taxpayers could use the same strategies if Congress reinstates the tax cuts next year and they need to recoup the extra withholding.

Jodi Parsons, manager of payroll and accounts payable at IFMC, a health care management company based in West Des Moines, Iowa, said if the IRS issues two sets of withholding tables, her two-person office could be overwhelmed with processing changes to W-4 forms.

“We’d have to basically go back and hand calculate checks for all 800-900 employees to determine whether or not we need to deduct additional taxes from them or refund taxes,” Parsons said. “We’d like to see changes in mid-November just to make sure we have time.”

There are now six federal tax brackets, ranging from 10 percent to 35 percent. If Congress doesn’t act, there will be five rates with the top bracket reaching 39.6 percent.

Nov. 20 notice

Last year, the IRS alerted payroll departments on Nov. 20 about the 2010 tax tables, said Scott Mezistrano, senior manager of government relations at the American Payroll Association in Washington. He said a delay in guidance from the IRS could increase costs for some small businesses.

The Treasury Department last week issued a statement that it was “maintaining flexibility” with regards to the release of the withholding tables for 2011.

If the IRS issues tables in mid-November and then again later, businesses will double their programming costs, Mezistrano said. A related concern, he said, is if Congress makes a last-minute decision to extend the cuts and companies aren’t able to implement the change before January.

Business owners may face “tons of angry employees pounding at my office door saying, ‘What have you done to my paycheck?’” Mezistrano said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Timothy R. Homan in Washington at thoman1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Christopher Wellisz at cwellisz@bloomberg.net


________________________ ________________________ ________________



HOPE & CHANGE BITCHES!   
 
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 27, 2010, 08:53:00 AM
ROLLING BLACKOUTS ANYONE?   ::)  ::)

________________________ ________________________ ________________________ __


NERC Releases Assessment on Resource Adequacy Impacts of EPA Regulations
The North American Electric Reliability Corporation ^ | 10.27.10 | NERC


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In the United States, several regulations are being proposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that directly affects the electric industry. Depending on the outcome of any or all of these regulations, the results could accelerate the retirement of a significant number of fossil fuel-fired power plants. EPA is currently developing rules that would mandate existing power suppliers to invest in retrofitted environmental controls at existing generating plants or retire them. The most significant proposed EPA rules have been in development for over ten years and are currently undergoing court-ordered revisions that must be implemented within mandatory timeframes.

The results of this assessment show a significant potential impact to reliability should the four EPA rules be implemented as proposed. The reliability impact will be dependent on whether sufficient replacement capacity can be added in a timely manner to replace the generation capacity that is retired or lost because of the implementation of these rules. Implementation of the rules must allow sufficient time to construct new capacity or retrofit existing capacity. Planning Reserve Margins appear to be significantly impacted, deteriorating resource adequacy in a majority of the NERC Regions/subregions. In this scenario, reduced Planning Reserve Margins are a result of a loss of up to 19 percent of fossil fuel-fired steam capacity in the United States by 2018.1 Additionally, considerable operational challenges will exist in managing, coordinating, and scheduling an industry-wide environmental control retrofit effort.

This assessment examines four proposed EPA rulemaking proceedings that could result in unit retirements or forced retrofits between 2015 and 2018. Specifically, the proposed rules under development include:

1. Clean Water Act – Section 316(b), Cooling Water Intake Structures

2. Title I of the Clean Air Act – National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants

(NESHAP) for the electric power industry (referred to herein as Maximum Achievable Control Technology (MACT) Standard)

3. Clean Air Transport Rule (CATR)

4. Coal Combustion Residuals (CCR) Disposal Regulations...
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 27, 2010, 03:02:55 PM

W.H.: No regrets on health, climate
By: Darren Samuelsohn
October 27, 2010 10:55 AM EDT


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The White House doesn't regret simultaneously pushing health care and climate change legislation, despite the ultimate failure to pass cap and trade, President Barack Obama's domestic policy adviser said Wednesday.

"We really felt like it was a walk and talk, walk and chew gum" situation, said Melody Barnes, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council.

Barnes said the White House believes the country can still tackle climate change without Congress passing legislation that caps greenhouse gas emissions, noting the push for executive agencies to curb emissions, coupled with efforts at the state and local government levels.

"The president feels that it's critical that we move forward, and whether or not it's through legislation, which would set a big comprehensive framework for companies, for the private sector, for investors and for the rest of the world to see, and obviously that's a priority and that's why we tried to move it in the first two years, that there's still other ways that we can advance this energy agenda," Barnes said during an event hosted by The Atlantic Magazine.  

The House passed a sweeping climate bill in June 2009, but it stalled in the Senate over objections from Republicans and moderate Democrats. A likely GOP takeover in the House or Senate is sure to kill any cap-and-trade bill over the next two years, prompting the administration to start looking for emission cuts in other venues.

“We’ve been absolutely thinking about this at every level,” Barnes said, citing the Environmental Protection Agency and Energy Department programs, as well as federal grants to help local governments build more sidewalks, light rail lines and street trolleys.

Barnes laughed when asked to predict when Congress would eventually pass a mandatory limits on greenhouse gases. "One of the things I've learned is that if you start to put your money down on when you think Congress will act, you will inevitably lose your money."
 
 
© 2010 Capitol News Company, LLC
 

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Time to impeach this asshole. 
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Kazan on October 27, 2010, 03:52:09 PM
Ways to advance the energy agenda, like having the FDA ( an unelected body) making "law". If that isn't a bunch of unconstitutional bullshit I don't know what is.
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 27, 2010, 06:33:21 PM
Barnes said the White House believes the country can still tackle climate change without Congress passing legislation that caps greenhouse gas emissions, noting the push for executive agencies to curb emissions, coupled with efforts at the state and local government levels.

________________________ ________________________ ___---

WTF is that? 

Obama's job is supposed to be to UPHOLD & ENFORCE the laws of the United States, not try to do end runs to jack up energy costs.
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 27, 2010, 06:58:46 PM
Bailout Oversight Panel Slams Obama Administration Over Foreclosure Crisis
First Posted: 10-27-10 06:40 PM   |   Updated: 10-27-10 08:25 PM


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 WASHINGTON -- A key government panel keeping tabs on the bailout strongly criticized the Obama administration Wednesday for its apparent failure on a variety of housing-related fronts, from its ineffective foreclosure-prevention initiatives to its refusal to acknowledge the growing crisis sparked by widespread evidence that mortgage companies frequently take their customers' homes via fraud.

Faced with increasingly heated criticism from the Congressional Oversight Panel, the administration's representative -- the Treasury Department's housing rescue chief, Phyllis Caldwell -- hunkered down, refusing to answer basic questions.

It was a familiar scene.

As the housing market continues to flirt with the risk of falling into a double dip -- prices are already heading downward, and the Federal Housing Finance Agency forecasts prices to return to their June 30, 2010 level in the fourth quarter of 2013 -- the Obama administration continues to face assaults on its attempts to fix the crisis threatening Americans' most valuable asset.

Some independent experts, while critical overall, praise the administration for its role in spacing out the negative shocks from the record home repossessions taking place, lessening the chances of the economy suffering a fatal blow. Others say the administration's efforts have simply prolonged the crisis and delayed the recovery. Either way, the consensus is that the administration hasn't pursued the right policies to jumpstart the recovery.

During Wednesday's hearing, members of the Congressional Oversight Panel said Treasury's foreclosure-prevention programs "failed to provide meaningful relief," generated "false expectations," and have been a "major disappointment." COP is an independent, nonpartisan commission created by Congress.

More than 20 months after President Barack Obama announced a plan to "enable as many as three to four million homeowners to modify the terms of their mortgages to avoid foreclosure," just 640,300 homeowners remain in the program. Nearly 729,000 struggling homeowners have been kicked out.

Story continues below
Advertisement"We are faced with a choice here," said Damon Silvers, a member of the panel who also works as director of policy and special counsel at the AFL-CIO. "We can either have a rational resolution to the foreclosure crisis or we can preserve the capital structure of the banks. We can't do both."

The commissioners were just as critical when it came to assessing Treasury's response to the growing crisis emanating from mortgage companies' use of fraudulent paperwork to foreclose on homeowners.

That consequences of that, though, may pale in comparison to the risk faced by the nation's biggest banks when it comes to demands for them to buy back the faulty home mortgages that they bundled and sold to investors as securities. Estimates from Wall Street analysts range well into the hundreds of billions of dollars.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York is part of a group of investors that sent a letter demanding Bank of America buy back some $47 billion in dodgy mortgages. The New York Fed owns the mortgage debt as a result of its 2008 bailout of Bear Stearns, the fallen global investment bank.

The administration and financial regulators are conducting a review, though it's unclear how comprehensive it is or how many people have been devoted to it. Administration officials say that thus far "there is no evidence of systemic risk."

Not taking that for an answer, Silvers bore into Caldwell.

"I'm concerned about Treasury making representations categorically that you don't see a systemic risk," Silvers told Treasury's chief homeownership officer. "And let me walk you through exactly why."

"That letter asks for $47 billion of mortgages -- of mortgage- backed securities to be repurchased at par," Silvers went on. "Do you know what those mortgages are currently carried at ... the market value of those bonds today?"

Caldwell declined to comment.

Silvers continued:

"OK, fine. Let me tell you what the Fed says they're worth. The Fed tells us they're worth 50 cents on the dollar. So if the Fed's request to Bank of America is honored, right, Bank of America, assuming they are carrying these bonds, assuming when they buy them back they mark them to market, Bank of America will take a $23 billion loss.

"The Federal Reserve further informs us that there is nothing particularly unique about that particular set of mortgage-backed securities -- meaning they have not been chosen...because they're particularly bad. They believe they are of a common quality with the rest of Bank of America's underwritten mortgage-backed securities. There are $2 trillion [worth] of Bank of America's underwritten mortgage-backed securities.

"Five such deals -- five such requests, if honored to Bank of America...will amount to more than the current market capitalization of Bank of America, which is $115 billion.

"Now do you wish to retract your statement that there is no systemic risk in this situation? And the word is 'risk' -- not 'certainty' -- but 'risk'? And I would urge you to do so, because these things can be embarrassing later."


Caldwell repeated her earlier claim that it was still early in the review. She added that Treasury is working "very closely" with "11 regulatory and federal agencies," and that the administration is "watching this every day.

"And that at this stage there appears to be no evidence of a systemic risk -- but again it is early and it is something we are monitoring daily," Caldwell said.

Silvers questioned her again.

"Let me suggest to you that the 'it is still early' is a perfectly acceptable position. ... Is it your position that Bank of America honoring five of these things would not present a systemic risk? ... Is Bank of America not systemically significant?"

Caldwell responded that she and Treasury "didn't say there was no risk. We said there didn't appear to be evidence of a major systemic risk."

"I hope that ... if the Treasury comes back to us and is discussing whether or not we need to deploy further public funds to rescue Bank of America, or such other institutions as might be affected by these events, that we get a similar kind of indifference to their fate after it's too late," Silvers shot back. "Because it strikes me that in light of the mathematics I've gone through with you, it is not a plausible position that there is no systemic risk here."

Silvers is a Democrat, but the panel's concerns were bipartisan. Republican panelist J. Mark McWatters, a high-powered corporate tax lawyer and CPA, similarly peppered Caldwell with questions.

After asking whether "Treasury [was] concerned that any of the large, too-big-to-fail financial institutions may experience a solvency or liquidity or capital crisis over the next few years" due to investor demands that it buy back faulty mortgages, and being told that Treasury had yet to find evidence of "systemic risk," McWatters continued to press Caldwell.

Citing the roughly $2.3 trillion of non-government-backed mortgage securities held by investors at the height of the housing bubble, McWatters said that "even if a relatively small percentage of those are put back and the banks have to buy them back at face [value], this could be a substantial problem.

"Also, considering that this is not just a one-shot deal. I mean, when a mortgage is originated and put in a [mortgage-backed security], it may be multiplied through synthetic CDOs. So you may have the synthetic CDO problems also going back to the banks," he added.

CDOs, or collateralized debt obligations, are securities based on the value of other securities, like home mortgage bonds. Synthetic CDOs are essentially side bets on those securities.

"So, I mean, it sounds like Treasury as of today has not done even a back-of-the-envelope sketch as to what the potential put-back rights could be to the TARP financial institutions," McWatters said, referring to the risk big banks face from investors forcing them to buy back dicey mortgages.

Caldwell repeated that Treasury is "monitoring this situation daily." She declined to offer specifics, though at one point she did say that the administration was "monitoring litigation risk."

Despite the many questions, and various hypothetical scenarios, Caldwell declined to give any more details on the foreclosure paperwork crisis than had already been disclosed by other members of the administration. The panel was forced to make do with open questions and a lack of details on what, exactly, the administration was looking at, how hard it was looking, and whether they are considering or planning for worst-case scenarios.

McWatters likely summed up the feelings of the entire panel when he said, "It's a little bit frightening."




*************************

Shahien Nasiripour is the business reporter for The Huffington Post. You can send him an e-mail; bookmark his page; subscribe to his RSS feed; follow him on Twitter; friend him on Facebook; become a fan; and/or get e-mail alerts when he reports the latest news. He can be reached at 646-274-2455.

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 29, 2010, 11:50:07 AM
Surge Of M.D.s Into Politics Shows Doctors Aren't Fans Of ObamaCare
IBD Editorials ^ | October 28, 2010 | JEFFREY H. ANDERSON AND ANDY WICKERSHAM



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Do doctors like ObamaCare? Judging by the number of doctors who are running for Congress in opposition to it, the answer would appear to be a resounding no.

By our count, 42 doctors (counting 35 M.D.s, five dentists, an optometrist and a psychologist) are running for one of the 435 House seats or 37 Senate seats at stake in the upcoming midterm elections. Far fewer than one in 100 Americans are doctors, yet one in 12 races for Congress now involves a doctor. And that's even without counting third-party candidates in the tally.

Most striking, however, is the party composition of these doctors: 34 are Republicans, while only eight are Democrats. Correspondingly, 34 oppose ObamaCare, while only eight support it. And 33 support ObamaCare's repeal. (One wants to try to repair it.)

So, at least among the folks running for federal office, four out of five doctors recommend repeal.


(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 29, 2010, 03:01:53 PM
Opinion
Obama's No. 1 problem? He tried to redistribute the economic pie, not grow it.
www.realclearpolitics.co m





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President Obama and congressional Democrats could have pursued sensible policies that promote growth and fairness. They didn't. And now voters stand ready to support the Republicans' pro-growth agenda in midterm elections next week.


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By Patrick Fleenor / October 28, 2010
Alexandria, Va.

As congressional Democrats brace for an electoral shellacking next week, one question still seems to puzzle pundits: “Why didn’t President Obama do more to help the economy?” The short answer is that his goal has always been to redistribute the economic pie – not necessarily grow it. That’s a shame, because he could have pursued policies that achieve both.

.“[W]hat people really want is fairness” Mr. Obama stated during the campaign. “They want people paying their fair share of taxes. They want that money allocated fairly.” After his victory, despite the economic crisis, he eschewed the Clinton mantra of “it’s the economy, stupid” and set out to make America more equitable.

Voters want economic growth

Voters, it turns out, are much more concerned about ensuring the economy grows than who gets what – especially during a deep recession. Unfortunately, the president seems locked into the mindset that greater equality of income must come at the expense of economic growth.

One Minute Debate: What's the best way to create more jobs?

Take the administration’s signature achievement: enactment of healthcare reform, aka Obamacare. This legislation subsidizes health insurance for low- and middle-income groups with taxes on high-earners, leveling material wealth but dampening economic growth by encouraging everyone to pare back on their work effort.

High-income workers have an incentive to work less since they get to keep less of what they earn. Low- and moderate-income workers face the same incentive because they can now maintain the same standard of living with even less effort.

Do high tax rates really harm the economy? Consider the countries of the European Union. Since the end of the Second World War, these nations have offered their citizens generous social benefits such as government provided health care and mandated lengthy vacations. Today per capita purchasing power in the EU is just two-thirds that of the US. More-equal slices maybe, but from a much smaller pie.

To deflect criticism that his policies are harming the economy, the president has tried to rely on his formidable rhetorical skills: expanding health care coverage was going to somehow drive down costs, handouts to state and local governments became a stimulus package, climate change legislation became a “green jobs” bill, and so on. Voters, it seems, aren’t buying any of it.

Policies that achieve growth and fairness

This didn’t have to happen. Obama could have embraced many policies that would have enhanced both equity and economic performance. And some of them could have bridged the ideological divide.

An obvious candidate would have been to tackle one of the biggest factors that contributed to the financial crisis in the first place: massive federal subsidies to the real estate industry via Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The implicit loan guarantees provided by Fannie and Freddie prior to the bust shifted risk from participants in real estate transactions to taxpayers and allowed capital to flow into the industry under very favorable terms.

This allowed Realtors, homebuilders, developers, mortgage lenders, securities traders, and others to reap enormous gains during the boom, only to dump their losses on taxpayers during the bust. It was a classic case of private gains, socialized losses. Eliminating these loan guaranteees – indeed, cutting all federal support for Fannie and Freddie – would not only have greatly enhanced equity, it would also have helped steer investment away from ever more conspicuous McMansions and into productive endeavors like building newer, more-efficient factories, stimulating economic growth.

Another area ripe for reform would have been the loophole-ridden tax code. Today the proliferation of carve-outs means that only 40 percent of personal income is taxed, pushing rates to more than twice what they could be and creating the situation where similarly situated families often face vastly different tax burdens depending on their ability to game the system. It also means that investment is steered away from companies adept at building better products and into those with the knack for lobbying.

By closing loopholes and broadening the tax base, the president could have slashed rates, enhanced equity, and provided a huge stimulus to the economy. Instead, he’s done the opposite, adding even more loopholes and promising to raise rates.

Obama and Democrats will probably pay a high price next week for failing to see a pro-growth path to fairness. Will the presence of a Republican-led, pro-growth Congress persuade the president to pursue his goal of greater fairness in a way that helps economic growth? Our mutual prosperity depends on it.

Patrick Fleenor is chief economist of the Fiscal Economics, Inc.
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Kazan on October 29, 2010, 04:46:09 PM
Redistribute, sick of hearing that bullshit from the Dems. I work hard for my pay check, if someone else chooses not to well tuff shit.
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 30, 2010, 04:59:43 AM
Redistribute, sick of hearing that bullshit from the Dems. I work hard for my pay check, if someone else chooses not to well tuff shit.

According to the far left, and even obamas dad, people should pay 100 percent to the govt and let them dole it back to you as they see fit. 
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 01, 2010, 01:36:31 PM
Oh My : 70 Percent of Independents Support Repeal
Weekly Standard ^ | NOVEMBER 1, 2010 | JEFFREY H. ANDERSON


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Rasmussen's final pre-election poll on the repeal of Obamacare shows that independents favor repeal by the colossal margin of 45 points (70 to 25 percent).

Likely voters on the whole favor repeal by a margin of 22 points (58 to 36 percent), men favor repeal (55 to 39 percent), women favor repeal (61 to 34 percent), every age-group favors repeal (with those in their 30s favoring it by the largest margin), and even 26 percent of Democrats favor repeal.


(Excerpt) Read more at weeklystandard.com ...
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Kazan on November 01, 2010, 06:03:44 PM
According to the far left, and even obamas dad, people should pay 100 percent to the govt and let them dole it back to you as they see fit. 

Well they can go pound sand, I stimulated the economy today by purchasing a new Remington 870 Marine Magnum ;D
(http://image.fourwheeler.com/f/miscellaneous/defending-the-homestead/15346679/remington-870-marine-magnum.jpg)
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 01, 2010, 06:08:15 PM
Well they can go pound sand, I stimulated the economy today by purchasing a new Remington 870 Marine Magnum ;D
(http://image.fourwheeler.com/f/miscellaneous/defending-the-homestead/15346679/remington-870-marine-magnum.jpg)

Sweet gun bro -   I shot a 17/25 at trap with that gun out of the box not even knowing what I was doing.  That gun rocks. 
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Kazan on November 01, 2010, 06:10:43 PM
Going to look at SA 1911a1 Loaded on the weekend to round out the collection
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 01, 2010, 06:12:05 PM
Going to look at SA 1911a1 Loaded on the weekend to round out the collection

Nice I like the  "Operator" model in olive drap color.  Can't go wrong with the SA 1911. 
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 02, 2010, 12:37:07 PM
It's Official: The Government Won't Be Getting Its Money Back From The GM Bailout
The Business Insider ^ | 11/2/10 | Megan McArdle




Well, they've priced the GM IPO, and it looks like they've valued the firm at just about what we lent it: $50 billion. Since the government only took a 60% stake, that's well below what would be needed for the government to recover its investment. Even with the billions they've already "paid back"--by not using all the money--Uncle Sam needed the company to be worth more like $70 billion to break even on the bailout. IPOs are usually priced at a discount, in order to ensure that a lot of buyers are interested; this creates a robust, liquid aftermarket in the stock, so that if the company needs to go raise more capital, there will be lots of buyers and sellers. But even if you think that the price will go up in the aftermarket, the government is going to take a hefty 30% loss on the $10 billion worth of shares that will be sold in the initial public offering. Moreover, the big block of stock that the government still owns will put some downward pressure on the price in the aftermarket. Everyone knows that the government is going to want to get rid of the remainder of its shares sooner rather than later, which means that secondary offerings will follow in fairly short order. Unless GM turns in some pretty spectacular profits, it looks to me like the government is going to lose at least $10 billion on this deal.


(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Kazan on November 02, 2010, 12:38:08 PM
Hmmm I wasn't aware that it was the governments money
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 05, 2010, 06:52:26 AM
Stimulus follies: $535 million down the drain in California in “green jobs”
Share21posted at 9:25 am on
November 5, 2010 by Ed Morrissey

http://hotair.com/archives/2010/11/05/stimulus-follies-535-million-down-the-drain-in-california-in-green-jobs/


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The Obama administration made Solyndra, a solar-power manufacturing company, a symbol of its “green jobs” push in the Porkulus program. Barack Obama himself toured the factory, as did Barbara Boxer. Taxpayers ended up sinking $535 million into building Solyndra a new facility that promised to add jobs in the clean-energy sector. Instead, now that Solyndra has its new facility, it’s closing another older facility and will lay off dozens of employees and cancel the contracts for 150 more contract workers:
Solyndra Inc., the high-flying solar panel maker once touted by President Barack Obama as a model for a green energy future, said Wednesday it has scuttled its factory expansion in Fremont, a move that will stop the company’s plans to hire 1,000 workers.
Solyndra said it will also close an existing factory in the East Bay. That will leave the company with one Fremont factory, a new plant visible from Interstate 880.

The moves mean that instead of having 2,000 workers in Fremont, Solyndra will cap its work force at 1,000, which is about the current level. Solyndra also will, over the next several weeks, eliminate 155 to 175 jobs in Fremont. That includes 135 contract employees and 20 to 40 full-time workers, said David Miller, a Solyndra spokesman.

In other words, we invested $535 million into a company that apparently couldn’t compete on a price basis with its foreign competition. Perhaps Obama and Boxer would choose to do this with the royalties each make from their literary enterprises. That would have been their money to lose.

Instead, though, they borrowed $535 million — a significant portion from China, as one might recall — in order to gamble on Solyndra while putting us on the hook for the investment. Solyndra did all right from it; they got a nice new facility and now can dump their old plant. The television report focuses on the risk if Solyndra has to abandon the new plant, but the same can probably said about its old plant, at least when it comes to getting a new tenant. The old building will sit vacant for a long time in all likelihood while Solyndra downsizes and attempts to stay in business at their taxpayer-funded digs.

It’s an object lesson in the incompetence of politicians and bureaucrats to pick winners and losers in private markets.


________________________ ______________________

And you idiot libs wonder why most people now despise this fool? 
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 08, 2010, 06:25:34 AM
Mileage Rules Prompt Backlash(This is laughable:Auto companies are owned lock,stock & bbl by Obama)
wsj ^ | 11/8/10 | josh mitchell


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Auto makers and car dealers, emboldened by rising profits and a more business-friendly Congress, say they will fight the Obama administration's proposal to boost average new-car fuel economy to as much as 62 miles a gallon by 2025.

The auto makers' main trade group accused regulators in documents filed last week of understating the costs by billions of dollars and suggested the industry might go to court over the issue.

It's a fresh sign that the "go along to get along" approach some industries took during the first two years of the Obama administration is over.

Dave McCurdy, president of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, the industry's main trade group, said he expects the new Republican-controlled House to review "regulations and policies that they would deem harmful to the overall business environment." He noted that the auto industry is the only sector currently regulated for carbon-dioxide emissions.  

Less than two years ago, the heads of the Detroit Three auto makers— General Motors, Chrysler Group and Ford Motor— pleaded before Congress for immediate government aid to prevent an industry collapse. Months later, in the middle of the government's bailout efforts for GM and Chrysler, industry executives signed a deal with the White House and California agreeing to boost fuel-economy standards nearly 35% by 2016 in return for California's agreement not to develop its own, separate fuel-economy rules.

But in recent months the industry has steered back toward a more confrontational posture. Auto makers lobbied heavily against a bill to mandate new safety technologies and increased government oversight, which was proposed in response to the uproar over Toyota Motor Corp.'s sudden acceleration recalls. That legislation now appears all but dead.


(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 09, 2010, 05:27:53 AM
FDA Says it Will Take Vending Machine Owners an Extra 14 Million Hours a Year ... (truncated)
csnews.com ^ | 11-8-10 | Dan Joseph

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/fda-says-it-will-take-vending-machine-ow


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Original title: FDA Says it Will Take Vending Machine Owners an Extra 14 Million Hours a Year to Comply with Obamacare Calorie Mandate

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration estimates that it will take the food service industry 14 million additional hours each year to comply with a new regulation that mandates chain restaurants and vending machine operators label the products they sell with a calorie count in a place visible to the consumer.

Most of the burden of the regulation, which is buried in President Obama’s 2,000 page health-care reform bill, will fall on the vending industry.

In the Nov. 5 edition of the Federal Register, the FDA estimates “a total of 14,068,808 recurring hours, with nearly all of these for vending machine operators, including 31,408 recurring hours for recordkeeping and 14,037,400 recurring hours for third party disclosure” in conjunction with the regulation.

The recordkeeping element includes recording and keeping track of the calorie content of each item offered in a vending machine, while the vast majority of the time will be spent on third party disclosure -- actually communicating that content to the consumer.

The FDA says that time will have to be invested again each year, as the labels will likely “have a relatively short life and the mix of product in a machine will change over time.”


Ned Monroe, the senior vice president of government affairs for the National Automatic Merchandising Association (NAMA), called the required time investment “absurd” and “unfair.”

“Our industry has always understood that consumers need access to product nutritional information, but requiring an industry to invest 14 million hours annually is absurd and sure to kill jobs,” he said. “We are opposed to the colossal burden these regulations impose on our industry and this report just confirms what an enormous and unfair burden it truly is.”

As CNSNews.com previously reported, Section 4205 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) says companies with 20 or more restaurants or vending machines must disclose nutrition content for standard menu items, and that for vending machines in particular, the company “shall provide a sign in close proximity to each article of food or the selection button that includes a clear and conspicuous statement disclosing the number of calories contained in the article.”

Eight months after the bill was signed, however, the FDA is “still trying to get their arms around” what guidance to give operators on how to implement that rule, Monroe said.

While full guidelines still have not been issued, the latest entry in the Federal Register does provide two basic suggestions for disclosing calories.

“Because there is wide variation in the kinds of vending machines used--in materials, display, mechanism--there will likely be a variety of solutions,” the FDA writes. “On the high end, a calorie display that is integrated with the graphics on the machine may cost several hundred dollars or more. On the low end, a set of calorie stickers affixed to the front of the machine would cost at most a few dollars per machine.

“Given the low margins in the vending machine industry, and given that nearly all of the regulated operators will be small businesses, FDA believes that almost all operators will, at least initially, choose the sticker option. In the long run, the manufacturers of vending machines, and the larger vending machine operators, such as the soft drink companies, may use the more integrated, and thus expensive, solution.”

The industry, which is dominated by small businesses, continues to question the need for the new regulation.

Monroe told CNSNews.com in August that he believes most customers “recognize the snacks and the drinks have the nutritional facts panel already on the packaging,” and that most people understand the relative nutritional values associated with the often familiar products.

“People that purchase items out of vending machines -- it’s not the first time they’ve tried the product, so they understand that there are certain calories in a chocolate treat versus a honey bun versus a baked chip.”

In doing its own calculations, NAMA has determined that that the FDA’s estimate may still be underestimating the time investment necessary, Monroe said.

“It’s even more troubling that after reviewing the calculations in the report the 14 million hour estimate might not even be enough,” he said. “The implementation for this policy is completely wrong. It’s obvious that the FDA needs to rethink this approach completely. In this economy where our small business members are struggling to survive, they can’t afford to spend 14 million hours each year to comply with this new regulation.”

While the calorie-disclosure regulation technically went into effect when President Obama signed the health-care law on March 23, the FDA said it would “refrain” from enforcing the provision until it publishes the final guidelines. Those will be ready in December.
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 09, 2010, 09:08:47 AM
Obama & Fed impose 20% tax on all Americans
http://toddkinsey.com/Obama-Fed-impose-20percent-tax.html ^




President Obama defended the Fed’s decision to implement a second Quantitative Easing (QE2) amidst disagreement by fellow G20 countries China and Russia. Both countries stated that they believe the G20 should have been consulted before the United States followed through with plans to print more money and begin purchasing its own debt.

A little over a year ago Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke swore under oath that he would not monetize America’s debt. For those that don’t quite grasp the concept, we are essentially borrowing the money from ourselves by issuing bonds (IOU’s) and then printing money to purchase the bonds from ourselves. By printing billions of additional dollars the Fed is purposefully causing inflation, which, by Chairman Bernanke’s own admission, is a tax increase. That’s a neat trick, maybe I’ll pay my mortgage with Monopoly money next month. I could use a Quantitative Easing just in time for Christmas.

Many top economists believe this second massive printing of dollars by the Federal Reserve will cause a dramatic decrease in the value of the dollar on the world market. Bill Gross who manages the world’s largest mutual fund asserted that the Fed’s move will ‘devalue the dollar by as much as 20%.”


(Excerpt) Read more at toddkinsey.com ...
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 10, 2010, 09:30:21 AM
Report: White House altered drilling safety report
 By DINA CAPPIELLO
The Associated Press
www.washingtonpost.com
Wednesday, November 10, 2010; 11:11 AM


________________________ ________________________ ____________


WASHINGTON -- The Interior Department's inspector general says the White House edited a drilling safety report in a way that made it falsely appear that scientists and experts supported the idea of the administration's six-month ban on new drilling.

The inspector general says the editing changes resulted "in the implication that the moratorium recommendation had been peer reviewed." But it hadn't been. The scientists were only asked to review new safety measures for offshore drilling.

"There was no intent to mislead the public," said Kendra Barkoff, a spokeswoman for Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who also recommended in the May 27 safety report that a moratorium be placed on deepwater oil and gas exploration. "The decision to impose a temporary moratorium on deepwater drilling was made by the secretary, following consultation with colleagues including the White House."

The Interior Department, after one of the reviewers complained about the inference, promptly issued an apology to the reviewers during a conference call, with a letter and personal meeting in June.


The inspector general's report, which was originally requested by Louisiana Sen. David Vitter and Rep. Steve Scalise in June, said the administration did not violate federal rules because the executive summary did not say the experts approved the recommendations and the department offered a formal apology and had publicly clarified the nature of the expert review.

But Louisiana Rep. Bill Cassidy, a Republican, said in a statement that the investigation proved "that the blanket drilling moratorium was driven by a politics and not by science."

"Candidate Obama promised that he would guided by science, not ideology," Cassidy said. Cassidy said if that were true thousands of jobs and billions in economic activity would have been preserved on the Gulf coast.

The Web site Politico was first to report the inspector general's findings. The Associated Press on Wednesday obtained a copy of the report, which has not been publicly released.
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 10, 2010, 10:52:37 AM
More federal workers' salaries skyrocket past $150,000
USA Today | 11-10-2010 | By Dennis Cauchon, USA TODAY



 

MY SUMMATION:

Federal workers earning $150,000 or more a year has increased 10x  in the past five years and doubled since President Obama was inaugurated
Already, some Republicans are going to use the lame-duck session that starts Monday to provides alternatives to Obama's plan to give a 1.4% across-the-board pay raise to 2 million plus federal workers.

 

read the rest at USA Today --->>  http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-11-10-1Afedpay10_ST_N.htm

 
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 11, 2010, 05:22:42 AM
Job-Killing Environmentalists
How the EPA cripples the American economy
Jon Basil Utley | November 10, 2010



________________________ ________________________ _________




President Barack Obama seems more concerned with appeasing environmental extremists in his administration than he is with the lost jobs of poor Americans. He’s letting the environmentalists run wild with long pent-up schemes to force a change in the American way of life that includes small cars, small apartments and, for many, a return to an idealized 19th century lifestyle. It’s not China that’s responsible for American job losses; it’s Washington’s fault for shutting down whole industries and preventing new jobs from being created.

What’s happened is that Obama has given the environmental extremists the power to make some of their wish list come true. Modern measurement techniques allow scientists to measure tiny parts per million; much of the technology did not exist when the Clean Air Act was first legislated in 1990. Using these new techniques environmentalists are able to impose their fantasies upon American business and labor. For industry, removing the last parts per million is prohibitively costly. For instance, technology which could have removed the Gulf of Mexico oil spill was prohibited by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) because the discharged ocean water would still contain more than 15 parts per million of oil.

When the American economy was growing fast these EPA job killers were not so damaging. Now, in slower times, they are proving deadly.

Below are eight areas where the environmental extremists hope to wreak havoc on the American economy.

Carbon Dioxide. Human activity accounts for less than 4 percent of global CO2 emissions and CO2 itself accounts for only 10 or 20 percent of the greenhouse effect. Water vapor accounts for most of the other 80 percent. The actual quantity of C02 in the Earth's atmosphere is about 0.0387 percent, or 387 parts per million. The Christian Science Monitor recently published an excellent analysis of how the EPA’s plans for reducing carbon dioxide could cause the loss of over a million jobs and raise every family’s energy costs by over $1,200.

Factory boilers. The EPA wants new, more stringent limits on soot emissions from industrial and factory boilers. This would cost $9.5 billion according to the EPA, or over $20 billion according to the American Chemistry Council. A study released by the Council of Industrial Boiler Owners says the new rules would put 300,000 to 800,000 jobs at risk as industries opted to close plants rather than pay the expensive new costs. The ruling includes boilers used in manufacturing, processing, mining, and refining, as well as shopping malls, laundromats, apartments, restaurants, and hotels.

Home Remodeling. Some contractors are refusing to work on houses built before 1979 (when lead paint use was discontinued) because of stringent new EPA permitting required for lead paint removal. Lead paint in powdered or edible form can hurt growing children. It was once used in the hard gloss paint for wood surfaces, but has been painted over with non-lead-based paint during the past 30 years. The new fines of $37,000 per day are ruinous for smaller contractors and individual workers. Many jobs will therefore not be created as smaller contractors stop replacing window frames or turn down other work where lead paint may be present.

Ground Level Ozone. AutoBlog reports that the EPA has asked the U.S. government to enact draconian new smog regulations for ground-level ozone. The request to cut levels to .006 to .007 parts per million comes less than two years after standards were set at .0075 particles of pollutants per one million. As AutoBlog notes, “That doesn't sound like a very big change, but the New York Times reports that the agency quotes the price tag of such a change at between $19 billion and $100 billion per year by 2020. Oil manufacturers, manufacturing and utility companies are the main source of air pollution and they will have to spend heavily to meet the proposed regulation.”

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). The Fish and Wildlife Service is drawing up plans that define more parts of ANWR as “wilderness” thereby permanently removing any possibility for oil drilling in the vast field. The full Alaskan nature reserve is the size of South Carolina while the proposed drilling area would be the size of Dulles Airport.

Alaska Oil. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has prohibited all off-shore drilling until further notice, although Shell Oil and others’ proposed sites are in less than 150 feet of water and use fixed drilling platforms, not the floating kind used for deep water in the Gulf of Mexico. Potentially vast oil fields and the accompanying jobs are therefore on hold.

Cement Kiln Regulations. Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), who led the fight to expose so called man-made global warming, warns of a new EPA job-killing plan. “EPA’s new cement kiln regulation could shut down 18 plants, threatening 1,800 direct jobs and 9,000 indirect jobs,” he writes. “According to an analysis of EPA’s rule by King’s College (London) Professor Ragnar Lofstedt, EPA could send 28 million tons of U.S. cement production offshore, mainly to China.”

The above are all large-scale restrictions. There are also many smaller, mostly unreported new regulations. A Heritage Foundation study describes 43 such restrictions imposed during 2010 and totaled up their cost as well over $26 billion. As Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) complained before her defeat, farmers, ranchers, and foresters “are increasingly frustrated and bewildered by vague, overreaching, and unnecessarily burdensome EPA regulations, each of which will add to their costs, making it harder for them to compete.”

Gulf of Mexico Oil. While Salazar ostensibly lifted his illegal and unnecessary suspension of all oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, we don’t yet know if he has put up interminable, cost-wrecking regulations in the ban’s place. Just one of his changes, allowing government bureaucrats 90 days instead of the prior 30 days to issue every decision, may be enough to ruin future oil drilling. The big floating rigs rent for over half a million dollars a day to operate. Just the threat of non-decisions along the chain of government command may be fatal and do to oil drilling what the environmentalists did to nuclear energy—namely, shutting down all new plants by making the costs and risks prohibitive. Michael Bromwich, Salazar’s director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, said that there were only 10 new well permits pending, but according to The Washington Post there were 69 unapproved exploration and development plans sitting in his office. Even simple, continued drilling in already producing oil sands, where the geological conditions are measured and known, has been suspended.

Salazar also suspended shallow well drilling in less than 500 feet depth from fixed platforms. Washington only issued 13 such shallow well permits in the seven months since the Macondo blowout in April. Before that it was issuing about 13 shallow well permits per month. As is often the case with Washington’s heavy-handed regulators, it is the smaller companies, doing less costly drilling closer to shore, that are bankrupted or driven out of business by these costly and burdensome rules. All this comes after 40 years of successful drilling without a major blowout or spill.

Government restrictions and environmentalist lawsuits also affect other mining activity. For example, there is currently a shortage in Chinese rare earth elements, which are essential to a number of technologies, including hard drives and environmentalist-friendly hybrid-car batteries. Yet despite an abundance of rare earth reserves in the U.S., domestic production has been essentially shut down by the president’s allies.

It’s time for Congress to investigate what the EPA and its reckless agenda is costing American workers, businesses, and taxpayers.

Jon Basil Utley is associate publisher of The American Conservative. He was a foreign correspondent for Knight Ridder newspapers and former associate editor of The Times of the Americas. For 17 years, he was a commentator for the Voice of America. In the 1980s, he owned and operated a small oil drilling partnership in Pennsylvania.



Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 12, 2010, 05:56:41 AM
Examiner Editorial: New EPA regs would kill jobs, stall economy
Washington Examiner ^ | November 11, 2010 | Editorial


________________________ ________________________ _____________________


It sounds innocuous enough. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued new guidelines Thursday requiring state and local authorities that issue pollution permits based on federal standards to use the "Best Available Control Technology," or BACT. The stated goal is to achieve a 20 percent reduction in greenhouse gases by 2020. Most of the facilities affected by the new guidelines will likely be power plants, refineries and cement production operations. What the BACT guidelines simply mean, according to the agency, is this: "After taking into account technical feasibility, cost and other economic, environmental and energy considerations, permitting authorities should narrow the options and select the best one. EPA anticipates that, in most cases, this process will show that the most cost effective way for industry to reduce GHG emissions will be through energy efficiency."

Others don't share EPA's sunny outlook about the consequences of imposing this new standard, which lowers permissible greenhouse gases from the current level of 75 million parts per billion to 60 million parts per billion. Achieving that level of reduction in greenhouse gases won't be easy or cheap. This immense new burden on the private sector comes at precisely the wrong time for an economy still struggling to create new jobs and reduce near double-digit unemployment. One of the skeptics is University of Mississippi professor William Shughart II, whose op-ed elsewhere in Friday's Examiner notes that many jurisdictions across the country can't meet the present greenhouse gas standard, much less reach the lower threshold anytime soon. "If a county or city is not in compliance, its economy won't be able to grow, so the EPA's proposal would spell economic stagnation for many communities," Shughart contends.


(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 12, 2010, 06:20:06 AM
Jindal hammers Obama in new book
By: Jonathan Martin
November 12, 2010 12:15 AM EST
www.politico.com

________________________ ______________
 

NEW ORLEANS — Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal uses a new book to portray President Barack Obama as disconnected from the Gulf oil spill, charging that he was more focused on the political aftermath than the actual impact of the crisis.

Jindal recounts a pair of private conversations with the president that paint him as consumed with how his actions were being perceived.

On Obama’s first trip to Louisiana after the disaster, the governor describes how the president took him aside on the tarmac after arriving to complain about a letter that Jindal had sent to the administration requesting authorization for food stamps for those who had lost their jobs because of the spill.

As Jindal describes it, the letter was entirely routine, yet Obama was angry and concerned about looking bad.

"Careful," he quotes the president as warning him, "this is going to get bad for everyone."

Nearby on the tarmac, Jindal recalls, then-White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel was chewing out his own chief of staff, Timmy Teepell.

“If you have a problem pick up the f——n’ phone,” Jindal quotes Emanuel telling Teepell.

The governor asserts that the White House had tipped off reporters to watch the exchange on the New Orleans tarmac that Sunday in May and deemed it a “press stunt” that symbolized what’s wrong with Washington.

“Political posturing becomes more important than reality,” he writes.

And after Obama instituted a moratorium on offshore drilling, Jindal recounts that the president dismissed his concerns about the economic impact of the ban.

“I understand you need to say all of this, I know you need to say this, that you are facing political pressure,” Jindal quotes Obama telling him. When the governor said he was concerned about people losing their jobs, he said the president cited national polls showing that people supported the ban.

“The human element seemed invisible to the White House,” he writes.

Asked to respond to Jindal's assertions, Obama aides didn’t directly address either conversation but pointed to the president’s overall response to the spill.

“From Day One, President Obama has directed his administration to work with state and local governments to respond to and help Gulf communities recover from the BP oil spill,” said White House spokesman Adam Abrams. “The administration’s response was the largest response to an environmental disaster in our nation’s history and included not just nutrition assistance but also over 40,000 workers, ongoing efforts in science and seafood safety, the Mabus report for long-term Gulf recovery and the creation of the BP $20 billion fund for Gulf families and businesses.”

Jindal has criticized the administration in the past over the spill, but that he would do so at the outset of his book suggests he wants to raise his national profile — and perhaps seek national office.


In an interview with POLITICO prior to the book’s release, the governor argued that Obama’s response to the disaster was a metaphor for what he described as the administration’s more fundamental problem.

“They’re not connected to reality on the ground,” he said.

The book, titled “Leadership and Crisis,” amounts to a national introduction for the 39-year-old first-term governor. While a familiar figure to political insiders — largely for his Indian-American heritage, sterling résumé and a regrettable State of the Union response last year — Jindal is largely undefined with the broader voting public.

After losing his first bid for the governorship in 2003 and then serving two terms in Congress, Jindal has enjoyed wide popularity since winning the governor's mansion in his native Baton Rouge in 2007.

He’s passed tax cuts and historic ethics reforms in the notoriously corrupt state and won accolades for his administration's responses to hurricanes and the oil spill.

But he faces a looming $1.5 billion budget deficit, and his proposed cuts to higher education this week brought hundreds of protesters to the state Capitol.

Louisiana’s fiscal straits and his refusal to raise taxes to avoid the education cuts have increased local speculation that Jindal, who has already held an array of political jobs in his short career, is eyeing an exit.

But in the interview, he indicated he was staying put.

Asked if he’d ever want to be president, Jindal recited his stock answer — “I’ve got the best job I will ever have.”

Pressed on whether he had any desire to return to Washington, Jindal offered a flat “no.”

Plainly, though, he’s interested in joining the political conversation beyond his home state.

Jindal uses the 283-page tome to tell his only-in-America story as the son of immigrants growing up in a Southern university town, to tout his record in office and to lay out a roster of policy prescriptions and political reforms.

What’s striking about the book — and what illustrates the degree to which it’s aimed at raising his profile among grass-roots conservatives — is the harshness of his attacks on Democrats, the media, elites and the political establishment in Washington.

Such broadsides are, of course, standard fare for aspiring Republicans. But they don’t necessarily square with the image Jindal has carved out in Louisiana as a get-it-done, wonky reformer more interested in ideas and solutions than in lobbing bombs across the aisle.

In addition to the shots he takes at Obama, Jindal also recounts anecdotes that depict reporters as out-of-touch liberals, turns around the famous William F. Buckley line to claim he’d rather be governed “by the first one hundred names in the Baton Rouge, Louisiana, phone book than the faculty of Harvard University” and approvingly cites the old saw that “dumb people need representation too ... and they surely have it in Washington.”

Jindal dismissed any notion that the pugnacious tone of his book was in conflict with his pragmatic brand.

“I have always been a principled conservative who doesn’t believe government is the answer to everything, but I am also somebody who is deeply interested in practical policy solutions,” he said. “I don’t care if they are Democratic or Republican ideas.”


But for some of the toughest language in his book, Jindal made no apologies — and was even feistier in person.

He writes that “the sad truth is that serving in Congress is now often an apprenticeship program for lobbyists-in-waiting” and likens the image of the former members reminiscing about their days in Congress with current members to “aging high school football players recalling their glory days on the field."

“These politicians-turned-lobbyists exploit their political access to cash in on what was supposed to be public service,” Jindal concludes.

Reminded that he served with former members of Congress from Louisiana whom he now suggests are exploiting their time in government, the governor allowed that former Republican congressmen like Jim McCrery and Richard Baker “served the state honorably.”

But Jindal also used the opportunity to broaden his indictment.

“There is almost this attitude among elected officials that [lobbying] is their deferred compensation,” he said. “I think their attitude is: Look, my buddies in law school are all making a lot more money than I did in private law firms, and I didn’t get to make that much money, and so this is my way of making up for all those lost earning years. To me that’s ridiculous. ... People should come back to their states, and people should go back to the private sector after they’re done in public service.”

The governor did, though, say in the interview that his party ought to be careful about not attacking political opponents personally. Having once been attacked for his own given Indian name, Jindal winced when reminded about those conservatives who mock Obama by referring to him as “Hussein,” his middle name.

“I think we can disagree with the president without being disagreeable,” he said. “Name-calling is not going to win elections or convince the American people."

Recalling some of the shots at President George W. Bush, Jindal added: “We didn’t like it when there was a Republican president, so we shouldn’t engage in that kind of activity when there is a Democratic president.”

The GOP, he said, should take the fight to the opposition based on ideas.

And there is no lack of them in his book.

Jindal joked that his advisers urged him to cut out some of the denser discourse on health care policy.

But he devotes an entire chapter to the topic, offering a list of what he calls “market-based health care reforms,” and another one on how to pay for Medicare. He also offers extended treatment on energy, tweaking those in his own party for their single-minded focus on oil exploration.

Conservatives, he writes, “need to do more than simply shout ‘Drill, baby, drill’ — we need to aggressively pursue the next generation of renewable and clean energy production technologies.”

Jindal also writes at length about cultural issues and national security. But, as made clear with his denunciation of Washington’s lobbyist culture, he’s as interested in reforming the political process as he is in addressing policy matters.

He proposes a “seven-step recovery program” for Congress that includes such perennials as a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution and a line-item veto but also argues for some newer ideas, such as requiring a supermajority to raise taxes and having the body become a part-time legislature.

Such notions, of course, would be most easily implemented if Jindal were president.

But as he gears up for his reelection next year, the governor dismissed the notion.

“This is not a campaign manifesto; this is not a platform,” he said of the book. “This is my contribution to help get our country to get back on track.”
 
 
© 2010 Capitol News Company, LLC
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 12, 2010, 08:07:35 AM
New deepwater drilling permits: Zilch

Relief wells were drilled this summer to stop the BP spill, which led to a shut down in Gulf of Mexico deepwater drilling.
 By Steve Hargreaves, CNNMoney.comNovember 12, 2010: 9:14 AM ET




NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- President Obama lifted his moratorium on deepwater oil drilling nearly a month ago, but the government still hasn't issued any new permits in the Gulf of Mexico.

And most analysts say permits will be slow in coming through 2011.

11Email Print CommentThe Interior Department halted deep water permits shortly after BP's Macondo well blew out last April. The accident resulted in the worst oil spill in U.S. history.

The moratorium was lifted in mid-October after government officials were confident new, stricter rules and regulations were in place.

But no new permits for wells covered under the ban have been issued, according to a spokeswoman for the Interior Department's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Regulation and Enforcement.

"[BOEMRE director Michael] Bromwich has indicated that he hopes to see some approved by the end of the year but cannot speculate," the spokeswoman said in a statement.

Even if a few permits come through, analysts say it will be a far cry from the amount issued pre-spill.

"We're not holding our breath for a return to business as usual," Whitney Stanco, and energy analyst at the Washington Research Group, wrote in a recent research note. "Despite pressure from Gulf state lawmakers and the oil and gas industry, we believe permitting in 2011 will likely be slower than it has been in recent years."

The moratorium did not affect current oil production in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico, which comes from wells that have already been drilled. Currently, about a quarter of the nation's five-million-barrel-a-day crude output comes from the deepwater Gulf, according to the Government's Energy Information Administration.

But future output could fall if new wells aren't drilled. EIA predicts U.S. output will drop by about 170,000 barrels a day in 2011 thanks to the ban.

With Republicans taking over the House, it's possible that the generally more pro-drilling lawmakers will push the administration to issue more permits.

"You could see hearings in the first quarter of the year," said Kevin Shaw, an energy lawyer at the law firm Mayer Brown. "But it will just be a stick to beat the administration with. I'm not expecting a much different outcome."


0:00 /:59BP's rebound
Indeed, analysts say most lawmakers will be reluctant to push the Interior Department to issue permits faster than it thinks it can safely do so.

"What happened this summer was pretty dramatic," said Joseph Stanislaw, an independent energy adviser at Deloitte & Touche. "I think everyone agrees that people really need to work out the rules."

That's tough news to the people who do the actual drilling.

"What's going on over here is a whole lot of nothing," said Jim Noe, and executive at Hercules offshore, who said they are still having a hard time getting permits even for shallow water wells.

Noe said they haven't had to lay off too many people yet, and have kept workers busy doing maintenance work and other jobs. But the longer the permit drought continues, the harder it gets.

"We're not optimistic we'll be back in business in a meaningful way anytime soon," he said. 

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 14, 2010, 09:23:34 AM
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 14, 2010, 11:14:43 AM
The EPA’s new ozone regulation will damage the US economy for no reason
climatequotes.com ^ | 11/14/10 | Sam



 There was much talk about the EPA's recent declaration of CO2 as a pollutant, and rightfully so. However, there is something else the EPA is regulating which is also very harmful to the US economy: ozone levels. Not only do they currently regulate ozone levels, but they are about to tighten their regulations on them. Many areas in the US are projected to already be in violation as soon as the new regulations are in place.

The current limit on ozone level is 75 ppb (yes that's parts per BILLION), which was set in 2008 by the Bush administration. The Obama administration has been wanting to change it ever since they got into office, and they were about to in August, but they didn't. Why? Politics. They intentionally waited until after the election to change the regulation. It is expected to change at the end of this year.

It isn't know exactly what level they will change the regulation to. It is expected between 60-70 ppb, but I expect it will be on the low end of that scale because changing the level from 75 to 70 hardly seems worth the amount of time they have invested in it. If the level is set at 60ppb, will that really be a problem? Absolutely. Here are a few articles from different areas in the US warning what is about to come:

Manatee likely to violate new ozone rule

MANATEE — Manatee and Sarasota counties soon could face a big-city problem: excessive smog. The two-county area is likely to violate new federal ozone standards, triggering an extensive — and expensive — effort to improve the region’s air quality, officials say. “I think they’re going to lower the standard to a point where we are going to be in violation,” said Mike Maholtz, a planner with the Sarasota/Manatee Metropolitan Planning Organization....The DEP estimates 14 Florida counties would not meet a 70 parts per billion standard. At 60 parts per billion, that figure jumps to 38 counties.

EPA ozone targets will hurt job creation in Lehigh Valley, New Jersey

Our region’s government health departments and businesses are working hard to reach the current 2008 ozone standard. The oil and gas industries alone spent $175 billion from 1990 to 2010 to meet all of the Clean Air Act emission standards. This is a difficult task because, as in football, the final few yards are the most difficult to achieve.

For the Lehigh Valley and New Jersey, very real economic hardships will result if the EPA implements these new regulations. Twenty-eight Pennsylvania counties and 21 New Jersey counties are expected to have ozone levels above 60 ppb in 2020. EPA’s new 60 ppb standard will force these counties into a “nonattainment” violation of the standard. This will force power plants, energy-intensive industries, trucking firms, commuters and small businesses under Draconian restrictions on their ozone emissions which will cause the destruction of profitability and growth. The EPA literally will be choking the economic life out of these 28 Pennsylvania counties and 21 New Jersey counties and their businesses.

This NYT article has two interesting quotes in it. The first is talking about the potential costs:

According to an analysis by the Manufacturers Alliance, setting the standard at 60 ppb would cost the economy about $1 trillion per year from 2020 to 2030 and would result in the loss of 7.3 million jobs.

$1 trillion a year?!?! That sounds high, but this regulation will put hundreds of counties across the nation into 'nonattainment', which is expensive. But how much does the EPA say it will cost? That brings me to my second quote:

In its proposal last January, EPA said it would set the standard somewhere between 60 and 70 ppb, eliciting the applause of environmental and public health groups. Depending on the standards chosen, the proposed changes would yield between $13 billion and $100 billion in health benefits at a cost of $19 billion to $90 billion, according to EPA estimates.

First of all, when governmental agencies estimate costs they usually are off by at least three-fold, usually five or more. However, what if we did take the numbers simply at face value? Look at the range of uncertainty! The ranges are essentially the same! In other words, the EPA is going to force every county in the US to obey an arbitrary ozone limit in order to obtain health benefits which are essentially the same as the cost imposed.

Why are they lowering the limit at all? Here is a fact sheet about the proposal. They say this:

• On January 6, 2010, EPA proposed to strengthen the national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) for ground-level ozone, the main component of smog. The proposed revisions are based on scientific evidence about ozone and its effects on people and the environment.
Alright, so they are basing these results on scientific evidence. What evidence is that? Let's see:

• In this reconsideration, EPA is not relying on studies about the health and ecological effects of ozone that have been published since the science assessment to support the 2008 review was completed. However, EPA conducted a provisional assessment of these newer studies and found they do not materially change the conclusions of the Agency's earlier science assessment.

So they aren't even looking at new evidence since the 2008 limits were put in place. They are basing it on the same evidence they had earlier, but they believe that 75ppb wasn't tight enough. However, they believe that 70ppb is tight enough. Obviously FIVE parts in a BILLION is enough of a difference to merit a new draconian rule. Are we really supposed to believe that a decrease of a few parts in a billion will significantly affect the health of our nation? If ozone is that bad (there is no safe background level) why is 60ppm the right number? There will still be asthmatic children harmed at 60ppb, so why not 20ppb or 0ppb? Can someone please inform the EPA about the concept of statistical significance? What I want to know it the margin of error on the ozone monitoring equipment. I bet it is at least 5ppb.

Counties and states across the country should stand up to the EPA and tell them the truth: you don't know what the hell you are talking about. Leave us alone.

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 19, 2010, 07:27:20 AM
Few Businesses Sprout, With Even Fewer Jobs .Article Comments (30) more in Financing & Investing ».
By JUSTIN LAHART And MARK WHITEHOUSE
www.wsj.com

________________________ ________________________ __



Fewer new businesses are getting off the ground in the U.S., available data suggest, a development that could cloud the prospects for job growth and innovation.


Dan Krauss for The Wall Street Journal
 
A circuit board by Tesla Controls, one of many new companies with no workers beyond its founder.

In the early months of the economic recovery, start-ups of job-creating companies have failed to keep pace with closings, and even those concerns that do get launched are hiring less than in the past. The number of companies with at least one employee fell by 100,000, or 2%, in the year that ended March 31, the Labor Department reported Thursday.

That was the second worst performance in 18 years, the worst being the 3.4% drop in the previous year.

Newly opened companies created a seasonally adjusted total of 2.6 million jobs in the three quarters ended in March, 15% less than in the first three quarters of the last recovery, when investors and entrepreneurs were still digging their way out of the Internet bust.


Starting a Global Business, With No U.S. Workers

Shortage of Capital Costs Firm

Research shows that new businesses are the most important source of jobs and a key driver of the innovation and productivity gains that raise long-term living standards. Without them there would be no net job growth at all, say economists John Haltiwanger of the University of Maryland and Ron Jarmin and Javier Miranda of the Census Bureau.

"Historically, it's the young, small businesses that take off that add lots of jobs," says Mr. Haltiwanger. "That process isn't working very well now."

Ensconced in a strip mall behind a Carpeteria outlet, Derek Smith has been tinkering for two years with a wireless electrical system that he says can help schools and office buildings slash lighting bills. With his financing limited to what he earns as a wireless-technology consultant, he has yet to hire his first employee.

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This is a far cry from his last start-up, which he cofounded in 2002. At the two-year mark, that company, which makes radio-tracking gear for hospital equipment, had five employees, about $1 million in funding from angel investors and offices with views of downtown San Diego.

"When I started this the plan was to go out and raise a bunch of money," says Mr. Smith, who is 36 years old. That was in late 2008, just as financial markets around the world collapsed. "I quickly discovered I can't do what I did before."

Tough economic times have pushed more Americans into business for themselves, working as consultants or selling wares online. But many are not taking the additional step of forming a company and hiring employees.

For people like Mr. Smith, lack of funding seems to be the biggest problem. Two traditional sources of start-up cash—home-equity loans and credit cards—have largely dried up as banks wrangle with massive defaults and a moribund housing market. Venture-capital firms that typically invest in young companies, as well as angel investors that focus on early-stage start-ups, are pulling back as they struggle to sell the companies they already own.

Venture-capital firms invested $25.1 billion in the year that ended in September, up 10% from the same period a year earlier but still down 27% from two years earlier, according to Dow Jones VentureSource. Angel investment amounted to $8.5 billion in the 2010 first half—30% below the average level in the five years leading up to the financial crisis, estimates Jeffrey Sohl, director of the Center for Venture Research at the University of New Hampshire.

"I've never seen seed capital so low," says Mr. Sohl. "This is alarming."

.Some entrepreneurs say it's not all about financing, though. They express concern about taxes, health-care costs and the impact that wrangling in Washington over the federal budget deficit will have on them. "I can't determine what the cost of providing health care for employees would be," says Kevin Berman, 47, who is starting a local-produce company in Orion Township, Mich., called Harvest Michigan. Starting a company "is harder than it was at any time I can remember."

San Diego has long been one of the nation's entrepreneurial hotbeds, a culture that dates back to the 1960s with the founding of Linkabit Corp., a communications company whose alumni have launched scores of technology companies. A 1970s biotechnology start-up, Hybritech Inc., gave rise to a thriving biotechnology industry.

Lately, though, the pace of start-ups securing funding in San Diego has been slowed at the University of California at San Diego center that helps researchers move their work into the commercial sphere. "Investors are moving away from early-stage companies," says Rosibel Ochoa, director of the William J. von Liebig Center. "Nobody wants to touch them."

Scarce funding is putting researchers like Deli Wang in a bind. The 42-year-old engineering professor is an expert on nanowires, thread-like structures with widths less than a thousandth the diameter of an average human hair. He has a plan to make light-emitting diodes using nanowires that, he says, would be far more efficient than existing alternatives. Investors, he says, are interested—if they can see a prototype. Building one would cost Mr. Wang $200,000 that he doesn't have. "We're kind of stuck," he says.

To be sure, some companies are still getting started, particularly in biotechnology, where cash-rich pharmaceutical concerns are eager buyers and investors. In the first half of 2010, health care and biotech accounted for 44% of all angel investments, Mr. Sohl says.

View Full Image

Dan Krauss for The Wall Street Journal
 
Derek Smith, owner of Tesla Controls, handles his own bookkeeping, emails and circuit-board fabrication.
.And in many cases, entrepreneurs today don't need as much money, or as many people, to start new businesses. Software, communications technology and high-tech equipment are far cheaper and far more powerful than they were a decade ago.

At Mr. Smith's one-man San Diego start-up, Tesla Controls Corp., circuit boards, semiconductor chips and other components litter a plastic folding table he uses as a workbench. "The hardware stuff is all cheaper," he says. "Any of these chips are $5 or less."

Much of Mr. Smith's economizing is the result of necessity. With a family to support, he doesn't want to borrow against his house. Angel investors, if interested, would demand a larger stake at a lower price than he can stomach. And the small stake he still has in his earlier start-up, Awarepoint Corp., is only paper wealth.

The lack of funding is slowing him down. And the day a week he spends on consulting takes away from the time that he can devote to his new company. "I would love to be able to hire other people," he says. "But right now I can't."

Write to Justin Lahart at justin.lahart@wsj.com and Mark Whitehouse at mark.whitehouse@wsj.com

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 22, 2010, 02:34:10 PM
700,000 Medicare Beneficiaries to be Displaced
Weekly Standard ^ | November 20, 2010 | Jeffrey H. Anderson


________________________ ________________________ _______________

Today's Wall Street Journal reports:


Seniors enrolling in private Medicare policies starting this week are finding fewer options, as health insurers close down certain types of plans due to legislative changes and looming cuts to federal funding.

Cigna Corp., Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, several Blue Cross Blue Shield plans and others aren't renewing hundreds of Medicare Advantage plans, which are Medicare policies administered by private insurers. The moves will displace some 700,000 beneficiaries who must find new policies, according to Humana Inc., a large seller of Advantage plans.

The Congressional Budget Office projects that Medicare Advantage funding would be cut by more than a quarter of a trillion dollars ($254 billion) in Obamacare's real first decade (2014 to 2023), which amounts to cuts of about $25,000 for each of the roughly 10 million Medicare Advantage beneficiaries. Those cuts wouldn't be made if Obamacare is repealed in January of 2013, but $8 billion will be cut by the end of 2012. These Medicare cuts -- both the $8 billion and the $254 billion -- wouldn't be used to make Medicare more solvent over the long haul, but would instead be spent on Obamacare.


(Excerpt) Read more at weeklystandard.com ...
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 23, 2010, 06:08:12 AM
Retrained for green jobs, but still waiting on work

By Michael A. Fletcher
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 22, 2010; 10:07 PM

www.washingtonpost.com




OCALA, FLA. - After losing his way in the old economy, Laurance Anton tried to assure his place in the new one by signing up for green jobs training earlier this year at his local community college.

Anton has been out of work since 2008, when his job as a surveyor vanished with Florida's once-sizzling housing market. After a futile search, at age 56 he reluctantly returned to school to learn the kind of job skills the Obama administration is wagering will soon fuel an employment boom: solar installation, sustainable landscape design, recycling and green demolition.

Anton said the classes, funded with a $2.9 million federal grant to Ocala's workforce development organization, have taught him a lot. He's learned how to apply Ohm's law, how to solder tiny components on circuit boards and how to disassemble rather than demolish a building.

The only problem is that his new skills have not resulted in a single job offer. Officials who run Ocala's green jobs training program say the same is true for three-quarters of their first 100 graduates.

"I think I have put in 200 applications," said Anton, who exhausted his unemployment benefits months ago and now relies on food stamps and his dwindling savings to survive. "I'm long past the point where I need some regular income."

With nearly 15 million Americans out of work and the unemployment rate hovering above 9 percent for 18 consecutive months, policymakers desperate to stoke job creation have bet heavily on green energy. The Obama administration channeled more than $90 billion from the $814 billion economic stimulus bill into clean energy technology, confident that the investment would grow into the economy's next big thing.

The infusion of money is going to projects such as weatherizing public buildings and constructing advanced battery plants in the industrial Midwest, financing solar electric plants in the Mojave desert and training green energy workers.

But the huge federal investment has run headlong into the stubborn reality that the market for renewable energy products - and workers - remains in its infancy. The administration says that its stimulus investment has saved or created 225,000 jobs in the green energy industry, a pittance in an economy that has shed 7.5 million jobs since the recession took hold in December 2007.

The industry's growth has been undercut by the simple economic fact that fossil fuels remain cheaper than renewables. Both Obama administration officials and green energy executives say that the business needs not just government incentives, but also rules and regulations that force people and business to turn to renewable energy.

Without government mandates dictating how much renewable energy utilities must use to generate electricity, or placing a price on the polluting carbon emitted by fossil fuels, they say, green energy cannot begin to reach its job creation potential.

"We keep getting these stops and starts in the industry. There is no way it can work like this," said Bill Gallagher, president of Solar-Fit, a Florida energy company whose fortunes have fluctuated with government incentives in its 35 years in business.

Like many people who run renewable energy companies, Gallagher said he sees no need to expand his 25-employee firm because the business is simply not there.

Although 29 states have enacted laws setting benchmarks for the amount of energy utilities must generate from renewable sources such as wind and solar, the standards vary greatly. And with a new congressional majority poised to take office - including many members elected pledging to reduce Washington's role in the economy - it remains an open question whether new federal regulations that would support expansion of the industry would be enacted anytime soon.

"Green energy investment has been a central talking point of the Obama administration's job growth strategy," said Samuel Sherraden, a policy analyst at the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan research organization. "It was a little bit too ambitious given the size and depth of the recession and the small size of the renewable energy industry."

Sherraden said it was unwise for the administration to invest so heavily in green energy, at least if short-term job creation was the goal. He said green energy comes with "political and market uncertainty" that has overwhelmed its job creation potential.

Despite that, Obama has described the surge of clean energy spending as crucial both to the nation's economic and environmental future.

"Our future as a nation depends on making sure that the jobs and industries of the 21st century take root here in America," Obama said in October. "And there is perhaps no industry with more potential to create jobs now - and growth in the coming years - than clean energy."

But other administration officials acknowledge that it is likely to be years before the spending on green energy produces large numbers of jobs. And they add that only part of the money earmarked for green energy has been spent. They also agree that the government will have to help create demand to support green energy.

Still, they are optimistic for the long term, even if the spending will not significantly ease the nation's unemployment crisis in the short run.

The money going into building car battery plants, for example, could allow the nation to capture as much as 40 percent of the global demand in that growing business in five to seven years, said Carol M. Browner, director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy.

"This stuff is coming on line," Browner said. "We all want it to come on line much more quickly."

Here in Ocala, the federal emphasis on green energy was eagerly embraced by local officials grasping for ways to blunt the area's skyrocketing jobless rate, which now stands at 14 percent.

The housing crisis had decimated the local economy, wiping out thousands of jobs that will probably never return. There were huge losses in construction jobs. Several plants that made building supplies and home furnishings have gone out of business. And last year, Taylor Bean and Whitaker, a mortgage company that employed more than 1,000 people, suddenly closed.

Now with real estate development not predicted to resume its former breakneck pace anytime in the foreseeable future, the local economy is left without an obvious source of new jobs.

That means many of the real estate agents, construction workers, mortgage brokers, kitchen cabinet makers, retail clerks and building supply people thrown out of work are going to have to find new careers. The overhang of workers who will need new skills to find work in new industries made the promise of green energy jobs all the more appealing.

When Workforce Connection, Ocala's regional work force development board, applied for a federal green jobs training grant last year, its top goal was to retrain 665 workers in green jobs skills with "immediate employment potential."

Ocala seemed like a good place to bet on green energy, particularly solar. The region's various window companies and other light manufacturing firms, coupled with its strategic location as a southeastern distribution hub make it a natural, local officials said.

"We felt like the expertise of a lot of the companies here translated easily to making solar panels and such," said Rusty Skinner, chief executive officer of Workforce Connection. "When you think of it, a solar panel is nothing more than a window with some added mechanisms."

Meanwhile, central Florida's abundant sunshine made the idea of marketing solar hot water heaters and solar electrical systems to nearby homeowners seem like a winning proposition.

But those assumptions have yet to pan out.

Federal incentives, which cover 30 percent of the installation costs, were offset by a state energy policy in disarray. Funding for a Florida program that offered rebates to residents and businesses who invested in solar energy was suspended earlier this year, leaving more than $50 million in claims up in the air and paralyzing the solar energy business.

Although Florida officials recently decided to use federal stimulus money to pay down part of the backlog of claims, the damage had been done. The turmoil over the incentive programs meant installation firms and manufacturers no longer had a reason to expand, green energy advocates said.

"There is no growth in this industry right now," said Colleen Kettles, executive director of the Florida Solar Research and Education Foundation. "In fact, some are going out of business."

Meanwhile, many of the unemployed workers who have retrained for jobs in the green energy business are out of luck.

Carols Arandia, 59, has earned seven green jobs certificates since beginning classes this year, while renting a room from a friend to weather the hard times.

Often studying well into the night, Arandia is familiar with hard work. He ran a small manufacturing business in his native Venezuela before arriving in the United States in 1996. For years, he lugged around a dictionary and a notebook in which he religiously wrote down words and phrases until his English became passable. He worked seven years at Boston Chicken. Later, he sold cars.

But now, after nearly two years of being out of work and a series of classes that have not led to a job, his optimism is dimming.

"What is the point of giving somebody the tools to do something but to have nowhere to use them?" he asked. "I think it's a great program, but I don't see the connection with all the training and jobs. And I need a job."

Christine Bageant, 45, also jumped at the opportunity to train in green jobs, after losing her position at the county library. She viewed the new classes as an opportunity to "get in on the ground floor of something big."

Since then she has earned similar training certificates as Arandia. A few months ago she started looking for work as a painter. She thought her newly acquired expertise in abating lead paint would make her a hot commodity.

But many of the painting contractors she has interviewed with are tiny companies, with no more than two or three employees. They are struggling to survive, and Bageant's expertise in lead abatement has left them unimpressed.

"Right now they are blowing it off," she shrugged. "They don't think it's important."

Officials who helped develop the training program nod knowingly when asked about the difficulty graduates are having landing jobs.

"I think this is a great program," said Peter J. Tesch, president and chief executive of the Ocala/Marion County Economic Development Corp. "Applying it to real life, that is the challenge. In a place like Florida everybody's talking the talk, but they're not walking the walk. The market place has not caught up to the technical training and skill sets that have been provided these people."

That much was obvious at a recent ceremony for 15 graduates of a solar electric training class. The students beamed proudly as family members took pictures and program officials offered words of wisdom.

Then, one-by-one, they walked up front to receive their certificates. But rather than serving as a passport to a job, the certificates were more like IOUs to be redeemed sometime in the distant future.

"There is significant job creation potential in clean energy. But it is not revealing itself quickly or clearly," said Jerone Gamble, executive manager of continuing education at the College of Central Florida, and a chief architect of the green jobs training program. "In the time being, we're really selling hope."

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 24, 2010, 07:10:09 AM
Follow MeRichard Epstein
The LibertarianMy ProfileMy Headline GrabsMy RSS Feed
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Government By Waiver: The Breakdown Of Public Administration
Nov. 23 2010 - 1
By RICHARD EPSTEIN


http://blogs.forbes.com/richardepstein/2010/11/23/government-by-waiver-the-breakdown-of-public-administration/?boxes=opinionschannellatest


________________________ ________________________ _________



The past year has marked the passage of the two most massive legislative reforms in the history of American politics: ObamaCare for health care and Dodd-Frank for the financial sector.  Their size and complexity dwarf those of any New Deal legislation.

These new laws require a stunning acceleration of the longstanding practice of relying on delegated authority to implement statutory commands.  According to its New Deal champions, this welcome division of authority could cure the manifold defects of a market economy by combining the best of democratic politics with the best of administrative expertise.  Under the new division of labor, the political branches of government set the broad direction of legislative reform, and then trust skilled administrative agencies to turn general directives into specific commands.

The sheer magnitude of the new legislative ventures has thrown this model–which, in truth, has never worked well–into disarray. Rulemaking is no small operation.  Typically, an agency has to gather enough information to take an intelligent stab at issuing reasonable rules.  It must therefore try to bring itself up to speed by a cumbersome, multistage process for gathering and synthesizing the needed information from hundreds, if not thousands, of separate sources.

Stripped to its essentials, the relevant agency decides what it needs to know to formulate a set of intelligent rules.  It must then conduct extensive surveys of the relevant stakeholders–industry and consumer groups, for starters–to obtain needed data.  Next it formulates and publishes preliminary rules and regulations.  These in turn are bombarded by comments from literally hundreds of separate groups, each with its own agenda.  Once the agency issues its final rules, they may well be challenged in court on a variety of statutory and constitutional grounds.

This complex administrative process only has a fighting chance of generating sensible rules with a statute that embodies some workable principles in the first place.  Here is one typical instance of how the process has gotten gummed up under ObamaCare. As a matter of grand legislative policy, ObamaCare decreed that firms would be required to knock out wasteful administrative costs by attaining favorable “medical loss ratios,” which in turn require them to slash their administrative expenses for individual and group health care plans to between, say, 15% and 20% of total costs.  The numbers are often little more than half of the current expense ratios for various kinds of plans.

The statutory commands all rest on the grand assumption that these administrative costs are a form of disguised waste that mere competitive market forces could not eliminate.  But the claim is a delusion.  No one has any clear idea what counts an “administrative cost” for statutory purposes, which itself leads to all sorts of jockeying and lobbying for strategic advantage inside the administrative process–which just raises those administrative costs even more.

Since the politicos miscalculated the regulatory burdens, they have to brace for the real possibility that some health care plans will collapse under the strain.  Starting in late September, reality hit home when McDonald’s announced that it would have cut out its “mini-med” program for about 30,000 of its low-paid workers. It insisted that it could not meet the statutory requirements for the simple reason that high employee turnover raises administrative costs.

Rather than face this public relations disaster, Kathleen Sebelius, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, granted a one-year waiver from the requirements of the program.  That particular result does not stand alone.  Since that time fresh waivers have been routinely dispensed by the Department of Health and Human Services to many other organizations, including many powerful unions. At least one million workers are now out from under ObamaCare, with more to come.

The process vividly shows how unrealistic expectations can undermine the rule of law.  Waivers are by definition an exercise of administrative discretion that benefits the party who receives its special dispensation.  Yet nothing in ObamaCare explains who should receive these waivers or why.

The dangers from this uncertainty are enormous. Make no mistake about it, a waiver gives the favored organization a competitive advantage over its rivals. But it is not only one applicant that pulls out all the stops.  Its competitors often follow suit while simultaneously trying to block the waiver for the original applicant.  Administrative expertise quickly takes a back seat to old-fashioned political muscle and intrigue.

What’s more, waivers are typically only for short periods–say one year.  They are often given on condition that the firm take steps to bring itself into compliance during waiver period.  But what happens if the firm requests a renewal?  Is it issued on the ground that no amount of ingenuity could have brought the firm into compliance? Or is it denied in order to make sure that the overarching statutory command is not nullified by endless short-term compromises?

What matters systematically is not the outcome of any particular case but rather the long-term toll that extensive rulemaking exacts from the administrative process.  The safeguards of the rule of law are always undermined by fierce short-term pressures on administrative agencies.

Economically, the high fixed costs of administrative compliance drive small firms to seek takeover by powerful larger firms whose deeper purses and better political contacts help them weather the storm.  The palpable irony is that the same health care experts who once touted ObamaCare now fear that the new combinations will make health care more monopolistic, raising prices while cutting costs.  But no one can expect private firms to stand still in the face of those mortal threats.  Better a concentrated industry than a decimated one.

Squads of health care experts and political pundits envisioned a Pax Obama for heath care once the political hubbub quieted down. It won’t happen.  Without major steps to overhaul or repeal ObamaCare, government by waiver will become standard operating procedure to the detriment of us all.
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 24, 2010, 06:46:00 PM
I would get rid of the epa,nea,  dea, batf, DHS, Commerce Dept, etc. 
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 25, 2010, 09:10:45 AM
November 25, 2010
President Barack Obama: Job Killer
By Larry Elder




President Barack Obama walked into the Oval Office in January 2009 during a severe economic downturn led by a meltdown in housing prices -- and promptly made things worse.

By bailing out banks, insurance companies and auto firms -- done to a lesser extent by the previous administration -- Obama rewarded poor performers and punished their better-managed competitors. Prevented from pouncing on wounded rivals and thus increasing market share or buying the assets of the wounded at fire sale prices, Ford, for example, watched GM and Chrysler get a cash infusion from taxpayers. Despite GM's recent "successful" public offering, taxpayers lost billions of dollars.

Obama and the Democratic congressional supermajorities passed a nearly trillion-dollar economic "stimulus" package and then proceeded to award fiscally irresponsible states with "stimulus" funds, helping postpone the day of reckoning when states must meet their budgets by reducing spending and cutting the size of government. Stimulus supposedly "saved or created" 3.5 million jobs, but it merely succeeded in transferring money from the pockets of producer taxpayers into the pockets of others.

Obama spends billions to "invest" in mythical "green jobs of the future." Investing is the job of the private sector, which uses private funds to produce a product that addresses a need or desire. Success is determined by the willingness of the consumer to pay good money for said product. A bad bet means somebody loses his own money -- a possibility that the private investor weighed before he chose to risk his capital.

But government "investments" are driven by politics, with decisions made by bureaucrats operating under rosy scenarios with romantic wish lists. When taxpayer money goes down a rathole -- as is far more likely than with privately invested money -- nobody gets fired, but the country is impoverished a little bit more.

ObamaCare puts 30 million Americans on the rolls of the medically insured. Since its passage, insurance companies -- citing the cost of ObamaCare mandates, rules and regulations -- jacked up their premiums and cut coverage. Over 100 waivers have been granted to companies and organizations that, but for these waivers, would have had to drop coverage, increase copays or reduce medical benefits. Nice to have friends in high places.

The AARP, a staunch proponent of ObamaCare, announced a reduction in benefits for its own employees, lest the tax kick in for so-called "Cadillac plans." To "bend the cost curve," ObamaCare promised cuts in Medicare reimbursement. So doctors are dropping their Medicare patients.

The administration signed into law new banking and financial regulations that keep intact the very government agencies that helped precipitate the housing meltdown -- Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Under policies aimed at allowing everyone with a pulse and a dream to buy a home, these "government-sponsored entities" allowed the players in the housing market -- banks, borrowers, investment banks and buyers of "exotic securities" -- to play with taxpayer money.

The Obama administration's various government efforts to "keep homeowners in their homes" are floundering, serving only to postpone the necessary market re-pricing of homes that are now worth less than they once were. Cash for Clunkers induced people who were going to buy cars anyway into making their purchases earlier. When the program ended, car buying slumped. The result was more taxpayer dollars removed from the hands of producers and put into the hands of recipients.

The administration, with some Republican support, increased the minimum wage and several times extended unemployment compensation -- both well-intended policies, but job killers nonetheless.

Obama promised to raise taxes on the rich, who, under Bush, got tax cuts they "didn't need" and "didn't ask for." So the rich sit on their money, not knowing whether they will be allowed to spend or save or invest it -- or whether Washington has other ideas. Most Bush-era tax cuts expire at the end of the year, and if not extended, rates will go up on income, capital gains, dividends and estates.

The recent Republican takeover of the House and loss of the Senate's Democratic supermajority likely mean that the rates will be extended for all -- including the dastardly, job-creating rich. But businesspeople cannot plan -- and are thus reluctant to hire -- until they know whether their taxes are going to increase.

Candidate Obama demagogued against trade agreements that "shipped jobs overseas," and promised to tweak the Bush administration-negotiated treaty with South Korea. According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the pact would create 250,000 jobs in America and it would open up exports to a NAFTA-sized market. But during his recent trip to Asia, Obama failed to get the South Koreans to go along with his changes aimed at benefiting the American auto and beef industries. The South Koreans said no, insisting that they had a deal and that if the U.S. won't do business with them, other countries will.

For two years, Obama has practiced Obamalism: Spread the wealth; redistribute income; punish success; reward ineptitude; and encourage the victicrat-entitlement mentality by making the lack of health insurance the responsibility of others.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Copyright 2010, Creators Syndicate Inc.

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 25, 2010, 09:14:49 AM
US to establish 187,000-square-mile ‘critical habitat’ for polar bears in Alaska
Boston.com/AP ^ | November 25, 2010



WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is setting aside 187,000 square miles in Alaska as a “critical habitat’’ for polar bears, an action that could add restrictions to future offshore drilling for oil and gas.
 

The total, which includes large areas of sea ice off the Alaska coast, is about 13,000 square miles less than in a preliminary plan released last year.

Tom Strickland, Interior assistant secretary for fish, wildlife, and parks, said the designation would help polar bears stave off extinction, recognizing that the greatest threat is the melting of Arctic sea ice caused by climate change.


(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 01, 2010, 07:35:31 AM
As EPA Goes Green, Businesses See Red From Lack Of Guidance
By SEAN HIGGINS, INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted 11/30/2010 07:18 PM ET

 


EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has urged congressional action on cap-and-trade - or her agency will act instead.


Big business is bracing for a series of Environmental Protection Agency regulations set to begin in January. The problem is, it doesn't really know what those regulations are going to be. Neither does the EPA, which has essentially punted that responsibility down to the states.

Starting Jan. 2, owners of factories, utilities and the like must meet higher standards when they apply for EPA emissions permits. In green jargon, they will have to install the "best available control technology" to limit greenhouse gases before they can operate.

Tough And Vague

But the EPA has no standard for determining what is the best technology — or how much the emissions must be reduced. Businesses are simply being told to do better and to figure out what that is with local government officials.

"There is no set answer and no set amount of emissions reductions or standard," said EPA spokeswoman Enesta Jones. The new process is a "case-by-case determination that is made by the permitting authority — usually a state or local environmental agency."

Jones said the process would give "a lot of flexibility" to agencies to determine the best process.

Federal officials say they are working closely with states to smooth the process.

Big business sees a major problem for members, who don't know how to proceed to renew their licenses. Ross Eisenberg, Chamber of Commerce counsel on environmental issues, said dealing with the coming changes "dominated" a recent meeting of the group.

"The first word out of CEOs' mouths is 'regulatory overload,'" Eisenberg said. "And regulatory stuff is usually not a high priority for Washington types, but it really has moved to the forefront because it has become overwhelming."

Applying for an EPA permit for a factory or utility can take years of planning. Those plans now require last-minute revisions as companies have to determine what is the best technology for cutting emissions — and get others to agree with them.

"At the end of the day, you have to figure how to get that done,you have to convince the local permitting authorities of this and then, more than likely, defend that in a court of law, because someone is going to challenge you," Eisenberg said.

Keith McCoy, vice president for energy and resources policy at the National Association of Manufacturers, says the process is eased somewhat because existing permits will be honored until their original expiration. Only those whose permits are up for renewal will need to upgrade their facilities.

"EPA's thinking is that they'll have some time on this," McCoy said. "What they are not factoring in is a company's capital planning. Some of these things are multiyear decisions." Uncertainty in the permitting process will scramble that.

Grill On The Hill

Permitting is expected to become a headache for the EPA as well. Once local companies begin to deal with the new permit process, they will complain to lawmakers, who'll seek answers from federal officials.

GOP lawmakers vying for the chairmanship of the House Energy and Commerce Committee have already promised to regularly grill top Obama officials, especially EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, on green policies. Other lawmakers have vowed inquiries as well.

State and local governments may not be ready for the added responsibility. The nonpartisan National Conference of State Legislators says little prep work has been done.

"There is minimal state legislation addressing how states will handle these new regulations," NCSL policy analyst Jacquelyn Pless said.

Green groups are bracing for a backlash, especially efforts to limit or roll back EPA authority.

"The lobbying that we are seeing in Washington is only growing," said John Coequyt, energy policy analyst for the Sierra Club. "Companies and industry associations are using this as an opportunity to argue against regulations writ large."

The new permit rules reflect the White House's frustration with the lack of progress on cap-and-trade. It pushed lawmakers to pass a cap-and-trade bill, but after a bill was rammed through the House, it stalled in the Senate.

Late last year, EPA's Jackson announced that the agency was asserting the right under a 2007 Supreme Court decision to regulate carbon emissions as a pollutant. It was a message to get Congress to pass cap-and-trade: Do it first, or we'll step in.

The legislation remained stalled, so the EPA went ahead. It essentially ordered caps but no trading. Some lawmakers, like Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., tried to pass legislation barring EPA action, at least temporarily. But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., held off on a vote and has now indicated there won't be one in the current Congress.

"We have a long list of items to consider and not much time to do so," said Reid spokeswoman Regan LaChapelle.

Lobbyists on both sides expect green efforts to pick up again, and with renewed urgency, when the 122nd Congress convenes in January. Republicans will control the House and will have a bolstered minority in the Senate.
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 01, 2010, 08:50:15 AM
Source: No new drilling in Gulf for seven years
CNN ^ | 12/1/2010 | Dan Lothian






A senior administration official confirms that President Obama will not be allowing new drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico for at least seven years. This is a result of the BP oil spill.


(Excerpt) Read more at politicalticker.blogs.cn n.com ...
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 03, 2010, 01:06:02 PM
Obama makes US even more dependent on foreign oil
Flopping Aces ^ | 12-03-10 | DrJohn







A search for "Obama reneges" yields 15,800 hits in Google.

And once again Barack Obama reneges, this time on offshore oil drilling and in so doing makes the United States even more dependent on foreign oil. This is the first step in Obama's bypassing Congress to rule by Executive Order.

The Obama administration instituted what was supposed to be a six month moratorium on "deepwater"drilling following the Deep Horizon spill. A Federal judge struck it down, but Obama just instituted another one. On October12, the Obama administration announced that it would lift the deepwater drilling moratorium but has issued no new permits. The issuance of new permits was promised to be a slow process


President Obama lifted his moratorium on deepwater oil drilling nearly a month ago, but the government still hasn't issued any new permits in the Gulf of Mexico.
And most analysts say permits will be slow in coming through 2011.

Really, really slow, as it turns out.


On Wednesday, the Interior Department said it would not propose oil exploration off the Atlantic and Pacific coastlines or the eastern Gulf of Mexico for at least seven years.
As is Obama's usual policy, he called for bipartisan support while acting in a strictly partisan manner.

(Excerpt) Read more at floppingaces.net...

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 04, 2010, 06:37:13 AM
US Chamber of Commerce says EPA 'over-stepping' on coal ash rule
McGraw Hill ^ | 11/19/2010



Washington (Platts)--19Nov2010/537 pm EST/2237 GMT

The US Chamber of Commerce Friday said the Environmental Protection Agency is "overstepping its bounds" as it considers whether to regulate coal combustion waste as a hazardous material.

The chamber was among hundreds of corporations, associations and individuals that submitted comments on the proposal by Friday's deadline. The agency has held public hearings around the country that pitted environmentalists and concerned citizens against companies worried about the economic effects of coal ash regulation.

"This rule has potentially devastating consequences for America's construction industry," said William Kovacs, the chamber's senior vice president of environment, technology and regulatory affairs, told the agency. "The EPA blatantly side-stepped a critical requirement by not performing a study of the potential impact on employment of this regulation. At a time when our country continues to struggle to dig out of the recession, we simply cannot afford this guaranteed job-killer."  

Coal ash is recycled and used in cement, concrete, wallboard, roofing materials, paints and plastics and highway projects -- so-called beneficial uses that would be restricted or eliminated if ash is categorized as "hazardous," the chamber said.

The chamber also criticized a "dramatic increase in burdensome regulation by Congress and the administration in several ... areas, including healthcare, financial markets, energy, and labor," saying the actions are creating tremendous uncertainty for business owners.

"Once again, EPA is overstepping its bounds to attack the coal industry, and it is ignoring the adverse employment impacts on the nation's construction industries," Kovacs said. The group charged that the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act requires EPA to study the effects on employment of new environmental regulations.

Environmentalists have launched a massive campaign calling for EPA to regulate coal ash as hazardous waste following a massive spill at Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston plant in December 2008 that unleashed five million cubic yards of coal ash into surrounding rivers and land areas.

EPA is considering whether to regulate coal ash as hazardous or under non-hazardous RCRA rules that would be less stringent.

--Jason Fordney, jason_fordney@platts.com

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 05, 2010, 06:54:19 AM

Dismal Jobs Numbers Exposes a Leaderless White House on Economic Policy
Pajamas Media ^ | December 3, 2010 | Richard Pollock
Posted on Friday,


As today’s calamitous jobless numbers report came out and the official unemployment rate spiked to 9.8%, Obama’s economic dream ended.
The economy is now his mess.  It’s his car that’s in the ditch.   There will be no economic recovery any time soon for millions of American workers under this president. And that may end up being  Barack Obama’s political legacy.

The depressing new numbers — only 39,000 jobs created after 150,000 were generated last month — also shine a bright spotlight on the fact that there is no economic leadership within the Obama administration.  The president’s economic “dream team” dissolved after Labor Day and there is no discernible Obama plan or vision to get America back to work and to generate millions of new jobs.  It simply doesn’t exist.

This fall, two of  Obama’s key economic chieftains — Christina Romer and Peter Orszag — called it quits and returned to their universities and academic centers. A third – Lawrence Summers — will leave at the end of the year. He’s going back to Harvard.

In August, Christina Romer, who promised unemployment would not top 8% if the federal stimulus was passed, announced she was going back to her position as an economics professor at the University of California at Berkeley. Orszag left earlier in the summer for family reasons.  Upon their departures many commentators said Obama’s economic brain trust dissolved.

The word on the street is that no economic stars with real business experience are interested in joining the Obama White House.  Two Clintonites, investment banker Roger Altman and numbers cruncher Gene Sperling, have been publicly courted but have not decided to share Obama’s bed.  That appears to be the best the president can do.

No one is being sought who has any experience running a 21st Century corporation and who actually knows how to produce jobs.  This is what happens when you declare war on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and your closest business ally, the Business Roundtable, excoriates you as they did this summer, you have created an “increasingly hostile environment for investment and job creation.”

And Jack Lew, the new Office of Management and Budget director, who is in charge of spending priorities for the federal government,  has been operating without a deputy since he was confirmed.

Michael S. Barr, the assistant Treasury secretary who shepherded the new federal regulations for the financial industry through congress, has departed.  Diana Farrell, the deputy director of Mr. Obama’s National Economic Council and another architect of the regulatory legislation, will leave at the end of the year. The team is breaking up.

In August White Robert Gibbs explained to reporters that Obama’s economic team was “exhausted.” The only ones left from the original team is Treasury Secretary Timothy Geitner and the sclerotic Paul Volker, Chairman of the Economic Recovery Advisory Board and Federal Reserve Chairman under former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.

Last Tuesday, President Obama, in a “news availability” (meaning he refused to take any questions) told reporters after meeting with Republican congressional leaders for the first time since the election, that the American people “want us to come together around strategies that will accelerate the recovery and get Americans back to work.”  So where are the Democratic strategies to generate millions of new jobs?

The Democratic-led Lame Duck session and the President are our only insight.  And thus far, they have ducked all legislative questions on economic strategies that can promote prosperity.  Their single Hallelujah jobs legislation — a $12 billion unemployment benefit extension that isn’t paid for — does not create a single new job.  What about the only other economic piece of legislation, preserving the Bush tax cuts?  Democrats passed an extension that does not include that highest earners — what incoming Speaker John Boehner calls “chicken crap.” But the extension of the tax cuts will not generate any new jobs either; it will simply assure there aren’t more job losses. The tax cut bill is a jobs preservationist policy, not a job growth policy.

The mainstream media’s spin of the Democratic drubbing last month was that it was only due to unemployment and not a reflection on the President’s policies.  A larger issue the media has all but ignored is that there is no one at the White House directing economic growth policies.  And today’s horrible jobs numbers shows it.

Richard Pollock is the Washington, D.C., editor for Pajamas Media and the Washington bureau chief of PJTV.


Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 05, 2010, 06:59:37 AM
No Jobs For Americans at Heinz
By: Ruth Calvo Saturday December 4, 2010 3:38 am
Tweet5 Share

 



No Jobs for U.S. workers declares Bill Johnson, CEO at Heinz, on Wall Street Journal Report last Saturday

Last Saturday, the CEO of Heinz, best known for ketchup production, told Maria Bartiromo that Heinz will not be hiring Americans this year (at 3:55).  The reason he gave was the ‘uncertainty’ produced by the ‘inability’ of the government to decide on really important things such as the tax rate his business will pay.  He announced at the same time on the same program that Heinz will be opening facilities and hiring in other countries, and concentrated on China where they make soy sauce.

When you go to any fast food restaurant, you are likely to see his product in little packets.  When you visit the grocery store you will find that Heinz enjoys vast amount of that vital shelf space.   You are quite likely to have some of Heinz products in your home as well.

Fortunately, I have no taste for ketchup, so I am not a supporter of the services that are not giving any jobs to U.S. workers until the government gets with their program.  I just checked, and my sweet relish (wonderful with ham sandwiches) is store brand.   There will be no Heinz products in my home again, ever.  . . .
The price of doing business in this country is so great that almost every existing business competes for the U.S. consumer with the well known profligacy in buying stuff.   This country, instead of competing for the lowest standards of worker pay and benefits, should be taking advantage of the terrific market that our store shelves present.

Government is falling into a distortion of reality by abandoning public protections to attract business.   The natural attraction of our consumer economy should be promoted, instead.   I would suggest charging for business licenses, and banning products that do not promote our own economic health.

Heinz has pointed up a huge fallacy in our government’s role in regulating business.  We need to start refusing business complicity with competitors to blackmail this country into unfriendly policies for our public.   Businesses have warped into abusive lobbies with the profits they make from our markets.   It’s past time to turn that on them, and demand that access to the profitable U.S. market be gained by promoting the public good instead of trampling on it for their ‘bottom line’ practices.

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 06, 2010, 05:56:34 AM
Updated: Mon., Dec. 6, 2010, 5:00 AM 
The jobs O hates
By BEN LIEBERMAN

www.nypost.com




For all his talk of job creation, Presi dent Obama has targeted many occu pations for extinction. Using un elected bureaucrats to implement a host of job-killing measures, his administration is generating piles of pink slips:

Oil: Even before the BP spill, Obama's Interior Department had cracked down on domestic drilling. In 2009, regulators allowed less than $1 billion in new oil and natural gas leases on federally controlled areas -- both onshore and offshore -- compared to $10 billion under President George W. Bush the year before.

Then, in response to the Gulf spill in April, Obama slowed down things even further, with a moratorium on deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. That proved so unpopular that the administration officially ended it -- but it remains in force unofficially, as regulators bottle up drilling permits with red tape and delays, keeping workers idle. Most recently, Obama regulators placed the entire Atlantic and Pacific coasts off limits to drilling.

Factories: Rising regulatory burdens, energy prices and health-care costs -- Obama has left no stone unturned in making American manufacturing globally less competitive and in forcing jobs overseas.

For example, several new Environmental Protection Agency permit requirements have shut down the construction of coal-fired power plants needed to provide manufacturers with affordable electricity. Jeffrey Holmstead, a former top air-quality EPA official, noted that in 2009 the incoming Obama bureaucrats "withdrew permits that had already been issued," and that "dozens are being held up today because they have no way to meet a new standard that EPA has put out."

It will soon get worse. A barrage of new regulations, including measures intended to address global warming, will hit in January 2011 -- directly targeted manufacturers, and far more costly and complex than anything imposed by America's global competitors, like China, on their own industries.

Mines: The decades-long regulatory squeeze on minerals mining continues unabated, and the Obama administration has now added coal mining to the hit list. The attack includes global-warming regulations that seek to restrict demand for coal and also direct attempts to stop new coal mines from opening.

States that rely on coal-mining jobs are feeling the pinch. Joe Manchin, formerly West Virginia's governor and now its newest US senator, boasts that, "over the past year and a half, we have been fighting Obama administration attempts to destroy the coal mining industry." As governor, Manchin sued the EPA in an attempt to prevent the agency from blocking coal mines in his state. But Obama shows no sign of budging -- even though Manchin is a fellow Democrat.

Fishing: Obama's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is imposing strict fishing limits, even where there is little or no evidence of an overfishing problem. Its controversial catch-shares program is destroying jobs in such fishing communities as Gloucester and New Bedford in Massachusetts, both of which are challenging the program's legality in federal court.

And the White House's new Ocean Policy Initiative would place more burdens on a US fishing industry that is already heavily regulated. Bonner Cohen, senior fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research, fears that this scheme "circumvents existing state and local decision-making bodies and replaces them with made-in-Washington zoning with the power to declare areas off limits to fishing."

There's a common thread among these and other beleaguered occupations: Environmentalists hate them. Green absolutists would be happy to see no oil or coal taken out of the ground or fish out of the sea and as many factories dismantled as possible, without any regard for the impact on jobs. Instead, they hype "green jobs" doing things like building wind turbines and solar panels, but these jobs are proving to be a mere trickle compared to those being lost.

Radical environmentalists have all but declared war on high-wage blue-collar jobs in this country, and the Obama administration has sided with them. The nation's stubbornly high unemployment rate is evidence they're winning.

Ben Lieberman is a senior fellow in envi ronmental policy with the Competitive En terprise Institute in Washington, DC.

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 07, 2010, 05:20:13 AM
Obamanomics: Only fat cats prosper
By CHARLES GASPARINO


Last Updated: 3:48 AM, December 7, 2010


________________________ ________________________ ___________


For all of President Obama's rhetoric about "fat cat" investment bankers who gambled the country into economic decay, he sure seems to have a larger soft spot for big Wall Street than for average Americans.

After all, his latest push to "remedy" 9.8 percent unemployment for the masses is an extension of unemployment benefits. Meanwhile, his policies aren't just making Wall Streeters rich, as bonuses are expected to hit record highs this year. They're also likely (according to some insiders) to spark a hiring spree among bankers in the new year.

This divergence ought to be a big story -- but don't bet on it: The establishment media have been largely silent amid the multiple failings of Obamanomics. For two years now, most reporters have gone out of their way to blame the country's staggeringly high unemployment on the Bush policies that they claim led to the financial collapse and the broader collapse of the economy.

OK, Obama did inherit a mess -- but his policies to turn around the economy have utterly failed to deliver on promised outcomes. Remember the 8 percent unemployment rate we were supposed to get if we spent $800 billion on fiscal stimulus?

Actually, the CEOs I speak to say Obama made a bad economic situation even worse. The massive retrenchment in hiring over the past two years, which led to last week's announcement that unemployment is rising close to 10 percent, is the direct result of business worries about the future costs of the president's social agenda, which only begins with universal health care.

Perhaps worse, Obamanomics looks to have failed utterly on its signature promise to level the economic playing field between the rich and poor.

While the government was releasing those dismal unemployment statistics, senior executives at the big banks were telling me that they'll likely be hiring more bankers and traders in the new year.

Depending on who you speak to, that hiring could be quite substantial. A senior official at Goldman Sachs will only say he's "cautiously optimistic" about employment prospects in 2011. But Nick Leopard, the chief executive of a Wall Street outsourcing firm, Accordion Partners, says he expects the huge backlog of deals and business to trigger a serious hiring spree among the mid-sized and large investment firms -- something in the neighborhood of a 5 percent rise in Wall Street employment next year.

Why? Obama's policies, insiders tell me, may be bad for the middle class -- but they've been pretty good for the banking class.

The bankers may not like parts of the new financial reform law (i.e., no more "proprietary trading"), but they love the fact that the White House has gone out of its way to support (some people think prod) Ben Bernanke's policies of 1) keeping interest rates at rock-bottom levels and 2) pumping the banking system with $600 billion in cash, known in economic circles as "quantitative easing" and in less formal circles as "printing money."

Both measures are supposed to spur lending to small business as banks, flush with cash, start to lend again and businesses can expand. But the direct beneficiaries of the "easy money" are the banks -- which continue to hoard the cash, and (according to Leopard) are ready to rake in billions of dollars in fees as that backlog of deals starts to emerge next year.

Big bankers also don't mind the inflation that Bernanke's policies risk: Inflation usually pushes (nominal) stock prices up -- and when the stock market rises, financiers and traders make a killing, even if the rest of us need a wheelbarrow filled with cash to buy a loaf of bread.

For years, Democrats have raged against the Bush tax rates -- arguing for higher taxes for the "richest Americans" as simply the fair thing to do, since the rich made so much money under Republican rule in Washington.

The president now is reluctantly ready to go along with a deal to extend the Bush-era tax rates in exchange for that extension of unemployment benefits. But he still seems unable to grasp the reality that hiking taxes on even "the richest Americans" is among the dumbest things you could do right now. Those folks spend a lot of money (and thus help keep working-class people working) -- and this tax hike would fall heavily on the small businesses that do much of the "non-rich" hiring these days.

But don't expect the president to make these points: He still doesn't realize that those fat-cat bankers he grouses about have him to thank for their weight gain.

Charles Gasparino is a Fox Business Net work senior correspondent; his latest book is "Bought and Paid For."

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: dario73 on December 17, 2010, 06:54:52 AM
Bump.
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 20, 2010, 08:57:10 AM
BUMP for TU, Straw, Lurker, and anyone else who thinks this is all not intentional. 
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 25, 2010, 08:51:02 AM
The EPA Says "Bah, Humbug!"
Townhall,com ^ | December 25, 2010 | Timothy Lee



Not even Ebenezer Scrooge had the stomach to fire people during the holidays.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), however, plans to move full speed ahead with new regulations on January 2 that will likely cost many Americans their jobs before the New Year’s Eve party hats have even been put away.

In a nutshell, the EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Tailoring Rule will treat emissions from renewable biomass energy the same as emissions from the use of fossil fuels, despite the fact that both policymakers and scientists have long considered biomass emissions to be carbon-neutral due to the life cycle of the forests from which biomass is produced.

This new rule and regulatory uncertainty could spell the end of the biomass energy industry by removing the carbon-neutral status of biomass and, consequently, the biggest incentive to continue investing in it. Recent estimates have shown that biomass generated from forest byproducts could supply as much as 15 percent of the nation’s renewable energy by 2021, yet this will likely never be realized if biomass producers are forced to comply with arbitrary, unfair and unnecessary regulations like those in the Tailoring Rule.

Unfortunately, the Tailoring Rule won’t just disincentivize the use of renewable biomass energy. It will also have widespread effects on our energy options, as well as jobs and the economy.

Forisk Consulting recently released a new study on the economic impact of the Tailoring Rule, which found that the regulations on biomass will result in the loss of over 134 renewable energy projects, up to 26,000 jobs, and $18 billion in capital investment. According to the study’s authors, 23 biomass energy projects have already been placed in limbo due to regulatory uncertainty. In Wisconsin, for example, Xcel Energy Inc. halted plans for a biomass energy plant that would have brought over 100 jobs to Ashland, Wisc., as well as a needed source of domestic power for the entire area. Xcel Energy cited the expected cost increases and regulatory uncertainty as reasons for canceling plans for the plant—and they are likely to be one of many energy companies doing the same.

The negative economic impact will be especially felt in Appalachia and rural parts of the South, the Pacific Northwest, and the Northeast, where biomass energy shows great promise as a source for domestic clean energy and innovative new jobs.

In addition to harming domestic renewable energy development and the economy, the EPA commits a crime that Mr. Scrooge would never commit: wasting money. In President Obama's “stimulus” program alone, the U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Energy have collectively spent more than $100 million of taxpayer money to promote biomass power production.

The new study by Forisk Consulting only further confirms what bipartisan governors, U.S. Senators, and U.S. Representatives, state and local lawmakers, scientists, and forestry industry insiders have been saying all along—that the Tailoring Rule will hurt energy development, jobs, and the economy at a time when we need all three to be thriving.

Even Representative Collin Peterson (D-MN), the outgoing Chair of the House Agriculture, said before the election, “[The EPA is] screwing things up. They’re raising costs for people, they’re raising the price of food, and I don’t think they’re accomplishing anything.”

The intransigent EPA isn’t yet listening to the bipartisan, nationwide outcry against the Tailoring Rule. Perhaps they will finally begin to pay attention to this latest round of hard facts about the impact of their regulations before it’s too late.

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 29, 2010, 08:46:10 AM
White House Plans to Push Global Warming Policy, GOP Vows Fight
www.foxnews.com ^ | December 28, 2010 | Kimberly Schwandt

________________________ ________________________ ________________________


HONOLULU, Hawaii -- After failing to get climate-change legislation through Congress, the Obama administration plans on pushing through its environmental policies through other means, and Republicans are ready to put up a fight.


On Jan. 2, new carbon emissions limits will be put forward as the Environmental Protection Agency prepares regulations that would force companies to get permits to release greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.


Critics say the new rules are a backdoor effort to enact the president's agenda on global warming without the support of Congress, and would hurt the economy and put jobs in jeopardy by forcing companies to pay for expensive new equipment.


"They are job killers. Regulations, period -- any kind of regulation is a weight on economy. It requires people to comply with the law, which takes work hours and time, which reduces the profitability of firms. Therefore, they grow more slowly and you create less jobs," said environmental scientist Ken Green of the conservative American Enterprise Institute.



(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 30, 2010, 07:27:47 AM
Why Jobs Leave
 
Posted 12/29/2010 07:05 PM ET


________________________ ________________________ _________--

 

Economy: Heading into the new year, there's plenty of optimism about the stock market rising, corporate profits recovering and companies hiring. There's just one problem on that last jobs item: Many will be overseas.

On those rare occasions when it's not demonizing businesses as bastions of corporate greed, the White House and all its supporting players spend their time pondering why U.S. businesses, with mountains of cash, won't use at least some of it to hire workers. A mere 900,000 jobs were created in 2010, while U.S. companies sat on $1.1 trillion in cash.

Last week, President Obama went so far as to meet with 20 CEOs for several hours over this, "asking the attendees to dialogue with him on a shared agenda focused on moving our economy forward," according to a White House statement.

We don't have any inside lines as to what was said, but news is trickling out the Obama administration is starting to think about doing something big to end the jobs drought in the U.S.

The something big would be to lower the U.S. corporate tax, which at 35%, stands as the second-highest in the developed world. President Obama only told NPR that he discussed "simplifying the system, hopefully lowering rates, broadening the base."

If so, and if there are no accompanying sleights of hand to extract cash from businesses some other way, as some reports have it, it's good news. Nothing inhibits the creation of U.S. jobs quite like high corporate taxes and their accompanying regulatory regime.

The fact is, companies sitting on cash aren't doing nothing. They're hiring overseas, creating 1.4 million jobs in 2010 alone, according to the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

That's not because they prefer foreigners to Americans, but because the bad business climate here pushes them to do so.

The rest of the world is a vastly different place from Obama's U.S., which is characterized by high taxes and protectionist set-asides for politically connected unions that shut out free trade.

In places like Indonesia, Singapore, Taiwan, India and Thailand, nobody demonizes business or blasts trade. Instead great efforts are made by the state and the private sector to draw in foreign investment by becoming more competitive than their rivals.

U.S. multinationals go to these places not because labor is cheap but because these policies also create boomtowns with lots of customers. Incredibly enough, sometimes overseas profits and jobs provide a lifeline for troubled U.S. companies back home. Take GM — today, its Brazil and Korea operations help keep it afloat.

Growth in the 8% to 9% range is typical in Asia. But even in other pro-business areas — like the city of Lyon, France, or the manufacturing mecca of Tijuana, Mexico — governments are going out of their way to attract U.S. investment.

In Tijuana's case, they've succeeding despite an ugly drug war.

While high-tax, high-bureaucrat suburbs around Los Angeles draw investment from hot sauce factories and hire unskilled workers, Mexico is drawing aerospace manufacturers and hiring engineers. Colombia, Chile, Brazil, Qatar and even the Republic of Congo are pulling them in, too.

Why? So long as profits are encouraged instead of taxed, the natural outcome is jobs. It's that simple. They get it. Why don't we?

Salon magazine noted that as companies shift their hiring overseas, the 1.4 million jobs created there could have, if they were created here, lowered the unemployment rate to 8.9% from 9.8%.

It's not for nothing that the rescuers of Chile's trapped miners this year knew the names of all the specialized American manufacturers to call for help. These companies had already been working in Chile because the government made it worth it to do so.

If small, remote countries like Chile can create opportunities for U.S. companies to invest and and hire workers, why can't we?
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 04, 2011, 05:49:29 AM
Is Obama Intentionally Damaging Our Economy?
Powerline ^ | 1-3-11 | powerline


________________________ ________________________ _____

That is the provocative question asked by Peter Schweizer at Big Peace. I think the answer is No, but let's let Peter explain why the question arises at all:

That may seem like an absurd question, but it's hard to come to any other conclusion when you consider what is happening to our energy industry on the Gulf Coast. As the Wall Street Journal reports today, the Obama Administration may have lifted its ban on drilling in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico, but there are still long delays in getting other permits approved to drill for oil. Why? No one seems to know. We assume that politicians do what is in their own self-interest, but in this case Obama seems to be damaging himself because he is dragging down the economy. As the Journal puts it, "The Gulf coast economy has been hit hard by the slowdown in drilling activity." And Obama doesn't seem particularly eager to change that fact.

Schweizer recalls Bobby Jindal's bizarre encounter with President Obama at the height of the Gulf oil spill crisis:

In his recently released book Leadership and Crisis, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal recounts an exchange with President Obama during the Gulf oil drilling moratorium. (Full disclosure: I co-wrote the book with Jindal.) After telling Obama that the moratorium would potentially cost tens of thousands of jobs, "The president went on to assure me that anyone who lost their job would get a check from BP. When I explained that BP might not write them checks because it was the federal government that imposed the moratorium the president said, 'Well, if BP won't pay the claim, they can file for unemployment.' I was amazed by the level of disconnect. The people of Louisiana want to work, not collect unemployment or BP checks."

For Obama, getting an unemployment check is about the same as getting paycheck.

What I think emerges here is President Obama's astonishing ignorance of economics, which is to say, how the world works. I don't think he is intentionally trying to damage our economy, simply because he knows that he has no chance of being re-elected unless the economy rebounds. At the same time, I think he is so appallingly ignorant of how wealth is created that he believes killing off jobs, as his administration has done along the Gulf Coast, is no big deal. The lost wealth will magically recreate itself, perhaps in the form of unemployment benefits. I think that Obama really does not understand the difference between receiving a paycheck in exchange for creating wealth, and getting a government handout in exchange for nothing. But then, I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 13, 2011, 01:15:06 PM
Going Broke by Going Green
Townhall.com ^ | January 12, 2011 | Harry R. Jackson, Jr



Editor's note: This article was co-authored by Harry Jackson, Jr. and guy Innis.

President Obama’s healthcare program came under intense scrutiny in 2010. As we enter 2011, we need to open our eyes to what is really going on behind his green energy propaganda, as well. To some, it may not seem as desperate an issue as healthcare, but it will grow to become just as devastating to those citizens among us who are poor, because access to affordable energy affects everything we do.

The administration’s green policies are being thrust into a precarious American economy. Every “green scenario” shows raised energy costs across the board. Not only will the average person pay more for energy; many will lose their jobs as the forced transition to alternative power sources rocks the stability of current energy-producing and energy-using companies.

Skyrocketing energy prices and lost jobs also mean millions of otherwise healthy Americans are subjected to new health threats: higher air conditioning, heating, transportation and other energy bills. For those who cannot afford the increased costs, this can mean death from heat stroke and hypothermia; reduced budgets for healthy food, proper healthcare, home and car repairs, college, retirement, and charitable giving; and psychological depression that accompanies economic depression.

Land withdrawals and leasing and permitting delays don’t just lock up vast energy storehouses. They kill jobs, eliminate billions in government bonus, rent, royalty and tax revenues – and force us to spend other billions to import more oil that we could produce right here at home.

The White House agenda represents a double power grab. It usurps state, local and private sector control over energy prices and generation, and gives it to unelected Washington bureaucrats. It also seizes our reliable, affordable energy, and replaces it with expensive, intermittent power.

While many Americans are duped into thinking renewable energy sources are the ticket to a clean world, they have not looked at the downside to these energy sources. Replacing fossil fuel power with coerced renewable energy means millions of acres will be covered with turbines and solar panels, and built with billions of tons of concrete, steel, copper, fiberglass and rare earth metals. It means millions of acres of forest and crop land will be converted to farming for inefficient biofuels that also require vast inputs of water, pesticides, fertilizers and hydrocarbon fuels.

Moreover, wind and solar facilities work only 10-30 percent of the time, compared to 90-95 percent for coal, gas and nuclear power plants. Even worse, prolonged cold is almost invariably associated with high atmospheric pressure, and thus very little wind. On December 21, 2010 – one of the coldest days on record for Yorkshire, England (undoubtedly due to global warming) – the region’s coal, gas and nuclear power plants generated 53,000 megawatts of electricity; its wind turbines provided a measly 20 MW, or 0.04% of the total. The same high pressure, no wind scenario happens on the hottest summer days.

“Renewable” and “clean” energy projects received $30 billion in subsidies under the gargantuan stimulus bill. They got another $3 billion in the “lame duck” tax deal. Federal wind power subsidies are $6.44 per million BTUs – dozens of times what coal and natural gas receive, to generate 1/50 of the electricity that coal does. At current and foreseeable coal and gas prices, wind (and solar) simply cannot compete.

As to “green” jobs, Competitive Enterprise Institute energy analyst Chris Horner calculates that the stimulus bill’s subsidies for wind and solar mean taxpayers are billed $475,000 for each job created. Texas Comptroller Susan Combs reports that property tax breaks for wind projects in her state cost nearly $1.6 million per job. “Green energy” is simply unsustainable, environmentally and economically.

President Obama and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson may be convinced that we face a manmade climate change crisis, and unacceptable health risks from power plant and refinery emissions. However, their “climate science” is little more than a self-proving theory: no matter what happens – hotter or colder, wetter or drier, more storms or fewer – it’s “proof” of global warming.

Thousands of scientists say there is yet no real evidence that we face such a crisis, and most coal-fired power plants and refineries have already reduced their harmful emissions to the point that only the most sensitive or health-impaired would be harmed.

The problem is not runaway global warming. It is a runaway and unaccountable federal bureaucracy.

Putting the green power grab into even sharper focus are these eye-opening comments from two “socially responsible” CEOs, who have lobbied the Congress, EPA and White House intensely for cap-tax-and-trade, far tougher emission policies and still more subsidies. We thank the Wall Street Journal for bringing them to our attention. EPA’s regulations “increase operating costs for coal-fired generators and ultimately increase the price of energy” for families and companies that need electricity," observed Exelon CEO John Rowe. “The upside for Exelon is unmistakable. Exelon’s clean [mostly nuclear] generation will continue to grow in value in a relatively short time. We are of course positioning our portfolio to capture that value.”

“Even without legislation in Congress, EPA is marching forward in terms of regulating carbon dioxide,” noted Lewis Hay, CEO of NextEra Energy, America’s largest producer of wind and solar power. “That puts us in a very good position.”

The Journal summarized the situation succinctly in a recent editorial: “The EPA is abusing environmental law to achieve policy goals that the democratic process rejected, while also engineering a transfer of wealth from the 25 states in the Midwest and South that get more than 50 percent of their electricity from coal. The industry beneficiaries [of these destructive regulations] then pretend that this agenda is nothing more than a stroll around Walden Pond, when it’s really about lining their own pockets.”

It is time to face reality. Misnamed “green energy” policies severely undermine any opportunity America may have to rebuild her economy. Perpetuating current jobless rates would be just the tip of the iceberg, if we follow the path that EPA and the White House have laid in front of us.

Let your legislators know that you do not support the White House’s current green programs. We cannot afford to go broke trying to go green.

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Fury on January 13, 2011, 03:07:09 PM
Spain's a good example of how economically successful "going green" turns out.  ::)
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 14, 2011, 05:21:02 AM
US axes permit for Arch's giant mountain coalmine [West Virginia: Obama's EPA]
Reuters ^ | January 13, 2011 | Timothy Gardner


________________________ ________________________ ____


The Obama administration revoked a permit on Thursday for Arch Coal Inc's (ACI.N) proposed Spruce 1 mountaintop coal mine in West Virginia, effectively shutting one of the biggest in the United States. "The proposed Spruce No. 1 Mine would use destructive and unsustainable mining practices that jeopardize the health of Appalachian communities and clean water on which they depend," said Peter Silvan, an assistant administrator for water, at the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA's final ruling under the Clean Water Act came after a scientific study, a public hearing, and a review of more than 50,000 public comments, the agency said. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had approved a permit for the mine in 2007, but it had not been fully constructed.

Lawmakers from West Virginia said the EPA's move would hurt the state's economy. "Today's EPA decision is not just fundamentally wrong, it is an unprecedented act by the federal government that will cost our state and our nation even more jobs during the worst recession in this country's history," Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat, said in a release. Senator Jay Rockefeller, also a Democrat, wrote a letter to President Barack Obama, that said: "as a nation we must not fall into the trap of forcing unnecessary choices between protecting the environment and having good paying jobs that support energy independence." St. Louis-based Arch said it would vigorously defend the permit in court. EPA's revocation of the permit blocks an additional $250 million in investment and 250 jobs, the company said. It was the latest move by the Obama administration to crack down on mountaintop mining, in which companies blast high peaks to uncover coal seams and often toss the resulting rubble into valleys....


(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 14, 2011, 02:39:52 PM
Feds threaten to sue states over union laws
            Buzz up! ..By SAM HANANEL, Associated Press Sam Hananel, Associated Press – 38 mins ago


________________________ ________________________ __________



WASHINGTON – The National Labor Relations Board on Friday threatened to sue Arizona, South Carolina, South Dakota and Utah over constitutional amendments guaranteeing workers the right to a secret ballot in union elections.

The agency's acting general counsel, Lafe Solomon, said the amendments conflict with federal law, which gives employers the option of recognizing a union if a majority of workers sign cards that support unionizing.

The amendments, approved Nov. 2, have taken effect in South Dakota and Utah, and will do so soon in Arizona and South Carolina.

Business and anti-union groups sought the amendments, arguing that such secrecy is necessary to protect workers against union intimidation. They are concerned that Congress might enact legislation requiring employers to allow the "card check" process for forming unions instead of secret ballot elections.

In letters to the attorney general of each state, Solomon says the amendments are pre-empted by the supremacy clause of the Constitution because they conflict with employee rights laid out in the National Labor Relations Act. That clause says that when state and federal laws are at odds, federal law prevails.

Solomon is asking the attorneys general in South Dakota and Utah for official statements agreeing that their amendments are unconstitutional "to conserve state and federal resources."

In his letter to South Carolina's attorney general, Solomon asks the state to take measures that would prevent the Legislature from ratifying the amendment. Solomon requested that Arizona's governor decline to make the amendment official.

Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff said he believes the state is on solid ground. He plans to coordinate a response with the other three states.

"If they want to bring a lawsuit, then bring it," Shurtleff said. "We believe that a secret ballot is as fundamental a right as any American has had since the beginning of this country. We want to protect the constitutional rights of our citizens."

South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley also promised to "vigorously defend our South Dakota Constitution" against any federal lawsuit.

Unions long have pushed for the card-check legislation, but the effort hasn't won enough support in Congress. Union officials say companies often use aggressive tactics — borderline illegal, they contend — to discourage workers from organizing unions.

Americans for Prosperity, a conservative group that spent millions to back congressional Republicans in last year's elections, was among the groups that pushed for passage of the state amendments. Phil Kerpen, the group's vice president for policy, said the NLRB's action "shows how determined the board is to accomplish card check by backdoor means against the wishes of the American people and Congress."

Kimberly Freeman Brown, executive director of the pro-union group American Rights at Work, said the board was confirming that "these initiatives were intended to restrict workers' rights to determine how they choose a union, disingenuously cloaked in the language of worker protection."


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110114/ap_on_re_us/us_unions_secret_ballots

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 17, 2011, 12:25:56 PM
Obama acknowledges decline of US dominance
times of india ^ | 1/17/11 | staff




MUMBAI: Implicitly acknowledging the decline of American dominance, Barack Obama on Sunday said the US was no longer in a position to "meet the rest of the world economically on our terms".

Speaking at a town hall meeting in Mumbai, he said, "I do think that one of the challenges that we are going face in the US, at a time when we are still recovering from the financial crisis is, how do we respond to some of the challenges of globalisation? The fact of the matter is that for most of my lifetime and I'll turn 50 next year - the US was such an enormously dominant economic power, we were such a large market, our industry, our technology, our manufacturing was so significant that we always met the rest of the world economically on our terms. And now because of the incredible rise of India and China and Brazil and other countries, the US remains the largest economy and the largest market, but there is real competition."


(Excerpt) Read more at timesofindia.indiatimes. com ...
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 19, 2011, 07:24:24 PM
Obama Consumer Agency May Not Be Able To Oversee Payday Lenders, Mortgage Firms
First Posted: 01/19/11 06:26 PM Updated: 01/19/11 08:23 PM






The nascent consumer agency dedicated to protecting borrowers from abusive lenders, a cornerstone of the Obama administration's efforts to reform the financial industry, will not be able to regulate the kinds of lenders that helped cause the crisis if the White House doesn't meet a key deadline, federal auditors say.

Firms like New Century Financial, Ameriquest, Fremont General and Countrywide Financial -- lenders that aren't banks and fall outside the bounds of regular federal supervision -- made the kinds of shoddy mortgage loans that ultimately led to the housing crisis. The Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, currently led by Elizabeth Warren on an interim basis, is supposed to change that by putting them under the umbrella of a robust federal regulator.

But if the White House can't get a nominee through the Senate by July, the bureau will lack the authority to supervise nonbank lenders, according to a Jan. 10 report by the inspectors general of the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve obtained by The Huffington Post. In six months, the agency officially assumes the power formally held by bank regulators. Bloomberg News first reported on the existence of the report Wednesday afternoon.

The dilemma poses a challenge to the Obama administration, which sold the agency to Congress and the industry in part based on the promise that it will help level the playing field between banks and nonbanks when it comes to government oversight. Banks have long been regulated by federal agencies and subject to regular audits. Nonbanks, like home mortgage and payday lenders, have been subject to sporadic oversight, at best. Such companies have been hit with billions in fines and legal settlements in response to accusations they engaged in abusive and predatory lending.

Adding to bankers' frustrations is the fact that the agency, even without a director, will be able to oversee consumer lending by banks with more than $10 billion in assets. Because this authority already exists with bank regulators, the consumer agency will be able to assume this responsibility in July, federal auditors said in their report. Nonbanks, though, will be off-limits.

The report puts added pressure on the White House to meet the July deadline. It has struggled to name an agency chief.

Industry officials and their allies in Congress prefer someone who will take a more relaxed approach to oversight. Consumer advocates are pushing for an aggressive regulator who will prevent the kinds of abuses that were common during the housing boom.

Story continues below
AdvertisementThe White House is stuck in the middle of this fight, wanting to please its allies who helped get the agency enacted into law in the first place, and helped the administration counter critics who say it's too close to Wall Street.

But the administration also wants to name an agency head who will face limited opposition in the Senate. Created as part of Dodd-Frank, the 2010 law overhauling financial regulation, President Barack Obama hailed it as one of the top achievements of his presidency.

Under pressure, President Barack Obama tapped Warren in September to lead the agency on a temporary basis. Warren, a passionate consumer advocate, is supposed to stand up the unit before it assumes its full power in July.

The White House has two choices: either go around the Senate and tap the agency's director through a recess appointment, or pick someone the Senate will confirm.

Shortly before tapping Warren, Obama noted the difficulty he's had in getting the Senate to confirm his nominees.

"I'm concerned about all Senate confirmations these days," Obama said Sept. 10. "I mean, if I nominate somebody for dog catcher..."

"I've got people who have been waiting for six months to get confirmed who nobody has an official objection to and who were voted out of committee unanimously, and I can't get a vote on them," he continued.

Because of that difficulty, the White House "has always looked at a recess appointment as a possibility," said Michael Calhoun, president of the Center for Responsible Lending. "And they can't let the agency go without a director come July."

White House spokesmen didn't respond to e-mailed requests for comment.

Opponents have vowed a nomination fight. Observers believe that whomever the White House chooses will likely face extensive grilling and opposition by Senators who oppose the very idea of a dedicated consumer agency.

Not having a director in place by July -- and thus preventing the agency from supervising nonbank lenders -- would be a "positive" for the industry, said Bill Cosgrove, president and chief executive of Union National Mortgage Company, a nonbank lender based in Ohio. "What we're concerned about is overkill in terms of regulation," he said.

Cosgrove added that state regulators, which currently oversee lenders like his firm, have stepped up their oversight of his industry. His firm has been audited by six different state regulators in the past year alone, he said.

Though the auditors' report places additional pressure on the administration to get a director in place so the agency can police firms like Cosgrove's, and not face the wrath of bankers who will note the administration's broken promise of a "level playing field," Calhoun said he was confident that the White House will meet its deadline.

"They have to," he said.

*************************
Shahien Nasiripour is a business reporter for The Huffington Post. You can send him an e-mail; bookmark his page; subscribe to his RSS feed; follow him on Twitter; friend him on Facebook; become a fan; and/or get e-mail alerts when he reports the latest news. He can be reached at 646-274-2455.


Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 26, 2011, 12:43:48 PM
Abbott to cut 1,900 jobs — 1,000 of them here (Illinois)
Chicago Sun Times ^ | 1/26/2011 | AP with Francine Knowles



-_________________________________________________________________



Abbott Laboratories said it is axing 1,900 workers, including about 1,000 of its more than 13,000 people in Northern Illinois as part of a restructuring.

Most of the cuts will take place in the North Chicago-based company’s Lake County pharmaceutical manufacturing operations...

Abbott blamed the cuts on new fees and pricing pressures associated with the healthcare reform law and a “challenging regulatory environment” at the Food and Drug Administration, which approves new drugs.


(Excerpt) Read more at suntimes.com ...
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 26, 2011, 01:35:38 PM
Lowe's laying off about 1,700 managers
Yahoo ^ | 1/26/11 | Martinne Geller, Dhanya Skariachan - Reuters





(Reuters) – Lowe's Cos Inc is laying off about 1,700 middle managers across the United States, the country's second-largest home-improvement chain said.

The news comes as home improvement chains focus on cutting costs to tackle tepid demand for expensive renovations in a slowly recovering. U.S. economy.


(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 26, 2011, 06:28:25 PM
Govt: New rules would cut thousands of coal jobs
AP/Yahoo ^ | 1/26/11 | Tim Huber



The Obama administration's own experts estimate their proposal for protecting streams from coal mining would eliminate thousands of jobs and slash production across much of the country, according to a government document obtained by The Associated Press.  

The Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement document says the agency's preferred rules would impose standards for water quality and restrictions on mining methods that would affect the quality or quantity of streams near coal mines. The rules are supposed to replace Bush-era regulations that set up buffer zones around streams and were aimed chiefly at mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia.

The proposal — part of a draft environmental impact statement — would affect coal mines from Louisiana to Alaska.


(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 26, 2011, 06:34:02 PM
Govt: New rules would cut thousands of coal jobs


 
By TIM HUBER, AP Business Writer Tim Huber, Ap Business Writer – 1 hr 18 mins ago
CHARLESTON, W.Va. –




The Obama administration's own experts estimate their proposal for protecting streams from coal mining would eliminate thousands of jobs and slash production across much of the country, according to a government document obtained by The Associated Press.

The Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement document says the agency's preferred rules would impose standards for water quality and restrictions on mining methods that would affect the quality or quantity of streams near coal mines. The rules are supposed to replace Bush-era regulations that set up buffer zones around streams and were aimed chiefly at mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia.

The proposal — part of a draft environmental impact statement — would affect coal mines from Louisiana to Alaska.

The office, a branch of the Interior Department, estimated that the protections would trim coal production to the point that an estimated 7,000 of the nation's 80,600 coal mining jobs would be lost. Production would decrease or stay flat in 22 states, but climb 15 percent in North Dakota, Wyoming and Montana.

Peter Mail, a spokesman for the surface mining reclamation office, said the proposal's aim is "to better strike the balance between protecting the public and the environment while providing for viable coal mining."

Mali said the document is the first working draft that was shared with state agencies, which are giving their comments on it. Comments also were received from environmentalists, industry, labor and others at meetings held across the country.

"Input received from the public will help shape the final regulatory refinements that will better protect streams and the public while helping meet America's energy needs," Mali said.

The National Mining Association blasted the proposal, saying the federal agency is vastly underestimating the economic impact.

"OSM's preferred alternative will destroy tens of thousands of coal-related jobs across the country from Appalachia to Alaska and Illinois to Texas with no demonstrated benefit to the environment," the trade group said in a statement. "OSM's own analysis provides a very conservative estimate of jobs that will be eliminated, incomes that will be lost and state revenues that will be foregone at both surface and underground coal mining operations."

The agency has submitted the proposal to several coal producing states for feedback before it releases proposed regulations by the end of February.

The states aren't happy with what they've seen.

They blasted the proposal as "nonsensical and difficult to follow" in a Nov. 23 letter to Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement director Joe Pizarchik. The letter was signed by officials from Alabama, Indiana, Kentucky, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming.

"Neither the environmental impact statement nor the administrative record that OSM has developed over 30-plus year of regulation ... justify the sweeping changes that they're proposing to make," West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection official Thomas Clarke told the Associated Press on Wednesday. "I've had OSM technical people who are concerned with stream impacts and outside contractors for OSM who are subcontractors on the EIS give me their opinion that the whole thing's a bunch of junk."

U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., said that if thousands of mining jobs could be lost, "then I will do everything in my power to block this wrong-headed proposal.

"Let me be crystal clear: I will fight any proposal from our federal government that poses a threat to our country's energy supply, West Virginia's coal industry, our jobs and our way of life," he said.

Manchin already plans to introduce legislation to curb the powers of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which recently vetoed a permit the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had long ago issued for Arch Coal's Spruce No. 1 mine in Logan County.


Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 26, 2011, 06:46:24 PM
Obama's Plan to Admit Mexican Trucks
by Phyllis Schlafly January 21, 2011

Phyllis Schlafly



http://www.eagleforum.org/column/2011/jan11/11-01-21.html




It is amazing that, with unemployment unacceptably high, the Obama Administration has endorsed a plan that will cost U.S. jobs and make highway driving for Americans more dangerous and less pleasant. Obama wants to admit Mexican trucks to drive on all U.S. highways and roads.

Todd Spencer, executive vice president of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, explained what this means: "U.S. truckers would be forced to forfeit their own economic opportunities while companies and drivers from Mexico, free from equivalent regulatory burdens, take over their traffic lanes." We wonder if Mexico has any regulatory standards at all.

Mexican trucks are known to be overweight and lacking in safety regulations we consider essential, such as anti-lock brakes. Mexico doesn't have national databases that track drivers' records, background checks, drug usage, and arrests, and it's known to be easy to get a commercial driver's license with a bribe.

Nevertheless, Obama's Transportation Secretary, Ray LaHood, has announced he wants to admit Mexican trucks, and he thinks he can appease Congress by presenting on January 6 what he calls a "concept document." It is two pages of bureaucratic pablum that does nothing to assure the safety of Americans on our highways and roads.


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The concept document calls for a "review" of the Mexican carriers' safety program, the driving records of Mexican drivers admitted to the program, and inspection of Mexican trucks for safety and emissions. But the document says nothing about what the standard of review and inspection will be, and whether trucks and drivers who don't pass inspection will be rejected.

Under the concept document, Mexican trucks would be subject to border inspections at the "normal border inspection rate," and subject to inspections within the U.S. "at the same rate as U.S. companies." That doesn't reassure us; the "normal" border inspection rate means that only a few violators will get caught, which the Mexicans will consider just a cost of doing business, and the notion that Mexican drivers need inspection only at the 50 percent U.S. rate is ridiculous.

U.S. law requires truck drivers to speak and understand the English language. The concept document says it will "conduct an English Language Proficiency" test of each Mexican driver, but it doesn't say the Mexican drivers must speak English or pass the test.

We know from the House testimony of the previous Transportation Secretary, Mary Peters, that the Department's policy is to approve Mexican drivers as "English proficient" even when they respond to an examiner's questions in Spanish. Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND), who was conducting the hearing, was so astounded at this answer that he asked Secretary Peters to repeat it.

The concept document contains other provisions about monitoring, inspections, review, and drug and alcohol inspection. But the document contains nothing about requiring Mexican trucks to meet U.S. standards and rejection if they do not.

Mexican trucks have been barred from operating inside the United States since March 2009. They are limited to a border zone where they must then transfer their cargo onto U.S. trucks.

Mexico claims the current ban violates our treaty obligations under NAFTA. That's not true because NAFTA is not a treaty; it was never ratified by two-thirds of Senators as our Constitution requires for a treaty, and is merely a law passed in 1993 by a simple majority vote.

Perhaps the Obama Administration plan to admit Mexican trucks is just a political maneuver. It may be a tactic to reach out to the business community, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and at the same time be a sneaky way to defeat Republican Members of Congress in 2012 by forcing them to vote on the admission of Mexican trucks.

This issue defeated one of our best conservatives in the House, the great track star Jim Ryun (R-KS), who unexpectedly lost his seat in 2006 after voting to admit Mexican trucks. The feminist Democrat who defeated Ryun, Nancy Boyda, then sponsored a bill to ban Mexican trucks, which passed the House by the overwhelming vote of 411 to 3, with the Senate passing a similar bill 75 to 23, votes that are a good indication of popular opinion.

With the drug war in full battle array along our southern border, this is no time to start admitting Mexican trucks. It's a safe bet that many of the trucks will be carrying illegal aliens and illegal drugs.

Another safety problem exists for U.S. trucks that would get access to Mexican roads under this misguided proposal. Trade is supposed to be two-way street, but U.S. drivers don't want to drive into northern Mexico, the most dangerous area in the world because of the ongoing war between drug cartels.
 
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 27, 2011, 10:19:41 AM
Ha ha ha ha - blaming the snow.   


________________________ ____________________--

Initial Jobless Claims in U.S. Rose Last Week to 454,000
By Alex Kowalski - Jan 27, 2011 8:52 AM ET



Applications for jobless benefits increased by 51,000 to 454,000 in the week ended Jan. 22, Labor Department figures showed today. Photographer: Jim R. Bounds/Bloomberg

More Americans than forecast filed first-time claims for unemployment insurance payments last week, indicating it will take time for the labor market to mend.

Applications for jobless benefits increased by 51,000 to 454,000 in the week ended Jan. 22, Labor Department figures showed today. Economists forecast 405,000 claims, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey. The number of people on unemployment benefit rolls rose, while those collecting extended payments fell.

A Labor Department official said snow in four southern states in previous weeks created a backlog of claims that were processed last week. While the economy has improved, it hasn’t been enough to reduce an unemployment rate that Federal Reserve policy makers said yesterday is too high and requires pressing ahead with a $600 billion stimulus plan.

“If claims drift higher, we’re just going to have to wait and see, tread water,” Julia Coronado, chief economist for North America at BNP Paribas in New York, said. “We’re creating enough jobs to keep the unemployment rate roughly steady and at a pace to keep the economy on track, but it’s not necessarily a picture of rapid improvement.”

Estimates in the Bloomberg News survey of 52 economists ranged from 375,000 to 428,000, after the Labor Department initially reported claims fell to 404,000 the prior week.

Futures on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index expiring in March fell 0.2 percent to 1,291.70 at 8:47 a.m. in New York. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note, which moves inversely to price, rose to 3.44 percent from 3.42 percent late yesterday.

Winter Effects

The Labor Department official said winter weather in Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina in previous weeks kept people from filing claims. Those unemployed Americans ended up filing last week, boosting the claims number.

“In addition to seasonal volatility, we have this extra effect in the numbers,” the Labor Department official said as the figures were released.

The four-week moving average, a less-volatile measure, rose to 428,750 from 413,000.

The number of people continuing to collect jobless benefits increased by 94,000 in the week ended Jan. 15 to 3.99 million. Economists forecast the number would increase to 3.87 million.

The continuing claims figure does not include the number of workers receiving extended benefits under federal programs.

Those who’ve used up their traditional benefits and are now collecting emergency and extended payments decreased by about 98,000 to 4.62 million in the week ended Jan. 8.

President Barack Obama in December signed into law an $858 billion bill extending for two years tax cuts for all income levels. The measure also continues expanded jobless insurance benefits to the long-term unemployed for 13 months and reduces payroll taxes for workers by two percentage points this year.

Democrats, Republicans

“These steps, taken by Democrats and Republicans, will grow the economy and add to the more than one million private- sector jobs created last year,” Obama said this week during the State of the Union address.

The unemployment rate among people eligible for benefits, which tends to track the jobless rate, rose to 3.2 percent in the week ended Jan. 15, today’s report showed. Fifty states and territories reported a decrease in claims, while three had an increase. These data are reported with a one-week lag.

Initial jobless claims reflect weekly firings and tend to fall as job growth -- measured by the monthly non-farm payrolls report -- accelerates.

Economic expansion in the U.S. is “continuing, though at a rate that has been insufficient to bring about a significant improvement in labor market conditions,” the Federal Open Market Committee said yesterday in its statement after a two-day meeting in Washington.

Unemployment is too high to be consistent in the long run with policy makers’ congressional mandate of full employment, the Fed said, repeating that progress toward its objectives has been “disappointingly slow.”

The labor market gradually improved at the end of last year, with unemployment falling to 9.4 percent in December from 9.8 percent a month earlier, according to Labor Department figures released Jan. 7. The country added 103,000 jobs in December, fewer than economists forecast in a Bloomberg survey.

Company Workforce

Some companies have been shifting the composition of their workforce to meet consumer demand, which probably grew 4 percent in the final three months of last year, according to the median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg before the Commerce Department’s first estimate of fourth-quarter growth tomorrow.

Lowe’s Cos., the second-biggest U.S. home-improvement retailer, said this week it plans to eliminate 1,700 middle- management jobs in stores as profit growth trails that of larger Home Depot Inc. At the same time, Mooresville, North Carolina- based Lowe’s plans to add 8,000 to 10,000 weekend sales positions to improve staffing at the chain’s busiest time of the week.

General Motors Co., the largest U.S. automaker, will add a third shift and about 750 jobs to its assembly plant in Flint, Michigan, to meet rising demand for pickups, according to a Jan. 24 statement. The hiring will start in the second quarter, and the additional shift will begin in the third quarter, Detroit- based GM said.

“Adding a third shift is a response to customer demand for heavy-duty pickups, which most people use to tow, haul and plow,” Mark Reuss, president of GM North America, said in the statement. “Equally importantly, it brings jobs and a needed economic boost to the Flint area.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Alexander Kowalski in Washington at akowalski13@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Christopher Wellisz at cwellisz@bloomberg.net
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 01, 2011, 09:51:43 AM

High-Speed Rail, Budget Buster (Almost everywhere it has been constructed, taxpayers lost out)
National Review ^ | 02/01/2011 | Wendell Cox


If the nation is going to reduce its out-of-control spending, the first step is to stop spending money on things we do not need. Despite President Obama’s call in his State of the Union speech for linking 80 percent of the nation by high-speed rail, it is hard to imagine a more unnecessary program.

For example, people who travel between Los Angeles and San Francisco — along the route planned for one of the nation’s first high-speed-rail projects — already have choices. They can fly, drive, take the bus, or travel by train. True, some would prefer to tax their fellow citizens so that they can have another choice, high-speed rail. But indulging this desire would be as legitimate as funding government grocery stores for people who prefer not to shop at their local grocery chains.

Among intercity transport modes, only Amtrak is materially subsidized. User fees pay virtually all the costs of airlines and airports, which (together with connecting ground transportation) link any two points in the nation within a day. The intercity highway system goes everywhere, and nearly all of it was built with user fees paid by drivers, truckers, and bus companies.

High-speed rail is a budget buster. Japan, with the world’s leading system, illustrates the financial devastation that high-speed rail can produce. For 25 years, Japan borrowed to build a system serving the ideal rail corridor, nestled along a single coast with a population of more than 75 million people. Ridership was artificially increased by high gasoline prices and one of the highest highway tolls in the world. Yet this modest system, only twice as long as proposed California system, played a major role in driving up a gargantuan rail debt that was transferred to Japanese taxpayers. The rail debt added more than 10 percent to the national debt. This is akin to adding $1.4 trillion to the U.S. national debt.

Virtually everywhere high-speed rail has been constructed, financial liability has fallen to the taxpayers. In Taiwan and the United Kingdom, taxpayers assumed billions of dollars in private debts for much more modest high-speed-rail systems than Japan’s.

All of this could have been avoided. Through the years, high-speed-rail cost overruns have been well documented. Most recently, research by Bent Flyvbjerg of Oxford University, Nils Bruzelius of Stockholm University, and Werner Rothengatter of the University of Karlsruhe (a former president of the influential World Conference on Transportation Research) found that passenger-rail cost overruns above 40 percent were common and that overruns above 80 percent were not uncommon. Overruns can go even higher: On Korea’s high-speed-rail project, they were between 200 and 300 percent, the president of the country’s rail system said.

High-speed-rail cost escalation has reached these shores. Even before the first shovel has been turned, California’s high-speed-rail costs have risen at least 50 percent, inflation adjusted. The cost estimates for the first approved section of the Los Angeles–to–San Francisco line, a “train to nowhere” from Corcoran to Borden, indicate escalation beyond $45 billion.

In Florida, boosters tell taxpayers that their liability for the Tampa to Orlando high-speed-rail line would be only $280 million, and that, somehow, a private bidder will shower additional billions upon them to pay any cost overruns.

Boosters also claim that high-speed rail will provide substantial environmental benefits, reduce highway-traffic congestion, and ease air-traffic congestion. Yet, as Joseph Vranich and I showed in the Reason Foundation’s “Due Diligence” report on California’s high-speed-rail proposal, the cost per ton of greenhouse gas removed would be from $1,900 to $10,000. This is 40 to 250 times what the International Panel on Climate Change research indicates greenhouse-gas removal should cost ($50 per ton). Our estimate does not account for the revised (much lower) ridership projection. Even the rosy reports produced by boosters show that high-speed rail would remove only a small percentage of cars from the roads. The hope of reducing air congestion is just as elusive because travel origins and destinations are so dispersed in the United States and because the number of people forsaking air travel for high-speed rail will be small.

Voters gave the new Republican House of Representatives a mandate to cut spending. Zeroing high-speed rail out of the federal budget may be the litmus test. If Congress fails to stop this costly and unnecessary program, it would call into question the commitment to spending reduction.

— Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, an international public-policy consultancy in St. Louis.

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 02, 2011, 01:11:19 PM
Obama: I’ll veto anything that limits EPA greenhouse-gas authority
Hot Air ^ | 2:55 pm on February 2, 2011 | Ed Morrissey


________________________ ________________________ --


How disappointed will Republicans be to hear Barack Obama’s veto threat on bills moving through Congress to rein in the EPA?  Not very.  It isn’t the first time the White House has issued the threat, but with one of the bills coming from his own side of the aisle, it’s starting to sound more like a plea to keep from being put in that position:

The Obama administration Wednesday repeated its threat to veto legislation that would curb its ability to regulate greenhouse gases.


Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson said that the White House continues to oppose any efforts from Capitol Hill to hamstring her agency on climate change.

“What has been said from the White House is that the president’s advisors would advise him to veto any legislation that passed that would take away EPA’s greenhouse gas authority,” Jackson told reporters on Capitol Hill. “Nothing has changed.”

EPA’s climate policies came under attack this week when Sens. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) and John Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) – backed by a host of co-sponsors – rolled out bills Monday to hamstring EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

A separate bill will come Wednesday afternoon from House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and the Senate’s top climate skeptic, Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.).

Republicans know that Obama will veto the bill.  His strategy in the next two years will be to consolidate his legislative gains from 2009-10 and to expand his agenda through executive-branch regulatory adventurism.  Despite his supposed rhetorical move to the center — which mainly failed to appear in his State of the Union speech — the EPA remains his one tool to crack down on domestic energy production.

In fact, Republicans are counting on a veto.  They want that strategy to get out into the light, rather than occur through the normally dull process of regulatory expansion.  The veto would only be the third of Obama’s term in office and would shine a bright spotlight on his regulatory expansion.  Having a Democrat write one of these bills gives the effort an even higher profile, as well as make Obama look even more radical.  Democrats that stick with Obama on this issue in the House and especially the Senate will do so at their own electoral peril.


Obama wants to stop Congress from sending him the bill in the first place, which is why he’s issuing the threat.  It’s not likely to work, especially not with red-state Senate Democrats looking at 2012 re-election bids.

Update: Barbara Boxer plans to double down on defiance.  According to The Hill, she wants Congressional hearings on climate-change skepticism:

Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Committee Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) is issuing a challenge to skeptics of climate change science: Bring it on.

Boxer said Wednesday that she’s expecting hearings on the issue.

She said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who is expected to head the panel’s oversight subcommittee, “is working on getting us going with some hearings.”


“We are going to absolutely look at the science of carbon pollution and its impact on our people, on our planet,” Boxer said at a committee hearing on drinking water safety. “We are absolutely going to keep up with the science.”

Which science?  The science that said snow in Washington DC was a thing of the past?  That the Himalayan glaciers were retreating?  The White House may want to have a chat with Boxer and Whitehouse on the subject of timing.

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 04, 2011, 12:17:40 PM
Shell: No Beaufort Sea drilling in Arctic for 2011
Shell cancels 2011 exploration plans in Beaufort Sea, looks to drill exploratory wells in 2012


.
.
Shell Alaska Vice President Pete Slaiby speaks at a news conference on Thursday, Feb. 3, 2011, at Shell offices in in Anchorage, Alaska.
Shell Alaska has dropped plans to drill exploratory wells in the Arctic waters of the Beaufort Sea this year and will concentrate on obtaining permits for the 2012 season, Slaiby said Thursday, Feb. 3, 2011. (AP Photo/Dan Joling)
Dan Joling, Associated Press, On Thursday February 3, 2011, 8:10 pm EST



ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) -- Shell Alaska has dropped plans to drill in the Arctic waters of the Beaufort Sea this year and will concentrate on obtaining permits for the 2012 season, company Vice President Pete Slaiby said Thursday.

The recent remand of air permits issued by the Environmental Protection Agency was the final driver behind the decision, Slaiby said at a news conference.

Alaska receives upward of 90 percent of its general fund revenue from the petroleum industry, and top state officials reacted strongly to the decision. U.S. Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, blamed the Obama administration and the EPA.

"Their foot dragging means the loss of another exploration season in Alaska, the loss of nearly 800 direct jobs and many more indirect jobs," Begich said. "That doesn't count the millions of dollars in contracting that won't happen either at a time when our economy needs the investment."

The EPA issued Shell an air permit, but the agency's review board granted an appeal because of limited agency analysis regarding the effect of emissions from drilling ships and support vessels.

Slaiby said the issue is not with the environment but with the process not being satisfied. He said Shell has no air issues with Alaska villages.

"That's coupled with $15 million in improvements we made on these assets to put together what's really a world-class program," he said.

The subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell PLC has invested more than $3 billion in exploration off Alaska's coast since 2005, Slaiby said. The company paid $2.2 billion for leases in the Chukchi Sea off Alaska's northwest coast that have been challenged.

The company had hoped last year to drill exploration wells during the 2010 open water season in both the Chukchi and the Beaufort but its plans were put on hold by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar after the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

Salazar suspended applications for permits and has announced no timetable for lifting the suspension, saying the department will take a cautious guided by science and the voices of North Slope communities.

Slaiby in October said Shell would focus on one or two exploratory wells in the Beaufort off Alaska's north coast during the roughly 105-day open water season.

Drilling in Arctic waters is opposed by environmental groups and some Alaska Native groups, who say petroleum companies have not demonstrated an ability to clean up a spill in ice-choked waters. They also say the remote location of drilling sites, the area's notorious inclement weather and the lack of infrastructure, including a deep-water port, would make a cleanup of a major spill nearly impossible.

They also claim drilling will stress marine mammals already being harmed by climate warming and diminishing sea ice, including polar bears, ice-dependent seals and walrus.

Shell has stressed that Arctic drilling would be in water far more shallow than the Macondo well, the site of the Gulf of Mexico disaster, and that the risk of a spill is minimal. The company also said it would position a second drilling ship in Alaska as a safety measure, so if the first drilling ship were crippled by a blowout, the second ship could drill a relief well.

Shell's primary drilling ship has been moved to prospects off New Zealand and the company will look for other ways to use support vessels. The backup drilling ship will remain in Dutch Harbor, a port in the Aleutian Islands, Slaiby said.

Alaska officials have been unwavering in their support for drilling. The trans-Alaska pipeline operates at about one-third capacity, and state officials have looked to offshore sources to keep it viable. Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell said it was unfathomable that a company could buy federal leases but not get onto them within five years.

"It's also unfathomable that they cannot get an air permit after five years when they can get one in the Gulf of Mexico within months," he said.

Republican U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski said actions taken by the Obama administration will result in higher gasoline prices and a loss of jobs and revenue.

"We talk a lot about the economy, but rarely do our actions match our rhetoric," she said. "That's unfortunate."

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Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 05, 2011, 01:32:47 PM
Oh lord is this moron clueless

________________________ ______________-


Obama: Businesses have responsibility to help economy grow
The Hill ^ | 2/5/2011 | Jordy Yager





President Obama called on U.S. businesses to do more to help grow the economy, saying that while the unemployment rate is getting better and jobs are being added, the U.S. needs “to get there faster.”

“Businesses have a responsibility, too,” said Obama in his weekly address on Saturday. “If we make America the best place to do business, businesses should make their mark in America. They should set up shop here, and hire our workers, and pay decent wages, and invest in the future of this nation. That’s their obligation.”

Obama said he planned to deliver that message to the Chamber of Commerce on Monday, along with his administration’s commitment to work with the powerful business lobby. The White House has negotiated for more than two months about when to hold the meeting with the Chamber, which has come out in opposition to several of Obama’s major policies, such as the healthcare measure and Wall Street reform.

The message is that “government and businesses have mutual responsibilities; and that if we fulfill these obligations together, it benefits us all,” said Obama. “Our workers will succeed. Our nation will prosper. And America will win the future in this century just like we did in the last.”

Obama resounded his push to “win the future” in his Saturday speech, saying that the country needs to “out-educate, out-innovate, and out-build the rest of the world.” The president lauded students and scientists at Penn State University for their research in the field of clean energy, as well as a Maryland window company and a North Carolina lighting company for making profits off of environmentally friendly products.

“All we did for these companies was provide some tax credits and financing opportunities,” said Obama. “And that’s what we want to do going forward, so that it’s profitable for American businesses to sell the discoveries made by the scientists at Penn State and other hubs of innovation.   

“If businesses sell these discoveries – if they start making windows and insulation and buildings that save more energy – they will hire more workers. And that’s how Americans will prosper. That’s how we’ll win the future.”

The White House’s continued focus on growing jobs comes as the nation’s latest unemployment numbers were released on Friday. In January, the unemployment rate dropped to 9 percent. It was 9.4 percent in December, and 9.8 percent in November.

Job growth, however, remained more placid, with the economy adding only 36,000 jobs, which is short of expectations and is likely to spur more questions about why the labor market is not improving more rapidly as other economic indicators suggest an improving economy.

After his talk with the Chamber next week, Obama is planning to travel to Marquette, Mich., where he is expected to use the small port city as an example of how access to high-speed broadband Internet has caused local businesses to boom as they increase their international exports.

Obama has called for an increase in access to the “next generation of high-speed wireless coverage” over the next five years.

“This isn't about faster Internet or fewer dropped calls,” Obama said in his State of the Union address earlier this year. “It's about connecting every part of America to the digital age. It's about a rural community in Iowa or Alabama where farmers and small business owners will be able to sell their products all over the world.”

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 07, 2011, 11:20:44 AM
Politics
February 07, 2011

 8 Shocking, Funny and Revealing Things Obama Told the Chamber of Commerce
AP




"I'm here in the interest of being more neighborly. Maybe we would have gotten off on a better foot if I had brought over a fruitcake when we first moved in."

"I understand the significance of your obligations to your shareholders. I get it. But as we work with you to make America a better place to do business, ask yourselves what you can do for America."

"I want to put more people to work rebuilding crumbling roads and bridges."

"To make room for these investments in education, innovation, and infrastructure, government also has a responsibility to cut the spending that we just can't afford. That's why I've promised to veto any bill larded up with earmarks"

"We're trying to run the government more like you run your businesses - with better technology and faster services. In the coming months, my administration will develop a proposal to merge, consolidate, and reorganize the federal government in a way that best serves the goal of a more competitive America."

"The perils of too much regulation are matched by the dangers of too little"

"If we're fighting to reform the tax code and increase exports to help you compete, the benefits can't just translate into greater profits and bonuses for those at the top. They should be shared by American workers."

"We can create a virtuous cycle."


http://nation.foxnews.com/president-obama/2011/02/07/8-shocking-funny-and-revealing-things-obama-told-chamber-commerce

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 08, 2011, 05:16:35 AM
EDITORIAL: Obama to America: Get lost
Sweetheart deal for billionaire could cut off GPS service
By THE WASHINGTON TIMES
-
The Washington Times
7:10 p.m., Monday, February 7, 2011



FILE - In this file photo made March 12, 2010, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is interviewed at his office in Washington. New rules aimed at prohibiting broadband providers from becoming gatekeepers of Internet traffic now have just enough votes to pass the Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday, Dec. 21, 2010. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, file)PrintEmailView 6Comment(s)Enlarge



In the past decade, millions have come to depend on the seeming magic of the global positioning system (GPS) to guide them to their destination. The navigational gadgets in cars, cell phones and other hand-held devices can even be a lifesaver. Now the system may be undermined by a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) decision last month to allow a well-connected company to exploit a slice of the airwaves in a way that potentially blocks GPS signals.

The FCC bent the rules so the Reston-based firm LightSquared could offer a new wireless Internet service that fulfills President Obama‘s high-profile push for public investment in broadband. Yet the FCC appears to have done its best to keep this particular deal far from the public eye. LightSquared made its formal request for a waiver on Nov. 18, and the agency opened a public-comment period the next day. Those with an interest in the matter had just two weeks to comment - a short period that included Thanksgiving.

The haste may be related to surprising laboratory test results from the world’s top manufacturer of navigational gizmos, Garmin Ltd. The company’s engineers found that popular consumer GPS units started experiencing dropouts when approaching within 3.6 miles of a LightSquared transmitter. A commonly used aircraft navigation unit completely lost its fix within 5.6 miles. “It’s mind-boggling to us,” Garmin spokesman Ted Gartner told The Washington Times. “If it’s implemented as is, we’ve presented a pretty good case with that test that there will be some disruptions.”

The concern is shared by the Department of Defense, which launched the first Navstar GPS satellite in 1978 as a tool to improve the effectiveness of the military’s aircraft, ships and missiles in reaching their targets. On Dec. 28, the military asked the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to ask the FCC to slow down. “DoD is concerned with the [order and authorization] being conducted without the proper analysis required to make a well informed decision,” the department’s spectrum policy director wrote in a Dec. 28 letter. The Pentagon wanted the FCC to “defer action” until interference issues were fully addressed.

The FCC ignored the request. According to insiders, the deal was brokered through the office of Chairman Julius Genachowski, who cut the other commissioners out of the process. The fast-paced decision-making was just what venture capitalist Philip Falcone needed to give his reported $3 billion investment in LightSquared a boost in its competition with established players including AT&T, Sprint and Verizon. LightSquared wisely harnessed a former FCC bureau chief to navigate the bureaucratic back channels, and Mr. Falcone’s $38,900 in campaign checks to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee since 2008 - and $2,300 to the House campaign of then-Rep. Rahm Emanuel, Illinois Democrat - certainly didn’t hurt in bringing the firm’s needs to the Obama administration’s attention.

As it stands, the FCC gave LightSquared until June 15 to issue a report on the GPS problem, which, if approved, would allow the company to begin operations. Given the widespread effects that interruption of GPS service would have on the nation’s commerce, this process needs to slow down and be made more transparent. Otherwise, it might be time to stock up on paper maps.

© Copyright 2011 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 08, 2011, 08:47:17 AM
BUSINESSFEBRUARY 8, 2011, 7:29 A.M. ET.
Obama Budget Proposes Broader Unemployment Taxes
www.wsj.com
By JONATHAN WEISMAN And DAMIAN PALETTA



________________________ ________________________ ________________



WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama's budget proposal is expected to give states a way to collect more payroll taxes from businesses, in an effort to replenish the unemployment-insurance program. The plan could cause controversy at a time when the administration is seeking to mend fences with corporate America.

The proposal would aim to restock strained state unemployment-insurance trust funds by raising the amount of wages on which companies must pay unemployment taxes to $15,000, more than double the $7,000 in place since 1983.

The plan, which would take effect in 2014, could increase payroll taxes by as much as $100 billion over a decade, according to a person involved in its construction.

By proposing to enlarge the pool of wages subject to unemployment taxes, the White House appears to be offering states a more politically palatable way to raise revenues than to boost tax rates. States could keep the tax rates they have, or even lower them somewhat, and still raise considerably more revenue than they are raising now.

Real Time Economics
Q&A: How Do Unemployment Taxes Work?
.The unemployment insurance program is a joint federal-state program. The federal unemployment insurance tax rate of 6.2% on the new, larger base would be reduced, so that the U.S. would be taking in no more revenue than it does under the current system, a person familiar with the plan said.

To avoid hitting businesses with a tax increase during the economic recovery, the proposal would delay the new rules until 2014. The plan is expected to be included in Mr. Obama's budget proposal for fiscal 2012, to be released Monday.

Any proposal would need congressional approval.

State governments have had to borrow heavily from the federal government to cover the jobless benefits they provide. States are responsible for the first 26 weeks of benefits, and many have seen their reserve funds wiped out.

More than 40 states raised their unemployment-insurance payroll taxes last year to boost revenues.

The proposal comes as the White House is trying to improve relations with business groups while also pushing them for financial help to shore up the unemployment insurance system, drained by prolonged high joblessness.

Republican aides on Capitol Hill reacted warily. Increasing levies on businesses in the next few years could hit a wall of opposition among Republicans, said one senior G.O.P. tax aide in the Senate. Mr. Obama delivered a speech on Monday to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, trying to repair frayed relations with business and offering areas of possible cooperation.

Mr. Obama has promised business an effort to simplify the corporate tax code while lowering the corporate tax rate. Pushing for higher unemployment taxes could reignite tensions.

—Sara Murray contributed to this article.
 
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 08, 2011, 09:30:28 AM
Environmentalists Are Killing Jobs And The Economy (WA coal terminal)
Business Insider ^ | February 7, 2011 | Liz Peek


________________________ ___

If President Obama is serious about smoothing the path for U.S. businesses, he should take up reading the newspaper. Not a day goes by that he wouldn’t find opportunities aplenty to unclog our regulatory arteries.

This past Friday was no exception. The issue? A proposed coal terminal on the Columbia River in Washington. A terminal that would facilitate coal shipments to China, thus aiding one of Mr. Obama’s professed goals—ramping up U.S. exports.

Unfortunately, as the Wall Street Journal reported, local environmentalists want the project scuttled. Not because the terminal’s operations would damage Washington State’s air or water quality, but because burning the coal in far-off China might foul the air – there.

Meanwhile, as the green group wrings their hands over emissions in China, U.S. citizens go without a $100 million project, billed as likely to produce 125 construction jobs and 75 permanent jobs, in a region where unemployment exceeds 12%.

This situation is symptomatic of the kind of hurdles that U.S. companies routinely face. It is time to put the needs of our workers ahead of all other considerations – including the gigantic environmental lobby.


(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 08, 2011, 12:41:38 PM
Why Small Business Isn't Hiring And Won't Be Hiring
oftwominds ^ | 02/08/2011 | Charles Hugh Smith



________________________ ________________________



Pundits and politicos promote a magical myth: a coming small business hiring boom. That fantasy is completely disconnected from the harsh realities of private enterprise.

Regardless of their ideological persuasion, pundits and politicos reliably repeat the mantra that "small business is the engine of jobs growth." The mantra is followed by the pundit-politico's belief that a "small business jobs boom is right around the corner."

I have news for the pundits and politicos: ain't gonna happen. Why? The answer cannot be found in the manipulated and massaged Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers (have any real jobs been created, net of jobs lost, in the past year? Who knows?) or in the punditry's Cargo-Cult-like belief in a mythical "small business jobs machine" that they have never experienced and know nothing about.

While a handful of the new crop of politicos are entrepreneurs, most Washington denizens are attorneys, the offspring of wealthy or politically connected families or people who have lived off the government at some level their entire lives. Most have never had a customer or client or had to borrow off a credit card to make payroll. (I have; any pundits who can honestly raise their hands for that one?)

Pundits come in two flavors: the academics, happily making mud pies in the moat surrounding their secure Ivory Tower, and the loud-mouths who have screeched louder and longer than the other media-monkeys. All know less than zero about actual small business.

To understand why small business isn't hiring and won't be hiring, you need to understand the psychology of this era and the systemic pressures on all small businesses which don't live off Federal government contracts. In a very powerful sense, those businesses which live from one government contract to the next are not private businesses at all: they are merely proxies or extensions of the government. Their non-governmental work is either trivial or non-existent.

So when some government set-aside program sanctions $40 million or whatever for "small business," it's no different than opening another government office: the only difference is the employees are not Civil Service. The competition is not between private-sector and government, it's only between rival government contractors.

What pundits and politicos don't get is small business knows the "recovery" is totally bogus. Why hire somebody who you'll have to lay off a few months from now? Laying people off is emotionally painful--you dread it, tire of it, are wearied by it. This is a real human being who is losing their job, not some ginned-up statistic hyped by some think-tank-pundit pulling down $15K a month for dishing whatever flavor of propaganda he/she is paid to churn out.

The Washington establishment--the Fed, the Treasury, Congress, the Obama Administration-- seem to believe they've successfully pulled the propaganda wool over Americans' eyes, and that the yokels actually believe "things are getting better and better every day and in every way."

Only the yokels without clients, customers and payrolls can believe the propaganda.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, small business income is down 5%. Small Business: Still Waiting for Recovery.

According to data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Proprietors' income-- the profits of unincorporated businesses such as partnerships or individuals who work for themselves--is down nearly 5 percent from two years ago, while corporate profits have jumped 21 percent in that period.

About 19.9 million partnerships and sole proprietorships with no employees existed in 2008, the latest year for which U.S. Census Bureau data are available. That number fell almost 2 percent from the previous year.

In a private-sector workforce of about 106 million, that's about 19% of all people with a job. Recall that the BLS counts you as employed if you work one hour a week or if you're "self-employed," even if you aren't making a dime.

Only in the Fantasyland of propaganda does nobody notice that self-employed people who are seeing revenues and profits fall do not need to hire someone: they're sinking all on their own.

Only in the Fantasyland of propaganda does nobody seem to notice that for every celebrity-chef restaurant opening to gushing hype in Manahattan, West L.A. or San Francisco, two other restaurants quietly closed.

Small business understands uncertainty is now permanent. That's why 26% of all new private-sector hires are temporary--and if we subtract the bogus phantom jobs created by the BLS "birth-death model," then the number is probably more like a third or even half.

Small business understands that the "recovery" is merely a Federal towel stuffed in the gaping hole in the rowboat's leaky planks, and that it's literally insane to hire workers when your revenues could evaporate next month.

Small business re-discovered it could do more with less. Once businesses trimmed payrolls to survive, they discovered they could make more money for themselves and do so with fewer people. Why add to staff when all that means is transferring your own paycheck to someone else?

Small businesses are closing, not opening. Rents have barely dipped, local government taxes and junk fees have skyrocketed, and the complexities and costs of the new healthcare bill have all added systemic pressures on every small business: it's either adapt quickly and successfully or perish, and many are choosing to close down and quit working so hard for so little payoff.

When leases expire, the doors close, and no one leaps in to pay boomtime-level rents, and heavy business licence and permit fees. The only people insane enough to hire anyone are three guys working in a living room somewhere, trying to hire a few Javascript programmers to finish their app so they can cash out by selling the "company" to some larger enterprise.

The programmers are independent contractors who have to take care of their own healthcare and taxes, or they're young and single so the healthcare insurance costs are modest--if they even bother with buying insurance.

Nobody's hiring for the long-term for the simple reason that there is no long-term: we're either selling the company as soon as we can, or we're waiting for the next dip in revenues to close down before we lose everything.

Local government has grown accustomed to small business being uncomplaining tax-donkeys, silently paying every junk fee and every additional tax the government levies. Only a funny thing happened on the way to local government's plan to fill the shortfalls in its own revenues by taxing small businesses even more: they're closing down.

The reason is simple: why work for free? This is incomprehensible to both local governments, who expect all those "filthy-rich small-business Capitalists" to pay higher taxes and fees, and the safely remote-from-the-real-world pundits and politicos.

These members of the academia-think-tank-media-politico Cargo Cult have a magical belief in a mythical "small business" which is anxious to get out there and create new jobs because "to get rich is glorious," as if "getting rich" is even an option for 90% of real small businesses.

In the real world, small businesses aren't getting rich, they're going broke and closing down to save whatever remains of their sanity and assets. You want high-tech and "clean energy" jobs? Well, how about MySpace laying off half its 1,000-person staff? How about Evergreen Solar closing its Devens, MA plant, laying off 800 workers and moving production to China? Did the pundits honestly think that globalization was over?

Memo to pundits and politicos: you worship at the altar of Capitalist profits driving small business--get real. People will do whatever they have to in order not to go broke.

That's why the three guys or gals aren't renting an office--who needs the overhead? They also don't have health insurance: who can afford $1,000 a month for crappy, confusing "care" young people rarely even need? Better to pay cash.

And they aren't hiring "employees": they're paying their friends with equity shares, or cash, and paying their own taxes is up to each free-lancer.

That is the new model of American entrepreneurship: no office, no overhead, no employees, no health insurance, no business travel. That's the only way any new enterprise can survive.

Everyone who buys into the myth and pays absurdly high rents, junk fees and healthcare insurance will be ground down and bled dry. The only exception are those well-connected enough to run a pipe into the limitless lake of Federal money. Yes, 40% of the lake is borrowed from our kids, but no matter--the "recovery" is real, and this stone with a crudely painted radio dial is in fact a working radio. It's magic. You just have to believe.

Small business can't afford to believe in myths and fantasies. They are dealing with the harsh reality of adapt or die.
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 10, 2011, 04:02:58 PM
CBO Director Says Obamacare Would Reduce Employment by 800,000 Workers
Jeffrey H. Anderson
February 10, 2011 2:37 PM


http://www.weeklystandard.com/print/blogs/cbo-director-says-obamacare-would-reduce-employment-800000-workers_547288.html





Testifying today before the House Budget Committee, Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Director Doug Elmendorf confirmed that Obamacare is expected to reduce the number of jobs in the labor market by an estimated 800,000. Here are excerpts from the exchange:

Chairman [Paul] Ryan: “t’s been argued...that the new health care law will create jobs and increase labor force participation. But if I recall from your analysis, it was quite the opposite. Is that not the case?”

Director [Douglas] Elmendorf : “Yes.”...

[…]

Rep. [John] Campbell: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, we'll -- and Dr. Elmendorf -- and we'll continue this conversation right now. First on health care, before I get to -- before I get to broader issues, you just mentioned that you believe -- or that in your estimate, that the health care law would reduce the labor used in the economy by about 1/2 of 1 percent, given that, I believe you say, there's 160 million full-time people working in '20-'21.  That means that, in your estimation, the health care law would reduce employment by 800,000 in '20-'21. Is that correct?

Director Elmendorf: Yes. The way I would put it is that we do estimate, as you said, that...employment will be about 160 million by the end of the decade.  Half a percent of that is 800,000.

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 12, 2011, 07:14:14 AM
Ex-Shell Head Says Energy Policies Choke Economy
by  Heather Caygle
Houston Chronicle 2/11/2011

URL: http://www.rigzone.com/news/article.asp?a_id=104068



Former Shell Oil Co. president John Hofmeister said that the Obama administration's energy policies and regulations are strangling the U.S. economy and preventing the country from decreasing its dependence on foreign oil.

Testifying before the House Energy and Power Subcommittee, the Houston businessman blamed the administration for restricting offshore drilling after the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico last year.

"I believe that the decline" in drilling in the Gulf of Mexico "will be sharper and deeper than what anyone is currently projecting," he told lawmakers. "We have made a horrible error as a country."

Hofmeister was one of six energy experts testifying about the effect of Middle East political unrest, including the ongoing protests in Egypt, on the U.S. oil market. The panelists presented a gloomy view of the America's energy future if restrictions on domestic production remain. The Obama administration lifted a moratorium on deep-water drilling in October, but the government has not approved any projects that would have been blocked by that ban.

"We have a real strangulation by regulation taking place for domestic production at the current time in this country," Hofmeister said.

"It is "absolutely critical to reduce dependence on the Middle East," he said. â??He â??said, for example, that if oil tanker traffic were shut down in the Strait of Hormuz, the price of crude would double or even triple rapidly. Rep. Gene Green, D-Texas, said last year's deep-water moratorium and "endless permitting delays" already have affected production.

Some Democratic committee members said the U.S. should focus more on alternative energy and efficiency.

"The bottom line here is we can't afford to not improve the fuel economy standards for the vehicles which we drive," said Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass. "That is our No. 1 weapon against the Middle East."

Copyright (c) 2011, Houston Chronicle


Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 12, 2011, 07:46:48 AM


Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 14, 2011, 05:13:18 AM
White House Expects Deficit to Spike to $1.65 Trillion (Obama continues spending at record pace)
wall street journal ^ | 2/14/2011 | DAMIAN PALETTA and COREY BOLES



The White House projected Monday that the federal deficit would spike to $1.65 trillion in the current fiscal year, the largest dollar amount ever, adding pressure on Democrats and Republicans to tackle growing levels of debt.

The projected deficit for 2011 is fueled in part by a tax-cut extension that President Barack Obama and Republican lawmakers brokered in December, two senior administration officials said. It would equal 10.9% of gross domestic product, the largest deficit as a share of the economy since World War II.

The new estimate is part of Mr. Obama's proposed budget for fiscal year 2012, which becomes public Monday morning.

Mr. Obama is proposing $3.73 trillion in government spending in the next fiscal year, part of a plan that includes budget cuts and tax increases that administration officials believe will sharply bring down the federal deficit over 10 years.

The deficit would decline in fiscal year 2012 to $1.1 trillion, or 7% of gross domestic product, under Mr. Obama's plan, as a year-long payroll tax holiday and an extension of federal jobless benefits expired, administration officials said. By 2017, the budget plan says, the deficit would be shaved to $627 billion, or 3% of gross domestic product.


(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 14, 2011, 05:51:58 AM
Geithner Tells Obama Debt Expense to Increase to Record
By Daniel Kruger and Liz Capo McCormick - Feb 14, 2011





Barack Obama may lose the advantage of low borrowing costs as the U.S. Treasury Department says what it pays to service the national debt is poised to triple amid record budget deficits.

Interest expense will rise to 3.1 percent of gross domestic product by 2016, from 1.3 percent in 2010 with the government forecast to run cumulative deficits of more than $4 trillion through the end of 2015, according to page 23 of a 24-page presentation made to a 13-member committee of bond dealers and investors that meet quarterly with Treasury officials.

While some of the lowest borrowing costs on record have helped the economy recover from its worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, bond yields are now rising as growth resumes. Net interest expense will triple to an all-time high of $554 billion in 2015 from $185 billion in 2010, according to the Obama administration’s adjusted 2011 budget.

“It’s a slow train wreck coming and we all know it’s going to happen,” said Bret Barker, an interest-rate analyst at Los Angeles-based TCW Group Inc., which manages about $115 billion in assets. “It’s just a question of whether we want to deal with it. There are huge structural changes that have to go on with this economy.”

The amount of marketable U.S. government debt outstanding has risen to $8.96 trillion from $5.8 trillion at the end of 2008, according to the Treasury Department. Debt-service costs will climb to 82 percent of the $757 billion shortfall projected for 2016 from about 12 percent in last year’s deficit, according to the budget projections.

Budget Proposal

That compares with 69 percent for Portugal, whose bonds have plummeted on speculation it may need to be bailed out by the European Union and International Monetary Fund.

Forecasts of higher interest expenses raises the pressure on Obama to plan for trimming the deficit. The President, who has called for a five-year freeze on discretionary spending other than national security, is scheduled to release his proposed fiscal 2012 budget today as his administration and Congress negotiate boosting the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling.

“If government debt and deficits were actually to grow at the pace envisioned, the economic and financial effects would be severe,” Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke told the House Budget Committee Feb. 9. “Sustained high rates of government borrowing would both drain funds away from private investment and increase our debt to foreigners, with adverse long-run effects on U.S. output, incomes, and standards of living.”

Yield Forecasts
Treasuries lost 2.67 percent last quarter, even after reinvested interest, and are down 1.54 percent this year, Bank of America Merrill Lynch index data show. Yields rose last week to an average of 2.19 percent for all maturities from 2010’s low of 1.30 percent on Nov. 4.

The yield on benchmark 10-year Treasury note will climb to 4.25 by the end of the second quarter of 2012, from 3.63 percent last week, according to the median estimate of 51 economists and strategists surveyed by Bloomberg News. The rate was 3.64 percent at 7:50 a.m. today in New York. The economy will grow 3.2 percent in 2011, the fastest pace since 2004, according to another poll.

“People are starting to come to the conclusion that you’ve got a self-sustaining recovery going on here,” said Thomas Girard who helps manage $133 billion in fixed income at New York Life Investment Management in New York. “When interest rates start to go back up because of the normal business cycle, debt service costs have the potential to just skyrocket. Every day that we don’t address this in a meaningful way it gets more and more dangerous.”

‘Kind of Disruption’
While yields on the benchmark 10-year note are up, they remain below the average of 4.14 percent over the past decade as Europe’s debt crisis bolsters investor demand for safer assets, Bank of America Merrill Lynch index data show.

“The market is still giving the U.S. government the benefit of the doubt,” said Eric Pellicciaro, New York-based head of global rates investments at BlackRock Inc., which manages about $3.56 trillion in assets. “What we’re concerned with is whether the budget will only be corrected after the market has tested them. Will we need some kind of disruption within the bond market before they’ll actually do anything.”

Still, U.S. spending on debt service accounts for 1.7 percent of its GDP compared with 2.5 percent for Germany, 2.6 percent for the United Kingdom and a median of 1.2 percent for AAA rated sovereign issuers, according to a study by Standard & Poor’s published Dec. 24. Among AA rated nations, China’s ratio is 0.4 percent, while Japan’s is 2.9 percent, and for BBB rated countries, Mexico devotes 1.7 percent of its output to debt service and Brazil 5.2 percent, the report shows.

Auction Demand
Demand for Treasuries remains close to record levels at government debt auctions. Investors bid $3.04 for each dollar of bonds sold in the government’s $178 billion of auctions last month, the most since September, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Indirect bidders, a group that includes foreign central banks, bought a record 71 percent, or $17 billion of the $24 billion in 10-year notes offered on Feb. 9.

Foreign holdings of Treasuries have increased 18 percent to $4.35 trillion through November. China, the largest overseas holder, has increased its stake by 0.1 percent to $895.6 billion, and Japan, the second largest, boosted its by 14.6 percent to $877.2 billion.

‘Killing Itself’
“China cannot dump Treasuries without killing itself,” said Michael Cheah, who oversees $2 billion in bonds at SunAmerica Asset Management in Jersey City, New Jersey. “They’re holding Treasuries as a means to an end,” said Cheah, who worked at the Singapore Monetary Authority from 1982 through 1999, and now teaches finance classes at New York University and at Chinese universities. “It’s part of what’s needed to promote exports.”

At least some of the increase in interest expense is related to an effort by the Treasury to extend the average maturity of its debt when rates are relatively low by selling more long-term bonds, which have higher yields than short-term notes. The average life of the U.S. debt is 59 months, up from 49.4 months in March 2009. That was the lowest since 1984.

The U.S. produced four budget surpluses from 1998 through 2001, the first since 1969, as the expanding economy, declining rates and a boom in stock prices combined to swell tax receipts.

Tax cuts in 2001 and 2003, the strain of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, the cost of funding wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the collapse in home prices and the subsequent recession and financial crisis has led to the three largest deficits in dollar terms on record, totaling $3.17 trillion the past three years.

‘Demonstrates Confidence’
The U.S. needs to manage its spending decisions “in a way that demonstrates confidence to investors so we can bring down our long-term fiscal deficits, because if we don’t do that, it’s going to hurt future growth,” Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said in Washington on Feb. 9.

The Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee, which includes representatives from firms ranging from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to Soros Fund Management LLC, expressed concern in the Feb. 1 report that the U.S. is exposing itself to the risk that demand erodes unless it cultivates more domestic demand.

“A more diversified debt holder base would prepare the Treasury for a potential decline in foreign participation,” the report said.

Foreign investors held 49.7 percent of the $8.75 trillion of public Treasury debt outstanding as of November, down from as high as 55.7 percent in April 2008 after the collapse of Bear Stearns Cos., according to Treasury data.

Potential Demand
The committee projects there may be $2.4 trillion in latent demand for Treasuries from banks, insurance companies and pension funds as well as individual investors. New securities with maturities as long as 100 years, as well as callable Treasuries or bonds whose principal is linked to the growth of the economy might entice potential lenders, the report said.

“They are opening up a can of worms with the idea of all these other instruments,” said Tom di Galoma, head of U.S. rates trading at Guggenheim Partners LLC, a New York-based brokerage for institutional investors. “They should try to keep the Treasury issuance as simple as possible. The more issuance you have in particular issue, the more people will trade them -- whether it be domestic or foreign investors.”

White House Budget Director Jacob Lew said the Obama administration’s 2012 budget would save $1.1 trillion over the next 10 years by cutting programs to rein in a deficit that may reach a record $1.5 trillion this year.

‘Roll-Over Risk’
“We have to start living within our means,” Lew said yesterday on CNN’s “State of the Union” program.

Still, about $4.5 trillion, or 63 percent of the $7.2 trillion in public Treasury coupon debt, needs to be refinanced by 2016. That gives the government a narrowing window as growing interest expense will curtail its ability to spend.

“There is roll-over risk,” said James Caron, head of U.S. interest-rate strategy at Morgan Stanley in New York, one of 20 primary dealers that trade with the Fed. “It’s a vicious cycle.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Daniel Kruger in New York at dkruger1@bloomberg.net; Liz Capo McCormick in New York at Emccormick7@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Dave Liedtka at dliedtka@bloomberg.net
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 14, 2011, 07:50:20 AM
Seahawk Drilling seeks bankruptcy, to sell assets
Posted 1d 17h ago |
 8 |  2ShareHOUSTON (AP) — Seahawk Drilling Inc. said it has filed for bankruptcy protection and plans to sell its fleet of offshore drilling rigs to a competitor for $105 million.




Seahawk Drilling Inc. plans to sell its fleet of offshore oil rigs, boats and other equipment to a competitor for $105 million as part of a bankruptcy filing.


Seahawk, which announced the deal with Hercules Offshore Inc. Friday, has been hurt by a slowdown in Gulf of Mexico drilling after the BP oil spill last April. The government halted drilling in deep waters and imposed tough new rules that have curtained all energy exploration in U.S. waters.

Seahawk owns a fleet of 20 jackup rigs for shallow water exploration, while Hercules owns 30 rigs, vessels and other equipment. It also provides drilling services. The deal creates a larger company with a more diverse fleet and greater operational flexibility, Seahawk said.

Both companies are based in Houston.

Hercules Offshore plans to buy Seahawk's assets using 22.3 million shares of its stock, $25 million in cash to retire Seahawk debt and additional cash for working capital. The Feb. 10 closing price of $3.62 per share for Hercules' stock brings the deal's value to $105 million.

The sale will be carried out under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Seahawk will seek expedited hearings for court approval of the deal, which is expected to close in the second quarter.

If the bankruptcy plan is approved by the court and regulators, Seahawk will cease operations as an independent company. It's unclear what will happen to the company's 494 employees, spokesman Thomas Becker said. Of Seahawk's 20 drilling rigs, seven are now deployed on projects, he said.

Seahawk said it has obtained a $35 million credit facility to help fund operations until the deal closes.

In November, Seahawk said it was considering a merger or asset sales to bolster shareholder return following the drilling slowdown. It reported a third-quarter loss and sharply lower revenues.

Shares of the company rose 43 cents, or 5.4%, to close Friday at $7.90. They lost $3.90 in after-market trading, however. Shares have traded in a range of $6.79 and $23.07 in the past year.

Hercules shares were unchanged Friday at $3.62. They gained 14 cents in after-market trading.

Seahawk was spun off from Pride International Inc. in August 2009.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/2011-02-12-seahawk-drilling_N.htm#


________________________ ________________________ _______

Great Job Obama - you communist C$%T
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 14, 2011, 09:03:18 AM
QE2 Bitches! 

________________________ __________

Clothing prices to rise 10 pct starting in spring
AP via Yahoo News ^ | 2/14/2011 | ANNE D'INNOCENZIO





NEW YORK – The era of falling clothing prices is ending.

[Snip]

Clothing prices are expected to rise about 10 percent in coming months, with the biggest increases coming in the second half of the year, said Burt Flickinger III president of Strategic Resource Group.


(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 14, 2011, 11:58:44 AM
Obama budget could boost fees on airline tickets
Associated Press ^ | DAVID KOENIG


________________________ ________________________ --


Airline travelers would pay more to help finance airport projects under President Barack Obama's budget plan.

The president's budget released Monday would raise the "passenger facility charge" to $7 from $4.50 per flight to offset cuts in airport grants.


(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 14, 2011, 01:06:16 PM
Obama Budget Doubles National Debt to $26.3 Trillion in 10 Years
CNSNews.com ^ | February 14, 2011 | Matt Cover




(CNSNews.com) – If the federal budget released by President Barack Obama today is implemented, it will double the national debt over the next 10 years. The current national debt is $13.56 trillion (end of FY 2010). By the end of 2021, that debt would rise to $26.3 trillion under the White House budget.


The figures reflect the effects of Obama’s fiscal year 2012 budget priorities, particularly a federal deficit that never falls below $500 billion in any year between 2010 and 2021.

The national debt – both debt held by the public and debt held by “government accounts” (the Social Security trust fund chief among them) – was $13.56 trillion on Sept. 30. 2010, the end of fiscal year 2010. (The national debt today, Deb. 14, 2011, is $14.08 trillion.)

In 2021, the national debt will have risen to $26.3 trillion, increasing by $1 trillion every year until 2021. Obama’s budget does not contain any plans for balancing the federal budget or reducing the national debt.

(The national debt figures used by the Obama administration are on p. 203 of the budget, Table S-14, released today. )

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 14, 2011, 01:23:13 PM

Obama's FY2012 Budget:
Taxes, Taxes, and More Taxes
From Ryan Ellis on Monday, February 14, 2011 12:00 PM


 
     
President Obama released his budget this morning.  Rather than focusing on Washington’s over-spending problem, the budget calls for higher taxes on families and small businesses to pay for even more government spending.  Under the Obama budget, tax revenues will grow from 14.4% of GDP in 2011 to 20% of GDP in 2021.  By comparison, the historical average is only 18% of GDP.


Tax hike lowlights include:

•Raising the top marginal income tax rate (at which a majority of small business profits face taxation) from 35% to 39.6%.  This is a $709 billion/10 year tax hike

•Raising the capital gains and dividends rate from 15% to 20%

•Raising the death tax rate from 35% to 45% and lowering the death tax exemption amount from $5 million ($10 million for couples) to $3.5 million.  This is a $98 billion/ten year tax hike

•Capping the value of itemized deductions at the 28% bracket rate.  This will effectively cut tax deductions for mortgage interest, charitable contributions, property taxes, state and local income or sales taxes, out-of-pocket medical expenses, and unreimbursed employee business expenses.  A new means-tested phaseout of itemized deductions limits them even more.  This is a $321 billion/ten year tax hike

•New bank taxes totaling $33 billion over ten years

•New international corporate tax hikes totaling $129 billion over ten years

•New life insurance company taxes totaling $14 billion over ten years

•Massive new taxes on energy, including LIFO repeal, Superfund, domestic energy manufacturing, and many others totaling $120 billion over ten years

•Increasing unemployment payroll taxes by $15 billion over ten years

•Taxing management capital gains in an investment partnership (“carried interest”) as ordinary income.  This is a tax hike of $15 billion over ten years

•A giveaway to the trial lawyers—not letting companies deduct the cost of punitive damages from a lawsuit settlement.  This is a tax hike of $300 million over ten years

•Increasing tax penalties, information reporting, and IRS information sharing.  This is a ten-year tax hike of $20 billion.


Add it all together, and this budget is a ten-year, $1.5 trillion tax hike over present law.  That’s $1.5 trillion taken out of the economy and spent on government instead of being used to create jobs.

The “tax relief” in the budget is mostly just an extension of present law, and also some refundable credit outlay spending in the tax code.  There is virtually no new tax relief relative to present law in the President’s budget.

PDF Version

Permalink | Email | Print | Tags: TAXES, OBAMA, BUDGET



Read more: http://www.atr.org/obamas-fy-budgetbr-taxes-more-a5844##ixzz1DyEoMv7v

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 14, 2011, 02:23:33 PM
White House proposes new oil and gas taxes
Fuel Fix ^ | February 14, 2011 at 2:08 pm | Jennifer Dlouhy

http://fuelfix.com/blog/2011/02/14/white-house-proposes-new-oil-and-gas-taxes



________________________ ______________________-



The White House is hoping the third time is the charm as it again asks Congress to raise tens of billions of dollars for federal coffers by slashing a raft of tax incentives long enjoyed by oil and gas companies.

But just as in the past two years, President Barack Obama’s appeal is almost certainly dead on arrival on Capitol Hill.

Obama is taking aim at the oil and gas tax incentives in his budget proposal for the 2012 fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. According to the administration, doing away with eight “oil and gas preferences” would generate $3.5 billion in fiscal 2012 and $43.6 billion over the next decade.

Other proposed changes to the way companies can get credit for foreign taxes, the planned reinstatement of Superfund taxes to pay for cleaning up contaminated industrial sites and possible new fees for oil and gas drilling could cost another $2 billion in fiscal 2012.

Oil and gas industry leaders today said the administration’s plan is shortsighted, because any immediate gains in tax revenue would be offset by longer-term losses, as the changes make more wells uneconomic to produce and discourage exploration.

“The increases, over the long term, would actually lower revenue to the government by many billions of dollars as a result of foregone revenues from projects the tax hikes would prevent going forward,” said American Petroleum Institute President Jack Gerard.

Barry Russell, president and CEO of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, said that “lost capital investment due to increased taxes will reduce these tax payments over time, not increase them.”

Although Obama has cast his proposal as a way to cut tax breaks for “Big Oil,” Russell said “small, independent energy producers” would bear a big burden. He said the administration’s budget plan “goes after the thousands of small businesses (that are) America’s independent oil and natural gas producers.”

Obama telegraphed his tax plan in the State of the Union speech, when he told lawmakers and a national audience that tax incentives for oil, natural gas and coal should be replaced by spending to promote the development and deployment of “clean energy” technology.

“Instead of subsidizing yesterday’s energy, let’s invest in tomorrow’s,” Obama said. After all, he added, oil companies are “doing just fine on their own.”

The White House is seeking to roll back a deduction that mineral right owners can take for the value of oil and gas removed from their property. Industry leaders say the percentage depletion deduction is essential to sustaining small, barely economic wells. But the administration says eliminating the tax policy would raise $607 million in fiscal 2012.

Another target for elimination is a 97-year-old deduction for intangible drilling costs such as expenses for fuel, hauling supplies and preparing sites. Companies now have the option of deducting the expenses the year they occur or over a five-year period, but if the provision were repealed, the costs would have to be capitalized and depreciated over a longer time frame.

By getting rid of the IDC deduction, Congress would send an estimated $1.9 billion to the U.S. treasury in fiscal 2012 — and an estimated $12.5 billion over the next decade.

Industry advocates argue that eliminating the IDC deduction would dry up capital needed to finance new wells.

The administration also wants Congress to change the way companies can get credit for foreign levies — such as petroleum income taxes — that they pay in exchange for some “economic benefit,” including access to a country’s reserves. The White House plan would block companies from taking a credit on their U.S. returns for what they pay in foreign levies above the general tax rate in those countries — a change that would raise an estimated $532 million in fiscal 2012.

Although the change would apply to all dual-capacity taxpayers, it would mostly affect oil and gas companies that pay a higher tax than general businesses in Norway, Nigeria, the United Kingdom and other countries.

Obama is also asking Congress to boost by one cent the per barrel fee that gets paid into an Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund established after the Exxon Valdez disaster. According to the administration, the change would raise an estimated $451 million over from fiscal 2012 through 2021.

Separately, the White House is asking Congress to nearly halve the federal Low Income Home Energy Program and cut it to roughly $2.6 billon in fiscal 2012. The administration’s request is already turning off lawmakers in the Northeast, where households rely on the prices to offset high home heating oil and gas bills. The American Gas Association also opposes cuts to LIHEAP.

Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., said he would be fighting cuts in LIHEAP funding that he said could leave more than 3 million families without help paying heating bills.

“The president recognizes that we don’t need to provide 100 year-old tax breaks to oil companies so they can sell $100 per barrel oil and make more than $100 billion per year,” Markey said. “We should be helping our nation’s poorest citizens by fully funding low-income heating assistance programs — not shareholder assistance programs for oil company executives.”

Charles Drevna, president of the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association, said the administration’s proposed taxes would “drive up the cost of gasoline, diesel fuel, home heating oil, jet fuel and petrochemicals – hurting every American consumer and every American business.”

The proposal “would weaken America’s oil production, refining and petrochemical industries, would increase our reliance on foreign nations, would send more American jobs and more American dollars to our competitors abroad and would increase unemployment here at home,” Drevna added.

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 15, 2011, 05:47:02 AM
Obama Delivers Catastrophic New Budget, Then Declares That Government Must “Live Within It’s Means”
The Patriot Statesman ^ | 2-14-2011 | Aaron Mattews


________________________ ________________________ _____________


On the most critical issue of his presidency – the long-term fiscal sustainability of the United States, Barack Obama just voted “present”.

Today Obama delivered a mind numbing budget that includes $26.3 trillion in NEW debt over the next decade. 2011 will see the biggest one-year debt jump in history, or nearly $2 trillion, to reach $15.476 trillion by Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year. That would be 102.6 percent of GDP – the first time since World War II that dubious figure has been reached. On top of this, Obama plans on strapping our families with a ten-year, $1.5 trillion tax hike.

Jake Tapper of ABC stated today that “At no point in the president’s 10-year projection would the U.S. government spend less than it’s taking in….The plan shows that Obama will not take the lead on any aggressive measure to eliminate the nation’s $14 trillion debt.”


(Excerpt) Read more at patriotstatesman.com ...


________________________ ________________________ __________-


What a frigging asshole this maddoff POTUS is.   
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 15, 2011, 06:48:23 AM
Shahien Nasiripour
HuffPost Reporting
shahien@huffingtonpost.com
Obama's Small Business Plan To Come Up Short, White House Concedes
 
Centerpiece Of Obama's Small Business Plan Likely To Fall Short, Administration Concedes
First Posted: 02/14/11 09:46 PM Updated: 02/15/11 09:06 AM


________________________ ________________________ ________________________ _________


 NEW YORK -- After spending much of last year relentlessly touting the benefits of a proposed $30 billion fund that would jumpstart bank lending to small businesses, the Obama administration forecasts the initiative will fall far short, spending just a little over half of the intended allotment, according to the White House's spending plan for 2012.

The proposal, known as the Small Business Lending Fund, originally would have taken $30 billion from the Troubled Asset Relief Program and diverted it to smaller banks. The move was supposed to stimulate lending by lowering the cost of funds as loan totals rise. The more a bank lends, the cheaper the funds become.

The program has faced an uphill climb. Banks are wary of taking government funds for fear of after-the-fact program changes; demand for loans remains tepid; and there's no guarantee banks would lend the money once they receive it.

The White House spending plan for next year reflects those challenges.

The administration projects it will allocate just $17.4 billion of the funds, or just 58 percent of its original goal. All of the money will be disbursed by Sept. 30, according to Treasury Department projections released Monday.

The proposal was a centerpiece of the administration's pre-election plans to boost small businesses, which have been among the hardest-hit sectors since the onset of the financial crisis.

Unlike large corporations, small businesses don't have access to the capital markets. They don't issue debt to investors nor do they raise capital on stock exchanges. Instead, they rely on banks for their funding. Small community lenders and regional banks are their primary source of credit.

Story continues below
AdvertisementBut bank lending froze as consumer spending fell, business investment slowed and banks faced growing losses on bad loans.

Inside the Treasury Department, a small team worked to counter the slowdown. By January of last year, Obama was able to pitch the plan that would help smaller firms get credit and help stabilize small lenders.

The plan was to inject taxpayer funds into community banks in hopes they'd lend it to small businesses. It worked like TARP: Banks borrow cash from Treasury, and pay a small fee for the privilege. The program, though, was limited to banks with less than $10 billion in assets.

Republican critics derided it as "TARP 2.0," or a reincarnation of the deeply unpopular bank bailout. In fact, banks in TARP can refinance out of the program and into this new one, escaping the restrictions that accompanied TARP like limits on executive compensation.

Administration officials and Democrats in Congress, though, pitched it as much-needed help for small businesses.

The administration spent nine months pounding Republicans for their objections to the proposal. Last September, a little over a month to the election, Obama signed it into law.

During a speech last March to economists in Washington, Christina D. Romer, the then-chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said the $30 billion fund "will translate into several times that amount of additional lending and could help create hundreds of thousands of new jobs."

Based on administration projections released Monday, it's unclear whether the fund will achieve its original objectives.

The White House declined to comment.

Officials insist they have $30 billion to lend. The Treasury Department is in the midst of trying to sign up banks for the fund, but bankers have said they're reluctant to accept any more taxpayer money.

Meanwhile, the government watchdog overseeing the bailout, the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, said earlier this month it would immediately audit the program.

*************************
Shahien Nasiripour is a business reporter for The Huffington Post. You can send him an e-mail; bookmark his page; subscribe to his RSS feed; follow him on Twitter; friend him on Facebook; become a fan; and/or get e-mail alerts when he reports the latest news. He can be reached at 646-274-2455.


Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 15, 2011, 08:32:23 AM
January Retail Sales: The "Real" Consumer Economy Remains In Depression
DShort ^ | 2-15-2011 | Doug Short




January Retail Sales: The "Real" Consumer Economy Remains In Depression

February 15, 2011
Doug Short - monthly update

The February 2011 Advance Monthly Sales for Retail Trade and Food Services Report for January was released this morning. Here is the opening paragraph of the report

The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for January, adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, were $381.6 billion, an increase of 0.3 percent (±0.5%)* from the previous month, and 7.8 percent (±0.7%) above January 2010. Total sales for the November 2010 through January 2011 period were up 7.6 percent (±0.5%) from the same period a year ago. The November to December 2010 percent change was revised from +0.6 percent (±0.5%) to +0.5 percent (±0.3%). * The 90 percent confidence interval includes zero. The Census Bureau does not have sufficient statistical evidence to conclude that the actual change is different than zero.

The 0.3% number is disappointing. The Briefing.com consensus estimate was 0.5% and its own estimate was 0.7%.

The chart below shows the complete data series from 1992, when the U.S. Census Bureau began tracking the data. I've highlighted recessions and the approximate range of two major economic episodes that have impacted consumer attitudes. The Tech Crash that began in the spring of 2000 had little impact on consumption. The Financial Crisis of 2008 has had a major impact. The January retail sales take us in nominal terms a mere 0.4% above the previous high of November 2007.

[snip]


(Excerpt) Read more at dshort.com ...
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 15, 2011, 08:39:54 AM
Where is Obama Leading Us? (How to define Obama in the upcoming budget showdown)
NRO ^ | 2/15/2011 | Stanley Kurtz


________________________ ________________________ ___________


Obama’s clever budget proposal has won him the advantage in the coming political showdown. Democratic grousing over limited cuts to discretionary spending will be used to paint the president as a fiscally responsible moderate. The Republican plan will be demonized as a heartless assault on the poor and elderly. Obama will do everything short of sending out an engraved invitation to provoke a GOP-led government shutdown. Whether or not the confrontation goes nuclear, Obama will enjoy the sort of upper hand Clinton had over Gingrich fifteen years ago.

Granted, the coming entitlement meltdown is a far greater threat than anything America faced in 1995. And despite Gingrich’s 1994 victory, there was nothing comparable to the Tea Party in those days. Even so, as the battle is shaping up, Obama is slated to win. The country as a whole fails to grasp the magnitude of the coming fiscal crisis. Advantage, Obama. What to do?

The answer, I think, is to tell a (true) story about Obama’s long-term aims and intentions. If the word socialism makes you uncomfortable, try “unaffordable Euro-style welfare state.” Obama is not Bill Clinton, and highlighting that fact is the best way to prevent Obama from assuming the mantle of triangulation. Obama wants to win a shut-down battle, but without “ending welfare as we know it.” In fact, Obama has already gone a far piece down the road of resuscitating and expanding the pre-Clinton welfare state. His budget largely preserves (“freezes”) that achievement. Without filling in the ideological commitments and long-term plans Obama so prudently declines to avow, the GOP will lose this battle.

Tea Party moxie and the shellacking notwithstanding, the GOP establishment remains reluctant to highlight Obama’s radicalism. I understand the reasons for this, and they are by no means trivial. While Obama’s policies are opposed by many, he remains personally popular. It seems disrespectful to attribute an ideology to the president that he himself won’t own up to. Words like “radical,” much less “socialist,” sound impolite. Yet, without defining the president in a way that happens to be not only politically advantageous, but true, I doubt Obama can be stopped. Telling the truth about this president is how we shellacked him to begin with.

Silly theories like birtherism and the notion that Obama is a committed Muslim have been amplified by a mainstream media eager to discredit legitimate assessments of the president’s transformative ambitions. Nonsensical arguments offered up by the left in the aftermath of Tucson have been used to shut down perfectly fair criticisms of the president.

Obama gains immensely by fudging or simply keeping silent about his ideological commitments and long-term plans. (The imaginary ten-year out projections in the current budget, of course, are a cover for next year’s expansion of government and do not represent the president’s actual long-term plans.) Obama’s every tactical feint to the center frightens a left which will not desert him, but whose criticism makes him seem moderate. Meanwhile, conservatives look disrespectful for filling in the blanks. Even so, that is the way to win. The real disrespect, of course, is Obama’s failure to own up to his own ideology. Yet Republicans have retreated of late from attempts to (accurately) define the president. That is a recipe for failure.

It will not do to chastise Obama’s budget proposal as a simple “refusal to lead,” a “punt,” or a “cynical political maneuver.” Obama isn’t failing to lead. He is very cleverly leading us toward an irreversible expansion of the welfare state. If Obama is reelected and in control when the entitlement crisis finally does hit, he will manage the country toward Euro-style taxes and Euro-style socialism. After all, in the midst of its current fiscal crisis, Obama is pushing Europe to expand spending, not contract it.

I like this post by Lexington Green (h/t Glenn Reynolds), although his vision of permanent Republican meltdown is overdrawn. Lexington rightly rejects the “failure to lead” framing, highlighting Obama’s strategic moves and long-term intentions instead. The notion that Obama plans to use Republican proposals for cuts to kick off a movement of “angry and mobilized” beneficiaries is exactly right. Obama’s 2010 attacks on the Chamber of Commerce and his infamous “punish your enemies” exhortation were efforts to do the same thing. I lay out the rationale behind this intentionally polarizing strategy in the final chapter of Radical-in-Chief. It’s a program deeply rooted in Obama’s past. And in the absence of an honest avowal of his plans and motives in the present, only the past reveals the truth about this president’s vision of the future.

Perhaps I’m wrong and “the president’s abdication of leadership” sound bite will be enough to defeat “the GOP’s heartless cuts.” Even so, as an alternative, I suggest: “Obama’s radical plans are leading us off a cliff.”

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 15, 2011, 10:15:04 AM

Obama's Revenue Estimates Are Either Fantasy Or Comedy
Chris Martenson, Chrismartenson.com | Feb. 15, 2011, 12:44 PM | 445 |  11

Daily Digest 2/15 - NYSE/Deutsche Börse Merger Finalized, Crony Capitalism And Modern Banking, Russia To Begin Arctic Drilling
Obama's Budget is a Fantastic Comedy


________________________ ________________________ _________--

 
Fantasy or comedy?  I couldn't decide which way to label the Obama budget, so I went with both.

The bottom line is that the Obama administration has brought forth the most unbelievable revenue increase that I have ever seen proposed in a budget, a whopping 65% increase in revenues in just four years, which will - miracle of miracles - drop the deficit as a percent of GDP from nearly 11% to just 3.2% over those same four years.

The only problem with this scenario is that it stands virtually no chance of actually happening. Revenue will be far lower than projected and the deficit correspondingly higher.

One of my abilities is spotting bogus numbers quickly, and another is to make reasonably accurate projections without a staff of hundreds. For example, in 2009 I called for the Social Security fund to soon begin dipping into negative territory when the CBO was clinging to the illusion that 2017 was the 'below zero' date. Turns out I was right, and it wasn't a terribly difficult call to make. A little trend projection here, some assumptions about early retirement there, a higher and more realistic assessment of peak unemployment, and - voila! - a reasonably accurate projection was made.

Let's look at the recently released Obama budget, which is so far off the mark that no special abilities are required beyond the ability to suppress the urge to chuckle:



The green circles show the rosy deficit-reduction estimates, while the red arrows indicate the incredible 65% increase in federal revenues over a single four year period.  65%! How likely is that? Is it realistic?

Perhaps a little history is in order here. Let's start by asking a question: In any other four-year period, have federal revenues increased by 65% or more?

The answer is yes, but it’s a very qualified yes.

In the first chart below, the red bars show the proposed revenue increases on a rolling four-year basis. That is, each year is compared to the revenue period four years prior. The blue bars are the same, only they represent actual history, not projections while the red bars are the Obama team projections.

The second chart is a comparison to CPI to make a point.



Over the past 60 years, there have only been three other years with a similar or higher rate of revenue growth to the one estimated to occur in 2015: 1979, 1980, and 1981.

There are two things we might note about those prior three years ('79-'81) of rapid federal revenue growth. The first is that those same years represent the second, first, and fourth highest rates of yearly inflation in 50+ years of data, coming in at 11.3%, 13.5%, and 10.4%, respectively.

Does the Obama budget assume similar enormous rates of inflation? Nope. It assumes 2% or less inflation in every year of its projections out through 2015.  So it's not inflation that will be driving the enormous revenue growth.

Another reason we might anticipate extremely strong revenue growth is because of a rapid expansion of GDP.

Here again in 1979, 1980, and 1981, we saw something very unusual in the data: Those years clocked exceptionally robust GDP growth at 11.7%, 8.8%, and 12.1%, respectively.  Out of 65 years of data, those were the 4th, 5th and 17th fastest years of economic expansion.

Could that be the driver behind Obama's optimism? Is his team calling for double-digit GDP growth over the next few years?  Do they envision 'top ten' like performance for a couple of those years?

Not according to their published data.



So we can't really defend the projected increase in revenues on the assumption of massive economic expansion either. The Obama team does predict a pretty decent expansion - but on a relative basis, it's nothing spectacular and is less than half that which drove the revenue expansion in the 1979-81 period.

So the 65% revenue increase will not be driven by either inflation or GDP expansion.

What if we compare the projected increases historically on an inflation-adjusted basis - would that put them in a better and more believable light?

In this next chart, we simply chart each year's federal revenues after correcting for CPI (we used the Obama budget CPI assumptions for the years 2011 - 2015 to discount the future so everything is in 2010 dollars).



Are these numbers any less fuzzy? Nope. Even on this basis the proposed revenue increases are the largest on record, bar none.

Conclusion

There is almost no chance of the Obama revenue projections coming to pass, unless massive tax increases are part of the deal, and as far as we know, they aren't.

The only other alternative is that the United States might enjoy some pleasurable combination of quite rapid growth, a fall off in unemployment to match, tidy increases in wages, and a low CPI.  But the probability of all of these coming to pass is very, very low (although I will admit that they must be very appealing to an incumbent. Appealing? Yes. Likely? No.)

Here's my prediction; we'll have sub-par growth in 2011 and relatively weak growth in 2012, with a 50% chance of a double-dip appearing in one of those years. As such, revenue growth will be slightly below average between here and 2015.

Using these assumptions, and generously assuming that things more or less carry on as normal and even more generously that the economy magically grows to $19 trillion as the Obama team has assumed, the actual budget deficit will be no less than 8% of GDP each year between here and 2015.



My estimates translate into a roughly $1.5 trillion cash deficit each and every year -- give or take a little -- digging our national debt hole deeper by another $7.5 trillion by 2015. 

This, however, is merely my starting bid. I can easily envision deficits that are far higher in both aggregate and percent-of-GDP terms, due to some combination of rising energy prices and debt overhang dragging the GDP figure downwards, and rising interest rates driving federal costs higher.

The bottom line is that either this budget is a fantasy, or I am completely wrong and we somehow set historical records for revenue growth during a time of low inflation and below average GDP growth.

It is against this backdrop that you should be especially dismissive of any and all partisan rhetoric that proposes to reduce the deficit by trimming this or that program by a few billion here and there. Until and unless you hear about cuts to the big four - Defense, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security - you can be certain you are merely listening to partisan talking points aimed at posturing for the next election, not credible plans for attacking the root of the problem.

The US is facing a deficit pattern (deficits higher than nominal GDP growth) that has ruined many a country before. A failure to legitimately address this condition before being forced to do so by global or market circumstances will lead to a far rougher period of adjustment than necessary.  Such a failure even risks it all: a sudden loss of reserve currency status for the US that leads to a sudden repatriation of some $7 trillion in US-dollar-denominated assets currently held off-shore.

Said simply: The risk is a massive inflationary event that forces the Fed to choose between defending the dollar (by raising interest rates) or defending the US economy. It can't do both at the same time.

Those interested in learning more about how events will likely play out from here can read our Guide to Navigating the Coming Crisis (free executive summary; enrollment required for full access).

Tags: Budget, Obama | Get Alerts for these topics »

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/obamas-budget-is-a-fantastic-comedy-2011-2#ixzz1E3K63JMF

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 15, 2011, 11:35:22 AM
High-speed rail is a fast track to government waste
The Washington Post ^ | February 14, 2011 | Robert J. Samuelson


________________________ _______________


Vice President Biden, an avowed friend of good government, is giving it a bad name. With great fanfare, he went to Philadelphia last week to announce that the Obama administration proposes spending $53 billion over six years to construct a "national high-speed rail system." Translation: The administration would pay states $53 billion to build rail networks that would then lose money - lots - thereby aggravating the budget squeezes of the states or federal government, depending on which covered the deficits.

There's something wildly irresponsible about the national government undermining states' already poor long-term budget prospects by plying them with grants that provide short-term jobs. Worse, the rail proposal casts doubt on the administration's commitment to reducing huge budget deficits. The president's 2012 budget is due Monday. How can it subdue deficits if it keeps proposing big spending programs?

~~ snip ~~

It's a triumph of fancy over fact. Even if ridership increased fifteenfold over Amtrak levels, the effects on congestion, national fuel consumption and emissions would still be trivial. Land-use patterns would change modestly, if at all; cutting 20 minutes off travel times between New York and Philadelphia wouldn't much alter real estate development in either. Nor is high-speed rail a technology where the United States would likely lead; European and Asian firms already dominate the market.

Governing ought to be about making wise choices. What's disheartening about the Obama administration's embrace of high-speed rail is that it ignores history, evidence and logic. The case against it is overwhelming. The case in favor rests on fashionable platitudes. High-speed rail is not an "investment in the future"; it's mostly a waste of money. Good government can't solve all our problems, but it can at least not make them worse.


(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 15, 2011, 02:00:38 PM
Obama threatens to veto House GOP spending measure
By Sam Youngman and Michael O'Brien - 02/15/11 04:08 PM ET

 
The Obama administration on Tuesday threatened to veto the House GOP's measure funding the federal government.

In a statement of administration policy, the Office of Management and Budget said cuts included in the Republican continuing resolution would hamstring the U.S. economy and compromise national security.

"If the president is presented with a bill that undermines critical priorities or national security through funding levels or restrictions, contains earmarks or curtails the drivers of long-term economic growth and job creation while continuing to burden future generations with deficits, the president will veto the bill," the statement said.


The White House said the cuts in the GOP plan "will undermine our ability to out-educate, out-build, and out-innovate the rest of the world."

The statement said the GOP proposal goes too far and "proposes cuts that would sharply undermine core government functions and investments key to economic growth and job creation, and would reduce funding for the Department of Defense to a level that would leave the department without the resources and flexibility needed to meet vital military requirements."

The House GOP measure would cut this year's spending by $61 billion, though conservative Republicans want to make further cuts.

Obama, at a press conference Tuesday, said lawmakers should refrain from threatening a government shutdown, and the statement hinted that Obama is still hopeful that can be avoided.

"The administration looks forward to working with the Congress to refine the legislation to allow critical government functions to operate without interruption for the remainder of the fiscal year underway," the statement said.

The administration's veto threat comes as the Republican House begins debate on the continuing resolution this afternoon. Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has pledged an "open" debate, meaning that lawmakers could add any range of amendment to the legislation, cutting spending even further.

The statement sets up the possibility for a showdown between the administration and Democrats in the Senate with the GOP-held House over the measure. Funding for the government's day-to-day operations runs out on March 4, and without some sort of short-term fix, the federal government would risk shutting down. The chairman of the House Budget Committee said Tuesday morning the government would pass a short-term CR rather than risking a shutdown.


http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/144285-obama-waves-veto-threat-at-continuing-resolution

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 15, 2011, 03:33:19 PM
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 16, 2011, 03:52:11 AM
THE DAMAGE OBAMA HAS DONE
By Dick Morris And Eileen McGann
02.15.2011


http://www.dickmorris.com/blog/the-damage-obama-has-done




 
The mainstream media does not cover the full extent of the damage the Obama Administration has inflicted on this country. Even FoxNews often doesn’t have the time to go into sufficient depth to explain what is happening.

From our friend Ruth S. King comes a chart which all of us should read and absorb, sobering though it may be:


 January 2009 Today % chg Source
Avg. retail price/gallon gas in U.S. $1.83 $3.104 69.6% 1
Crude oil, European Brent (barrel) $43.48 $99.02 127.7% 2
Crude oil, West TX Inter. (barrel) $38.74 $91.38 135.9% 2
Gold: London (per troy oz.) $853.25 $1,369.50 60.5% 2
Corn, No.2 yellow, Central IL $3.56 $6.33 78.1% 2
Soybeans, No. 1 yellow, IL $9.66 $13.75 42.3% 2
Sugar, cane, raw, world, lb. fob $13.37 $35.39 164.7% 2
Unemployment rate, non-farm, overall 7.6% 9.4% 23.7% 3
Unemployment rate, blacks 12.6% 15.8% 25.4% 3
Number of unemployed 11,616,000 14,485,000 24.7% 3
Number of fed. employees, ex. military (curr = 12/10 prelim) 2,779,000 2,840,000 2.2% 3
Real median household income (2008 v 2009) $50,112 $49,777 -0.7% 4
Number of food stamp recipients (curr = 10/10) 31,983,716 43,200,878 35.1% 5
Number of unemployment benefit recipients (curr = 12/10) 7,526,598 9,193,838 22.2% 6
Number of long-term unemployed 2,600,000 6,400,000 146.2% 3
Poverty rate, individuals (2008 v 2009) 13.2% 14.3% 8.3% 4
People in poverty in U.S. (2008 v 2009) 39,800,000 43,600,000 9.5% 4
U.S. rank in Economic Freedom World Rankings 5 9 n/a 10
Present Situation Index (curr = 12/10) 29.9 23.5 -21.4% 11
Failed banks (curr = 2010 + 2011 to date) 140 164 17.1% 12
U.S. dollar versus Japanese yen exchange rate 89.76 82.03 -8.6% 2
U.S. money supply, M1, in billions (curr = 12/10 prelim) 1,575.1 1,865.7 18.4% 13
U.S. money supply, M2, in billions (curr = 12/10 prelim) 8,310.9 8,852.3 6.5% 13
National debt, in trillions $10.627 $14.052 32.2% 14

Just take this last item: In the last two years we have accumulated national debt at a rate more than 27 times as fast as during the rest of our entire nation’s history. Over 27 times as fast! Metaphorically, speaking, if you are driving in the right lane doing 65 MPH and a car rockets past you in the left lane 27 times faster . . . it would be doing 1,755 MPH!

(1) U.S. Energy Information Administration; (2) Wall Street Journal; (3) Bureau of Labor Statistics; (4) Census Bureau; (5) USDA; (6) U.S. Dept. of Labor; (7) FHFA; (8) Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller; (9) RealtyTrac; (10) Heritage Foundation and WSJ; (11) The Conference Board; (12) FDIC; (13) Federal Reserve; (14) U.S. Treasury

In our new book, Revolt! (Due out March 1 – you can pre-order autographed copies now at DickMorris.com) we explain how Obama has wrecked our economy and chart a path to reverse the damage and defeat him in 2012.

These numbers make it crystal clear how crucial these two tasks really are!

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: whork25 on February 16, 2011, 04:21:12 AM
Dick Morris i hate that fat prick
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 16, 2011, 04:33:45 AM
Morris is a sleeze no doubt, but I posted it because of the chart he listed.  Its viewed better on his site.
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 16, 2011, 04:47:38 AM
HHS Will Become Nation's First Trillion-Dollar-Per-Year Cabinet Department When Obamacare's Fully Implemented in 2014, Says Obama's Budget
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
By Terence P. Jeffrey
 http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/hhs-will-become-nation-s-first-trillion


________________________ ______________



President Barack Obama is applauded by Vice President Joe Biden and House Speaker John Boehner on Capitol Hill while delivering his State of the Union address on Tuesday, Jan. 25, 2011. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, Pool)

(CNSNews.com) - The Department of Health and Human Services will become the nation's first-ever $1-trillion-per-year Cabinet department in 2014, which is also the first year President Barack Obama's health-care law is scheduled to be fully implemented by that department, according to the budget projections President Obama released yesterday.

In fact, HHS already is costing American taxpayers more per year in inflation-adjusted dollars than the entire federal government cost back in 1965, the year President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed Medicare into law.

Medicare is the single most costly program in HHS.

This year, according to the Obama budget, HHS will spend $909.7 billion. That makes it the most expensive Cabinet department in the U.S. government, exceeding the Defense Department—which will spend $739.7 billion this year--by $170 billion.

In 1965, according to the historical tables published yesterday with President Obama’s budget, the entire federal government spent $118.228 billion. Using the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator, that adjusts to $822.6 billion in 2010 dollars—or about $87 billion less than HHS alone will spend this year.

HHS spending will increase to $1.049 trillion in fiscal 2014, according to the Obama budget. That would be the first time in history that any U.S. Cabinet department spent more than $1 trillion in a single year.

According to HHS’s budget plan, Medicare will account for 54 percent of the department’s budget in fiscal 2012 and Medicaid will account for 30 percent.

Medicare spending will  rise from $488.4 billion in fiscal 2011 (the current year) to $557 billion in fiscal 2014, when President Obama’s health-care law would be in full force, according to budget tables published with the president's budget. Medicaid will rise from $276.2 billion this year to $352.1 billion in 2014.
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 16, 2011, 04:52:41 AM
President Obama's budget kicks the hard choices further down the road
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/15/AR2011021500055_pf.html
Tuesday, February 15, 2011; 12:00 AM




THE PRESIDENT PUNTED. Having been given the chance, the cover and the push by the fiscal commission he created to take bold steps to raise revenue and curb entitlement spending, President Obama, in his fiscal 2012 budget proposal, chose instead to duck. To duck, and to mask some of the ducking with the sort of budgetary gimmicks he once derided. "The fiscal realities we face require hard choices," the president said in his budget message. "A decade of deficits, compounded by the effects of the recession and the steps we had to take to break it, as well as the chronic failure to confront difficult decisions, has put us on an unsustainable course." His budget would keep the country on that course.

Granted, the budget outlines cuts in discretionary spending, ranging from military procurement to heating assistance for the poor. A five-year freeze in nonsecurity discretionary spending - two years longer than the three-year freeze proposed in last year's budget - would save $400 billion during that period compared to what would have been spent otherwise to keep up with inflation.

But as Mr. Obama noted in his State of the Union address, discretionary spending represents a small slice of government outlays, so cuts in discretionary spending are simultaneously onerous and insufficient to reach fiscal balance. The administration proclaimed that its budget would save $1.1 trillion, two-thirds of it from spending cuts. It neglected to point out that, even if all those savings were implemented, the debt would increase by another $7.2 trillion over the decade. And that's accepting the administration's optimistic projections. From 2013 to 2016, the administration estimates the economy will grow at an average rate of nearly 3.9 percent per year, while the Congressional Budget Office projects a growth rate of just 3.4 percent. That could make an enormous difference in the amount of revenue generated and, consequently, the size of deficits. By 2021, the national debt will equal 77 percent of the total economy, even given the administration's rosy forecast - and, as the administration's chart reprinted here shows, the debt will then really explode.

Administration officials applauded themselves for having the discipline to offset the cost of two expensive items: avoiding punishing cuts in Medicare reimbursement rates for physicians and making sure the alternative minimum tax (AMT) does not hit a growing share of middle-class taxpayers. Not so fast. The patches are temporary - two years in the case of the so-called "doc fix," three years for the AMT. Meantime, the administration uses up a decade's worth of financing to pay for them - with no whisper of how to address the problems in the long term.

And that's not the only gimmickry. The budget assumes that the full cost of the doc fix will be paid for, and therefore not add to the deficit, but fails to explain how. It includes a $328 billion magic asterisk for transportation funding, identified only as "bipartisan financing for Transportation Trust Fund." Higher gasoline taxes? Don't ask. Meanwhile, the administration recommends paying for the AMT fix by reducing the value of charitable tax deductions for those in the two highest tax brackets. A smart idea, and one that the administration also proposed in its two previous budgets, originally as a way to pay for health-care reform. If it was a nonstarter then, what's the basis for thinking its prospects are better now?

The larger problem with the budget is the administration's refusal to confront the hard choices that Mr. Obama is so fond of saying must be faced. The president's debt commission concluded that more tax revenue will be needed in coming years to finance the costs of an aging society. Mr. Obama repeated his call to do away with the Bush tax cuts for upper-income taxpayers in two years - but maintained his tired and irrational insistence that the rest of the tax cuts, enacted in far different fiscal circumstances, be preserved.

If Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coburn could sign on to a deficit-reduction plan that included raising tax revenue, is it too much to ask for such bravery from Mr. Obama? And if Illinois Democratic Sen. Richard Durbin could sign on to a plan that included raising the Social Security retirement age, is it too much to ask for more from Mr. Obama than an airy set of "principles for reform"? Sadly, the answer appears to be yes.


________________________ ________________________ _____________-


Once again - watch what he does, not what he says.   
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 16, 2011, 05:00:32 AM
Obama To The Next Generation: Screw You, Suckers
14 Feb 2011 02:49 pm
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2011/02/obama-to-the-obama-generation-youre-on-your-own.html


________________________ ___________________-





The logic behind president Obama's budget has one extremely sensible feature: it distinguishes between spending that simply adds to consumption, and spending that really does mean investment. His analogy over the weekend - that a family cutting a budget would rather not cut money for the kids' education - is a sound one. We do need more infrastructure, roads and broadband, non-carbon energy and basic science research, and some of that is something only government can do. In that sense, discretionary spending could be among the most important things government could do to help Americans create wealth themselves. And yet this is the only spending Obama wants to cut.

But the core challenge of this time is not the cost of discretionary spending. Obama knows this; everyone knows this. The crisis is the cost of future entitlements and defense, about which Obama proposes nothing. Yes, there's some blather. But Obama will not risk in any way any vulnerability on taxes to his right or entitlement spending to his left. He convened a deficit commission in order to throw it in the trash. If I were Alan Simpson or Erskine Bowles, I'd feel duped. And they were duped. All of us who took Obama's pitch as fiscally responsible were duped.

The cynical political calculation is obvious and it is well put by Yglesias and Sprung. If Obama backs Bowles-Simpson, the GOP will savage him for the tax hikes, while also scaring the wits out of the elderly on Medicare. The Democratic left - just look at HuffPo today - will have a cow. Indeed, if Obama backs anything, the GOP will automatically oppose him. He has to wait for a bipartisan agreement which he can then gently push ahead. But that's exactly why we are in this situation today. Because no president has had the balls to deal with it, and George W. Bush made it all insanely worse. Sprung says the proposal on corporate taxes is a trial balloon. He argues that:

Corporate income taxes account for about 12% of the Federal government's revenue.  Obama's core premise for reforming them is structurally similar to the Bowles-Simpson commission's approach to personal tax reform: reduce targeted tax breaks while lowering the overall rate, currently at 35%.

And that's fine if you think we have plenty of time. But in a mere nine years, entitlements will account for 64 percent of all federal spending. And Obama just punted on his promise to cut Medicare payments to doctors, as pledged under Obamacare as a core part of the case that health insurance reform would cut the deficit. So congrats, Megan. We can chalk that up as a cynical diversion (even though Obama pledges to find savings elsewhere in the Medicare budget to make up for this lie - a promise we now have no reason to trust or believe).

There is some hope, as David Brooks has noted. Those who want to save the useful things that government alone can do, while pulling back from the fiscal brink, have to

get behind an effort now being hatched by a group of courageous senators: Saxby Chambliss, Mark Warner, Tom Coburn, Dick Durbin, Mike Crapo and Kent Conrad. These public heroes have been leading an effort to write up the Simpson-Bowles deficit commission report as legislation to serve as the beginning for a serious effort to get our house in order. They’ve been meeting with 20 to 40 of their colleagues to push this along.

They have to lead, because this president is too weak, too cautious, too beholden to politics over policy to lead. In this budget, in his refusal to do anything concrete to tackle the looming entitlement debt, in his failure to address the generational injustice, in his blithe indifference to the increasing danger of default, he has betrayed those of us who took him to be a serious president prepared to put the good of the country before his short term political interests. Like his State of the Union, this budget is good short term politics but such a massive pile of fiscal bullshit it makes it perfectly clear that Obama is kicking this vital issue down the road.

To all those under 30 who worked so hard to get this man elected, know this: he just screwed you over. He thinks you're fools. Either the US will go into default because of Obama's cowardice, or you will be paying far far more for far far less because this president has no courage when it counts. He let you down. On the critical issue of America's fiscal crisis, he represents no hope and no change. Just the same old Washington politics he once promised to end.

(Photo: US President Barack Obama talks to 8th grade students in the school cafateria after a tour of a science class during a visit to Parkville Middle School and Center of Technology on Feburary 14, 2011 in Baltimore, Maryland. By Tim Sloan/AFP/Getty.)
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 16, 2011, 05:13:31 AM

Interior Department to revisit Bush-era oil shale plans

Posted on February 15, 2011 at 3:55 pm by Jennifer Dlouhy in E&P, Interior Department, Politics and Policy, regulation

http://fuelfix.com/blog/2011/02/15/interior-department-to-revisit-bush-era-oil-shale-plans


________________________ ________________________ ________-

 
Interior plans new wilderness protections, scrapping Bush-era policy.Interior plans new wilderness protections, scrapping Bush-era policy.Interior plans new wilderness protections, scrapping Bush-era policy.Interior Department launches royalty rate review.Fed official says oil shale not ready..In response to a legal challenge by conservation groups, the Obama administration today launched a process to reconsider — and probably rewrite — a Bush-era plan for developing oil shale in the West.

At issue are decisions by former President George W. Bush’s Interior Department to open roughly 2 million acres of land in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming to commercial oil shale leasing, while also approving regulations setting royalty rates for eventual production that critics blasted as too low.

Under a court settlement filed today, more than a dozen groups, including the National Wildlife Federation and the Natural Resources Defense Council, will abandon their legal challenge to the Bush-era plans while the Obama administration reviews and revises those oil shale leasing policies.

“The Bureau of Land Management is taking a fresh look at commercial oil shale rules and plans that were issued in 2008,” BLM Director Bob Abbey told reporters on a conference call. After input from the public, those November 2008 policies may be revised “to take account for expected water demands . . . and make sure they provide a fair return to taxpayers.”

Under the Bush-era regulations, companies that successfully produced oil-like substances from shale rock initially would be forced to pay royalty rates of 5 percent to the federal government — far lower than the 12.5 percent charged for conventional oil and gas production on federal lands.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said the move didn’t mean the administration was turning its back on the potential for energy companies to extract the crude-like substance known as kerogen from sedimentary shale rock found primarily on federal land in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming.

“We in the West have been trying to unlock oil shale for the past century because it is so abundant,” Salazar said. “Oil shale is an important resource for the United States, and it is my view that we need to move forward and explore the possibility of developing oil shale.”

But, he stressed, it was important to proceed cautiously and ensure that the potentially high water demands of evolving techniques for extracting the petroleum-like liquids don’t hurt agriculture and wildlife in the arid West.

“The question of the impact on the water in the Colorado River basin and the agricultural economy is one that looms large,” Salazar said.

Salazar added that the 2008 policies effectively put the cart before the horse by paving the way for vast oil shale development at low royalty rates before fully studying all of the potential repercussions.

Abbey noted that commercial oil shale development is years down the road, providing a window of time to better study the issue.

“There is much yet to be learned about oil shale development,” Salazar said. “We are interested in learning as quickly as possible.”

The government estimates there are 2 trillion barrels of oil equivalent locked in shale rock, with federal land making up 72 percent of that oil shale acreage.

American Petroleum Institute upstream policy adviser Holly Hopkins said the trade group was encouraged by the administration’s interest in developing oil shale resources.

“Oil shale is an important part of our domestic energy portfolio, and API is committed to environmentally responsible oil shale development,” Hopkins said. “Our companies have made technological advancements in oil shale production and are committed to continued research and development in this area.”

But Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., the head of the House Natural Resources Committee, said the decision to review rules for commercial oil shale development was “redundant” and would “delay the development of at least a trillion barrels of U.S. oil resources and prevent the creation of thousands of new U.S. jobs.”

“The current commercial rules for oil shale leasing were adopted under a rigorous and open public rule making process,” Hastings said in a statement. “There is no need to review the rules unless their intention is to halt progress on the development of our oil shale resources and create more uncertainty for companies interested in investing in new technology.”

This isn’t the first time Salazar has zeroed in on oil shale decisions made by the Bush administration.

In February 2009, Salazar suspended a Bush-era lease solicitation for companies to conduct oil shale research, development and demonstration projects on public lands. Seven months later, Salazar invited energy companies to apply for new research, development and demonstration projects on 160-acre tracts — a fraction of the 5,120 acres that would have been allowed for commercial production under the Bush plan.

Three companies have submitted nominations under that second round of oil shale leasing in October 2009, including two in Colorado from Exxon Mobil and Natural Soda Holdings, Inc., and another in Utah from AuraSource Inc.

Five other oil shale leases in Colorado issued in 2007 are held by Chevron Shale Oil Co., EGL Resources, Inc., and Shell Frontier Oil & Gas. A lease of federal land in Utah, also issued in 2007, is held by the Oil Shale Exploration Co.

Abbey said that BLM’s review of its commercial oil shale regulations and programs should have no effect on those existing research and development leases.
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 16, 2011, 05:49:09 AM
Healthcare Reform Law Requires New IRS Army Of 1,054
By Paul Bedard
http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2011/02/15/healthcare-reform-law-requires-new-irs-army-of-1054_print.html

Posted: February 15, 2011


________________________ ________________________ _____



The Internal Revenue Service says it will need an battalion of 1,054 new auditors and staffers and new facilities at a cost to taxpayers of more than $359 million in fiscal 2012 just to watch over the initial implementation of President Obama's healthcare reforms. Among the new corps will be 81 workers assigned to make sure tanning salons pay a new 10 percent excise tax. Their cost: $11.5 million.

[See a slide show of 10 ways the GOP can take down Obamacare.]

"The ACA [Affordable Care Act] will require additional resources to build new IT systems; modify existing tax processing systems; provide taxpayer outreach and assistance services; make enhancements to notices, collections, and case management systems to address and resolve taxpayer issues timely and accurately; and conduct focused examinations to encourage compliance," said the newly released IRS budget.

[See a slide show of 10 things that are, and aren't, in the healthcare law.]

In its request, the IRS explained that the tax changes associated with health reform are huge. "Implementation of the Affordable Care Act of 2010 presents a major challenge to the IRS. ACA represents the largest set of tax law changes in more than 20 years, with more than 40 provisions that amend the tax laws."

Unsaid: The requests are just the beginning, since the new healthcare program is evolving and won't be fully implemented until about 2014.

The detailed IRS budget documents spell out exactly what most of the new workforce will be doing. For example, some 81 will be tasked just to handle the tax reporting of 25,000 tanning salons. They face a new 10 percent excise tax on indoor tanning services. Another 76 will be assigned to make sure businesses engaged in making and imported drugs pay their new fee which is expected to deliver $2.8 billion to the Treasury in 2012 and 2013. The new healthcare corps will also require new facilities and computers.

[See editorial cartoons about the healthcare law.]

The document gives the GOP a bright target to hit if they plan to make good on promises to defund the president's healthcare plan.

Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, who's become a point man in the budget battle, told Whispers, "The president's irresponsible budget empowers the IRS to begin to audit Americans' healthcare. As the IRS says, Obamacare represents the largest set of tax changes in more than 20 years. Adding hundreds of new jobs and millions of dollars to the IRS isn't going to make care better or more available for anyone. I will continue to fight to repeal and replace Obamacare with patient centered reforms that help the private sector—not the IRS—create more jobs."


The Treasury Department, which oversees the IRS said: "The Affordable Care Act includes important tax credits that help small businesses provide health insurance for their employees and partially cover the cost of health insurance for Americans who do not have access to affordable coverage, and Treasury's Budget includes funding for the IRS to administer these tax provisions. The vast majority of this funding will be used to develop information technology systems and other support to implement the law and help taxpayers claim these important credits."

The IRS document also noted that other tax law changes related to the stimulus require more workers, estimated at about 215 new employees.

[See photos of healthcare reform protests.]

It's not all tough news for taxpayers. The IRS regularly pays for its enforcement team and more when they collect taxes that companies and individuals try to skip out on. According to the budget documents, the IRS plans to get a big return on investment worth about $279 million by fiscal 2014.

•Check out our editorial cartoons on healthcare.
•See a slide show of 10 ways the GOP can take down Obamacare.
•See the 10 best cities in which to look for a job.
Updated on 2/15/11


________________________ ______________-



Hope & change bitches!   
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 16, 2011, 09:54:32 AM
Jeffrey on Socialism's Trajectory: Obama's HHS Is Bigger Than LBJ's Government
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
By Terence P. Jeffrey

http://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/article/jeffrey-socialisms-trajectory-obamas-hhs



________________________ ___




Anyone who doubts that the trend toward socialism is pushing America toward ruin should examine the historical tables President Obama published Monday along with his $3.7 trillion budget.

In fiscal 2011, according to these tables, the Department of Health and Human Services will spend $909.7 billion. In fiscal 1965, the entire federal government spent $118.228 billion.

What about inflation? According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' inflation calculator, $118.228 billion in 1965 dollars equals $822.6 billion in 2010 dollars. In real terms, the $909.7 billion HHS is spending this year is about $87.1 billion more than the entire federal government spent in 1965.

1965 was a key year in the advancement of socialism in the United States.

From 1776 until 1965, Americans generally did not rely on the federal government for health care unless they served in the military or worked in some other capacity for the federal government.

But in 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson and a Democratic Congress enacted two massive federal entitlement programs -- Medicare and Medicaid -- that fundamentally altered the relationship between Americans and the federal government by making tens of millions dependent on the government for health care.

Prior to 1937, the Supreme Court correctly understood the Constitution to deny the federal government any power to create and operate social-welfare programs. The Constitution held no such enumerated power, and the 10th Amendment left powers not enumerated to the states and the people.

From George Washington's administration to Franklin Roosevelt's, Americans took care of themselves and their own communities without resorting to federal handouts.

FDR sought to change what he believed was an unrealistic reliance on families in American life.

He used the crisis of the Great Depression to pass the Social Security Act of 1935, compelling Americans to pay a payroll tax in return for the promise of a federal old-age pension. This was blatantly unconstitutional. That same year, in Railroad Retirement Board v. Alton, the Supreme Court had justly slapped down a law mandating what amounted to a Social Security program for the railroad industry alone.

FDR attempted to defend the railroad pension law as a legitimate regulation of interstate commerce, justifiable under the Commerce Clause -- the same argument the Obama administration has used to defend the individual mandate in Obamacare.

The Court scoffed, suggesting that if the federal government could mandate a federal pension for railroad workers, the next thing it would do would be to mandate health care.

"The question at once presents itself whether the fostering of a contented mind on the part of an employee by legislation of this type is, in any just sense, a regulation of interstate transportation," the Court said answering FDR's argument. "If that question be answered in the affirmative, obviously there is no limit to the field of so-called regulation. The catalogue of means and actions which might be imposed upon an employer in any business, tending to the satisfaction and comfort of his employees, seems endless. Provision for free medical attention and nursing, for clothing, for food, for housing, for the education of children, and a hundred other matters, might with equal propriety be proposed as tending to relieve the employee of mental strain and worry."

When Social Security went to the Court in 1937, FDR used a different strategy. He argued that Article 1, Section 8, Clause 1 of the Constitution, which gave Congress the power to levy taxes to "provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States," meant the federal government could do virtually anything it deemed in the "general welfare" of Americans even if it was otherwise outside the scope of the Constitution's other enumerated powers.

FDR's interpretation of the General Welfare Clause effectively rendered the rest of the Constitution meaningless.

To persuade the same court that ruled against him in the railroad case to rule for him in the Social Security case, FDR proposed the Judicial Reorganization Act. This would allow him to pack the court by appointing an additional justice for each sitting justice who had reached age 70 and six months and not retired.

Faced with a potential Democratic takeover of the court, and thus a federal government controlled entirely by FDR's allies, Republican Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes and Associate Justice Owen J. Roberts flip-flopped from their position in the railroad case. They quietly voted in favor of Social Security and took the steam off FDR's court-packing plan.

That year, federal spending was 8.6 percent of gross domestic product, according to President Obama's historical tables.

When LBJ enacted Medicare and Medicaid -- and began fulfilling the court's prophecy in the 1935 railroad-pension case -- federal spending was 17.2 percent of GDP.

When George W. Bush expanded Medicare with a prescription drug benefit in 2003, federal spending was 19.7 percent of GDP. This year, federal spending will be 25.3 percent of GDP.

In 2014, when Obamacare is scheduled to be fully implemented, HHS will become the first $1-trillion-per year federal agency. That year, Medicare and Medicaid will cost $557 billion and $352.1 billion respectively, or a combined $909.1 billion -- about what all of HHS costs this year.

In other words, when Obamacare is just getting started, Medicare and Medicaid will cost more than the $822.6 billion in 2010 dollars than the entire federal government cost in 1965 when LBJ signed Medicare and Medicaid into law.
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 16, 2011, 11:00:38 AM
Is the Wealth Gap Widening Under Obama, Bernanke?
Published: Tuesday, 15 Feb 2011 | 3:36 PM ET Text Size By: John Melloy
Executive Producer, Fast Money


________________________ ________________________ _______________________


President Obama said at his inauguration two years ago that, “a nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous.” Ironically, the President’s own actions, along with those of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, are testing that theory.


Consumer sentiment among families with income above $75,000 jumped to 88.2 in early February, the highest since under President Bush in 2007, according to the Reuters/University of Michigan’s latest survey.

But sentiment among lower-income households dropped to 67.7 from 72.1 in January, trapped in a range it’s been stuck in since just after Obama's 2009 inauguration.

The president helped widen this gap by compromising on the Bush tax cuts with the Republicans in Congress, agreeing at the end of last year to extend them on all incomes for two years, investors said.

Meanwhile, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has set upon a large quantitative easing program that has boosted the stock market by increasing liquidity, but also raised the costs of basic goods that hit the poor the very hardest.

“Low-income families are not likely to be benefiting from the rally in stocks,” said Ed Yardeni, president and chief investment strategist of Yardeni Research. “They probably remain more vulnerable to long-term unemployment and wage cuts. To add insult to injury, Mr. Bernanke’s focus on core inflation is irrelevant to most of them. Rising food and fuel costs matter to them.”

The Fed, with interest rates already at zero, is in the middle of a $600 billion Treasury buying program to fight off deflation and encourage investment.

But as prices for corn [CCV1  684.75    -5.75  (-0.83%)], wheat [WCV1  832.25    -8.00  (-0.95%)] and rice have surged, the Fed chairman has drawn the ire of many, including other countries’ central bankers, for sparking out-of-control inflation. This is the second such buying program Bernanke has done since the financial crisis.

 

“Maybe the most unintended consequence of ‘QE2’ is the great wealth disparity it is creating,” said Steve Cortes of Veracruz Research and a ‘Fast Money’ trader. “We are literally doing it on the backs of the poorest people in this country and the world.”

You can see the effects of this wealth gap unfold in the struggles of Walmart [WMT  54.79    -0.16  (-0.29%)   ], which is trying to upgrade its image to appeal to higher income shoppers as the economy recovers, but also not lose what it identifies as its core customer (those making between $40,000 and $70,000 a year). Now its stuck right in the middle of this wealth gap.

Pro Traders: 4 Stock Inflation Mini-Basket
Jon Najarian: Unusual Options Activity In This Stock
Walmart is “seeing fewer trips from these core customers who seem to prefer the convenience of dollar and drug stores over supercenters, even choosing to continue shopping those channels during Walmart’s Summer of deep discount last year,” said JPMorgan’s Charles Grom, who downgraded the stock Monday. “Also, an overall gradual improvement in the macro backdrop lends itself to trade-up risk.”

To be fair, while President Obama reappointed Bernanke in 2009, the Fed Chairman is supposed to operate independently. Plus, Obama has pledged to keep the Bush tax cut extensions at just 2 years.

It’s been said that presidents generally want interest rates kept low to keep the economy going, at least through the next election. See George H.W. Bush’s reported criticism of former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan for not cutting rates fast enough in the early ‘90s and costing him the election. In this case, we may have a president that pressures the Fed chairman to raise interest rates.

 

For the best market insight, catch 'Fast Money' each night at 5pm ET, and the ‘Halftime Report’ each afternoon at 12:30 ET on CNBC.


http://www.cnbc.com/id/41605145

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 16, 2011, 11:31:35 AM
How Inflation Could Be 66% Higher Than the Fed Reports
Daily Finance ^ | 2/16/2011 | DAN BURROWS





Global food prices are at an all-time high, U.S. gasoline prices are at the costliest level ever for this time of the year and yet inflation, in the words of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, remains "quite low."

By official reckoning, that's certainly the case. On Thursday we'll get the latest monthly inflation figures in the form of the consumer price index, which, to the Fed chief's chagrin, is running too close to disinflationary levels. Economists, on average, expect January prices to increase at just a 0.3% rate. So-called core inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, is forecast to rise just 0.1%.

As Bernanke testified before Congress last week, economists exclude food and energy prices because that core inflation rate "can be a better predictor of where overall inflation is headed." By that measure, inflation was only 0.7% in 2010, compared with around 2.5% in 2007, the year before the recession began, the Fed chief explained.

Too bad those numbers don't jibe with with most folks' experience at the gas pump or checkout counter. As economist Ed Yardeni, president of Yardeni Research, told clients Tuesday: "I share the growing concern among the Fed's critics that the official measures of consumer price inflation may be understating actual inflation and that excluding food and energy from these measures is OK as long as you don't eat or drive."




(Excerpt) Read more at dailyfinance.com ...
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 16, 2011, 11:36:35 AM
White House Ignores Interest Payments in Claiming to Control Debt
By Judson Berger
Published February 16, 2011 | FoxNews.com




The Obama administration's statement that the government will not be adding to the debt by the middle of the decade clashes hard against the facts, Republicans say, leaving officials straining to justify the budget claim they've pushed repeatedly over the past few days.

As it turns out, the administration is not counting interest payments. That means the budget team plans to have enough money to pay for ordinary spending programs by the middle of the decade. But it won't have the money to pay off those pesky -- rather, gargantuan -- interest payments. So it will have to borrow some more, in turn increasing the debt and increasing the size of future interest payments year after year.

So how then, visibly agitated Republicans asked, can the administration claim that its 2012 spending plan sets the country on a course to "pay for what we spend" in just a few years?

"We're still going further into debt, massively," Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., told White House Budget Director Jack Lew at a budget hearing Tuesday, accusing the administration of "double-talk."

Anyone who gives the budget chart a cursory glance can see the debt will continue to skyrocket under the White House proposal. In fact, the long-term outlook shows the public debt -- which isn't even the entire debt -- soaring from about $11 trillion this year to nearly $19 trillion in 2021. Driving that increase is the fact that annual deficits will never fall below $600 billion.

To justify the administration claim, Lew said the administration was merely referring to "primary balance" -- or federal spending minus interest payments. Lew sought to forgive the public for their confusion.

"The terminology that we use in Washington of primary balance is a little confusing," Lew said.

"It's because I believe it's dishonest," Ensign shot back.

Republicans were understandably befuddled. To put the scenario in everyday terms, it's like a family claiming that they've balanced the family finances, but neglecting to mention that they're taking out a new loan every month to pay off credit-card interest. As a result, the family keeps going deeper into debt.

For an $80 interest payment, that might be manageable. But this is the United States budget. If the government does what the Obama administration is recommending, net interest payments will go from about $200 billion this year to $844 billion in a decade. That's more than the country spends now on Social Security.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, at his first official press briefing on the job, used the credit card analogy Wednesday and acknowledged interest rates "have to be contended with."

"But the first important step in dealing with this issue is getting your regular spending and income in balance so that you're no longer adding to the problem," he said. "And interest payments are a major portion of our long term debt problem that we need to address. But it is not an inconsequential deal."

Yet President Obama and Lew neglected to explain this point in their initial statements. Lew, in an interview Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union," said: "Our budget will get us, over the next several years, to the point where we can look the American people in the eye and say we're not adding to the debt anymore. We're spending money that we have each year, and then we can work on bringing down our national debt."

Obama, discussing his budget in Baltimore Monday, said the proposal "puts us on a path to pay for what we spend by the middle of the decade."

In his press conference the next day, Obama went further.

"What my budget does is to put forward some tough choices, some significant spending cuts, so that by the middle of this decade our annual spending will match our annual revenues. We will not be adding more to the national debt," he said.

Pressed to explain this claim, the president hinted at the rationale.

"We've racked up a whole bunch of debt. And there's a lot of interest on that debt," he said. "So in the same way that if you've got a credit card and you've got a big balance, you may not be adding to principal. You've still got all that interest that you've got to pay. Well, we've got a big problem in terms of accumulated interest that we're paying and that's why we're going to have to whittle down further the debt that's already been accumulated."

Under questioning from Senate Republicans Tuesday, Lew acknowledged the government would be adding to the debt by borrowing to pay interest, but still stood by his statements.

"We're getting further in debt ... because of our interest rate," Ensign said.

"Yeah," Lew responded.

Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, grilled Lew over this disconnect.

"We are adding to the balance, and we're not cutting up the credit card. That's just the fact," Sessions said, calling the administration's claims "misleading."

Lew stood by his claim. "What I said was we're going to stop adding to the debt. Our spending will not add to the debt," he said. "It's an accurate statement."

Sessions disagreed, calling the assessment "not a legitimate way to analyze it."

The website PolitiFact, which tries to sort out politicians' policy claims, analyzed the administration's argument in an article Tuesday and gave it a rating of "false."

The White House later claimed that the debt would not increase as a share of the economy -- that's technically true, given that the public debt would level out at about 76 percent of GDP by mid-decade. But that assumes a certain level of growth in the economy and also assumes the debt, as a figure, will continue to rise year after year. PolitiFact ruled that its "false" rating would remain unchanged, given that Obama did not make that distinction in his press conference.

 Print     Close URL

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/02/16/white-house-stretches-truth-national-debt-claim

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 16, 2011, 01:07:39 PM
February 15, 2011, 6:22 PM ET.
White House Economists Won’t Testify on Stimulus.

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2011/02/15/white-house-economists-wont-testify-on-stimulus/tab/print


________________________ ________________-




The Obama White House won’t be sending a witness to defend the economic-stimulus package before a House Oversight Committee panel Wednesday.

The committee is holding a hearing on the impact of the stimulus package, which President Barack Obama signed almost two years ago. Testimony will come from a lineup of conservative economists, plus Josh Bivens of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, who was picked by committee Democrats.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R., Ohio), who is running the hearing, had asked Jared Bernstein and Christina Romer, who played major roles in preparing the package to testify or suggest another witness to represent the White House. Both declined.

Officials volunteered to send witnesses from the Transportation and Commerce departments but the offers were turned down.

Ms. Romer, formerly the head of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, returned to her teaching job at the University of California, Berkeley, last year. Mr. Bernstein remains the chief economic adviser to Vice President Joe Biden.

Republicans say that they plan to use the hearing to examine the effects of the stimulus plan on the economy “and how its results compare to projections made by administration officials.” GOP staff said that they didn’t think that witnesses from individual federal departments would be able to answer these questions.

The plan, which has a current estimated price tag of $814 billion, is considered by Democrats to be one of their signature achievements during Barack Obama’s first two years in office. Mr. Bernstein and Ms. Romer have credited it with preserving up to 3.7 million jobs, compared with what would have happened otherwise.

But Republicans have questioned how the White House reached those figures, and have argued that the stubbornly high unemployment rate shows that the plan was a costly failure.

Public perceptions of the package have been dismal and during the November midterm elections, many GOP candidates ran on a platform of criticizing the stimulus effort, while Democrats barely mentioned it.

Copyright 2008 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 16, 2011, 01:45:25 PM
Empty seats: Obama snubs Issa on witnesses for stimulus hearing
The Daily Caller ^ | 2/16/11 | Jonathan Strong



________________________ ________________________ ____________-


In the latest sign of an increasingly antagonistic stand by Democrats against top GOP oversight official Rep. Darrell Issa, President Obama declined a request for a top economic adviser to testify before an oversight panel about the president’s economic stimulus law. Obama spokesman Reid Cherlin indicated the move will be part of a general policy against top White House aides testifying before Congress, potentially setting the stage for a showdown on later, more important hearings.


(Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com ...
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 17, 2011, 05:38:00 AM
PRIEBUS: Happy stimulus day
How’s that working out for you?
By Reince Priebus
The Washington Times
6:06 p.m., Wednesday, February 16, 2011

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/feb/16/happy-stimulus-day/print

________________________ ________________________ _______________________


Bloomberg News With Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. looking on, President Obama tells an Eisenhower Executive Office Building audience Wednesday that the economic-stimulus legislation he signed a year ago helped avert an economic catastrophe.PrintEmailVi ew

Two years ago today, President Obama signed into law a "stimulus package" that his administration promised would keep unemployment under 8 percent. What has been the result of nearly $1 trillion spent on the so-called "stimulus?" Twenty-one months of unemployment at or above 9 percent, 2.6 million jobs lost, unsustainable budget deficits and an ever-growing national debt.

Americans rejected the Democrats' reckless tax and spend policies last November. Despite this "shellacking," Mr. Obama's proposed budget ignores the will of the American people and reflects a complete lack of seriousness for our fiscal crisis.

In my capacity as the new chairman of the Republican National Committee, it is my job to help hold President Obama accountable for his lack of leadership.

Looking at the president's fiscal 2012 budget, my job may have just gotten a little easier. As the reviews come in, it's clear the president didn't live up to his own standards.

Under the president's spending plan, 2012 will be the fourth consecutive year of running deficits in excess of $1 trillion. As a result of Mr. Obama's spending spree, the federal debt will soon be equal to the entire U.S. economy.

Instead of showing the leadership this country wants and deserves, the president continues to punt on real fiscal responsibility, making none of the tough decisions to cut spending - at no point in his budget would we spend less than we are taking in, raising taxes by $1.6 trillion and adding $13 trillion in new debt.

We've seen this movie before. Spending $814 billion on the stimulus and $2.5 trillion on government-run health care, America tried the Democrats' model of spending hand-over-fist to jump-start the economy - to no avail.

Last week, the Congressional Budget Office director confirmed that the president's massive health care spending law will eliminate 800,000 jobs from our economy. In fact, the only jobs that appear to be created by the president's budget are located at the Internal Revenue Service with 5,000 new agents prepared to enforce the president's tax hikes.

It is this lack of leadership that encouraged voters to give Republicans a seat at the table as we work to get our country's fiscal house in order.

The status quo is simply unsustainable. As Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke put it, limiting the expansion of government is critical to growing our economy. Getting our deficit in check will instill much-needed confidence for job creators our country depends on to jump-start our economy.

The American people are demanding a change in course. To achieve economic prosperity for future generations, they know that the government must start living within its means - just like millions of families across the country do every day.

We've run out of time for warnings; the time to act is now. We have to unite behind leaders who will tax less, spend less and borrow less to get our economy back on track.

As House Speaker John A. Boehner said this weekend, we are broke. It is time for the Democrats to understand that Washington has an addiction to spending. And like all addictions, it will not be cured without dramatic action.

With all due respect, Mr. President, our fiscal situation doesn't need a scalpel - we need a machete.

Already, House Republicans have set a new tone in Washington by committing to $100 billion in spending cuts - the largest cut in congressional history. Returning spending to pre-stimulus levels for the rest of the current fiscal year is the first step of many to restore fiscal sanity.

And while the president punts on entitlement reform, we are ready to stand with Americans who are serious about tackling real fiscal reform.

We are truly in a fight for freedom in this country, and I am proud of our Republican leaders for stepping up to the plate. Now it is my job to help elect more principled Republicans to join the conversation and help make our country as prosperous as we can be.

Barack Obama sought the presidency seemingly to make the difficult choices and put our nation on solid footing. If he continues to avoid making the tough decisions and instead insists on an agenda of more spending, higher taxes and more debt, the choice facing voters in 2012 won't be very difficult.

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 17, 2011, 05:42:24 AM
Obama's Budget Increases 2012 Deficit by a Third
Townhall.com ^ | February 17, 2011 | Jackie Gingrich Cushman


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Obama's budget increases 2012 deficit by a third. Yes, that's correct. President Obama submitted his proposed 2012 budget this past Monday. This budget produces a $1.1 trillion deficit for 2012. This deficit is 33 percent higher than his 2011 budget projection, which targeted the 2012 deficit at $828 billion. This higher 2012 deficit is equivalent to $3,217 per person in the United States (based on the U.S. Census Bureau's population clock).

This year's forecast of the 2011 deficit is $1.6 trillion, 30 percent higher than Obama's 2011-budgeted deficit of $1.3 trillion.

Let's step back and take another look at what has happened: The government spent $265 billion less in 2010 than had been forecast for 2010 at the time of the 2011 budget.

The receipts (read, taxes on companies and individuals, i.e., their expenses) for 2010 were about on target, actual $2,163 billion versus a forecast of $2,165 billion. This change in spending produced a 2011 deficit $378 billion, or 30 percent higher than originally budgeted.

The one thing we can determine so far is that the administration does not have a stellar record for budgeting. Before beginning my writing career, I worked in corporate finance. In my last few years in corporate planning, I was in charge of budgeting and planning for companies worth $3 billion. My background includes an MBA in finance, and I am a holder of the Chartered Financial Analyst designation. This lets you know that I know how to scrutinize the details of budgets and sub schedules to see if the logic and the math hold up.

During the 2011 budget process, revenues (taxes on individuals and corporations) were originally forecast to rise $402 billion (19 percent) from 2010 to 2011, but are now forecast to rise by just $11 billion. Outlays (government expenses) were projected to rise by $113 billion, or 3 percent. In the 2012 budget submission, the 2011 outlays increased by $363 billion, or 11 percent.

So, while we spent less in 2010 than had been forecast in 2010, we are still planning on spending more in 2011.

Hmm. The first rule in budgeting is to make sure your year-end forecast reflects what is going to happen, because that is how the next year is compared.

Clearly, in the last year's round of forecasting year-end results, the outlays were overstated. Maybe there should be a bit of scrubbing on the 2011 year-end government-spending forecast. Outlays (government sending) decreased by $62 billion in 2010; the 2011 year-end forecast is for an increase of $363 billion.

This clever bit of forecasting allows the administration to claim a decrease in government spending in 2012 (granted that it's only $90 billion, or 2 percent, less than the 2011 forecast).

However, when you compare 2010 to 2012, there is a $273 billion increase in government spending. So, while Obama might talk about a decline in government spending in 2012, it's only because his 2011 forecast includes a government spending increase of $363 billion, or 11 percent.

In this year's budget submission, revenues are forecast to rise $453 billion, or 21 percent, in 2012. Much of the forecast is based on a 65 percent increase in corporate taxes. This is a substantial increase in taxes.

In selling his budget this week, Obama mentioned a letter he had recently received "from a woman named Brenda Breece. ... She's looking, as we speak, for a second job to help put Rachel (her daughter) through college and ensure, as she told me, that 'the money is there to help Rachel with her future.'"

Obama continued with, "What's true for Brenda's family is true for the larger American family. ... We're going to have to get serious about cutting back on those things that would be nice to have but we can do without."

The difference is that Brenda Breece is willing to take on a second job to secure her daughter's future, and Obama's budget never lives within our means. Every year in his budget there is a deficit, with the lowest deficit at $607 billion in 2015.

Obama's budget does not live up to his rhetoric -- we never live within our means, and he only reaches his target of cutting the deficit in half by first increasing it by 27 percent. His pitch is for us to live with a high deficit in 2012 (he labels it an investment) so that the out-years (2013 -- 2021) will get better.

We need to quit listening to the sales pitch and focus on this year and next because, in budgeting, the out-years never come.

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 17, 2011, 12:42:59 PM
Geither:   "Our budget is unsustainable"


Ha ha ha ha - HOPE & CHANGE! ! ! ! !  ! ! !

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 17, 2011, 03:24:08 PM
Judge: Drill Baby Drill
the american spectator ^ | 2/17/11 | Chris Horner


________________________ ________________________ _


Federal Court Orders Obama Administration to Act on Stalled Deepwater Drilling Permits

Calls permitting delays "unreasonable, unacceptable and unjustified"  

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, the Obama Administration's de facto drilling moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico was once again struck down in Federal Court. U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman granted a preliminary injunction requiring that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) act within 30 days on five pending permit applications from Ensco.

"The court has now clearly found that the Obama Administration's refusal to act on permits is causing irreparable harm to companies, families and people of the Gulf," said House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Doc Hastings. "The President's de facto moratorium is destroying American jobs, hurting our economy and forcing businesses to move overseas.


(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 18, 2011, 05:03:22 AM
Gov’t Has Borrowed an Additional $29,660 Per Household Since Obama Signed Stimulus
Thursday, February 17, 2011
By Terence P. Jeffrey



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President Barack Obama speaks at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington, Monday, Feb. 7, 2011. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

(CNSNews.com) - The federal government has borrowed an additional $29,660 per household in the United States since President Barack Obama signed his economic stimulus law two years ago.

That brings the total national debt to $125,475.18 per household.

At the close of business on Feb. 17, 2009, the day Obama signed the $787-billion law, the national debt stood at $10.79 trillion ($10,789,783,760,341.41), according the Bureau of the Public Debt. At the close of business on Feb. 16, 2011, the national debt stood at $14.13 trillion ($14,129,889,690,377.50)—an increase of $3.34 trillion (3,340,105,930,036.09)

The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that there are a total of 112,611,029 households in the United States, which average about 2.6 people per household. That means that the new debt accumulated in the two years since Feb. 17, 2009, when President Obama signed his economic stimulus law, equals about $29,660.55 per household.

The current total national debt of $14.13 trillion can be divided into equal portions of $125,475.18 for each of the 112,611,029 households in the country.
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 18, 2011, 05:16:00 AM
Obama budget plan shows interest owed on national debt quadrupling in next decade

By Steven Mufson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 17, 2011; 1:59 AM



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Interest payments on the national debt will quadruple in the next decade and every man, woman and child in the United States will be paying more than $2,500 a year to cover for the nation's past profligacy, according to figures in President Obama's new budget plan.

Starting in 2014, net interest payments will surpass the amount spent on education, transportation, energy and all other discretionary programs outside defense. In 2018, they will outstrip Medicare spending. Only the amounts spent on defense and Social Security would remain bigger under the president's plan.

The soaring bill for interest payments is one of the biggest obstacles to balancing the federal budget, pushing the White House and Congress to come up with cuts deeper than previously imagined. Unlike with discretionary spending or even entitlement programs, the line item for interest payments cannot be altered except through other budget cuts.

The phenomenon is a bit like running up the down escalator. Without interest payments, the president's plan would balance the budget by 2017. But net interest payments that year are expected to reach $627 billion, up from $207 billion in the current fiscal year.

"This goes to the heart of why we have to address our fiscal problems," said Mark Zandi, co-founder and chief economist at Moody's Economy.com. "If we don't, we're going to get swamped by our interest payments."

Benjamin Friedman, a Harvard economic professor and author of "Day of Reckoning," about U.S. economic policy, said, "I think it's a reminder that we have a very serious problem and that the budget that's on the table does not address that problem."

Even with the cuts in Obama's budget, relief would not come until 2021, when the deficit as a percentage of gross domestic product would stop rising and plateau at 3.4 percent.

The explosion of interest payments comes from a double whammy of economic factors. First, the nation's debt is growing faster than the economy. Second, interest rates are rising. Over the next decade, net interest payments will amount to nearly 80 percent of the debt added, an indication of how past borrowing is forcing the country deeper into debt.

"We're running a gigantic deficit, and we're not growing very fast," said Kenneth Rogoff, an economics professor at Harvard University and former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. "We're on a dramatically unsustainable path."

The Obama administration's latest forecasts starkly illustrate the phenomenon of generation shifting, moving today's costs to future taxpayers. The borrowing the United States did over the past decade - to pay for the 2001 tax cut, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and propping up the economy during the steep 2009 downturn - is coming due this decade.

As bad as the outlook is in the Obama budget proposal for fiscal year 2012, it could get worse. So far, interest payments have been relatively low because of the willingness of global investors to lend the U.S. government money at abnormally low interest rates. But that could change.

"The scary scenario - which I am not predicting but is a real possibility - is an incident of capital flight, where investors lose confidence in the U.S., causing interest rates to rise precipitously and pushing the budget deficit even further into the red," said N. Gregory Mankiw, a Harvard economics professor and former chairman of President George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers.

The Obama budget's assumptions include a substantial increase in rates. It predicts that the interest rate on 10-year Treasury notes will climb from 3 percent this year to 3.6 percent next year. It forecasts rates of 5 percent by 2015 and 5.3 percent at the end of the decade.

Short-term rates will rise even more sharply, from nearly zero now to 4 percent by 2015 in the Office of Management and Budget assumptions.

Rogoff calls the administration's forecast "reasonable," but he warns that the actual number is hard to know with any certainty.

"The basic issue is that when you hold a lot of debt you're vulnerable to shifts in sentiment and sharp rises in the interest rates," Rogoff said.

He said that combined federal, state and municipal debt in the United States is at a record high, beyond the famous post-World War II levels. Unlike interest payments made then, however, a huge portion of interest payments are flowing to investors in other countries, draining funds out of the U.S. economy. (There are other interest payments made to the Social Security fund, but because they shift money from one pocket of the government to another, they are not counted in the net interest numbers.)

Some positive developments could ease the interest payment crisis, including faster-than-expected economic recovery, higher-than-expected tax receipts and lower-than-expected government borrowing rates.

Ultimately, Rogoff said, the federal government should aim to reduce the amount of debt as a percentage of GDP. But for now, the U.S. government is still borrowing just to meet the interest payments on earlier borrowing.

"We are in a self-reinforcing, vicious cycle," Zandi said.

He compared the United States to European nations such as Greece or Portugal, or developing nations that in the past have received bailouts from the European Central Bank or the IMF.

"But there's no one we can get help from," Zandi said, noting that no economy is bigger than the U.S. economy. "There's no sugar daddy out there for us."

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 18, 2011, 06:13:03 AM
Yet another emerging crisis
Politico44 ^ | 02/17/11 | JULIE MASON


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What does it say about America's standing in the world when Canada kind of hates us now and openly mocks our ragged economy? President Obama's proposal to start charging Canadians an inspection fee to enter the country has Canada all agog.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said the U.S. should not try to balance the budget on the backs of Canadian tourists:

“They're running deficits down there well over a trillion dollars a year,” Harper said in the Toronto Star. “Some 40 per cent plus of the American spending is financed by borrowing. These are enormously challenging figures.”

Overlooking the fact that it apparently took until Thursday for the news to reach Canada, the Canadians are considering banding with Mexico to push back against the fee. Not that! Remember when we used to throw away Canadian pennies?

The $5.50 fee is tucked into Obama's budget for the Department of Homeland Security. The plan would lift existing exemptions for visitors from Canada, Mexico and Caribbean and is expected to raise about $110 million in the first year.


(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 18, 2011, 06:29:57 AM






Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 18, 2011, 08:54:53 AM
US 2011 Inflation: 10.6%?
ZeroHedge ^ | 2/18/2011




We thank Sean Corrigan of Diapason Securities for bringing our attention to the MIT Billion Price real time inflation Index (first reported here) who points out that based on the ongoing surge in prices, which have increased by 1.25% in the last 25 days (December 31, 2010: 101.085, February 14, 2011: 102.353), a simple annualization indicates a 10.6% increase in prices in 2011! With all undue respect to the Chairsatan (and other "disinflationists") it is time to bring Volcker out of the freezer once again. Look for the 30 Year to pass 5% in a few weeks. Oh yes, M2 surged to all new time highs again.
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 20, 2011, 07:07:36 AM
White House Gets It Wrong on Stimulus Jobs
Townhall.com ^ | February 20, 2011 | Salena Zito




An American Recovery and Reinvestment Act stimulus sign guards the majestic National Trust Historic Preservation building just beyond DuPont Circle in Washington, D.C.

The sign, like so many others Americans have seen along their highways the past two years, proudly marks the spot where “Your government is at work for you.”

A“Maybe it’s stimulating the grass to grow?” remarked a friend as we hustled down Massachusetts Avenue, seeing no construction in sight.

The sign has stood there for nearly a year. It provided no stimulus funding for the National Trust, or its grass. But new sidewalks are being installed behind the building, said someone answering the phone at the Trust, and the District of Columbia’s Department of Transportation “has been working on it since at least July.”

According to the district DOT’s stimulus website, the sidewalk project has been ongoing since October 2009. It does not state how many jobs were stimulated; in fairness, that probably is difficult to gauge – since the project was slated before the stimulus was enacted.

Even though the nation’s unemployment rate is at 9 percent (not the 7 percent projected by the White House, if the stimulus act worked), White House press secretary Jay Carney said Thursday that the stimulus has added “several million jobs” and “lowered the unemployment rate. … The goals of the stimulus package have been met.”

This administration still doesn’t get it, or doesn’t read its own jobs reports.

Middle America’s voters, especially those Democrats and independents who supported Obama in 2008, still feel a major disconnect with this administration.

In 2010 they told Washington that they wanted a new approach. What they were looking for most was fiscal responsibility from the federal government.

When President Obama appointed his bipartisan debt commission late last winter, a sigh went up from fiscally conservative Democrats that the White House was taking America’s demands – fiscal responsibility and bipartisanship - seriously.

Yet in his budget released last week, it is hard to find evidence that Obama incorporated any of the commission’s recommendations for cutting entitlements.

Nor did the budget provide guidelines to deal with the growth of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

Voters told Washington to tighten its belt and balance its books, just as they have had to do within their own families. What they got was more out-of-control deficit spending with no regard for future implications.

Worse, Americans are not seeing the benefits of deficit spending. It's not giving them better lives. It's not fixing their problems.

Public policy is supposed to be about fixing society’s problems, and federal budgets should be about protecting the country and keeping the trains running.

Policy often is a reactionary effort by politicians to fix a problem, a deliberate plan by the government to address an issue and change people’s behaviors.

The stimulus act and the tax cuts spent a lot of money, running up the deficit and the national debt. A large percentage of stimulus spending simply went to relieving state budgets; it did not change people’s behavior, and that is bad public policy.

When proposed, the stimulus act was deemed so necessary. If true, then its money should have gone to much-needed improvements to this country's infrastructure. At least then, with so much money being spent, we’d have something to show for it. More important, we would have changed people's behaviors.

Businesses, particularly small businesses, would have created jobs leading to more permanent employment; people would have had incentives to retrain in technology, and access to improved mass transit and mass communications.

Last month, Allentown Metal Works – a century-old factory in the Lehigh Valley that Obama used as a backdrop a year ago to promote for a big jobs bill – closed.

Obama’s visit there kicked off a multi-city tour following his “jobs summit” in Washington.

Last week, Obama’s press secretary dismissed questions about the effectiveness of the stimulus act.

"We've said repeatedly that we don't want to re-litigate the battles of the past," he told a reporter.

His remark came the same day that U.S. unemployment, as measured by Gallup without seasonal adjustment, hit 10 percent in mid-February – up from 9.8 percent at the end of January



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Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 21, 2011, 05:47:54 AM
Obama's National Debt Impact

Amount of Debt at Obama Inauguration............ ...... $10,626,877,048,913
Amount of Debt as of Feb 17, 2011.................... ...... $14,123,589,307,191
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Amount of Debt Obama Increased over 2 yrs…….. $3,496,712,258,278

Amount of Debt Bush Increased over 8 yrs................ $4,899,100,310,609

Amount of Debt Obama would increase over 8 yrs.. $13,986,849,033,112



Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 22, 2011, 03:11:01 PM
Obamacare's New Enforcers [The IRS Grows Stronger.]
ATR ^ | 2011-02-21 | Ben Wilterdink




The workforce of the Internal Revenue Service currently consists of over 93,000 employees to collect and process tax returns and enforce tax laws. While this number is daunting in and of itself, the IRS recently released its new budget which calls for an additional 1,056 new IRS employees citing specifically the new demands placed on the agency due to the new healthcare law. Beyond just more employees the burden of the healthcare law would require more facilities and new systems to handle the task; U.S. News and World Report put the cost to taxpayers at over $359 million in fiscal year 2012 alone.

Included in the report are specifics about what the new IRS employees would be tasked with. This ranges from collecting taxes from the new ten percent tax on indoor tanning services to new drug excise taxes. The tax collecting burden placed on the IRS greatly increases with the implementation of Obamacare and costs the taxpayers more and more money just to keep up with the agency’s requirements that will continue to skyrocket...

Read more: http://www.atr.org/obamacares-new-enforcers-a5880#ixzz1Ehup4oKW


(Excerpt) Read more at atr.org ...


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Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 22, 2011, 03:12:46 PM
President’s Budget Demonstrates Commitment To Forced Unionization, Not Jobs
Townhall.com ^ | February 22, 2011 | Katie Gage




 As the nation seriously examines the role of government and the extent to which we should increase the debt as opposed to cutting spending, the President this past week submitted his financial blueprint for the nation in his budget.

Workers and small businesses have been heartened as of late by President Obama’s rhetoric concerning harmful regulations and the impact they have on job creation and economic development.

In an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal last month, the President wrote “small firms drive growth and create most new jobs in this country. We need to make sure nothing stands in their way.”

Therefore, many expected his budget to reflect this new commitment to small businesses by curtailing burdensome and onerous rules by cutting or not increasing funding to regulatory agencies like the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and National Mediation Board (NMB).

The President’s words were not matched with action. At a time when American families are tightening their belts, the White House's budget actually increased funding to the NLRB and NMB by $4,797,000. In fact, this comes after a $21,276,000 increase last year.

These agencies are not focused on helping small businesses turn around our economy. Instead, they are committed to putting in place policies that hurt job creators and reward Big Labor bosses by eliminating worker rights.

The NLRB has spent its time attempting to enact rules that shorten the election window in union-organizing drives, implement card check, institute electronic voting and create various bargaining units in one workplace, none of which creates a single job and only serve to produce uncertainty for job providers.

And as the NLRB has been leading an assault against employees and employers, the NMB has reversed a rule in place for nearly a century that required a majority of workers to select a collective bargaining unit, and instituted a policy that allows a small minority to determine the fate of an entire workforce.

These highly provocative and damaging actions have been enacted by bureaucrats that are Big Labor’s cronies.

For instance, the NLRB’s Craig Becker is a labor radical and prior to joining the agency, he served as counsel to both the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) and Service Employee International Union (SEIU). As has been reported numerous times, both unions' combined contributions in the 2008 presidential election in favor of President Obama totaled hundreds of millions of dollars.

The head of the NLRB, Wilma Liebman, is not much better. She previously worked for the Bricklayers and Allied Craftsmen as well as the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

At the NMB, is Linda Puchala, the former president of the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA) and the chair, Harry Hoglander was the executive vice president of the Air Line Pilots Association.

Any notion that these individuals would place laborers before labor leaders is long gone as their actions have been an obvious “payback” to Big Labor bosses.

The national budget debate brings all of this to the forefront as the President increases funding to these agencies, while the U.S. House attempted to de-fund the NLRB. Even though the vote failed, 176 Representatives voted in favor of it. But Congress isn’t done yet, as House Members are attempting to cut $50 million from the NLRB’s budget in order to save the taxpayer not only dollars, but essentially, their livelihoods.

This is not a time for political favors and government waste. It is, as the President said, time to make sure that “nothing stands in [the] way” of small businesses.

It is ludicrous that President Obama proposed a budget with increased funding to the NLRB and NMB when they have done nothing to help businesses, but plenty to hurt them. And now that the House is attempting to reign in this spending and provide a much needed check and balance on these agencies, it is becoming increasingly clear that neither the American worker nor the small business owner has an ally in the White House, which insists on doing the bidding of union bosses.



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Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 23, 2011, 05:09:32 AM
ObamaCare Is Already Damaging Health Care
Many of its changes don't kick in until 2014. But the law is forcing dramatic consolidation and reducing choice in the industry.
Text   By LLOYD M. KRIEGER
www.wsj.com


________________________ ________________________ _________-


The Republicans who now control the House of Representatives hope to repeal or defund ObamaCare, but the law has already yielded profound, destructive changes that will not be undone by repeal or defunding alone. Active steps and new laws will be needed to repair the damage.

The most significant change is a wave of frantic consolidation in the health industry. Because the law mandates that insurers accept all patients regardless of pre-existing conditions, insurers will not make money with their current premium and provider-payment structures. As a result, they have already started to raise premiums and cut payments to doctors and hospitals. Smaller and weaker insurers are being forced to sell themselves to larger entities.

Doctors and hospitals, meanwhile, have decided that they cannot survive unless they achieve massive size—and fast. Six years ago, doctors owned more than two-thirds of U.S. medical practices, according to the Medical Group Management Association. By next year, nearly two-thirds will be salaried employees of larger institutions.

Consolidation is not necessarily bad, as larger medical practices and hospital systems can create some efficiencies. But in the context of ObamaCare's spiderweb of rules and regulations, consolidation is more akin to collectivization. It means that government bureaucrats will be able to impose controls with much greater ease.

With far fewer and much larger entities to browbeat, all changes in Medicare and Medicaid policies will go through the entire system like a shock wave. There will be far fewer individual insurers, doctors, hospitals, device makers, drug manufacturers, nursing homes and other health-care players to resist.

View Full Image

Getty Images
 
Many doctors and hospitals have decided that they cannot survive unless they achieve massive size—and fast.

.There is little mystery how the government will exercise its power. Choices will be limited. Pathways to expensive specialist care such as advanced radiology and surgery will decline. Cutting-edge devices and medicines will come into the system much more slowly and be used much less frequently.

This is why simply defunding enforcement of the individual mandate and other upcoming directives will not be enough: Given all this consolidation, limits on treatment choices are already becoming hardwired into the system. Lawmakers must take concrete steps to stop and reverse this.

On the provider end, this means enacting tax and other economic shields for insurers and providers that choose not to succumb to the financial pressure encouraging consolidation. It means unwinding all of the rules—about data compilation, reporting and compliance requirements, and information technology—designed to increase overhead to the point that only massive and easily regulated provider organizations can survive.

Legislators will have to scrub the 2,700-page ObamaCare law line by line to remove all of the disincentives for medical practices, hospitals and others to remain smaller and independent.

On the consumer end, reform means re-establishing choice at all levels of the system. Lawmakers at a minimum should change the individual mandate so that people can choose what type of coverage they buy. To do this, legislation has to ensure that all consumers have access to a menu of options for varying types of coverage, and that they are free to purchase policies across state lines. There should also be tax breaks for people who purchase medical care not covered by their insurance, so there is reasonable chance of escaping government-imposed limits on treatment choices.

System-wide, collectivization will be dismantled only by limiting the power of government agencies to determine what care gets funded. That means new legislation to supersede Section 1311 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which requires herding everyone into "qualified plans" and forcing doctors (via fines, penalties and nonpayment) to follow care guidelines determined by the secretary of Health and Human Services.

ObamaCare is already doing great damage, even years before its individual mandate and other controls kick in. Its systematic undoing is an urgent necessity.

Dr. Krieger, a plastic surgeon, invests in health-care companies.
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 23, 2011, 07:36:53 AM
Industry Has Spoken… Will the President Listen?
By Kenneth P. Green and Hiwa Alaghebandian
 Wednesday, February 23, 2011



http://www.american.com/archive/2011/february/industry-has-spoken-will-the-president-listen/article_print



Filed under: Government & Politics, Public Square

In a survey of which regulations most impede the ability to do business, environmental regulation was the greatest concern.
 
In December 2010, Representative Darrell Issa, Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, launched an examination of regulatory barriers to business. Chairman Issa sent 171 letters to businesses, industry groups, and think tanks, asking them to identify the government regulations that most impede their ability to do business.

On February 7, 2011, Chairman Issa released a  of responses from 113 organizations. We dug into the file, and even we were surprised: While complaints about Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) regulations, the tax code, and provisions of the new healthcare law were expected, the clear focus of most responses was environmental regulation. As the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council warned:

The general regulatory thrust of the Administration with regard to energy and the environment will lead to less energy, higher energy prices, a disincentive to manufacture in the U.S. and massive job loss. Our energy sector is being forced into a regulatory vice—caps and restrictions are being imposed on how much America can use and produce, while excessive regulation on energy use and the industry are driving costs higher. Anti-energy activists in the regulatory bureaucracies seem accountable to no one. Unfortunately, small business owners and their workforce will bear the brunt of higher costs and widespread job loss if initiatives at the Environmental Protection Agency move forward.

Of the total complaints that each organization had agencies, EPA dominates the field. Of the 651 total complaints, 334 of those pertained to EPA—a whopping 51 percent.

Between Greenhouse Gas regulations through the Clean Air Act, Boiler Maximum Achievable Control Technology standards, and National Ambient Air Quality Standards for Ozone and other criteria pollutants, the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) onerous regulatory agenda was perceived as the greatest threat to business. The American Coke and Coal Chemicals Institute (ACCCI) explains:

In recent months, EPA has undertaken an unprecedented regulatory agenda by promulgating or proposing a host of rules in the areas of air, water, solid waste, greenhouse gases, and toxic chemicals … in a nutshell, these new regulations will create permitting obstacles to expand and modernize our facilities and will impose significant additional costs that are difficult recoup in the face of intense international competition.

ACCCI was not alone in their opinion. Counting the total number of complaints that each organization had about each agency, EPA dominates the field. Of the 651 total complaints, 334 of those pertained to EPA—a whopping 51 percent. The next closest agency—at only 8 percent—would be the Department of Labor, which combines complaints about OSHA, the Mine Safety and Health Administration, and National Labor Relations Board regulations.

 



 

Even taking a more conservative approach, tallying only the number of organizations who have complaints that pertain to each agency, yields similar results. EPA is still the clear winner, with 82 of 113 responses specifically mentioning the agency’s regulations. The distant runner up remains the Department of Labor, which was mentioned in 22 of the 113 responses.

 



 

Our methodology is not perfect, since responses varied in formatting, and not all organizations listed specific regulations or went into as much detail as others. For example, while the U.S. Chamber of Commerce listed 17 EPA regulations, the Association for Manufacturing Technology did not cite specific regulations, but rather explained that

in many cases, regulations are excessive, confusing and so costly that R&D and business development suffer as a result, hindering job growth and stifling innovation. This is particularly true with regulations originating from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), where it is obvious that regulators know little or nothing about manufacturing.

It is clear that EPA regulations are perceived as a serious obstruction to job creation and private-sector efficiency, and that proposed EPA regulations are seen as an even greater threat.
But despite the data’s limitations, EPA regulations are clearly perceived as a serious obstruction to job creation and private-sector efficiency, and proposed EPA regulations are seen as an even greater threat. The results are in, and the best way to fix onerous regulations is to cut the EPA. But will President Obama listen?

In his January 25, 2011, State of the Union address, President Obama expressed his concern about government regulation and promised, “When we find rules that put an unnecessary burden on businesses, we will fix them.”

Yet if President Obama’s 2012 budget proposal is any indication, the administration’s emphasis on climate regulation is not over. While the proposed plan cuts $1.3 billion from the EPA budget, the cut is mostly comprised of reduced funding for states’ clean water and drinking water projects, and the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative. The agency’s economically harmful regulatory agenda faces no serious budget cuts.

In its response to Chairman Issa’s letter, the Murray Energy Corporation expressed its concern for hardworking Americans “whose jobs and lives are being destroyed by Mr. Obama and his out-of-control, radical USEPA and his appointees to it.” While it is tempting to believe President Obama’s promises of change, all the evidence indicates that the president and his out-of-control EPA will continue burdening the private sector with excessive regulation.

Kenneth P. Green is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, where Hiwa Alaghebandian is a research assistant.

FURTHER READING: Green and Aleghebandian have also described how “Science Turns Authoritarian,” while Aleghebandian suggests a “Homework Assignment” for Congress on telework. Green uncovers “The Myth of Green Energy Jobs: The European Experience,” outlines “Empowering the Free Energy Markets,” and says it’s “Not Going Away: America's Energy Security, Jobs and Climate Challenges.”
Image by Rob Green/Bergman Group.
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 24, 2011, 12:48:27 PM
CBO: Jobs Created and Saved By Stimulus Cost At Minimum An Average of $228,055 Each
cnsnews.com ^ | Thursday, February 24, 2011 | By Matt Cover





(CNSNews.com) - The jobs created and saved by the economic stimulus law that President Barack Obama signed on Feb. 17, 2009 cost at a minimum an average of $228,055 each, according to data released yesterday by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

In a report released Wednesday—“Estimated Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act on Employment and Economic Output from October Through December 2010”—the CBO said it now estimates the stimulus law cost a total of $821 billion, up from CBO’s original estimate that the stimulus would cost $787 billion.

In the same report, the CBO estimated that in the fourth quarter of 2010 there were somewhere between 1.3 million and 3.5 million people who were then employed who would not have been had the stimulus not been enacted. “CBO estimates,” says the report, “that ARRA’s policies had the following effects in the fourth quarter of calendar year 2010: … Increased the number of people employed by between 1.3 million and 3.5 million.”

This estimate seeks to state the net impact the stimulus had on the number of people employed in the United States as a result of the stimulus, taking into account not only the new jobs believed to be created and the existing jobs believed to be killed by the stimulus, but also the existing jobs that were saved that otherwise would have been lost.

The CBO’s estimate that there were 1.3 million to 3.5 million people employed in the fourth quarter of 2010 who would not have been were it not for the stimulus represents a decline from the 1.4 million to 3.6 million people CBO estimated were employed as a result the stimulus during the third quarter of 2010. (See Table 1 in the report.) In fact, CBO now estimates that the apogee of the stimulus’s net job-creating-and-saving power occurred in the third quarter of 2010 when it believes somewhere between 1.4 million and 3.6 million people had jobs they would not have had except for the stimulus.

Thus, the $821 billion cost of the stimulus divided by the maximum of 3.6 million jobs the CBO believes the stimulus may have saved or created equals an average of $228,055 per job.

At the lower end of the CBO’s top job-creating-and-saving estimate for the stimulus—1.4 million jobs—the jobs would cost an average of $586,428 a piece.

In February 2009, when President Obama signed the stimulus law the national unemployment rate was 8.2 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In January 2011, the national unemployment rate was 9.0 percent.

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 24, 2011, 07:25:25 PM

Did Goldman Sachs Secretly Write Some Democratic Propaganda And Disguise It As Research?
Joe Weisenthal | Feb. 24, 2011, 8:42 PM | 894 |  6
 



A Goldman Sachs research report warning that austerity measures and a possible budget shut down would be a drag to growth is being seen as a covert piece of Democratic propaganda by some on the right.

The report, by Goldman economist Alec Phillips, was first surfaced yesterday by ABC, which published a few key paragraphs. See if you can spot the propaganda.

Proposals to cut federal spending, the possibility of a government shutdown, and the escalated debate over state employee compensation has increased interest in the effect of fiscal policy on growth, after last year’s fiscal package briefly neutralized the expected drag from federal fiscal policy.

Federal spending cuts deserve the most attention. They are the most likely of these issues to occur, and could have the largest magnitude. The assumption we incorporated into our recently revised budget estimates—discretionary spending cuts of $25bn and $50bn below the CBO baseline for FY2011 and FY2012 respectively—would shave nearly one percentage point off of the annualized rate of real GDP growth in Q2, but would fade quickly with a negligible effect on growth by year-end.
The related risk of a temporary federal government shutdown could also lead to a fiscal drag on growth, but this appears to be a lower probability scenario. We estimate that each week that the federal government is shut down would reduce federal spending by around $8bn, and could reduce real GDP growth by as much as 0.8 pp at an annualized rateher  in the quarter it occurred, but would provide a lift to growth in the following quarter as federal activity returned to the previous level.
Reuters' conservative columnist James Pethokoukis has been all over this. This morning he tweeted that this wasn't even economics, it was just arithmetic (though he later tweeted that after being pro Democratic, Goldman now gives more to the GOP)! Robert Wenzel goes further, saying that the report may have been deliberately timed to help the Democrats in the current budget battle, and that Goldman was "providing pitchforks" for the Democrats.

But sorry, ff you think there's pro-Democratic propaganda in the paragraphs above, you've got better eyes than we do. It specifically says that by the end of the year, the spending cuts would have a negligible effect, though it goes onto say that a government shutdown would have a more serious impact on growth.

Is there anyone that actually would dispute any of this? Not only does this seem blatantly obvious, but it's exactly the same message we see in almost every macro research report we read: One risk to GDP estimates is austerity. Here's another way to think about it: Just about everything we read after the tax cut deal was reached said that it would boost the GDP, and yet that, too, was basically pro-deficit Keynesianism in action.

Where were the howls of outrage over those reports? There weren't any.

Here's where people are getting tripped up. In the long term, more spending isn't a recipe for a robust economy. But in the short term, Goldman's point is incredibly conventional. And though people love to slam economists for their models and not predicting crises, in the short term, there's nothing too difficult about forecasting GDP

So go ahead and slam Wall Street's desire for a sugar-filled stimulus now, and for ignoring the long-term effects of policy. But the only aspect of Goldman's report that was intentionally timed was a desire to communicate to clients various scenarios for what's going on in DC.

Tags: Goldman Sachs, Politics | Get Alerts for these topics »

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-sachs-democratic-propaganda-2011-2#ixzz1EwB7suhL
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 25, 2011, 08:56:57 PM
IBD Editorials


Does Obama Want $8 Gasoline?


Posted 06:30 PM ET


Gas is going through the roof in prices not seen since 2008. This 76 station reflects Feb. 24 gas costs in Irvine, Calif.


Energy Policy: While we sit on abundant oil and natural gas reserves, prices at both the wellhead and the pump are rising on fears of spreading Mideast turmoil and short domestic supply. But then, maybe that's the plan.

The silver lining for this administration in the gathering storm over the Middle East may be what it's doing and may yet do to energy prices. The average price for gasoline jumped nearly 12 cents a gallon last week to $3.287, according to AAA. But at the White House, that's not necessarily bad news.

Oil has surged to 2 1/2-year highs as the chaos in Libya chokes that nation's exports. Yet among the "full range of options" the Obama administration is considering as the Libyan crisis festers, and the lit match of discontent gets perilously close to Saudi oilfields, ordering the full resumption of domestic oil and gas production is not one of them. Why?

Energy Secretary Steven Chu has said that "any disruption in the Middle East means a partial disruption in the oil we import. It's a world market, and (a disruption can) have real harm on the price." And so, we would think, would the orchestrated and carefully planned disruption of domestic supply by this administration.

It's not just Mideast turmoil that has brought us to this point. It's also a deliberate program of restricting domestic energy to make so-called green energy more attractive and necessary, keeping an Obama campaign promise that energy prices would "necessarily skyrocket" on his energy agenda.

Before he was appointed energy secretary, Chu expressed a fondness for high European gas prices as a means of reducing consumption of fossil fuels. In September 2008, he told the Wall Street Journal: "Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe." Gas prices in Europe then averaged about $8 a gallon.

Certainly every administration energy decision has had the effect of raising energy prices. The Deepwater Horizon disaster gave the administration the excuse for a drilling moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico, one that a federal judge overturned. When the administration reinstated the ban, it was found in contempt of court.

A virtual regulatory ban continues today. At least 103 drilling permits await approval by a federal government that has not approved a single new permit since the moratorium was allegedly lifted last October.

The administration has announced that the eastern Gulf and the Atlantic and Pacific coasts will be off-limits for the next seven years. The Interior Department has canceled four pending lease sales in Alaska.

Drilling in that state's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is prohibited, and oil-rich offshore areas have been designated as critical polar bear habitat despite a booming bear population.

The administration's hostility to fossil fuels is documented. Immediately on taking office, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar canceled 77 leases for oil and gas drilling in Utah. Recently, in a stunning land grab, Salazar issued an order allowing Bureau of Land Management officials to place land with "wilderness characteristics" off-limits to energy development. Some 6 million acres in energy-rich Utah would be affected.

The day before President Obama was inaugurated, the average price of a gallon of gas was $1.83, the Heritage Foundation notes. Today it's well over $3 and on the way to $4. Prices for this February and last December were the highest ever for those months.

John Hofmeister, former president of Shell Oil, told Platt's Energy Week Television that Americans could be paying $5 for a gallon of gasoline by 2012 based on the uncertainty of world events, the lack of domestic supply and increased worldwide demand fueled by countries like India and China.

Democrats once accused Big Oil of deliberately restricting supply to enrich itself. Now the Obama administration may be doing the same on purpose — a policy sure to impoverish us all.



http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/ArticlePrint.aspx?id=564290&p=1

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 26, 2011, 06:55:56 AM
Salazar: Won't Bow to Political Pressure to Restart Gulf Deepwater Drilling
Dow Jones Newswires via Rig Zone ^ | February 25, 2011 | Ryan Dezember




Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said that U.S. regulators would not bow to political pressure to restart deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico before they are certain the oil-and-gas industry is capable of containing an oil spill like the one that followed last BP's Deepwater Horizon disaster.

Salazar and Michael Bromwich--the head of the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, which oversees offshore drilling--were in Houston Friday to meet with oil industry executives to assess the spill-containment systems they have developed in the wake of nation's worst-ever marine oil spill.

Bromwich said he was "quite confident that we are getting very close to the point where we can begin issuing deepwater permits." But he and Salazar said the industry still has work to do before exploration of the Gulf's deepest waters can resume.

The U.S. government shut down deepwater drilling shortly after the Deepwater Horizon exploded on April 20, killing 11 and unleashing a catastrophic oil spill.

The government's official ban was lifted in October, but regulators have yet to allow drilling to resume in water deeper than 500 feet despite mounting political pressure from congressional Republicans and Gulf Coast Democrats to reopen one of the nation's primary energy fields.

"We don't respond to political pressure," Salazar said. "We are frankly doing what's right for America's energy program."

Both Helix Energy Solutions Group, whose system helped stem the flow of BP's runaway well last summer, and the nonprofit Marine Well Containment Co., formed by a consortium of major oil companies, say their systems are ready to respond to spills on par with Deepwater Horizon. But the nation's top energy regulators said that they felt differently.

"These containment systems are work in progress," Salazar told reporters after the meetings. "Both systems currently have limitations on water depth ...


(Excerpt) Read more at rigzone.com ...
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 26, 2011, 07:18:10 AM
Environmentalists Damaging US Economy and Job Growth
oilprice.com ^ | 2-26-11 | Liz Peek


________________________ ________________________ ____--



Environmentalists Damaging US Economy and Job Growth

Written by Liz Peek Thursday, 17 February 2011 13:43

If President Obama is serious about smoothing the path for U.S. businesses, he should take up reading the newspaper. Not a day goes by that he wouldn’t find opportunities aplenty to unclog our regulatory arteries.

This past Friday was no exception. The issue? A proposed coal terminal on the Columbia River in Washington. A terminal that would facilitate coal shipments to China, thus aiding one of Mr. Obama’s professed goals—ramping up U.S. exports.

Unfortunately, as the Wall Street Journal reported, local environmentalists want the project scuttled. Not because the terminal’s operations would damage Washington State’s air or water quality, but because burning the coal in far-off China might foul the air – there.

For the record, they also argue that the environmental consequences of mining the coal in Wyoming and Montana have not been sufficiently researched. Let us immediately discard this latter notion. We have been mining in those coal-rich states for more than a century; I’m pretty confident that residents in the region have looked into the attendant pros and cons. In any event, it is the former dispute that should unhinge anyone concerned with our country’s future.

Those opposed to the terminal will argue that if the Chinese have access to our coal, they will not pursue clean energy technologies. The green lobby will thus link U.S. exports to some increased degradation of global air quality. This argument fails because our coal burns cleaner than China’s indigenous resources, which is their most likely alternative. China’s sulfur content, for instance, is 1.1% compared to 0.8% for the Powder River fuel at issue. China’s coal also burns with higher ash. The Chinese, in other words, are not inconsiderate of the environmental impact of energy production.

Not only have they have been building cleaner coal-burning power plants in recent years, moderating the pollution impact, but they have chosen to import more expensive lower sulfur fuel. This policy at the moment is being stonewalled by environmentalists –go figure. At the same time, the Chinese have made vast investments in all kinds of alternative energy production, including nuclear and also “green” approaches. The extraordinary growth of the country –last year at 10.3% and by most estimates better than 9% this year – requires that they pursue all available power sources.

Meanwhile, as the green group wrings their hands over emissions in China, U.S. citizens go without a $100 million project, billed as likely to produce 125 construction jobs and 75 permanent jobs, in a region where unemployment exceeds 12%.

As it happens, the shipping of coal to China is also currently limited by a shortage of suitable West Coast terminals. As U.S. utilities migrate to using cleaner-burning natural gas, of which we have an abundant supply, coal producers are increasingly looking for new markets. Exporting to countries like China seems a great opportunity – an opportunity that environmentalists are currently prohibiting. Apparently some companies are exporting through Vancouver, where the enticement of jobs and income evidently overwhelmed green protests.

This situation is symptomatic of the kind of hurdles that U.S. companies routinely face. It is time to put the needs of our workers ahead of all other considerations – including the gigantic environmental lobby. When Mr. Obama finishes straightening up this imbroglio, he might next turn his attentions to another item that showed up in Friday’s paper- Shell Oil’s abandonment for the current year of its drilling program offshore Alaska – on acreage it has under lease in the Beaufort Sea. Because the company was unable to secure air permits from the EPA for the project, Shell will not be able to spend the expected $100 to $150 million on a test well. U.S. Senator Mark Begich (D-Alaska) claimed the stalling by the EPA cost the state 800 direct jobs and millions in related contracting work. Meanwhile, the trans-Alaska pipeline operates at one-third capacity.

I can’t wait to see what’s in today’s paper.

By Liz Peek of The Fiscal Times

Source: Business Insider

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 27, 2011, 04:17:57 AM
February 27, 2011
Obfuscating Inflation
By Steve McCann



The government in Washington D.C. seems to be going out of its way to obfuscate and confuse the American citizens as to various economic factors and what the reality is of the situation the people find themselves in.  Instinctively the people know matters are worse than what they are being told and with the most incompetent and unscrupulous resident of the White House in the country's history in charge there is great unease that their government is not being honest with its citizens.  More than ever the American people deserve to be told the truth.


Among the most confusing of statistics is the unemployment rate.  The government adjusts for "seasonal factors", those who have supposedly dropped out of the labor force and some who are collecting or not collecting unemployment benefits.  The result of these adjustments is a number no one accepts as reality.


There is one simple way to look at the job situation that, while not 100% scientifically accurate, does reflect the real employment situation.   


In 2000 the population of the United States was, per the US Census, 281,421,906.  In that same year the US Payroll Employment: Total Non-Agricultural was 130,781,000 or 46.6% of the population.  The Bureau of Labor Statistics showed an unemployment rate then of 4.0%.  Thus full employment in 2000 would have been 136,000.000 people or 48.3% of the population. 


The most recent national census completed in April 2010 revealed the population of the country had increased to 309,745,538.    In the same month of 2010 the US Payroll Employment: Total Non-Agricultural was 129,750,000 or 41.5% of the population.   Per the full employment factor of 48.3% in 2000 there should be a full employment labor force of 149,607.000 in 2010.


Therefore using the actual payroll employment of 129,750,000 in 2010 versus the theoretical full employment of 150,226,000 the employment rate is 86.4%.  Thus the unemployment rate is 13.6% as compared to the factors extant in 2000, the year of the last national census.


Essentially the unemployment rate is a statistical variable based on input and can be manipulated; however the bottom line is: over the past decade payroll employment has dropped by 1,031,000 while the total population has increased by 28,323,000.  Had the country maintained the same employment level as in 2000 there should have been 13,310,000 more people employed instead 14,331,000 jobs were lost or not created.


The US Census Bureau estimates that by 2020 the population of the United States will be 342,000,000, an increase of 33 million versus 2010.  Therefore to achieve the employment level established in 2000 by 2020 another 15,500,000 jobs will need to be created on top of the 14,331,000 lost in the previous decade.  Therefore nearly 30 million jobs or 3 million per year over the next 10 years must be established to achieve the levels experienced in 2000.   


The bottom line and the only meaningful job statistic the American people should pay attention to: if the monthly job creation number is not at least 250,000 every month then the United States is going backwards regardless of any games played by the various government agencies and their data.


Another area of obfuscation is the true cost of living and the rising cost of commodities and industrial raw materials.


The worldwide commodities markets are in a turmoil brought about by the lower yields for food staples, the upheavals in the Middle-East, the beginning of an economic recovery in the rest of the world and the inflationary impact of the Federal Reserve quantative easing programs.  Some commodities such as cotton are up 140% over a year ago.   


A key factor in the rise of commodity prices has been the decline in the value of the dollar.  As points of comparison over the past two years:  the Dollar has declined 16% versus the Japanese Yen, the Canadian Dollar by over 21%, and the Swiss Franc by 22%.


The best way to see the overall impact of commodity price increases is to track the various indices which contain a large basket of items within each category.  Since February of 2009 all the major indices are up significantly.  Despite the protestations of the Federal Reserve and the abandonment of fiscal responsibility of the Obama administration, these charts and the information they reveal will manifest themselves in the U.S. economy particularly coupled with the very real possibility of an oil cut-off form the Middle East.


This chart tracks the Agricultural Raw Material Index (increase 81% since 2009):




The Food Price Index (increase 49% since 2009):





The most volatile index of all has been the Metals Price Index which has increased 137%:






Lastly the Fuel (Energy) Index has increased 82% since 2009 but is destined to go higher:




There is simply no way these factors will not impact the inflationary trend here in the United States in the immediate future, killing any chance for a recovery.  Rarely have all these indices been on such a sustained rise in such a short period of time, and unless there is another global recession they will continue to do so.  Already other countries around the world have taken steps to fight inflation while the Federal Reserve is still contemplating deflation and continuing with its quantatative easing program (essentially printing money) while the Obama administration throws fuel on the fire by proceeding with its profligate spending agenda.


The American people should pay attention to theses indices.  As long as these trends continue inflation will hit the shores of the United States regardless of any obfuscation or misreporting by the Government.


It is beyond time for truth telling in Washington D.C. as the economy begins to tip into another downturn that maybe further accelerated by the chaos in the Middle East.

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/02/obfuscating_inflation.html at February 27, 2011 - 06:13:57 AM CST
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 27, 2011, 06:06:43 AM
Obama: 'Investment' spending essential to 'win the future' (Chicom issued WTF credit cards?)
The Hill ^ | 2/26/11 | Julian Pecquet




Obama: 'Investment' spending essential to 'win the future'
By Julian Pecquet - 02/26/11 06:00 AM ET


President Obama reiterated his call for Congress to invest in the nation's long-term future in his weekly address Saturday, at times repeating almost to the word what he said during his State of the Union address last month.


As lawmakers prepare to take up a stop-gap budget bill to keep the government funded past the end of next week, the president again linked the twin goals of out-educating and out-innovating the rest of the world while getting the nation back on sound fiscal footing.


"Investments in education, innovation, and infrastructure are an essential down payment on our future," he said. "But ... the only way we can afford these investments is by getting our fiscal house in order. Just like any family, we have to live within our means to make room for things we absolutely need."


Fiscal conservatives criticized the president's budget proposal last week for running up the national deficit to a record $1.6 trillion this year while punting on solutions to the problem of growing entitlement spending.


In his weekly address, the president defended his proposal to freeze domestic spending over the next five years, which he said would cut non-security discretionary spending down to a share of the economy "lower than it was under Ronald Reagan."


And he called on Congress to propose cuts to "defense spending, spending in Medicare and Medicaid, and spending through and tax breaks and loopholes."


"I'm willing to consider any serious ideas to help us reduce the deficit - no matter what party is proposing them," Obama said. "But instead of cutting the investments in education and innovation we need to out-compete the rest of the world, we need a balanced approach to deficit reduction. We all need to be willing to sacrifice, but we can't sacrifice our future."


He ended with a hope that bipartisanship will prevail as the Republican-led House and the Democratic Senate negotiate a budget compromise next week. The two bodies have radically different views of what should be in the spending bill for the rest of the year, and are now expected to pass a short-term budget next week to give them some negotiating time past March 4.


"For the sake of our people and our economy, we cannot allow gridlock to prevail," Obama said. "(...)I look forward to working with members of both parties to produce a responsible budget that cuts what we can't afford, sharpens America's competitive edge in the world, and helps us win the future."

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 27, 2011, 05:54:51 PM
Skip to comments.
Feds to let airport screeners gain union rights
 OneNewsNow ^ | FEBRUARY 4, 2011 | Chris Woodward




A union leader says the government has decided to grant collective bargaining rights to the nation's 40,000 airport screeners... Republican opponents say that could jeopardize national security.

James Sherk, a labor expert at The Heritage Foundation, calls the decision a huge loss for airline security and passengers. He says there is a reason that most national security agencies by law do not have unions -- and that is because the union contracts make it more difficult for them to do their jobs.

"Canada has a system where they allow their security screeners to unionize -- and they've had problems where, over Thanksgiving, they won't go on strike, but what they'll do is insist on hand-inspecting every piece of luggage," explains Sherk. "So you get enormous backlog and enormous delays for [airline passengers] because the unions are trying to exhort pressure on the company to give them what they want at the negotiations."

Sherk has other concerns as well. "With a union contract, it's very difficult to fire poor performers," he states. "It's difficult to move workers where you need them, when you need them. The potential for a labor action would be catastrophic."

TSA badgeKatie Gage, head of the Workforce Fairness Institute, says the Obama administration is paying back big labor for its support by agreeing to grant collective bargaining rights to airport screeners. "At the time that [Barack Obama] was first elected, it was made very clear by folks within the ranks of organized labor that they expected a payback on that front."

Gage does not think it is a great idea if the country started to unionize the Coast Guard, for example -- adding that it certainly does not make sense to put an agency responsible for the nation's security under control of big labor bosses...


(Excerpt) Read more at onenewsnow.com ...
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 27, 2011, 07:23:48 PM
3M Chief Warns Obama Over Business Regulation
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/bd9b4100-429b-11e0-8b34-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1FDHpURBO ^ | February 27 2011 | Hal Weitzman



By Hal Weitzman in Chicago

Published: February 27 2011 19:27 | Last updated: February 27 2011 19:27

The head of one of the US’s biggest industrial groups has launched a scathing attack on Barack Obama’s attempts to repair relations with companies, dubbing him “anti-business”.


(Excerpt) Read more at ft.com ...


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 27, 2011, 07:28:56 PM
NEWS & COMMENTARY 
Is Team Obama lying to us
Or do they just not know their math?
You decide. We and Joe Wilson have made up our minds
 

February 26, 2011



We've notice in recent months as the recession has dragged on and on with little improvement that the Obama Administration is playing a game with both the Gross Domestic Product numbers and the unemployment numbers. The game is: They release reports that show improvement. The next month they "revise the previous month/quarter" and there is a pattern. The revisions are always downward, and in many cases the revised numbers would not have been a statistically significant improvement as they trumpeted.

Here are two such examples this month:

On January 29, 2011 the New York Times reported that: "The gross domestic product, a broad measure of the goods and services produced in the country, grew at an annual rate of 3.2 percent in the fourth quarter, up from 2.6 percent in the previous period, according to a Commerce Department report released Friday." The Times then opined that: "Because of this slightly speedier expansion, the nation's overall economic output has finally matched its peak before the recession. Still, given the millions of jobless American workers, the economy has fallen far short of what it could be if it were healthy, economists said."

On February 25 the Associated Press reported: "Deeper spending cuts by state and local governments weighed down U.S. economic growth in the final three months of last year.

The government's new estimate for the October-December quarter illustrates how growing state budget crises could hold back the economic recovery.

The Commerce Department reported Friday that economic growth increased at an annual rate of 2.8 percent in the final quarter of last year. That was down from the initial estimate of 3.2 percent.

The weaker figure was disappointing and prompted some economists to lower their forecasts for economic growth in the current January-March quarter."

Are they lying to us, or do they just make a mistake every month? You decide.


http://www.beaufortobserver.net/Articles-c-2011-02-26-251135.112112-Is-Team-Obama-lying-to-usbrOr-do-they-just-not-know-their-mathbrYou-decide-We-and-Joe-Wilson-have-made-up-our-minds.html

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 28, 2011, 05:18:59 AM
February 28, 2011
Obama Nixes Safe Drilling
By Jeffrey Folks


________________________ _____________



Interior Secretary Ken Salazar was in Houston this weekend talking with oil executives who are eager to start drilling again in the Gulf of Mexico. That may sound like progress, but after the meeting Salazar said that nothing had changed. He was not ready to approve any new drilling.


Despite everything that energy companies have done to devise advanced containment systems, Salazar is unwilling to issue a single new permit. Systems constructed by the nonprofit Marine Well Containment Company and other entities are now able to handle a flow equal or greater than that experienced during the Deepwater Horizon accident last summer. But that's not enough for Salazar, who stated that even the most advanced systems have "limitations on water depth and barrel-per-day containment capacity."


Well, yes. Any system that could be devised would have limitations on depth and per-barrel capacity. But that's not the point, as Mr. Salazar must know. The question is whether the new systems are able to handle the sorts of accident that might actually take place. Not the worst scenario that someone from the Interior Department could dream up. Combined with safely protocols now in place, the new containment equipment can do just that.


So why no permits for new drilling? It appears that the Obama administration is more interested in kowtowing to environmental donors in advance of the 2012 election than it is in controlling energy prices. Even with a federal court order to decide on new drilling in the Gulf by March 20, the Obama administration remains obdurate.


By refusing to grant a single deep-water permit in the Gulf, Obama has shut down access to one third of America's oil supply. With Libyan oil fields now closed indefinitely and with uncertainty about future production elsewhere in the Middle East, it is a dreadful time to be shutting down America's oil fields as well. Turmoil in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait, or Iraq would drive the price of oil up above $150 a barrel, at the very least. A prudent policy would be to increase domestic production in light of uncertainty abroad.


Some Americans are already paying $4 a gallon for gas, but this is not just because of what's happening in the Middle East. Government action on Gulf drilling permits would immediately calm the oil markets and bring down prices, even though new production would not come on line for several years. But instead of reducing prices, Obama seems is intent on driving them up.


It's not just the Gulf of Mexico that is off limits. Obama opposes drilling anywhere offshore, including in the rich arctic region which is known to hold billions of barrels of oil reserves.


Just as bad, in his FY2012 budget Obama proposes cutting $4.4 billion of annual tax deductions for oil and gas drilling -- deductions for depreciation and amortization that date back to 1913. Those tax deductions help energy companies pay for exploratory projects that then result in lower energy costs for all Americans. At a time when Obama is throwing away $100 billion on risky alternative energy boondoggles, a number of which have already gone bankrupt, he wants to end those modest tax advantages that actually result in the production of large quantities of new energy. That sort of accounting only makes sense to a politician.


Obama, in fact, is doing everything possible to curtail domestic energy production, and yet he says that "our dependence on foreign oil threatens our national security." If reliance on foreign oil puts America at risk, why not produce more oil at home? New drilling techniques including fracking, horizontal drilling, and deep-water drilling now make it possible to do just that, but Obama opposes all of these.


If the President knows that dependence on foreign oil threatens our national security and that new drilling techniques can increase domestic supplies, why is he intent on destroying our domestic oil and gas industry?   


America is going to need new oil and gas production in a big way. In a new report, Charles T. Maxwell, the dean of U.S. energy analysts, has gone on record saying that regardless of what happens in the Middle East, oil prices are going up, way up. In a Barron's interview Maxwell stated that oil prices will hit $300 by 2020. Maxwell arrives at this number by way of a straightforward calculation. By about 2015 global oil production will peak, but demand will continue to increase on a global basis.


That leaves Americans paying $12 a gallon for gas, which is just about what Obama has said he wants. That certainly will help to end our dependence on foreign oil. The problem is there won't be anything to take its place.


At $12 a gallon, we won't be driving around much in large SUVs or in small SUVs, either. Nor will we be enjoying cheap air fares or discounted cruises. The cost of transporting goods will triple, as will the cost of heating homes, schools, and offices. And those who think that solar and wind will take the place of fossil fuels are sadly mistaken.


As Maxwell points out, solar energy now supplies one tenth of one percent of America's energy needs. Even with massive subsidies -- the kind of subsidies that have already bankrupted the Spanish economy -- solar and wind will never supply more than a small percentage of America's energy needs. Since Obama, through EPA restrictions, is busy sabotaging coal and natural gas as well, and since America has no serious nuclear program underway, we are left with nothing.


Only a president who is extraordinarily stupid would fail to see this. Conclusion: Obama is either extraordinarily stupid, or he is willing to trade America's national security for the support of environmentalist donors who are key to his re-election. Whichever it is, we're in trouble.


Jeffrey Folks is the author of many books and article on American culture.

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/02/obama_nixes_safe_drilling.html


 at February 28, 2011 - 07:14:47 AM CST
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 28, 2011, 01:36:25 PM
Good News! New Smog Regulations Could Cost 7.3 Million Jobs!
Hotair ^ | 02/28/2011 | Jazz Shaw




With a hat tip to Jammie Wearing Fool, we find the AP reporting on a rather inflammatory potential job loss number coming out of a new study on the effects of proposed Obama administration smog regulations.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Industry officials say with confidence that 7.3 million jobs will disappear if the Obama administration goes through with tighter rules to reduce smog. The industry-sponsored researcher who came up with that number isn’t so sure.

“There’s uncertainty around that,” economist Don Norman said of the “shockingly high” job loss number he extrapolated using a study sponsored by the oil and natural gas industry’s American Petroleum Institute and covering just 11 states.

This story actually serves as a cautionary tale from two different directions, and for once I’m inclined to at least partially agree with the AP’s conclusions. Studies concerning things that have happened can be quite conclusive, assuming you’re given enough time to collect and analyze all of the appropriate data. But studies on what may happen in the future should always find the savvy news shopper exercising some restraint.

The models in question are, by the admission of the researcher, all using worst case analysis numbers, so the true figures may be considerably lower. Factor that in with the fact that you’re never going to bat 100% in the prognostication business and you’ll probably find that 7.3 million figure rather hard to hang your hat on. But that doesn’t mean that the general direction of trends is in question.

One would imagine by now that the effects of too much regulation would be well known. And when you start applying environmental standards which carry a direct impact on business without taking that into account, the rule of unintended consequences is in play.

But let’s say that the 7.3 million figure is complete pie in the sky. (Though not a pie any of you would care to eat, I’m sure.) I think I can still agree with Don Norman.

“Even if the numbers are half of that, the number is huge,” he said.

We’re still at the point where any number of jobs going out the door rather than being created is too large of a figure. And that doesn’t look to be changing any time soon.

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 01, 2011, 10:05:34 AM
Federal workers surge, private sector down
One News Now ^ | 3/1/2011 | Chris Woodward





While the private sector workforce in America has dwindled in recent years, a new report shows that the federal workforce has gone the opposite direction.

Since December 2007, the private sector has shed more than 7.5 million jobs and decreased by 6.6 percent. But Rea Hederman, research fellow and assistant director of The Heritage Foundation's Center for Data Analysis, compares that to the federal workforce's numbers.

"The federal government has increased by almost 12 percent of total workers," he reports. "Over 230,000 new federal workers have been hired in the last three years," excluding census and postal workers.

And while the trend may have begun in December 2007, it has continued to be the norm throughout the Obama administration. Since President Obama was sworn into office, the private sector workforce has shrunk by 2.6 percent, compared to the public sector's seven-percent increase. But Hederman warns that the divide may grow even larger as the president's 2012 budget proposes more federal jobs.

"ObamaCare means we'll need a lot more federal workers to carry out a lot of the intrusive elements of the bill, such as analyzing people's tax returns on a monthly basis," the research fellow notes. "That's why the IRS says we need about 4,100 new workers."

Overall, he says President Obama wants to create roughly 15,000 new jobs on the federal level.


(Excerpt) Read more at onenewsnow.com ...
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 02, 2011, 04:21:30 AM
How Green Is Your Lost Job?
IBD Editorials ^ | March 1, 2011 | Staff


________________________ ________________________ ________-



Power: A study of renewable energy in Scotland shows that for every job created in the alternative energy sector, almost four jobs are lost in the rest of the economy. We've seen this movie before.

Not only has the sun set on the British Empire, but the promise of wind apparently is deserting it as well. A new study called "Worth The Candle?" by the consulting firm Verso Economics confirms the experience of Spain and other countries: The creation of "green" jobs destroys other jobs through the diversion of resources and the denial of abundant sources of fossil fuel energy.

The economic candle in the U.K. is being blown out by wind power. The Verso study finds that after the annual diversion of some 330 million British pounds from the rest of the U.K. economy, the result has been the destruction of 3.7 jobs for every "green" job created.

The study concludes that the "policy to promote renewable energy in the U.K. has an opportunity cost of 10,000 direct jobs in 2009-10 and 1,200 jobs in Scotland." So British taxpayers, as is the case here in the U.S., are being forced to subsidize a net loss of jobs in a struggling economy.

"There's a big emphasis in Scotland on the economic opportunity of investing in renewable energy," says study co-author and Verso research director Richard Walsh. "Whatever the environmental merits, we have shown that the case for green jobs just doesn't stack up."


(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 02, 2011, 05:01:15 AM
COLE: Obama’s helping hand hoodwinks homeowners
Government mortgage assistance can be worse than nothing
By Rebel A. Cole
-
The Washington Times
6:42 p.m., Tuesday, March 1, 2011



Back in March 2009, the Obama administration unveiled the Home Affordable Modification Program, or HAMP, a program for helping delinquent borrowers save their homes from foreclosure - a problem that got worse again in reports released just last week. The goal of HAMP was to “help 3 to 4 million homeowners by 2012.” This phrase should have read “help or hurt” because hurt is exactly what has happened to hundreds of thousands of homeowners who have attempted to use HAMP to save their homes.

How is it possible that a program for providing mortgage modifications could hurt homeowners? To understand this, we need only look at how HAMP has worked - in practice. As reported in its most recent report for December 2010, HAMP has led to 1.47 million “trial modifications” that have resulted in 580,000 “permanent modifications,” but 735,000 “trial modifications [have been] canceled.” The half-million permanent modifications are noteworthy achievements, so long as they don’t result in a high percentage of re-defaults, as has been the case for past modifications.

But what about the almost three-quarter-million borrowers whose trial modifications were canceled? Are they better off or worse off from participating in HAMP? In perhaps hundreds of thousands of cases, the answer is worse - far worse. To understand how that happened, we must go back in time to see how and why these borrowers entered into the program. According to a survey by ProPublica, a nonprofit journalism organization, almost half of respondents reported that “they were advised, incorrectly, to fall behind on their mortgage in order to qualify for a modification.” In other words, these homeowners were current on their mortgages and only defaulted in order to qualify for HAMP - because you had to be in default before you could get government help. Indeed, the survey respondents reported, they only fell behind on their payments after being advised by their lender, loan servicer or other supposedly reliable third party that it could help their situation. Extrapolating the survey results to the 1.4 million HAMP participants, this situation likely describes the experience of a half-million homeowners: duped into delinquency.

As bad as this sounds, it gets much worse because these borrowers typically were not told all the potential consequences of falling behind on their mortgages. Consider the case of one borrower I know who followed the advice of his servicer to default in order to qualify for a trial modification, as HAMP is only available to delinquent homeowners. This borrower successfully obtained a trial modification that reduced his monthly payment from $2,000 to just $1,200. The trials are supposed to last just three months, but after three months, this borrower was told to continue making the modified payments until a decision could be made on his application for a permanent modification. Eight months passed, with eight timely modified payments made to the servicer, and then the homeowner was notified that the application had been denied because of failure to file required paperwork that had, in fact, been filed but that the servicer had lost repeatedly. ProPublica reports that “losing documents and giving false information” is an almost universal complaint of respondents to its survey.

Worse yet, this homeowner was told that he was responsible not only for the next month’s full mortgage payment of $2,000, but also for the cumulative difference in the trial and full payments for the previous eight months (a total of $6,400), for late fees ($800), for foreclosure fees ($1,900) and for foreclosure attorney fees (1,400), a grand total of $10,500. This borrower, who was never advised of this possible outcome, did not have $10,500 saved up for such a contingency and could not comply. Instead, the servicer initiated foreclosure proceedings, where the situation now stands. Fortunately, this borrower lives in a judicial foreclosure state where the process can take longer. In a statutory foreclosure state like Virginia, the house likely would have been lost already at a sheriff’s sale.

Was this homeowner helped or hurt by HAMP? He was in financial distress but able to make his monthly payment by skimping on everything else. He reached out to HAMP for a lifeline; instead, he received a noose around his financial neck.

How could this situation have been avoided? Clearly, more disclosure would have helped. With the full set of facts regarding potential outcomes, this homeowner and the hundreds of thousands in similar situations never would have defaulted in the first place. Better yet, why don’t regulators require servicers to accept the modified payment as payment in full for the length of the trial-modification period, require servicers to make a binding decision after the three-month trial period and require servicers to forgo late fees and other penalties when a trial modification fails? Or perhaps, as Republican lawmakers have suggested, it is simply time to pull the plug on HAMP and apply the $30 billion that remains allocated for HAMP to other purposes.

Of course, the servicers don’t want to give up these lucrative sources of income, which have turned foreclosure into a profit center at the expense not only of borrowers, but also of the investor-lenders whom the servicers represent. Typically, fees get paid to servicers before principal and interest go to investors. In fact, investors want to change the terms of their contracts with servicers to put their own best interests ahead of the interests of the servicers. However, the trustees who represent most investors are other Wall Street bankers, who thus far have failed to take action against the servicers, who also are Wall Street bankers.

Just last week, the December S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index confirmed that housing has entered into a double-dip recession. December data from LPS Applied Analytics shows that 2.2 million mortgages are in the process of foreclosure; another 2.1 million are seriously delinquent and most likely headed into foreclosure. At the current rate of foreclosure sales, we are looking at three years or more before this inventory works its way through the legal system; as it does so, housing prices will continue to decline, dragged down by the sale of foreclosed properties. Until changes are made to the way delinquent mortgages are serviced in the United States, the housing market will continue to decline, likely dragging our economy into a double-dip recession.

Rebel A. Cole is professor of finance and real estate at DePaul University.

© Copyright 2011 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 02, 2011, 05:18:07 AM
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/02/the-minimal-impact-of-the-stimulus/#more-102276

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

March 2, 2011, 6:00 am The Minimal Impact of the Stimulus
By CASEY B. MULLIGAN
 Casey B. Mulligan is an economics professor at the University of Chicago.



Last week’s final report on gross domestic product for 2010 provides a fresh opportunity to evaluate the stimulus law passed two years ago. The data and economic reasoning suggest that the effect of government spending on G.D.P. was minimal at best.

As planned, almost all of the tax cuts and public spending increases from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 are finished. The Obama administration and its supporters promised that the fiscal stimulus law would create or save more than three million jobs by now. Their stated intention was to provide government spending while the economy was weak, then end the extra spending as the economy recovered.

But instead of adding jobs, employment is now about two million below what it was when the law was passed in February 2009.

Some of us think that the fiscal stimulus made a bad situation worse, and that employment would have grown, or fallen less, if the stimulus law had not been passed. The Obama administration contends that, apart from the stimulus law, the economy was in worse shape than anyone expected, and that the law kept the employment drop to two million, rather than a potential drop of more than five million.

While the increase in the stimulus by design coincided with economic weakness, the stimulus decline did not coincide with economic strength. Unemployment rates remained high, and employment, home prices and the Federal funds rate remained low as stimulus spending was winding down (as this profile of stimulus spending shows; note that we are now in the middle of fiscal year 2011).

If Keynesian stimulus advocates are correct, economic growth should have been sharply reduced when stimulus spending slowed.

I use real G.D.P. results from the Bureau of Economic Analysis to measure actual economic growth through the end of 2010. In order to compare the results with the Keynesian theory, I assume a government spending multiplier of 1.5, as the Obama administration did when it projected the impact of the law.

Such a multiplier means that each additional dollar in government spending adds $1.50 to G.D.P., and each dollar subtracted from government spending subtracts $1.50 from G.D.P.

Because we know that the economy would have been weak in the first few quarters of the stimulus regardless of the law, I do not begin the measurement until the fourth quarter of 2009, when the president’s Council of Economic Advisers declared that the stimulus law had successfully started a slow recovery.

If the advisers were right, economic growth should have increased further when government spending grew still faster in the next couple of quarters, and then grown more slowly as government spending grew more slowly later in 2010.

I have illustrated the Keynesian-multiplier-1.5 as a red line in the chart below, and the actual results as blue squares. The blue square at the end of the red line is the data for the fourth quarter of 2009. If the multiplier of 1.5 held up, all of the data for the subsequent quarters should have appeared on the red line. (The quarters represented by the squares are not in chronological order.)


 Instead, actual G.D.P. growth ended up below the red line and, more important, the quarters with more government spending growth tend to be those with less G.D.P. growth.

Stimulus advocates lament that the stimulus law was too small and was significantly offset by shrinking state and local government spending. But my chart measures total government spending at all levels.

We can see from the chart that real government spending did in fact grow rapidly at times and grow slowly at other times: the actual growth rates range from less than 1 percent per year to more than 7 percent per year.

The red line shows that the range was wide enough to, according to the 1.5 multiplier, make G.D.P. growth rates of almost 9 percent per year (technical note: as drawn, the red line does not have a slope of 1.5 because, in terms of growth rates, the slope is the product of 1.5 and the ratio of government spending to G.D.P.).

A number of Keynesians outside the Obama administration would distinguish government spending on “transfers to individuals” from government spending on goods and services (among other things, government spending on goods and services is automatically counted in G.D.P.; transfers are not).

My chart’s green line shows an alternate Keynesian hypothetical based on a multiplier of 0.75, which might represent a smaller multiplier for transfers.

(Because the Obama administration’s original projection made no distinction between purchases and transfers to individuals – even though it knew that much federal spending would be the latter and some federal grants to state and local governments would allow those governments to make transfers – the 1.5 hypothetical is the appropriate one for evaluating their promises of stimulus results, even it is not appropriate for evaluating other Keynesian theories).

The blue squares showing actual results for our economy do not fit anywhere in the cone formed by the two Keynesian hypotheticals, suggesting that, contrary to the Keynesian promises, the stimulus law did not noticeably increase G.D.P. and might even decrease it.

After all, the stimulus spending penalized success, since its benefits — for example, extending unemployment insurance — were aimed at people and businesses with low incomes, and not at those who were working and/or achieving a certain income level. So it would be no surprise if the result was to keep incomes below what they would have been — as in other cases, a counterproductive result of a well-intentioned program.

Perhaps you think that government spending does its stimulation with a lag, but the Keynesian theories do not fit the lagged data any better. The chart below is the same as the one above except that government spending growth is measured in the quarter prior to the G.D.P. growth.

Again, the data fail to fall in the cone predicted by the 0.75 to 1.5 range of Keynesian multipliers. (Further variations on these charts provide no better results).
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 02, 2011, 05:43:14 AM
Why the Dollar's Reign Is Near an End
WSJ ^ | 3/1/11 | BARRY EICHENGREEN




For decades the dollar has served as the world's main reserve currency, but, argues Barry Eichengreen, it will soon have to share that role. Here's why—and what it will mean for international markets and companies.

The single most astonishing fact about foreign exchange is not the high volume of transactions, as incredible as that growth has been. Nor is it the volatility of currency rates, as wild as the markets are these days.

Instead, it's the extent to which the market remains dollar-centric.

But as astonishing as that is, what may be even more astonishing is this: The dollar's reign is coming to an end.

The impact of such a shift will be equally profound, with implications for, among other things, the stability of exchange rates, the stability of financial markets, the ease with which the U.S. will be able to finance budget and current-account deficits, and whether the Fed can follow a policy of benign neglect toward the dollar.


(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 02, 2011, 01:26:03 PM
Fearing economic impact, Dem presses Obama to ‘reevaluate’ climate rules
The Hill ^ | 2-28-11 | Ben Geman



Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) is urging the White House to re-evaluate greenhouse gas permitting regulations to avoid damaging manufacturers and other industries that are vital to his state and the nationwide economy.

Brown — who faces reelection in 2012 in the battleground Midwest state — wrote to President Obama Monday calling for a review of the “economic repercussions and potential unintended consequences” of regulations the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has begun to phase in this year.


(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Nation Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 02, 2011, 07:18:37 PM
The Decline of U.S. Naval Power
Sixty ships were commonly underway in America's seaward approaches in 1998, but today there are only 20. We are abdicating our role on the oceans..

  By MARK HELPRIN


Last week, pirates attacked and executed four Americans in the Indian Ocean. We and the Europeans have endured literally thousands of attacks by the Somali pirates without taking the initiative against their vulnerable boats and bases even once. Such paralysis is but a symptom of a sickness that started some time ago.

The 1968 film, "2001: A Space Odyssey," suggested that in another 30 years commercial flights to the moon, extraterrestrial mining, and interplanetary voyages would be routine. Soon the United States would send multiple missions to the lunar surface, across which astronauts would speed in vehicles. If someone born before Kitty Hawk's first flight would shortly after retirement see men riding around the moon in an automobile, it was reasonable to assume that half again as much time would bring progress at a similarly dazzling rate.

It didn't work out that way. In his 1962 speech at Rice University, perhaps the high-water mark of both the American Century and recorded presidential eloquence, President Kennedy framed the challenge not only of going to the moon but of sustaining American exceptionalism and this country's leading position in the world. He was assassinated a little more than a year later, and in subsequent decades American confidence went south.

Not only have we lost our enthusiasm for the exploration of space, we have retreated on the seas. Up to 30 ships, the largest ever constructed, each capable of carrying 18,000 containers, will soon come off the ways in South Korea. Not only will we neither build, own, nor man them, they won't even call at our ports, which are not large enough to receive them. We are no longer exactly the gem of the ocean. Next in line for gratuitous abdication is our naval position.

Separated by the oceans from sources of raw materials in the Middle East, Africa, Australia and South America, and from markets and manufacture in Europe, East Asia and India, we are in effect an island nation. Because 95% and 90% respectively of U.S. and world foreign trade moves by sea, maritime interdiction is the quickest route to both the strangulation of any given nation and chaos in the international system. First Britain and then the U.S. have been the guarantors of the open oceans. The nature of this task demands a large blue-water fleet that simply cannot be abridged.

View Full Image

Associated Press
 
Forty percent of the world's population lives within range of modern naval gunfire, and more than two-thirds within easy reach of carrier aircraft.
.With the loss of a large number of important bases world-wide, if and when the U.S. projects military power it must do so most of the time from its own territory or the sea. Immune to political cross-currents, economically able to cover multiple areas, hypoallergenic to restive populations, and safe from insurgencies, the fleets are instruments of undeniable utility in support of allies and response to aggression. Forty percent of the world's population lives within range of modern naval gunfire, and more than two-thirds within easy reach of carrier aircraft. Nothing is better or safer than naval power and presence to preserve the often fragile reticence among nations, to protect American interests and those of our allies, and to prevent the wars attendant to imbalances of power and unrestrained adventurism.

And yet the fleet has been made to wither even in time of war. We have the smallest navy in almost a century, declining in the past 50 years to 286 from 1,000 principal combatants. Apologists may cite typical postwar diminutions, but the ongoing 17% reduction from 1998 to the present applies to a navy that unlike its wartime predecessors was not previously built up. These are reductions upon reductions. Nor can there be comfort in the fact that modern ships are more capable, for so are the ships of potential opponents. And even if the capacity of a whole navy could be packed into a small number of super ships, they could be in only a limited number of places at a time, and the loss of just a few of them would be catastrophic.

The overall effect of recent erosions is illustrated by the fact that 60 ships were commonly underway in America's seaward approaches in 1998, but today—despite opportunities for the infiltration of terrorists, the potential of weapons of mass destruction, and the ability of rogue nations to sea-launch intermediate and short-range ballistic missiles—there are only 20.

As China's navy rises and ours declines, not that far in the future the trajectories will cross. Rather than face this, we seduce ourselves with redefinitions such as the vogue concept that we can block with relative ease the straits through which the strategic materials upon which China depends must transit. But in one blink this would move us from the canonical British/American control of the sea to the insurgent model of lesser navies such as Germany's in World Wars I and II and the Soviet Union's in the Cold War. If we cast ourselves as insurgents, China will be driven even faster to construct a navy that can dominate the oceans, a complete reversal of fortune.

The United Sates Navy need not follow the Royal Navy into near oblivion. We have five times the population and almost six times the GDP of the U.K., and unlike Britain we were not exhausted by the great wars and their debt, and we neither depended upon an empire for our sway nor did we lose one.

Despite its necessity, deficit reduction is not the only or even the most important thing. Abdicating our more than half-century stabilizing role on the oceans, neglecting the military balance, and relinquishing a position we are fully capable of holding will bring tectonic realignments among nations—and ultimately more expense, bloodletting, and heartbreak than the most furious deficit hawk is capable of imagining. A technological nation with a GDP of $14 trillion can afford to build a fleet worthy of its past and sufficient to its future. Pity it if it does not.

Mr. Helprin, a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, is the author of, among other works, "Winter's Tale" (Harcourt), "A Soldier of the Great War" (Harcourt) and, most recently, "Digital Barbarism" (HarperCollins).

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704150604576166362512952294.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop#articleTabs%3Darticle

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Nation Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 03, 2011, 04:54:44 PM
Gulf Oil Spill Could Have Been Stopped 48 days Earlier
 american thinker ^ | 3/3/11 | Bruce Thompson





For 48 days and nights, the Deepwater Horizon well spewed oil into the Gulf of Mexico, when it could have been shut down. We now know this:

It is very likely that if the top kill had been designed to deliver more than 109 bpm of 16.4 ppg drilling fluid below the BOP stack for a sustained period, the Macondo blowout could have been stopped between May 26-28, 2010. Given that the well was successfully shut-in with the capping stack in July, and that the subsequent bullhead (static) kill was successful, certainly a higher rate top kill would have been successful at that time.

That is the pull quote from a research paper submitted to the President's Oil Spill Commission by Dr. Mayank Tyagi et al. of LSU. The Commission's Chief Counsel's Report 2011 puts the onus on BP for discontinuing the top kill attempt. Dr. Tyagi uses a New York Times illustration as his figure 2, indicating some faith in their reporting. The New York Times reported that Energy Secretary Steven Chu was responsible for stopping the effort against BP's wishes.

His role gradually deepened as he assembled a team of scientists from the Department of Energy laboratories, universities and other government agencies. By late May, his confidence had grown and he was giving orders to BP officials, including his demand to stop the top kill effort even though some BP engineers believed it could still succeed.

"A lot of us said ‘don't start it,' and he was the one who said ‘stop,' " said a BP technician who was granted anonymity because he was not authorized to speak for the company. "But having done all we had already done, I thought we should have completed the final two operations. He was not keen to listen. BP people said, ‘Let's try these last two steps,' but he said, ‘No, stop.' "

We know from the factual record that the last joint National Incident Command - BP press conference was held on May 27. The next press event by the NIC did not occur until June 1 and BP was not invited. Somebody has some explaining to do!

Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Nation Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 03, 2011, 04:56:40 PM
Official: Obama, Calderon reach trucking agreement
 AP/WorldMag ^ | Mar 3, 12:26 PM EST | Julie Pace





WASHINGTON (AP) -- An administration official says President Barack Obama and Mexican President Felipe Calderon have reached an agreement on resolving a long-standing dispute over cross-border trucking.

The official says the leaders will announce a clear path to open U.S. highways to Mexican trucks during a joint news conference at the White House Thursday afternoon. Calderon is in Washington for wide-ranging meetings with Obama on everything from border security and immigration.


(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Nation Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 03, 2011, 05:10:51 PM
- The Foundry: Conservative Policy News. - http://blog.heritage.org -
 



http://blog.heritage.org/2011/03/03/obamas-start-up-america-initiative-stalling-entrepreneurs/print


Obama’s “Start-Up America” Initiative: Stalling Entrepreneurs

Posted By Jim Roberts On March 3, 2011 @ 11:00 am In Enterprise and Free Markets | 1 Comment



 
[1]
 
“Entrepreneurs embody the promise of America: the idea that if you have a good idea and are willing to work hard and see it through, you can succeed in this country. And in fulfilling this promise, entrepreneurs also play a critical role in expanding our economy and creating jobs.” – President Barack Obama, January 31, 2011
 
The recent White House announcement [2] of a new government program to promote entrepreneurship must signify that the Obama Administration finally “gets it” about job creation and economic recovery, right? [3] Certainly free-market conservatives can agree with the President’s inspiring words. But …
 
The problems, as always, emerge in the details of the program. This “coordinated public/private effort” appears to be just another head-fake in the direction of capitalism with the intention of growing more government. Just look at the program’s goals:

 •“Expand access to capital for high-growth startups throughout the country”: An almost perfect definition of the government picking winners and losers and a sure-fire recipe for corruption. To add insult to injury, it turns out there is more than one federal agency in the game. Check out what the Small Business Administration is doing [4] to identify “gazelle” (high-growth/high-impact) firms. The Department of Energy [5] has been at it longer.

 •“Expand entrepreneurship education and mentorship programs that empower more Americans not just to get a job, but to create jobs”: New government spending opportunities here, for sure. The government cannot create jobs (at least not jobs that generate more taxes than they consume).

 •“Strengthen commercialization of the about $148 billion in annual federally-funded research and development, which can generate innovative startups and entirely new industries”: Does “commercialization” mean that the government is trying to use taxpayer funds to take “market share” away from private banks and venture capitalists?

 •“Identify and remove unnecessary barriers to high-growth startups”: Barriers like high taxes and over-regulation? Regulation is undoubtedly a hurdle to business growth and formation, which is an area this Administration could not disagree with more. The health care reform law of 2010 is the clearest example of this lack of understanding. Heritage papers [6] point to the health care law impacting the business sector negatively—beyond the standard 1099 provision.

 •“Expand collaborations between large companies and startups”: Why does the government need to be involved in that?
 
Looks like any funding for “Start-Up America” should be added to Congress’s bucket list of wasteful government programs ripe for pruning. As Heritage experts have reported, only private entrepreneurs, investors, and small businesses can truly “lay the foundation for a lasting economic recovery [7].” Government spending programs that do not increase demand for goods and services but simply redistribute demand within the economy – such as Start-Up America – should be the first to go.
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Article printed from The Foundry: Conservative Policy News.: http://blog.heritage.org

URL to article: http://blog.heritage.org/2011/03/03/obamas-start-up-america-initiative-stalling-entrepreneurs/

URLs in this post:

[1] Image: http://blog.heritage.org/wp-content/uploads/Going_out_of_Business090203.jpg

[2] announcement: http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/startup-america

[3] right?: http://blogs.reuters.com/james-pethokoukis/2011/03/01/why-a-top-ceo-rejects-pro-business-obama

[4] what the Small Business Administration is doing: http://www.ieeeusa.org/careers/webinars/2011/files/SBA-OI-Webinar-Presentation-18-Jan2011.pdf

[5] Department of Energy: http://www.nationalreview.com/agenda/39216/future-delaware/reihan-salam

[6] papers: http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2010/09/Obamacare-Impact-on-the-Economy

[7] lay the foundation for a lasting economic recovery: http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2010/12/A-Free-Enterprise-Prescription-Unleashing-Entrepreneurs-to-Create-Jobs
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Nation Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 03, 2011, 05:13:49 PM
- The Foundry: Conservative Policy News. - http://blog.heritage.org -
 


Morning Bell: How Obama Is Making Gas Prices Higher




- The Foundry: Conservative Policy News. - http://blog.heritage.org -
 


Morning Bell: How Obama Is Making Gas Prices Higher

Posted By Conn Carroll On March 3, 2011 @ 9:10 am In Energy and Environment | 53 Comments



 
Yesterday, for the first time since September 2008, the price of a barrel of crude oil topped $100 [1] on the New York Mercantile Exchange. But while the recent unrest in the Middle East has had some marginal effect on rising prices, the most significant factor has been increased oil demand worldwide. That is why, long before the recent protests even began, analysts were predicting $4 a gallon by this summer [2] and $5 a gallon by 2012 [3]. Anyone could have predicted that the recovering world economy, coupled with the continued growth of India and China, was going to push oil prices higher. So if an Administration wanted to keep gas prices down, they could have mitigated increased oil demand by increasing domestic oil production. But that is not what the Obama Administration has done. Instead of increasing domestic oil supplies, the Obama Administration has cut them at every opportunity, and Americans are now suffering because of those choices.
 
Back in February, when the protests in Egypt were first unfolding, Energy Secretary Steven Chu was asked what the Administration could do to combat rising world oil prices. Chu responded [4]: “The best way America can protect itself against these incidents is to decrease our dependency on foreign oil, in fact to diversify our supply.” It is now one month later and the Administration has not updated its talking points. Pressed on gas prices yesterday, White House spokesman Jay Carney said [5]: “We are also, as you have seen over the past two-plus years, very focused on the need precisely to develop other energy sources so that we are not as dependent on foreign oil as we have been in the past.” So what are these “other energy sources” the White House has been developing? How does the White House plan to “diversify supply” to reduce gas prices? The answers are corn, wind, sun, and electric cars. And they won’t help a bit.
 
According to Heritage analysts Nick Loris and John Ligon, Obama’s energy policy consists of [6]: increased biofuel production, increased electric vehicle production, and increased renewable power production. These are all terrible public policies. The major source of biomass production, corn-based ethanol, produces less energy per unit volume than gasoline, contributes to food price increases, costs taxpayers $4 billion to produce 2 percent of the total gasoline supply, and has dubious environmental effects. The electric cars the Obama Administration has invested in are prohibitively costly, do not fit the needs of the American consumer, and are also environmentally suspect. The other sources of energy the Obama Administration is subsidizing and promoting—wind and solar—not only make up a minuscule 1 percent of America’s electricity generation but are entirely irrelevant to gasoline supply in the transportation sector.
 
But not only has President Obama failed to diversify our energy supply in any meaningful way; he has actually proactively moved to cut our own domestic energy supplies [7]:

 •First, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar canceled 77 leases for oil and gas drilling in Utah in his first month in office. According to the U.S. Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Land Management, there are 800 billion barrels (a moderate estimate) of recoverable oil from oil shale in the Green River Formation, which goes through Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. This is three times greater than the proven oil reserves of Saudi Arabia.

 •Then last summer, President Obama needlessly instituted not one but two outright drilling bans in the Gulf of Mexico. The Energy Information Administration estimates that President Obama’s offshore drilling ban will cut domestic offshore oil production by 13 percent this year.

 •Last fall, Interior Secretary Salazar announced that the eastern Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic coast, and the Pacific coast will not be developed, effectively banning drilling in those areas for the next seven years. At least 19 billion barrels of easily recoverable oil lie off the currently restricted Pacific and Atlantic coasts and the eastern Gulf of Mexico.
 
•President Obama has also failed to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, where an estimated 10 billion barrels of oil lie beneath a few thousand acres that can be accessed with minimal environmental impact. Those 10 billion barrels are equivalent to 16 years’ worth of imports from Saudi Arabia at the current rate.
 
“The Obama Administration is repeating the mistakes of President Jimmy Carter’s failed energy policies, which marred his term and stigmatized the 1970s. They are leading us straight into another national energy disaster,” Steve Forbes warned [8] in Politico yesterday. And what would that “energy disaster” cost the American people? According to The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis [6], an increase in the per-barrel price of imported crude oil by $10 in the first quarter of 2011 and by $20 in the second quarter would reduce gross domestic product by $20 billion, drop potential employment by nearly 100,000 jobs, and increase gasoline prices by 18 cents per gallon in 2011 alone.
 
Yesterday, Carney said that “the president is extremely aware of the impact that a spike in oil prices can have on gasoline prices and therefore on the wallets and pocketbooks of average Americans.” If that is true, and if Energy Secretary Chu really has recanted his belief that Americans ought to be paying $8 a gallon for gas [9], then the President must completely reverse his entire energy policy so far by allowing Americans to develop our own natural resources, issuing permits in a timely manner, and removing regulatory and litigation delays on energy projects [6].
 
Quick Hits:
 •According to a new book, President Obama believes racism is a “key component” of the Tea Party [10] movement.
 •A gunman shouting “Allahu Akbar” [11] opened fire on a bus carrying U.S. airmen in Frankfurt, Germany, killing two and wounding two.
 •The Ohio state Senate approved legislation that prohibits public-employee unions from bargaining [12] over health benefits and pensions while also eliminating their ability to strike.
 •The Wisconsin state Senate passed a new rule fining any Senator who misses two or more days of session [13] $100 a day.
 •House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan (R–WI) says [14] that President Obama has failed to produce a plan to shore up Medicare as required by a 2003 Medicare law.
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Article printed from The Foundry: Conservative Policy News.: http://blog.heritage.org

URL to article: http://blog.heritage.org/2011/03/03/morning-bell-how-obama-is-making-gas-prices-higher/

URLs in this post:

[1] the price of a barrel of crude oil topped $100: http://www.dallasnews.com/business/headlines/20110302-crude-oil-tops-100-per-barrel-for-first-time-since-2008.ece

[2] $4 a gallon by this summer: http://www.necn.com/12/31/10/Stocks-quietly-finish-mixedOil-prices-ri/landing.html?&blockID=3&apID=75f4dca7c13b4504965409c7a00b1b8f

[3] $5 a gallon by 2012: http://abcnews.go.com/US/oil-executive-gas-prices-soar-2011-2012/story?id=12509267

[4] responded: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20029935-503544.html

[5] said: http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2011/03/what-is-the-white-house-doing-about-oil-prices-todays-qs-for-os-wh-322011.html

[6] consists of: http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2011/03/What-To-Do-About-High-Oil-Prices

[7] proactively moved to cut our own domestic energy supplies: http://blog.heritage.org/2011/01/07/gas-prices-under-president-obama-in-pictures/

[8] warned: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0311/50417.html

[9] Energy Secretary Chu really has recanted his belief that Americans ought to be paying $8 a gallon for gas: http://sf.streetsblog.org/2009/04/24/steven-chu-forced-to-recant-belief-in-higher-gas-prices/

[10] President Obama believes racism is a “key component” of the Tea Party: http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2011/03/02/obama-says-race-a-key-component-in-tea-party-protests?PageNr=3

[11] “Allahu Akbar”: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/gunman-shouting-allah-akbar-kills-us-airmen-germany/story?id=13037467

[12] prohibits public-employee unions from bargaining: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704005404576176812441615134.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories

[13] fining any Senator who misses two or more days of session: http://www.620wtmj.com/news/local/117248828.html

[14] says: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0311/50548.html
Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Nation Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 03, 2011, 05:18:12 PM
Sam Zell absolutely destroys the Obama Admn on EVERYTHING it has done regarding the economy. 

Absolutely speechless. a Dem Senator told him point blank about Obamacare 11th year - 'I'm 80 y/o who cares?"

Great video.   FFFUUUBBBOOOOOO 

http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232/?video=3000008420&play=1



Title: Re: Obama: The modern day "Typhoid Mary" to the U.S.A.
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 04, 2011, 06:24:03 AM
John Holdren: White House Malthusian
by Robert Bradley Jr.
March 3, 2011


http://www.masterresource.org/2011/03/holdren-malthusian




If there is one quotation by Obama’s new science advisor that every American should hear, it is this:

“A massive campaign must be launched to restore a high-quality environment in North America and to de-develop the United States. . . . Resources and energy must be diverted from frivolous and wasteful uses in overdeveloped countries to filling the genuine needs of underdeveloped countries. This effort must be largely political” (italics added).

- John Holdren, Anne Ehrlich, and Paul Ehrlich, Human Ecology: Problems and Solutions (San Francisco; W.H. Freeman and Company, 1973), p. 279.

Holdren’s deep-seated belief of the human “predicament” as a zero-sum game–America must lose for other countries to win–was also stated by him two years before:

“Only one rational path is open to us—simultaneous de-development of the [overdeveloped countries] and semi-development of the underdeveloped countries (UDC’s), in order to approach a decent and ecologically sustainable standard of living for all in between. By de-development we mean lower per-capita energy consumption, fewer gadgets, and the abolition of planned obsolescence.”

- John Holdren and Paul Ehrlich, “Introduction,” in Holdren and Ehrlich, eds., Global Ecology, 1971, p. 3.

Holdren and the Ehrlichs paid homage to the gloomy worldview of Thomas Robert Malthus, who saw “misery or vice” as the necessary equalizer between growing population and the means of subsistence in An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798):

“We find ourselves firmly in the neo-Malthusian camp. We hold this view not because we believe the world to be running out of materials in an absolute sense, but rather because the barriers to continued material growth, in the form of problems of economics, logistics, management, and environmental impact, are so formidable.”

- Paul Ehrlich, Anne Ehrlich, and John Holdren, Ecoscience: Population, Resources, and Environment (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman and Company, 1977), p. 954.

Holdren and Paul Ehrlich put their anti-growth philosophy into a mathematical equation, I=PAT, where a negative environmental impact was linked to any combination of population growth, increasing affluence, and improving technology. This “gloomy prognosis” required, according to the three:

“organized evasive action: population control, limitation of material consumption, redistribution of wealth, transitions to technologies that are environmentally and socially less disruptive than today’s, and movement toward some kind of world government” (1977: p. 5).

Does Dr. Doom still believe all this? He has repeatedly been challenged with some of his past quotations and he has held fast to his exaggerations. Mid-course correction not.
1 comment

1 Ed Reid { 03.03.11 at 6:52 pm } I have commented here previously about the “three-legged stool” of AGW/AGCC/GCD.

Leg 1: zero global carbon emissions;
Leg 2: global veganism (methane reduction, you know);
Leg 3: population controls (exhalation control): and,
Seat: global governance (probably by the same folks who brought us the Iraq “Oil for Palaces, Payloads and Payoffs” program.

I contend that this would arguably be the ugliest piece of “furniture” ever designed by man. Also, the most expensive.

Holdren was (and I believe is still) a “three-legged stool” kind of guy. Apparently so is his master.

Is it any wonder that the AGW believers are so reluctant to lay out the entire plan? Better to rely on the “slippery slope”.

The obvious end condition of income and wealth redistribution is communism (initially with a small “c”). There is a generally accepted name for those who advocate communism, though its use is now extremely politically incorrect. Too bad; so sad.
Title: Re: Obama: "Typhoid Mary" to the U.S.A.
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 04, 2011, 06:45:45 AM
Obama Admin. Refuses to Call Attack in Germany an Act of Terrorism, Compares It to Giffords Shooting
Nation.Foxnews ^ | Mar 3, 2011





U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley on whether the murder of two U.S. airmen was a terrorist attack:

"Was the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords a terrorist attack? I mean, you have to look at the evidence and look at the motivation and then you make a judgment," Crowley told the Press.

The suspect in the murder of two U.S. airmen at the Frankfurt airport confessed that he specifically wanted to kill Americans as revenge for the Afghan war, a German investigator said Friday.

Prosecutor Rainer Griesbaum told reporters that 21-year-old Arid Uka from Kosovo said he went to the airport with the intent to shoot “as revenge for the American mission in Afghanistan.”

Griesbaum also said that Uka’s pistol malfunctioned during the attack, preventing further loss of life. After shooting and injuring two more.


(Excerpt) Read more at nation.foxnews.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: The modern day "Typhoid Mary" to the U.S.A.
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 04, 2011, 10:05:46 AM
 >:(
Title: Re: Obama: The modern day "Typhoid Mary" to the U.S.A.
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 04, 2011, 11:10:32 AM
U.K. Pulls Plug on United Nations Spending in Opposition of U.S."
FoxNews.com ^ | March 03, 2011 | George Russell




Critics of U.S. spending on the United Nations got a huge boost—and supporters of that spending, especially the Obama Administration, took a body blow—from an unlikely source this week: the British government, long one of the U.N.’s staunchest supporters.

In a sweeping and hard-nosed reorganization of priorities for its $10.6 billion multilateral foreign aid program, the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government of Prime Minister David Cameron has pulled the financial plug entirely on four U.N. agencies at the end of next year, put three others judged merely “adequate” on notice that they could face the same fate unless they improve their performance “as a matter of absolute urgency;” and issued pointed criticisms of almost all the rest.

The major exception: UNICEF, the U.N. children’s aid agency, which got a strong endorsement and a funding increase.

The tough actions were revealed as the Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, led by House Foreign Affairs Committee chairperson Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, has been gearing up an extended critical look at U.N. funding as part of its overall budget austerity plan. The British revelations also came while U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice was on an extended cross-country tour, drumming up grass-roots support for U.N. funding in what is sure to be a protracted battle. Unveiling of the new British priorities undoubtedly will hearten her opponents on Capitol Hill.


(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: The modern day "Typhoid Mary" to the U.S.A.
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 04, 2011, 12:58:30 PM
THE REVOLVING DOOR: 22 People Who Went From Wall Street To Washington To Wall Street
Katya Wachtel | Mar. 4, 2011, 3:51 PM | 108 | 
A A A   


List of Wall Streeters who have ended up with government jobs and vice versa is long.

Some would argue the incestuous nature and revolving door between Washington and downtown Manhattan is dangerous.

Others are glad to have people in the Capitol making decisions about the economy who have actually been involved in it practically.

The Wall Street-to-Washington-and-back revolving door was swinging at least as long ago as 1934.

And it's still going.

In the last couple of months, the government has found appointees on the Street and banks have pulled new employees from the SEC and the Fed.

To give you a better idea of the swarm of people who have served time on Wall Street and K Street or Pennsylvania Avenue or all three, we rounded up a few of our favorites and the newest converts.


Joseph Kennedy
On Wall Street: President of the Columbia Trust Bank; employee of stock brokerage firm Hayden, Stone & Co; independent investor

For the government: First Chairman of the SEC; Ambassador to Great Britain
Martin Feldstein
For the government: Served as President and Chief Executive Officer of the NBER; chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers and chief economic advisor to President Ronald Reagan.

On Wall Street: Sat on boards of AIG Financial Products and JPMorgan

Back to the government: Board member of President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board.
Robert Rubin
On Wall Street: Chairman and COO of Goldman Sachs

For the Government: Secretary of Treasury under Bill Clinton

Back on Wall Street: Vice Chairman of Citigroup, Special Limited Partner with Insight Venture Partners
Laura Tyson
On Wall Street: Board director of Stanley Morgan

For the government: Chair of the US President's Council of Economic Advisers during the Clinton Administration. She also served as Director of the National Economic Council.



Hank Paulson
On Wall Street: Goldman Sachs CEO

For the government: Secretary of Treasury under George W. Bush and President Obama
Carlos Gutierrez
For the government: George W. Bush’s Commerce Secretary

On Wall Street:: Vice Chairman of Cit's Institutional Clients Group
Faryar Shirzad
For the government: On the staff of the National Security Council at the White House; special assistant to the President for International Economic Affairs; deputy assistant to the President and deputy national security advisor for International Economic Affairs under George W. Bush

On Wall Street: Vice President and Director of International Public Policy at Goldman Sachs
Larry Summers
For the government: Director of the White House National Economic Council for President Barack Obama, Secretary of the Treasury under Obama

On Wall Street: Paid keynote speaker at banks including Goldman and JP Morgan; will be keynote speaker at annual Alpha Hedge Bermuda Global Hedge Fund Summit; consultant to hedge funds including D.E Shaw.

Read more at the Business Insider >
David Markowitz
For the government: SEC Assistant Regional Director; Staffer on New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's team

On Wall Street: Associate General Counsel and a senior member of the litigation and regulatory proceedings group at Goldman Sachs
Mark Patterson
On Wall Street: Chief Goldman Sachs lobbyist

For the government: Chief of Staff in Obama's Treasury Department.
Lewis Sachs
For the government: Former NY Federal Reserve Advisor (and a longtime friend of Tim Geithner)

On Wall Street: Partner at Mariner Investment Group, a holding group for various hedge funds

Back to the government: Senior Economic Adviser to President Obama


Daniel Zelikow
On Wall Street: Managing Director in the Government Institutions Group within J.P. Morgan's Investment Bank.

For the government: Various senior roles within the U.S. Department of the Treasury under President Clinton, including Deputy Assistant Secretary for Asia, the Americas and Africa; headed task force that oversaw $20 billion emergency financing program for Mexico in 1995 (and is one of Tim Geithner's oldest and dearest friends)

Back on Wall Street: Head of International Public Sector Group at JPMorgan.
Gary Gensler
On Wall Street: Senior Partner and Co-Head of Finance at Goldman Sachs

For the government: Head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission
Michael Froman
On Wall Street: COO at Citigroup Alternative Investments

For the government: Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Adviser for International Economic Affairs in the Obama Administration
Jacob Lew
For the government: Special Assistant to the President under President Clinton

On Wall Street: COO of Citigroup Alternative Investments

Back to the government: Director of the United States Office of Management and Budget
William Dudley
On Wall Street: Chief Economist, managing director and partner of Goldman Sachs

For the government: President and CEO of the New York Federal Reserve
Peter Orszag
For the government: White House Budget Director

On Wall Street: Vice Chairman of Citi's Investment Bank
Theo Lubke
For the government: Chairman of the New York Fed

On Wall Street: Chief Regulatory Reform officer at Goldman Sachs
Bill Daley
For the government: U.S. Secretary of Commerce under President Clinton

On Wall Street: Midwest Chairman at JP Morgan

Back to the government: White House Chief of Staff under President Obama
Neel Kashkari
On Wall Street: Vice President at Goldman Sachs

For the government: Special assistant to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson; led the Office of Financial Stability, and helped set up TARP.

Back on Wall Street: Managing Director in charge of new investment initiatives at PIMCO
Alexander Friedman
For the government: Worked in the Department of Defense under Bill Clinton

On Wall Street:  Managed private investment vehicle, Asymmetry LLC; senior advisor to Lazard; Chief Investment Officer at UBS
Mona Sutphen
For the government: Obama’s Deputy Chief of Staff

On Wall Street: She's just been hried to head up macro analysis for the bank at UBS


http://www.businessinsider.com/people-who-have-worked-on-wall-street-washington-white-house-2011-3?op=1

Title: Re: Obama: The modern day "Typhoid Mary" to the U.S.A.
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 04, 2011, 01:56:38 PM

September 22, 2010
Typhoid Barry
By Robin of Berkeley


________________________ _______________________---




There's a fascinating phenomenon in medicine of a "carrier" of a disease. The most famous example is Typhoid Mary.


Mary was a cook in the early 20th century who spread typhoid to over fifty people, although she never contracted the infection herself. There are carriers of a variety of illnesses. For instance, a person can test positive for TB without having suffered from the disease. 


Typhoid Mary is, I think, an apt metaphor for not just carriers of physical disease, but of psychological mayhem. I'm referring to people who wreak havoc without so much as lifting a finger.


The most extreme example is Charles Manson. Manson rots in prison for life, charged with crimes he did not personally commit. Hypnotically, he compelled his young charges to mutilate and massacre.


Jim Jones, the messianic San Francisco preacher and fan of Marx and Hitler, is another example. At People's Temple in Guyana, Jones managed to convince over nine hundred people to commit suicide by drinking cyanide-spiked Kool Aid -- even to feed it to their children. 


Psychological carriers are on a continuum from the most deranged, like Manson and Jones, on down the totem pole. I regard those Columbia University luminaries, Richard Cloward and Frances Fox-Piven, as Typhoid Elitists.


From tony ivory towers, they concocted their theories about overwhelming and crashing the system. While the duo kept out of the fray, they aggravated and agitated urban black youths to riot.


Their manipulation of ghetto kids so outraged a then-young black reporter, Juan Williams, that he wrote an angry treatise for the Washington Post, "If Liberals Need Riots, Let Whites Do It." But that didn't stop Cloward and Piven from continuing to exploit blacks as foot soldiers in their quest for revolution.   


Regarding the enigmatic Obama, there are many theories percolating to understand his modus operandi.  Maybe he's a warrior righting the colonialist wrongs of his father. Or perhaps he's a fiery radical, à la Bill Ayers, raging against the system. Some people conjecture that Obama is a closet Muslim, trying to unleash sharia law on the United States.


While Obama appears to sympathize with all of the above, he doesn't embody
the warrior spirit. A freedom-fighter has fire in his belly; he burns with an inner combustion, even though his cause may be twisted.


Bill Ayers, for instance, got down and dirty by bombing the New York City Police Department, the Capitol, and the Pentagon. Van Jones served time in jail during the Rodney King riots. 


But Obama the warrior? I don't see it. He's a poser and a posturer, a blank screen on which others project their fantasies. Obama does not embrace his father's dreams, nor does he have many of his own.


He's just Barry, an orphan with no country, the perennial outsider. A loner who prefers his own company or the anonymity of crowds. In clinical terms, he may be a "secret schizoid" -- outwardly engaged but, in actuality, uneasy around people.


Obama comforts himself with pleasures -- parties, golf, vacations. He's easily tempted by the allure of wealth and power. Through his affiliation with the slumlord, Tony Rezko, he and Michelle acquired a mansion.


Where was Obama's righteous indignation when black tenants endured rat-infested,  unheated apartments? Where was Obama's towering passion when he cavalierly eliminated the D.C. school voucher program? As for his father, if Obama is ablaze with Barack Sr.'s spirit, why did Junior skip the man's funeral, and why did he allow Dad's family to live in squalor?


Obama is no warrior. He's the middleman, the closer. This country has had a date with destiny since the radical Left began spreading its poison decades ago. Obama is simply the empty suit brought in to close the deal.


Obama doesn't have the fire, or the cojones, as Palin memorably phrased it, to be a revolutionary. He likes his arugula and his fine wine. He will not get his manicured fingers dirty.


Like Cloward and Piven, he's another version of the carrier syndrome, a sort of Typhoid Barry. He gestures with his middle finger about Hillary and whips the crowd into a frenzy. Or he cajoles people to hit back hard, and maniacs beat up conservatives.


Obama sneers that Cambridge cops practice racism, and voilà, attacks against police burgeon. He demonizes the banks, and AIG employees receive death threats.   


Obama doesn't lose his cool. Aside from the occasional passive-aggressive comment (for instance, saying snidely that Rush Limbaugh can play with himself), he's composed. Obama knows his role well. It was conceived and crafted before he was even born.


Unlike Mary, Obama is a carrier not of typhoid, but of something much worse -- the sickness of hatred. He mesmerizes the masses with his magnetic charm. He casts a hypnotic spell over the desperate and forlorn.


They become the warriors. With the snap of the hypnotist's finger, they'll do the dirty work for him. 


A frequent American Thinker contributor, Robin is a licensed psychotherapist and a recovering liberal in Berkeley. You can contact Robin through her blog, robinofberkeley.com. Robin's articles are intended for entertainment and informational purposes.  They are not intended to provide treatment or diagnosis.  Should you need psychological help, please contact a local therapist for assistance.  Information on Cloward and Piven drawn from David Horowitz' seminal book, The Shadow Party.

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/09/typhoid_barry_1.html at March 04, 2011 - 03:55:45 PM CST
Title: Re: Obama: The modern day "Typhoid Mary" to the U.S.A.
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 04, 2011, 02:19:42 PM
Mexican President Joins Obama in Calling for ‘Comprehensive’ Reform Legalizing Illegal
CNSNews ^ | March 4, 2011 | Fred Lucas




Complete title: Mexican President Joins Obama in Calling for ‘Comprehensive’ Reform Legalizing Illegal Aliens in U.S.


VIDEO 1:39 minutes


(CNSNews.com) - Mexican President Felipe Calderon yesterday joined President Barack Obama in calling for “comprehensive” immigration reform, a term used to describe reform that includes granted legal status to illegal aliens in the United States.


“We have also discussed immigration, an issue on which both countries have responsibilities,” Obama said, standing next to Calderon during a White House joint news conference.


“As I told President Calderón, I remain deeply committed to fixing our broken immigration system with comprehensive reform that continues to secure our borders, enforces our laws--including against businesses that break the law--and requiring accountability from undocumented workers,” Obama said. “And we have to conduct this debate in a way that upholds our values as a nation of both laws and immigrants. So I’m eager to work with Republicans and Democrats to get this reform done, which is vital to the U.S. economy.”


Obama has long supported a “comprehensive immigration reform” that supporters call a “pathway to citizenship” for illegal aliens and opponents call “amnesty.” But such legislation--backed by the immigration lobby and some pro-business organizations--was defeated in Congress during 2005 and 2007, and was deeply unpopular with the public.


Nevertheless, Calderon said he supports Obama’s desire to see such legislation pass.


“President Obama has always recognized, invariably recognized, the contributions of immigrants to the economy and society of the United States, and I recognize and value his clear and determined support for the adoption of a comprehensive migratory reform in this country, as well as his firm commitment to the human and civil rights of communities, regardless of their point of origin,” Calderon said. “I've expressed to him my concern for the proliferation of local initiatives that are against the interests or the rights of immigrant communities.”

Title: Re: Obama: The modern day "Typhoid Mary" to the U.S.A.
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 04, 2011, 02:40:21 PM
Interior Secretary Says White House Opposes Drilling in Arctic Because It Will Not Lead...
CNSNews ^ | March 4, 2011 | Nicholas Ballasy




Complete title: Interior Secretary Says White House Opposes Drilling in Arctic Because It Will Not Lead to Energy Independence


VIDEO 2:09 minutes


(CNSNews.com) - When asked why the Obama administration opposes drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) given the rising cost of gasoline, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar told CNSNews.com that the “drill, baby, drill program” is not going to lead the United States to energy independence.


“We don’t believe that you need to drill everywhere and we don’t believe that the 'drill, baby, drill' program is the way that’s going to get us to the energy independence that we need for America or that will power our economy and that’s why the President has been so clear from day one and we in the Department of Interior have been so clear that what we need to do is need to have a robust energy program that includes a number of different sources of energy and while yes, we are pushing forward with oil and gas development both offshore and onshore which was the subject of much of the hearing today, we’re also moving forward with renewable energy,” he told CNSNews.com after testifying before the House Natural Resources Committee about his Department’s FY2012 budget.


“The President has said we are supporting nuclear, we’re support other clean air energy forms and at the end of the day, this is a place where there is hope that perhaps some of the Republicans in the House would come together and say that we can move forward with energy legislation that moves us into this new energy future.”


Salazar was also asked what the White House is saying about drilling in the Gulf.


“What I say is what the White House would say and that is that we are moving forward with an effort to stand up oil and gas drilling in the deep oceans of the gulf and are doing it in a safe and orderly way and that’s reflected in the budget request that we were defending for the President today,” he said.


________________________ ________________________ ________-


F'ing clueless.

Title: Re: Obama: The modern day "Typhoid Mary" to the U.S.A.
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 04, 2011, 02:50:23 PM
Led by a Follower: The Danger of a Weak President
Pajamas Media ^ | March 4, 2011 | Chris Salcedo


________________________ ________________________ _________-


Obama defers to the tyrants and the UN, and the world is more dangerous because of it.

 Remember when U.S. presidents were regarded as the “leader of the free world”? They earned that moniker. FDR spoke of a day of infamy and rallied our nation to fight the Nazi threat to global freedom. JFK stood strong in the face of the Cuban Missile Crisis. And Ronald Reagan recognized the strength of America and stood up to one of the most deadly totalitarian regimes in human history.

Now we have President Obama.

He’s the one — we were told — who would restore our credibility in capitals around the globe. He was to reassert our moral authority: the nation that stands for basic human rights and the dignity of the individual. We were told that his intellect alone could bring tyrants to heel — Obama infamously expressed a desire to meet with dictators, never minding that such meetings would elevate despotic regimes by offering the prestige of the American presidency.

As has come to pass: emboldened by a weak or non-existent foreign policy, buoyed by the confidence that Obama’s White House is unwilling to act, and inspired by strongmen that openly defy the president’s wishes, thugs of all shapes, sizes, and degrees of brutality are challenging the United States.

Those challenges are met with silence, when condemnation is required. They are greeted with ambivalence, when the world cries for decisiveness. The world begs the U.S. to lead, and the “leader of the free world” is content to go with the flow.

Vice President Joe Biden said Obama would be tested, and he has been tested several times over. Each instance seemed a surprise, a distraction to the president. He appeared bothered that each crisis took him away from his stated goal of remaking America. Unfortunately, the rogue elements of the world were not inclined to give the president time to learn on the job. They, unlike Mr. Obama’s devout followers, were not fainting in the aisles after his inauguration. In fact, the despots felt just the opposite: they were reinvigorated. They smelled blood in the water.

In May of 2009, the dictator of North Korea tested a nuclear weapon that was rumored to have been as powerful as the device used over Hiroshima. The nuclear test was a clear violation of multiple United Nations Security Council resolutions and international agreements. President Obama’s response was less than inspirational: he declared that North Korea’s actions were “directly and recklessly challenging the international community,” and that “such provocations will only serve to deepen North Korea’s isolation.” Susan Rice, Mr. Obama’s ambassador to the U.N., reinforced the president’s stance, saying Pyongyang will “pay a price for the path that they’re on if they don’t reverse.” To date, nothing of substance has been done, and this lack of American leadership may have emboldened the communist nation. North Korea has since attacked and sunk a South Korean ship, killing 34 people, and the North launched a deadly shelling on South Korea in November 2010. Obama’s White House called for an end to the North’s “belligerent action.”

The weakness projected by President Obama on North Korea is bad enough. But the president’s timidity elsewhere on the world stage has led to far greater consequences and loss of life.

In the summer of 2009, Iranian citizens took to the streets of Tehran to protest “questionable” election results. The bloodshed that followed was horrific. The Iranian theocracy clamped down on freedom seekers with iron-fisted ruthlessness. The Telegraph, hardly conservative, summed up the White House response as “cowardly, lily-livered and wrong.” That was one of the more flattering accounts of the president’s policy toward Iran, or lack thereof.

It’s not like we weren’t warned of Mr. Obama’s predilections towards appeasement. All of his opponents in the 2008 election cycle, including his current secretary of state, warned that Mr. Obama’s desire to “sit down” with Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad without preconditions would lead to disaster. It was Mr. Obama’s naive notion of talking with such a morally bankrupt regime that, many speculated, led to days of terror for the Iranian people with no opposition from the so-called “leader of the free world.”

In the beginning days of the protest, the administration — through VP Biden and Secretary Clinton — conveyed President Obama’s position: “We’re going to withhold comment…. I mean we’re just waiting to see,” Biden said. Clinton declared in a statement: “The United States has refrained from commenting on the election in Iran.”

Is that leadership?

Only after nearly two weeks of criticism from the international community and conservatives at home did President Obama abandon his “engagement” policy with the thugs in Iran and strongly condemn the regime’s actions. Again, Mr. Obama had to be led before standing for American ideals. Yet a few months later Obama made his first speech before the UN General Assembly, where he called for a “new era of engagement with the world” – he was still leaving the door open to rogue regimes.

Obama’s lack of leadership in standing up to tyranny again evidenced itself a little over a year later.

The Middle East has exploded in protests. Countries that have been ruled by strongmen for decades are seeing a popular uprising of epic proportions. And once again the American administration was caught unaware. Once again the Obama administration was caught flat-footed, as Egyptians took to the streets to overthrow dictator and U.S. ally Hosni Mubarak. Egypt, being a U.S. ally, must have enabled the Obama administration to come out early and call for Mubarak to step down.

It’s well-documented how this administration treats traditional U.S. allies: the return of the bust of Winston Churchill and the gift of Obama speeches on an iPod for the queen, his treatment of Israel, his lackluster support for South Korea, his policy toward trade with democratic Colombia. All the while, Obama treats tyrants and dictators, self-declared enemies of the U.S., with kid gloves.

What else explains the timidity shown in the face of Libyan uprisings, and murders in the streets? When Obama finally got around to commenting on the hundreds of Libyan citizens dead, he couldn’t even bring himself to mention dictator Muammar Gaddafi by name or call for him to step down. He eventually got around to it after a fresh round of shame from his political opposition. As the situation worsened, nations from around the world evacuated their citizens from Libya. Did President Obama send one of our carrier groups to evacuate and guard our citizens? No, he … charted a ferry. We wouldn’t want to project American power and stability in the region, would we? A move like that might have sent an unmistakable message to Gaddafi and other tyrants in the Middle East that the mass murder of their citizens would not be tolerated by the United States. It might have made other despots think twice before ordering their air forces to fire on protesters if they knew American air power was minutes away. I’m sure the calculus was made in the White House: a carrier group would have negated all the good will America has enjoyed since Mr. Obama’s American apology tour early in his presidency. There has been no show of strength or stability in the Middle East. Instead, Mr. Obama has turned once again to the UN to tame Libya’s mad-dog dictator.

Mr. Obama is a weak president. This isn’t my calculation. It’s the consensus of every thug and dictator around the world. Has there been any evidence to the contrary? The world’s despots seem reasonably assured that the most negative consequence for their mayhem is a severe tongue-lashing. And the world is now a much more dangerous place because of Mr. Obama’s lack of experience, his lack of an American-centered resolve, and his pattern of embracing America’s enemies and alienating our friends.

Instead of leading the world as the head of the nation that stands for freedom and liberty, Mr. Obama abdicates that responsibility to the United Nations. We no longer have the “leader of the free world” in the White House. We have “the follower of the oppressed world.” And as long as he occupies that office, America stands to lose its influence around the globe. It’s an influence that, before Obama, made America a beacon of light for human freedom and dignity. That light is growing ever dimmer, allowing the world’s anti-American tyrants to thrive, and leaving our friends and those yearning to breathe free with no guide out of the increasing darkness.

Title: Re: Obama: The modern day "Typhoid Mary" to the U.S.A.
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 04, 2011, 02:56:44 PM
President Obama Busts the Budget for Pie-in-the-Sky Amtrak and “Livability” Proposals
Published on March 4, 2011
by Ronald Utt, Ph.D.


http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2011/03/Transportation-Spending-Busting-the-Budget-for-Amtrak-and-Livability


________________________ __



President Obama’s budget proposal for fiscal year (FY) 2012 is an unabashed attempt to grow government and add $1 trillion to the national debt. While a detailed review of the flaws in the President’s budget is beyond the scope of this paper,[1] one of the budget’s more fiscally irresponsible components is the proposal to increase surface “transportation” spending by more than 84 percent (from $58 billion to $107 billion) over FY 2010 spending levels.[2]

To put this in context: The President’s overall spending totals for the same period would rise by 7.9 percent, so transportation spending would rise more than 10 times faster than all programs combined. As proposed by the President, this would be a one-time blast of money. In the next fiscal year (2013), total transportation spending would decline by $30 billion, so the new transportation plan should be seen as a “twofer” for the President, validating his borrow–and-spend policies and lavishing money on supporters before the election. One reason for the explosion in proposed transportation spending is the President’s commitment to create two new programs—Amtrak/high-speed rail (HSR) and Livability—that have strong appeal to unions and environmentalists.

The Alchemy of Fiscal Extravagance

As is apparent from the President’s first two years in office, he and his team believe in a primitive form of Keynesian economics, one of the tenets of which is that government can spend its way to economic prosperity. Despite the revolving collection of euphemisms to define these varied schemes—“stimulus,” “jobs,” and now “investments”—this proposal would fare no better than the first several efforts. Notwithstanding the failure of the first several mega-billion-dollar stimulus plans, the President seems determined to find validation for his views, and taxpayers are expected to finance the search.

The Politics of Fiscal Extravagance

Added to this is the political allure of federal transportation spending that disproportionately benefits members of labor unions and their leaders. All workers on federally supported construction projects must be paid “prevailing” wages in accordance with the Davis–Bacon Act, and these wages are higher than those in the competitive market. Such wages are common to union contracts. A recent Heritage Foundation study found that the Davis–Bacon Act increases the cost of federal construction projects by 9.9 percent and that its repeal would create 155,000 more construction jobs at the same cost to taxpayers.[3]

Davis–Bacon is not the only cost problem. All federally funded transit systems are operated by unionized workers who are paid wages and benefits, and provided costly job protections under Section 13(c) of the Federal Transit Act and other federal statutes, well above those of comparable workers in the private sector, whether unionized or not.

The President’s Amtrak Plan

While the President promises high-speed rail (HSR) service (top speeds of at least 150 mph), most of his projects involve signal and track improvements on privately owned freight rail systems that would provide marginal improvements in the Amtrak service sharing those tracks. As Heritage has noted, the President’s HSR plan is best characterized as an exercise to benefit Amtrak and for-profit freight railroads, which received 55 percent of the so-called HSR rail money included in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.[4]

Despite his State of the Union proclamation to spend $56 billion on HSR over five years, the President’s transportation budget offers no such plan. Of the $8 billion of “HSR” money for FY 2012, “$4 billion [$15 billion over six years] fully funds Amtrak’s national network operating, capital, and debt service requirements,” while the other $4 billion [$38 billion over six years] “funds competitive grants for development of core express, regional and feeder corridors, to advance the President’s goal to provide Americans with convenient access to a passenger rail system featuring high-speed rail service.”[5]

The key word here is featuring. What does “convenient access” to something featuring HSR mean? As written, this program could subsidize Washington, D.C.’s deficit-ridden Metro system because it provides “convenient access” to Union Station, where Amtrak’s so-called HSR Acela trains run. If so, spending on real HSR will account for (or feature) a relatively minor amount of the $38 billion that the President proposes.

The President’s Livability Plan

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has been pressing for an expansive and costly “livability” effort and formally defines livability as “being able to take your kids to school, go to work, see a doctor, drop by the grocery or post office, go out to dinner and a movie, and play with your kids in a park, all without having to get in your car.”[6] In order to achieve the LaHood vision for America, government must nudge/force/coerce people into buses or trolleys and create tighter living arrangements.

The President proposes a total of $7.8 billion in livability spending for FY 2012 and $48.1 billion over the next six years.[7] More than half of these funds would come from shifting money from roads.

Delusional on Arrival

There is little chance that any of this will be enacted. In the weeks and months leading up to the budget’s release, the governors of three states rejected the President’s Amtrak/HSR plans for their states and sent $3.7 billion back to Washington. Reflecting how little confidence the Congress has in the President’s Department of Transportation, the House of Representatives cut a greater percentage from the remaining FY 2011 transportation budget than it cut from any other account.

Nor are Republicans the only opponents of the President’s transportation policy: In the last Congress, the Democrat-controlled Senate and House Appropriations committees rejected his infrastructure bank proposal. Now he is asking for it again, and the price tag is $30 billion over six years. With federal transportation programs becoming little more than political slush funds, perhaps it’s time to turn the program back to the states.

Ronald D. Utt, Ph.D., is Herbert and Joyce Morgan Senior Research Fellow in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.
Title: Re: Obama: The modern day "Typhoid Mary" to the U.S.A.
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 04, 2011, 03:33:10 PM

March 04, 2011
The Muslim Brotherhood is officially A-OK for the Obama Administration
Richard Baehr



Professor Barry Rubin argues in his latest article that the Administration's approach to the new Middle East is becoming clearer, and that it represents the worst single strategic blunder in American foreign policy in the Middle East in decades. In essence, the Obama team has decided that it can live with and work with  Islamist regimes  in the Middle East, so long as Al Qaeda is not the group in power.


In other words the Muslim Brotherhood is just fine, if it succeeds in taking power in Egypt and other Arab countries currently in turmoil. Rubin quotes  the new policy as described in a Washington Post article and then offers his reaction:


"The administration is already taking steps to distinguish between various movements in the region that promote Islamic law in government. An internal assessment, ordered by the White House last month, identified large ideological differences between such movements as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and al-Qaeda that will guide the U.S. approach to the region."

Get it? Al-Qaeda is bad because it wants to attack U.S. embassies, the World Trade Center, and the Pentagon.

BUT the Muslim Brotherhood is good! Because it merely wants to seize state power, transform Egypt into an Islamist state, rule 90 million people, back Hamas in trying to destroy Israel, overthrow the Palestinian Authority, help Jordan's Muslim Brotherhood overthrow the monarchy, and sponsor terrorism against Americans in the Middle East.

I'm sure you can see the difference. This is the nonsense that the administration has been working toward for two years. It is the doctrine pushed by the president's advisor on terrorism, elements in the CIA, and White House ideologues. The State and Defense departments are probably horrified.

Here's the next paragraph:

"`We shouldn't be afraid of Islam in the politics of these countries,'" said a senior administration official....`It's the behavior of political parties and governments that we will judge them on, not their relationship with Islam.'"

That first phrase is correct. We shouldn't be afraid of Islam in the politics of these countries. Islam has always been present in Egypt and Jordan, Saudi Arabia or post-Saddam Iraq, and even Iran before its revolution and Afghanistan not under the Taliban. But we should be very afraid of Islamism in the politics of these countries. "


     .    .    .   .


For weeks, the Administrations' favorite newspaper, the New York Times has been paving  the way for the new policy with a series of opinion pieces and news stories on the new "moderate" face of the Muslim Brotherhood,  their commitment to non-violence, their discipline and social service role. 


The new policy is in some ways consistent with the docile American attitude towards Iran- where engagement was tried and failed, weak sanctions were applied with enough loopholes to make them like swiss cheese slices, the anti-regime demonstrations were ignored and garnered no support, and military action was never contemplated.  The result- the Administration is now preparing for a nuclear Iran , and all that is left is finding a way to contain Iran's aggressive posture once it becomes a nuclear power.



Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/03/the_muslim_brotherhood_is_offi.html at March 04, 2011 - 05:30:26 PM CST
Title: Re: Obama: The modern day "Typhoid Mary" to the U.S.A.
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 04, 2011, 06:45:55 PM
http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/2011/mar/04/8/suspect-nuns-traffic-death-had-offenses-handled-in-ar-883902/



Published: March 04, 2011
Updated: March 04, 2011 - 6:21 PM

Home / news / state_regional /

Illegal alien in nun's traffic death had offenses handled inconsistently
By Bill McKelway


A long-awaited report on the deportation status of a Prince William illegal alien whose alcohol-related head-on collision killed a Richmond-based nun shows repeated instances of a failure to report his crimes to Homeland Security as well as a shift in emphasis by the Obama administration in dealing with illegal aliens.
 
Judicial Watch, a public disclosure group, said today that it has a received a copy of the report by the Department of Homeland Security that was kept secret after Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano had declared her office would thoroughly investigate the Prince William case and make it public.
 
The 35-page report deals with the criminal history and legal status of Carlos Martinelly-Montano, 23, whose Aug. 1 collision in Prince William seriously injured two Benedictine nuns and killed a third, Sister Denise Mosier, 66, all of Richmond.
 
Martinelly-Montano is scheduled to go to trial March 28 on six indictments, including felony murder, maiming resulting from driving under the influence and involuntary manslaughter.
 
Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, said the report, which his group sought through a Freedom of Information Act request, shows how this country's patchwork of policies toward illegal immigrants and deportation can "blow up in our faces."
 
He called the report "a clear indictment of Obama's lawless approach to illegal immigration. An innocent person lost her life because local police officers and immigration officials couldn't be bothered to enforce and obey the law."

The report details shifting federal policy regarding what level of crimes should result in deportation. It also tracks at the local level in Northern Virginia court and law enforcement systems that don't uniformly enforce laws or report their outcomes to federal immigration officials.

Corey Stewart, chairman of the county Board of Supervisors, said the report "indicates that ICE is, in fact, releasing dangerous criminal illegal aliens instead of deporting them. And in (Martinelly Montano's) case, they issued him a federal employment authorization permit."

(This has been a breaking news update. Check back for more details as they become available. Read more in tomorrow's Richmond Times-Dispatch.)



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the Richmond Times-Dispatch © Copyright 2011 Media General Communications Holdings, LLC. A Media General company.
Title: Re: Obama: The modern day "Typhoid Mary" to the U.S.A.
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 04, 2011, 06:49:29 PM


By John Hayward
 

The House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee invited Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to swing by and have a little chin wag about the budgetary implications of ObamaCare. Representative John Shimkus (R-IL) noticed that the rather large sum of $500 billion was dedicated to both sustaining Medicare and funding ObamaCare. When he asked Sebelius which destiny awaited those five hundred billion clams, she replied, "Both."

 
That's right, folks: another part of the ObamaCare fraud involved double-counting half a trillion dollars. Shimkus said he was "shocked" to learn this. "We knew the health care law's actual cost was much greater than originally told to the public," he declared. "And now, the truth is slowly coming out in administration reports and testimony." In other news, Shimkus was equally "shocked" to discover there was gambling going on at Rick's Café.

read the rest of the story at humanevents.com

Title: Re: Obama: The modern day "Typhoid Mary" to the U.S.A.
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 04, 2011, 06:56:59 PM
Skip to comments.

Obama: No Arming of U.S. Agents in Mexico
FOX ^



Obama: No Arming of U.S. Agents in Mexico

President Obama on Thursday appeared to reject the idea of arming U.S. agents in Mexico, saying after a meeting with Mexican President Felipe Calderon that the two governments will look at other ways to protect American officials in the wake of a fatal shooting last month.

"There are laws in place in Mexico that say that our agents should not be armed," Obama said, describing the U.S. role south of the border as an "advisory" one. "We do not carry out law enforcement activities inside of Mexico."

The president's statement answers speculation about how far the administration would go in reforming safety measures in response to the killing three weeks ago of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jaime Zapata in Mexico. The shooting death raised questions in the U.S. about Mexico's ability to control violence but U.S. officials earlier wouldn't say whether Obama would press the Mexican leader to allow U.S. agents to be armed.

Coming out of the meeting Thursday afternoon, both presidents stressed that U.S. agents cannot be armed. Obama said he was nevertheless concerned about the safety of agents and that they would examine "procedures and protocols" for how to better protect them.


(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...


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Title: Re: Obama: The modern day "Typhoid Mary" to the U.S.A.
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 06, 2011, 06:41:45 PM
Interior appeals oil drilling ruling
By: Dan Berman and Darren Goode
March 4, 2011 10:18 PM EST
www.politico.com


________________________ __________


 
The Obama administration has fired another shot in the fight over the speed with which the Interior Department is — or isn’t — letting oil drillers resume work in the Gulf of Mexico after last year’s Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill.

The administration late Friday appealed a judge’s orders directing the department to act on several pending Gulf Coast deep-water drilling permits.

Gulf state lawmakers and the oil industry have accused the department of dragging its feet on the permits, enacting a de facto moratorium against new drilling, while the department has said it needs to ensure that safety and environmental protections are in place.

Friday’s appeal challenges rulings by U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman, who on Feb. 17 gave the department 30 days to make a verdict on five pending deep-water drilling permit applications. He later added two permits to that order.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar hinted at the appeal during a Senate hearing Wednesday.

Feldman “in my view is wrong,” Salazar said. “And we will argue the case because I don’t believe that the court has the jurisdiction to basically tell the Department of the Interior what my administrative responsibilities are.”

“The policy we have in mind is unmistakingly clear,” he added. “We are moving forward with the development of oil and gas” production.

Earlier in February, the judge held the department in contempt, citing its “dismissive conduct” in blocking offshore drilling during last year’s spill.

The delay in issuing permits since last year’s Gulf oil spill is “increasingly inexcusable,” Feldman wrote.

The Interior Department on Monday announced the approval of the first deep-water drilling permit held up since last year’s spill. The permit, issued to Noble Energy for a well partly owned by BP, was not one of those that Feldman’s ruling addressed.
 
 
© 2011 Capitol News Company, LLC

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Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 06, 2011, 06:45:49 PM
Number of healthcare reform law waivers climbs above 1,000
The Hill ^

________________________ ____________


Number of healthcare reform law waivers climbs above 1,000 By Jason Millman - 03/06/11 03:38 PM ET

The number of temporary healthcare reform waivers granted by the Obama administration to organizations climbed to more than 1,000, according to new numbers disclosed by the Department of Health and Human Services.

HHS posted 126 new waivers on Friday, bringing the total to 1,040 organizations that have been granted a one-year exemption from a new coverage requirement included in the healthcare reform law enacted almost a year ago. Waivers have become a hot-button issue for Republicans, eager to expose any vulnerabilities in the reform law.

In order to avoid disruption in the insurance market, the healthcare overhaul gives HHS the power to grant waivers to firms that cannot meet new annual coverage limits in 2011. The waivers have typically been granted to so-called "mini-med" plans that offer limited annual coverage — as low as $2,000 — that would fall short of meeting the new annual coverage floor of $750,000 in 2011.

"We don't want to take away people's health insurance before they have some realistic other choices,” HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in an interview with The Hill earlier this year.

Republican lawmakers have seized on the waivers as proof that the law they want to see repealed is flawed, and they have accused the administration of giving them waivers as gifts to union allies. The administration has rejected both claims as Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee have asked HHS for in-depth details about every waiver decision and request.

Most requests for waivers have been accepted, but dozens have been denied because they "did not demonstrate that compliance with the minimum annual limits requirements would significantly increase premiums or decrease access to benefits," an HHS spokeswoman told The Hill in January.

The waivers are meant as a stopgap measure until new state-run insurance exchanges open in 2014. Annual dollar limits will also be abolished by then.

About 2.6 million people are covered by the waivers, representing less than 2 percent of privately insured individuals, according to HHS.

The department also said the number of waivers has been steadily decreasing. HHS approved more than 500 in December, which it attributed to most plan years starting Jan. 1. It then approved 200 waivers in January and 126 in February.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 06, 2011, 06:56:58 PM
Obama: Unrest a positive for Israel
Politico44 ^ | 03/04/11 | ABBY PHILLIP



His remarks, made to a group that included influential Jewish donors, reveal how the president sees populist uprising in the Arab world affecting U.S. national security and that of allies in the region.

In his remarks to the donors, Obama described a White House meeting with the leaders of Jewish American organizations held earlier in the week, noting that he encouraged the attendees “not to be afraid” of the changes the world is observing.

“I told them we have to be sober, we can’t be naive about the changes that are taking place in the Middle East. Our commitment to Israel’s security is inviolable, is sacrosanct,” Obama said.

He added: “I’m actually confident that 10 years from now we’re going to be able to look back and say that this was the dawning of an entirely new and better era. One in which people are striving not to be against something but to be for something.”


(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


What a freaking idiot 
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 06, 2011, 07:02:52 PM
Senator Snowe Presses Administration Adverse Impacts Federal Rule Making on Paper Industry [VIDEO]
YOUTUBE ^ | Mar 2, 2011 | SenatorOlympiaSnowe



At a hearing of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee today examining job loss in the manufacturing industry, U.S. Senator Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine) pressed U.S. Department of Commerce Secretary Gary Locke on the critical imperative to assess the adverse affects of proposed rules on the paper industry. Senator Snowe, who asserted the paper industry is a cornerstone of America's manufacturing sector, insisted the Department do a better job of understanding the implications of proposed regulations on job creation.


(Excerpt) Read more at youtube.com ...

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 06, 2011, 07:07:26 PM

President Obama's "Half-Way" Math On Deficit Cuts Doesn't Even Come Close
Mike "Mish" Shedlock, Global Economic Trend Analysis | Mar. 6, 2011, 10:30 AM | \

URL Mike "Mish" Shedlock Mish is an investment advisor at Sitka Pacific Capital. He writes the widely read Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis


________________________ ______________-


 
President Obama claims he is meeting Republicans "half-way" on Republican plans to reduce the deficit by $61 billion. "Half-way" is $11 billion ($10.5 billion to be more precise).

My math strongly suggests the president needs math lessons.

Please consider Obama offers deeper cuts, appeals for budget deal

President Barack Obama says he's willing to make deeper spending cuts if Congress can compromise on a budget deal that would end the threat of a government shutdown.

Obama's appeal for common ground came Saturday in his weekly radio and Internet address, but lacked specifics on how to bridge the $50 billion gulf that divides the White House and Democratic budget proposal from the deeper reductions offered by Republicans.

The government is running on a temporary spending bill that expires March 18, so the parties have until then to come up with a plan to pay for the remainder of the budget year through September.

"We need to come together, Democrats and Republicans, around a long-term budget that sacrifices wasteful spending without sacrificing the job-creating investments in our future," Obama said.

"My administration has already put forward specific cuts that meet congressional Republicans halfway. And I'm prepared to do more," said Obama.

But the claim that Democrats are meeting Republicans halfway only stands up under the Democratic explanation of the intricate numbers game being played on Capitol Hill.

Obama has threatened to veto that plan, and a Democratic offer of $6.5 billion in cuts -- on top of $4 billion already signed into law -- restores money the House GOP cuts from education, health and other programs.

"You may have heard President Obama say that we need to make sure 'we're living within our means,'" said freshman Rep. Diane Black, R-Tenn. "He's right about that. Unfortunately, his budget doesn't match his words.

Tortured Math

The way that article is worded, I am not even positive the Democrats have offered up even as as the $11 billion I gave them credit for.

I am struggling with the fact that the Democratic proposal "restores money the House GOP cuts from education, health and other programs."

What kind of tortured logic allows you to claim credit for cuts if you restore money elsewhere?

Let's dive deeper into one of Obama's statements: "We need to come together, Democrats and Republicans, around a long-term budget that sacrifices wasteful spending without sacrificing the job-creating investments in our future"

Since when is getting rid of wasteful spending "a sacrifice"?

What Would a Government Shutdown Do?

For all this concern about having a budget in place by March 18 (revised later from March 5 by some sort of emergency funding provision), does it really matter?

CNN Money discusses the setup in Shutdown: What you need to know

Which services would stop?

During the last major shutdown, the government closed 368 National Park Service sites, along with national museums and monuments.

In addition, 200,000 passport applications went unprocessed, and toxic waste cleanup work at 609 sites stopped. The National Institutes of Health stopped accepting new clinical research patients, and services for veterans, including health care, were curtailed.

Work on bankruptcy cases could slow. In the last shutdown, more than 3,500 cases were delayed.

Which services would the government keep running?

Agencies are allowed to perform any operations necessary for the safety of human life and protection of property.

The government would keep essential services -- like air traffic control and the national security apparatus -- in full operating mode.

Federal workers who provide medical care on the job would be kept on, as well as employees who handle hazardous waste, inspect food, patrol the borders, protect federal property, guard inmates or work in power distribution.

Workers who protect essential elements of the money and banking system would also report to work.

The Postal Service, which is self-funded, will continue to operate.

Preposterous Hype

For all the hype over a shutdown, I fail to see how it would matter much. Republicans should stick to their guns. I assure you the world will not end.

The world did not end in the Clinton administration during five days in November 1995 and another 21 days that ended January 1996.

Indeed the best thing might be for everyone to see how little a "shutdown" would matter.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

Tags: U.S. Government, U.S. economy, Barack Obama, Deficit, Republicans | Get Alerts for these topics »

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/president-obamas-half-way-math-on-deficit-cuts-doesnt-even-come-close-2011-3#ixzz1FsaALskH

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 06, 2011, 07:17:51 PM
We have no idea how this will turn out in any way whatsoever, unless of course obama plans on installing sharia led govts and that is his idea of an improvement.

Niall Fergusin already oblierated the notion that this mess in the ME will likely turn out well using historical fact and specific examples. 
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 06, 2011, 07:53:09 PM
QE2: An Unmitigated Disaster?
Submitted by asiablues on 03/06/2011 18:44 -0500
www.zerohedge.com


Ben BernankeCopperCRBCRB IndexDouble DipFederal ReserveFederal Reserve BankGross Domestic ProductMonetary PolicyObama AdministrationPurchasing PowerRick SantelliThe EconomistUnemploymentUS Dollar Index


By Dian L. Chu

There was a debate recently between Rick Santelli of CNBC and James Bullard, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis regarding the inflation effects of the QE2 initiative.

Bullard, the economist, cited the core inflation rate, and even the headline inflation rate as illustrative of a lack of serious inflation pressures in the US economy. Santelli, on the other hand, talked the trader`s perspective of inflation wanting to use the CRB Index (Fig. 1) as a true indication of inflation effects since QE2 was brought up at Bernanke’s Jackson Hole Speech in August 2010.





So let us compare two scenarios and ask ourselves would the US economy be doing better without the QE2 initiative?

Pre-QE2 Prices:

1.2.50-2.70% 10-Year Treasury Yield   
2.$2.64 US Gasoline Price (August 2010)   
3.Cotton Prices at $85 (Contract Size 50,000 pounds)   
4.S&P 500 Index 1100   
5.Copper Prices $3.25 a pound   
6.US Dollar Index at 83.00   
7.Lumber Prices at $200 (Futures Contract –Contract Size 110,000 board feet)   
8.Sugar Prices at $17.50 (Futures Contract-Contract Size 112,000 Sugar #11)   
9.Cattle Prices at $92 (Futures Contract-Contract Size 40,000 pounds)   
10.Milk Prices at $14 (Futures Contract-Contract Size 200,000 pounds Class III)
QE2 Effects So Far:

1.3.50% 10-Year Treasury Yield   
2.$3.50 US Gasoline Price   
3.Cotton Prices at $215 (Futures Contract -50,000 pounds)   
4.S&P 500 Index 1320   
5.Copper Prices $4.50 a pound   
6.US Dollar Index at 76.40   
7.Lumber Prices at $303 (Futures Contract)   
8.Sugar Prices at $30 (Futures Contract)   
9.Cattle Prices at $114 (Futures Contract)   
10.Milk Prices at $19.50 (Futures Contract)
About That Unemployment Rate...

This just gives a snapshot of some of the inflationary effects for the US consumer.  I cannot think of any argument where higher interest rates resulted from QE2 are good for the housing sector, which is the most troubled part the US economy.

Nevertheless, I must add that the unemployment rate is better, and we have created more jobs since QE2 but with a highly fluctuating job pool where workers give up looking and leave the labor market it is hard to gauge the real unemployment numbers.

Plus how much of the job creation is due to other factors like more business friendly policies from the Obama administration, a Republican Landslide in the Midterm Election, and the extension of the Bush Tax Cuts and a reduction in the payroll taxes for businesses?

Equity Gains Don’t Mean Much

The S&P 500 is 230 points higher which can be argued is good for the “wealth effect” but stocks usually have a year-end rally so some of these gains probably would have occurred even without QE2.

Clear Present Danger – Inflation

There are some substantial price increases in a lot of these inflationary metrics for both businesses and the US consumer, not to mention the reduced purchasing power of a much lower US dollar (Fig. 2).





More importantly, inflation data utilized by the core and headline rates are behind the curve of futures prices by anywhere from 3-6 months so the true inflation pass through effects of these higher input prices at the futures level have yet to be realized in the Fed`s measures of inflation data.

For example, gasoline prices at the pump probably lag the futures prices established by the RBOB contract by 20-30 cents. Likewise, the full effects of higher cotton prices will take much longer to work their way through the supply chain to consumers at the retail level for clothes they purchase. It may take another six months for the damage that has already occurred at the futures level to be fully experienced by consumers of cotton products, which would lead to an underestimate of the current inflationary effects in the economy.

Biflation at Work

It should be noted that parts of the economic data are deflationary in nature like housing and wages, which serve to artificially keep the inflation numbers utilized by the fed down, which is the biflation phenomenon I previously discussed.  And if you add in the 6 month lag factor for inflation effects to pass through to the data, a completely different inflation story starts to emerge.

Wanted – Lower Inflation & Interest Rate

However, this still misses the important barometer for analyzing QE2 which should be the following question: “Which scenario is better off for the US economy?” and not any argument of what the current inflation level is in the economy.

This assumes that some inflation is better than no inflation, and I would argue that being able to finance a home mortgage at 100 bps lower, and a dollar per gallon cheaper gasoline is better for businesses and consumers, and that this scenario is far better for fostering sustainable economic growth than the current scenario of QE2 and its effects.

Really Better Off with QE 2?

So the question for Bullard misses the mark if one argues with him what the current or even future inflation effects are for the economy due to QE2. The real question for Bullard is would the US economy be performing that much better without QE2? If you add up all the pros and cons of QE2, guess which scenario would 9 out of 10 independent economists pick for an environment that fosters economic growth?

It seems regardless of what the inflation data says is the overall inflation rate in the economy, QE2 gave us all the negative, anti-growth, lowered standard of living type of inflationary effects that act as a major tax and headwind for both businesses and consumers going forward, and very little of the much needed “Record GDP Growth” and “Eye-Popping Job Creation” bang for our costly buck.

Right Back Where We Started

It seems we pretty much could have gotten this same level of current GDP growth and job creation without massively devaluing the dollar in the process. Sometimes a little patience goes a long way, and if the fed would have waited until the November elections where both the business climate and economic data were improving all on their own we could have had the best of both worlds with a low inflationary price stable environment, and a slow but steadily improving employment situation.

The real fear and irony is that once the full effects of QE2 are realized in the US economy, that we start reacting to said inflationary effects both through tightening monetary policy and consumer/business behavioral changes, and the US starts giving back some of its recent economic gains, and becomes vulnerable to the very scenario that the fed was trying to avert in the first place, a double dip, deflationary downturn in the economy.

EconForecast, March 06, 2011 | Facebook Page | Post Alert | Kindle

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 06, 2011, 08:09:43 PM


















Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 07, 2011, 05:46:59 AM
By Ron Arnold
Created Mar 6 2011 - 8:05pm
Ron Arnold: Obama's 'starve America first' energy policy creates a backlash




"Energy is the capacity to do work." That simple truth from Physics 101 has everything to do with gas prices spiking at the pump as Moammar Gadhafi's war planes bomb Libya's rebel-held oil district and the whole Middle East seethes in unrest.

With shaky foreign energy supplies threatening to deepen the worst recession since World War II, why doesn't America protect its capacity to do work by drilling for more oil and gas here at home? Simple truth from Politics 101: Big Green's extreme anti-energy ideology permeates the Obama administration.

Dan Kish, senior vice president for policy at the D.C.-based Institute for Energy Research, told me, "The Obama administration is deliberately embargoing our own domestic energy from us, from Americans.

He and his agency heads all believe in the politics of scarcity -- force society to live with less. The most anti-energy interior secretary in history is Obama's Ken Salazar -- who is also presently in contempt of court for withholding deepwater Gulf of Mexico oil drilling permits."

Department of the Interior Secretary Salazar, a former U.S. senator from Colorado well practiced in Washington's pretended niceties, wields power with self-assured arrogance that needs no bluster. Two days before Christmas last year, he issued Secretarial Order 3310, in which through bureaucratic fiat he created a new category of off-limits federal property that he calls "Wild Lands."

House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., held a hearing last week to criticize Salazar's end-run around congressional authorization and the Wild Lands order's adverse impact on jobs and economic growth. Hastings was clearly furious, ending his opening statement with, "This administration should be on notice that unilateral decisions and orders to impose restrictive, job-destroying policies will be met with firm resistance."

Salazar told Bob Abbey, his director of the Bureau of Land Management, to get in that hearing and defend his order's legality. Big mistake. Hastings allowed Abbey to testify after the other nine witnesses were finished and proceeded to rip his testimony apart, with devastating cross-examination from Republican Reps. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, and Don Young, R-Alaska. Hastings ended by forcing Abbey to admit that Salazar had "no statutory authority" to issue Order 3310.

Hastings presided over another hearing two days later, this one with Salazar as lead witness, nominally on spending and budget matters, but mostly angry grilling about oil drilling -- a repeat performance of an earlier Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing.

The House honed in on Salazar's placing large areas of the country off-limits to oil production. The Senate focused on Salazar's moratorium on drilling in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico. Salazar coolly dismissed all criticism with false claims and misleading statistics.

Lesson: Zealous environmentalists will never accept resource development, and utilitarians will never accept the cultish beliefs of Big Green.

Never mind that the Congressional Research Service has released a study, U.S. Fossil Fuel Resources, that shows America's combined recoverable natural gas, oil, and coal endowment is the largest on Earth, far larger than that of Saudi Arabia (3rd), China (4th), and Canada (6th) combined.

None of that matters to the Obama administration, which has blocked dozens of energy developments on federal lands and now forbids recovery of 83 percent of our oil resources.

There are as many rationalizations for this vandalism to America's capacity to do work as there are blocked areas, which include a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposal to designate a resource-rich area of 200,000 square miles as untouchable "critical habitat" for polar bears.

Sen. David Vitter, R-La., grew tired of that and placed a hold on Obama's nominee to head the FWS, Dan Ashe. And thereby hangs a tale which we will get to in Friday's column.

Examiner Columnist Ron Arnold is executive vice president of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise.
.ColumnistsCongressional Research ServiceEnergyHouse Natural Resources CommitteeInterior Secretary ken SalazarNatural GasoilPetroleumPresident ObamaRep. Doc HastingsRep. Rob BishopRon ArnoldNEP

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Source URL: http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/2011/03/ron-arnold-obamas-starve-america-first-energy-policy-creates-backlash

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: 240 is Back on March 07, 2011, 05:51:14 AM

Dan Kish, senior vice president for policy at the D.C.-based Institute for Energy Research, told me, "The Obama administration is deliberately embargoing our own domestic energy from us, from Americans

You do know that the Inst for Energy Reseasch has, in the past, received a buttload of money from Exxon Mobil, don't you?

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 07, 2011, 05:58:26 AM
You do know that the Inst for Energy Reseasch has, in the past, received a buttload of money from Exxon Mobil, don't you?



So fucking what? 

Damnit are you in the tank for this asshole in DC.   

Did he give you a few C notes when he came down there?   

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Fury on March 07, 2011, 06:00:32 AM
So fucking what? 

Damnit are you in the tank for this asshole in DC.   

Did he give you a few C notes when he came down there?   



LOL!
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 07, 2011, 06:01:50 AM
EPA bars Texas' operating permit to refinery
Houston : TX : USA | May 25, 2010
Source: Associated Press  

http://www.allvoices.com/news/5914627-epa-bars-texas-operating-permit-to-refinery



The federal government has removed Texas' authority to issue an operating permit to a southeast Texas refinery, saying the state is violating the federal Clean Air Act in dozens of cases.

Al Armendariz, the regional head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, says the EPA objected to 40 permits in December largely because they allowed flexible rules for emitting pollutants. He says months of talks failed, so the EPA blocked Texas from issuing its permit. Instead, the EPA will issue a stricter one for the independently owned Flint Hills Corpus Christi East Refinery.

Armendariz says the EPA will also block Texas from issuing permits in 39 other cases, including those for facilities owned by Exxon Mobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and Dow Chemical.

State environmental regulators said they would respond.

 
The federal government has removed Texas' authority to issue an operating permit to a southeast Texas refinery, saying the state is violating the federal Clean Air Act in dozens of cases.

Al Armendariz, the regional head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, says the EPA objected to 40 permits in December largely because they allowed flexible rules for emitting pollutants. He says months of talks failed, so the EPA blocked Texas from issuing its permit. Instead, the EPA will issue a stricter one for the independently owned Flint Hills Corpus Christi East Refinery.

Armendariz says the EPA will also block Texas from issuing permits in 39 other cases, including those for facilities owned by Exxon Mobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and Dow Chemical.

State environmental regulators said they would respond.
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 07, 2011, 06:30:27 AM
Truly astonishing how disgusting the obama admn is.   Hiding 105 Billion in Obamacare spending no one knew about.  Truly revolting. 

FUCK YOU X 100000 whoever still supports this criminal regime and Mugabe wannabe.

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 07, 2011, 06:36:30 AM
Truly disgusting.   

Obama belongs in a jail cell in Kenya for life.

 

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: dario73 on March 07, 2011, 06:52:34 AM
Truly disgusting.   

Obama belongs in a jail cell in Kenya for life.

 



And the liberals call her an idiot. Intelligent conservative women are a threat to those morons. Either that or most liberals are gay. I am thinking they are all gay.
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 07, 2011, 06:56:22 AM
No, liberals in general think they are entitled to plunder the nation into bankruptcy without anyone saying a damn word about it. 

You see it here daily.   They are mini-madoffs to the core. 
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 07, 2011, 07:09:13 AM
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703580004576180340862497026.html


By GRACE-MARIE TURNER, ALEX CORTES AND HEATHER R. HIGGINS

Sports fans relish this time of year for the NCAA Championship Basketball Tournament, aka "March Madness." But this year the tournament has a serious contender for that title. March is also ObamaCare's anniversary month.

Last year, President Obama gave Congress an arbitrary deadline to pass his health-care takeover legislation before the Easter recess at the end of March. This forced lawmakers to hurry their votes on a deeply flawed bill that very few of them had read. Worse, many made false promises to secure final passage.

We're already seeing ObamaCare's madness in its first year of implementation, which is why the American people continue to call for defunding, repealing and replacing it with more sensible reforms. Here are a few examples of the mayhem.

• More than half the states—28 and counting—are challenging the law in court, saying that it violates the constitutional rights of their citizens and the sovereignty of the states. A new study from the Senate Finance and House Energy and Commerce Committees found that as a result of ObamaCare, budget-strapped states face at least $118 billion in unfunded mandates during the first 10 years after the law takes effect.

• Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has handed out nearly 1,000 waivers to allow select companies, unions and states to escape, at least temporarily, some of the burdensome new insurance rules she has created. This is a continuation of the trend of the "Cornhusker Kickback" and the "Louisiana Purchase" that Senate Democrats used to get the law passed in the first place, and that so disgusted the American people.

 • Independent experts have shown that the cost of health insurance will rise faster than it would have without the law. The Congressional Budget Office expects the price of a family policy in the individual market to be $2,100 higher by 2016 than it would have been had the law not passed. In at least 20 states, it's now impossible to buy child-only health insurance because of Ms. Sebelius's onerous new rules.

• Seniors are at risk of losing access to physicians and medical care. Medicare actuaries say that the cuts built into the law will force as many as 40% of providers to eventually stop seeing Medicare patients or go bankrupt.

• Many thousands of people are already losing the health insurance they have now as companies are exiting markets for individual, small group and Medicare Advantage coverage.

• The former director of the Congressional Budget Office, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, says that the costs of ObamaCare are set to explode when employers opt to drop coverage and send their workers to the new, federally subsidized health exchanges for coverage. He estimates that this will drive up the cost of the law by $1 trillion or more in the first 10 years.

The list goes on and on. It's time to stop the ObamaCare madness before it becomes another entrenched entitlement program.

To protect taxpayers and our health sector, Congress can begin by defunding ObamaCare at every opportunity. Next we need a president and a Congress that will vote to repeal the law and start over with sensible reforms. The stakes are high for the capacity of patients and doctors to choose and control their medical choices, and for all Americans' freedom and prosperity.

If we do this right, in March of 2013, instead of jumping through more of ObamaCare's hoops, let's hope we will be able to focus on basketball's March Madness instead.
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 07, 2011, 07:48:17 AM
William Beach and Dustin Siggins

Archive    |    Latest    |    Log In

March 7, 2011 4:00 A.M.

An Emergency for Americans Under 30
For the Debt Paying Generation, huge burdens, high inflation, and a weakened economy.



 Listen to the Audio Version
 

A news alert for the Debt Paying Generation: President Obama’s budget for Fiscal Year 2012 brings the national debt from $14.1 trillion to nearly $26.4 trillion by 2021. This will take the amount debt per working American by the end of this fiscal year — all 153,000,000 of them — from $101,150 to more than $161,631. Young Americans are going to get hammered by this debt if entitlement, welfare, and defense reforms are not under way within the next two to five years.

Those 115 million Americans between 5 and 30 years old are going to have to absorb virtually all of this debt. In earlier pieces, we outlined our take on the matter, and how few members of Congress are willing to stand up for the interests of the under-30 generation. Today, we’d like to highlight a warning from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which has been sending warning shots across our bow for almost a year, and just the last January released yet another report warning of economic pain and disruption for Americans if we don’t get our debt under control.


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Of the several studies released by the IMF, the most important was a May 15 report warning the United States that it would have a debt-to-GDP ratio of 100 percent by 2015. An April 30 report also found that of all the debt reductions industrialized nations need to make, the United States requires the second-largest adjustment. This adjustment amounts to full 12 percent of our structural deficits — not quite as bad as Japan at 13 percent, but considerably worse than woeful Greece at 9 percent. Yet Congress will probably not be able to enact these necessary changes.

In order to achieve that 12 percent reduction during the five fiscal years between now and 2015, the average budget cut would have to be equal to equal $395.3 billion per year. Given that the president’s bipartisan debt commission’s recommendations could not even get to Congress for a vote, and that the new budget from House Republicans cuts only $61 billion from 2010 spending levels, how can the American people expect real structural change in the federal budget? Members of the Debt Paying Generation certainly cannot, and rightfully should ask if they will be left holding the bag.

And there’s more than IOUs in that bag. A much weaker economy is part of the burden, too. According to Claudia Reinhart and Hugh Rogoff, authors of the best-selling This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly, countries that amass public debt above 90 percent of GDP inevitably experience sharply slower economic growth and usually debilitating inflation. That means that the Debt Paying Generation could end up with lower incomes and devalued investments while bearing the biggest debt burden in human history. Say hello to virtually no savings and no retirement.

Implementation of the IMF’s recommendations will be next to impossible, for either political party, if the last ten years are any example. With the president’s 2012 budget proposal out but not yet fully analyzed, we decided to put the IMF’s recommendations into real terms based upon the president’s initial 2011 budget proposal. If Congress were to enact the IMF recommendations, it would have to make cuts amounting to 72 percent of defense spending or 145 percent of the president’s proposed Medicaid spending every year through 2015. Or Congress could just eliminate the entire discretionary budget, all of Social Security, and spending equal to two-thirds of our national-debt interest payments for FY 2011 to reach the same total cuts this year, and leave the budget in other years untouched.

It’s time for Americans to step up and place blame squarely on ourselves both for electing ineffective leaders and for not knowing where our tax dollars are going. Approximately 41 percent of the president’s original 2011 budget is taken up by Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, programs that this nation can’t afford but that huge majorities of Americans don’t want changed. The program Americans most want to cut? Foreign aid, which amounts to less than 2 percent of federal spending — just $38 billion dollars out of a budget nearly $4 trillion in size.

In order to lift ourselves out of this hole, Americans will need to make tough decisions. Because mandatory spending and defense make up more than 65 percent of the federal budget, reforming entitlement programs for the elderly and indigent, and bringing much needed efficiencies to the Department of Defense, must be undertaken now. Otherwise, the Debt Paying Generation will experience a significant level of financial insecurity. For example, it is widely believed, with good reason, that Americans under 30 are never going to collect any Social Security or Medicare, despite government promises to the contrary. How unfair is it, then, to add insult to injury by loading them down with thousands in additional taxes throughout their lives to repay the policy-driven debts of their parents’ and grandparents’ generations?

We hope the new Congress will address these problems before they hit critical mass in the next two to five year However, history suggests otherwise, and the inertia of the past bodes poorly for the Debt Paying Generation. If Congress does not take seriously the fiscal realities that the IMF has highlighted, young Americans almost certainly will suffer under a lifelong recession.

— William Beach is director of the Center for Data Analysis at the Heritage Foundation. Dustin Siggins is a former policy researcher in the Center for Data Analysis at Heritage.
 
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/261422/emergency-americans-under-30-william-beach-and-dustin-siggins

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Option D on March 07, 2011, 08:50:18 AM
I got one..

*****NEWSFLASH*******

OBAMA ATE AN ORANGE FOR BREAKFAST..

Obama had an orange for breakfast and now he is contributing to the national shortage of oranges..
He should be jailed and maybe even put on deathrow for this
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 07, 2011, 08:51:49 AM
MICHAEL GOODWIN: Chaos In Libya Extends All the Way to the White House
By Michael Goodwin


Published March 07, 2011 | New York Post

The Libyan nutjob, Daffy Qaddafi, has big problems, but America is not among them. At least not until the Obama administration gets its act together to speak with one voice.

Continuing the mixed-message habit it showed in Egypt, the White House appears to be locked in an internal struggle about responding to the Arab uprisings. Details will make a good history class some day, but for now, the result is a mess.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton says a no-fly zone is on the table. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates promptly shoots it down, telling Congress there are logistical problems, and it would mean an attack on Libyan air-defense systems. President Obama then suggests no-fly remains an option. Got that?

It's tempting to hope the goal is to keep Qaddafi off guard, but that's too generous. As a friend says, always reach first for the obvious answer in a puzzle. If you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras.

In this case, think incompetence, not clever strategy. Obama sent an ambassador to Egypt to tell Hosni Mubarak to begin a smooth exit transition. When the ambassador, Frank Wisner, later said something similar in public, the White House rebuked him. It seems Obama, without telling Wisner or Clinton, had changed the policy and wanted Mubarak out.

Power is centralized in Obama's office or, more accurately, in Obama. For all his talk about partnership, he's big on unilateral action, as long as he's the unit. Sources tell me that on matters ranging from the economy to the Mideast, Obama doesn't listen to anyone.

"He has his own worldview," one Dem said. Another said, "He's very stubborn."

Those are not compliments. And as Libya shows, neither are they virtues.

Michael Goodwin is a New York Post columnist and Fox News contributor. To continue reading his column on deficits and other topics, click here.

 Print     Close URL

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/03/07/libyan-chaos-dc




________________________ _______________--



Amazing - the incompetent Obama doesnt listen to anyone even though he himself has ZERO experience in anything whatsoever.     
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: 240 is Back on March 07, 2011, 08:56:42 AM
I got one..

*****NEWSFLASH*******

OBAMA ATE AN ORANGE FOR BREAKFAST..


Word has it that the Orange Growers Association of America was exempted from Obamacare.  I think this is worthy of congressional investigation, but only after the repub House votes upon their 97th Anti-Abortion bill in the last 6 weeks.
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: blacken700 on March 07, 2011, 08:57:52 AM
I got one..

*****NEWSFLASH*******

OBAMA ATE AN ORANGE FOR BREAKFAST..

Obama had an orange for breakfast and now he is contributing to the national shortage of oranges..
He should be jailed and maybe even put on deathrow for this


everybody who eats oranges can die and go to hell you commies  ;D ;D
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 07, 2011, 08:59:57 AM

Word has it that the Orange Growers Association of America was exempted from Obamacare.  I think this is worthy of congressional investigation, but only after the repub House votes upon their 97th Anti-Abortion bill in the last 6 weeks.

Nice that you two can't refute one article posted in his entire thread that completely obliterates the horrible job your messiah is doing.

 
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: blacken700 on March 07, 2011, 09:00:56 AM

Word has it that the Orange Growers Association of America was exempted from Obamacare.  I think this is worthy of congressional investigation, but only after the repub House votes upon their 97th Anti-Abortion bill in the last 6 weeks.


they're top priority is jobs, mmmm nevermind ;D
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Option D on March 07, 2011, 09:01:12 AM

everybody who eats oranges can die and go to hell you commies  ;D ;D

yes this is the worst thing in the history of the Universe. Damn orange eaters.. you know who also ate oranges, Satan... yes satan himself ate oranges. Obama=the son of satan.
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Option D on March 07, 2011, 09:05:01 AM

Word has it that the Orange Growers Association of America was exempted from Obamacare.  I think this is worthy of congressional investigation, but only after the repub House votes upon their 97th Anti-Abortion bill in the last 6 weeks.
Aww Shit.. its fuckin over for this Cynical Citrus Consuming Communist. Time to go down Orangebama... oh yeah... i forgot to add a few  ::) ::) ::)
You dont even know.. youre in the dark, i guess fruit is not your strong suit ::) ::)
Get a clue...

Youtube about oranges..
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: blacken700 on March 07, 2011, 09:05:33 AM
i don't know if this is related but hitler drank orange juice  :D
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Option D on March 07, 2011, 09:06:23 AM
i don't know if this is related but hitler drank orange juice  :D


aww fuck its all coming together now..
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: 240 is Back on March 07, 2011, 09:09:25 AM
i don't know if this is related but hitler drank orange juice  :D

Those citrus swilling m********ckers. 

You can peel this orange from my cold sticky hands...
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: blacken700 on March 07, 2011, 09:14:55 AM

aww fuck its all coming together now..


and what color are oranges ? orange, and what color was  obama's shirt on oct 15 that's right orange , do you see where this is going  ;D
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 07, 2011, 09:18:54 AM
David Rosenberg's Explanation Why The Real Unemployment Rate (U-3) Is 12%
ZeroHedge ^ | 3/4/2011 | Tyler Durden





Pretty much precisely what noted earlier today: "A couple of behind-the-scene facts: from October to February, an epic 700k people have left the work force. If you actually adjust for the fact that the labour force participation rate has plunged this cycle to a 27-year low the unemployment would be sitting at 12% today. Moreover the employment-to-population ratio — the so-called “employment rate” — stagnated in February at 58.4% and is actually lower now than it was last fall when “double dip” was the flavour du jour."

PAYROLL REVIEW – NICE JOB, SHAME ABOUT THE PAYCHEQUE, from Gluskin Sheff

The widespread reaction to the jobs report today is uniformly positive. I think a dose of reality is really needed here. It may as well come from this pen. The headline print of +192k was in line with published estimates but following the slate of ISMs and the ADP report, the “whispered” number was closer to +250k. Of course, there were the upward revisions to the back-data that showed net gains of +58k so one could easily respond that adjusted for these, the topline did indeed meet these “whispered” estimates. The employment diffusion index jumped to a 13-year high of 68.2% from 60.1% in January, but beware of peaks and troughs in this index (i.e. it would have been a mistake to extrapolate the 17% low in this job dispersion measure at the March 2009 market trough).

Here is what I think is important: because of the winter storms, we really have to average out the past two months. So the January-February average for payrolls is +128k. Allowing for a similar reading in March that we received in February would generate an average increase for the first quarter of around 150k. That is little changed from what employment gains averaged on a monthly basis in the fourth quarter. So while we are seeing positive job growth, it is not accelerating even though we are coming off the most intense impact of the fiscal and monetary easing that was unveiled late last year. In other words, we are disappointed with what is still a lacklustre trend in net job creation, particularly in view of the peak stimulus we are currently experiencing.

What if Q1 is the peak for job growth? If you remember, we ended up with sub-3% GDP growth in the fourth quarter, which is about half of what we should be seeing at this stage of the cycle. And if we are generating jobs at a similar rate in the current quarter, barring a re-acceleration in productivity, growth again will be below 3% at a time when the consensus is closer to 3.5%. But more to the point — what if this represents the peak for the year? Because if there is one thing we do know, it is that this quarter contains all the incremental policy easing impact on the macro data.

What was particularly discouraging was the fact that both the wage number and the workweek were flat. Nominal wages, in fact, have been stagnant in three of the past four months. Weekly average earnings have also been flat or negative in three of the past four months. How on earth can these statistics possibly be viewed as bullish for the economy? The year-over-year-trend in average weekly earnings in the past three months has softened from 2.6% to 2.5% to 2.3% today. At the same time, it is probably reasonable to assume that surging food and fuel costs will bring headline inflation to, and possibly through, 3% in coming months. In other words, the growing risk of falling personal income in real terms, even with the positive growth in payrolls, is a glaring yellow light as far as the consumer spending outlook is concerned.

Aggregate hours worked only managed to tick up 0.2% in February after a flat January. That is total labour input — bodies and hours. So assuming a trend-like productivity performance, we are talking yet again about sub-3% GDP growth, which by itself is okay but considering the peak impact of all the fiscal and monetary steroids being administered this quarter, it is actually disappointing.

Yes, the unemployment rate dipped again to a 22-month low of 8.9% from 9.0% in January and the nearby high of 9.8% in November. This reflected a 250k risein Household employment — the third increase in a row — and a flat participation rate. A couple of behind-the-scene facts: from October to February, an epic 700k people have left the work force. If you actually adjust for the fact that the labour force participation rate has plunged this cycle to a 27-year low the unemployment would be sitting at 12% today. Moreover the employment-to-population ratio — the so-called “employment rate” — stagnated in February at 58.4% and is actually lower now than it was last fall when “double dip” was the flavour du jour.

All that matters in these employment reports is what the jobs environment means for income, because workers generally spend in the real economy. With credit harder to come by, and with fiscal policy soon to become more focussed on austerity, it is the income that the labour delivers that will prove to be the critical determinant of the economic outlook. So while the “spin” may be over near-200k headline payroll gains, another dip in the headline unemployment rate, the organic income backdrop can really only be described as tentative, at best, especially in real terms as gasoline prices make their way to $4 a gallon by the time Memorial Day rolls around.
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 07, 2011, 09:21:26 AM
Government posts biggest monthly deficit ever
The Washington Times
11:46 a.m., Monday, March 7, 2011

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/mar/7/government-posts-biggest-monthly-deficit-ever/print




The federal government posted its largest monthly deficit in history in February at $223 billion, according to preliminary numbers the Congressional Budget Office released Monday morning.

That figure tops last February's record of $220.9 billion, and marks the 29th straight month the government has run in the red — a modern record. The last time the federal government posted even a monthly surplus was September 2008, just before the financial collapse.

Last month's federal deficit is nearly four times as large as the spending cuts House Republicans have passed in their spending bill, and is more than 30 times the size of Senate Democrats' opening bid of $6 billion.

Senators are slated to vote this week on those two proposals — both of which are expected to fail — and then all sides will go back to the negotiating table to try to work out a final deal.

© Copyright 2011 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Option D on March 07, 2011, 09:23:18 AM

and what color are oranges ? orange, and what color was  obama's shirt on oct 15 that's right orange , do you see where this is going  ;D

aint this a bitch.. all this time.. i thought it was an innocent orange.. but this whole time it was a terroist pot to collapse the nation by depriving it of its citrus supply..

holy fuck.. i just landed on the mother load

Busted! Obama as Hitler was Democrat/Union plant | Orange Juice -

www.orangejuiceblog.com/.../busted-obama-as-hitler-was-democratunion- plant/
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 07, 2011, 09:59:53 AM
The ObamaCare Fraud – Administration Admits It’s Unsustainable As Over 1,000 Waivers Granted
By: Curt 0diggsdigg

http://floppingaces.net/2011/03/07/the-obamacare-fraud-administration-admits-its-unsustainable-as-over-1000-waivers-granted

________________________ __________________-



So answer me this. Obama touted his Socialized medicine plan as the fix this country needed to get everyone healthcare. But if it’s so great why in the world do a thousand businesses (and climbing) with hundreds of thousands of employees (and climbing) need to be exempted from this “masterpiece” of legislation?

HHS posted 126 new waivers on Friday, bringing the total to 1,040 organizations that have been granted a one-year exemption from a new coverage requirement included in the healthcare reform law enacted almost a year ago. Waivers have become a hot-button issue for Republicans, eager to expose any vulnerabilities in the reform law.

And as the administration hands out more waivers it is also acknowledging what we all knew long ago. ObamaCare cannot sustain itself and will create a HUGE burden on the taxpayers:

In debate on the health care bill in late 2009, Republicans and moderate Democrats repeatedly warned that sicker people were more likely than healthy ones to sign up for the long-term care plan. Enrollment is voluntary, but the law stipulates that premiums must be set high enough to guarantee the solvency of the program over 75 years. Higher premiums would discourage healthier people from participating, economists and actuaries say.

Administration officials, who played down such concerns 15 months ago, say they now share them. Under questioning by a Republican at a Senate hearing last week, Ms. Sebelius said the original version of the program, known as Community Living Assistance Services and Supports, or Class, was “totally unsustainable.”

She told the House Ways and Means Committee, “We very much share the concerns that have been expressed that, as written into law, the framework of the program was not sustainable.”

So, the CLASS act….which Obama used to sell the program as sustainable, really isn’t.

It was all one big gimmick used by Obama to make it appear that ObamaCare would actually reduce the deficit. The CLASS Act basically says they can start collecting premiums five years before benefits are provided. So when you look at the ten year budget, as the CBO did, it would show a surplus. Of course those last five years, when ObamaCare really gets rolling, will run HUGE deficits and as the administration now acknowledges…it isn’t sustainable.

To top it all off, and realizing the vulnerability in the law, Obama told the governors at the recent governor meeting that “if your state can create a plan that covers as many people as affordably and comprehensively as the Affordable Care Act does — without increasing the deficit — you can implement that plan.”

Hogwash.

This is not the first time he has come forward with an open hand that in reality was not so open. In September of 2009, he said: “If you come to me with a serious set of proposals, I will be there to listen.” In February of 2009, he said: “I won’t hesitate to embrace a good idea from my friends in the minority party.” As we know, Obama went forward with his approach, and Obamacare passed with no Republican votes and 34 Democratic votes against it in the House.

…The problem with this [new] offer, and Obama’s previous offers of flexibility, is the vagueness of the key words. He gets to decide what is “serious,” what is a “good idea.” In this case, he — specifically, skeptical senior officials at HHS — gets to decide in advance whether market-based reforms would “create a plan that covers as many people as affordably and comprehensively.”

Pass a law requiring everyone to buy healthcare, then give out thousands of waivers. Tell everyone the law will pay for itself to get it passed, once its passed let everyone in on the secret…it really won’t pay for itself. And finally tell the states “well, if you can do a better job…do it. but I get to decide if it really is better.”

Smoke and mirrors.

That’s all this administration is about.
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: blacken700 on March 07, 2011, 10:05:34 AM
http://floppingaces.net/2011/03/07/the-obamacare-fraud-administration-admits-its-unsustainable-as-over-1000-waivers-granted

this must be a parent company of the wsj  :D
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 07, 2011, 10:10:28 AM
http://floppingaces.net/2011/03/07/the-obamacare-fraud-administration-admits-its-unsustainable-as-over-1000-waivers-granted

this must be a parent company of the wsj  :D

 ::)  ::)

Yeah, remind me again why 1000 waivers have been issued so far?   
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 07, 2011, 10:17:01 AM
Gates Says U.S. May Stay in Afghanistan Past 2014 Deadline
 Mark Wilson/Getty Images
 By Sara Sorcher
Monday, March 7, 2011 | 12:25 p.m.
http://www.nationaljournal.com/nationalsecurity/in-surprise-afghanistan-visit-gates-says-u-s-may-stay-past-2014-deadline-20110307




________________________ _______--




Defense Secretary Robert Gates said from Afghanistan on Monday that the U.S. military is well positioned to start withdrawing some troops in July, though he said a U.S. presence may remain in the country past the 2014 deadline to transfer security control to local forces.

Gates arrived in Afghanistan on Monday on an unannounced trip to meet with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and visit the country's restive eastern and southern provinces to assess conditions as he decides how many troops to withdraw in July. Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell told reporters en route to Afghanistan that "there are more talks to take place and more work to be done once [Gates] is home," before any official decisions are made about the size and scope of troop withdrawals.

Gates told troops in Afghanistan that the U.S. may remain in the country past a 2014 deadline for the end of combat operations to train Afghan soldiers. "Here in Afghanistan, we're in the process right now of beginning a negotiation with the Afghan government for a long-term security partnership.... We are fully prepared to have a continuing presence here assisting the Afghans after 2014.... Obviously it would be a small fraction of the presence that we have today," Gates said, according to Agence-France Presse.

The issue of civilian casualties was also part of Gates's visit: Karzai on Sunday rejected the personal apology of Gen. David Petraeus, top commander of U.S. and NATO forces there, for the mistaken killings of nine children in Afghanistan last week when two helicopters fired on what they thought were insurgents. Petraeus apologized for the incident at an Afghan National Security Council meeting Sunday in addition to his public apology last week.

"The people of Afghanistan are tired of these incidents and excuses, and condemnations cannot relieve their pain," Karzai said Sunday.

Gates addressed the issue at a news conference alongside Karzai, saying that the incident "breaks our heart," and called it a "setback" for U.S. relations with the Afghan people. Karzai accepted the apology.

From Afghanistan, Gates will fly to Germany to visit the U.S. Africa Command and then continue to Brussels to attend a meeting of NATO defense ministers.


________________________ ________________________ ___-


Ha ha ha- DU and HP are going to be in meltdown over this.   
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 07, 2011, 12:04:09 PM
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 07, 2011, 12:15:39 PM
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Option D on March 07, 2011, 12:17:14 PM
BOOM... I cracked the case!!!!!

Obama and the Orange CT.. its over..



http://slog.thestranger.com/2008/02/oranges_for_obama

So I was staring at a pile of mandarin oranges on my kitchen counter last night, wondering what I could do to get people who weren’t thinking of caucusing to caucus. I’ve never caucused before. I think it sounds fun. Also, I’m not the greatest neighbor. I don’t do neighborly things. I decided I’d knock on doors on my floor in my apartment building an hour before it’s time to caucus, offer an orange, and see if any of my neighbors wanted to walk to our caucus site together. It’s morning in America, etc.

I knocked and knocked and knocked. No one’s home. Except the couple down the hall who apparently are in a huge fight. Just as I was about to knock, I heard the guy shout: “No one’s ever told you you sound like a girl when you talk that way?” So I didn’t knock. Nevertheless, I felt pathetic. Everyone else is out scaling mountains; I’m knocking on doors.

I went down two floors and knocked on my building maintenance guy’s door. He answered. I said, “Do you want an orange? O is for Obama.” He said he can’t eat oranges because they have sugar in them or something. I asked if he wanted to walk to the caucus site anyway. He said, “That’s today?”

So we’re going to go together. I think I’m going to bring all these oranges. Bargaining chips
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 07, 2011, 03:24:09 PM
Government Motors By the Numbers
National Legal & Policy Center ^ | March 7, 2011 | Peter Flaherty








News coverage of General Motors over the past few weeks has painted an increasingly glowing picture, but here's a dose of reality: GM still has not repaid taxpayers for the bailout and it's looking less and less like taxpayers will ever be made whole.

Unlike much of the media, we actually spent a considerable amount of time looking behind the press releases to see what GM's numbers really say about the health of a company taxpayers now own. This week, we will be sharing with readers a more realistic picture of the company's health. The bottom line: The picture is far less rosy than GM would like you to believe.

GM's Share Price: Will taxpayers ever be made whole?

Remember these promises?

"Recent progress at GM gives reason for optimism that it may be possible for taxpayers to get every penny back." Steve Rattner , Presidential Task Force on the Auto Industry (11/18/2010)

"American taxpayers are now positioned to recover more than my administration invested in GM." President Barack Obama (11/18/2010)

"The government's investment is well placed, and I think they'll make a lot of money." Former GM CEO Ed Whitacre (11/18/2010)

GM's share price closed below its $33 IPO price for the first time on March 1st. The company has underperformed the S&P 500 by 15% since the beginning of the year. The Middle East is in turmoil and gas prices are skyrocketing. Not a good harbinger for GM's share price.

Now the Feds say that they want to get out of their GM position as soon as possible. Their first opportunity to do so will be when the government's "lockup period" ends in May.

But according to the House Oversight Panel's January update on TARP and the auto industry, for U.S. taxpayers just to break even on the government's historic $50 billion "investment", GM shares will need to trade at $54.28 -- a whopping 65% premium over GM's March 1st closing price. (GM went down further today.)

From the November IPO to the March 1st close, GM's shares have been range bound between roughly $34 and $39 per share. Does anyone really believe that we will see a 65% explosion to the upside for GM shares in the next several months? How about in the next year? Two years?
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 07, 2011, 05:43:18 PM
 The Huffington Post March 7, 2011   
This is the print preview: Back to normal view »  Sam Stein
 
HuffPost Reporting
 
stein@huffingtonpost.com


Senate Dems Consider Health Care Fix That Could Hit Poor Consumers The Hardest

First Posted: 03/ 7/11 05:37 PM Updated: 03/ 7/11 06:57 PM

Read More: 1099, Democrats Health Care, Poor People Health Care, Senate Democrats, Senate Democrats Health Care, True-Up, Politics News
 
WASHINGTON -- Democrats on the Hill are growing increasingly convinced and, in some cases, concerned that in an effort to offset the cost of repealing a tax requirement in the president’s health care bill, the party will settle on a policy that jacks up insurance prices for low-income Americans.

The policy prescription, known as a “true-up,” and well-outlined by Talking Points Memo’s Brian Beutler, is the favored approach of House Republicans. Under the true-up, individuals who receive subsidies to help purchase insurance would be subject to heightened penalty from (or payback to) the IRS, starting in 2014, should they move up income brackets.

Up until last weekend, it seemed likely that Senate Democrats would balk at such an approach, wary that it would come off as penalizing the poor and discouraging those in need from taking subsidies to purchase insurance. But now, sources with knowledge of the conversations say, the party is leaning toward adopting the House GOP language in an effort to pay for the repeal of the law’s 1099 provision -- an unpopular requirement that requires small business owners to make excessive tax-reporting requirements.

“This is very real,” said one knowledgeable Senate source who was adamantly opposed to the proposal. “There are people talking to [leadership], letters from members, who are trying to make this not happen. But it is very, very real.”

A Senate Democratic aide confirmed that assessment.

Under current law, households that receive subsidies to purchase health care and work their way into higher income brackets would only be forced to pay the IRS back $600 or less. Those receiving federal tax credits based on their 2013 income level, the theory goes, should have to pay back some of that money if they get richer by 2014, since the lower the recipient's income, the more generous the subsidies.

The revised law, which the House passed and the Senate is now considering, would raise the penalties -- in some cases, by thousands of dollars. Households that move into an income bracket of 300 to 400 percent above the federal poverty line would have to pay up to $2,500 back to the IRS. For those that move into the range of 200 to 300 percent above poverty, that cap is $1,500. For those who move into the 100 to 200 percent range, it is $600. Those who move above the 400 percent range, which is the limit for qualifying for a subsidy in the first place, coule face a payback even higher than $2,500.

“It would cause a significant number of people, through no fault of their own, to have a significant liability at the end of each year,” said Ron Pollack, the founding executive director of Families USA, a national lobby for health care consumers. “And that is going to be both puzzling and troubling for people affected. The second problem is, as more and more people learn about these problems, fewer people will seek tax credit subsidies to help them afford premiums. So I think this would undermine the ability to provide affordable health coverage for many middle- and moderate-income people and families, and that would undermine a key goal of the Affordable Care Act.”

A spokesman for Families USA, following up on Pollack’s statement, noted that the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the fix could jeopardize coverage for approximately 250,000 people.

As to why the Democratic Party would lean on the backs of the poor and middle class to pay for the 1099 fix, Pollack could only speculate. The latter was so unpopular, he said, that lawmakers likely were eager to move quickly to fix it, even if it meant adopting House Republican language without much of a protest. That said, as of Monday morning, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s office was cautioning reports that there were “concerns with the unintended consequences of the health care credit offset.” Further consultation with the leadership team was needed, Reid's office said.

UPDATE: Michelle Nawar, Director for Legislation at the Service Employees International Union, tells The Huffington Post that the labor group is working the Hill encouraging Senate Democrats to defeat the "true-up" pay for. The union, she adds, will be scoring the vote – as good an indication as any that there will be a political price to pay for those who support the House-passed provision.

“We are very disappointed that Senate leadership seems to want to go in this direction,” Nawar said. “We’re very upset that they appear willing to except this proposal that puts the burden on low-income families.”

As for the state of play in the Senate, a Democratic operative on the Hill relays that the party does appear “extremely close” to passing the true-up revision. The thinking, the operative relays is that leadership just wants to get the 1099 issue dealt with. The White House is opposed to the fix being discussed. But they don’t seem too eager to threaten a veto either.


Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 07, 2011, 06:07:58 PM
U.S. Treasury Drew Down Its Cash Balance by $81.6 Billion in Just First 4 Days of March
Monday, March 07, 2011
By Terence P. Jeffrey [/b


A view of the U.S. Treasury Department in Washington. (AP File Photo/Evan Vucci)

The U.S. Treasury is depleting its cash at an accelerating pace, drawing down its cash balance by $81.6 billion in the just the first four days of March, leaving the federal government with only $108.9 billion on hand, according to the Daily Treasury Statement released Monday afternoon.

At the beginning of February, the Treasury had $349.1 billion in cash on hand, but spent that down by $158.5 billion during the month, ending February with only $190.6 billion on hand.

Were the government to continue to draw down its cash balance at the $20.4 billion-per-day rate that prevailed in the first four days of March, it would spend its way through its final $108.9 billion in little more than five days.

Under current law, the U.S. Treasury may only run the national debt up to $14.294 trillion. At the end of February, according to the Treasury’s Monthly Statement of the Public Debt, the total debt subject to this legal limit was $14.142331 trillion—just $151.669 billion short of the limit.

Had the Treasury not spent down the $81.6 billion in its cash balance in the first four days of this month and borrowed that money instead, it would have significantly reduced its remaining legal borrowing authority.

For the Treasury to borrow more than the current $14,294 limit, Congress and President Barack Obama will need to enact new legislation authorizing the Treasury to increase the national debt up to whatever new limit they find agreeable.

The Treasury’s largest single expenditure in the first four days of March, according to the Daily Treasury Statement, was paying off maturing debt. During those four days, Treasury paid $128.477 billion to redeem old bonds. At the same time, it borrowed $133.196 billion by selling new bonds.

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/us-treasury-drew-down-its-cash-balance-8

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 07, 2011, 06:38:59 PM
WOLF: Obamacare vital signs starting to fade
Court puts law on the fast track to judgment day
By Dr. Milton R. Wolf
-
The Washington Times
6:11 p.m., Monday, March 7, 2011


________________________ ______________________



Obamacare is living on borrowed time, and even its most ardent supporters are beginning to realize it. That's why they're racing to implement - and entrench - as much of the plan as possible before the laws of economics and the laws of the land and voters catch up. They're like a deadbeat renter starting a remodeling project after being evicted but before the police escort them from the premises in hopes that it gives them squatter's rights. Meanwhile, two unrelated but devastating events have caused the ground to shake beneath the feet of Obamacare supporters.

A major component of Obamacare is "totally unsustainable." Those aren't the words of Rush Limbaugh or Sarah Palin; no, those belong to the Obama administration's own chief cheerleader, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, in testimony before the Senate Finance Committee. The program in question, the CLASS Act or Community Living Assistance Services and Support Act, is a massive long-term elderly care entitlement program that was quietly tucked into Obamacare and never got anywhere near the attention it deserves.

Sen. Kent Conrad, North Dakota Democrat, called the CLASS Act "a Ponzi scheme of the first order, the kind of thing that Bernie Madoff would have been proud of." And then he voted for it. I suspect Bernie Madoff would be proud of Kent Conrad. The White House's sleight of hand goes like this: CLASS Act taxes begin in Year 1 but the benefits don't begin until Year 6, so when 10 years of revenues and five years of expenses were calculated, the Congressional Budget Office declared not only that the CLASS Act paid for itself but, as a result, Obamacare overall would reduce the deficit. However, when 10 years of revenues and expenses are counted - even accepting the White House's rosy scenario projections - the CLASS Act goes billions into the red and Obamacare itself raises rather than reduces the deficit.

Mrs. Sebelius agrees with the Medicare chief actuary that the program "is at a significant risk for failure" with or without the accounting gimmick but - channeling the spirit of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez - she claims the law gives her "administrative flexibility" to bypass Congress and the American voters and rewrite the law to her liking. Such power.

In separate testimony last week, the HHS secretary admitted to double-counting Obamacare's cooked books. The question posed was whether a $500 billion cut in Medicare should be counted toward preserving Medicare or funding the new law. Her own actuary previously acknowledged they must choose one or the other. Mrs. Sebelius' reply? "Both."

Several hundred miles away in Florida, federal Judge Roger Vinson dealt yet another blow to Mr. Obama's health care crown jewel. It was Judge Vinson, of course, who in January declared Obamacare to be unconstitutional. Many from the victorious 26 states that brought the lawsuit have sought to expedite final resolution of the case in the Supreme Court, but the White House has resisted with hopes of delaying their day of reckoning. Instead, the best and the brightest lawyers in the administration opted to request clarification from Judge Vinson regarding his ruling and its effect on implementation. If there's one thing a squatter knows, it's how to stall.

It would be understandable for Judge Vinson to take exception to this tactic since he had already declared quite clearly that "the award of declaratory relief is adequate and separate injunctive relief is not necessary." In other words, once a law is declared unconstitutional, the only option is to stop implementing it.

This week, the White House was smacked with a painful lesson: Be careful what you wish for. Judge Vinson interpreted the administration's request for clarification as a request to stay his own ruling and he granted it - with a big catch. Judge Vinson, saying "the citizens of this country have an interest in having this case resolved as soon as practically possible," has given the White House exactly one week to request that the case be expedited to the appellate court or the Supreme Court or halt Obamacare implementation.

Regrettably, Judge Vinson stopped short of demanding a complete injunction, which not only would have achieved his goal of expediting the case to the Supreme Court but also would have saved taxpayers billions of dollars in the meantime. Still, the administration's bluff has been called.

In case the White House is still unclear, let me offer them the clarification they seek: Get this case to the Supreme Court now and, unless you do, stop spending billions we don't have on an unconstitutional law.

Obamacare may be the crowning achievement of the big-government crowd erecting their ever-expanding entitlement state, but the laws of economics and the laws of the land are racing to see which will take it down first - that is, if the voters don't beat them to it. Even its most ardent supporters call the plan "a Ponzi scheme" and "totally unsustainable" and its date with Supreme Court destiny is about to be fast-tracked.

Obamacare is a skipping stone careening along the water's surface, but the laws of gravity - like the laws of economics and the laws of the land - will always win.

Dr. Milton R. Wolf, a Washington Times columnist, is a board-certified diagnostic radiologist and President Obama's cousin. He blogs at miltonwolf.com.

© Copyright 2011 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission



http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/mar/7/obamacare-vital-signs-starting-to-fade/print

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 07, 2011, 07:04:50 PM
IBD Editorials Sponsored by:
. Oil Hypocrisy
 
Posted 06:52 PM ET




Energy Policy: As the White House goes to court to defend its self-imposed drilling moratorium, it floats the idea of tapping our strategic petroleum reserve to lower rising prices. How about the oil offshore and in Alaska?

Listening to mainstream punditry, you'd think $4 gas is due solely to Mideast unrest and global demand. Those are factors, but so are our self-imposed restrictions on supply.

The administration at least acknowledges that the law of supply and demand exists, with White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley telling NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday that the White House is considering tapping into the nation's strategic petroleum reserve to counteract upward price pressure caused by fear of supply disruptions from Mideast unrest.

"The issue of the reserves is one (option) we are considering," Daley said. All matters have to be on the table." All options? Does that include opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, ending a de facto drilling moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico and lifting a seven-year ban on drilling off our coasts?

We think not, for as Daley was uttering those words the administration was speaking out of the other side of its mouth by going to court to appeal a judge's order to act on several Gulf of Mexico deep-water drilling permits. That appeal was made Friday, the same day the national average for a price of self-serve unleaded hit $3.51, up 32.7 cents from two weeks earlier.

The Obama administration appealed an order by District Court Judge Martin Feldman, who on Feb. 17 gave the administration and Interior Department 30 days to decide on five pending deep-water drilling permit applications. He later added two more permits to his order.

It was Feldman who issued an injunction against the administration's total ban on deep-water drilling after the Deepwater Horizon disaster, calling it "heavy-handed, and rather overbearing." The administration had even doctored a report by experts it convened on offshore drilling safety to make it seem as if they approved of the moratorium, which they later said they did not.

When the administration rearranged a few words and phrases and reinstated the moratorium, Feldman found Interior in contempt. In his current order, Feldman said the delay in issuing permits since last year's oil spill was "increasingly inexcusable."

As for a possible oil crisis, it is we who have dug the hole we're in. We could in the short term start issuing those drilling permits being held hostage and in the long term exploit the domestic oil and gas reserves that dwarf anything Saudi Arabia and OPEC may have.

As Jane Van Ryan of the American Petroleum Institute states, the SPR "was established to protect the United States against an interruption of petroleum supplies, such as occurred after the hurricanes Katrina and Rita."

It was not established to respond to or mask the consequences of a deliberate administration policy to have energy prices "necessarily skyrocket" in a futile pursuit of so-called "green" energy, a policy designed to create an artificial shortage orchestrated by an energy secretary, Steven Chu, who once said gas should be at $8 a gallon.

The administration's energy policy, or lack of one, is inexcusable and outright hypocritical — admitting we need to increase supply to mitigate price hikes at the same time it works to restrict supply to make prices go up. We have plenty of oil here in the U.S. Unfortunately, all our dipsticks are in Washington, D.C.

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=565234&p=1

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 08, 2011, 04:50:19 AM
White House Seeks to Allay Muslims’ Fears on Terror Hearings
New York Times ^ | March 6, 2011 | SHERYL GAY STOLBERG


STERLING, Va. — As a Republican congressman prepares to open hearings on the threat of homegrown Islamic terrorism, President Obama’s deputy national security adviser visited a mosque here on Sunday to reassure Muslims that “we will not stigmatize or demonize entire communities because of the actions of a few.”

The White House billed the speech by the adviser, Denis McDonough, as a chance for the administration to lay out its strategy for preventing violent extremism. But the timing was no accident; Mr. McDonough was in effect an emissary from the White House to pre-empt Representative Peter King of New York, the House Homeland Security Committee chairman, who has promised a series of hearings beginning Thursday on the radicalization of American Muslims.

“In the United States of America, we don’t practice guilt by association,” Mr. McDonough told an interfaith, but mostly Muslim, audience of about 200 here at the All Dulles Area Muslim Society, known locally as the Adams Center. “And let’s remember that just as violence and extremism are not unique to any one faith, the responsibility to oppose ignorance and violence rests with us all.”

Mr. McDonough made no explicit mention of the hearings or Mr. King. But his speech came on a day when the back-and-forth over Mr. King’s plans crescendoed, from the airwaves of Washington’s Sunday morning talk shows to the streets of Manhattan to this northern Virginia suburb, a region packed with Muslim professionals, many of whom are extremely wary of Mr. King and his plans.

In Washington, Mr. King, who represents parts of Long Island, faced off on CNN with Representative Keith Ellison, the Minnesota Democrat and the only Muslim in Congress. Mr. Ellison said he would testify at Mr. King’s hearing on Thursday


(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 08, 2011, 05:18:19 AM
GOP Lawmakers Target $105B in Spending Found in Health Care Law (Obama lies then steals billions)
Fox News ^ | 3/8/2011 | fox news





Republican lawmakers are up in arms over what they say was $105 billion in unannounced spending tucked into Democrats' legislation overhauling the nation's health care system.
 

Rep. Michele Bachmann, in an interview Monday with Fox News' Sean Hannity, suggested that this spending was one reason Obama and congressional Democratic leaders were in such a hurry to pass the legislation in late 2009.

“We didn’t get the bill until a literally couple of hours before we were supposed to vote on it,” Bachmann told Hannity, saying that the spending was split up and put in different portions of the proposed legislation.

The conservative Heritage Foundation uncovered the spending, which had been tallied by the Congressional Research Service and Congressional Budget Office.

It falls under the heading of mandatory spending, because it is controlled by laws other than annual appropriations acts. Such mandatory funds could remain available for the Obama administration to spend even if Republicans manage to defund the health care law.


(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Option D on March 08, 2011, 06:59:33 AM
i thought you dont quote fox news.. just WSJ or Bloomberg  ::)


***NEWSFLASH***** 3333 LIES AGAIN ABOUT HIS SOURCES...
What a pathetic joke

GOP Lawmakers Target $105B in Spending Found in Health Care Law (Obama lies then steals billions)
Fox News ^ | 3/8/2011 | fox news





Republican lawmakers are up in arms over what they say was $105 billion in unannounced spending tucked into Democrats' legislation overhauling the nation's health care system.
 

Rep. Michele Bachmann, in an interview Monday with Fox News' Sean Hannity, suggested that this spending was one reason Obama and congressional Democratic leaders were in such a hurry to pass the legislation in late 2009.

“We didn’t get the bill until a literally couple of hours before we were supposed to vote on it,” Bachmann told Hannity, saying that the spending was split up and put in different portions of the proposed legislation.

The conservative Heritage Foundation uncovered the spending, which had been tallied by the Congressional Research Service and Congressional Budget Office.

It falls under the heading of mandatory spending, because it is controlled by laws other than annual appropriations acts. Such mandatory funds could remain available for the Obama administration to spend even if Republicans manage to defund the health care law.


(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 08, 2011, 07:07:00 AM
i thought you dont quote fox news.. just WSJ or Bloomberg  ::)


***NEWSFLASH***** 3333 LIES AGAIN ABOUT HIS SOURCES...
What a pathetic joke


You really are  a sad fucking joke and embarassment to the human race.

Bachmann made te same claims on Meet the Press and said the evidence is contained in a congressional report just gven to them on this.   

But dont let that stop you from your triviality.  Being a 95% er is embarrassing dude.  Seriously. 

   
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 08, 2011, 07:16:49 AM
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Option D on March 08, 2011, 07:18:58 AM
You really are  a sad fucking joke and embarassment to the human race.
 
lol says the guy with 50k posts on getbig... you just mad that i point out your epic lies.. instead of sayin "oh my bad i really dont use fox news but...blah blah.. (kind of like how you said you really dont follow fox news)...but you rather wild out and say im an embarassment to the human race? Why, because i dont share the same political views as you.. damn.. you willd.
I dont call you uber lame because we have different political views. Me and BF disagree on everything and he is still cool.. so is tomy and showstoppa. but i call you insanely lame because you come on here like some political guru then just post flat out lies and have numerious contradictions... "embarassnent to the human race" yeah go ask the kids i coach if im an embarassment. Go ask Tyki Nelworth,
one of my mentees that made it to westpoint if im an embarassment to the human race. Or the kids in watts i voluenteer for every week.
The embarassment to the human race is you my friend, the idiot who posts on a site any negative stoy he can find on a guy even if its a flat out lie. that embarassment there chief
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 08, 2011, 07:20:28 AM
lol says the guy with 50k posts on getbig... you just mad that i point out your epic lies.. instead of sayin "oh my bad i really dont use fox news but...blah blah.. (kind of like how you said you really dont follow fox news)...but you rather wild out and say im an embarassment to the human race? Why, because i dont share the same political views as you.. damn.. you willd.
I dont call you uber lame because we have different political views. Me and BF disagree on everything and he is still cool.. so is tomy and showstoppa. but i call you insanely lame because you come on here like some political guru then just post flat out lies and have numerious contradictions... "embarassnent to the human race" yeah go ask the kids i coach if im an embarassment. Go ask Tyki Nelworth,
one of my mentees that made it to westpoint if im an embarassment to the human race. Or the kids in watts i voluenteer for every week.
The embarassment to the human race is you my friend, the idiot who posts on a site any negative stoy he can find on a guy even if its a flat out lie. that embarassment there chief


whatis a lie?  Did Bachmann lie about th $105 Billion?    yes or no? 
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Option D on March 08, 2011, 07:25:06 AM

whatis a lie?  
the fact that you said you dont quote fox news.. and then you did....................q uote fox news..
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 08, 2011, 07:28:05 AM
the fact that you said you dont quote fox news.. and then you did....................q uote fox news..


I said I don't watch Fox News.  I barely watch any tv at all.   

Regardess, I posted the clip from Meet the Press where Bachmann made the same claims they reported.  What difference does it makes who reports it, i posted the clip of Bachmann in her own words.     

BTW - please tell me when you plan to tell me one good thing Obama has done that has worked out for the average taxayer that has not been offset by some other WTF policy  has put forth.

  Just one would be nice.       
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Option D on March 08, 2011, 07:30:08 AM
I said I don't watch Fox News.  I barely watch any tv at all.   

Regardess, I posted the clip from Meet the Press where Bachmann made the same claims they reported.  What difference does it makes who reports it, i posted the clip of Bachmann in her own words.     

BTW - please tell me when you plan to tell me one good thing Obama has done that has worked out for the average taxayer that has not been offset by some other WTF policy  has put forth.

  Just one would be nice.       

so you dont watch fox new but you can get your printed news from them?
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 08, 2011, 07:35:52 AM
so you dont watch fox new but you can get your printed news from them?

And your point is?   I heard about the story on the radio, saw it reported by foxnews.com and posted it.  Would you ave preferred I posted the same exact stry from a different source? 

I guess postng her in her own words still is not enough for you.   Thats' ok, the Prez looks cool in shades and knows how to brew beer in the WH and host an RB Concert in the WH - Who Dat! 
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Option D on March 08, 2011, 07:42:28 AM
And your point is?   I heard about the story on the radio, saw it reported by foxnews.com and posted it.  Would you ave preferred I posted the same exact stry from a different source? 

I guess postng her in her own words still is not enough for you.   Thats' ok, the Prez looks cool in shades and knows how to brew beer in the WH and host an RB Concert in the WH - Who Dat! 


just sayin a bit of consistancy would be cool.. but if not...i guess thats just you
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 08, 2011, 07:45:55 AM
just sayin a bit of consistancy would be cool.. but if not...i guess thats just you

Consistency of what?  Who cares about the source when I posted the person at issue in their own damn words via youtube? 
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: blacken700 on March 08, 2011, 07:51:25 AM

Fox news
But Democrats pushed back on Bachmann's claim, particularly an earlier remark she made about the funding being a "deceitful" trick hidden from public view.

One Democratic aide said the $105 billion was calculated as part of the original "score" for the bill presented to Congress.

"The Congressional Budget Office had this included in their score. They scored the bill and found it (saved) $1.2 trillion over 20 years," the aide said. "What is deceitful is Bachmann voting to end patients' rights while keeping her taxpayer-funded health care."

Though Bachmann claims the authors of the health care law buried the money, the House had three months to find it before approving the final version last March.

just another nut
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 08, 2011, 07:56:41 AM
http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=6BDCA002-E814-4A21-8624-B4C34C7B01C7


Manchin: Obama has 'failed to lead'
By: Jennifer Epstein and Scott Wong
March 8, 2011 08:24 AM EST

 
West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin is planning to rip President Barack Obama on his budget proposals in a Senate floor speech Tuesday, a rare rebuke from a freshman Democrat who clearly is worried about the politics of deficit spending as he faces a tough reelection in 2012.

Manchin says the president has failed to lead the way in reducing spending, but he’s also criticizing Republicans for “partisan” and “unrealistic” budget proposals as well.

“Why are we doing all this when the most powerful person in these negotiations — our president — has failed to lead this debate or offer a serious proposal for spending and cuts that he would be willing to fight for?”

The full-throated rejection of the president’s spending proposals by a politically vulnerable Democrat is just the latest worrisome sign for Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who have yet to rally their party around a unified spending plan. Indeed, Democratic leaders are having trouble just keeping moderates on board — Sens. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) and Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) also have expressed skepticism that Democrats are willing to cut enough spending to satisfy voters and make a dent in the deficit.

Manchin will vote against both the Senate Democrats’ proposal, which will cut $10.6 billion below current spending levels and the House Republican version of the continuing resolution, which would cut $61 billion. The Senate is expected to vote on both this week, perhaps as early as Tuesday, and neither is expected to pass.

The government will run out of money on March 18 if there’s no compromise on federal spending, but it’s clear from Manchin’s comments that Democrats have work to do on their side of the aisle while Republicans put up a unified front on spending cuts.

Congress has been engaged in “political theater,” Manchin will say in prepared remarks provided to POLITICO. “Why are we voting on partisan proposals that we know will fail, that we all know don’t balance our nation’s priorities with the need to get our fiscal house in order?”

The remarks were first reported in POLITICO’s Huddle on Tuesday morning.

“Respectfully,” Manchin will say, “I am asking President Obama to take this challenge head on and propose a compromise plan for dealing with the our nation’s fiscal challenges.”

The bills proposed by both Democrats and Republicans take the wrong approaches, Manchin argues.

The Democratic bill includes $6.5 billion in cuts and “utterly ignores our fiscal reality — our nation is badly in debt and spending at absolutely unsustainable and out-of-control levels,” he says. “We must turn our financial ship around, but the Senate proposal continues to sail forward as if there’s no storm on the horizon.”

But Republicans’ spending plan for the rest of the year is “an even more flawed measure,” he says. The GOP bill “blindly hacks the budget with no sense of our priorities or of our values as a country.”

Instead, Congress and the nation need the president’s leadership to work out a bipartisan compromise, Manchin says.



“I know it’s not easy. I know that it takes compromise. I know it will be partisan and difficult. I know that everyone will have to give up something and no one will want to relinquish anything. But that is what the American people demand.”

Other Senate Democrats have expressed similar misgivings about the bill put forward by Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), saying it doesn’t go far enough to put the country on the right fiscal footing.

In language not nearly as bold as Manchin’s, McCaskill, who also faces a tough reelection battle in 2012, said Monday she was unsure of whether she’d vote for her party’s bill.

“I feel the cuts are not large enough, but there are some cuts, so I don’t know whether I’ll be for it or against it,” she said. “But I know it doesn’t go as far as we need to go.”

Asked whether she’s looking for a middle option between the Republican and Democratic plans, McCaskill quipped: “I’m the Mama Bear,” a reference to the “Three Bears” children’s story.

Nelson, another vulnerable Democrat targeted by the GOP in the 2012 campaign, told POLITICO that he’s been reviewing both proposals and would decision by Tuesday.

“We’ve been reviewing them, and they’re not close enough yet. But I’m going to make my announcement [Tuesday],” Nelson said. “I don’t know if it’s in the middle. It might be closer to the top.”

Democratic leaders, however, have suggested they’re unwilling to slash any more out of the budget, saying such cuts would kill 700,000 jobs, harm education programs and stifle innovation.

And while Reid is watching his centrist Democrats stray, he also has to worry about liberals getting disenchanted by the race to cut more and more spending.

“I’m willing to see more deficit reduction, but not out of domestic discretionary spending. I think we’ve pushed this to the limit,” Majority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, said during an appearance on “Fox News Sunday.”

Reid on Monday acknowledged that this week’s votes were purely symbolic. Neither plans have secured the 60 votes required to pass.

“We’ve all done the math, and we all know how these votes will turn out: Neither proposal will pass, which means neither will reach the president’s desk as written,” he said. “We’ll go back to square one and back to the negotiating table.”

But Reid and others say the votes will highlight the difference between those who are “responsible” and “reckless.”

“They will show us which senators are serious about fortifying our long-term future, and which are more concerned with scoring short-term political points. These votes will show us who wants an easy applause line and who wants to strengthen our nation’s bottom line,” Reid said. “And as the two parties’ vastly different proposals make clear, there is a fine line between a responsible budget and a reckless one.”

Jonathan Allen, Manu Raju and Shira Toeplitz contributed to this story.
 
 
© 2011 Capitol News Company, LLC


 
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 08, 2011, 08:19:05 AM
U.S. Taxpayers on the Hook As Obama Joins a New International Renewable Energy Agency
Monday, March 07, 2011
By Patrick Goodenough
 http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/us-taxpayers-hook-obama-joins-new-intern


________________________ ________________________ _____




IRENA Director-General Adnan Amin. (Photo: IRENA)

(CNSNews.com) – At a time when congressional Republicans are looking for ways to reduce U.S. funding to the United Nations, the Obama administration has formalized its membership in a new international body – and American taxpayers will provide more than one-fifth of its budget.

The administration on Friday deposited its instrument of acceptance to join the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), State Department spokesman Philip Crowley announced.

After joining in June 2009, the U.S. now becomes the 63rd fully ratified member of IRENA, a European-inspired initiative set up in 2009 to promote renewable forms of energy such as wind and solar power.

Although IRENA is not currently a U.N. agency, becoming one is a goal for some of its proponents, and members’ contributions are calculated according to the same formula used to fund the U.N.

The U.S. therefore will provide 22 percent of IRENA’s budget.

In its fiscal 2012 budget request for international programs, the administration has asked for $5.2 million for IRENA.

When the U.S. first announced it was joining the agency in June 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the decision to participate “an important element of the administration’s effort to support clean energy technologies and the development of low carbon economies to address global climate change.”

At an IRENA meeting last October, the U.S. representative, Assistant Secretary Kerri-Ann Jones of the Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, spelled out why the administration was supporting the initiative.

“Much of the world has come to understand that human-induced climate change has the potential to radically alter the planet,” she said.

“We firmly believe that the increased adoption of renewable energy technologies constitutes a crucial piece that will ultimately solve the climate change challenge, while serving as the catalyst for job creation and sound economic growth.”

Several existing U.N. bodies already carry out activity in the field of renewable energy, including the secretariat’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The U.N. also has an interagency mechanism to coordinate energy-related efforts, called U.N.-Energy.

Moreover, a non-U.N. organization working in the renewable energy field is the International Energy Agency (IEA). IEA membership is open only to the 34 members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), but it does undertake projects with non-OECD developing countries, like China and India.

Despite all this activity underway, the advocates behind IRENA cited mounting concerns about climate change and the need to find “clean” energy sources in arguing for the need for an organization focusing exclusively on renewable energy.

‘North-South tensions’

Progress in setting up the new agency has not been without hiccups.

At a “preparatory commission” meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, in June 2009, a developed country/developing country rift emerged over where IRENA should be based. Germany had played a leading role in the process leading up to its establishment, and pushed for hosting rights, as did Austria and Denmark.

But the United Arab Emirates (UAE) also sought to host IRENA, and Emirati officials traveled to more than 100 countries ahead of the meeting to lobby for support.

Some European activists meanwhile complained that the Gulf state was not an appropriate venue for the agency. Although it has begun to explore renewable energy, the UAE remains almost solely reliant on oil and gas, and has one of the world’s highest per-capita “carbon footprints.”

A compromise hammered out behind the scenes handed the right to host the headquarters to the UAE’s Abu Dhabi, while Germany and Austria got consolation prizes in the form of an IRENA innovation and technology center in Bonn, and an IRENA office in Vienna to liaise with the U.N. and other international organizations. The German and Austrian governments will fund the two satellite entities.

At the time of the meeting, media reports said Germany and Austria withdrew their candidacies after it became apparent that an overwhelming majority of countries supported the UAE.

But one of the classified U.S. government cables released by Wikileaks late last year revealed that the U.S. delegation at the Sharm el-Sheikh meeting played the principal role in brokering the compromise that favored the UAE.

The cable did not make clear why this was important for the administration, although there was a reference to “North-South tensions regarding the role of developed countries in promoting renewable energy in the developing world.”

On a visit to Abu Dhabi last January, Clinton highlighted the fact that IRENA “is the first truly international organization to be headquartered in the Middle East.”



Helene Pelosse, a Frenchwoman who served as the first director-general of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) until resigning abruptly last October, is pictured here with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in New York on September 18, 2009. (UN Photo by Paulo Filgueiras)

IRENA’s next hurdle came when its first interim director-general, Helene Pelosse of France, abruptly resign last October, just 15 months into her tenure.

No official reason was given for Pelosse’s surprise departure, but she told the French news agency AFP later that she had fallen afoul of the UAE government over payment delays and after promoting the recruitment of more women to the agency (when nominated as director-general, Pelosse pledged to aim for a 50 percent female IRENA staff).

After Pelosse resigned the post was handed temporarily to Adnan Amin, a Kenyan national with a U.N. background, pending a final decision to be taken when IRENA holds its inaugural assembly early next month.

Although IRENA is not now a U.N. agency, it says it will work closely with the U.N. and could eventually become a U.N. body.

 “Given the founders’ ambitious time goal for the founding of IRENA, it was not a realistic option for IRENA to become a new United Nations or United Nations-affiliated organization,” a question-and-answer section on the IRENA Web site states.

“Thus, it was decided that IRENA should be created as an independent organization and swiftly commence operations. In the long term however, integrating IRENA into the United Nations should be considered.”

Immediately After her appointment, Pelosse also spoke about the desire for IRENA to become “part of the U.N. family.”

Among those invited to IRENA’s inaugural assembly on April 4-5, is Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s foreign minister, Musa Kusa, the Emirates News Agency WAM recently reported.


L
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 08, 2011, 11:05:05 AM
U.S., Mexico reach truck deal
Reaction: Some U.S. truckers praise plan, others cite economic harm, safety concerns
By Elizabeth Aguilera
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/mar/03/us-mexico-reach-truck-deal/

Thursday, March 3, 2011 at 10:29 p.m.



________________________ ________________________ ____________-


President Barack Obama and Mexican President Felipe Calderón agreed Thursday to remove most restrictions on trucking across the U.S.-Mexico border, sparking furor from the Teamsters and raising concerns for truckers on both sides of the border — for different reasons.

The American Trucking Association praised the announcement, saying it will promote trade. The Teamsters and certain trucking companies oppose the deal, saying it sacrifices American jobs when unemployment is high so that big business can save money partly by hiring cheaper drivers.

The Obama-Calderón plan comes 17 years after passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which permitted cross-border trucking. Implementation efforts have faced stiff challenges, including lawsuits, over the years from unions and some lawmakers. Critics have cited what they see as environmental and safety deficiencies among Mexican truckers.

“It’s completely importing poverty. It hurts the workers, their families,” said Todd Mendez, secretary-treasurer of Teamsters Local 683 in San Diego. “We will fight tooth and nail and exhaust all resources to fight this bill back. We have no choice but to preserve jobs for Americans.”

Economist Gary Hufbauer sees the agreement as a sign that Obama is not intimidated by unions and expects the move to set a new course for foreign economic policy.

“We promised and we didn’t deliver,” said Hufbauer, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, D.C. “This has been a big issue in trade relations between the U.S. and Mexico.”

After years of trying to establish the U.S.-Mexico trucking program, the two nations’ governments launched a pilot program in 2007. The Obama administration shut down that project in 2009, and the Mexican government responded with tariffs on dozens of American products — worth about $2.4 billion a year — and similar restrictions on U.S. trucks.

The latest compromise requires congressional approval, which could come as early as summer. It would create another pilot program in exchange for gradual cancellation of all the tariffs. Mexican truckers would need to meet several requirements, such as passing English and safety tests and proving that their trucks meet designated environmental standards.

U.S. and Mexican officials are still working out a range of details before the measure is presented to Congress.

Currently, trucks carry merchandise that makes up more than 70 percent of U.S.-Mexico trade, according to the American Trucking Association. The port in Laredo, Texas, was the busiest in 2009 with nearly 1.4 million northbound truck crossings. Otay Mesa ranked second, with more than 684,000, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Cross-border trucking would increase trade between the two countries partly because goods would move more quickly since they would not have to be unloaded and reloaded in the border region, Hufbauer said.

At border ports of entry, security inspections of commercial trucks will not change, said Ralph DeSio, spokesman for Customs and Border Protection in San Diego.

“We are going to continue to do what we need to do to process trucks for entrance into the country,” he said.

For American companies that routinely send trucks to the border, including some with permits that allow their drivers to go up to 30 miles into Mexico, the new agreement brings worries of lost jobs and increased traffic along the border. They are concerned about competitors undercutting them during the bidding process, in part by paying lower wages to Mexican drivers.

“Currently, they bring their freight to us and we take it up to L.A. or other cities,” said Brandon Davis, vice president of San Diego-based Davis Trucking. “If they are going to be able to go wherever they want, then it will kill U.S. trucking companies.”

Davis has a permit to enter the border area of Mexico for pickups. He also takes loads from Mexican truckers and completes the U.S. delivery route. The cross-border business makes up one-quarter to one-third of Davis’ bottom line.

Davis Trucking employs 51 people and runs 75 vehicles from several locations, including Calexico and Los Angeles. The company operates three to five routes in and out of Mexico every day, moving everything from Bimbo Bakery goods to Sony products.

While the agreement would allow U.S. trucks to also transport goods into Mexico, many truckers and the Teamsters said it is an unrealistic and unfair trade-off. Mexico is too dangerous for American truckers, they contend.

Mexican truck companies are focused on the often-prickly binational politics and how U.S. truckers in Mexico might impact their business.

Rafael Godinez Beltran, owner of Transportes Rafa in Mexicali, participated in the pilot program that ran from 2007 to 2009. Now, he is skeptical about the latest deal, although he sees potential long-term benefits.

He had purchased new trucks for the original pilot program, paid the application fees and met safety requirements.

“I am going to need to analyze it and know how it’s going to function to see if we would participate,” Godinez Beltran said. “It would open the market for work, but I’m going to wait and see if it can get beyond the politics.”

elizabeth.aguilera@uniontrib.com (619) 293-1717 Twitter @sdutaguilera


________________________ ________________________ ___________________





FFFFFF UUUUUUUUUU     BBBBBBBBBB   OOOOOOOOOOOO


RRROOOTTTTT IIINNNNNN  HHHHEEELLLLLLLLL
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 08, 2011, 11:31:24 AM
QE3? Several Top Fed Officials Seem To Think That More Quantitative Easing Is Necessary
The Economic Collapse ^ | 03/05/2011 | Michael Snyder



________________________ ________________________ ________________________ ____________



The end of QE2 is still several months away and yet quite a few top Federal Reserve officials are already hinting that more quantitative easing may be necessary. Apparently the U.S. economy is not moving forward as rapidly as they would like. So it looks like "QE3" could be on the way. But did anyone out there actually believe that quantitative easing would come to a complete stop in June? Whether they call it "QE3" or something else entirely, the reality of the matter is that we have now come to a time when the Federal Reserve is going to be continually purchasing a significant percentage of all new U.S. government debt. This is essentially a gigantic Ponzi scheme, but sadly there is just not enough money in the rest of the world to be able to continue to feed the U.S. government's voracious appetite for debt. Right now Ben Bernanke and his cohorts are trying to break the news to us gently, but anyone with half a brain can see what is happening. The only way for the game to keep going is for the Federal Reserve to print lots more money, and that is going to be incredibly bad for the U.S. economy in the long run.

The other day James Bullard, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, made national headlines when he declared that Fed officials should "never say never" when it comes to QE3 and more quantitative easing. But the truth is that other Fed officials have been dropping public hints about the "need" for QE3 for several weeks now. Just consider the following quotes from top Federal Reserve officials....

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke in response to a question about the potential for QE3 at the National Press Club....

"In the end, we'll just ask the same questions. Where's the economy going, and what do various inflation indicator look like? We'll ask those questions. If unemployment is still too low, then we may continue. If we're moving towards full employment, then we won't need to stimulate more."

William Dudley, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York during a recent speech at New York University....
"The economy can be allowed to grow rapidly for quite some time before there is a real risk that shrinking slack will result in a rise in underlying inflation."

James Bullard, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis during a recent speech at the Bowling Green Area Chamber of Commerce....

"The natural debate now is whether to complete the program, or to taper off to a somewhat lower level of asset purchases. Quantitative easing has been an effective tool, even while the policy rate is near zero. The economic outlook has improved since the program was announced."

Charles Evans, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago during a recent interview with The Financial Times....

"The message that comes out of what I think of as high-quality research on this subject is that policy ought to remain accommodative for really quite a while, even a while after conditions start to improve."

So how in the world did things get to the point where the Federal Reserve feels forced to recklessly print gigantic piles of money?

Well, it didn't happen overnight. Back during the 1980s and 1990s there were many people that desperately tried to warn about what would happen if U.S. government debt was not brought under control.

Unfortunately, our politicians did not heed those warnings.

Today, the U.S. national debt has reached a grand total of $14,137,541,098,872.71. It is 14 times larger than it was just 30 years ago. It is the largest single debt in the history of the world.

So why don't our politicians just balance the budget now so that we don't keep having to borrow so much money?

Well, there are some huge problems. First of all, when you combine entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare with interest on the national debt, it comes to approximately 64 percent of all federal government spending.

But that is not the bad news.

In the years ahead, entitlement spending and interest on the national debt are both projected to absolutely explode.

We are rapidly approaching a time when spending on entitlement programs and interest on the national debt will be significantly greater than all of the revenue that the federal government brings in each year. All federal revenues will be spoken for even before a single penny is spent on defense, education, running the government or anything else.

Either entitlement programs are going to have to be seriously reformed or the U.S. government is going to have to come up with a massive amount of extra money from somewhere or the U.S. government is going to have to borrow increasingly large piles of money from someone.

Unfortunately, there are no easy solutions and most of our politicians are scared to death to touch entitlement programs because it will mean that they will lose votes.

But our entitlement programs were never meant to be as massive as they are today. Back in 1965, only one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid. Today, one out of every 6 American is on Medicaid.

Obviously something has to be done, because the debt that we are passing on to future generations is absolutely criminal.

For example, every single child born in America today inherits $45,000 in U.S. government debt.

Isn't that lovely?

Of course our liberal friends believe that the answer is just to raise taxes.

Oh really?

The truth is that our taxation system is deeply broken.

Small business owners and middle class Americans are being taxed into oblivion while those at the top of the food chain often pay no federal taxes whatsoever.

For example, did you know that Citigroup did not pay a dime of federal taxes in the third quarter? Meanwhile, their executives continue to bring in bonus packages worth millions.

Did you know that even though Boeing receives billions in federal subsidies every year and even though it has a bunch of juicy government contracts it did not pay a single penny in federal corporate income taxes from 2008 to 2010?

Did you know that while Exxon-Mobil did pay $15 billion in taxes in 2009, not a single penny went to the U.S. government? Meanwhile, their CEO brought in over 29 million dollars in total compensation that year.

You can find a lot more examples of this phenomenon right here.

Those at the top of the food chain are experts at avoiding federal taxes. So liberals can raise rates all they want but it won't do much good.

As I have written about previously, the truth is that approximately a third of all the wealth in the world is now held in "offshore" banks. The ultra-wealthy and the monolithic predator corporations that dominate the global economy don't mess around when it comes to paying taxes. They don't care if they aren't paying their "fair share". They simply know how to play the game and they laugh at all the rest of us.

Our entire system is broken beyond repair and needs to be reconstructed from the ground up.

But of course that simply is not going to happen.

So what can be done?

Not a whole heck of a lot.

The truth is that the U.S. economy is on the verge of a major collapse.

Marc Faber, the author of the Gloom, Boom and Doom report recently gave a speech in which he declared that the U.S. financial system is in such disastrous shape that only a "reboot" will be able to save it....

I think we are all doomed. I think what will happen is that we are in the midst of a kind of a crack-up boom that is not sustainable, that eventually the economy will deteriorate, that there will be more money-printing, and then you have inflation, and a poor economy, an extreme form of stagflation, and, eventually, in that situation, countries go to war, and, as a whole, derivatives, the market, and everything will collapse, and like a computer when it crashes, you will have to reboot it.

But can we just "reboot" the system and expect things to go back to normal?

Of course not.

The truth is that when the rest of the world completely loses faith in the U.S. dollar and in U.S. Treasuries the dominoes are going to start to fall. Eventually we are going to see a financial panic that is going to make 2008 look like a Sunday picnic. Our economic system will massively implode as all of the gigantic mountains of debt and paper money collapse like a house of cards.

Right now the Federal Reserve is desperately trying to hold the system together by "papering over" all of the mistakes. But in the end it is not going to work. In fact, what we are witnessing now are the very early stages of hyperinflation. A lot of other nations in the past have thought that they could just print their way out of trouble, but many of those "experiments" ended in total disaster.

Marc Faber is certainly right about one thing - all of this money printing is going to give us substantial inflation to go along with the high unemployment that we already have. This is called "stagflation" and anyone that remembers the 1970s knows that it is not a lot of fun.

But the Federal Reserve seems absolutely determined to print more money. Fed officials are doing the same thing now that they did right before QE2. They are dropping hints about QE3 and they are trying to break it to us gently.

Well, it is about time that someone told the American people the truth. All of this money printing is going to end in disaster and so you had better get prepared.

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 08, 2011, 12:02:36 PM
Team Obama Directly Working to Recall Wisconsin Republicans [The Fifth Column Advances.]
ATR ^ | 2011-03-08 | Joshua Culling




...This morning, Wisconsin Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald said in a radio interview that President Obama's political team is directly involved in burgeoning efforts to recall Republican elected officials (emphasis on the word "elected," as in chosen by the people of Wisconsin in a democratic vote four months ago):

"There's many people that are beginning to believe this is a delay tactic by the Democrats in the Senate so that these recall elections can be organized by the Obama team out of Chicago, which they are, as we start to do the research on the people that have filed the petition," Fitzgerald told Newsradio 620 WTMJ's "Wisconsin's Morning News."

When asked whether Fitzgerald knew that for a fact, he responded, "The organizer against (River Hills Republican Senator) Alberta Darling definitely has direct links to the Obama camp. There's no doubt about it. These guys might be out until June. Unfortunately, what they're trying to do is flip the majority, and I think that's becoming very evident."

This is yet another coup for the state of Illinois. The Senate Democrat caucus has been vacationing in the state for 18 days, providing some much-needed stimulus to the Quinn Economy. Now it has surfaced that they will pay Obama's Chicago team to organize a recall effort...

Read more: http://www.atr.org/team-obama-directly-working-recall-wisconsin-a5919#ixzz1G2T8HfHz


(Excerpt) Read more at atr.org ...
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: MCWAY on March 08, 2011, 12:31:49 PM
so you dont watch fox new but you can get your printed news from them?

SO WHAT!!! Try addressing his point, for the love of the Almighty.

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 08, 2011, 12:33:32 PM
SO WHAT!!! Try addressing his point, for the love of the Almighty.



I'll cut Option Fail a break, when there is nothing left to defend from this horrible Admn, you have to resort to trivial nonsense like this.   
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: kcballer on March 08, 2011, 01:11:46 PM
Hahaha this thread is your slow descent into madness.  Classic!
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Option D on March 08, 2011, 01:15:13 PM
SO WHAT!!! Try addressing his point, for the love of the Almighty.



he does the same thing with my posts.. which is why i did it. When i posted things he came directly at the source without addressing the content. And thats fine, but dont then compound it by saying, "yeah i only get my news from bloomberg or the wsj" then when someone post one of many fox news' fails he says "yes thats why i dont do fox news, just bloomberg and wsj..............by the way.. look at what i found on fox news"...I just gave him a rope. he hung himself with it
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 08, 2011, 01:15:17 PM
Hahaha this thread is your slow descent into madness.  Classic!

Please point out what article is madness.  
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 08, 2011, 01:16:24 PM
he does the same thing with my posts.. which is why i did it. When i posted things he came directly at the source without addressing the content. And thats fine, but dont then compound it by saying, "yeah i only get my news from bloomberg or the wsj" then when someone post one of many fox news' fails he says "yes thats why i dont do fox news, just bloomberg and wsj..............by the way.. look at what i found on fox news"...I just gave him a rope. he hung himself with it

 ::)  ::)

I only posted the same story in her own words on Meet the Press.   I guess you missed that.   
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 08, 2011, 01:20:34 PM
Funding mosque makeovers. 

http://www.wsbtv.com/video/25764282/index..html

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: kcballer on March 08, 2011, 01:21:00 PM
Please point out what article is madness.  

Oh the over-reaction that is 333.  I wouldn't waste my time reading the garbage and one sided nonsense you take for fact and truth.  All i need to do is read this last page to know the direction you are heading and perhaps you are already there.  Your descent into madness will forever be noted on getbig.com.  Feel proud of that, 333.  There isn't much else you can be proud of on here.  
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 08, 2011, 01:23:24 PM
Waivers Gone Wild: HHS Grants Another 126 Waivers
http://www.officialwire.com/main.php?action=posted_news&rid=84014 ^




Typical Chicago-style politics:

The Department of Health and Human Services has found a way to top itself. On Friday, Kathleen Sebelius issued another 126 waivers, bringing the total to 1,040. All told, health care waivers now cover 2.6 million Americans.


(Excerpt) Read more at officialwire.com ...
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 08, 2011, 01:33:57 PM








Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 08, 2011, 01:36:13 PM




Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 08, 2011, 01:38:25 PM







Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 08, 2011, 01:39:35 PM
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 08, 2011, 01:41:15 PM
OWNED



Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 08, 2011, 01:43:27 PM




Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 08, 2011, 01:51:08 PM




Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 08, 2011, 01:58:59 PM
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 08, 2011, 02:00:50 PM








Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 08, 2011, 02:10:28 PM
Cloward & Piven - spreading the wealth to the unproductive.   

________________________ ________________________ ______________-



Welfare State: Handouts Make Up One-Third of U.S. Wages
Published: Tuesday, 8 Mar 2011 | 3:59 PM ET Text Size By: John Melloy
Executive Producer, Fast Money



Twitter LinkedInMore Share Government payouts—including Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance—make up more than a third of total wages and salaries of the U.S. population, a record figure that will only increase if action isn’t taken before the majority of Baby Boomers enter retirement.

 

Even as the economy has recovered, social welfare benefits make up 35 percent of wages and salaries this year, up from 21 percent in 2000 and 10 percent in 1960, according to TrimTabs Investment Research using Bureau of Economic Analysis data.

“The U.S. economy has become alarmingly dependent on government stimulus,” said Madeline Schnapp, director of Macroeconomic Research at TrimTabs, in a note to clients. “Consumption supported by wages and salaries is a much stronger foundation for economic growth than consumption based on social welfare benefits.”

The economist gives the country two stark choices. In order to get welfare back to its pre-recession ratio of 26 percent of pay, “either wages and salaries would have to increase $2.3 trillion, or 35 percent, to $8.8 trillion, or social welfare benefits would have to decline $500 billion, or 23 percent, to $1.7 trillion,” she said.

Last month, the Republican-led House of Representatives passed a $61 billion federal spending cut, but Senate Democratic leaders and the White House made it clear that had no chance of becoming law. Short-term resolutions passed have averted a government shutdown that could have occurred this month, as Vice President Biden leads negotiations with Republican leaders on some sort of long-term compromise.

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“You’ve got to cut back government spending and the Republicans will run on this platform leading up to next year’s election,” said Joe Terranova, Chief Market Strategist for Virtus Investment Partners and a “Fast Money” trader.

 

Terranova noted some sort of opt out for social security or even raising the retirement age.

But the country may not be ready for these tough choices, even though economists like Schnapp say something will have to be done to avoid a significant economic crisis.

A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll released last week showed that  less than a quarter of Americans supported making cuts to Social Security or Medicare in order to reign in the mounting budget deficit.

Those poll numbers may be skewed by a demographic shift the likes of which the nation has never seen. Only this year has the first round of baby boomers begun collecting Medicare benefits—and here comes 78 million more.

Social welfare benefits have increased by $514 billion over the last two years, according to TrimTabs figures, in part because of measures implemented to fight the financial crisis. Government spending normally takes on a larger part of the spending pie during economic calamities but how can the country change this make-up with the root of the crisis (housing) still on shaky ground, benchmark interest rates already cut to zero, and a demographic shift that calls for an increase in subsidies?

At the very least, we can take solace in the fact that we’re not quite at the state welfare levels of Europe. In the U.K., social welfare benefits make up 44 percent of wages and salaries, according to TrimTabs’ Schnapp.

“No matter how bad the situation is in the US, we stand far better on these issues (debt, demographics, entrepreneurship) than other countries,” said Steve Cortes of Veracruz Research. “On a relative basis, America remains the world leader and, as such, will also remain the world's reserve currency.”
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: kcballer on March 08, 2011, 02:16:22 PM
This has to be some sort of youtube posting meltdown hahaha
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 08, 2011, 02:18:30 PM
And yet you won't be able dispute one of them.

Hope and change you schmuck.
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 08, 2011, 02:40:22 PM
The real death panel & the Cloward-Piven devastation awaiting you in Obamacare
Renew America ^ | March 8, 2011 | Arlen Williams andTallulah Starr



http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2685625/posts

________________________ ________________________ ______________



Much has been made of whether or not Obamacare influences physicians to provide end of life counseling to elderly or very sick patients. Although that does not fit her description, the news media seems obsessed with tying that to Sarah Palin's allusion of a "death panel" being a part of the plan. Why?

Apparently, because that diverts attention from the actual death panel — one that really will decide whether you get life saving treatment, or whether you are budgeted (and snuffed) out.

It is called the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research and it includes fifteen members, appointed by Barack Obama immediately after the pseudo-stimulus act of early 2009. It is a governing bureaucratic council, or in the Russian language, a "soviet." (Obama may be familiar with that linguistic fact, since his parents, according to the official story, met in a Russian language class, in 1960. Let that sink in, if you had not known it.)

It is not my practice to present a video while reiterating it in print. Please listen well. It lasts only six minutes. Dr. David Janda, before the last election:

(VIDEO AT LINK)

Video posted 10/19/2010, "Dr. David Janda explains rationing and why Dr. Rob Steele must defeat Dingell"

Per the title of this video: alas, in southeast Michigan's heavily unionized Congressional District 15, Dr. Rob Steele, a cardiologist, was defeated by the incumbent Democrat, John Dingell. That seat has been held by a socialized medicine backing Dingell since 1933. Gotta love those unions and their campaign donations, extorted by mandatory union dues.

Michigan's David Janda was introduced to us in August, 2009, by Nan Matthis of the blog, American Daughter. It was my privilege to be one of the very first to interview him on the subject of Obamacare, as well as to publish an initial Janda article about it: "Dr. David Janda on "The Awakening" — The Best Obamacare Expose.'" In each, his conclusion properly depicted the mandates under which we have just begun to suffer, as fascism.

But rest assured, Obamacare will not stop there. On the same evening as the Janda interview (apologies, if you listen; it was at one of my more sleep-deprived sessions, though the conversation was very stimulating, to say the least) we interviewed Pamela Key, of Naked Emperor News. We also presented her now famous video of Obama and his congressional comrades, Reps. Barney Frank and Jan Schakowsky, describing the intended end result, the "single payer system," otherwise known as "universal healthcare." Or, Vladdy Lenin called it "the keystone of the arch of socialism."

That video rests at the bottom of this article of the time, which also provides a tour of her most salient exposés of America's neo-Marxist, putative president: "Pam Key of Naked Emperor News, Video Freedom Fighter — Interview Archived from Monday Night's 'Awakening.'"

Yes, Obamacare is intended, in true, Cloward-Piven fashion, to be a very burdensome precursor to thoroughly socialized health "care," as we are transitioned from authoritarianism to totalitarianism. James Simpson explained this in the same August 2009, in his "Manufactured Healthcare Crisis." That was confirmed by Obama himself, just a few days ago, as he offered states the "flexibility" of seeking shelter in "single-payer." (Link)

This is a week in which we must once again focus upon healthcare and what sins pass for the same. That is especially true, since Rep's Steve King and Michele Bachmann are bringing out the subterfuge and effectively the legislative fraud of Obama-Pelosi-Reid's extra $105,464,000,000, "Pass the Bill So You Can Find Out What's in it" Mandate. (Link, Link) Oh, shucks here is a video on that, too.

(VIDEO AT LINK)

Video posted 3/3/2011, "Exposing $105 Billion Already Dedicated to ObamaCare"

And last, but not least...

As if that were not reason enough this week, to demand reform in Congress' months delayed, manufactured crisis, Pelosi-hangover budget, there is also the opportunity to free our wallets and consciences from the taxpayer-funded abuse of women, teenage children, and babies — and the "eugenic" racism — of Planned Parenthood. (Do click this link, if no other.)

If these atrocities are what government will give us, then please, God, shut it down.

And reader, please call your U.S. Representative and both Senators about all of this. Today.

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: kcballer on March 08, 2011, 02:49:42 PM
And yet you won't be able dispute one of them.

Hope and change you schmuck.

What would be the purpose to dispute it anyway?  You're never going to change your viewpoint or even seek out an alternative.  It would be a waste of my time, if you can not see the light, you are worse off for it, not I. 
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 08, 2011, 02:52:57 PM
What would be the purpose to dispute it anyway?  You're never going to change your viewpoint or even seek out an alternative.  It would be a waste of my time, if you can not see the light, you are worse off for it, not I. 




Ha ha ha ha - see the light?   In what?    Obama is a fucking piece of trash trying to collapse the nation.   How about yo try to make me see the light on the dirty obamacare deals he made which I pointed out?     

BTW - I post at other sites and use this thread as a reference point for other sseeking info on what this asshole you shill for is doing.  The formatting here works well.   

 
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 08, 2011, 06:10:47 PM
visit http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?pageId=272293
 

Tuesday, March 08, 2011


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White House official praises Muslim Brotherhood leader
Deputy NSC chief begs for 'cooperation' at mosque in Virginia

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WorldNetDaily

WASHINGTON – While visiting a mosque in the Washington area last week, a senior White House security official lavished praise on a Muslim cleric who happens to be a top leader of the radical Muslim Brotherhood in America, FBI investigators point out.  

Imam Magid and Denis McDonough
 

"They are so ignorant," said one FBI veteran regarding the White House. "This is unbelievable bullsh--."  

White House sources explain that deputy National Security Adviser Denis McDonough was unaware of the cleric's radical ties, and added that the presidential assistant attended the outreach event as a show of support for the Muslim community ahead of Thursday's congressional hearings on Muslim radicalization. Led by New York Republican Rep. Peter King, the planned hearings have already generated charges of "bigotry" from Muslim activists.

During his speech at the All Dulles Area Muslim Society in Sterling, Va., McDonough singled out the mosque's imam, Mohammed Magid, for praise.

"Thank you, Imam Magid, for your very kind introduction. I know that President Obama was very grateful that you led the prayer at last summer¹s Iftar dinner at the White House," he said. "Thank you, also, for being one of our nation's leading voices for the values that make America so strong, especially religious freedom and tolerance."

However, Sudanese-born Magid (aka Hagmagid Ali) is also president of the Islamic Society of North America – a terror-supporting organization and known front group for the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood's operations in America.

The Justice Department recently implicated the Islamic Society of North America, or ISNA, in a criminal conspiracy to fund Palestinian terrorists. U.S. prosecutors, in fact, designated ISNA as an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terrorism-finance case in U.S. history, the Holy Land Foundation trial. They also identified ISNA as a U.S. front group for Hamas and its parent the Muslim Brotherhood.

In a post-trial opinion, the federal judge ruled the government provided "ample evidence" to support ISNA's involvement in the foundation's conspiracy to underwrite terrorism, and he refused ISNA's petition to remove its name from the list of co-conspirators.

(Story continues below)


Magid's father, a Cairo-educated, Muslim Brotherhood scholar, has served as Grand Mufti of Sudan, an al-Qaida hotspot.

Speaking at the ADAMS Center, one of the largest Islamic centers in the Washington area, McDonough said, "This is a typically American place."

In fact, FBI investigators say the mosque is a Muslim Brotherhood-controlled property. It has been cited for distributing hate literature and oppressing women. The leadership pens female members in a separate area of the worship hall and has them cover their heads with scarves.

Last decade, ADAMS was singled out by the Freedom House as one of the top distributors of Saudi-sponsored anti-Semitic and anti-Christian dogma.

The mosque's board of directors includes key Muslim Brotherhood figures in America. "I'm sure McDonough doesn't know that the chairman of the board at ADAMS is Ahmed Totonji, one of the original Brothers in the U.S.," said the FBI official in Washington.

According to the book, "Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives Have Penetrated Washington," federal investigators have uncovered hundreds of thousands of dollars in checks endorsed to ADAMS by Brotherhood leaders and entities whose offices were raided after 9/11.

The book quotes a longtime ADAMS Center member who said that all Muslims are united in a kind of blood pact under the "ummah," the worldwide Muslim brotherhood.

"If you hurt one Muslim anywhere in the world," the man said, "it's like hurting all Muslims." And the Brothers will respond in kind, even if that means self-immolation on the streets of America.

"Muslims are not afraid to die, you know," he added, according to "Infiltration." "We are not afraid to die."

Asked his opinion of Osama bin Laden, he replied: "We do respect him."

Why? Because he stands against "injustice and oppression," explained the man, who works for a Beltway contractor. And even though he's rich, bin Laden shuns palaces and walks the true walk of Islam, he added – unlike the Saudi monarchs, whom he referred to as "hypocrites."

In closing his speech, McDonough encouraged the mosque and its leaders to continue "their efforts to strengthen cooperation between Muslim communities and law enforcement."

White House sources point out that Magid and ADAMS have also been recognized by the FBI and Homeland Security as outreach partners.

FBI sources say the partnership was originally established by the head of the FBI's Washington field office, Joseph Persichini, whom they say was trying to impress judges in a "community policing" awards contest.

In his application for the 2009 IACP Community Policing Awards competition – a copy of which was obtained by WND – Persichini cites imam Majid as a "key community partner," who "represented the voice of moderate Muslims."

Later that year, Persichini took early retirement from the FBI after the Justice Department's inspector general caught him cheating on an important bureau test.

Special offer:

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 08, 2011, 06:13:25 PM
Obama Security Adviser Comforts Muslims With Terrorist Ties
Judicial Watch ^ | March 8, 2011




To reassure Muslims ahead of this week’s congressional hearings on radicalization, President Obama sent his Deputy National Security Adviser to schmooze an extremist group (Islamic Society of North America or ISNA) that raises money for Hamas.


A few years ago a special Judicial Watch report on Muslim charities exposed ISNA’s terrorist connections and aggressive campaigns to place radical leaders in mosques throughout the U.S. ISNA pushes the Saudi-Wahhabi form of Islam, which teaches that all non-Muslims are enemies and heathens. In 2008 the Justice Department named ISNA an unindicted co-conspirator in a Texas case involving a similar group (Holy Land Foundation) convicted of funneling millions to Hamas.


This week the president’s Deputy National Security Advisor, Denis McDonough, assured members and supporters of the group that Muslims have an ally in the U.S. government, and specifically, the Obama Administration. The heartwarming speech was delivered at an ISNA affiliate in the Washington D.C. area, best known by its rather ingenious acronym; the Adams Center, which stands for All Dulles Area Muslim Society.


Not surprisingly, the barrage of mainstream media reports on the Obama Administration’s latest Muslim outreach effort omitted the ties between the AdamsCenter and a renowned group of Islamic extremists that support terrorism. Only a conservative publication made the connection and published a story on its web site shortly after McDonough’s heavily-promoted meeting.


His Adams Center speech is posted in its entirety on the White House web site but here are a few highlights: "The bottom line is this-when it comes to preventing violent extremism and terrorism in the United States, Muslim Americans are not part of the problem, you're part of the solution." Predicted applause ensued and McDonough continued. A pair of pompons would have suited him well.


He went on to say: "We have a choice. We can choose to send a message to certain Americans that they are somehow ‘less American' because of their faith or how they look; that we see their entire community as a potential threat ... And if we make that choice, we risk feeding the very feelings of disenchantment that may push some members of that community to violent extremism. Or, we can make another choice. We can send the message that we're all Americans."


His mission was to comfort Muslims before a congressional hearing to address “The Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community and that Community's Response.” Scheduled for Thursday before the House Committee on Homeland Security, the hearing has outraged Islamic leaders who assert it’s a modern-day form of McCarthyism designed to spark fear against Muslims.


Read Judicial Watch’s coverage of the Obama Administration’s ongoing Muslim outreach efforts by clickinghere, here and here.
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 08, 2011, 06:20:33 PM
U.S. To Give Arab-Based Renewable Energy Agency $5 Mil
Judicial Watch ^ | March 7, 2011 | Judicial Watch




As if wasting exorbitant amounts of money to support the corrupt United Nations wasn’t bad enough, President Obama has joined a new Arab-based “international organization” dedicated to promoting renewable energy worldwide.

That means U.S. taxpayers will supply a big chunk of the group’s funding in addition to the billions of dollars that already go to the U.N. each year for programs that, incidentally, already address renewable energy. As the largest contributors to the U.N., American taxpayers forked over $6.3 billion last year and billions more will be allocated this fiscal year, despite promises from some lawmakers to slash the cash flow to the scandal-plagued world body.

With the U.S. national debt topping $14 trillion the last thing the country needs is a costly membership to yet another world agency promoting a leftist agenda.

Headquartered in the United Arab Emirates, the new International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) will get a chunk of change from Uncle Sam—around $5 million—to promote renewable energy technologies that meet the challenges of sustained economic growth, energy security and climate change. At least that’s how the State Department explains it. The Obama Administration is especially excited that IRENA is the “first truly international organization based in an Arab country.” With its headquarters in Abu Dhabi, the group claims that it will act as the “global voice for renewable energies” by facilitating access to all relevant renewable energy information, economic data and “renewable resource potential data.” So far 65 countries have officially joined IRENA, which also has offices in Austria and Germany.


(Excerpt) Read more at judicialwatch.org ...


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PISSING MONEY AWAY LIKE ITS WATER
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 09, 2011, 05:35:25 AM
EPA Seeking Comments on Considering Environmental Justice during the Rulemaking Process
http://www.getbig.com/boards/index.php?action=post;topic=346454.425;num_replies=443



________________________ ________________________ ___


EPA is releasing an interim guide on incorporating environmental justice into the Agency’s process for developing rules and regulations. The Interim Guidance on Considering Environmental Justice During the Development of an Action is a step-by-step guide that helps EPA staff ask questions and evaluate environmental justice considerations at key points in the rulemaking process. It helps EPA staff determine whether actions raise possible environmental justice concerns and encourages public participation in the rulemaking process.

The Guide is part of EPA’s efforts to advance environmental justice and to protect the health and safety of the historically underrepresented in the environmental decision-making process—minority, low-income, and indigenous populations, and tribes—who are often most at risk from environmental hazards.

EPA is looking for feedback and input on how to best implement and improve the Guide and on ways EPA can further advance efforts toward environmental justice. Comments can be submitted through this link, http://www.epa.gov/compliance/ej/resources/policy/ej-rulemaking.html, with the comment period open through April 8, 2011.
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 09, 2011, 05:56:02 AM
Obama's Green-Jobs Fantasies
Townhall.com ^ | March 9, 2011 | John Stossell




Anyone who understands basic economics already knows that President Obama's $2.3 billion green-jobs initiative was snake oil. Now, thanks to Kenneth P. Green, we have statistics as well as theory to prove it.

In a new article, "The Myth of Green Energy Jobs: The European Experience," the environmental scientist and a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute writes, "Green programs in Spain destroyed 2.2 jobs for every green job created, while the capital needed for one green job in Italy could create almost five jobs in the general economy."

Ironically, Obama boasts his initiative "will help close the clean-energy gap between America and other nations." But Green says, "(C)ountries are cutting these programs because they realize they aren't sustainable and they are obscenely expensive."

Obama claims that if we "invest" more, "the transition to clean energy has the potential to grow our economy and create millions of jobs -- but only if we accelerate that transition."

What could make more sense? A little push from the smart politicians and -- voila! -- we can have an abundance of new good-paying jobs and a cleaner, sustainable environment. It's the ultimate twofer.

Except it's an illusion, as economic logic demonstrates.

"It is well understood, among economists, that governments do not 'create' jobs," Green writes. "The willingness of entrepreneurs to invest their capital, paired with consumer demand for goods and services, does that. All the government can do is subsidize some industries while jacking up costs for others. In the green case, it is destroying jobs in the conventional energy sector -- and most likely in other industrial sectors -- through taxes and subsidies to new green companies that will use taxpayer dollars to undercut the competition. The subsidized jobs 'created' are, by definition, less efficient uses of capital than market-created jobs."

Green is using good, solid economic thinking. Many years ago, Henry Hazlitt wrote in his bestseller, "Economics in One Lesson," "The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups."

In judging any government initiative, such as Obama's green-jobs plan, you can't look just at the credit side of ledger because the government is unable to give without first taking away.

Worse than that: Inevitably, more is taken away -- destroyed -- than is given because the government substitutes force and taxation for consent and free exchange. Instead of a process driven by consumer preferences, we get one imposed by politicians' grand social designs. It's what F.A. Hayek called "the fatal conceit."

So we shouldn't be surprised that green-jobs programs make energy more expensive. "(F)orcing green energy on the market (is) much, much more expensive," Green said. "Using Spain as a model, when you do the math, you realize that creating 3 million new green jobs could cost $2.25 trillion."

Of course, many people who push "green jobs" want the price of energy to rise so we'll use less. If the environmental lobby wants Americans to be poorer, it ought to come clean about that.

The advocates of such programs don't just misunderstand economics. They have lapsed into a pre-economic mentality. Rulers once believed they could do whatever they wanted, subject only to the physical laws of nature. If things didn't work out as planned, it was because the people had failed to cooperate. But as economist Ludwig von Mises wrote, once economics emerged as an intellectual discipline, "it was learned that in the social realm too there is something operative which power and force are unable to alter and to which they must adjust themselves if they hope to achieve success ... ."

That "something" is inescapable economic forces like the law of supply and demand.

Green is right when he says, "Central planners in the United States trying to promote green industry will fare no better (than Europe) at creating jobs or stimulating the economy."
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 09, 2011, 08:16:19 AM
Largest-ever federal payroll to hit 2.15 million
Washington Times ^ | February 2, 2010 | Stephen Dinan




The era of big government has returned with a vengeance, in the form of the largest federal work force in modern history.

The Obama administration says the government will grow to 2.15 million employees this year, topping 2 million for the first time since President Clinton declared that “the era of big government is over” and joined forces with a Republican-led Congress in the 1990s to pare back the federal work force.

Most of the increases are on the civilian side, which will grow by 153,000 workers, to 1.43 million people, in fiscal 2010.  

The expansion could provide more ammunition to those arguing that the government is trying to do too much under President Obama.

“I’m shocked that the ‘tea party’ hasn’t focused on it yet

...

Including both the civilian and defense sectors, the federal government will employ 2.15 million people in 2010 and 2.11 million in 2011, excluding Postal Service workers.


(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 09, 2011, 12:10:35 PM
BILL GROSS: There's "No Way Out" Of The Debt Trap
Business Insider ^ | 03/09/2011 | Stacey Curtin


________________________ ________________________ ____________--



Debt, debt and more mounting debt is plaguing countries around the globe.

In this U.S., states across the country face a collective $125 billion shortfall for fiscal 2012, while Congress is facing a budget gap nearly 10 times that size.

PIMCO founder and co-CIO Bill Gross has previously said that if the United States were a corporation, no one in their right mind would lend us money. For the last decade, we’ve been “relying on the kindness of strangers” to help cover our debts, he tells Aaron in the accompanying clip.

By “strangers” he is referring to our foreign counterparts, like China for example. Basically, for years Americans have spent their hard-earned dollars on less-expensive Chinese made goods. With great gratitude, China turned around and used all those dollars to buy up U.S. Treasuries and other dollar-denominated assets.

But now after years of reckless spending, America’s debt level is nearing a breaking point and can no longer rely on foreign capital as a last resort. “When a country reaches a certain debt level, confidence in that country’s ability to repay that debt becomes jeopardized,” says Gross, citing the work of Ken Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart in This Time Is Different.

The Way Forward...And Your Pocket Book

The budget crisis situation unfolding at the state and federal government level does not bode well for working men and women in this country. There are really only two choices, says Gross. And, neither favors your pocketbook:

Option #1 – Keep spending and do nothing

Option #2 – Balance our budgets by cutting entitlements

House Republicans ran and won on a platform to cut $100 billion from the budget this year and last month managed to pass legislation that would strip $61 billion in spending.


(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 09, 2011, 02:31:08 PM

March 09, 2011
Inside the Obama Administration
Ed Lasky



Barack Obama's executive ineptitude is on display at the highesty level of government. While he has been repeatedly meeting with union leaders over the last two years and playing golf, he has not been so attentive to his cabinet members, and all is not peaceful. The Nobel Peace Prize winner needs to work his magic close to home.

According to an article in New York magazine by veteran journalist John Heilemann, Obama has not yet conferred with some six Cabinet members since becoming President.  He certainly has been busy appointing czars and czarinas, however, and advisers such as Elizabeth Warren who is the de facto head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Apparently, cabinet members are not feeling the love and are in a rebellious mood. There have recurring reports over the last few years that Barack Obama relies on a small, hard-core group of advisers to make and enact policy. He does not like "new people."   

Anne E. Kornblut of the Washington Post reports that the White House is in repair mode-trying to tamper the anger:

News this week of the first departure of a Cabinet secretary from the Obama administration comes amid a wide-ranging effort under the new chief of staff, William M. Daley, to repair badly frayed relations between the White House and the Cabinet.


During the first two years of President Obama's term, the administration fully embraced just a few of his superstar picks -- people such as Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Education Secretary Arne Duncan. But many more agency chiefs conducted their business in relative anonymity, sometimes after running afoul of White House officials.


Both sides were deeply disgruntled. Agency heads privately complained that the White House was a "fortress" that was unwilling to accept input and that micromanaged their departments. Senior administration advisers rolled their eyes in staff meetings at the mention of certain Cabinet members, participants said.


Obama himself said his advisers were relying on him too frequently as a messenger, rather than letting his appointees carry important themes to the country, senior administration officials said. And the president felt isolated. "One of the first things he said to me was, 'I want to see these people more often,' " Daley said in an interview.


Apparently, Obama picks favorites.


The top tier is prized, with Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner in good stead. So, too, is Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., even after some early angst over his decision to hold a controversial terrorism trial in New York. They head the traditional "big four," the original departments created by George Washington, with the heftiest portfolios. Additionally, aides said, Obama cherishes Duncan, who is a basketball buddy and a charismatic advocate.


Everyone else has had problems, to widely varying degrees


Seemingly,  the laying of hands did not extend to most of the Cabinet. There were internal battles among Cabinet members as well, but there is no denying that the White House dropped the ball in managing the officials chosen to lead the nation.


Also, not meeting with at least 6 cabinet members since assuming office is insulting, especially given the time spent on the golf links, at East Room musical soirees, vacations, and pick-up basketball games with NBA superstars.


Perhaps it is time for another beer summit, featuring the beer that the Obamas have found time to brew themselves at the White House, another historic first.

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/03/inside_the_obama_administratio.html at March 09, 2011 - 04:27:46 PM CST


________________________ _____________


Chickens without heads.   
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 09, 2011, 08:49:59 PM
AmSpecBlog
Obama/Holder DoJ Attacks New York Firefighters
By Quin Hillyer on 3.7.11 @ 10:16PM



This should be a huge scandal. Even a decade past 9/11, few groups in the country enjoy the respect that the Fire Department of New York does. See what the Obama DoJ is doing to the FDNY, even AFTER Ricci v. DeStefano should have put this sort of thing off-limits. Heavily edited, this still gives the flavor of it:

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.'s obsession with racial grievance-mongering could get Americans burnt to a crisp in their own homes. That's because his Justice Department is trying to force the Fire Department of New York (FDNY) to hire flunkies who got 70 percent wrong on a basic, fire-related multiple-choice, open-book test. The exam was used to screen applicants to the fire academy. More than 90 percent of black and Hispanic test-takers passed, which isn't enough for liberals addicted to affirmative action.... On Feb. 28, Thomas E. Perez, assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division, submitted a proposed order for damages for rejected applicants who scored 25 or higher on the 85-question exams. New York's taxpayers would be forced to pay compensation to the flunkies to make up for years of seniority supposedly lost when the city chose not to hire them. Minority rejects also would receive seniority over firemen who had been working all the while.

Here's a good quote that sums it up nicely: "[This order] would serve well as comic relief if the stakes weren't so high, and is a good example to support the contention that the Plaintiffs are apparently not concerned with the safety of NYC residents, visitors or firefighters," wrote deputy fire chief Paul Mannix, president of Merit Matters, an advocacy group opposed to weakening entrance exams.

The earlier news on this was almost as disturbing:

The lead Justice Department attorney in the FDNY case is Loretta King, who ordered the dismissal of most voter-intimidation charges against Black Panthers in Philadelphia and who is hip-deep in other race-based legal controversies. On Sept. 30, she wrote a memo to Judge Garaufis pitching four proposals to require "representative" or "proportional" quotas. Ms. King glosses over the professional challenges of firefighting to focus on whether minorities feel "stigmatized" or if black firefighters could further their "sense of fairness in their place of employment" if surrounded by more workers of their own race. Firemen should be hired for ability, not racial bean-counting. The judge's fiat, wrote Manhattan Institute Fellow Heather MacDonald in the City Journal, "was not just groundless, it was recklessly inflammatory." The heroic FDNY doesn't deserve to have its operations so inflamed.

Fire departments are there for our safety. A job at a fire department is a responsibility for brave and noble people, not a right for slackers. This abomination by the DoJ and Judge Garaufis must be stopped.



http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:U8egM4QwPPEJ:spectator.org/blog/2011/03/07/obamaholder-doj-attacks-new-yo+fdny+perez+doj&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&source=www.google.com

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 10, 2011, 04:29:05 AM

March 10, 2011
Thanks for Small Favors, President Obama
By Jeffrey Folks



On Feb. 28, just after Interior Secretary Salazar declared that he was not satisfied with Gulf drilling safety standards, President Obama's drilling czar, Michael Bromwich, announced that a permit had been approved to resume deep-water drilling 70 miles off the Louisiana coast. Not a new permit, mind you, but one for a project that had already begun drilling before the Deepwater Horizon accident in April 2010. In the months ahead, Bromwich hinted, there might be more approvals, even approval for a new deep-water well. Maybe so, maybe not.


That's the way it works with crony socialism. Just to show how business-friendly he can be, Obama agrees to the resumption of drilling on one deep-water well. That well, operated by Noble Energy, was approved after Noble signed up capping equipment produced by Helix Well Containment Group that met the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement's new standards.


If the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement ("BOEMRE") seems like a mouthful, it's the same agency that used to be known as the Minerals Management Service ("MMS"). In line with its expanded appellation and newly appointed director -- a veteran of the Clinton Justice Department -- the agency has taken on a much more aggressive role in regulating offshore drilling, so much so that practically no drilling has taken place.


This is the way bureaucracy operates under crony socialism. Permits trickle out at a pace decided by a bureaucrat who has spent his entire career in government at the direction of a President who has never worked outside government (inside government either, many would say). Once government controls the means of production and decides how much production and on what terms, the private sector has in effect been nationalized. Having been stifled by this kind of regulation, businesses have to decide whether to limp along in the manner of state-regulated utilities or pack up and leave. In the energy sector, a lot of companies have been leaving. Deep-water rigs have departed for Africa and Latin America, and new exploration and production is relocating abroad.


Lest anyone think that Obama has suddenly become energy friendly, let's review what else he has done in the last few months. Along with his refusal to approve any new deep-water wells, there's the small matter of increased taxes. At a time when the price of oil has exceeded $100 a barrel, the President's FY2012 budget includes a reduction of $44 billion in funds to promote energy independence. The proposed budget would entirely eliminate the current Oil and Gas Research and Development Program while significantly increasing funds for alternative fuels that meet less than 1% of our nation's energy needs.


Those cuts for fossil fuels compare with a 38.5% increase in education spending. Maybe that's because oil-field workers aren't big contributors to the Democratic Party the way teachers' unions are. But piling new taxes on oil companies while boosting teachers' salaries is not going to make America energy independent. You won't get very far pumping a lesson on Women's History Month into your tank.


Meanwhile, in yet another power grab, Obama's EPA wants to slap costly new regulation on refineries and other industrial boilers. Its initial job-killing plan was estimated to cost American workers $3.9 billion annually. EPA Director Lisa Jackson seemed surprised at the level of opposition but subsequently offered a new plan estimated by the EPA to be 46% less expensive.


Amazingly, Jackson claimed that the new plan, at about half the cost, would accomplish essentially the same environmental goals as the first one. That being the case, why wasn't the less costly plan offered to begin with? Since it seems to pull these plans out of thin air whenever it is politically expedient to do so, maybe the EPA can come up with a third plan that is less costly still.


In fact, Jackson's giveback is typical for this administration. What the Obama EPA seeks is not a reasonable level of regulation -- that is to say, minimal regulation necessary for public welfare -- but regulation so far-reaching that private businesses operate at the behest of bureaucrats. Having mugged American business and threatened to strip them of every dime of profit, the agency now decides to make nice and allow some American corporations to subsist within a system of state corporatism.


But not those that produce or burn fossil fuels. The revised regulations on industrial boilers carved out an exemption for schools, hospitals, and some small businesses but did nothing to ease the burden on larger companies. Why is it that teachers, once again, are suddenly exempt from the burden of regulation while energy companies are not? Teachers are being rewarded for being good little Obama comrades, while those connected with fossil fuels are blacklisted. Maybe it's because energy companies actually produce something of value and have the ability to create private sector jobs independent of government. Evidently no one in the Obama administration wants to see those kinds of companies prosper.  


Underlying Obama's energy policy is the goal of de facto nationalization of all major sectors of the economy. Drilling in the Gulf may be allowed to resume, although gradually, but Obama has not backed down on his socialist agenda. His latest budget doubles down on subsidies for green vehicles and alternative fuels. He continues to rally support for alternative fuel mandates, a backdoor means toward carbon emissions control. And Obama's friends at the Environmental Resources Defense Council are promoting CAFE standards of 60 mpg by 2025, a goal that would run the American auto industry into the ground a second time and bankrupt consumers as well. The only thing that has changed is that, with gas prices climbing over $4 a gallon, Obama needs cover through the 2012 election for an energy policy that is not working.


I suspect that more deep-water approvals are forthcoming, but not many and slowly. Even as a bipartisan resolution has been introduced in the House calling for faster permitting, there is no leadership on this issue from the White House. Or rather, there is leadership in the wrong direction. Obama managed to shut down deep-water permitting in the Gulf for an unprecedented ten months, then act like Santa Claus when he re-authorized a permit that had already been granted. What happens when he actually approves a permit for new drilling? He'll make it sound like we're on the way to $2 gas when, under his plan, we're on the way to no gas at all.


A lot of voters are unhappy because they know that Obama-style socialism is not working. They know that fewer Americans are working, prices are going up, and government debt is out of control. That's why they voted Democrats out of office in record numbers last November. Obama is attempting to placate the public by acting like he has learned his lesson and is willing to compromise. But approval for resumption of one deep-water well, or of a few wells in the coming months, is not compromise. It's a cynical ploy designed to deflect attention from the continuing takeover of the energy sector.


Jeffrey Folks is the author of many books and article on American culture.

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/03/thanks_for_small_favors_presid.html



 at March 10, 2011 - 06:24:59 AM CST
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 10, 2011, 04:38:45 AM

March 10, 2011
Obama Calling Tea Party Racist Reveals A Far More Disturbing Reality
By Lloyd Marcus



________________________ _______________



Please consider the validity of what I am about to say rather than having a knee jerk reaction dismissing it as being "over the top."   Folks, we have an irresponsible egocentric evil man occupying the Oval Office.


The Democrats and the liberal mainstream media sold the American people on Obama, "the man."  Despite Obama's zero experience at running anything, they said a leader with his spirit and heart was "what we have been waiting for".


Fearful of criticizing our first black president, politicians politely say, "President Obama's policies have been unfruitful," while ignoring the huge elephant in America's living room.


The elephant of which I speak and America's major problem is "Obama, the man"; socialist, divisive and evil.


My dad says a snake can stay under water a very long time just like a fish. But eventually, it must come up for air. Why? Because, it is not a fish. It is a snake. Obama continues to come up for air revealing his true self.


President Obama said the Tea Party is racist. The liberal media, NAACP and Democrats have been relentlessly promoting this same baseless allegation. When final confirmation comes down from the highest office in the land, the Oval Office, that the Tea Party is racist; the allegation becomes "official" in the minds of millions. President Obama is slandering millions of decent hard working Americans who simply disagree with his progressive/socialist agenda.


Think of the repercussions. Obama's indictment of the Tea Party will birth tremendous racial discord across America in schools, churches, and civic life.  Obama's proclamation will cause Americans to double down on their already extreme caution when criticizing our black president.  Sadly, I suspect such intimidation is a part of Obama's plan; anything to empower his mission to "fundamentally transform America."


Make no mistake about it, Obama and company have successfully intimidated many white Americans into not dissing the black president in public.


I stopped in a fast food restaurant for a burger. Around fifteen white seniors were having lunch. I overheard them ranting about Obama's overreaches and socialist policies. Upon seeing me, a black man, they became silent. I was tempted to say, "Please continue, I hold-heartedly agree with you!" Too bad they did not notice my Tea Party Express t-shirt.


Barack Hussein Obama received more votes than any other presidential candidate in American history. So Obama alleging millions of Tea Party patriots are simply upset because America elected a black president is disingenuous, absurd and manipulative.


Obama is exploiting his race and sacrificing national race relations solely to implement his progressive/socialist agenda. Callously and strategically, the President of the United States is pitting millions of black and white Americans against each other. Lord help us, that is pure evil.


Quoting deceased make-up legend, Mary Kay, "Leadership spreads from the top down."


A fine black young adult whom I have known for years has always appeared to be racially color blind.  He idolizes Obama.  Suddenly, I have noticed this kid beginning to view everything through a racial lens. His latest absurd statement, "Friends" is a racist TV show because there are no black cast members."


While I admit this example is anecdotal, I suspect Obama's divisiveness is inspiring millions of Americans to choose sides along racial lines.


Before knowing the facts, Obama immediately assumed the white police officer was guilty of racial profiling in the Professor Gates case.  This suggests Obama has racial emotional baggage.  Such a luxury cannot be afforded the president of "all Americans."


Obama is not who most Americans thought he was and is exactly who the liberal mainstream media hoped he would be: their Great Black Hope for implementing their progressive/socialist agenda.


They will do whatever it takes to protect Obama; ignoring his character flaws, lawlessness, deceptions and lies. If Obama says two plus two equals five, the liberal media will defend it as being the "New Math."  We cannot trust the liberal media to tell us the truth regarding Obama.


Obama's inauguration brought tears to the eyes of millions of Americans. Blacks are only 12% of our nation's population, which means it took many million white votes to put Obama in the Oval Office. Thus, most of the American tears of joy were white.


President Obama is fully aware of this truth.


Obama willfully dividing Americans by exploiting his race for political gain is a despicable betrayal of the whites who elected him. But even more disturbing, it reveals the true character of the man running our country. America deserves much, much better.


Lloyd Marcus, Proud Unhyphenated American
"One Million People To Defeat Barack Obama 2012". Please join us!
Please sign and encourage your friends to sign this petition at www.ipetitions.com/petition/1milliontodefeatbarackobama
LloydMarcus.com
Spokesperson & Entertainer of Tea Party Movement & Tea Party Express.
The American Tea  Party Anthem cd/album.
Confessions of a Black Conservative, written by Lloyd Marcus & foreword by Michelle Malkin
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Join Lloyd Marcus Facebook Page
Tea Are The World, "Taking Back America" The Making of Documentary... The MUST SEE Tea Party Hist

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/03/obama_calling_tea_party_racist.html


 at March 10, 2011 - 06:35:27 AM CST
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Al Doggity on March 10, 2011, 05:23:15 AM
Quote
Lest anyone think that Obama has suddenly become energy friendly, let's review what else he has done in the last few months. Along with his refusal to approve any new deep-water wells, there's the small matter of increased taxes. At a time when the price of oil has exceeded $100 a barrel, the President's FY2012 budget includes a reduction of $44 billion in funds to promote energy independence. The proposed budget would entirely eliminate the current Oil and Gas Research and Development Program while significantly increasing funds for alternative fuels that meet less than 1% of our nation's energy needs.


Those cuts for fossil fuels compare with a 38.5% increase in education spending. Maybe that's because oil-field workers aren't big contributors to the Democratic Party the way teachers' unions are. But piling new taxes on oil companies while boosting teachers' salaries is not going to make America energy independent. You won't get very far pumping a lesson on Women's History Month into your tank.

Does a decrease in subsidies really count as a tax increase? And the author did say the 2012 fiscal budget, right? The same budget that House Republicans want to slash by $100billion?
How much do you want to bet the "38.5% increase in education funding" is a mere fraction of $44 billion? 


Without bothering to even click back one page, I feel safe in assuming most of the articles in this thread are poorly reasoned shit like this.

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 10, 2011, 09:15:13 AM
Gas Prices Have Gone Up 67 Percent Since Obama Became President
weeklystandard.com ^ | Mar 9, 2011 | MARK HEMINGWAY




Ah, January of 2009. Hope was in the air, but more importantly, gas was under two dollars a gallon. Since then gas prices, have gone up 67 percent and it's an ominously upward trend. Interestingly enough, the Heritage Foundation also took a look at the first 26 months of Bush's presidency -- gas only rose 7 percent during that time frame.


(Excerpt) Read more at weeklystandard.com ...
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 10, 2011, 07:48:33 PM
'Junk' Insurer Owned By Goldman Sachs Gets First Exemption From Health Care Provision

First Posted: 03/10/11 11:50 AM Updated: 03/10/11 11:50 AM
marcus@huffingtonpost.com.


live blogOldest
Newest Today  11:49 AM Wall-Street-Owned 'Junk' Insurer Gets Obamacare Exemption 




A notorious company that has been temporarily banned from selling insurance in at least one state and faces allegations of peddling "junk insurance" elsewhere is getting the first waiver from the 2010 health care overhaul's requirement that insurers spend at least 80 percent of premiums on care, according to federal regulators.

Maine is the first state to get the temporary waiver -- New Hampshire, Nevada and Kentucky have applications pending -- allowing the three insurance companies in the state to keep their existing 65 percent medical loss ratio, successfully persuading the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that higher costs would drive insurers out of the market.

As The Watchdog reported in January, Maine's insurance commissioner sought the exemption on behalf of HealthMarkets Inc., which is largely owned by funds run by Goldman Sachs and Blackstone -- the insurer's subsidiary, Mega Life and Health Insurance, controls about 37 percent of the market for individual insurance in the state.

HealthMarkets and its subsidiaries have a troubled history and have long been dogged by accusations that their coverage is inadequate. The insurer has been banned for at least five years from selling insurance in Massachusetts after a probe by the state's attorney general, who accused the firm of waging a "campaign of deception and unfair practices," finding that the insurer's coverage didn't cover such basics as doctors' office visits, prescription drugs, chemotherapy and even some lab tests and X-rays.

Last October, the city of Los Angeles sued HealthMarkets and its Mega Life unit for allegedly selling “junk insurance” that left customers “without coverage when they needed it most,” according to court documents. In response to the complaint, which is still pending, the company issued a statement: "No company in the service business is without issues involving customer satisfaction, and HealthMarkets is no exception. We encourage our customers to contact us directly with their questions and concerns so we can resolve issues." It has also set up a page on its website to address allegations.

Since 2002, the company has been fined by at least seven states and faced lawsuits from dozens of policyholders. A three-year probe of the insurer by 29 states, including Maine, found multiple problems involving consumer disclosure, oversight and training of agents, claims handling and complaint handling practices, resulting in a $20 million settlement in 2008.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/07/epa-budget-cuts-house-republicans_n_832372.html

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 11, 2011, 05:40:19 AM
BOOK EXCERPT
MARCH 11, 2011. A Letter to America
Americans deserve better than the European model that Barack Obama is trying to implement.
By DANIEL HANNAN


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703559604576176620582972608.html#printMode



________________________ ________


The following essay is adapted from the Encounter Books Broadside, "Why America Must Not Follow Europe," No. 19 in a series.

On a U.S. talk-radio show recently, I was asked what I thought about the notion that Barack Obama had been born in Kenya. "Pah!" I replied (or words to that effect). "Your president was plainly born in Brussels."

American conservatives have struggled to press President Obama's policies into a meaningful narrative. Is he a socialist? No, at least not in the sense of wanting the state to own key industries. Is he a straightforward New Deal big spender, in the model of FDR and LBJ? Not exactly.

View Full Image

Barbara Kelley
 .Americans understandably seek to define their president in American terms. But looking across from my side of the Atlantic, there is a much simpler explanation. President Obama wants to Europeanize the U.S. All right, he wouldn't put it in those terms, partly because the electorate wouldn't wear it and partly because he sees himself as less Eurocentric than any of his 43 predecessors.

My guess is that if anything, Obama would verbalize his ideology using the same vocabulary that Eurocrats do. He would say he wants a fairer America, a more tolerant America, a less arrogant America, a more engaged America. When you prize away the cliché, what these phrases amount to are higher taxes, less patriotism, a bigger role for state bureaucracies and a transfer of sovereignty to global institutions.

He is not pursuing a set of random initiatives lashed arbitrarily together, but a program of comprehensive Europeanization: European health care, European welfare, European carbon taxes, European day care, European college education, even a European foreign policy, based on engagement with supranational technocracies, nuclear disarmament and a reluctance to deploy forces overseas.

No previous president has offered such uncritical support for European integration. On his very first trip to Europe as president, Obama declared, "In my view, there is no Old Europe or New Europe. There is a united Europe." Having silkily dispensed with the old Rumsfeldian idea that the U.S. should deal with EU states as individual nations, he went on to dismiss the euroskeptic majorities in most European countries: "I believe in a strong Europe, and a strong European Union, and my administration is committed to doing everything we can to support you."

It's hardly surprising that Obama should be such an enthusiast for a European superstate: He is building his own version at home. I don't doubt the sincerity of those Americans who want to copy the European model. A few may be snobs who wear their euro-enthusiasm as a badge of sophistication. But most genuinely believe that making their country less American and more like the rest of the world would make it more comfortable and peaceable.

All right, growth would be slower, but the quality of life might improve. All right, taxes would be higher, but workers need no longer fear sickness or unemployment. All right, the U.S. would no longer be the world's superpower, but perhaps that would make it more popular. Is a European future truly so terrible?

Yes. Take it from me, my friends. I have been an elected member of the European Parliament for 11 years. I have seen firsthand what the European political model means. I inhabit your future—or at least the future toward which your current rulers seem intent on taking you. Before you follow us, let me tell you about it.

The critical difference between the American and European unions has to do with the location of power. The U.S. was founded on what we might loosely call the Jeffersonian ideal: the notion that decisions should be taken as closely as possible to the people they affect. The EU, by contrast, was based on precisely the opposite ideal. Article One of its foundational treaty commits its nations to establish "an ever-closer union."

From that distinction, much follows. The U.S. has evolved a series of unique institutions designed to limit the power of the state: recall mechanisms, ballot initiatives, balanced budget rules, open primaries, localism, states' rights, term limits, the direct election of public officials, from the sheriff to the school board. The EU, by contrast, has placed supreme power in the hands of 27 unelected Commissioners, who have been made deliberately invulnerable to public opinion.

The will of the people is generally seen by Eurocrats as an obstacle to overcome, not a reason to change direction. When France, the Netherlands and Ireland voted against the European Constitution, the referendum results were swatted aside and the document adopted regardless. For, in Brussels, the ruling doctrine—that the nation-state must be transcended—is seen as more important than freedom, democracy or the rule of law.

This doctrine has had several malign consequences. For example, it has made the assimilation of immigrants far more difficult. Whereas the U.S. is based around the idea that anyone who buys into American values can become American, the EU clings to the notion that national identities are anachronistic and dangerous. Unsurprisingly, some newcomers, finding their adopted countries scorned, have turned to other, less apologetic identities. Hint to my American friends: If you go around the world apologizing for everything, you make it harder for immigrants to want to belong.

The single worst aspect of Europeanization, however, is its impact on the economy. Many Americans, and many Europeans, have a collective memory of how Europe managed to combine economic growth with social justice. Didn't Western Europe do tremendously well after World War II? Wasn't its success associated with something called "Rhineland capitalism" or "the social market"?

Like most folk memories, the idea of a European economic miracle has some basis in fact. Between 1945 and 1974, Western Europe did indeed outperform the U.S. And in retrospect, we can see why. Europe happened to enjoy perfect conditions for rapid growth. Infrastructure had been destroyed during the war, but an educated, industrious and disciplined work force remained. On top of which, Europe received a massive external stimulus. Thirteen billion dollars were disbursed through the Marshall Plan between 1948 and 1952, on top of the $12 billion already given by the U.S. in aid since the end of the war.

In the circumstances, it would have been extraordinary had Europe not prospered. Human nature being what it is, however, few European leaders attributed their success to the fact that they were recovering from an artificial low, still less to external assistance.

They convinced themselves, rather, that they were responsible for their countries' growth rates. Their genius, they thought, lay in having hit upon a European "third way" between the excesses of American capitalism and the totalitarianism of Soviet communism.

They believed in markets, but regulated markets. Instead of the industrial strife that they had experienced before the war, they would establish a tripartite system in which employers, labor unions and government officials worked together. Instead of seesawing between Left and Right, they would have consensual coalition governments in which both Christian Democrats and Social Democrats accepted the broad framework of a mixed market. Instead of competition between states, they would pursue political and economic integration.

We can now see where that road leads: to burgeoning bureaucracy, more spending, higher taxes, slower growth and rising unemployment. But an entire political class has grown up believing not just in the economic superiority of euro-corporatism but in its moral superiority. After all, if the American system were better—if people and businesses could thrive without government supervision—there would be less need for politicians. As Upton Sinclair once observed, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it."

Nonetheless, the economic data are pitilessly clear. For the past 40 years, Europeans have fallen further and further behind Americans in their standard of living. In 1974, Western Europe, defined as the 15 members of the EU prior to the admission of the former communist countries in 2004, accounted for 36% of world GDP. Today that figure is 26%. In 2020 it will be 15%. In the same period, the U.S. share of world GDP has remained, and is forecast to remain, fairly steady at around 26%.

At the same time, Europe has become accustomed to a high level of structural unemployment. Indeed, if we exclude the United Kingdom, the EU failed to produce a single net private-sector job between 1980 and 1992. Only now, as the U.S. applies a European-style economic strategy based on fiscal stimulus, nationalization, bailouts, quantitative easing and the regulation of private-sector remuneration, has the rate of unemployment in the U.S. leaped to European levels.

Why is a European politician urging America to avoid Europeanization? Well, I'm not European; I'm British. My country is linked to the U.S., and to the wider Anglosphere, by ties of history and geography, commerce and law, blood and speech.

As a Briton, I see the American republic as a repository of our traditional freedoms. The doctrines rooted in the common law, in the Magna Carta, and in the Bill of Rights found their fullest and most sublime expression in the old courthouse of Philadelphia. Britain, as a result of its unhappy membership in the European Union, has now surrendered a large part of its birthright. But our freedoms live on in America.

Which brings me to my country's present tragedy. The fears that the American patriot leaders had about a Hanoverian tyranny were, in retrospect, exaggerated. The United Kingdom did not develop into an absolutist state. Power continued to pass from the Crown to the House of Commons.

Until now. Nearly two and a half centuries after the Declaration of Independence, the grievances it adumbrated are belatedly coming true—but in Britain, rather than in North America. Colossal sums are being commandeered by the government in order to fund bailouts and nationalizations without any proper parliamentary authorization. Legislation happens increasingly through what are called standing orders, a device that allows ministers to make laws without parliamentary consent—often for the purpose of implementing EU standards. Elections have been drained of purpose, and turnout is falling.

How aptly the British people might today apply the ringing phrases of the Declaration of Independence against their own rulers, who have "combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws."

Throughout my career in politics, I have campaigned to apply Jeffersonian democracy to British political conditions, to recover those British freedoms that have flourished more happily in America than in their native soil, to repatriate our revolution. So you can imagine how I feel when I see the U.S. making the same mistakes that Britain has made: expanding its government, regulating private commerce, centralizing its jurisdiction, breaking the link between taxation and representation, abandoning its sovereignty.

You deserve better, cousins. And we expect better.

Mr. Hannan is a member of the European Parliament.

Copyright 2011 Dow Jones &
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Option D on March 11, 2011, 06:17:52 AM
check your pm
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 11, 2011, 10:19:34 AM
Shocker: Domestic Oil Production Down, Foreign Imports Up
Hotair ^ | 03/11/2011 | Jazz Shaw




Fortunately for all of us, the wise energy policies of the Obama administration have us well on the way to a sustainable, secure energy future for our nation. After all, who could argue with a policy where we seek to import less oil from abroad, stifle the domestic production of such resources and do nothing to replace the shortfall?

With that in mind, surely nobody would expect a result like this.




The lack of effective leadership on this vital issue has drawn the ire of a group of conservative leaders who recently provided a summary of just what we can expect in the future if nothing happens. Brace yourselves, as I’m sure none of you could have called this one.

Issue-in-Brief: Continued instability in the Middle East, combined with unprecedented foreign demand for oil and an uncertain economic recovery at home, has left the United States at the mercy of foreign dictators and markets – issues that would be alleviated if the Administration lifted its self-imposed energy freeze and let domestic producers get back to work, particularly in the Gulf. There is an obvious lack of leadership from the Obama Administration.

Demand for Oil is Skyrocketing

•Since President Obama assumed office gas prices have risen 87%! (From $1.83 to $3.43 and even higher in some states!)
•Global demand for oil is rising, and the competition for foreign resources has intensified. By 2035, the United States, Japan, OECD Europe, China, and India are projected to need 25 percent more imported oil than in 2005, with China and India accounting for the major portion of that increase.
•Instead of reaping the economic and social benefits of developing our domestic resources, the Gulf of Mexico (GOM), even despite the recent permit granted by the Department of Interior (DOI), remains closed for business. According to the Energy Information Agency, domestic offshore oil production will fall 13 percent in 2011, a loss of about 220,000 barrels/day, mainly due to the continued lack of permits for the GOM.

Shocking. That’s the only word for it. Who could have imagined that we would have to import more oil from unstable foreign sources if
we don’t allow domestic producers to drill for it here? With this in mind, I would like to officially nominate the Obama administration for the Hot Air Capt. Louis Renault Award.

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 11, 2011, 10:22:36 AM
The Extrordinary Disconnect between Obama/Treasury/Dems on Oil Price
http://floppingaces.net/2011/03/10/the-extrordinary-disconnect-between-obamatreasurydems-on-oil-price

By: Mata Harley

________________________ ______________




Among the things that make you go “huh” comes the tri-forked tongue of Obama, his Dem lawmakers and his own Treasury Secretary on the latest rise in oil prices. On a day when the Dow tumbled 228 points on a plethora of issues, including Spain’s credit downgrade, unrest in Saudi Arabia, the latest US unemployment figures, China’s trade deficit, and in general the effect of rising oil prices on various global economies, the mixed message from liberal leadership is nothing short of headscratching.

It was just yesterday when the NYTs confidently announced that the rising oil prices and ME unrest was “unlikely” to derail this “recovery” that main street has yet to feel. This was amusing enough, as Clay Waters over at NewsBusters noted, that $3.57 per gal gas at the pump under Obama wasn’t worrisome while $2.55 per gal under Bush in 2005 was a prediction of a recession.

Well, hindsight notes that it was housing – not oil prices – that was the catalyst for the 2008 crash, and possibly aided by outside forces with a wider agenda in mind.

Despite the claims that the economy was well braced for high oil prices, Obama has been considering tapping the US Strategic Petroleum Reserves for an event it was never created for… prices. Even so, his mouthpieces were careful this was obvious to most who understand the whys and whens of that supply, and busy peppering their talking points with supporting reasons for doing so.

White House spokesman Jay Carney insisted Monday that while opening the reserve is under consideration, such a decision would be based on the possibility of a “major disruption” of oil production.

Carney spoke one day after Bill Daley, President Obama’s chief of staff, said the president is considering tapping the reserve. Unrest in the Middle East has sent the price of oil skyrocketing to $107 per barrel on Monday.

“There are a number of factors that go into it, and it’s not price-based alone,” said Carney, who in response to questions was adamant that he was not walking back Daley’s comments.

“It’s important to look at history … and the times when it has been used. So I wouldn’t look to a price threshold. The issue here is disruption. Is there a major disruption in the flow of oil? That’s obviously a factor.”

But there is no imminent disruption to warrant such an action… despite the lip service.

But his fellow Dems, desperate to lessen the impact on an economy for which they cannot escape culpability, are already floating a bill to tap those reserves. Unlike the WH, however, they don’t disguise their purpose… to affect the price at the pump.

Meanwhile, Geithner – also busy threatening the House Appropriations subcommittee to *increase* foreign diplomatic aid or “…risk losing ground to China” – took a more noncommittal approach to the SPR, and it’s need or impact.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told lawmakers Thursday that the United States and other nations can tap oil reserves if they’re needed to restrain prices and keep the global economic recovery moving forward.

Geithner downplayed the risks that political unrest in the Middle East and North Africa was posing a major threat to the nation’s economic recovery or could cause a long-term spike in inflation during testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

“It’s important to note that there is considerable spare oil production capacity globally, and we and other major economies possess substantial strategic reserves of oil,” he said. “If necessary, those reserves could be mobilized to help mitigate the effect of a severe, sustained supply disruption.”

His views that rising oil prices will boost inflation are similar to those held by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, who told lawmakers this week that they would probably have a short-term effect and wouldn’t require action from the central bank.

What a circus… do these people talk to each other, or what? Leadership… what a joke.

But if Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla), ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, is correct, Obama won’t be tapping those reserves because it conflicts with his desire for higher gas prices.

Me, personally? Hang no… do not tap these reserves for price control. But what with more concern about China’s economy, which lessens their demand for oil and counteracts the fear of disruption, oil prices closed lower today at $104 than it did on Monday. Considering the price of oil back in 2007-08, it seems premature to tap this reserve, primarily there for disruption and not manipulation of market prices.

So now we get to witness that battle Obama internally faces… let the prices go up, as he has stated in the past he desires to force behavioral changes? Or acquiese to his Dem Congressional members? And will Geithner start backtracking now on his confidence in the US economy, being able to withstand high oil prices?

Have the popcorn ready….
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 11, 2011, 03:19:48 PM
Obama Blames Oil Companies For Lack Of Drilling 
By Sean Higgins     
Fri., March 11, 2011 4:56 PM ET 
Tags: Obama - Energy - Drilling - Democrats


http://blogs.investors.com/capitalhill/index.php/home/35-politicsinvesting/2510-obama-blames-oil-companies-for-lack-of-drilling





In his Friday press conference to discuss gas prices, President Obama was rather defensive, straining to counter the notion that his administration has been unfriendly to oil drilling, something most people would like to see a lot more of these days.

Where do people get that notion? Perhaps his Interior Department appealing a judge’s ruling that it act on several pending deepwater permits had something to with it.

Obama claimed repeatedly that he is not against drilling, then made the following comments:

There is more we can do, however. For example, right now, the (oil) industry holds leases on tens of millions of acres — both offshore and on land — where they aren’t producing a thing. So I’ve directed the Interior Department to determine just how many of these leases are going undeveloped and report back to me within two weeks so that we can encourage companies to develop the leases they hold and produce American energy. People deserve to know that the energy they depend on is being developed in a timely manner.

In other words, Obama is arguing that the oil companies themselves may be to blame for the fact that there isn’t more drilling. For some reason they’re ignoring making a profit. It’s a bizarro-world inversion of the usual complaint against oil companies — that they are reckless and all-too eager to despoil pristine lands in search of black gold.

Nevertheless, it is a familiar talking point that Democrats have been throwing out there for years now.  The Interior report Obama mentioned will probably come in the coming weeks or months and “prove” this point. Obama clearly hopes it will take the pressure off of his administration for high gas prices and throw it on the oil companies.

But is any of this true? Technically yes, says the oil industry, but the claim is extremely misleading. As Richard Ranger, a policy analyst with the American Petroleum Institute, has explained:

“The process of looking at an area that might have oil and gas potential and narrowing your search over time and over a sequence of steps to actually producing oil and gas involves kind of casting a big net first and over time through geologic work,” Ranger said. “[Y] You prioritize some over others, you may be lucky on those first ones you drill, you may not — then you drill prospects further down your priority list.”

Ranger also explained it’s not always a cut-and-dried situation. Some areas will have oil and gas, some won’t and some might have it, but it may not be economically feasible to pump it out of the ground.

“When you drill, you have results that are either sufficient oil or gas to allow production or a dry hole or somewhere in between where you think we may have production but we may need some further work to determine whether this formation, this target, is economic to produce. Those steps consume several years from the point of leasing to a point of decision.”

 
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 11, 2011, 09:08:45 PM
Mexican truck deal close to final agreement
HOUSTON CHRONICLE ^ | March 10, 2011, 10:15PM | RICHARD S. DUNHAM


WASHINGTON — The final agreement to end a 2-year-old trucking dispute between the U.S. and Mexico "should be weeks, if not days" away, U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk said Thursday.

At a lunch meeting with reporters, the highest-ranking Texan in the Obama administration said U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Mexican Transportation Minister Humberto Treviño are close to signing the deal that will end an impasse that has cost American businesses about $5 billion in retaliatory tariffs imposed by Mexico. "This could not have been better news and it could not have happened soon enough" for Texas and California agriculture interests, said Kirk, a former Dallas mayor .

Mexico has imposed about $2.4 billion in annual tariffs on U.S. goods going into Mexico in retaliation for the U.S. Congress' 2009 decision to end a pilot project that had allowed as many as 100 Mexican trucking companies to haul cargo across the border. The tariffs are calibrated to make U.S. products uncompetitive in Mexico's market and targeted wine and produce from California, home state of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.


(Excerpt) Read more at chron.com ...


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 13, 2011, 06:48:47 AM
US backing for world currency stuns markets
March 10, 2011 by Underground Militia
Filed under: Uncategorized 


US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner shocked global markets by revealing that Washington is “quite open” to Chinese proposals for the gradual development of a global reserve currency run by the International Monetary Fund.
The dollar plunged instantly against the euro, yen, and sterling as the comments flashed across trading screens. David Bloom, currency chief at HSBC, said the apparent policy shift amounts to an earthquake in geo-finance.

“The mere fact that the US Treasury Secretary is even entertaining thoughts that the dollar may cease being the anchor of the global monetary system has caused consternation,” he said.

Mr Geithner later qualified his remarks, insisting that the dollar would remain the “world’s dominant reserve currency … for a long period of time” but the seeds of doubt have been sown.

The markets appear baffled by the confused statements emanating from Washington. President Barack Obama told a new conference hours earlier that there was no threat to the reserve status of the dollar.

“I don’t believe that there is a need for a global currency. The reason the dollar is strong right now is because investors consider the United States the strongest economy in the world with the most stable political system in the world,” he said.


The Chinese proposal, outlined this week by central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan, calls for a “super-sovereign reserve currency” under IMF management, turning the Fund into a sort of world central bank.

The idea is that the IMF should activate its dormant powers to issue Special Drawing Rights. These SDRs would expand their role over time, becoming a “widely-accepted means of payments”.

Mr Bloom said that any switch towards use of SDRs has direct implications for the currency markets. At the moment, 65pc of the world’s $6.8 trillion stash of foreign reserves is held in dollars. But the dollar makes up just 42pc of the basket weighting of SDRs. So any SDR purchase under current rules must favour the euro, yen and sterling.

Beijing has the backing of Russia and a clutch of emerging powers in Asia and Latin America. Economists have toyed with such schemes before but the issue has vaulted to the top of the political agenda as creditor states around the world takes fright at the extreme measures now being adopted by the Federal Reserve, especially the decision to buy US government debt directly with printed money.

Mr Bloom said the US is discovering that the sensitivities of creditors cannot be ignored. “China holds almost 30pc of the world’s entire reserves. What they say matters,” he said.

Mr Geithner’s friendly comments about the SDR plan seem intended to soothe Chinese feelings after a spat in January over alleged currency manipulation by Beijing, but he will now have to explain his own categorical assurance to Congress on Tuesday that he would not countenance any moves towards a world currency.

http://info.themicroeffect.com/?p=1643

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 13, 2011, 06:56:33 AM
The Fact Checker
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/12/AR2011031204258_pf.html

Saturday, March 12, 2011; 11:45 PM



"The Democrats have put forward spending cuts, many of them pretty painful, that give Republicans already half of what they were seeking, because they're the right thing to do."

- President Obama, March 11, 2011

The White House was not happy when we gave two Pinocchios to Democrats for persistently saying they have gone "halfway" to GOP proposals on cutting the 2011 fiscal year budget. We also suggested that the "halfway" phrase would be worth more Pinocchios if President Obama began to use it.

He did so in his weekly radio address March5, and then again at his news conference Friday, but not before the White House gave The Fact Checker a bunch of data and charts trying to make the administration's case for using the phrase. So let's review the issue again, and see how persuasive the administration's argument is.

The Facts

It comes down to where you draw the line - the budget baseline. Democrats like to draw the line at the president's proposal for 2011, even though it was never enacted. Under that measure, Republicans would cut about $100 billion and Democrats about $50 billion. That's where the "halfway" comes from.

Republicans - and much of the news media - measure the cuts from the 2010 budget, the last one signed into law. Under that scoring, the Republicans have cut $60 billion and the Democrats under $10 billion. The two sides are still $50 billion apart, but under this scenario, the Democrats have barely budged. (Their argument was further weakened last week when the Congressional Budget Office judged some of their cuts to be worth less than they claimed.)

White House officials have argued that it makes sense to compare one proposal - the president's 2011 budget request - with another proposal, the House 2011 bill. But that argument has gained little traction in official Washington.

The White House has now come up with a third way of drawing the line: the 2010 budget, adjusted for inflation. This is not unreasonable, since inflation means a dollar one year does not buy as much as the next year.

Under this scenario, the discretionary budget for fiscal 2011 would have been $1.117 trillion, all things being equal.

Here's how the different budget proposals compare when adjusted for this new line:

+12 billion

President's original 2011 proposal

-39 billion

Latest Democratic proposal

-91 billion

House Republicans

These numbers show that the president's proposal certainly would have been an increase over inflation. But they also appear to show that the Democrats have moved even more toward the GOP position, though not quite "halfway."

To some extent, this is all semantics. No matter how you measure it, the two sides are always at least $50 billion apart.

However, we are not convinced by the White House presentation. The inflated baseline helps demonstrate that even a "freeze" would mean a cut in some spending, but it still makes more sense to compare the 2011 proposals with the 2010 numbers.

The Pinocchio Test

The Democrats' posturing that they have met Republicans "halfway" on budget cuts does them no credit. Either they should take a stand and say they won't accept further cuts, or they should begin a real negotiation that leads to a higher number. Obama signaled he was willing to deal when he said in his radio address he was "prepared to do more." But the persistent claims of going "halfway" when in fact Democrats have done little to engage Republicans on the issue will only hurt their credibility in the long run.

Three Pinocchios for the president.

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 13, 2011, 07:12:25 AM
PolitiFact, FactCheck, and WaPo All Confirm: The $105 Billion Obamacare Slush Fund Exists
Heritage ^ | 3-9-11





Today former Congressman Ernest Istook testified before the House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee about the $105 billion slush fund in advance appropriations liberals tucked inside Obamacare.

The $105 billion bypasses the traditional yearly budgeting process and is spread throughout the 2,700 page legislation.

It took the Congressional Research Service (CRS) seven months to identify all the disparate funds and it was not until February (11 months after the bill passed) that all of the funds could be totaled up.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) has been beating the drum to raise awareness of this unprecedented level of advance spending.

But the liberal media has been attacking her for calling it “hidden” funding. In reality, Rep. Bachmann said that “practically no Member of Congress even knew that $105 billion of funding was” in the bill.

FactCheck says that this funding was known to “those who read the bill … including members of Congress.”

But does FactCheck really believe that any member of Congress read all 2,700 pages of the bill?

Do they have any evidence at all that any member of Congress knew about the $105 billion figure before CRS published their report this February?

But more importantly, in their attempted take down of Rep. Bachmann, PolitiFact, FactCheck, and The Washington Post Fact Checker all confirm her underlying charge:

the $105 billion exists.

Poltifact writes: “We added up the spending Bachmann was referring to and got $104 billion — very close to her number.”  

And a note to The Washington Post Fact Checker: Former Congressman Ernest Istook served in the House of Representatives, not the Senate.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 13, 2011, 07:15:01 AM
Sad. Obama Official Salazar Lies to Congress About Gulf Oil Production (Video) …Update: Obama Repeats Lie
Posted by Jim Hoft on Friday, March 11, 2011, 11:46 AM
 
http://gatewaypundit.rightnetwork.com/2011/03/sad-obama-official-salazar-lies-to-congress-about-gulf-oil-production-to-prevent-more-drilling-video



  Last week, at a House Natural Resources Committee hearing, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar told Congress that oil production in the Gulf of Mexico “remained at an all-time high.” Salazar claimed: “In 2009 there were 116 rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, in 2010 in February, 120, in February 2011, 126.”

He was lying.

Energy Tomorrow blog reported:

Salazar’s numbers distort the true number of working rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. According to Baker Hughes:

•Four days before the Deepwater Horizon accident there were 55 rotary rigs actually drilling offshore in the Gulf of Mexico.

•On May 28, 2010, when the administration announced the six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling, there were 46 rotary rigs operating in the Gulf.

•Last week, 25 rotary rigs were operating in the Gulf of Mexico.
So the fact that there is an “all-time high” number of rigs in the Gulf ignores the fact that most of those rigs are not working. Claiming an increase in idle rigs in the Gulf as a success story is like claiming the job market is great because a lot of people are unemployed and available to work.

In the same hearing, the Secretary also claimed that “the production has remained at an all-time high” within the Gulf of Mexico and there is no way to actually make this true. The Energy Department’s Energy Information Administration reports that production in the Gulf of Mexico is in decline, forecasting a decline of 250,000 barrels a day from Gulf production, due partly to the moratorium and restricted permitting. While the annual production figure for 2010 was greater than 2009, EIA’s month-by-month production figures show a peak in May of 2010, and a relatively steady decline since.

It’s getting to the point where you can’t trust a single thing these people say.

UPDATE: This is really sad but we all knew it was coming.

Barack Obama held a press conference today on American energy and repeated the same lie… “Oil production at its highest level in 7 years.  Oil production from federal waters in Gulf at an all time high.”

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 13, 2011, 07:36:14 AM
Letting No Disaster Go To Waste, SEC Prepares To Let Lehman Executives Walk For Repo 105 Fraud
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 03/12/2011 10:55 -0500





And while the general public frets over the latest geopolitical disasters, the SEC proves Rahm Emanuel correct once again, and letting no disaster go to waste, man-made or natural, the world's most incompetent (but massively underpaid, or so they claim) regulator is preparing to let Dick Fuld completely off the hook for last spring's stunning Repo 105 report by Anton Valukas, whose findings even the bankruptcy expert said were probably cause for civil lawsuits. The WSJ reports: "In recent months, Securities and Exchange Commission officials have grown increasingly doubtful they can prove that Lehman violated U.S. laws by using an accounting maneuver to move as much as $50 billion in assets off its balance sheet, which made it appear that the securities firm had reduced its debt levels....After zeroing in last summer on the battered real-estate portfolio and an accounting move known as Repo 105, SEC officials have grown more worried they could lose a court battle if they bring civil charges that allege Lehman investors were duped by company executives. The key stumbling block: The accounting move, while controversial, isn't necessarily illegal." Oh no, illegal it is. The problem is that should the SEC actually pursue it and win, that act would open up the floodgates for hundreds of lawsuits against everyone from Bank of America and Citi, which have also disclosed they used comparable tactics to misrepresent the true status of their books, to shady accounts like Ernst & Young, all the way to FASB at the very top of the corruption pyramid. And with hundreds of millions if not billions in legal fees about to be paid out if the fraudclosure back door settlement fails, the SEC simply can not allow the pursuit of justice to threaten the viability of America's only national interest: that of its criminal banking syndicate.

From the WSJ:

A year ago, it looked as if the SEC and federal prosecutors had a road map to use against Lehman's former top executives. Last March, the Repo 105 transactions were condemned by court-appointed examiner Anton R. Valukas, who said in a report that they enabled Lehman to "paint a misleading picture of its financial condition."

In the transactions, Lehman swapped fixed-income assets for cash shortly before the securities firm reported quarterly results, promising to buy back the securities later. The cash was used to pay down the company's debts. Emails sent by executives at the company referred to Repo 105 as a "drug" and "basically window dressing."

Mr. Valukas concluded there were "colorable," or credible, legal claims against Ernst & Young, Mr. Fuld and former finance chiefs Ian Lowitt, Erin Callan and Christopher O'Meara.

People close to the investigation cautioned that no decision has been reached on whether to bring civil charges, adding that new evidence still could emerge. Investigators are reviewing thousands of documents turned over to the SEC since it began its probe shortly after Lehman tumbled into bankruptcy in September 2008 and was sold off in pieces. Officials also have questioned a number of former Lehman executives, some of them multiple times, the people said.

But after zeroing in last summer on the battered real-estate portfolio and an accounting move known as Repo 105, SEC officials have grown more worried they could lose a court battle if they bring civil charges that allege Lehman investors were duped by company executives. The key stumbling block: The accounting move, while controversial, isn't necessarily illegal.

In a possible sign that the probe has slowed, the SEC hasn't issued a Wells notice to Lehman's longtime auditor, Ernst & Young, according to people familiar with the situation. The firm had concluded that the accounting in the Repo 105 transactions was acceptable. Wells notices are a formal signal that the SEC's enforcement staff has decided it might file civil charges against the recipient.

The snags are the latest sign of trouble for the SEC and other U.S. regulators trying to punish companies and executives at the center of the financial crisis. So far, no high-profile executives have been successfully prosecuted. Last month, a federal criminal investigation of former Countrywide Financial Corp. Chief Executive Angelo Mozilo was closed without charges.

The punchline:

It isn't clear what the Lehman executives have said to SEC officials during the probe. Last year, Mr. Fuld told lawmakers he had "absolutely no recollection whatsoever of hearing anything" about Repo 105 at the time of the transactions. Lehman's demise was caused by "uncontrollable market forces" and the U.S. government's unwillingness to rescue the firm, he said.

In other words, with everyone complicit on the crime, there is not one party that can be singled out without every party having to be sued. Ah the benefits of risk diversification: Wall Street realized all too well that a symbiotic approach to middle class parasitism is the best one, as it leaves it far less open to direct attack. Yes, any given bank may reap slightly less in benefits immediately, but over the long run everyone makes money and if there is some catastrophe the taxpaying peasant will have no choice but to bail everyone out. And should there be a legal case against one, in a reverse case of the Three Musketeers, it would have to be a case against all. 2008 confirmed the first. Dick Fuld is confirming the second. But don't forget - the SEC has no money and no computers. So it is isn't their fault they are corrupt and siding with the criminals on this one... and on every other one.

Expect Charles Ferguson's question of why nobody has ever gone to jail over the greatest financial crisis since the depression to remain unanswered in this lifetime.

5.Your rating: None Average: 5 (7 votes)

www.zerohedge.com

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: SAMSON123 on March 13, 2011, 08:36:24 AM
This MANIC level of posting is almost scary as it proves absolutely nothing. The wretchedness of the Obama administration is no different than the wretchedness of all administrations before him. So far as wrecking the american economy... GREED AND CORRUPTION did that long before Obama...1929 anyone?

Politics is a LIARS game. One, the liars must be elected to do the lying to the masses to make them fall for the game. Two, the LIED TO has to play their part in ignoring the reality of politics and world around them. This is like a TANGO that requires two people to make it work.

So for those still holding onto false beliefs about governments, politics, politicians, capitalism, democracy etc etc...know that you have none of this in america nor in any other nations claiming to have any of these mentioned things. What you have are deceivers and deception and you are the DECEIVED. Now wake up from your deception....
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 13, 2011, 08:44:33 AM
I use this thread to keep these articles all in one place. 

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Fury on March 13, 2011, 08:51:25 AM
This MANIC level of posting is almost scary as it proves absolutely nothing. The wretchedness of the Obama administration is no different than the wretchedness of all administrations before him. So far as wrecking the american economy... GREED AND CORRUPTION did that long before Obama...1929 anyone?

Politics is a LIARS game. One, the liars must be elected to do the lying to the masses to make them fall for the game. Two, the LIED TO has to play their part in ignoring the reality of politics and world around them. This is like a TANGO that requires two people to make it work.

So for those still holding onto false beliefs about governments, politics, politicians, capitalism, democracy etc etc...know that you have none of this in america nor in any other nations claiming to have any of these mentioned things. What you have are deceivers and deception and you are the DECEIVED. Now wake up from your deception....

If he doesn't post it then no one will. Are you going to do it? Of course not. You're too busy fabricating fictional books while trying to pass them off as factual material that no one has read (Hi, Albert Pike!).

You've been getting pretty uppity in your defense of Obama and the Dems lately, Jag. Is it because your hero Obama is going down faster than a sinking ship?
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 13, 2011, 08:53:57 AM
Lol. "Fictional books".
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: SAMSON123 on March 13, 2011, 10:28:56 AM
If he doesn't post it then no one will. Are you going to do it? Of course not. You're too busy fabricating fictional books while trying to pass them off as factual material that no one has read (Hi, Albert Pike!).

You've been getting pretty uppity in your defense of Obama and the Dems lately, Jag. Is it because your hero Obama is going down faster than a sinking ship?

Well well well its BERZERKFAG (emphasize the FAG part...and aren't you too old to be on this board anyway? Geriatrics that way--->) offering his two cents which is three cents short. These posting are still MANIC at best, as the understanding of POLITICS is still ignored in all of them. So far as fiction goes...the only fiction is the belief in politics/politicians as NO ONE can point to a single politician who has ever told the truth, changed any detrimental policies, corrected former politicians mistakes or LISTENS TO THE PEOPLE AS A DEMOCRACY IS SUPPOSE TO.

Try dealing with that FICTITIOUS PLACE CALLED AMERICA....
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 14, 2011, 07:16:55 AM
Doomsday and Why America Should Not Default. The USA is living on borrowed time.
American Thinker ^ | 03/14/2011 | John Griffing


________________________ ________________________ ________



America nears the brink of financial collapse.  If action is not taken to reduce American debt, a tidal wave -- called the "doomsday scenario" by economists -- will consume American economic power, effectively ending American preeminence.


Obama's proposed budget has caused a row that some have said might lead to a government shutdown, freezing spending and interrupting certain government services.  New stop-gap measures have temporarily prevented this possibility.  But if American spending levels continue on their present trajectory, a true government shutdown -- one that would destroy American wealth and power -- will occur.  At the present time, U.S. debt equals GDP -- the first time debt has reached this level since WWII.  War permits great extravagance, but in what universe is peacetime debt of the size proposed by the Obama administration permissible?


Over the next decade, interest payments to foreign creditors will account for 80 percent of the debt added, meaning that less money can be spent on the programs demanded by citizens.  Now that American debt is 100 percent of GDP, America will not be able to credibly incur new debt.  And if America is not able to pay, foreign creditors will no longer have any reason to continue funding American indebtedness.   


By lowering the value of existing holdings, one-hundred-percent credit as a monetary standard will significantly harm foreign debt stakeholders currently funding American extravagance.  When America increases its debt, the Fed prints new dollars to offset the increase, which decreases the value of debt held by foreign creditors.  Under these conditions, foreign owners of American debt are incentivized to divest their securities and flee the United States for safer shores rather than face the inevitable default.  The "doomsday scenario" holds that as debt stakeholders shed their assets, the falling value of retained assets prompts further dumping, resulting in the inexorable collapse of the U.S. stock market.


Due to the financial linkage of many nations' economies to American consumer spending -- called "coupling" by economists -- any drop in American markets will have an immediate impact overseas.  Coupling is a trend that developed in the wake of the Bretton Woods conference following WWII.  America pledged to prop up global prosperity with sizable debt, and the world pledged to invest surplus dollars back into the United States, creating systemic interdependence and the resulting coupling of market trends.


Doomsday is closer than many would care to admit.  Net federal liabilities currently exceed $100 trillion.  World GDP hovers around $58 trillion.  Planned U.S. spending exceeds world GDP.  The implications of these staggering levels of spending are obvious: such decadence can never be paid for.  If owners of U.S. debt demanded the principal, instead of interest, America would cease to function as an economic entity.  In short, American global power would be virtually gone.  What power America would be allowed to keep would be contingent on the goodwill of creditors. 


For perspective, consider that the Chinese are requesting ownership of U.S. infrastructure as collateral on future loans.  Presumably, if America is unable to "pay up," public roads and buildings will become Chinese property.  China is already the only supplier of the rare-earth magnets used in U.S. bombs.  China is calling American debt its "nuclear option." 


While there is still time, America must begin to apply a simple understanding of how money works -- an understanding lost due to a century of Fed debt-monetization in which the printed pieces of paper circulating have never-endingly increased, diminishing purchasing power and permitting government to expand exponentially.


Real money, and not merely printed pieces of paper, must be created through the production of goods.  Production creates new money.  Services move existing money around.  The idea of an economy supported solely by services is laughable.  Classical economists knew this to be the case.  Industry is the source of wealth, and services depend on industry.  Currently, American services depend on Chinese industry. 


As German economist Friedrich List once explained, "[t]he forces of production are the tree on which wealth grows[.] [...] The prosperity of a nation is [...] greater in the proportion in which it has [...] more developed its powers of production."


Until we apply basic financial principles like debt management, charades like the one in Wisconsin -- in which government employees demand that taxpayers fund their positions with more and more debt -- will continue to push America to the brink. 


The only alternative to fiscal discipline is to default, which would have many of the same financial consequences as those associated with the doomsday scenario.  Some writers at American Thinker have suggested this course as a viable option, but a nation as large and integral to the global economy as the United States could never recover from unconditional default, since nations that trade with the United States would no longer be able to take America at its word.  Why should nations support a mountain of debt if no tangible capital exists to back up American promises to pay?  Indeed, why should nations continue to invest in a nation that has defaulted on sizable loans? 


Remember the Plaza Accords.  In the late eighties, the U.S. dollar was inflated, disrupting global trade.  Through a cooperative global process, the dollar was gradually devalued to permit greater balance in the international trade system.  America's trade partners were being harmed by an overvalued dollar, and they therefore possessed a direct interest in cooperative mechanisms of currency valuation.


Due to the coupling phenomenon described above, U.S. financial implosion would ripple to partner economies, so these countries have an incentive to assist America in the goal of managed debt reduction.  Since current prosperity, such as it is before the global meltdown, is driven almost entirely by American consumer spending -- 20 percent of world GDP, in fact -- the transition proposed would necessarily involve America's partners.  Those nations dependent on American consumer spending would need time to diversify portfolios and increase trade with other countries that have growing consumer markets -- e.g., China, which now boasts around 300 million "middle-class" consumers, making for a quantity as large as the entire American market.


American debt needs not be completely eliminated, given that it possesses defensible utility as a source of investment, a fact realized by American patriarch Alexander Hamilton nearly three centuries ago.  Instead, our target should be to lower the proportion of debt relative to GDP.


The problem of American debt can no longer be passed to the next administration.  America lives on borrowed time, and time is not as forgiving as the Chinese.

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 14, 2011, 07:54:56 AM
Obama - DEADBEAT


________________________ ___________

Springfield, Ill., mayor wants $55,457 for Obama visit
Share | .StoryDiscussionSpringfi eld, Ill., mayor wants $55,457 for Obama visit


ASSOCIATED PRESS STLtoday.com | Posted: Saturday, March 12, 2011 11:09 am | Loading…




SPRINGFIELD, Ill. • This time, Springfield Mayor Frank Edwards is going straight to the top.

Edwards has written President Barack Obama seeking the balance of the bill the city ran up for police when the then-candidate visited in 2008 to announce his running mate.

The (Springfield) State Journal-Register reports that the city submitted a bill for $68,139. It's still owed $55,457.

The interim mayor says there appears to be confusion about whether the Secret Service or the White House owes the money.

Edwards wrote that "sometimes only the executive himself can cut through such inter-departmental differences of opinion."

He says he's not trying to embarrass anyone, but times are tight.

Obama visited the Old State Capitol in August 2008 to announce Joe Biden as his running mate.

.Copyright 2011 STLtoday.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

 
.Posted in Illinois, Govt-and-politics on Saturday, March 12, 2011 11:09 am Updated: 12:57 am.
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 14, 2011, 09:24:27 AM
Obama Administration (Transparency, Inc.) Responds to Fewer Information Requests in 2010
Fox News ^ | 3/14/11




Obama Administration Responds to Fewer Information Requests in 2010
Published March 14, 2011
Associated Press


WASHINGTON -- Two years into its pledge to improve government transparency, the Obama administration handled fewer requests for federal records from citizens, journalists, companies and others last year even as significantly more people asked for information. The administration disclosed at least some of what people wanted at about the same rate as the previous year.


People requested information 544,360 times last year under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act from the 35 largest agencies, up nearly 41,000 more than the previous year, according to an analysis by The Associated Press of new federal data. But the government took action on nearly 12,400 fewer requests.


The administration refused to release any sought-after materials in more than 1-in-3 information requests, including cases when it couldn't find records, a person refused to pay for copies or the request was determined to be improper under the law. It refused more often to quickly consider information requests about subjects described as urgent or especially newsworthy. And nearly half the agencies that AP examined took longer -- weeks more, in some cases -- to give out records last year than during the previous year.


(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 14, 2011, 10:53:59 AM
Organizing for America (BarackObama.com) Wisconsin Office Locations - 59 of them, open 96 hours/wk.
Organizing for America (BarackObama.com) ^ | 3/9/2011 | Organizing for America


Adams 240 S. Main St. Adams, WI 53910 (608) 339-7410 Hours: M-F 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sat. 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. View map

Amery 108 Keller Ave. N. Amery, WI 54001 Hours: M-F 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sat. 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. View map

Appleton 214 E. College Ave. Appleton, WI 54911 (920) 735-4989 Hours: M-F 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sat. 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. View map

Ashland 304 W. Main St. Ashland, WI 54806 (715) 682-2773 Hours: M-F 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sat. 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. View map

Baraboo 128 4th Ave. Baraboo, WI 53913 (608) 355-2308 Hours: M-F 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sat. 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. View map

Beloit 432 E. Grand Ave. Beloit, WI 53511 (608) 362-3273 Hours: M-F 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sat. 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. View map

Beaver Dam 1231 Madison St. Beaver Dam, WI 53916 (920) 219-9450 Hours: M-F 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sat. 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. View map

Brookfield 14685 W. Capitol Dr. Brookfield, WI 53005 Hours: M-F 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sat. 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. View map

Burlington 400 N. Pine St. Burlington, WI 53105 (262) 510-5562 Hours: M-F 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sat. 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. View map

Cameron 100 Spruce St. Cameron, WI 54822 Hours: M-F 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sat. 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. View map

Chippewa Falls 619 N. Bridge Falls St., Suite 100 Chippewa Falls, WI 54729 (715) 738-1888 Hours: M-F 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sat. 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. View map

Dodgeville 410 Main St. Dodgeville, WI 53533 (608) 930-1424 Hours: M-F 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sat. 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. View map

Eau Claire 404 S. Barstow St. Eau Claire, WI 54701 (715) 855-1015 Hours: M-F 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sat. 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. View map

Elkhorn 21 E. Walworth Ave. Elkhorn, WI 53121 Hours: M-F 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sat. 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. View map

Fond du Lac 39 S. Main St. Fond du Lac, WI 54935 (920) 322-0309 Hours: M-F 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sat. 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. View map

Glendale 6805 N. Green Bay Ave Milwaukee, WI 53209 (414) 247-3047 Hours: M-F 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sat. 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. View map

Green Bay 1041 Velp Ave. Green Bay, WI 54303 (920) 490-9100 Hours: M-F 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sat. 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. View map

Hales Corner 5126 S. 108th St. Hales Corner, WI 53130 (262) 510-5998 Hours: M-F 5:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sat. 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. View map

Hudson 522 2nd St. Hudson, WI 54016 (715) 441-3079 Hours: M-F 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sat. 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. View map

Janesville 1300 Milton Ave. Janesville, WI 53545 (608) 756-2851 Hours: M-F 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sat. 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. View map

Jefferson 218 Wisconsin Ave. Jefferson, WI 53549 (920) 674-2826 Hours: M-F 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sat. 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. View map

Kenosha 5810 6th Ave. Kenosha, WI 53140 (262) 653-0670 Hours: M-F 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sat. 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. View map

La Crosse 127 6th St. S. La Crosse, WI 54601 (608) 785-5860 Hours: M-F 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sat. 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. View map

Ladysmith 120 E. Miner St. Ladysmith, WI 54848 (715) 532-2760 Hours: M-F 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sat. 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. View map

Madison 1709 Monroe St. Madison, WI 53711 (608) 255-0411 Hours: M-F 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sat. 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. View map

Madison -- South Side Office 1216 S. Park St. Madison, WI 53715 Hours: M-F 10:00 a.m. - 10:00 p.m. Sat. 10:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m. Sun. 12:00 p.m. - 10:00 p.m. View map

Madison -- Student HQ 216 N. Henry St. Madison, WI 53703 (608) 250-4562 Hours: M-F 10:00 a.m. - 10:00 p.m. Sat. 10:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m. Sun. 12:00 p.m. - 10:00 p.m. View map

Manitowoc 1207 Washington St. Manitowoc, WI 54220 (920) 682-7392 Hours: M-F 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sat. 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. View map

Marinette 1703 Marinette Ave Marinette, WI 54143 (920) 254-8238 Hours: M-F 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sat. 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. View map

Marshfield 401 S. Central Ave. Marshfield, WI 54449 (715) 207-6099 Hours: M-F 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sat. 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. View map

Menomonie 643 Broadway St. S. Menomonie, WI 54751 (715) 231-2393 Hours: M-F 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sat. 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. View map

Mequon -- Ozaukee County 10521 N. Port Washington Rd. (Entrance E) Mequon, WI 53092 (262) 240-0102 Hours: M-F 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sat. 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. View map

Middleton 6717 Frank Lloyd Wright Ave. Middleton, WI 53562 Hours: M-F 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sat. 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. View map

Milwaukee Region HQ 744 N. 4th St. Milwaukee, WI 53203 (414) 224-5409 Hours: M-F 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sat. 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. View map

Milwaukee -- National Ave. 534 W National Ave. Milwaukee, WI, 53204 (414) 643-1045 Hours: M-F 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sat. 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. View map

Milwaukee -- North Side Office 7984 W. Appleton Ave. Milwaukee, WI 53218 (414) 466-4836 Hours: M-F 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sat. 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. View map

Milwaukee -- 5th Ward Office 170 S. 2nd St. Milwaukee, WI 53204 Phone Banking only (414) 223-3050 Hours: M-F 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sat. 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. View map

Milwaukee -- Downer Ave. Office 2567 Downer Ave. Milwaukee, WI 53211 (414) 455-8182 Hours: M-F 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sat. 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. View map

Oak Creek 7435 S. Howell Ave. Oak Creek, WI 53154 (414) 762-3415 Hours: M-F 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sat. 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. View map

Oshkosh 480 N. Main St. Oshkosh, WI 54901 (920) 426-8060 Hours: M-F 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sat. 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. View map

Platteville 55 W Main St. Platteville, WI 53818 (608) 348-5160 Hours: M-F 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sat. 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. View map

Portage 104 W. Cook St. Portage, WI 53901 Hours: M-F 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sat. 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. View map

Racine 522 6th St. Racine, WI 53403 (262) 637-7042 Hours: M-F 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sat. 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. View map

Rhinelander 26 N. Brown St. Rhinelander, WI, 54501 (715) 369-9825 Hours: M-F 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sat. 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. View map

Richland Center N Main St & W 6th St Richland Center, WI 53581 Hours: M-F 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sat. 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. View map

River Falls 1025 S. Main St. River Falls, WI 54022 Hours: M-F 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sat. 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. View map

Portage 501 N. 8th St. Sheboygan, WI 53081 (920) 457-5160 Hours: M-F 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sat. 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. View map

Stevens Point 1108 Main St. Stevens Point, WI 54481 (715) 544-4432 Hours: M-F 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sat. 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. View map

Sturgeon Bay 62 South 3rd Street Sturgeon Bay, WI 54501 (920) 559-8200 Hours: M-F 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sat. 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. View map

Sun Prairie 1435 W. Main St. Sun Prairie, WI 53590 (608) 837-7428 Hours: M-F 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sat. 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. View map

Superior 1810 Belknap St. Superior, WI 54880 (715) 718-0488 Hours: M-F 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sat. 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. View map

Waukesha 804 N. Grand Ave. Waukesha, WI 53186 (262) 521-2008 Hours: M-F 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sat. 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. View map

Waupaca 107 E. Main St. Weyauwega, WI 54983 (920) 867-2460 Hours: M-F 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sat. 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. View map

Wausau 201 N. Forest St. Wausau, WI 54403 (715) 441-3015 Hours: M-F 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sat. 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. View map

West Allis and Wauwatosa 8633 W. Greenfield Ave. Milwaukee, WI 53214 (414) 778-0563 Hours: M-F 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sat. 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. View map

West Bend 152 N. Main St. West Bend, WI 53095 (262) 338-0990 Hours: M-F 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sat. 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. View map

Weyauwega 107 E. Main St. Weyauwega, WI 54983 Hours: M-F 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sat. 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. View map

Whitewater 153 W. Main St. Whitewater, WI 53190 (262) 472-8908 Hours: M-F 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sat. 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. View map

Wisconsin Rapids 830 Huntington Ave. Wisconsin Rapids, WI 54494 (715) 712-1230 Hours: M-F 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sat. 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. View map

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 14, 2011, 02:57:19 PM
As Treasury Cash Drops To Just $14.2 Billion...Is America About To Run Out Of Cash?
ZeroHedge ^ | 03/14/11 | Tyler Durden

www.zerohedge.com


Title truncated due to length. It is: As Treasury Cash Drops To Just $14.2 Billion, And No Bond Auctions Until Next Week, Is America About To Run Out Of Cash?

And so the US Treasury has hit the proverbial paycheck to paycheck sustenance level. After burning $12.8 billion (without a change in gross debt) in cash today alone, and $75 billion in the month of March so far, primarily driven by a back end-loaded tax refund calendar, according to the Daily Treasury Statement, today's cash balance dropped to the scary level of just $14.2 billion. Without the benefit of incremental funding, this is the same amount that the Treasury burns on a good day! In other words, we take back what we said about the US Treasury existing paycheck to paycheck - Geithner now has to scramble to find funding on a day to day basis. If tomorrow operating outflows surpass $14.2 billion (and, again, the amount was $12.8 billion today) the world's "greatest" country (i.e. banana republic) runs out of cash, period. And as the following schedule indicates, there are no Long-Term bond issuances until next week (and the Bill issues are merely funding of rolling issues), we have some trouble seeing how the US Treasury will fund itself for the balance of the week...



And the forward issuance calendar: remember, this is where the bulk of money for deficit funding comes from there days.



On the other side of the ledger, total debt was $14.164 trillion, with $50 billion left in the liquidating SFP account. That means there are just two more 56-Day CMB maturities left before the credit ceiling gimmick expires. Once that happens, and in the absence of any clarity on the debt ceiling debacle, America may soon grind to a halt as the incremental debt capacity is hit in just over a month.

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 14, 2011, 03:10:47 PM
PROMISES, PROMISES: Little transparency progress
 .. AP – FILE - In this March 15, 2010, file photo, President Barack Obama speaks in Strongsville, Ohio. Two years …
– Mon Mar 14, 12:24 pm ET

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110314/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_sunshine_week_foia_2




WASHINGTON – Two years into its pledge to improve government transparency, the Obama administration took action on fewer requests for federal records from citizens, journalists, companies and others last year even as significantly more people asked for information. The administration disclosed at least some of what people wanted at about the same rate as the previous year.

People requested information 544,360 times last year under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act from the 35 largest agencies, up nearly 41,000 more than the previous year, according to an analysis by The Associated Press of new federal data. But the government responded to nearly 12,400 fewer requests.

The administration refused to release any sought-after materials in more than 1-in-3 information requests, including cases when it couldn't find records, a person refused to pay for copies or the request was determined to be improper under the law. It refused more often to quickly consider information requests about subjects described as urgent or especially newsworthy. And nearly half the agencies that AP examined took longer — weeks more, in some cases — to give out records last year than during the previous year.

The government's responsiveness under the Freedom of Information Act is widely considered a barometer of how transparent federal offices are. The AP's analysis comes a day before a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing examining the Obama administration's progress.

There were some improvements. The administration less frequently invoked the "deliberative process" exemption under the law to withhold records describing decision-making behind the scenes. President Barack Obama had directed agencies to use it less often, but the number of such cases had surged after his first year in office to more than 71,000. It fell last year to 53,360. The exemption was still commonly invoked last year at the Homeland Security Department, which accounted for nearly 80 percent of cases across the whole government.

[ For complete coverage of politics and policy, go to Yahoo! Politics ]


Overall, the decidedly mixed performance shows the federal government struggling to match the promises Obama made early in his term to improve transparency and disclose more information rapidly. "Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their government is doing," Obama said when he took office."

The White House said it was voluntarily disclosing more information, forestalling a need to formally make requests under the law, and said that agencies released information in nearly 93 percent of cases, excluding instances when it couldn't find records, a person refused to pay for copies or the request was determined to be improper.

"A lot of the statistics need to be taken with a grain of salt, but they may understate our successes," said Steven Croley, a special assistant to the president for justice and regulatory policy.

At an event on Monday celebrating Sunshine Week, when news organizations promote open government and freedom of information, Associate Attorney General Tom Perrelli announced the unveiling of a website, foia.gov, to provide the public with a centralized resource that details how to file requests for government records.

The Obama administration censored 194 pages of internal e-mails about its Open Government Directive that the AP requested more than one year ago. The December 2009 directive requires every agency to take immediate, specific steps to open their operations up to the public. But the White House Office of Management and Budget blacked-out entire pages of some e-mails between federal employees discussing how to apply the new openness rules, and it blacked-out one e-mail discussing how to respond to AP's request for information about the transparency directive.

The OMB invoked the "deliberative process" exemption — the one that Obama said to use more sparingly — at least 192 separate times in turning over the censored e-mails to the AP. Some blacked-out sections involved officials discussing changes the White House wanted and sections of the openness rules that were never made official.

This year, after Republicans won control in the House and with the presidential election looming, the fight over transparency could turn political. The new Republican chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., is conducting a broad inquiry into Obama's openness promises. The investigation was at least partly prompted by reports from the AP last year that the Homeland Security Department had sidetracked hundreds of requests for federal records to top political advisers, who wanted information about those requesting the materials.

Organizations that routinely ask for government records are fighting many of the same battles for information waged during the Bush administration. Federal offices lack enough employees and money to respond to requests quickly and thoroughly, said Anne Weismann, chief counsel at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a watchdog group. With federal spending expected to tighten, the problem will likely get worse.

"They're going to be asked to do more with less," Weismann said.

AP's analysis showed that the odds a government agency would search its filing cabinets and turn over copies of documents, e-mails, videos or other requested materials depended mostly on which agency produced them — and on a person's patience. Willingness to wait — and then wait some more — was a virtue. Agencies refused more routinely last year to quickly consider information requests deemed especially urgent or newsworthy, agreeing to conduct a speedy review about 1-in-5 times they were asked. The State Department granted only 1 out of 98 such reviews; the Homeland Security Department granted 27 out of 1,476. The previous year the government overall granted more than 1-in-4 such speedy reviews.

The parts of the government that deal with sensitive matters like espionage or stock market swindles, including the CIA or Securities and Exchange Commission, entirely rejected information requests more than half the time during fiscal 2010. And they took their time to decide: The SEC averaged 553 days to reply to each request it considered complicated, and the CIA took more than three months.

Less-sensitive agencies, such as the Social Security Administration or Department of Agriculture, turned over at least some records nearly every time someone asked for them, often in just weeks.

Some federal agencies showed marked improvements, but sometimes it came at a cost elsewhere in the government. The Homeland Security Department cut its number of backlogged information requests by 40 percent last year, thanks mostly to work under a $7.6 million federal contract with TDB Communications of Lenexa, Kan., which was approved during the Bush administration. The company accomplished its work partly by forwarding to the State Department tens of thousands of requests for immigration records from Homeland Security's Citizenship and Immigration Services because the State Department makes visa determinations in immigration cases. At one point, as the Homeland Security Department was reducing its backlog, it was sending as many as 3,800 cases each month to the State Department, said Janice DeGarmo, a State Department spokeswoman.

The State Department received and handled three times as many requests in 2010 than the previous year. It ended up with a backlog of more than 20,500 overdue cases, more than twice as many as the previous year.

Also, the Veterans Affairs Department said it received 40,000 fewer information requests last year. Spokeswoman Jo Schuda said the department incorrectly labeled some requests in 2009 as being filed under the Freedom of Information Act but actually were made under the U.S. Privacy Act, a different law.

The 35 agencies that AP examined were: Agency for International Development, CIA, Consumer Product Safety Commission, Council on Environmental Quality, Agriculture Department, Commerce Department, Defense Department, Education Department, Energy Department, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Interior Department, Justice Department, Labor Department, State Department, Transportation Department, Treasury Department, Department of Veterans Affairs, Environmental Protection Agency, Federal Communications Commission, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Federal Trade Commission, NASA, National Science Foundation, National Transportation Safety Board, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Office of Management and Budget, Office of National Drug Control Policy, Office of Personnel Management, Office of Science and Technology Policy, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Securities and Exchange Commission, Small Business Administration and the Social Security Administration.

__

Online:

FOIA.gov: http://www.foia.gov/index.html

Sunshine Week: http://www.sunshineweek.org/

Follow Yahoo! News on Twitter, become a fan on Facebook


Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 15, 2011, 06:07:08 AM
March 15, 2011
None of the Above on Energy
By Jeffrey Folks




In terms of energy policy, as in so much else, the Obama administration is in leaderless disarray. The only thing it seems capable of doing is delaying and shutting down energy production.  As soon as some promising new supply pops up, like the shale gas capable of fueling America for the next century, the Obama EPA is there launching an environmental study designed to regulate and restrict it. At the moment when new energy supplies are most needed, there are no plans to increase supplies -- only plans to reduce them. One would almost think that this President wants to bring America to its knees.


Meanwhile, for the Chinese and other fast-growing economies, it's full speed ahead on new energy projects. Chinese oil companies are pursuing new oil and gas exploration on a global scale, even in the mainland U.S. They are buying up oil and gas leases in Asia, Africa, Latin America, Europe, and North America, including just offshore Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico.


But China is not limiting its options to petroleum. It is acquiring vast reserve of coal, importing U.S. coal that environmentalists have put off-limits to electric utilities in the United States and securing ownership of coal mines in Australia, Asia, and Latin America. The purchase of Felix Resources by China's Yanzhou Coal in December 2009 was the largest coal acquisition in Australian history, but it was by no means the last. Asian buyers are now competing for another big prize: Whitehaven Coal. Soon, even if American policymakers were to wake up to the threat we face, there will be no more major coal properties available for purchase.


The situation with uranium supplies is equally dire. At present the U.S. is the largest nuclear energy producer in the world, but China is out to change that. As reported in the Wall Street Journal, China plans to build 60 large nuclear reactors by the end of this decade, and it is acquiring the uranium necessary to fuel these facilities along with its existing plants. Chinese state-owned companies are bidding on uranium-rich companies around the world, including Kalahari Minerals, owner of large uranium deposits in Namibia.


In response, the Obama administration has not approved a single one among the pending 21 applications for new nuclear facilities in the U.S. With no action on the part of regulators, American companies are loath to acquire rights to new supplies of uranium. They have been largely absent from bidding for the world's remaining supplies.


This review is not intended as a criticism of China, which is simply pursuing the kind of coherent, long-range energy policy that is lacking at present in the U.S. China is acting in the rational self-interest of its people, and its people will reap the reward of this effort in the decades ahead.


Obama's policy, on the other hand, is simply "none of the above." America will also reap the rewards of its energy policy under Obama and Energy Secretary Chu. With no additional nuclear facilities under development, with the withering away of domestic coal-power production, and with no access to major new Alaskan and offshore oil supplies, America faces a future energy shock of unprecedented proportions.  Once the effects of Obama's restrictions on drilling begin to be felt, today's gas prices are going to seem like a blue-light special.


The question is, why does Obama want to forestall access to so many of our energy resources just at the moment when gas prices are hitting $4 a gallon and experts are predicting they will go higher? Either the President is out of his mind, or he is intent on wrecking our future. Since spiraling gas prices are also going to hinder Obama's re-election, it is a difficult question to answer. The truth may be that he just hasn't thought about it. He's too busy shooting hoops and hosting rappers like Jay-Z in the White House Situation Room.


Unless reversed by a conservative president and Congress following 2012, Obama's failed energy policy will have devastating consequences. Americans will pay much higher prices for energy in the future, as high as $12 a gallon for gas and four times the current price of about 15 cents per kilowatt hour for electricity. More important yet, high energy prices will sap economic growth, and slower growth will result in structurally high unemployment, declining living standards, and a weakening of our national defense. Maybe this is what Obama wants -- I believe that it is -- but it is not what most Americans hope to see.


Slow growth and a weakened military may not seem like such an awful fate to the fashionable idiots on the left. It is, in fact, exactly what they are seeking: an America brought to its knees, one weak little nation among many, no more powerful or influential than Bolivia or Peru. A nation that sits happily on the sidelines of history, content to consume its "fair share" of the earth's resources and live at the average level of the world's economy, somewhere between Nigeria and Moldova.


That is the happy future that Obama has in mind for your grandchildren and great-grandchildren. A pair of plastic sandals and a government-issued bike for transport, a bowl of rice for supper, a three-month wait for a visit to the physician's assistant, and a hundred-square-foot apartment with a wall screen permanently tuned to MSNBC.


There are some Americans who are born communists -- those who fancy the Mao suit, the masochistic fall-into-line mentality, the fondness for self-abasement and diminishment. These natural-born comrades, eager to hand over their liberties to some vicious and inscrutable dictator, must like what they see in Obama. The rest of us will continue fighting to preserve our liberties.


Jeffrey Folks is the author of many books and article on American culture.

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/03/none_of_the_above_on_energy.html


 at March 15, 2011 - 08:05:36 AM CDT
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 15, 2011, 06:31:33 AM
Tel Aviv Journal: Obama’s Scandalous Approach to the Middle East
Martin Peretz
March 15, 2011 | 12:00 am



.What is now clear is that the only help Barack Obama was willing to give to the Arabs was his coldness to the Jewish nation. Or, and I want to be frank, his hostile indifference to Israel. It has been a not quite sub rosa sub-theme of his presidency since the beginning. He had not the slightest idea or maybe couldn’t care less that Zion and Zionism meant the retrieval of the Jews from a harrowing if remarkable history. The president is of the generation—or perhaps the temperament—that knows not the “long is the road” Hebrew story of national philosophical rebirth in the context of 1848, the saga of the pogroms, the disenchantment with bourgeois liberalism, the stubborn persistence of blood libels and its cumulative consequence in the unrivaled catastrophe of the Nazi ghettoes and concentration camps after which, not miraculously but conscientiously, a dispersed community was reborn as a commonwealth and as a state. Unlike the Palestinian pretense, it did not have even to be reimagined, save for its old scriptural language which is now at once practical and poetic. (The literate high Arabic language cutting across cultures, as prosaic Arabic does not, also has its own beauties, both tranquil and heroic, even to someone who reads it only in translation.)

Now, please do not be troubled by my insistent questioning of the authenticity of “the Palestinian nation.” It doesn’t mean that Israel should continue to hold much of the West Bank, and it does not mean that the present voices of the Palestinians are inauthentic either. But they happen to reach for different ends. Most states in the world (and in the United Nations) are not properly nation states, by which I mean that they are mostly accretions of tribal groups—which does not, of course, necessarily translate into “primitive”—or clans, the loyalties of which are to their specific own rather than to the wider rhetorical assemblages that are represented in world politics. Perhaps it is pointless to cavil against an international system when what strains it most is the hostility within rather than among its constituent parts. Zimbabwe and “Democratic” Congo, for example. Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Iraq, Bahrain, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, even Jordan: Antagonistic visions animate each of these polities. Like Palestine. Give it a decade or two, and the same will be said for Saudi Arabia. Already the tiny wealthy but all less-wealthy-than-they-were-two-years-ago emirates cannot count their own native-born as a majority and that is because they are in most of them a small minority. It’s a curious point: But the 22-member Arab League and the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference usually vote as one. It’s within the individual states and statelets where the rancor expressed is truly felt.

What is curious about Obama’s infatuation with Arab societies (and with non-Arab Muslim societies, too) is that he knows just about nothing about them. And I don’t just mean their histories or theology. What’s clear is that the president grasps pretty-close-to-zero about the actualities of these states, their economic and social realities, the stratifications by tribe and sex, the race between literacy and population growth, the synchrony of tradition with bureaucracy, the stultification of education, the militarization of these polities, their abhorrence of liberal ideas. And the fact is that Obama is neither fast-spirited nor supple. He certainly was blind-sided by the turbulence and torment that has wracked the region over more than two months now. Why could he not see the new amidst the crumbling old? And why was he also not liberated a bit from the old order to which he had mysteriously attached himself?

The fact is that Obama is a victim of a certain sort of “orientalism” transmitted to him by his friend Rashid Khalidi carrying the message of Edward Said. Except that this form of the dogma, now hopefully on its last legs in the academy, does not idealize the vision of the imperials. It idealizes whatever Arab reality happens to have survived western imperialism. Among them is the standing of the hijab or burqa. This is part of the civilizational conflict in the world of Islam and, as I have pointed out at least twice, Obama has spoken up for the looking-backwards end of the dispute. Why should he not, in Cairo and at the White House, have defended the modernizers instead? This would have put him on the side of the future, though if he didn’t want to intrude on an internal Muslim struggle he could have simply shut up. But no. This president thinks he speaks with authority on any topics he chooses to address.

Alright, so Obama patters on about Koranic theology or whispers arcane words, throaty or mellifluous, in Arabic. Wow! He is a vernacular panderer to one group and then another, including the Jews. As anybody current with the conflicts in Arab and Islamic culture understands, the place of memorization in the education of the young is right there at the top. Anybody who has read the various volumes of the United Nations Arab Development Report also understands why this is so. Well, the horrendous prevalence of illiteracy in these countries, where the Prophet’s scripture is hammered into the heads of boys (and now sometimes girls, too), testifies to the deformity of the entire system. Being “progressives,” Barack and Michelle are more than likely to disapprove of rote learning in American schools. But since the president takes each and every opportunity he can to fawn over antiquarian Islam he has also made himself heard on this vexing issue of teaching and knowing.

We now know from many scholars, and especially Dan Diner in his book Lost in the Sacred: Why the Muslim World Stood Still,about which I’ve written several times, that it is not Islam per sebut the very restraints on print and the idolization of language, among other factors, that are responsible for the benighted state of intellectual achievement in that orbit. A brand new book by Duke economic historian Timor Kuran, The Long Divergence: How Islamic Law Held Back the Middle East, which I half-read when I was home in Cambridge a fortnight ago, argues that the rules of the religious structure inhibited virtually to a standstill the development of economic and social forces in the region. Kuran ends on an optimistic note and it is based on the near-collapse of the societies without oil and the distorted growth of those with oil. The thesis (and I mean no disrespect): It’s so bad that it has to get better. Of course, it is now mostly about education, which means openness to the new. Society must sign the pledge.

Actually, then, the most shocking thing Obama ever said in my view had little intrinsic or concrete implications for U.S. foreign policy. But it was an endorsement of the awful vocation of memorization of text. He was announcing the appointment of Rashad Hussain, an apparently quite talented student of Middle Eastern affairs, to be the president’s envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference. Now, the truth is that the Conference ain’t really much of anything. But it is, by the administration’s own admission, an instrument of its blah-blah diplomacy.

Here is the beginning of the “White House Blog” item of March 7, 2010, posted by Pradeep Ramamurthy, senior director for Global Engagement at the National Security Council:

During his speech in Cairo on June 4, 2009, the President articulated a vision for a New Beginning with Muslims around the world -- one based on mutual respect and the pursuit of partnerships in areas of mutual interest.  Around the world, from Rabat to Jakarta, the United States is engaging Muslim communities around the world and building mutually beneficial partnerships that expand opportunity.  As part of our commitment to dialogue, our embassies have held roundtables with thousands of students, civil society leaders and entrepreneurs, among others, and senior officials like Secretary Clinton have held televised townhalls.

Over the past nine months, the Administration has been delivering on the specific commitments the President made in his speech – from appointing science envoys, creating a Technology and Innovation Fund, and expanding exchanges to hosting a Summit on Entrepreneurship in April.  But, the U.S. Government has done far more than deliver the specific commitments from President Obama's speech.  For example, while we have partnered with the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) to eradicate polio, we also worked with Saudi Arabia to prevent the spread of H1N1 influenza during hajj.

The speech in Cairo expressed an overarching vision for our engagement.  To help pursue that vision, the President recently appointed Rashad Hussain to be his Special Envoy to the OIC.  Rashad has played an important role in developing the New Beginning we seek with Muslim communities around the world.  In his new position, he will continue to play a key role in expanding our engagement with Muslims around the world.

And the president added to Hussain’s credentials in his own statement by announcing that his designee was also “a hafiz (memorization student) of the Quaran,” as if this were a high distinction rather than a commonplace. After all, millions and millions of clever boys, many of them actually illiterate and without understanding any of the Arabic in which the holy book is written, have committed the text to their heads. Maybe I am being persnickety in pointing out these small details of Obama’s presentation. But they are telling.

Especially in contrast with his palsied response to the historic revolution of the Arabs that for a few weeks seemed unstoppable. Let’s face it: Obama is petrified by the unprecedented newness emerging in the desert. In Tunisia and Egypt the crowd moved quickly against the regime which meant at least that the old regime would be gone. What will happen next is anyone’s guess, except for American intelligence which has finally lost its credentials for both analysis and prophecy. It was probably the CIA that put us on the side of Hosni Mubarak in the early days of the Tahrir Square manifestations. The president was quiet and then was just sheer bluster, not decisive and not imaginative either. He was not a man of history. Except to move it backwards.

If any power has allowed Muammar Qaddafi, tyrant and psychotic, to remain in power it is the clinical allergy to power of our president. He is weak-willed and weak-kneed. Here, after all, was a brave people who’d been brutalized for more than four decades, been run by gangsters and still had the clarity of the lure of liberty. They’d also been unlucky in their northern neighbors across the Mediterranean, Italy and France, who had maintained the vocation of imperials for many decades. Despite this and perhaps because of it Paris and Rome have now dumped their long-time partner in crimes against humanity. Of course, Washington has finally proclaimed Tripoli an illegitimate government. As if a statement without practical action would have any real resonance.

Qaddafi possesses the power of any dictator, men in arms who will follow him and behave brutally. They are waging a war against the rebels but also against the innocent. Bombing from the air without targets to create chaos and dread. Pace Robert Gates, a no-fly zone would have imperiled nothing except the colonel’s air force.

But the American refusal to recognize the provisional government in Benghazi is the true betrayal of the Arab revolution, of an Arab people and of Arab hope. For were the president to announce that the U.S. sees the revolutionaries and rebels as the legitimate representatives of their long betrayed people, some $30 billion in assets in our country would be theirs. Perhaps more. This added to the other enormous holdings of the Libyan people in French, Italian, and British banks could make that people free.

Martin Peretz is the editor-in-chief emeritus of The New Republic.

For more TNR, become a fan on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

 
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--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Source URL: http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/85234/peretz-israel-palestinian-obama
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 15, 2011, 10:52:23 AM
White House Urges Supreme Court Not to Jump Into Health Care Law Cases Prematurely
FOX News ^ | 3/15/11 | Lee Ross



The Obama administration told the Supreme Court on Monday night it should stay away from a high-profile challenge to the 2010 health care law until after a lower court has had a chance to review the case. (Snip) In his filing last month, Cuccinelli said there's a "palpable consensus" that the high court will ultimately have to pass judgment on the merits of President Obama's health care law and should do so without delay. Furthermore, Cuccinelli argues that his case involves "pure issues of constitutional law" that appellate judges on the Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals will be unable


(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 15, 2011, 10:54:32 AM
Obama Taping NCAA brackets today for ESPN.
Politico ^ | March 15, 2011 | Mike Allen




Text Size -+reset Listen By MIKE ALLEN | 03/15/11 8:30 AM EDT

PRESIDENT OBAMA is taping his NCAA picks today, and they’ll be revealed tomorrow on ESPN. … NATE SILVER’s March Madness bracket http://nyti.ms/fc2qH9 ... At 11:25 a.m., Obama will tape interviews from the Map Room with KOAT Albuquerque, KDKA Pittsburgh and WVEC Hampton Roads on education reform and the need to fix No Child Left Behind.


(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 15, 2011, 01:01:31 PM

March 15, 2011 10:51 AM PDT
White House wants new copyright law crackdown
by Declan McCullagh





The White House today proposed sweeping revisions to U.S. copyright law, including making "illegal streaming" of audio or video a federal felony and allowing FBI agents to wiretap suspected infringers.  

In a 20-page white paper (PDF), the Obama administration called on the U.S. Congress to fix "deficiencies that could hinder enforcement" of intellectual property laws.

 
Victoria Espinel, the first Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator, with Vice President Joe Biden during an event last year.

(Credit: Whitehouse.gov) The report was prepared by Victoria Espinel, the first Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator who received Senate confirmation in December 2009, and represents a broad tightening of many forms of intellectual property law including ones that deal with counterfeit pharmaceuticals and overseas royalties for copyright holders. (See CNET's report last month previewing today's white paper.)

Some of the highlights:

• The White House is concerned that "illegal streaming of content" may not be covered by criminal law, saying "questions have arisen about whether streaming constitutes the distribution of copyrighted works." To resolve that ambiguity, it wants a new law to "clarify that infringement by streaming, or by means of other similar new technology, is a felony in appropriate circumstances."

• Under federal law, wiretaps may only be conducted in investigations of serious crimes, a list that was expanded by the 2001 Patriot Act to include offenses such as material support of terrorism and use of weapons of mass destruction. The administration is proposing to add copyright and trademark infringement, arguing that move "would assist U.S. law enforcement agencies to effectively investigate those offenses."

• Under the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, it's generally illegal to distribute hardware or software--such as the DVD-decoding software Handbrake available from a server in France--that can "circumvent" copy protection technology. The administration is proposing that if Homeland Security seizes circumvention devices, it be permitted to "inform rightholders," "provide samples of such devices," and assist "them in bringing civil actions."

The term "fair use" does not appear anywhere in the report. But it does mention Web sites like The Pirate Bay, which is hosted in Sweden, when warning that "foreign-based and foreign-controlled Web sites and Web services raise particular concerns for U.S. enforcement efforts." (See previous coverage of a congressional hearing on overseas sites.)

The usual copyright hawks, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, applauded the paper, which grew out of a so-called joint strategic plan that Vice President Biden and Espinel announced in June 2010.

Rob Calia, a senior director at the Chamber's Global Intellectual Property Center, said we "strongly support the white paper's call for Congress to clarify that criminal copyright infringement through unauthorized streaming, is a felony. We know both the House and Senate are looking at this issue and encourage them to work closely with the administration and other stakeholders to combat this growing threat."

In October 2008, President Bush signed into law the so-called Pro IP ACT, which created Espinel's position and increased penalties for infringement, after expressing its opposition to an earlier version.

Unless legislative proposals--like one nearly a decade ago implanting strict copy controls in digital devices--go too far, digital copyright tends not to be a particularly partisan topic. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, near-universally disliked by programmers and engineers for its anti-circumvention section, was approved unanimously in the U.S. Senate.

At the same time, Democratic politicians tend to be a bit more enthusiastic about the topic. Biden was a close Senate ally of copyright holders, and President Obama picked top copyright industry lawyers for Justice Department posts. Last year, Biden warned that "piracy is theft."

No less than 78 percent of political contributions from Hollywood went to Democrats in 2008, which is broadly consistent with the trend for the last two decades, according to OpenSecrets.org.

.
Declan McCullagh
 
Full Profile
E-mail Declan McCullagh
Declan McCullagh is the chief political correspondent for CNET. Declan previously was a reporter for Time and the Washington bureau chief for Wired and wrote the Taking Liberties section and Other People's Money column for CBS News' Web site.



Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20043421-281.html#ixzz1GhTUvePv

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 15, 2011, 01:23:43 PM
Medicare and Medicaid Made $70 Billion in ‘Improper Payments’ Last Year—More Than All Spending by Homeland Security and State Departments Combined
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
By Terence P. Jeffrey



Dr. Donald Berwick, whom President Obama recess-appointed as director of CMS. (AP Photo/Goodman Media International, Inc.)

(CNSNews.com) - The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services—the federal health-care agency that is a key bureaucracy in implementing Obamacare—made at least $70.5 billion in “improper payments” last year.

These improper federal health-care payments amounted to more than the combined total of $68.3 billion spent by the entire Homeland Security and the State departments last year, which spent $44.5 billion and $23.8 billion respectively according to the White House Office of Management and Budget.

Medicare made at least $48 billion in improper payments in fiscal 2010 and Medicaid made $22.5 billion, according to written testimony on "Medicare and Medicaid Fraud, Waste and Abuse" presented to the Senate Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management by Kathleen King, director of health care for the Government Accountability Office.

The full amount of improper payments made by Medicare may be higher than $48 billion because the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services has not yet estimated the dollar amount of improper payments made by Medicare Part D, the prescription drug-benefit program.

“An improper payment,” said the GAO, “is any payment that should not have been made or that was made in an incorrect amount (including overpayments and underpayments) under statutory, contractual, administrative, or other legally applicable requirements.”

Total combined federal expenditures for Medicare and Medicaid in fiscal 2010 were $781.6, according to the U.S. Treasury. That means the $70.5 billion in improper payments Medicare and Medicaid made during the year equaled 8.95 percent of all Medicare and Medicaid expenditures.

“GAO has designated Medicare and Medicaid as high-risk programs because they are particularly vulnerable to fraud, waste, abuse, and improper payments (payments that should not have been made or were made in an incorrect amount),” the GAO's King told the Senate subcommittee. “Medicare is considered high-risk in part because of its complexity and susceptibility to improper payments, and Medicaid because of concerns about the adequacy of its fiscal oversight to prevent inappropriate spending.”

A key element of Obamacare provides government health-insurance to lower income people by increasing the income threshold for Medicaid eligibility and putting more people on the Medicaid rolls.


http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/medicare-and-medicaid-made-70-billion-im

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 16, 2011, 05:35:24 AM
EDITORIAL: Shipwrecked by the EPA
Regulations leave coastal economy dead in the water
By THE WASHINGTON TIMES


http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/mar/15/shipwrecked-by-the-epa


The Washington Times
7:10 p.m., Tuesday, March 15, 2011



Tugboats bring the disabled cruise ship Carnival Splendor to dock in San Diego on Thursday, Nov. 11, 2010. (AP Photo/Lenny Ignelzi)

Radical greens are using the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan as an excuse to peddle their wacko, pet theories and push for more stringent environmental regulation. Such efforts literally ship U.S. jobs overseas.

On Thursday, Carnival Cruise Lines announced it will move Elation from Mobile, Ala., to Port Canaveral, Fla., so the ship can spend more time in international waters. The culprit is higher fuel costs, which will be exacerbated when the Environmental Protection Agency begins enforcing tough new emissions standards next year. “The Caribbean nations southeast of Florida are not included in the [regulation] zone,” the Mobile Press-Register explained. “That means a cruise ship leaving from Port Canaveral would need to burn the cleaner, more-expensive fuel for much less time than the same ship leaving from New Orleans or Mobile.”

Carnival can’t be faulted for adapting its operations to offset new regulatory costs. Elation’s new berth is based on realistic business factors. The EPA admits the rules could boost ship-operation costs by 3 percent. However, the EPA ignores the real-world consequences left in the wake of its bureaucratic dictates. Cruise-industry analysts reported in 2008 that Elation annually generated 2,130 jobs and $122 million for southern Alabama. Even half of that would be a major boost for a coastline still reeling from Hurricanes Ivan and Katrina, a catastrophic oil spill and other economic blows over the past few years.

New emissions regs don’t even make sense from a tree-hugger standpoint because other nations aren’t bound by them. Given that Elation ditched Alabama so it could burn “cleaner” fuel for a shorter time, spending more hours in foreign waters means the oceanliner will be “dirtier” fuel for a longer time. Overall, by green logic, Mother Earth will be worse off, not better, because of EPA meddling.

The new standards will hit many industries hard. According to the EPA, the average 20-foot shipping container will cost $18 more to transport, raising the price of American products. The middle of a recession is no time for government to undermine U.S. competitiveness.

© Copyright 2011 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 16, 2011, 06:15:02 AM
Wholesale prices rise 1.6 pct. Biggest jump in food costs in 36 years (Dollar devaluation)
WashingtonPost ^

Posted on Wednesday, March 16, 2011 8:59:34



WASHINGTON — Wholesale prices jumped last month by the most in nearly two years due to higher energy costs and the steepest rise in food prices in 36 years. Excluding those volatile categories, inflation was tame.

The Labor Department says the Producer Price Index rose a seasonally adjusted 1.6 percent in February, double the 0.8 percent rise in the previous month. Outside of food and energy costs, the core index ticked up 0.2 percent, less than January’s 0.5 percent rise.

Food prices soared 3.9 percent last month, the biggest gain since November 1974. Most of that increase was due to a sharp rise in vegetable costs, which increased nearly 50 percent. That was the most in almost a year. Meat and dairy products also rose.


(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...


________________________ ________________________ ____________-


QE2 bitches!   
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 16, 2011, 01:14:09 PM
EPA proposes regulating mercury from coal plants
Posted on March 16, 2011 at 12:24 pm by Matthew Tresaugue in Coal, Environmental Protection Agency
508  |   7 Share 2  share E-mail .
Image: Fotolia
SEE ALSO:


http://fuelfix.com/blog/2011/03/16/epa-proposes-regulating-mercury-from-coal-plants





Mass. coal plants affected by EPA proposal.Regulations, cheap gas could curb Texas coal plants.Regulations, cheap gas could curb

Texas coal plants, experts say.Regulations, cheap gas could curb Texas coal plants, experts say.Regulations, cheap gas could curb


Texas coal plants, experts say..Federal environmental regulators proposed new rules today for mercury and other toxic air pollution from coal-fired power plants — a move that could cost industry billions of dollars while preventing thousands of premature deaths a year.

The new standards, which the Environmental Protection Agency issued under court order, would require many older power plants to install scrubbers and other pieces of costly equipment to reduce emissions of the pollutants.

The EPA estimates the cost of compliance would be more than $10 billion a year for utilities and other operators of power plants but would bring $140 billion in annual health benefits.

matthew.tresaugue@chron.com



Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 16, 2011, 03:27:40 PM
Obama award for ‘deep commitment’ to transparency postponed
The Daily Caller ^ | 3/16/11 | Steven Nelson


________________________ ________________________ ___________--


The White House postponed an event scheduled for Wednesday afternoon where President Obama was supposed to receive an award for a commitment to transparency due to unspecified “changes to the president’s schedule.”

The award was to be presented by organizers of the Freedom of Information Day conference in conjunction with “Sunshine Week” for the president’s “deep commitment to an open and transparent government—of, by, and for the people.”

The Associated Press reported this week that despite pledges of increased transparency, the Obama administration last year responded to fewer Freedom of Information Act requests than the year before.  

In 2010 there were 544,360 requests filed at the 35 largest government agencies. The AP reported that the administration “refused to release any sought-after materials in more than 1-in-3 information requests.”


(Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com ...
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Fury on March 16, 2011, 04:51:27 PM
Obama award for ‘deep commitment’ to transparency postponed
The Daily Caller ^ | 3/16/11 | Steven Nelson


________________________ ________________________ ___________--


The White House postponed an event scheduled for Wednesday afternoon where President Obama was supposed to receive an award for a commitment to transparency due to unspecified “changes to the president’s schedule.”

The award was to be presented by organizers of the Freedom of Information Day conference in conjunction with “Sunshine Week” for the president’s “deep commitment to an open and transparent government—of, by, and for the people.”

The Associated Press reported this week that despite pledges of increased transparency, the Obama administration last year responded to fewer Freedom of Information Act requests than the year before.  

In 2010 there were 544,360 requests filed at the 35 largest government agencies. The AP reported that the administration “refused to release any sought-after materials in more than 1-in-3 information requests.”


(Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com ...


(Politico) — President Obama’s only event at the White House that isn’t closed to the press on Wednesday is a ceremony in which he’ll accept an award for being open to the press.

According to his public schedule, Obama has four behind-closed-doors meetings from 10 a.m. to 3:05 p.m.: his daily briefing, a talk with the USAID administrator, a session with senior advisers, and a huddle with his defense secretary. All of the meets are in the Oval Office, and all of them are “closed press,” the White House says.

But at 2:55 p.m., Obama will emerge to “accept an award from a coalition of good government groups and transparency advocates to recognize ‘his deep commitment to an open and transparent government — of, by, and for the people’ in conjunction with Sunshine Week,” the White House said in guidance to reporters.

And, importantly: “There will be a pool spray at the top.”

The White House didn’t specify what Obama will say, if anything, when he accepts the award. But he probably won’t mention that his administration acted on fewer requests for information last year even as it was asked for more, a tally documented by the AP.

And he also probably won’t talk about his aggressive effort to prosecute federal workers who leak information to shed light on wrongdoing. Or that despite his anti-lobbyist rhetoric, his aides are meeting with lobbyists just outside the White House, allowing the administration to keep the meetings off the books from public view.

We wonder if he’ll even take a question from the press pool, a practice Obama seems to have grown to hate.





Hahahaha. Talk about a contradiction.
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 16, 2011, 04:53:59 PM
We wonder if he’ll even take a question from the press pool, a practice Obama seems to have grown to hate.


________________________ _______


God forbid the messiah ever have to deal with an unscripted moment without the aid of the teleprompter.
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Fury on March 16, 2011, 05:01:12 PM
We wonder if he’ll even take a question from the press pool, a practice Obama seems to have grown to hate.


________________________ _______


God forbid the messiah ever have to deal with an unscripted moment without the aid of the teleprompter.

He's a master orator!  ::)
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 16, 2011, 05:03:35 PM
And he also probably won’t talk about his aggressive effort to prosecute federal workers who leak information to shed light on wrongdoing. Or that despite his anti-lobbyist rhetoric, his aides are meeting with lobbyists just outside the White House, allowing the administration to keep the meetings off the books from public view.


________________________ ________________________ ____-


More lies.   I posted a long story about how his aides are using flats all around DC to hide their meetings with lobbyists 24/7.

Funny - none of TK jumped on me for that one.   
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Fury on March 16, 2011, 05:05:45 PM
And he also probably won’t talk about his aggressive effort to prosecute federal workers who leak information to shed light on wrongdoing. Or that despite his anti-lobbyist rhetoric, his aides are meeting with lobbyists just outside the White House, allowing the administration to keep the meetings off the books from public view.


________________________ ________________________ ____-


More lies.   I posted a long story about how his aides are using flats all around DC to hide their meetings with lobbyists 24/7.

Funny - none of TK jumped on me for that one.   

They're too busy posting about Palin 50,000 times a day.
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 17, 2011, 08:54:50 PM

Obama’s OMB nominee admits proposed 2012 budget does not pay down deficit
By Amanda Carey - The Daily Caller   7:03 PM 03/17/2011




 President Obama’s nominee for deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget  (OMB) tried, but failed to defend the proposed budget for fiscal year 2012 in a Senate Budget Committee hearing Thursday afternoon.

Obama’s nominee, Heather Higginbottom, crumbled under questioning from Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, ranking member of the committee, about the accuracy of statements the president and OMB Director Jacob Lew have made that the proposed budget will not add to the national debt.

The more than six-minute long questioning consisted of numerous exchanges that saw Higginbottom trying to dodge direct questions regarding the impact the president’s budget would have on the national debt:

Sessions: Did Mr. Lew or the President of the United States, when they made that statement “we will not be adding to the debt,” did they say, “by the way American people, what we really mean is some arcane idea about not counting interest payments the United States must make as part of our debt?” Did they say that?

Higginbottom: I’m not sure exactly what they did say.

Sessions: Well if they didn’t say that, would that be an accurate statement?

Higginbottom: The interest costs on what we’re borrowing add to the debt…

A few minutes later:

Sessions: You’re saying that what the president really meant but that he didn’t say, is that one year or so, that you calculate, if you don’t count the interest… then we can tell the American people we’re not adding to our debt?

Do you think that’s a legitimate way to discuss with the American people the debt crisis we now face?

Higginbottom:  …It puts us on a path to stabilize the debt as a percentage of our economy, which is a very important first step in eventually being able to able to pay it down, which is the large task in front of us.

Sessions goes on to ask Higginbottom if she knows the last three years of the president’s ten-year budget proposal all have rising deficits. Higginbottom – the president’s nominee for the second highest position at the OMB — replied with, “I don’t have the deficit table in front of me.”

Sessions’ questioning ends with him pointing out that the president’s proposed budget for FY2012 does not have one year where the deficit falls below $600 billion.

“That is correct,” Higginbottom confirms.


WATCH: Sessions grills Higginbottom


Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/03/17/obamas-omb-nominee-admits-proposed-2012-budget-does-not-pay-down-deficit/#ixzz1Gv5NRMvN

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 18, 2011, 08:24:51 AM
Heather Higginbottom's Socialist Connection
new zeal ^ | 3/18/11 | Trevor Loudon




Heather A. Higginbottom, the Obama administration's nominee for Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget, faced a tough interrogation yesterday from Ranking committee member and Alabama senator Jeff Sessions during a hearing with the Senate Budget committee.

Perhaps Senator Sessions should ask Heather Higginbottom to explain this photo, taken from here

Heather Higginbottom, podium. Left to right William Julius Wilson, Dottie Stevens, Jack Clark, Bob Haynes. D.S.A. logo on wall center right

The photo above shows Heather Higginbottom, while serving as a legislative assistant to Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, addressing an October 30, 2001, Boston Democratic Socialists of America organized forum "Welfare, Children and Families: The Impact of Welfare Reform", with William Julius Wilson, Dottie Stevens, Jack Clark and Bob Haynes.

William Julius Wilson and Jack Clark were confirmed D.S.A. Marxists. Bob Haynes is a long time Boston D.S.A. affiliate - at least.

Incidentally William Julian Wilson spoke at another D.S.A. forum, on February 25 1996, in Ida Noyes Hall at the University of Chicago.


(Excerpt) Read more at newzeal.blogspot.com ...
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 18, 2011, 08:28:53 AM

http://news.yahoo.com/s/dailycaller/20110318/pl_dailycaller/hamasassociatedcairapplaudedbywhitehouse

Hamas-associated CAIR applauded by White House
The Daily Caller Neil Munro - The Daily Caller – Fri Mar 18, 1:58 am ET



________________________ ________________________ ______


White House officials have applauded advocacy efforts by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, even though top FBI managers refuse to meet its leaders, the council has been judged by courts to have been associated with the Islamic terror group Hamas, and several of its employees and members have been jailed or expelled for jihadi-related terrorist offenses since 2001.

CAIR was publicly applauded at a Mar. 10 White House event by Valerie Jarrett, senior advisor and assistant to the president for intergovernmental affairs and public engagement, for its work with MTV to counter “bullying.” “Bullying can be prevented if we all take action,” said Jarrett, as she cited the MTV project, and named CAIR as a partner.

After lauding the National Education Association, Cartoon Network and a litany of other Democratic-affiliated advocacy groups and companies that are part of the White House’s “anti-bullying” campaign to reshape children’s opinions, Jarrett thanked MTV for “launching a new coalition that will work to fight bullying and intolerance online.” The coalition partners include the Hispanic advocacy group, “the National Council of La Raza, the Anti-Defamation League, and the [Council on] American-Islamic Relations, GLAAD and many others,” Jarrett said.

“There’s no controversy,” said Ibrahim Hooper, CAIR’s press secretary. To advance CAIR’s causes, including “cyber-bullying,” he said, “we do what we think is necessary…what other people do is up to them.”

White House officials declined to respond to inquiries from The Daily Caller.

[ For complete coverage of politics and policy, go to Yahoo! Politics ]


On Feb. 11, FBI Director Robert Mueller told a House hearing that the FBI does “not have a relationship with CAIR [because] there are individuals in CAIR with whom we had issues with and continue to have issues with.” When pressed by Republican New York Rep. Peter King, Mueller added that “there are occasions when individuals who may be either loosely associated with CAIR or may have attended a CAIR event that we do have relationships with… [and] on some occasions, we may be at [events] or with persons who have an affiliation with CAIR.”

The issues that Mueller referred to include the 2008 Holy Land Fund trial, where evidence showed that the most prominent Muslim advocacy groups in the United States had associations with Hamas, which is the Palestinian branch of the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood. The tied groups include the Islamic Society of North America, which is an umbrella organization for many Muslim groups, and the North American Islamic Trust, which owns the titles to many U.S. mosques. “The government has produced ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR, ISNA, NAIT, with NAIT, the Islamic Association for Palestine, and with Hamas,” Judge Jorge Solis said in a July 2009 ruling.

CAIR is connected with Hamas through its director, Nihad Awad, who was a co-founder in 1994 of the Islamic Association for Palestine. Documents subsequently presented in court by the federal government showed the IAP was the U.S. propaganda and advocacy arm of Hamas, according to data provided by the Investigative Project on Terrorism, founded by journalist Steve Emerson. In turn, the IAP was one element of a larger circle of organizations founded by supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood.

In 1993, these various groups met in Philadelphia and proposed the creation of a media-advocacy organization, according to a FBI tape-recording of the meeting. Awad attended the meeting, as did another CAIR co-founder, Omar Ahmed, who declared that “if Muslims engage in political activism in America and started to be concerned with Congress and public relations we will have an entry point to use them to pressure Congress and the decision-makers in America,” according documents provided by Emerson’s IPT.

Since then, Hamas has instigated and applauded many bloody attacks on Jews, including suicide-bombs detonated on buses and in restaurants. For example, the March 11 killing of the Fogel family, including one infant and a 3 year-old, was endorsed in the Arabic-language portion of Hamas’ website, alqassam.ps, according to a translation provided by a U.S. website, translating-jihad. “Our correspondent in Nablus reported that a Palestinian mujahid [Islamic warrior] was able to break into the usurper [settlement] of ‘Itamar’ south of Nablus in the occupied [West] Bank, and stabbed five Zionist usurpers,” the article said. Another article, published on the Hamas-tied felesteen.ps website, declared the murders to be a “heroic operation,” according to a translation provided by the Middle East Media Research Institute.

As of March 17, CAIR’s website did not carry any condemnation of the jihadi attack. The most recent press release displayed on the group’s website was issued March 10, and decried a congressional hearing on Islamic radicalization among Muslim communities.

Hamas has also prompted gays to flee from its Gaza territory. Agudah, an Israeli advocacy group for gays and lesbians, tries to win sanctuary for gays from Gaza who fear they will be executed, as required by Hamas’ application of Islamic law, if they are exposed in Gaza.

CAIR is playing a role in the broad “anti-bullying” campaign by working with the “A Thin Line” project established by the New York-based cable-TV channel MTV. The coalition is intended “to fight bullying and intolerance online,” and it also includes the National Council of La Raza, Anti-Defamation League, and GLAAD. The White House’s website highlighted the MTV project, describing it “a new anti-digital discrimination coalition, which will work with MTV to fight bullying and intolerance online (in partnership with the National Council of La Raza, Anti-Defamation League, Council on American-Islamic Relations, and GLAAD).”

A MTV spokeswoman said they recruited CAIR as part of their effort to build a coalition of minority groups that share a common interest in the reduction of “bullying.” She declined to comment when asked CAIR’s ties to Hamas.

A representative for GLAAD declined to comment about their work with CAIR.

The ADL joined MTV’s group after being reassured that it would play a more central role than CAIR, said Todd Gutnick, ADL’s director of media relations. “We considered this [MTV project] very carefully and decided that despite CAIR, it is central our mission of countering bully and cyber-bullying, and far outweighed any differences we do have” with CAIR, he said. There’s a great deal of anti-Semitism on the Internet, often in comments about American Jews in the news, he said. MTV officials assured the ADL that they would play a greater role in the project than CAIR, he said, adding that “I don’t know what their involvement is with MTV.”

CAIR is part of the MTV project because “American Muslims have the same concerns as other Americans, and cyber-bullying is one of them,” said Hooper.

Like many other activists in the White House’s campaign, Hooper conflated physical bullying and intimidation with routine spoken and online criticism of ideas and behavior, and suggested that CAIR’s critics were violent. “There’s a cottage industry of ‘Muslim-bashers’ who seek on a daily basis to marginalize American Muslims and to demonize Islam,” said Hooper.

The ‘-basher’ phrase was first used by gay-advocates to tar their critics as violent, and is now routinely used by Hooper and other Islamist advocates to portray their critics as violent. ‘Muslim-basher,’ Hooper said, is “colloquial American-English for someone who rhetorically bashes Muslims.”

When asked about CAIR’s view of Hamas, Hooper sent a statement saying “we unequivocally condemn all acts of terrorism, whether carried out by al-Qa’ida, the Real IRA, FARC, Hamas, ETA, or any other group.” However, CAIR’s statement is ambiguous because Islamists describe Israeli military operations as “terrorism” and their attacks on Israeli civilians as justified “resistance” or “jihad.”

On Friday, a former CAIR official is to be jailed for his work as spy for Saddam Hussein. The sentencing follows the jailing or expulsion of several other former CAIR employees and contractors for terrorism-related offenses.

“We’re on this coalition [with CAIR, but] we’re not working with” CAIR, Gutnick said.

Read more stories from The Daily Caller

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 18, 2011, 11:44:47 AM
CBO: Obama budget worse than projected on 10-year deficit
By Erik Wasson - 03/18/11 02:03 PM ET



http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/budget/150737-cbo-obama-budget-worse-than-claimed-on-deficit?tmpl=component&print=1&page=




The Congressional Budget Office on Friday released its analysis of President Obama’s 2012 budget proposal and found it does less to rein in deficits and the debt than the administration had estimated.

CBO estimates Obama's plan would produce 10 years of deficits totaling $9.5 trillion. By 2021, it would increase the debt held by the public to 87 percent of gross domestic product.

The administration, using different methods, estimated budget deficits would total $7.2 trillion over the next 10 years under the 2012 budget. It forecast that total debt in 2021 would be 77 percent of GDP.
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 18, 2011, 12:03:02 PM
Environment Trumps Health As FDA Ends Sales of Only OTC Asthma Inhaler in U.S.
CNS News ^ | 3/17/11 | Susan Jones




(CNSNews.com) - The only over-the-counter asthma inhaler sold in the United States soon will be banned from store shelves because of environmental concerns, and replacement medications may cost more, the U.S. Food and Drug administration acknowledged.

The FDA announced on Wednesday that Primatene Mist (epinephrine) will be discontinued by the end of the year, as part of an international agreement to phase out chlorofluorocarbons and other ozone-depleting substances.

Primatene Mist, approved by the FDA for the temporary relief of occasional symptoms of mild asthma, uses chlorofluorocarbons as a propellant.


(Excerpt) Read more at cnsnews.com ...
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 18, 2011, 12:54:48 PM
64 Senators Declare Obama AWOL On Deficit, Entitlements
IBD's Capital Hill ^ | 3/18/2011 | Sean Higgins



In a sign of how frustrated members of both parties are with President Obama’s disengagement from the budget debate on Capitol Hill, a supermajority of 64 senators, including Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., have signed a letter urging the president to “to engage in a broader discussion about a comprehensive deficit reduction package.”

Sen. Mike Johanns, R-Neb., and Michael Bennet, D-Colo., organized the effort. In a conference call with reporters today, Johanns said any hope for broad reform will require leadership from the White House, which the lawmakers haven’t seen so far.


(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.investors.com ...


________________________ ________________________ __________


Unfreaking real.   

who the hell voted for this farce of tha POTUS? 

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Option D on March 18, 2011, 01:18:25 PM
Environment Trumps Health As FDA Ends Sales of Only OTC Asthma Inhaler in U.S.
CNS News ^ | 3/17/11 | Susan Jones




(CNSNews.com) - The only over-the-counter asthma inhaler sold in the United States soon will be banned from store shelves because of environmental concerns, and replacement medications may cost more, the U.S. Food and Drug administration acknowledged.

The FDA announced on Wednesday that Primatene Mist (epinephrine) will be discontinued by the end of the year, as part of an international agreement to phase out chlorofluorocarbons and other ozone-depleting substances.

Primatene Mist, approved by the FDA for the temporary relief of occasional symptoms of mild asthma, uses chlorofluorocarbons as a propellant.


(Excerpt) Read more at cnsnews.com ...


lmao...obama name isnt even on this one...
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 18, 2011, 01:20:26 PM
Its his admn pushing this shit.    He is doing crap through regulatory agencies that would never see the light of day if done through the congress.     
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 18, 2011, 01:27:32 PM
CBO: Obama understates deficits by $2.3 trillion
ap ^ | 03/18/2011 | ap






A new assessment of President Barack Obama's budget released Friday says the White House underestimates future budget deficits by more than $2 trillion over the upcoming decade.  

The estimate from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says that if Obama's February budget submission is enacted into law it would produce deficits totaling $9.5 trillion over 10 years — an average of almost $1 trillion a year.

Obama's budget saw deficits totaling $7.2 trillion over the same period.

The difference is chiefly because CBO has a less optimistic estimate of how much the government will collect in tax revenues, partly because the administration has rosier economic projections.

But the agency also rejects the administration's claims of more than $300 billion of that savings — to pay for preventing a cut in Medicare payments to doctors — because it doesn't specifying where it would come from. Likewise, CBO fails to credit the White House with an additional $328 billion that would come from unspecified "bipartisan financing" to pay for transportation infrastructure projects such as high speed rail lines and road and bridge construction.

Friday's report actually predicts the deficit for the current budget year, which ends Sept. 30, won't be as bad as the $1.6 trillion predicted by the administration. But 10 years from now, CBO sees a $1.2 trillion deficit that's almost $400 billion above White House projections.

The White House's goal is to reach a point where the budget is balanced except for interest payments on the $14 trillion national debt. Such "primary balance" occurs when the deficit is about 3 percent of the size of the economy, and economists say deficits of that magnitude are generally sustainable.


(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 18, 2011, 07:52:32 PM
Report: U.S. considering strategic outreach to Hezbollah
Haaretz ^ | March 18, 2011 | Haaretz Service




The administration of U.S. President Barack Obama is considering reaching out to the political elements in Hezbollah, the Washington Post reported on Friday, stressing that the at this stage it was an intelligence effort, not a policymaking one.

In an opinion piece appearing on the newspaper's online edition, columnist David Ignatius indicated that Washington was considering an effort similar to the one the U.K, implemented "during the 1990s with Sinn Fein, the legal political wing of the terrorist Irish Republican Army."

"That outreach led to breakthrough peace talks and settlement of a conflict that had been raging for more than a century," Ignatius wrote, adding that several U.S. officials were expected to endorse dialogue with political elements of both Hezbollah and the Taliban in an upcoming intelligence report.

Writing of the effect recent Mideast turmoil may have had on Obama's decision to accept these recommendations, the Washington Post writer said that the "political time bomb ticking away in the [intelligence report] is the question of whether the United States should seek some kind of direct or indirect engagement with Hezbollah — at least with its political wing."

"Officials who support this course argue that the organization is like the IRA or the PLO — with nonmilitary components that can be drawn into a dialogue," Ignatius added.


(Excerpt) Read more at haaretz.com ...


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 18, 2011, 07:55:59 PM
Editorial: Obama's Libya Strategy Driven By Politics
IBD Editorials ^ | March 18, 2011 | Staff



Foreign Policy: As is often the case, the president's Libya strategy looks politics-driven, as senators get privately briefed while the public is left guessing. The public deserves more.

Thursday's classified briefing of senators by Obama officials on possible U.S. intervention in Libya was by all signs a political success.

Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., came away believing "the administration is moving and now the only question is time." Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who always comes through in the clutch — for Democrats — said afterward, "I want to take back criticism I gave to them yesterday and say, 'you are doing the right thing.'"

But has Obama's underlying role in inflaming the Middle East — Libya being merely the latest manifestation — been "the right thing"?

Whether George W. Bush was prescient or naive in declaring that America's liberation of Iraq lit an "untamed fire of freedom" that will "reach the darkest corners of our world" may be debatable. But the Obama Doctrine seems to be the foreign policy equivalent of arson.

The president strikes the match, as he did in his 2009 Cairo speech criticizing U.S. allies like Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, and implicitly apologizing for U.S. actions in Iraq and Iran. But as the fire grows, Obama is unable to direct the flames or put it out.


(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 20, 2011, 06:04:25 AM
Interior Dept Gives Approval to Brazilian Oil Company’s Gulf of Mexico Deep Water Facility
Weasel Zippers ^ | March 18, 2011




Yes, as he continues to hold up drilling permits for U.S. oil companies in the Gulf.

(Reuters) — The U.S. Interior Department said on Thursday it gave final approval for Petrobras to use the first ever deepwater floating production storage facility in the Gulf of Mexico.

The facility will be used when the company begins oil and natural gas production at its Chinook-Cascade project in the near future, the department said. Petrobras is based in Brazil.

A Petrobras official who asked not to be identified told Reuters that production would begin in May.

The floating facility has a daily production capacity of 80,000 barrels of oil and 16 million cubic feet of gas. It can be disconnected and moved out of the path of a storm, unlike permanently moored production platforms, preventing long-term supply disruptions because of storms.

“These regulatory approvals pave the way for safe, new production of oil and gas resources in the Gulf of Mexico,” said Michael Bromwich, who heads the department’s agency that oversees offshore drilling.

Such vessels are common for offshore production in other countries without seabed pipelines to transport oil and gas to shore, such as West Africa and Brazil. Petrobras has a fleet of them off Brazil’s shores, and Exxon Mobil Corp uses one of the largest units in the world at one of its fields in offshore Angola.

Read more. . .

Timely, considering the First Family’s upcoming holiday to Rio.

________________________ _____________


Soros' investment is paying off.   

FFFFUUUUBBBBOOOOO!!!!!!

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 21, 2011, 05:13:54 AM
Report: U.S. considering strategic outreach to Hezbollah
Washington Post says Obama administration weighing dialogue with Lebanese militant group's political wing, in an effort similar to that attempted by U.K. in its dealings with Sinn Fein in the 1990s.

By Haaretz Service

Tags: Israel news Lebanon Hezbollah


________________________ _______________-



The administration of U.S. President Barack Obama is considering reaching out to the political elements in Hezbollah, the Washington Post reported on Friday, stressing that the at this stage it was an intelligence effort, not a policymaking one.

In an opinion piece appearing on the newspaper's online edition, columnist David Ignatius indicated that Washington was considering an effort similar to the one the U.K, implemented "during the 1990s with Sinn Fein, the legal political wing of the terrorist Irish Republican Army."

  Hezbollah fighters parade during the inauguration of a cemetery for fighters who died while fighting Israel, in southern Beirut on Nov. 12, 2010.
 
Photo by: AP 

"That outreach led to breakthrough peace talks and settlement of a conflict that had been raging for more than a century," Ignatius wrote, adding that several U.S. officials were expected to endorse dialogue with political elements of both Hezbollah and the Taliban in an upcoming intelligence report.

Writing of the effect recent Mideast turmoil may have had on Obama's decision to accept these recommendations, the Washington Post writer said that the "political time bomb ticking away in the [intelligence report] is the question of whether the United States should seek some kind of direct or indirect engagement with Hezbollah — at least with its political wing."

"Officials who support this course argue that the organization is like the IRA or the PLO — with nonmilitary components that can be drawn into a dialogue," Ignatius added.

Ignatius quotes in his article one intelligence official, John Brennan, known for supporting a move toward dialogue with the Lebanese militant group, as saying that while "Hezbollah started out as purely a terrorist organization back in the early ’80s," it has "evolved significantly over time."

"The bottom line," the Washington Post article concluded, "is that after a decade of American wars in the Middle East, the Obama administration is increasingly looking for ways to talk with adversaries and draw them into a process of dialogue."

"The world is changing, and perhaps so should U.S. policy," he added.
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 21, 2011, 06:49:23 PM

IBD Editorials Sponsored by:
. Obama: Drill, Brazil, Drill!
 
Posted 07:08 PM ET
 



Energy Policy: While leaving U.S. oil and jobs in the ground, our itinerant president tells a South American neighbor that we'll help it develop its offshore resources so we can one day import its oil. WHAT?!?

With Japan staggered by a natural disaster and a nuclear crisis, cruise missiles launched against Libya in our third Middle East conflict and a majority of U.S. senators complaining about a lack of leadership on the budget, President Obama decided it would be a good time to schmooze with Brazilians.

His "What, me worry?" presidency has given both Americans and our allies plenty to worry about. But in the process of making nice with Brazil, Obama made a mind-boggling announcement that should make even his most loyal supporter cringe:

We will help Brazil develop its offshore oil so we can one day import it.

We have noted this double standard before, particularly when — at a time when the president was railing against tax incentives for U.S. oil companies — we supported the U.S. Export-Import Bank's plan to lend $2 billion to Brazil's state-run Petrobras with the promise of more to follow.

Now, with a seven-year offshore drilling ban in effect off of both coasts, on Alaska's continental shelf and in much of the Gulf of Mexico — and a de facto moratorium covering the rest — Obama tells the Brazilians:

"We want to help you with the technology and support to develop these oil reserves safely. And when you're ready to start selling, we want to be one of your best customers."

Obama wants to develop Brazilian offshore oil to help the Brazilian economy create jobs for Brazilian workers while Americans are left unemployed in the face of skyrocketing energy prices by an administration that despises fossil fuels as a threat to the environment and wants to increase our dependency on foreign oil.

Obama said he chose Brazil to kick off his first-ever visit to South America in recognition of that country's ascendancy. He has also highlighted one of the reasons for America's decline — an energy policy that through the creation of an artificial shortage of fossil fuels makes prices "necessarily skyrocket" to foster his green energy agenda.

In an op-ed in USA Today explaining his trip, Obama opined: "Brazil holds recently discovered oil reserves that could be far larger than ours. And as we seek to increase secure-energy supplies, we look forward to developing a strategic energy partnership."

Yet in his alleged quest for "secure-energy supplies," he refuses to develop oil and natural gas resources in U.S. waters. His administration has locked up areas in the West where oil shale reserves are estimated to be triple Saudi Arabia's reserves of crude. His administration is even stalling on plans to build a pipeline to deliver oil from Canada's tar sands to the U.S. market.

That project would build a 1,661-mile pipeline from the tar sands of Alberta to U.S. refineries near Houston. It would create 13,000 "shovel-ready" jobs and provide 500,000 more barrels of oil per day from an ally.

Yet it's now being held up by the State Department because it crosses an international border, on the grounds that it needs further environmental review. Shipping oil by tanker from Brazil is safer and more secure?

If Brazil had copied our current energy policy, it wouldn't have discovered in December 2007 the Tupi field, estimated to contain 5 billion to 8 billon barrels of crude, or its Carioca offshore oilfield that may hold up to 33 billion barrels.

Haroldo Lima, head of Brazil's National Oil Agency, estimates that Carioca might hold as much as five times the reserves of Tupi. Somehow the Brazilians aren't too worried about oil spoiling the pristine beaches of nearby Sao Paulo or Rio de Janeiro in the tourist season.

We suggest that President Obama return home and start worrying about an unapologetic American renaissance in which we focus more on American energy and American jobs and less on mythical environmental hazards and foreign accolades.



http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/566719/201103211908/Obama-Drill-Brazil-Drill.htm

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 22, 2011, 06:00:13 AM
The 12 Worst Features Of ObamaCare 
By David Hogberg     
Tue., March 22, 2011 12:04 AM ET 
Tags: ObamaCare - Health Care - Waivers - Hospitals - Medicare

http://blogs.investors.com/capitalhill/index.php/home/35-politicsinvesting/2532-the-12-worst-features-of-obamacare?src=HPLNews





On the eve of the one-year anniversary of President Obama signing his health care bill into law, it's a good time to examine ObamaCare’s worst features.

Of course, any law is going to cause difficulties, but problems seem to be attracted to ObamaCare the way worms are to an apple orchard. And the bulk of the law has yet to come into force, including the individual mandate, health exchanges and massive taxpayer subsidies. This is a list of the ObamaCare’s 12 worst features, although it is hardly definitive. Feel free to suggest your own in the comments section.

1. 1099. Under ObamaCare, businesses have to send a 1099 tax form to every other business, contractor and so forth that they do $600 worth of commerce with, resulting in a huge amount of costly new paperwork. Previously, businesses only had to send a 1099 to an independent contractor for services rendered. This provision has proven so unpopular that President Obama said he’d sign a repeal. The House and Senate have passed bills repealing the measure but remain at odds over the details.

2. Surprises, Surprises. There doesn’t seem to be an end to the discoveries of provisions that almost no one knew were in ObamaCare until after it passed. The 1099 may have been the first. The most recent is the “Basic Health Plan,” what Greg Scandlen called “sort of a ‘public option’ in sheep’s clothing.”  According to Scandlen, a BHP is a plan “states may implement to provide coverage for people between 133% and 200% of poverty and noncitizen legal immigrants who are not eligible for Medicaid ... . If a state opts for a BHP, those people will no longer be eligible for coverage under the Exchange.” One of the surprises first broken by IBD was that health plans that were supposed to be “grandfathered” under ObamaCare were only grandfathered if they didn’t make any big changes in the future. An administration document estimated that under the rules, about 51% of employers would have to relinquish their coverage by 2014. Unless of course, your plan is run by a union.

3. Waivers. Section 2711 waivers enable the health plans of businesses, labor unions and other groups to avoid having to comply with ObamaCare’s regulations, lest their members lose “the insurance they like.” The Department of Health and Human Services has granted 1,040 waivers in about six months. Naturally, a disproportionate share of those receiving waivers are unions, some of Obama’s biggest political allies.

And the waivers are a temporary reprieve as by 2014 all business, unions, etc., must comply with ObamaCare rules, something that will very likely result in lost jobs.

4. More Waivers? State governments are now asking for waivers from ObamaCare’s medical-loss-ratio regulations. At present, Maine has received a waiver, Kentucky, Nevada and New Hampshire have applied, and 11 other states are preparing applications. An MLR is the share of health premiums spent on medical costs. A 75% ratio means that 75% of premiums are spent on medical care, leaving 25% for things like salaries, advertising, fraud prevention and profits. Starting in 2011, insurers serving the individual or small-group market — i.e., companies with 100 employees or less — must have MLRs of at least 80%. It seems that states are worried that the difficulty of complying with these regulations might drive insurance companies out of their individual and small markets. Maine applied for a waiver because officials there worried that MEGA Life and Health Insurance, which has 37% of the state’s individual market, “would withdraw from the market altogether if the federal requirement remained in place.”

5. Insurers Have Left The Child-Only Market. In June 2010, HHS informed insurers that they would have to sell a policy to anyone under age 19, regardless of pre-existing conditions. Insurers figured this would incentivize more and more parents to purchase insurance after their children fell ill. This would almost surely make child-only policies a losing business. Thus, insurers started abandoning the child-only market in droves. According to a survey conducted by the Republican staff on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, 34 states have lost at least one insurer in the child-only market and 20 no longer have any insurers offering child-only policies.

6. Medicaid — Ouch! ObamaCare requires all states to expand their Medicaid program to 133% of the federal poverty level. Presently only eight states and Washington, D.C. make eligibility limits that generous. That expansion is expected to cost states at least an additional $118 billion through 2023. States are already reeling from budget shortfalls, with Medicaid usually being the biggest budget item. But the stimulus package passed in early 2009 added a new twist to Medicaid. It gave states money to shore up their Medicaid shortfalls, but in exchange the states could not cut back on Medicaid by reducing the eligibility level. That has left only two options: cutting back on benefits and reducing provider reimbursement rates. So far, states seem to be taking the former approach, with Arizona ending support for some organ transplants being the most notorious example.

7. Life After Death Panels. While Sarah Palin’s remark about a “death panel” was not technically accurate, it did highlight the fact that the original version of ObamaCare contained a provision allowing Medicare to pay for end-of-life counseling. In the ensuing media storm, the provision was removed. But that wasn’t the end of it. If reformers with a good idea can’t get it through the front door, they’ll eagerly try the back. Late last year the issue again erupted when HHS tried to slip the provision into 692 pages of new Medicare regulations. The provision was removed again, but controversy remains. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius recently admitted she was the one that decided to exclude the provision for the “proposed” regulations and later slip them into the final rules. The House GOP is calling for an investigation.

8. Medicare’s Advantage Over Cuts. ObamaCare was supposed to cut about $200 billion from Medicare Advantage, the Medicare program that pays private insurers to provide Medicare benefits. There was just one little problem: the 11 million seniors with Medicare Advantage plans who could lose them if the cuts were enforced. As a result, the Obama administration suspended the cuts for 2011 and will actually increase the amount given to Medicare Advantage by 1.6% in 2012 (election year, anyone?). Which means that for the budget math to work, even deeper Medicare Advantage cuts will have to be made in the future. Assuming the budget math actually works to begin with.

9. Cost Estimates Not Correct. An analysis by Medicare chief actuary Richard Foster showed that ObamaCare would not reduce overall health care costs, but would increase them by about $311 billion through 2019. An analysis by former Congressional Budget Office head Douglas Holtz-Eakin found that if one takes into account factors that the CBO could not in its analysis (CBO is limited to analyzing just what is a bill), then ObamaCare could increase the deficit by $190 billion.

10. Who Needs Evidence? Two of the new health care financing “models” pushed by ObamaCare are medical homes and Accountable Care Organizations. Yet there is very little research showing the medical homes are a cost-effective way of delivering care (and some research that they aren’t.) As for ACOs, there doesn’t appear to be much research on them at all. So much for policymakers only enacting sweeping reforms backed up by evidence.

11. CLASS-less. ObamaCare included Community Living Assistance Services and Support Act, a measure that is supposed to help seniors pay for long-term care. On paper, the CLASS Act looks fiscally sustainable because it takes in premiums for a number of years before it starts paying out benefits. Which means it is not sustainable. Even Sebelius has admitted as much. But on short-term measures, the CBO has to score CLASS as reducing the deficit.

12. Physician-Owned Specialty Hospitals. A major source of innovation in health care, physician-owned specialty hospitals had long been a target of the Big Hospital Lobby — the American Hospital Association and the Federation of American Hospitals — which doesn’t like competition. ObamaCare effectively prevents new physician-owned specialty hospitals from opening and makes it near impossible for existing ones to expand.

 
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 22, 2011, 09:28:45 AM
Solar-panel maker Solyndra to lay off workers (Obama bundler got huge amount of stimulus money)
news.cnet.com ^ | 3-2011





Thin-film solar-panel maker Solyndra will announce today it plans to close its Fab 1 plant in Fremont, Calif., The New York Times has reported.

The closing will result in 40 Solyndra employees being laid off. Another 150 subcontractors will not have their current work contracts renewed, according to the report.

But the news follows the opening of Solyndra's state-of-the-art Fab 2 plant near its original Fremont plant just weeks ago, which was built in part with a $535 million federal loan guarantee from the Department of Energy.  

The Fab 2 plant, when fully operational, is capable of producing 500-megawatts worth of thin-film solar panels per year and employing about 1,000 people.

Solyndra makes thin-film flexible solar cells from CIGS (copper, indium, gallium, and selenide), not traditional photovoltaic cells made with silicon. Thin-film solar cells are typically less efficient than silicon solar cells, but because they have also been traditionally cheaper to install they maintained a competitive edge in the solar marketplace.

But a changing thin-film solar market, as well as a significant drop in the cost of traditional silicon solar cells, has changed that dynamic.

Solyndra has raised a total of $970 million in financing, and received another $573 million in the form of a loan guarantee from the Department of Energy, money that was appropriated in the Energy Act of 2005. The Department of Energy and the White House has held Solyndra up as a prime example of U.S. green-tech manufacturing innovation, investment, and job creation. President Obama made his "We've got to go back to making things" speech in May from the Fab 2 plant during a visit.

Concurrent with Solyndra's funding and ramp-up to production, several thin-film solar manufacturers in China have also been ramping up manufacturing in large part because of the Chinese government's well-documented push to invest in green tech.

Chinese thin-film solar manufacturer Suntech, for example, has announced several tech partnerships it says have improved the efficiency of its thin-film solar cells, as well as increased production volume resulting in significantly lower costs for its products.

In April PricewaterhouseCoopers, Solyndra's auditor, said the company was in debt at a rate that was unsustainable and needed to make significant adjustments if it was to be profitable long-term. In July the company canceled its planned IPO and announced that Solyndra founding CEO Chris Gronet would be stepping down to be replaced by Brian Harrison.

The decrease in cost to install conventional PVs, combined with this recent introduction of cheaper thin-film solar products from China, has been closing the competitive gap. Solyndra's high-tech Fab 2 plant will reduce production costs compared to its old facility, Harrison told The New York Times.

"Fab 2 is much more efficient and cost-effective than our existing facility," he said.

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20021624-54.html#ixzz1HIS39ISl




Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 22, 2011, 01:28:25 PM



Top Oil Rig Suppliers to Obama: Your Response to Gulf Oil Spill Is Unreasonable, Unwarranted, Unfair & Unlawful (Video)
Posted by Jim Hoft on Tuesday, March 22, 2011, 12:16 PM


http://gatewaypundit.rightnetwork.com/2011/03/top-oil-producers-to-obama-your-response-to-gulf-oil-spill-is-unreasonable-unwarranted-unfair-unlawful-video



 They’re mad as hell and aren’t going to take it anymore…


The Offshore Marine Service Association (OMSA), put together the following video to explain how the de facto moratorium against offshore drilling is killing the American economy and driving up oil and gas prices. OMSA represents the companies that provide supplies and services to the oil rigs in the Gulf. They are really hurting, as they watch drill equipment leave the Gulf instead of waiting out the drilling moratorium.

Here is OMSA’s Open Letter to Barack Obama:

February 17, 2011

The President
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President:

On behalf of the tens of thousands of offshore marine service employees and their families, we are writing to protest your war on domestic energy exploration and development and its devastating impact on Americans. Lift your de facto moratorium on oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Let Americans get back to work. We’ve suffered enough.

Your response to the Gulf oil spill has been unreasonable, unwarranted, unfair, and unlawful. Other industries have collaborated with government to tighten safety measures and implement improvements following tragic accidents, but you simply shut down every deepwater drilling operator in the Gulf of Mexico. When a federal judge pronounced your moratorium was unjustified-and later found you in contempt of the injunction-you simply ignored the court’s ruling as if you were above the law.

For nearly a year, you have defied a court order prohibiting you from interfering in the lawful production of energy off the Gulf Coast. You are not issuing deepwater drilling permits and you have been indecisive on the remedies that would satisfy you. For nearly a year, you’ve maintained your de facto moratorium, which is shutting down new energy production in the Gulf.

For well over a year now, you’ve told Americans quite the opposite-that your policies will create jobs, lower energy costs and make us less dependent on foreign oil. You’ve told Americans that you’ve lifted the moratorium, when the facts show otherwise. Americans know a moratorium when they see one. Isn’t it time you started telling the truth?

While your disregard for the rule of law may placate environmental activists and the government-subsidized corporations clambering for alternative energy giveaways, the vast majority of Americans will only suffer the burden of your policies. Most Americans can’t afford to pay $4 for a gallon of gasoline or see their home heating bills skyrocket. They need jobs-they don’t want to be more beholden to those unstable and hostile regimes that your actions are ensuring will supply America’s energy.

Before your moratorium, more than 50,000 oil wells were drilled safely in the Gulf of Mexico. The fact that we earn an honest living serving those operations should in no way suggest that we aren’t concerned with the safety of our colleagues or the health of the Gulf. After all, thousands of us live here-we fish here, we shrimp here, and our children swim here. No one wants to pollute our beaches, put Americans out of work, or spend billions of dollars to clean up a spill. It’s in everyone’s best interests to drill safely.

Mr. President, your deliberate actions to strangle domestic energy production are putting people out of work, raising the price of fuel and weakening our national security. Your political agenda does not supersede American law.

Again, we remind you that Americans have suffered enough. Lift your de facto moratorium on oil drilling in the Gulf and let Americans get back to work.

Signed by several top leaders in top offshore drilling

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 22, 2011, 02:08:48 PM
President Obama Can’t Wait to Buy More Foreign Oil
Heritage.org ^ | 3/22/11 | Conn Carroll




The Obama Administration has already presided over the steepest rise in gas prices since the Carter Administration. And like President Jimmy Carter, PresidentBarack Obama has restricted traditional domestic energy development at every turn. According to the Energy Information Administration, President Obama’s Gulf drilling moratorium will cause domestic offshore oil production to fall 13% this year . Absent the Obama moratorium, the EIA had predicted a 6% increase in offshore production from 2010 levels. That means President Obama’s Gulf moratorium alone will cost American consumers 220,000 barrels of domestic oil production a day.

But President Obama is not against all offshore oil drilling. When other countries are the ones developing their natural resources, President Obama is all for it.


(Excerpt) Read more at blog.heritage.org ...
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 22, 2011, 07:59:47 PM
Editorial: President Obama’s Crony Capitalism
 http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/566837/201103221841/Crony-In-Chief.htm

Posted 06:41 PM ET


Leadership: Obama critics were quick to link U.S. loans for Brazil oil to benefits for his investor pal George Soros. There was no link in this case, but considering how this president operates, it's no wonder suspicions ran high.

The president's announcement that his administration would lend billions of dollars to develop Brazil's offshore oil reserves left many Americans flabbergasted.

After all, he had issued two drilling moratoriums in U.S. waters and then was declared in contempt of court for defying a federal judge who ordered the moratoriums reversed. Some wondered if the president wasn't intentionally acting against U.S. interests.

Others wanted to know if pleasing political campaign contributors was the idea. The name of Soros, the leftist billionaire, came up because he'd held stock in Petrobras, the Brazilian state oil company. But he dumped the shares six months ago.

Our disengaged president has said little as the Arab world is engulfed in revolution and has been absent as a huge budget battle plays out in Congress. But some lines can be drawn between his more inexplicable decisions and cronyism.

Indeed, many of Obama's decisions have been all about benefiting special interests and political friends — what's been called the Chicago Way. Whatever it's called, it's in the interests of the few at the expense of the whole. Some examples:

• Obama's firm support for nuclear energy in the wake of Japan's nuclear crisis. We don't fault his position, but it's worth noting that General Electric is a principal constructor of nuclear power plants, and its CEO is a close Obama ally.

Jeffrey Immelt was named to a White House jobs board, where he baffled many by declaring no core inflation in the U.S. and supported the administration's big spending. Was there an exchange of favors?

• Obama's praise for Solyndra Inc. as the first recipient of $535 million of stimulus cash in 2009 to hire 1,000 workers for "green jobs." The company had never shown a profit, but that was no obstacle to getting the cash, and in the end the Fremont, Calif.-based solar panel manufacturer never came through.

However, Solyndra's majority owner, billionaire George Kaiser, was a top fundraiser for the 2008 Obama-Biden campaign.

• During the U.S. auto bailout of 2008 and 2009, Obama's ally, the United Auto Workers, saw its unsecured claims win out over those of secured bondholders, an unprecedented alteration of bankruptcy law that violated bondholders' legal rights. The move was augmented by a politically motivated investigation against rival Toyota, with Transport Secretary Ray LaHood telling Americans not to buy Toyotas.

• The Health and Human Services Department gave 1,040 Section 2711 waivers on onerous ObamaCare regulations, which enabled labor unions and businesses to avoid the burdensome costs of the new law.

"Naturally, a disproportionate share of those receiving waivers are unions, some of Obama's biggest political allies," wrote IBD's David Hogberg in a blog post Monday.

The list goes on. If there's any pattern here, it's that of a president who makes a clear decision only if it's to help someone who can help him — or who already has.

That's not leadership. That's cronyism, and history is a harsh judge to such leaders.

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 23, 2011, 10:14:14 AM
National & World News
23, 6:55 AM EDT
US reviewing nuclear arsenal with eye to new cuts

By DESMOND BUTLER
Associated Press
 

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_US_NUCLEAR_WEAPONS?SITE=VANOV&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

US Video
 

 
 

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Obama administration has begun examining whether it can make cuts to its nuclear weapons stockpiles that go beyond those outlined in a recent treaty with Russia.


The classified review is not expected to be completed until late this year, but some Republicans already are worried that it will go too far. On Tuesday, 41 Republican senators warned Obama in a letter not to make major changes in nuclear policy without consulting Congress.

Arms control advocates say the United States is mired in Cold War-era thinking about nuclear deterrence and are pressing the administration to use the review to rethink U.S. nuclear requirements. They say the decisions will be a test of President Barack Obama's commitment nearly two years ago to put the world on a path toward eliminating nuclear weapons.

Obama ordered the nuclear review early last year with an aim of shrinking the nuclear arsenal, but the work, led by the Defense Department, began recently, according to a department spokeswoman, Lt. Col. April Cunningham.

The review will look at issues such as what targets the U.S. would have to hit with nuclear weapons in a worst-case scenario and what kind of weapons it would need to hit them. Rethinking the requirements could open the way to cuts.

In the letter to Obama, Republicans warned against any big reductions from those outlined in the New START treaty, ratified by the Senate and the Russian Duma in recent months. The treaty limits each side to 1,550 deployed warheads - a level military officials have said meets the need of the current directives.

Sharp reductions in nuclear forces "would have important and as yet unknown consequences for nuclear stability," the letter said.

The letter was circulated by Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., a leading opponent of the New START treaty when it was considered in the Senate. It makes clear that significant changes in nuclear policy without consulting Congress could affect consideration of a new treaty with Russia. The 41 lawmakers who signed it include a number who supported New START and represent sufficient numbers to block any treaty.

There is no indication that the Obama administration is considering drastic cuts as a result of the review. But the study could shape talks it has proposed with Russia on weapons not covered by the New START treaty. The administration wants to focus on stored nuclear weapons and those intended for short-range delivery, known as tactical nuclear weapons. But negotiations with Russia also could lead to further reductions in deployed long-range nuclear weapons.

Administration officials say the review has just begun and no decisions have been made. In a broader look at nuclear weapons policy last year, called the nuclear posture review, the administration stressed the need for maintaining a strong U.S. deterrent.

"The United States will continue to ensure that, in the calculations of any potential opponent, the perceived gains of attacking the United States or its allies and partners would be far outweighed by the unacceptable costs of the response," the document said.

Disarmament advocates who follow administration thinking on nuclear issues say the document is unlikely to lead quickly to sharp cuts.

"For better or worse, it's not in the cards," says Daryl Kimball, head of the Arms Control Association, which advocates nuclear disarmament.

But advocates hope the review could open the way to reconsidering what would be needed to deter potential adversaries.

"We shouldn't have to dump 60 hydrogen bombs on Odessa to ensure U.S. nuclear security," says Joseph Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, which advocates the elimination of nuclear weapons. "This review will determine whether the president is serious about moving toward deep reductions and the elimination of nuclear weapons or if he is giving up on that vision."
 
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 23, 2011, 10:30:21 AM
Petrobras gets permit for U.S. deep waters
http://www.upi.com ^





WASHINGTON, March 18 (UPI) -- Washington has given Petrobras America Inc. permission to start oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico, a regulator said.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement gave Petrobras approval to use a floating production storage offloading facility at its Cascade-Chinook project in the Gulf of Mexico.

The approval marks the first time FPSO technology will be used in U.S. waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

The oil and gas project is about 165 miles off the coast of Louisiana in 8,200 feet of water. The FPSO has a production capacity of 80,000 barrels of oil and 16 million cubic feet of natural gas per day.

The BOEMRE approved the production safety system permit and a supplemental deep-water operating plan from Petrobras. The regulatory agency said it was satisfied that operations would be safe from hurricanes and other natural disasters.

"These regulatory approvals pave the way for safe, new production of oil and gas resources in the Gulf of Mexico," BOEMRE Director Michael R. Bromwich said in a statement.

Noble Energy in early March was awarded a BOEMRE permit to drill in the Mississippi Canyon block about 70 miles south of the Louisiana coast.

The permit was for what the BOEMRE described as a bypass well meant to drill around a mechanical problem in the original hole.

Deep-water exploration is under scrutiny following the April oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The U.S. government lifted a moratorium on deep-water drilling in October, six months after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig caught fire and sank in the Gulf of Mexico.


(Excerpt) Read more at upi.com ...
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Fury on March 23, 2011, 10:38:46 AM
So let me get this straight. It's OK for Brazil to deepwater drill in our waters yet it's wrong for American companies to do that?

Awesome logic from tovarich Obama!  ::)
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 23, 2011, 10:39:58 AM
So let me get this straight. It's OK for Brazil to deepwater drill in our waters yet it's wrong for American companies to do that?

Awesome logic from tovarich Obama!  ::)

Check out the story I posted above that.   

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 23, 2011, 07:04:21 PM

Anthony Weiner: Waiver might work for New York
Close Send to a friendAnthony Weiner: Waiver might work for New York
'Maybe New York City can come up with a better plan' on health care, said Anthony Weiner. | AP Photo
CloseBy KATE NOCERA | 3/23/11 4:37 PM EDT


Rep. Anthony Weiner said Wednesday he was looking into how a health law waiver might work for New York City.

Weiner, who is likely to run for mayor of New York, said that because of the city’s special health care infrastructure, his office was looking into alternatives that might make more sense. Weiner is one of the health care law’s biggest supporters; during the debate leading up to reform, he was one of the last holdouts in Congress for the public option.

“The president said, ‘If you have better ideas that can accomplish the same thing, go for it,’” said Weiner. “I’m in the process now of trying to see if we can take [President Barack Obama] up on it in the city of New York, … and I’m taking a look at all of the money we spend in Medicaid and Medicare and maybe New York City can come up with a better plan.”

New York is one of two states that pass on Medicaid expenses to cities and localities, so “the city winds up having an enormous Medicaid expense,” Weiner said.

The congressman was trying to debunk Republican “myths” about the health care law during a speech at the Center for American Progress. He used the waivers as way to describe how flexible the law actually is and how “this notion that the government is shoving the bill down people’s throats” is not true.

“The administration needs to make this argument more forcefully,” he said. “A lot of people who got waivers were … people who are our friends.”

The New York Democrat said that he does not have the power to get the city to apply for a waiver but that he is “personally looking at whether he can make the numbers work.”

“We in New York already have hospitals, we already employ doctors and we employ nurses. We have a lot of uninsured people. … [Setting up] the exchanges is the one piece of the puzzle that would be difficult for us to do,” he said. “I’m just looking internally to whether the city can save money and have more control over its own destiny.

Weiner is slated to hold at least five events on the anniversary of the Affordable Care Act and has been one of the most outspoken Democratic supporters of the law.



Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0311/51840.html#ixzz1HTj9MQjD

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 23, 2011, 07:06:54 PM
Texas: EPA's Cheating on Tests to Pull Plug on Gas Drilling
Newsmax ^ | 3/23/2011 | Charles J. Little



The Environmental Protection Agency still is trying to shut down a gas drilling operation near Fort Worth despite fresh doubts about the agency’s central allegation, that the drilling had tainted the local water supply, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Texas’ own regulators say new scientific tests on gas in the water well show the leakage is the result of natural causes: gas migrating upward from a rock formation that lies directly below the tainted aquifer.

Armed with these findings, Texas officials allege that the EPA is using dubious science to reach hasty conclusions that will harm the state’s economy.

“This is an example of overreaching at its worst,” said Texas regulator Michael Williams.


(Excerpt) Read more at newsmax.com ...


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 25, 2011, 11:07:43 AM
Vicente Fox: Obama’s Approach a Failure
Newsmax ^ | 3/22/2011 | Jim Myers and Kathleen Walter




Former Mexican President Vicente Fox says his nation is at "war" with drug cartels, and he offered sharp criticism of the Obama administration for failing to assist its beleaguered neighbor.


In an exclusive interview with Newsmax.TV on Tuesday, Fox said President Barack Obama's administration has failed to grapple with the deteriorating situation in Mexico.


“Obama is thoroughly mixed up with all these things he’s got," Fox said, adding: "He’s got to solve Libya. He’s got to solve Afghanistan. He’s everywhere. And this nation, I don’t know why it’s not showing the leadership and capacity to attend different issues at the same time.”


(Excerpt) Read more at newsmax.com ...
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Option D on March 25, 2011, 11:09:48 AM
lmao...
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 25, 2011, 11:12:06 AM
Doug Feith: "The President wants to cut America down to size"

http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2011/03/23/doug-feith-the-president-wants-to-cut-america-down-to-size





Doug Feith served as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy for President George W. Bush from July 2001 until August 2005, where he worked closely with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other senior administration officials on U.S. policy from Afghanistan to Iraq.  (Fareed highlighted an incredible April 7, 2003 memo Rumsfeld sent Feith basically asking him to solve the world’s most intractable problems in a few lines.) Feith is also the author of War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism, and director of the Center for National Security Strategies at the Hudson Institute.

I talked with Feith this afternoon about American foreign policy in the Middle East. Here’s an edited transcript of what Feith had to say about President Obama’s motivations for intervention in Libya.


“Most people are analyzing U.S. action in Libya in a way that makes what President Obama is doing seem incomprehensible.  If the President says Gadhafi must go and believes it is important enough to engage our military to achieve this objective, why would he wait two or three weeks before making a stand? If the President’s goal is to protect civilians in Libya, how can he be willing to let Gadhafi - the source of the humanitarian danger in Libya - remain in power after the operation ends?

“Pundits are puzzled because they assume President Obama is focused on Libya.  But that assumption may be false.

“The only way to make the President’s behavior comprehensible is to recognize that he has a larger strategic goal than just the outcome of Libya.  While the rest of the country is focused on Libya’s future, the President is focused on fundamentally changing America’s role and standing in the world. Libya, for him, is simply an occasion for undertaking a radical reformulation of 70 years of American foreign policy.

“At least since the U.S. entered World War II, there has been a view of the United States as a leading power, a democratic power, a country that acts boldly in its own interests.  I think President Obama does not believe that’s the role America should play in the world.

“Had the Arab League vote, the push by the French and British and the UN vote not lined up as they did, the intervention in Libya wouldn’t have happened.  This means that whatever happens in Libya is less important to the President than these other factors.

“The President is saying that as important as Libya is, it is not as important as the principle that the U.S. should not act independently. He is saying, 'I’m willing to intervene in Libya only if I can do it in a way that establishes the principle that America does not act unilaterally, independently or simply for American interests. We only act within multilateral contexts.  We try not to take the lead and when we do have to assert leadership, we do not hold it for very long. We transfer leadership early.'

“Essentially, the President wants to cut America down to size - he would say make America a better citizen of the world. But what he is talking about is moving America away from a position of leadership.

“This explains why the President missed a major opportunity two to three weeks ago to seize on the momentum of the rebels to defeat Gadhafi.  Unlike other countries that acted earlier to support the rebels, the President did not recognize the rebels, arm them or provide other forms of support.  He did not want to act without the United Nations.

“Over the next two to three weeks, Gadhafi turned the tide and recaptured virtually all the ground he had lost. Only when he was on the verge of wiping out rebels - and only after the international community had come together - did President Obama act.

“What President Obama is doing is very risky. He is taking an important military action in a circumstance that he does not consider to be very important. He’s gone out of his way to emphasize that we shouldn’t consider it too important either - waiting for the UN, emphasizing limitations on our means, and stressing that he does not want to lead the operation.

“The President said at the outset that we are not going in on the ground.  But if he had the strategic goal of removing Gadhafi from power, the smart thing to do would be to say that that was the goal, and to stress our determination to achieve it.

“Instead, he has signaled to the Libyan people that if the going gets hard, America won't escalate its efforts and will therefore settle for a more modest goal than ousting Gadhafi.   Even if President Obama has no intention of sending in ground forces, it doesn’t serve U.S. purposes to announce that because it sends a negative message to Libyan people, whom we are trying to motivate.

“But - and here is the key point - President Obama is less interested in motivating Libyans to overthrow Gadhafi than in establishing the principle of constrained American action.

“This is why many American commentators have said they lack confidence in the President regarding Libya.

“Now he may turn out to be lucky in Libya. Tomorrow Gadhafi could get a bullet in his head from somebody in Libya. Everything may turn out well. That would be good for America and good for the world. But that would not be the result of our action. It would just be good luck.”
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Option D on March 25, 2011, 11:14:12 AM
his security detial did it
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 25, 2011, 08:15:51 PM
Obama’s U.N. Debacle - The Obama administration’s big hopes of reforming the Human Rights...
NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE ^ | March 25, 2011 | Anne Bayefsky




Obama's U.N. Debacle


The Obama administration's big hopes of reforming the Human Rights Council from within are in shreds.



President Obama’s decision to place the United Nations at the center of his foreign policy took another hit Friday as the U.N. Human Rights Council ended its latest session in Geneva. One of the president’s primary justifications for joining the notorious council shortly after he assumed office was its mandatory five-year review process; if the U.S. was a member, the administration claimed, it could influence this process. The process, which quietly unfolded in back rooms in Geneva over the past six months, has been exposed to be a total fraud, taking the administration’s cover down with it.

Starting last fall, the Obama team was a very active participant in a working group of the council that had been set up to tackle reform. At the end of February, the working group produced a document summarizing its decisions, and on Friday the council passed a resolution adopting that document by consensus — that is, without a vote. Regardless of the fact that every serious recommendation of the United States was rejected, Obama’s diplomats refused to call for a vote on the resolution so that they could vote against it.

They did play a little game intended to fool uninformed listeners by claiming to “dissociate” the administration from the resolution. However, since the resolution has been adopted by consensus, it will proceed unimpeded to the General Assembly, where it will be rubber-stamped. The U.S. could not have stopped the resolution, but an American vote against the measure would have been a major blow to the credibility of the Human Rights Council. It also would have set up the U.S. to leave the council as a logical consequence of the failure to reform it.

The slap in the face to President Obama is painfully clear from a short list of American demands for reform and the council’s responses.

The council has an official, permanent agenda that governs all its meetings and consists of only ten items. One of those items is reserved for condemning Israel, and another is assigned to human rights in the other 191 U.N. member states. This session, for instance, produced six resolutions condemning Israel, one resolution each on four other states, and nothing at all on the remaining 187 countries. The American delegation huffed and puffed that this obvious discrimination — which characterizes every meeting of the council — must come to an end, and proposed that the two agenda items be rolled into one. The proposal was rejected.

The American delegation proposed creating easier trigger mechanisms for convening special sessions on specific countries when serious human-rights concerns arise. The proposal was rejected.

The American delegation proposed abolishing the council’s make-work “Advisory Committee.” It is currently populated by such human-rights luminaries as former Sandinista leader and suspended priest Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann. (Brockmann once served as president of the U.N. General Assembly and is best remembered for a series of anti-Semitic outbursts and for coming down off his podium to hug Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.) The proposal was rejected.

The American delegation proposed making public pre-screened complaints of gross and systematic violations of human rights that are received by the council. Specific cases, which have poured into the U.N. for over half a century from poor souls around the world, have never been revealed. The proposal was rejected.

The American delegation proposed expanding the time allocated to discussions of abuses in specific countries. The proposal was rejected.

The American delegation proposed that states running for a seat on the council should engage in a public dialogue with General Assembly members on their human-rights record, as measured by specific criteria. The proposal was rejected.

In all, the U.N. reports that 42 proposals were put forward by the American delegation orally and in writing. Only three were accepted. Those three addressed minutiae. For instance, the Obama team proposed allowing all states that wish to speak during the council’s “universal periodic review” (UPR) to be permitted to do so. The UPR is the procedure in which the council considers the human-rights record of every state, but the council tightly controls the time spent on each country. Council members are allotted three minutes’ and non-members two minutes’ worth of comments, regardless of the scope of the issues. Since the total time is fixed, would-be commentators are frequently silenced by ending up too low on the speakers’ list. The “reform” that was proposed and accepted? Keep the total time the same and reduce the allotted time per speaker. Thirty-second critiques of human-rights abuses, here we come.

Instead of admitting their complete inability to accomplish their mission of reforming the council, however, Obama’s representatives are scrambling to sweep the disaster under the rug. Admitting their error would no doubt strike at the heart of the president’s U.N. chorus line.

On March 31, 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and U.N. ambassador Susan Rice announced that the U.S. would seek to join the council “because we believe that working from within, we can make the Council a more effective forum,” and because “the Council . . . is scheduled to undergo a formal review of its structure and procedures in 2011, which will offer a significant opportunity for Council reform.” In a New York Times op-ed on Sept. 13, 2010, Eileen Donahoe — the United States’ ambassador to the council — called the review “a serious self-reflection exercise” and claimed that “if we do not sit at the table with others and do the work necessary to influence the process, U.S. values and priorities will not be reflected in the outcome.”

Now we know there was no “serious self-reflection.” U.S. values and priorities have not been reflected in the outcome. The reform opportunity is in shreds.

The result leaves the administration with two choices. Choice number one: Admit the fiasco. Refuse to lend legitimacy to a highly discriminatory agency designed to help members such as Saudi Arabia, China, and Cuba conceal their own abuses. And get out. Choice number two: Allow a bogus “reform” to be adopted by consensus, and stay put.

President Obama has evidently decided to take the second course, sending one more signal about how little he values Israel and how few are the number of human-rights victims around the world that stand any chance of capturing his attention.

— Anne Bayefsky is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, director of the Touro College Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust, and the editor of www.EYEontheUN.org.


Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 26, 2011, 07:42:52 AM
Obama’s Monetary Policy: Stick It to the Middle Class
Pajamas Media ^ | March 26, 2011 | Kyle- Anne Shiver


________________________ ________________________ ______________


Inflated federal egos drive real-world inflation ever higher.

 It’s a rare day when I, a self-confessed macroeconomics ninny, dare to write about anything so weighty as federal monetary policy. My husband of four decades loves to joke that I know nothing about money except how to spend it. (Ha. Ha.)

He fails to mention that I have been the chief financial officer of my household budget for 41 years now — that I have managed to put wholesome, safe meals on our family’s table through some of the most treacherous-to-the-middle-class periods of inflation in American history. Or that I take only cash to purchase nearly 100 items every single week and am never off my cost estimate by more than a few dollars at checkout. These are feats of which I am quite proud. In the process of weekly grocery shopping over four decades, I have become an expert at spotting inflation before my financial-guru husband has the slightest clue what’s around the bend.


I’ve been sounding the hyperinflation alarm for more than a year — to rolling eyes and shrugs, and the all-too-familiar “you just want a raise” discounting tactic. So when I read this little piece in the Wall Street Journal last week, I would have been downright giddy at the validation, if I weren’t so utterly depressed by the reality.

It seems that one heck of a prestigious dude — William Dudley, president of the New York Federal Reserve — decided to have a little tête-à-tête with local consumers, no doubt sensing a need to bolster their confidence in the Fed’s more-fishy-by-the-hour monetary policy.


Mr. Dudley gave a nice PR speech highlighting “improvements” in the economy and the Fed’s “successes.” Then came the questions. One guy had the audacity to hope he could make some sense out of the government’s insistence that inflation remains minimal despite the largest monthly increase in food costs in 36 years — and gas spiking so much that soon the cost of getting to work may exceed one’s wages. Dudley made use of a skill they must have taught him at Berkeley, proceeding to ram his Goldman Sachs resume, along with his Gucci loafer, right through his front teeth:

“Today you can buy an iPad 2 that costs the same as an iPad 1 that is twice as powerful,” he replied. “You have to look at the prices of all things.”

To which one truly great American responded: “I can’t eat an iPad.” He might as well have added, “I can’t drive an iPad to work either.” And at the rate grocery and gas prices are rising, by the end of this year, I couldn’t afford that iPad’s monthly service fee even if I had enough discretionary income to purchase the little piece of dazzling technology in the first place.

If you ask me, Ms. typical American middle-class consumer, I would have to say that Mr. Dudley’s current yearly salary of $410,000 in taxpayer money is just a tad inflated as well. That $410,000 of our money is mere chicken-feed to a man of Mr. Dudley’s stature, I’m told. When he was at Goldman Sachs, he was pulling in millions every year. I’m sure he was worth every penny. If inflation really were down in the 2% range on the genuine necessities of life for us little people, then I wouldn’t begrudge the guy his half-million in wages and benefits.


But Dudley’s salary, along with Geithner’s and Bernanke’s and even Obama’s, are all based on lying statistics that mean nothing in the real world where inflation is actually rampant.

ObamaCare alone has caused a nearly 40% hike in insurance premiums for individual policies such as the one my self-employed husband and I have. The Democrats’ save-the-deadbeats credit card law caused an immediate rise in interest rates for us always-pay-on-time consumers to cover the cost of the mandated write-offs.

Right here, in the real world, Obama’s monetary policy is starting to look like it has a bottom line screw-the-middle-class philosophy.

For the president’s information, the most dreaded word in every middle-class household’s budget confab is — all together now — INFLATION. And just because a few golden-boy hotshots in the jet set can somehow ignore the cost of groceries and gas when they do their little on-paper tallies of deceptive figuring does not mean that a real family can get by without taking these vital things into account.

When inflation drives up the cost of food to fuel the little human bodies sitting around the dinner table every night, then the family must get the money from somewhere else in the budget. Otherwise children go hungry. We don’t have money-printing presses in our living rooms.


When inflation drives up the cost of gas — and gas is necessary to get to work and school and all the other places we must go — then that extra money has to come from somewhere else. The yearly vacation, which has been cut down to a couple of days close by, has to go entirely. Or that summer camp we were planning to send the kids to is out. Or the braces will have to go on the credit card whose interest is way above “prime rate.” There isn’t a middle-class family in this entire country who does not live in dread of the I-word.

Inflation stalks like a thief in the night, filling the nightmares of homemakers and breadwinners alike.

Inflation is the invisible beast that steals the long-awaited raise before it has a chance to hit the bank account.

Inflation is the disease that ravages the arduously saved dollars of decades.

Inflation is the bandit that steals from the poor while hardly ever even noticed by the likes of the politicians who guilefully prod its crime spree.

Inflation is the monster who gobbles up the goodies of responsible citizens no matter their station.

So, when Obama and Bernanke and all the Fed gurus like Mr. Dudley put their little heads together and formulate a monetary policy, it would really be nice if they remembered — just once — that while the iPads and the Guccis and the golf clubs they love so much are simply wonderful if they cost a little less, the rest of us do have to worry about the rising cost of our groceries and our gas.


In our world, the necessities of life don’t get paid for with other people’s money.

We in the middle class pay the most taxes and fuel the government engine.

It would be nice if we weren’t told to eat our iPads when we notice that our government has set out to deflate the middle class.

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Option D on March 26, 2011, 07:57:17 AM
HIS SECURITY DID IT RIGHT?
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 26, 2011, 08:01:44 AM
HIS SECURITY DID IT RIGHT?


Yes.  JBT's were called out on granny.


BTW - you have not been able to dispute one article in this entire thread.   Wonder why?   
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Option D on March 26, 2011, 08:27:08 AM

Yes.  JBT's were called out on granny.


BTW - you have not been able to dispute one article in this entire thread.   Wonder why?   


His security called swat on Grannies?

Is that a true statement from you?
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 26, 2011, 08:30:28 AM

His security called swat on Grannies?

Is that a true statement from you?

Yes - I posted the video. 


Were those girl scouts with the batons, helmets, and riot gear? 


 
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Option D on March 26, 2011, 08:35:34 AM
Yes - I posted the video. 


Were those girl scouts with the batons, helmets, and riot gear? 


 

And you have it on solid proof that it was Obamas Security...who worked for the whitehouse security team what called the SWAT team?.. is that what you are assessing?
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 26, 2011, 08:36:27 AM
And you have it on solid proof that it was Obamas Security...who worked for the whitehouse security team what called the SWAT team?.. is that what you are assessing?

did you watch the video?  Were those neighborhood watch called out on granny? 
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Option D on March 26, 2011, 08:38:19 AM
did you watch the video?  Were those neighborhood watch called out on granny? 


So you are saying that was the SWAT team?
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 26, 2011, 08:41:13 AM

So you are saying that was the SWAT team?


No, it was Gomer Pyle and officer Krupke.   ::)  ::)

Quik question Trump or obama - who you votin for?       
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Option D on March 26, 2011, 08:43:32 AM
Dude... all of the dumb ass comparisons trying to divert the attention away from your lie is old..

and i cant debate until you fess up to fabricating this and jumping the gun..
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 26, 2011, 08:45:03 AM
Obama's security detail coordinated with the local people to call out swat and riot, and jack boots on granny.  I posted the video.   did that look like Matlock to you?   
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Option D on March 26, 2011, 08:47:33 AM
Now.. is it
A. Obama called the SWAT TEAM on grandmothers

or

B. Local police who were dressed in riot gear, were ordered by that towns Commanding officer (not by obama or his "security detail"  ::) to make room for the presidents motorcade that was stopped and posed a security threat..



 and if you sit here and act like there isnt a threat to a stopped motorcade ill have to ask OZMO to block you from the political board
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Option D on March 26, 2011, 08:49:05 AM
Obama's security detail coordinated with the local people to call out swat and riot, and jack boots on granny.  I posted the video.   did that look like Matlock to you?   


So you are sticking with the swat story...
and "coordinated with" does that mean you have proof his security detail told someone to call the swat team.. and for the record it was proven by that town head of police that there werent any swat.. ...

any more?...lol this is fun
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 26, 2011, 08:53:05 AM

So you are sticking with the swat story...
and "coordinated with" does that mean you have proof his security detail told someone to call the swat team.. and for the record it was proven by that town head of police that there werent any swat.. ...

any more?...lol this is fun

No, it was the local girls' club selling lemonade in those helmets, riot gear, and billy clubs in hand. 

BY - this thread is viral on FR as well, so thanks for the post count increasing.     
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Option D on March 26, 2011, 08:59:35 AM
No, it was the local girls' club selling lemonade in those helmets, riot gear, and billy clubs in hand. 

BY - this thread is viral on FR as well, so thanks for the post count increasing.     

so because you dont want to look bad youll keep posting these sarcastic responses.. trying to stop where you are.. dont wanna dig a deeper hole..

Now was it The SWAT team or Local officers in riot gear?
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 26, 2011, 09:06:09 AM
so because you dont want to look bad youll keep posting these sarcastic responses.. trying to stop where you are.. dont wanna dig a deeper hole..

Now was it The SWAT team or Local officers in riot gear?

Who do you think asked for the jack boots out there to protect osama from the grannies?


Bro - dont you at all feel remotely embarressed yet at the disgusting fraud you and your ideological butt buddies gave us with Obama?   
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Option D on March 26, 2011, 09:13:40 AM
Who do you think asked for the jack boots out there to protect osama from the grannies?


Bro - dont you at all feel remotely embarressed yet at the disgusting fraud you and your ideological butt buddies gave us with Obama?   
so you dont think a stopped motorcade poses a threat to the president?
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 26, 2011, 09:18:52 AM
so you dont think a stopped motorcade poses a threat to the president?

I think obama/osama poses a far more threat to this nation at this point than any motorcade, even if it were filled with mb/al qeada, ms-13/ crips, bloods, hells angels, mongols, arayan brotherhood, arayan nation, vatos loco, mexican mafia, etc.

He is the tip of the spear for every anti-american force in the world at this point.

Thank you for supporting him.  Your contribution to our collapse is noted. 

     
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Option D on March 26, 2011, 09:26:54 AM
I think obama/osama poses a far more threat to this nation at this point than any motorcade, even if it were filled with mb/al qeada, ms-13/ crips, bloods, hells angels, mongols, arayan brotherhood, arayan nation, vatos loco, mexican mafia, etc.

He is the tip of the spear for every anti-american force in the world at this point.

Thank you for supporting him.  Your contribution to our collapse is noted. 

     

so... you are going to try to argue this down to mush adding your editorial twist and opinion to a question asked about the facts of the call.. well if thats how you operate...


i just come from different stock.. where proof and lack of sensationalism rule the day.. not the pre teen like behavior you display on a daily basis..  ::)
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 26, 2011, 09:30:12 AM
so... you are going to try to argue this down to mush adding your editorial twist and opinion to a question asked about the facts of the call.. well if thats how you operate...


i just come from different stock.. where proof and lack of sensationalism rule the day.. not the pre teen like behavior you display on a daily basis..  ::)

I posted the video - it speaks for itself.

Thank you for supporting the collapse of the nation.     
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Option D on March 26, 2011, 08:02:27 PM
I posted the video - it speaks for itself.

Thank you for supporting the collapse of the nation.     
it dosent...as i can dress up in a police outfit and it dont make me a policeman

police can dress up in riot gear.. dont make them SWAT

and as you stated his securituy detail called sway.. but really the police chief told police in riot gear to march.. there was no swat as Quincy Ill dosent have a swat.
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 26, 2011, 09:15:54 PM
Obama goes deep, sets new record
03/25/2011, 10:50 pm
Comment on this story

Thomas Sowell


Random thoughts on the passing scene:

They say that records are made to be broken. President George W. Bush set a record by adding $3.2 trillion to the national debt over the course of his eight years in office. But Barack Obama has already beaten that record with $4.4 trillion in just his first three years in office.

People who thoughtlessly give money to panhandlers on the street seem not to realize that this is making installment payments on the degeneration of America.

Don't mention "municipal golf courses" to me. It sends my blood pressure up through the roof. What earthly excuse is there for spending the taxpayers' money subsidizing a golf course? Politicians can't even invoke "the poor," as they do when trying to justify other government boondoggles.

The vocabulary of the political left is fascinating. For example, it is considered to be "materialistic" and "greedy" to want to keep what you have earned. But it is "idealistic" to want to take away what someone else has earned and spend it for your own political benefit or to feel good about yourself.

Lou Gehrig was probably the greatest clutch hitter of all time. Although his career was cut short by the disease that bears his name, in seven of his 14 full seasons he had over 150 runs batted in. (Babe Ruth was second with five seasons.) And Gehrig still holds the career record for home runs with the bases loaded.

Economists are often asked to predict what the economy is going to do. But economic predictions require predicting what politicians are going to do-- and nothing is more unpredictable.

An e-mail from a perceptive reader points out that, although Congressional "earmarks" represent a very small part of federal spending, they can be used as bribes to buy the votes of members of Congress on bills involving the spending of vastly larger sums of the taxpayers' money.

When political commentators from the Fox News Channel had books whose sales would normally make the New York Times' non-fiction best-seller list, the New York Times changed the rules for putting books on that list. Thus best-selling political books by Mike Huckabee and Dick Morris appeared last Sunday on a more obscure list of miscellaneous personal advice and how-to books, such as "Weight Watchers New Complete Cookbook."

When the Federal Reserve cites statistics to claim that there is not much evidence of inflation, we need to keep in mind that the statistics they rely on exclude food and energy prices. The cost of living is no sweat if you can do without electricity and food.

Even if it could be proved that judges who are making rulings that go counter to the written law produce better results in those particular cases than following the letter of the law would have, that does not make society better off. When laws become unreliable and judges unpredictable, lawsuits become a bonanza for charlatans, who can force honest people to settle out of court, for fear of what some judge might do.

The mainstream media never expressed half the outrage about Mao Zedong as they did about Ronald Reagan. Yet, when it came to killing millions of innocent civilians, even Hitler was an amateur compared to Mao.

The Obama administration seems to be following what might be called "the Detroit pattern" -- increasing taxes, harassing businesses, and pandering to unions. In the short run, it got mayors re-elected. In the long-run, it reduced Detroit from a thriving city to an economic disaster area, whose population was cut in half, as its most productive citizens fled.

Safety advocates who say that we shouldn't take chances, but should ban things that might be unsafe, don't seem to understand that if we banned every food to which somebody had an allergy we could all starve to death.

The vile people who picket the funerals of American soldiers killed in action are far away enough from the mourners not to be heard. It is media attention that magnifies their sick message.

Intolerance may not promote progress but it can promote survival. An intolerant Islamic world may outlast the Western world that seems ready to tolerate anything, including the undermining of its own fundamental values and threats to its continued existence.

THOMAS SOWELL is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford (Calif.) University. His website is www.tsowell.com.


 
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 26, 2011, 09:42:05 PM
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 27, 2011, 06:03:23 AM
$5B Hollywood Handout Bankrupting Obamacare
Thursday, 24 Mar 2011 05:51 PM

By Chris Gonsalves



http://www.newsmax.com/InsideCover/health-care-law-unions/2011/03/24/id/390680?s=al




$5 billion handout to states, big corporations, and Hollywood unions to subsidize health insurance for early retirees is threatening to bankrupt a major part of the year-old healthcare reform law, according to staffers of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

A small percentage of the organizations signed up for the plan has already drained more than $500 million from the program’s coffers.

Like many provisions in Obamacare, the “Early Retiree Reinsurance Program” has largely escaped public scrutiny and congressional oversight. The program provides subsidies to employers and unions to cover between $15,000 and $90,000 of the healthcare costs for early retirees.

The ERRP program was designed primarily to help early retirees over age 55, along with their spouses and dependents, who are not eligible for Medicare.

Nearly 5,500 organizations have been approved to participate in the program. Among the 253 participants that received more than $535 million in ERRP funding last year were Hollywood unions such as the Screen Actors’ Guild, and large corporations like Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and Sara Lee.

The lion’s share of ERRP reimbursements went to state governments, followed by non-profits, corporations, unions, and religious organizations, the report says.

Over one-third of the of the money spent in 2010, some $182 million, went to just five government entities: California Public Employees’
Retirement System — $57.8 million; State of New Jersey Treasury Department, Pension Accounting Services — $38.6 million; Georgia Department of Community Health, State Health Benefit Plan — $35 million; Commonwealth of Kentucky — $29.7 million; and Employees Retirement System of Texas — $20,982,299.

The retiree reinsurance money was supposed to last until 2014. The program received $5 billion — the same amount provided for high-risk coverage pools for people with pre-existing conditions. But with 10 percent of the allocated funds already spent on less than 5 percent of program participants in just a few months, the fund will likely run dry by early next year, according to Richard Popper, Director of the Office of Insurance Programs at the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight.

“The Early Retiree Reinsurance Program is helping to control healthcare costs and protect coverage for early retirees and their families,” says HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. “This program is providing critical financial relief to help states, private employers and other organizations preserve access to affordable health coverage for millions of Americans.”

The House staffers report concluded differently, however.

“With the public debate focused squarely on the spiraling costs of the federal budget, and this administration’s lackluster efforts to create job growth, the committee staff was surprised to learn that the healthcare law would subsidize the early retirees of corporate America, Hollywood, state, county and municipal employees, as well as unions,” the Congressional staffers wrote.

“It is inappropriate that a bill sold to the American people as healthcare legislation would contain a sweetheart deal for unions and Hollywood, and it is grossly inefficient that in troubling economic times, the American taxpayer would be asked to subsidize the healthcare costs of massive corporations.”


© Newsmax. All rights reserved.


Read more on Newsmax.com: $5B Hollywood Handout Bankrupting Obamacare
Important: Do You Support Pres. Obama's Re-Election? Vote Here Now!
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Option D on March 27, 2011, 08:29:04 AM
it dosent...as i can dress up in a police outfit and it dont make me a policeman

police can dress up in riot gear.. dont make them SWAT

and as you stated his securituy detail called sway.. but really the police chief told police in riot gear to march.. there was no swat as Quincy Ill dosent have a swat.
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 27, 2011, 06:46:20 PM

 The Obama gas tax
By Troy Senik   10:54 AM 03/25/2011
 



If you’ve been spending much time at the gas pump lately, chances are you’ve been spending a lot less time everywhere else. With fuel costs soaring, everyday Americans are being forced to cut back on even routine car trips to avoid breaking the bank. In the last month alone, average gas prices have gone up nearly fifty cents per gallon. And because the cost of fuel is critical to supplying a wide array of goods and services, we’ll soon see prices skyrocketing everywhere.

While this trend appears to have gotten worse amid the turmoil in the Middle East — including the supply interruption in Libya — it has been a steadily rising pattern since even before the Middle East uprisings. In fact, gas prices are up 67 percent since President Obama took office a little more than two years ago. Lest you think this analysis one-sided, during the same period in President Bush’s tenure gas prices increased by only seven percent.

Yet that doesn’t seem to bother President Obama much. Earlier this month, he said that we can’t drill our way out of our energy problems. That is like suggesting you can’t medicate yourself out of an illness.

Opening up America’s vast domestic resources is literally the only realistic way to ease the pressure. It can lower prices at the pump, curb our reliance on foreign energy producers, and create new jobs right here on our soil. In short, it can do all the things that alternative energy claims to do but simply cannot despite billions of taxpayer dollars.

Yet President Obama has blocked energy exploration at every turn. For his secretary of the interior, he chose former Colorado Senator Ken Salazar, a man who once said that he wouldn’t want more domestic oil production opened up even if gas prices hit $10 a gallon. Then, in the wake of last year’s Gulf oil spill, the administration imposed a moratorium on deepwater drilling — a freeze that is effectively still in place today.

In addition to pushing up unemployment rates in the Gulf, these policies are keeping 97 percent of America’s offshore oil and gas off limits. To add insult to injury, President Obama recently told an audience in the newly oil-rich nation of Brazil, “We want to help you with the technology and support to develop these oil reserves safely. And when you’re ready to start selling, we want to be one of your best customers.” Don’t hold your breath for an economic recovery as long as the president of the United States is willing to do more investing in foreign economies than he is here at home.

If the president wants to complain about the effects gas prices are having on his popularity, he has only himself to blame. He has it in his power to push prices downward — and keep them down — with new energy exploration. Until he is willing to make that change, we’ll consider the higher prices at the pump the “Obama gas tax.”

Troy Senik is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Individual Freedom (www.cfif.org).


Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/03/25/the-obama-gas-tax/#ixzz1Hr2TB9Y8

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Option D on March 28, 2011, 12:05:12 AM
it dosent...as i can dress up in a police outfit and it dont make me a policeman

police can dress up in riot gear.. dont make them SWAT

and as you stated his securituy detail called sway.. but really the police chief told police in riot gear to march.. there was no swat as Quincy Ill dosent have a swat.
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 28, 2011, 10:42:03 AM
While Slowing BP Oil Spill, Administration Slowed Flow Of Information Too, Claims Coast Guard Report
By Mike Levine


Published March 28, 2011 | FoxNews.com

 

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration failed to set up an "effective" communications system during last year's BP oil spill and threatened its own credibility by "severely restricting" the release of "timely, accurate information," according to a newly released report commissioned by the U.S. Coast Guard.

Quietly posted on the Coast Guard's website two weeks ago, the report offers the first major assessment of the federal government's communications efforts during the worst oil spill in U.S. history.

"Several layers of review and approval by the White House and (Department of Homeland Security) prevented timely and effective crisis communications and hindered the Coast Guard's ability to ... (keep) stakeholders informed about the status of the response," the report reads, adding that "accurate and timely messaging from the response organization improves transparency with the public."

Information centers in Houma, La., and Mobile, Ala. -- established by the Coast Guard in accordance with pre-set plans for major disasters -- were "effectively muted," the report reads.

Photographs could not be released without Washington's blessing, and Coast Guard officials leading efforts on the ground "were not authorized to conduct media interviews, hold press conferences or send press releases without prior approval from DHS," according to the report.

Asked about the report, sources with knowledge of White House and DHS involvement went even further, saying the administration "looked at this as a political problem, not an operational problem." After all, one source said, the 2010 midterm elections were drawing closer as the oil spill crisis deepened, and the White House "went into campaign mode."

An administration official, however, strongly disputed that contention, saying involvement from the White House and DHS in Washington was "a necessary step" after what began as a relatively routine Coast Guard response became a "unique and unprecedented" government-wide effort. More than 40,000 people took part in the response.

"Calls were coming in -- both in Washington and in the Gulf region -- and it was imperative given all the moving pieces that information remain consistent," the official said. "Throughout the course of the spill, we executed a successful effort to consolidate the release of information among 17 federal agencies."

The official noted that DHS appointed outgoing Coast Guard Commandant Thad Allen to be the National Incident Commander, effectively the government's "principal spokesman." The report described Allen as a "credible spokesman" who "proved to be an effective means of communicating a unified message to the public."

In addition, the official said, the administration engaged in a "robust" effort to keep the public informed, including daily briefings by Allen and daily "fact sheets" issued to the press and posted online.

At the same time, the report reads that the Coast Guard lacked "enough senior personnel with the requisite crisis communications training and/or experience to effectively manage the public affairs campaign for an incident of this magnitude," and those who had the requisite training or experience "were quickly overwhelmed by the tremendous demand for information."

Early on, senior Coast Guard officials made public missteps. In the days after the explosion ripped through the Deepwater Horizon in April 2010, Rear Adm. Mary Landry, then the head of the response effort in the Gulf region, told reporters, "We do not see a major spill emanating from this incident."

In a statement to Fox News, a Coast Guard spokesman said the newly released report "does not reflect the views of the Coast Guard," but one of the sources with knowledge of White House involvement said it "depends on who you talk to." Essentially, the source said, the oil spill response created "a clash of cultures," with operational needs scraping against political ones.

Nevertheless, the report states the communications system put in place was a departure from prior practice, with White House and DHS officials in Washington becoming gatekeepers to information about developments in the Gulf Coast.

"If any level of the response organization is restricted from interacting with the media and the public in any way, it has the potential to damage the credibility of the Federal Government and erode public trust," the report reads.

Information about the incident was "channeled up" to the Unified Area Command, the regional hub of the response effort, where it "was packaged and released after review and approval" from the DHS public affairs office in Washington, the report reads. At the time, some of the most senior Coast Guard officials expressed frustration with the process, a source said.

"The additional handling and approval process for releases of information often prevented the response organization from providing real-time information," according to the report. "Because the Coast Guard was severely restricted in its ability to distribute timely, accurate information, it was perceived by some that the Federal Government was purposely withholding information pertaining to the incident from the American public."

The administration official, however, insisted such a process is routine in federal government, saying agencies "do run things up the chain, and they come back down" every day. In addition, the source who said the White House "looked at this as a political problem, not an operational problem" noted the Bush administration looked through a similar prism and likewise took control of the message during Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

"Negative press equals lost votes," the source said. "It's not a political party thing, it's about political operatives and what's in their comfort zone."

The newly released report offers no specific cases of delayed or restricted information, and one source said he was not aware of any substantive information or photograph ultimately prevented from being released. But, the source said, it would take up to eight hours for DHS or the White House to approve a photograph's release. Another source involved with the oil spill response said he knew of at least one press release that was not immediately sent out due to fears it could upset environmental activists.

In one instance, a Coast Guard official was directed to release information that -- unbeknownst to him -- was at best misleading, according to two sources. The information related to whether the White House was controlling the oil spill message.

In May 2010, amid media concerns that access to impacted areas was being restricted, a Coast Guard public affairs official told The Associated Press that the White House had to sign off on all requests for tours of the spill zone. In response, the White House referred questions to Coast Guard Lt. Commander Rob Wyman who told The Associated Press that the official's description of the process was incorrect and that all requests from media were "decided on by the command center in Robert, La."

Those assertions contradict the findings of the newly released report, and administration officials did not deny that the official's initial assessment was correct after all. An e-mail to Wyman Sunday seeking comment was not returned.

The administration official, meanwhile, dismissed the report, which offers no direct attribution for its statements, as little more than "an opinion piece." Only six pages of the 167 pages address the issue of "external communications," with the rest of the report analyzing other aspects of the response like other recent reports have.

"Compared to the meticulously researched and sourced Oil Spill Commission Report (released Wednesday), this one is sufficiently lacking in both and, as such, is being received accordingly," the official said.

The official said the report "is just one of many reports that have and will continue to inform the Coast Guard's efforts to prepare for and respond to a catastrophic oil spill."

The report, officially dubbed an "Incident Specific Preparedness Review," was authored by an 11-member team of representatives from inside and outside government. Nearly 100 people were interviewed by the team, more than a third of them current or former Coast Guard officials. Four DHS officials and two White House officials were interviewed. The report was finalized in January.

Perhaps ironically, some within the Coast Guard wanted to issue a press release two weeks ago announcing the report's release, but those efforts were quashed.

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Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Option D on March 28, 2011, 10:50:43 AM
it dosent...as i can dress up in a police outfit and it dont make me a policeman

police can dress up in riot gear.. dont make them SWAT

and as you stated his securituy detail called sway.. but really the police chief told police in riot gear to march.. there was no swat as Quincy Ill dosent have a swat.
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 28, 2011, 12:21:24 PM
CBO: Obama Underestimates Deficit by $2.3 Trillion !!
Fiscal Times ^ | 03/28/2011 | James C. Cooper




Obama’s budget credibility took a hit from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office this month, when CBO said the administration’s 2012 budget proposal will not deliver the deficit improvement in the coming decade that it promised.

CBO’s analysis said deficits through 2021 would total $2.3 trillion more than those projected in the budget document prepared by the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Instead of falling to 3 percent of GDP by 2017 and remaining near that level through 2021, CBO analysts say the deficit would never go below 4.1 percent of GDP and would begin to rise toward the end of the period, hitting 4.9 percent in 2021.

The analysis will add fuel to the Republican’s fire as the Washington budget battle heads down to the wire — again. In lieu of an official budget, the latest in a series of temporary spending bills that have kept the government operating will expire on Apr. 8. President Obama will have to negotiate a deal with House Republicans who want $61 billion in spending cuts in order to keep the government running until the end of the current fiscal year on Sept. 30. Still, Obama’s bigger challenge will be the hard choices facing the 2012 budget and new pressure to reduce future deficits.




The projected failure to reach 3 percent of GDP is important. At that level the so-called “primary budget,” which excludes interest payments, is in balance. A deficit maintained at that level typically means that debt held by the public is not growing any faster than GDP. The administration’s numbers show public debt stabilizing at about 77 percent of GDP, but CBO projects the White House’s proposals would double the debt by 2021, causing a steady rise to a hefty 87 percent of GDP, up from 62 percent in 2010.

CBO’s projections differ from those of the OMB for two broad reasons. First, there are differences in the underlying forecasts of what would happen without any of the proposals in Obama’s 2012 budget; that is, if current policy was unchanged for the next 10 years. That difference accounts for some $1.3 trillion of the $2.3 trillion disparity, due in large part to the administration’s more upbeat forecast for economic growth. The White House sees growth averaging 3.9 percent per year over the next five years vs. CBO’s 3.3 percent. The other $1 trillion reflects differing estimates of the cost of new programs and savings on existing programs.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) recently issued a quid pro quo linking GOP support for raising the $14.3 billion statutory ceiling on federal debt to Obama’s agreement to long-term spending cuts that would address the unsustainable path of fiscal policy. The Treasury Dept. says the debt limit will be reached between Apr. 15 and May 31. Economists have warned that market reaction to hitting that ceiling could harm the economy, if holders of U.S. Treasury securities demand higher yields out of uncertainty over the government’s ability to function and meet its obligations.

If McConnell and the GOP are able to bring Obama into a discussion of long-term deficit reduction, the national debate over taxes and entitlement programs will ratchet up several notches. “The policy changes that are needed will significantly affect popular programs or people’s taxes or both,” said CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf at a policy conference in early March. On the revenue side, taxes on individual income and social insurance account for more than 80 percent of all revenues. As for spending, annually funded discretionary programs outside of defense are only 19 percent of all outlays and cannot alone solve the problem, which means mandatory entitlement programs will have to be a part of any solution.

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 28, 2011, 03:09:10 PM
Obama on Illegal Aliens to Illegal Alien: We Don’t Want to Deport Them; 'We Want Them To Succeed’
CNSNews ^




Obama on Illegal Aliens to Illegal Alien: We Don’t Want to Deport Them; 'We Want Them To Succeed’ Monday, March 28, 2011 By Edwin Mora

(CNSNews.com) -- When questioned by an illegal alien student today who showed him a deportation letter, President Barack Obama said he did not want to deport illegal alien students like the one who questioned him, he wanted them to succeed.

The exchange came during a town hall event sponsored by the Spanish-language television network Univision at a Washington, D.C., school. An illegal alien student, who appeared via Skype, asked: “My question for the president is, why [is the government] saying that deportations have stopped or the detention of many students like me, why is it that we are still receiving deportation letters like this one?”

Obama answered, “We have redesigned our enforcement practices under the law to make sure that we’re focusing primarily on criminals, and so our deportation of criminals are up about 70 percent. Our deportation of non-criminals are down, and that’s because we want to focus our resources on those folks who are destructive to the community.

“And for a young person like that young woman that we just spoke to who’s going to school, doing all the right things, we want them to succeed," Obama said.


(Excerpt) Read more at www.cnsnews.com



________________________ ________________________ ______


since when does sucking up tax dollars and ommitting ID fraud constitute doing the right thing?   
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Fury on March 28, 2011, 03:29:13 PM
Obama on Illegal Aliens to Illegal Alien: We Don’t Want to Deport Them; 'We Want Them To Succeed’
CNSNews ^




Obama on Illegal Aliens to Illegal Alien: We Don’t Want to Deport Them; 'We Want Them To Succeed’ Monday, March 28, 2011 By Edwin Mora

(CNSNews.com) -- When questioned by an illegal alien student today who showed him a deportation letter, President Barack Obama said he did not want to deport illegal alien students like the one who questioned him, he wanted them to succeed.

The exchange came during a town hall event sponsored by the Spanish-language television network Univision at a Washington, D.C., school. An illegal alien student, who appeared via Skype, asked: “My question for the president is, why [is the government] saying that deportations have stopped or the detention of many students like me, why is it that we are still receiving deportation letters like this one?”

Obama answered, “We have redesigned our enforcement practices under the law to make sure that we’re focusing primarily on criminals, and so our deportation of criminals are up about 70 percent. Our deportation of non-criminals are down, and that’s because we want to focus our resources on those folks who are destructive to the community.

“And for a young person like that young woman that we just spoke to who’s going to school, doing all the right things, we want them to succeed," Obama said.


(Excerpt) Read more at www.cnsnews.com



________________________ ________________________ ______


since when does sucking up tax dollars and ommitting ID fraud constitute doing the right thing?   





Shocker: Obama Consulted SEIU Official Caught on Tape Stating Amnesty Meant to Ensure “Progressive” Rule

(Aaron Klein) — President Obama once boasted of consulting a radical on immigration issues who later admitted that granting citizenship to millions of illegal aliens would expand the “progressive” electorate and help ensure a “progressive” governing coalition for the long term.

A widely circulated video clip of Obama making a campaign stop at an event for the Service Employees International Union, or SEIU, shows the then-candidate telling the nation’s second-largest union, “Your agenda has been my agenda in the Senate.”

While the video received play during the 2008 presidential election campaign, there is one section that may warrant renewed scrutiny in light of a separate, second video that recently surfaced involving the individual being referenced by Obama.

Obama boasts to the SEIU about how he consulted the group’s officials while he was in the Senate.

“Before immigration debates took place in Washington, I talked with Eliseo Media and SEIU members,” Obama said.

Medina is SEIU’s international executive vice-president.

In February 2010, WND posted video of Medina stating that a bill to document an estimated 12 million illegal aliens could help ensure “progressive” rule.

“We reform the immigration laws, it puts 12 million people on the path to citizenship and eventually voters,” stated Medina.

Medina was speaking at a June 2009 Washington conference for the liberal America’s Future Now!

Medina said that during the presidential election in November 2008, Latinos and immigrants “voted overwhelmingly for progressive candidates. Barack Obama got two out of every three voters that showed up.

“Can you imagine if we have, even the same ratio, two out of three? Can you imagine 8 million new voters who care about our issues and will be voting? We will be creating a governing coalition for the long term, not just for an election cycle.”

http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=279141
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 29, 2011, 05:15:16 AM
New Rules Would Label Millions of American Workers as Disabled
By Shannon Bream

Published March 28, 2011 | FoxNews.com


 

Millions of Americans may be disabled and not even know it, according to some legal experts.

That's because sweeping new regulations from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission offer new guidelines on the issue of how to define "disability" under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The ADA, originally passed in 1990 and updated by Congress in 2008, originally defined disability as "a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits a major life activity."

When a worker satisfies the definition, employers must provide reasonable accommodations. For years, employers and employees have clashed over who truly qualifies for the sometimes-costly modifications to workplace duties and schedules. Attorney Condon McGlothlen says the new regulations could have a profound impact on that debate.

"Before, perhaps 40 million people were covered by the ADA. That number will increase significantly," McGlothlen told Fox News. "Some people might even say that a majority of Americans are covered as disabled under the law."

EEOC Commissioner Chai Felblum said the agency worked hard to find compromise between the business and disability communities, and she's optimistic the new regulations provide the right balance. "These are workable guidelines that will help people with disabilities, and it will be workable for employers," Feldblum said.

Although the new regulations cannot classify any condition as a disability per se, there is a list of maladies that will be viewed that way "in virtually all cases." The list includes: autism, diabetes, epilepsy and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Overall, lawyers for employers say the regulations shift the burden of proof in disability claims.

They say that employers will now have to show why a worker doesn't require special accommodations, rather than employees proving that the measures are merited.

"It's going to be very difficult for employers to argue in just about any case that an employee is exaggerating their disability or that the person isn't genuinely disabled," McGlothlen said.

While both sides acknowledge it is only a matter of time until a legal challenge to the regulations is filed, Feldblum believes they will provide courts with plenty of clarity. She's also urging employers to stop focusing on defining disability, and spend more time on accommodations.

"I am hopeful that employers will now move to the next question which is, 'How do we make sure our workplace is welcoming to people with a range of health conditions?'" she told Fox News.

Barring congressional intervention, the new regulations will take effect May 24.

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Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 29, 2011, 05:42:11 AM
Home > News > Government Federal > Emails: Insiders worried over political ‘meddling’
Emails: Insiders worried over political ‘meddling’
By The Associated Press
Posted: 10:24 am Mon, March 28, 2011


http://nydailyrecord.com/blog/2011/03/28/emails-insiders-worried-over-political-meddling






WASHINGTON, D.C. — Insiders at the Homeland Security Department warned for months that senior Obama administration appointees were improperly delaying the releases of government files on politically sensitive topics as sought by citizens, journalists and watchdog groups under the Freedom of Information Act, according to uncensored emails newly obtained by The Associated Press.

The highly unusual political vetting was described as “meddling,” “crazy” and “bananas!” It is the subject of a congressional hearing later this week and an ongoing inquiry by the department’s inspector general.

Concerns came even from the official put in charge of submitting files to the political staff of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano for the secretive reviews. Chief Privacy Officer Mary Ellen Callahan, who was appointed by Napolitano, complained in late 2009 that the vetting process was burdensome and said she wanted to change it.

Callahan is expected to be a central witness during an oversight hearing Thursday by the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee. In emails, she warned that the Homeland Security Department might be sued over delays the political reviews were causing, and she hinted that a reporter might find out about the political scrutiny.

“This level of attention is CRAZY,” Callahan wrote in December 2009 to her then-deputy, Catherine Papoi. Callahan said she hoped someone outside the Obama administration would discover details of the political reviews, possibly by asking for evidence of them under the Freedom of Information Act itself: “I really really want someone to FOIA this whole damn process,” Callahan wrote.

Less than one week after Callahan’s email, on Dec. 21, the AP formally requested the records about the controversial political vetting. The agency ultimately turned over more than 995 pages of emails last summer, after a seven-month fight, and the AP wrote about the program. But the emails were heavily censored under provisions in the Freedom of Information Act allowing the government to withhold passages that describe internal policy-making deliberations.

The newly obtained versions of the same internal emails are not censored. Together with other confidential emails obtained by the AP for the first time, the files reflect deep unease about the reviews plus new concerns about whether Napolitano’s senior political advisers might have hidden embarrassing or sensitive emails that journalists and watchdog groups had requested.

After an admitted al-Qaida operative tried to blow up a commercial airliner flying to Detroit on Christmas 2009, the AP asked for emails sent among Napolitano; her chief of staff, Noah Kroloff; deputy chief of staff Amy Shlossman; and four others. But the number of printed pages that Kroloff and Shlossman turned over to the FOIA unit was much less than what a computer search indicated should have existed, according to emails.

“When (the chief information office) pulled off the emails for these individuals, the page count is much higher, indicating that Shlossman and Kroloff possibly did not retrieve all the responsive emails or opted not to produce all responsive emails,” Papoi wrote in May to Callahan. “I think we have an obligation to compare the hard copy emails to those pulled by the CIO from the individuals’ email accounts to determine why the discrepancy.”

Department spokeswoman Amy Kudwa said Monday that no emails were withheld by Napolitano’s office, and no one complained that emails weren’t turned over that should have been.

“At no point did anyone alert the office of the secretary or the office of the general counsel of concerns that responsive documents had not been submitted for review,” Kudwa said in a statement. “Had any concerns been raised, appropriate steps would have been taken.”

More recently, immigration rights advocates asked the Homeland Security Department for emails that political advisers exchanged with U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement about a controversial enforcement program. Inside the government, the search turned up emails described as “embarrassing, crude exchanges.” But the political advisers never turned over their own embarrassing emails; these were revealed only when the recipients elsewhere in the department provided them.

“Apparently these embarrassing exchanges didn’t get turned over when the (political) front office conducted its search but they did when the ICE employees copied on these exchanges coughed up the responsive records,” the FOIA unit’s associate director, William Holzerland, wrote in January to Papoi.

Papoi responded, “They don’t like to abide by the law or be reminded that they are breaking it.”

Kudwa said Monday that the department’s FOIA unit had never asked Napolitano’s political advisers to search their own emails about the immigration enforcement program.

The congressional investigation into government transparency under President Barack Obama is among the earliest by Republicans since they won control of the House and targets one of the first pledges Obama made after he moved into the White House.

The Freedom of Information Act, the main tool forcing the government to be more transparent, is designed to be insulated from political considerations. Anyone who seeks information through the law is supposed to get it unless disclosure would hurt national security, violate personal privacy or expose confidential decision-making in certain areas. People can request government records without specifying why they want them and are not obligated to provide personal information about themselves other than their name and an address where the records should be sent.

But at the Homeland Security Department, since July 2009, career employees were ordered to provide political staffers with information about the people who asked for records — such as where they lived and whether they were private citizens or reporters — and about the organizations where they worked. If a member of Congress sought such documents, employees were told to specify Democrat or Republican. No one in government was allowed to discuss the political reviews with anyone whose information request was affected by them.

Papoi was replaced earlier this month by her new boss, Delores J. Barber, who took over Papoi’s title as deputy chief FOIA officer and moved into Papoi’s office. The Republican chairman of the House oversight committee, Rep. Darrell Issa of California, said that “appeared to be an act of retaliation,” after Issa identified Papoi as the employee who confidentially complained in March 2010 to the DHS inspector general about the political vetting of requests for government files.

The emails also raise doubts about whether the emails previously released to the AP were properly censored. “The government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed or because of speculative or abstract fears,” Obama said shortly after he took office.

In a statement Sunday, Kudwa said, “Redaction decisions have always been made by FOIA professionals and career legal staff.”

The government censored Callahan’s email that described the “crazy” scrutiny by political advisers. It also censored another email by Holzerland, who told Callahan in September 2009 that the political reviews were “bananas!” Also censored were complaints by Papoi, the former deputy, that the political reviews were “meddling” and, together with “constant stonewalling” by the department’s top lawyers, causing delays in the agency’s open records department.

“I currently have 98 requests that are tagged by the front office for tracking and forwarding to the front office,” Papoi wrote in one previously censored passage. “I simply don’t have the time or staff to review all of those requests before we send them on. Quite honestly, we shouldn’t have to.”

The AP protested last year that the emails it received had been improperly censored, but the Homeland Security Department never responded to its formal appeal.
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 29, 2011, 09:55:52 AM
for Clunkers 2: The Return of Government Motors
← return to Water Cooler
Kerry Picket
Published on March 29, 2011


http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/watercooler/2011/mar/29/cash-clunkers-2-dumped-capitol-hill




Ready for another cash for clunkers program? It looks like General Motors is attempting to replace it's own consumer incentives with tax payer money. The car company, bailed out of bankruptcy in 2009 by the American tax payer, appears to be turning the government into an automatic rebate provider.

The Obama administration and their friends on Capitol Hill are floating around a proposal to change the $7500 tax credit for green vehicles. This change can be found not only in President Barack Obama's budget but also a bill proposed by Senator Debbie Stabenow, Michigan Democrat.

Edmunds.com, a 45 year old trade magazine company that provides automotive information, posted a Department of Energy document listing the department's funding highlights. The proposed Obama Budget, changes the existing $7,500 electric vehicle tax credit “into a rebate that will be available to all consumers immediately at the point of sale.”

According to Senator Stabenow's website, her proposed legislation, known as the "Charging America Forward Act" (S.298), "will provide consumers with a rebate worth up to $7500 for plug-in electric vehicles at the time of purchase."

Essentially, if one were to buy a $41,000 Chevy Volt, the buyer gets a $7,500 coupon, so the final price is $33,500. In the end, the auto dealer assumes the risk of the government giving them this tax credit.

It is pretty convenient that Ms. Stabenow, who represents a state where GM is headquartered is pushing a bill that is also supported by Edison Electric Institute, whose president was loaned a Chevy Volt, Eaton Corp: the sole American producer of car recharge systems, and Battery Electric Vehicle Coalition, a lobbying group for the electric car industry.

In fact, Department of Energy's David Sandalow told Bloomberg News in February the insta-credit would operate the “same way the 2009 ‘Cash for Clunkers’ program worked.”

The Detroit News reported Vice President Joe Biden said at an Indiana battery assembly plant, "You won’t have to wait,’ it would be like the cash-for-clunkers program.”

GM is likely the most excited about this instant credit plan. “General Motors supports the instant credit saying the bill “integrates all of the components necessary for successful acceleration of electric vehicles in the marketplace," The Detroit News reported.

Is the United States really prepared to deal with another tax payer paid for deal that will only benefit the now government owned GM? After all, did Cash for Clunkers part one really work out for the tax payers and auto dealers? Washington, D.C. based organization Americans for Tax Reform  didn't think so and wrote in late October of 2009:

The program began on July 24th with a budget of $1 billion and by July 30th they were out of money. Giving people “free” money to buy cars is definitely popular. Congress then allocated another $2 billion that lasted almost until the end of August. That’s right, $3 billion in under a month. The program didn’t help the economy or auto industry. Despite a bump in the 3rd quarter to GDP and auto sales, consumer spending dropped 0.5% in September and the vehicle output bump was artificial and unsustainable, meaning it will drop off considerably in the next quarter as the market stabilizes to its real level. As Nick Gillespie and Veronique de Rugy pointed out today over at Reason, even the reported GDP bump is misleading, because is includes government spending. So if government spending increases it will increase the GDP, but that doesn’t mean any more was produced.

There are also the unseen costs of this program. By encouraging people to junk older vehicles, they lowered the supply of cheap used cars. When you lower supply and keep demand stable, the price goes up. With fewer used cars on the market, the prices for remaining used cars increases. This will make it more difficult for younger drivers or low income drivers to buy cars to get to work or school. (A video by Congressman Ron Paul further explains how it hurts the poor here.) At least the wealthy got a handout to buy their brand new cars though right?

Unfortunately, when ideas turn bad, it does not preclude another similar bad idea to be proposed later on.

 

Ready for another cash for clunkers program? It looks like General Motors is attempting to replace it's own consumer incentives with tax payer money. The car company, bailed out of bankruptcy in 2009 by the American tax payer, appears to be turning the government into an automatic rebate provider.

The Obama administration and their friends on Capitol Hill are floating around a proposal to change the $7500 tax credit for green vehicles. This change can be found not only in President Barack Obama's budget but also a bill proposed by Senator Debbie Stabenow, Michigan Democrat.

Edmunds.com, a 45 year old trade magazine company that provides automotive information, posted a Department of Energy document listing the department's funding highlights. The proposed Obama Budget, changes the existing $7,500 electric vehicle tax credit “into a rebate that will be available to all consumers immediately at the point of sale.”

According to Senator Stabenow's website, her proposed legislation, known as the "Charging America Forward Act" (S.298), "will provide consumers with a rebate worth up to $7500 for plug-in electric vehicles at the time of purchase."

Essentially, if one were to buy a $41,000 Chevy Volt, the buyer gets a $7,500 coupon, so the final price is $33,500. In the end, the auto dealer assumes the risk of the government giving them this tax credit.

It is pretty convenient that Ms. Stabenow, who represents a state where GM is headquartered is pushing a bill that is also supported by Edison Electric Institute, whose president was loaned a Chevy Volt, Eaton Corp: the sole American producer of car recharge systems, and Battery Electric Vehicle Coalition, a lobbying group for the electric car industry.

In fact, Department of Energy's David Sandalow told Bloomberg News in February the insta-credit would operate the “same way the 2009 ‘Cash for Clunkers’ program worked.”

The Detroit News reported Vice President Joe Biden said at an Indiana battery assembly plant, "You won’t have to wait,’ it would be like the cash-for-clunkers program.”

GM is likely the most excited about this instant credit plan. “General Motors supports the instant credit saying the bill “integrates all of the components necessary for successful acceleration of electric vehicles in the marketplace," The Detroit News reported.

Is the United States really prepared to deal with another tax payer paid for deal that will only benefit the now government owned GM? After all, did Cash for Clunkers part one really work out for the tax payers and auto dealers? Washington, D.C. based organization Americans for Tax Reform  didn't think so and wrote in late October of 2009:

The program began on July 24th with a budget of $1 billion and by July 30th they were out of money. Giving people “free” money to buy cars is definitely popular. Congress then allocated another $2 billion that lasted almost until the end of August. That’s right, $3 billion in under a month. The program didn’t help the economy or auto industry. Despite a bump in the 3rd quarter to GDP and auto sales, consumer spending dropped 0.5% in September and the vehicle output bump was artificial and unsustainable, meaning it will drop off considerably in the next quarter as the market stabilizes to its real level. As Nick Gillespie and Veronique de Rugy pointed out today over at Reason, even the reported GDP bump is misleading, because is includes government spending. So if government spending increases it will increase the GDP, but that doesn’t mean any more was produced.

There are also the unseen costs of this program. By encouraging people to junk older vehicles, they lowered the supply of cheap used cars. When you lower supply and keep demand stable, the price goes up. With fewer used cars on the market, the prices for remaining used cars increases. This will make it more difficult for younger drivers or low income drivers to buy cars to get to work or school. (A video by Congressman Ron Paul further explains how it hurts the poor here.) At least the wealthy got a handout to buy their brand new cars though right?

Unfortunately, when ideas turn bad, it does not preclude another similar bad idea to be proposed later on.
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 29, 2011, 01:48:44 PM
Obama's High Food Price Policy Stealing Milk from Babies
American Thinker ^ | 3-29-11 | Jeffrey Folks




The price of corn has reached a record $7 a bushel. Other basic foodstuffs, including wheat, sugar, and soybeans are selling at or near record prices. Milk prices as well have risen to record levels, making it more difficult for families to purchase milk for their children. It is Obama, more than anyone, who is responsible for this state of affairs.

While food prices have always been volatile, today's high prices are not just the result of weather and other natural forces. They are the consequence of a sinister conspiracy on the part of the left to raise prices and force an ever larger number of Americans into dependency. As of early March, milk prices were setting new record highs, along with near record highs for corn, wheat, soybean, and other staples. Where is the President on this? He is out there promoting ethanol mandates that burn 40% of the U.S. corn crop, raising the price of everything from milk and meat to pop-tarts.

Obama claims to care deeply about the lives of ordinary working Americans, but he is the one responsible for rising food and energy prices. When Americans went to the store in February and found that their food costs had risen at an annualized rate of 7.2%, they had Obama to thank for it.

It is not just the President's policy of expanding ethanol subsidies. It is also a weak-dollar policy that forces Americans into competition on unequal terms with foreign buyers. On March 25 the USDA revealed transactions that strongly suggest the return of China to U.S. corn markets. As a result, corn future prices climbed 14%. That increase of 14% will affect what American consumers can expect to pay in the months ahead for basic foodstuffs. If the dollar weakens further against the Chinese yuan, as many expect (and against other currencies), American consumers may find themselves paying more than that for global commodities like food.

The President's solution to rising food prices is, of course, more government. With 25 million Americans unemployed, over 15 million Americans on Social Security disability (SSDI or SSI), and over 43 million Americans on food stamps, Obama's "solution" is to increase dependency even further. The President's 2012 budget proposal includes increases in funding for the government's food stamp and WIC programs, while it continues funding at record levels for a myriad of other food programs.

If Obama were truly concerned about food security, he would address the fundamental issues, not try to paper them over by paying out ever larger sums of borrowed money to an ever larger number of recipients. But the Democrats are never going to address the fundamental issues -- partly because of pressure from environmentalists, unions, and corn-state lobbyists and partly because they want more Americans to be dependent on government assistance.

Democrats actually seem pleased to find that 43 million Americans are dependent on food assistance and that the number has risen by almost 30% million since Obama took office. That level of dependency translates into a large block of reliable votes.

Once they become dependent on government food aid, welfare recipients constitute a lifetime constituency focused exclusively on maintenance and expansion of benefits. No wonder Democrats aren't interested in reducing the cost of food and other essentials. Or, for that matter, increasing the number of jobs within the private sector. Their interest lies in nudging more and more Americans onto the dole.

This is not the first time that a left-wing president has consolidated his power by expanding dependency. During the Great Depression, FDR's alphabet-soup of relief agencies enrolled millions in unproductive make-work projects, even as crops went unharvested and industrial plants lay idle. As Amity Shlaes has shown in The Forgotten Man, Roosevelt's socialist boondoggles prolonged the Depression by years.

What is happening today, however, is unique: this is the first time in American history when an administration is deliberately forcing food prices higher in order to increase dependency and extend government control over the economy.

There is hardship ahead even for those not dependent on government aid. Despite our nation's vast agricultural resources, Americans are not immune to the kinds of food shortages that have existed throughout human history and that continue to exist in developing countries today. It takes only a short time for a nation to slip from abundance into impoverishment.

Most Americans do not think of Romania as a resource-rich nation, but a century ago Romania, with its productive agricultural sector, was among the richest countries in Europe. At that time no one could have imagined the suffering that lay ahead as the country descended into 80 years of war and communist rule. The abundant harvests that had once fed Romania's people were commandeered by the government and shipped abroad to bankroll the extravagant lifestyle of the rulers and to fund the state security apparatus necessary to defend it. This and fundamental mismanagement resulted in decades of hunger for the Romanian people.

For America the combination of corn ethanol mandates and a weak-dollar policy is, in effect, a "Romania-style" seizure of the nation's food supply. The left is intent on gaining control of America's natural resources -- its agricultural and energy sectors, in particular -- and for exactly the same reason they were seized in communist states such as Romania. The control of food and energy is the means by which the left hopes to gain permanent power over the American people.

America is approaching a future in which food will be expensive and in short supply. The combination of an ever expanding corn ethanol program and the demands of a tighter global market will make food less affordable and less available. What may not be so obvious is that the American left, led by Obama and Democrats in Congress, actually want food prices to rise, just as they want energy prices to rise, so as to create further dependency. If they did not, they would take simple measures to lower prices: eliminate ethanol mandates, eliminate protective tariffs, strengthen the dollar, and allow the free market to govern prices. But none of this will happen with the left in charge because high prices and shortages serve the interest of a party intent on centralized control of the economy.

This disaster can only be averted by the defeat of Obama and of the Democrat-controlled Senate in 2012, and by the removal of leftists from government agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency, Health and Human Services, and the Department of Agriculture. Above all, the nation must return to a free-market economy in which prices for food and all else are determined by supply and demand, not by the ambitions of leftists in Washington.

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 30, 2011, 12:17:54 PM
Former Organizing for America staffer interfered with FOIA requests Department Homeland Security
DailyCaller ^ | March 30, 2011 | Mike Riggs




New emails and testimony from Department of Homeland Security FOIA officer Catherine Papoi reveal that a former Obama campaign staffer repeatedly asked Papoi and her team to redact portions of “politically sensitive” documents, as well as portions of documents that were already publicly available.

Papoi, who came under fire at DHS for complaining that “sensitive” FOIA requests were being vetted by political employees, testified on March 3 that Willard “Clint” Carte, a DHS attorney with the title of “confidential assistant,” attempted to block a FOIA request for DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano’s calendar in which Napolitano’s secretary had referred to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as “Senator Clinton.” According to Papoi’s testimony, Carte asked that Clinton’s title be changed on the calendar in order to spare the department “embarrassment.”

...But Carte, a graduate of West Virginia University Law School, isn’t just an attorney. According to a campaign database maintained by George Washington University, Carte served as the new media director for Obama For America, Obama’s general election campaign group in West Virginia. Carte also appears as an administrator of several groups hosted on Organizing for America’s website, including “West Virginians for Obama,” “Marshall University Students for Barack Obama,” “In Support of Change,” and others.

Papoi’s testimony and emails revealed a second conflict with Carte.

According to emails obtained by The Daily Caller, Carte wanted to redact information from a FOIA request filed by the conservative group Judicial Watch.


...Papoi claims that she was demoted within DHS for raising concerns about the FOIA process.


(Excerpt) Read more at www.dailycaller.com ...
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 31, 2011, 08:33:38 AM
Not a secret anymore
Shh! Obama gets anti-secrecy award
By ABBY PHILLIP | 03/30/11 4:17 PM Updated: 03/31/11 10:17 AM


http://www.politico.com/politico44/perm/0311/not_a_secret_anymore_a00ccd98-0d9e-4822-8936-168f3a51b959.html




The president accepted a transparency award in a closed, undisclosed meeting. AP Photo

Close President Obama finally and quietly accepted his “transparency” award from the open government community this week — in a closed, undisclosed meeting at the White House on Monday.

The secret presentation happened almost two weeks after the White House inexplicably postponed the ceremony, which was expected to be open to the press pool.

This time, Obama met quietly in the Oval Office with Gary Bass of OMB Watch, Tom Blanton of the National Security Archive, Danielle Brian of the Project on Government Oversight, Lucy Dalglish of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and Patrice McDermott of OpenTheGovernment.org, without disclosing the meeting on his public schedule or letting photographers or print reporters into the room.

“Our understanding going into the meeting was that it would have a pool photographer and a print reporter, and it turned out to be a private meeting,” Bass told POLITICO. “He was so on point, so on target in the conversation with us, it is baffling why he would not want that message to be more broadly heard by reporters and the public interest community and the public generally.”

Just hours before the White House put off the original event, White House press secretary Jay Carney was defiant in his defense of Obama’s transparency record against criticism that it might have been premature.

“This president has demonstrated a commitment to transparency and openness that is greater than any administration has shown in the past, and he’s been committed to that since he ran for President and he’s taken a significant number of measures to demonstrate that,” Carney said in a testy exchange with Fox News reporter Wendell Goler on March 16.

The transparency advocates who presented the award to Obama say that the recognition is important, because despite the work left to be done, Obama has done a lot to change the government’s posture toward openness issues.

But others believed the positive reinforcement was more than a little unnecessary.

“I don’t feel moved today to say ‘thank you, Mr. President,’” said Steve Aftergood, the director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists. But he said he understands the award to be “aspirational,” in recognition of Obama’s potential to do more on the transparency front.

“And in that sense, one could say it resembles the award at the Nobel Peace Prize,” Aftergood said. “It’s not because Obama brought peace to anyone but because people hoped he would be a force for good in the world, and maybe that’s the way to understand this award.”

Watch below: President Obama talks transparency - July '09
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 31, 2011, 07:31:29 PM
U.S. Gives Obama Donor $500 Mil For “Green” Projects
Judicial Watch ^ | March 31, 2011






One of President Obama’s top fundraisers has been rewarded with more than half a billion dollars in stimulus money for “green” projects and a coveted adviser position at the federal agency that regulates his highly profitable business ventures.


It’s the very cycle of money, influence and access that Obama vowed to break when he came to Washington, according to the investigative journalism group that broke the story this week. Not only has the president’s money man benefited from the astounding sums of cash the administration has dedicated to “clean energy” startups, he also has extraordinary access to the White House and serves as an adviser to the cabinet official (Energy Secretary Steven Chu) who regulates his industry.


The prolific Democratic fundraiser, Steve Westly, worked in the Jimmy Carter Administration and was once a public official in California where he currently operates a lucrative “green” business (Westly Group) that’s boomed in just a few years. The Westly Group has raked in more than half a billion dollars in loans, grants or stimulus money from the Department of Energy which is doling out around $35 billion to politically-connected businesses that help reduce pollution.


A frequent White House visitor Westly is also a member of a government advisory board on energy policy, which means he actually “advises” Energy Secretary Chu, the administration official in charge of distributing the agency’s green startup cash. The money is supposed to help clean technology firms expand in order to meet Obama’s goal of lowering dependence on foreign oil.


More than 90% of the companies that apply for the federal dollars are rejected, yet Westly has easily secured the public funding for three of his firms. The government aid is important because it lends companies credibility and helps attract investors. Other Obama donors have also received big chunks of federal dollars for their clean energy endeavors, including another California billionaire who serves on the president’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board and an Oklahoma oil magnet who bundled tens of thousands of dollars for his 2008 campaign.


Obama must keep his top fundraisers happy because he will need their services—and cash—in 2012. Westly is one of about 50 “bundlers” who raised more than half a million dollars for Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. Undoubtedly, Westly is expected to step up to the plate in 2012 so Uncle Sam will likely continue filling his coffers with cash for innovative “green” projects.


Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 01, 2011, 09:14:12 AM
Barack Obama: Losing $84 billion big success
← return to Water Cooler

Kerry Picket
Published on March 31, 2011




http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/watercooler/2011/mar/31/barack-obama-losing-84-billion-big-success





Obama has some 'splaining to do about taxpayers' profitable "investment" in General Motors. It turns out the president is imagining things.

Though Democrats tout the auto bailout as a success, recent reports illustrate the taxpayer cost of the GM auto bailout was substantially larger than the Obama administration and a Congressional Oversight report has owned up to.

"American taxpayers are now positioned to recover more than my administration invested in GM,” President Obama said, according to a piece in USA Today last November. Steven Rattner, former head of the Treasury's auto task force agreed, telling CNN in November: “Recent progress at GM gives reason for optimism that it may be possible for taxpayers to get every penny back.”

In fact, Investor's Business Daily reported that even the White House’s Director of the National Economic Council remarked that the Treasury Department Department had a good chance in "recovering most, if not all, of its investment in" GM.

However, a March 16 Congressional Oversight report, tells a different story. It estimates taxpayers will be out of $25 billion. Additionally, the report points out that “full repayment will not be possible unless the government is able to sell its remaining shares at a far higher price.”

That's only the beginning. Both the White House and the Congressional Oversight report omit the fact that during its bankruptcy, GM got a $45 billion tax break, courtesy of the American people.

GM is driving “away from its U.S.-government-financed restructuring with a final gift in its trunk: a tax break that could be worth as much as $45 billion,” reported The Wall Street Journal last November.

Over one year after  the promises President Obama and his administration made about the auto bailout, a February piece on AutoBlog also confirms that GM will also get a $14 billion dollar domestic tax break:

GM will be able to skip its tax tab due to years of massive losses. Companies are typically forgiven a portion of future taxes due to their past losses, but that benefit is typically stripped after an organization goes through bankruptcy.
However, the Obama administration and its allies presently continue to celebrate the success of the auto bailout, regardless of the facts.  "I don’t think there’s any doubt that this was a success," said (H/T Detroit News) acting assistant secretary at the Treasury Department Tim Massad, who oversees the TARP program at Treasury, to a House panel on Wednesday.

In Obama's world, success mean taxpayers only lost as much as $84 billion.
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 01, 2011, 10:14:03 AM
Former Organizing for America staffer interfered with FOIA requests at Department of Homeland
The Daily Caller ^ | 3/30/11 | Mike Riggs


New emails and testimony from Department of Homeland Security FOIA officer Catherine Papoi reveal that a former Obama campaign staffer repeatedly asked Papoi and her team to redact portions of “politically sensitive” documents, as well as portions of documents that were already publicly available.

Papoi, who came under fire at DHS for complaining that “sensitive” FOIA requests were being vetted by political employees, testified on March 3 that Willard “Clint” Carte, a DHS attorney with the title of “confidential assistant,” attempted to block a FOIA request for DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano’s calendar in which Napolitano’s secretary had referred to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as “Senator Clinton.” According to Papoi’s testimony, Carte asked that Clinton’s title be changed on the calendar in order to spare the department “embarrassment.”

“The front office wanted that changed before the response went out the door and we were pushing back saying that once you cast your net and retrieve a record, you can’t alter a record because of mere embarrassment,” Papoi said in her testimony.

According to Papoi, FOIA officers are told they can only “cast their net” one time. “Once you have retrieved the records, they lose…the living nature where they are evolving, and the statute requires that you retrieve the records and then process them,” she testified. “DOJ has also opined that you don’t cast your net twice, you cast once. You retrieve the records and you process them. So [the front office, where Carte worked] also suggested making the changes and then recasting our net, and it was explained that also was unacceptable.”


(Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com ...
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 01, 2011, 10:23:54 AM
Investigations Find ‘Unprecedented’ Political Review of FOIA Requests by Homeland Security Department
Friday, April 01, 2011
By Fred Lucas

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/investigations-find-unprecedented-politi-0





Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.)

Washington (CNSNews.com) – A political review of open records requests smacks of “Nixonian” tactics by the Department of Homeland Security, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said Thursday.

Two investigations found that Freedom of Information Act requests sent to the DHS were reviewed by Obama administration political appointees.

“Through the course of an eight-month investigation, the committee has learned that political staff under the DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano have corrupted the agency’s FOIA compliance procedures, exerted unlawful political pressure, on FOIA compliance officers, and undermined the federal government’s accountability to the American people,” Issa said.

“These events have nurtured a fragile – and at times hostile – work environment that does not serve to fulfill the department’s primary mission to secure the nation from the many threats we face,” he added.

The department’s Office of Inspector General found that many records requests were filtered through Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano’s office.

However, DHS general counsel attacked the House oversight report as biased, pointing out that the IG report never alleged direct wrongdoing.

“My initial reaction was one of concern because as you indicate these are very serious allegations,” DHS General Counsel Ivan Fong told the committee. “I take very seriously, as I should, any allegation of wrongdoing by my staff. On further examination, my concern frankly turned into indignation because I believe the report paints an unfair and irresponsible portrait of some people and events. The report reads more like an advocacy piece rather than a sober, substantive, dispassionate investigative report.”

The investigations found that information requesters were identified by party affiliation in some cases. During the hearing, Mary Ellen Callahan, chief FOIA officer and chief privacy officer for DHS, could not answer why.

Callahan said this is only the case with members of Congress.

“According to our weekly report, we are supposed to indicate who is a Democrat and who is a Republican,” Callahan told the committee. “I think that is how members of Congress are addressed. I don’t know why, but career staff added that in 2006.”

The House report found that by the end of 2009, “copies of all significant FOIA requests were required to be forwarded to the Secretary's political staff for review. The career staff in the FOIA Office was not permitted to release responses to these requests without approval from political staff.”

The House investigation further found “original versions of documents that were heavily redacted before being released to the Associated Press show the Office of General Counsel relied on exception (b)(5) – normally meant to protect pre-decisional records – to prevent the release of embarrassing records.”

The report also said that the secretary’s office stopped using e-mail in the second quarter of 2010, and instead contacted their career staff by phone.

The report from DHS Acting Inspector General Charles Edwards did not allege corruption, but did say the department must make changes.

“We also determined that the Office of the Secretary has had unprecedented involvement in the Freedom of Information Act process beginning in 2009,” the IG report said. “For several hundred requests deemed significant, components were required to provide for headquarters review all materials they intended to release.”

After DHS issued a report in 2009 about “right wing extremist groups,” the secretary’s office communicated its concern to the DHS FOIA office, according to the IG report. The secretary’s office asked, “Have we actually turned over any documents at this point?” and later asked the FOIA office for a list of all 33 organizations that requested the right wing extremist report.

The IG report also says, “Potentially embarrassing wording was redacted in other cases as well. In November 2009, a senior DHS official suggested limitations on the release of particular requests that a component was processing.”

Rep. Gerald Connelly (D-Va.) insisted that there was nothing wrong with the secretary’s office reviewing FOIA requests.

“The agency leadership simply wanted to know more about it. This actually represents laudable agency coordination, and a notable deconstruction of the usual bureaucratic stovepipes. If we assume FOIA requests can serve as a proxy for public interest in certain issues on which an agency is working, then agency knowledge about those requests means that the agency can be more responsive to the public it serves,” he said.

The DHS has taken unprecedented measures, John Verdi, director of open government for the watchdog group Electronic Privacy Information Center.

“We are not aware of any other program that has singled out FOIA requests based on politically sensitive content or the identity of the requestor,” Verdi told the committee. “Political review delays the release of records and raises the specter of wrongful performance.”

He further said that “federal law simply does not allow agencies to select” what requests to respond to based on political considerations.

Edwards, the inspector general, said his office had not determined that DHS has done anything illegal. But, he stressed much improvement needs to be made.

Callahan said the department has decreased its backlog of records under the Obama administration. “Two years ago, the department faced a backlog of more than 74,000 FOIA requests,” Callahan told the committee. “Under this administration, we have reduced the backlog by 84 percent, or more than 63,000 requests.”

However, Republicans on the committee pointed out that it was the Bush administration that hired a private contractor for $7.6 million to help relieve the department’s FOIA backlog. Further, the approximately 30,000 FOIA requests were shifted to the State Department.
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 01, 2011, 07:55:16 PM
"Climate Change Adaptation Plan" For All Govt. Agencies (Outrageous)
Judicial Watch ^ | April 1, 2011




All federal agencies and private companies that deal with the U.S. government must identify their vulnerabilities to the impacts of global warming and develop a climate change adaptation plan, as per an executive order quietly signed by President Obama.


The order was actually penned in the fall of 2009 but the president’s Climate Change Adaptation Task Force had to properly investigate the matter and come up with recommendations. Now that the task force has developed a detailed plan on climate proofing the government, yet another Obama advisory committee, the Council on Environmental Quality, has issued instructions on implementation.


Under the plan, every government agency must integrate climate change adaptation into their planning, operations, policies and programs. That means they must appoint a “climate change adaptation specialist,” participate in climate adaptation workshops and educate every employee throughout the year. All agencies must identify and analyze “climate vulnerabilities” by spring of 2012 and execute an adaptation plan by the fall of 2012.


The training will also be required at all private businesses that contract with the government, including those that provide any sort of maintenance or logistics. In all, tens of thousands of public employees will be required to participate in Obama’s “green” plan, which will also require federal agencies to create greenhouse gas emissions reduction plans, increase energy efficiency, conserve water, reduce waste and support sustainable communities. No word on what all this will costs U.S. taxpayers.


The president asserts that setting these sorts of “sustainability goals” for federal agencies demonstrates his commitment to lead by example. It will ultimately have a huge impact on the nation as a whole. After all, Obama points out, the federal government occupies nearly 500,000 buildings, operates more than 600,000 vehicles, employs more than 1.8 million civilians, and purchases more than $500 billion per year in goods and services. Americans are sure to follow its lead, according to the commander-in-chief.


Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 02, 2011, 03:31:34 AM
How is this "outrageous"?

think about it
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 02, 2011, 03:36:21 AM
New York electric bills to soar 12%
NY Post ^ | April 1, 2011 | BILL SANDERSON





New Yorkers are about to get zapped on their electric bills.

Starting May 28, households in the five boroughs will be socked with rate increases of up to 12 percent to run appli ances -- after the feds de cided that power companies needed an extra $500 million a year, The Post has learned.

And that's on top of another 4 percent state-OK'd Con Ed rate hike that kicks in today.

A typical apartment resident's electric bill of $74 -- based on 250 kilowatt hours of power each month -- will go up to $86, or $12 more than last July.

About $8 of that boost will come from the feds' decision.

Businesses will be hit even harder. A small firm that paid $406 last July will shell out $477 this July -- a 17.5 percent boost.

About $59 of that comes courtesy of the feds.

Mayor Bloomberg and Sen. Charles Schumer are furious over the shocking ruling -- and are urging the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to reconsider.

"The economic impact of this order on the residents and businesses of New York City would be severe," Bloomberg complained to the commission.

He said the "excessive increases" to power bills resulting from FERC's decision will cause "severe hardship."

Schumer told The Post: "New Yorkers shouldn't be forced to pay exorbitant electric rates because some faraway regulator decided not to look at all the evidence."

City officials say the feds granted the increase on the incorrect belief that power companies...

--snip--

In effect, the feds are letting generating companies get reimbursed "for costs they are not even paying," said Con Ed official Richard Miller said.

His company will take the blame from consumers but not make an extra penny, he said. That's because it doesn't generate power; it only transmits it...


(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 02, 2011, 05:17:02 AM

.Presidential limousine, security vehicles exempt from fed 'green' vehicle policy
David Shepardson / Detroit News Washington Bureau




Washington — The U.S. Secret Service said today that some federal vehicles for law enforcement and security purposes will be exempt from President Barack Obama's directive that all federal vehicles purchased starting 2015 be advanced technology models.

Secret Service spokesman Robert Novy said the directive wouldn't apply to vehicles used for some law enforcement or security reasons by various federal agencies.
 
"Certain specialized vehicles including those with law enforcement and security specifications are not subject to this directive," Novy said.

That would include the GM-built Cadillac presidential limousine and other vehicles in the motorcade. It also expected to include many law enforcement vehicles.

Obama announced the plan this week to "green" the federal fleet.

"I'm directing our departments and our agencies to make sure 100 percent of the vehicles they buy are fuel-efficient or clean energy cars and trucks by 2015.Not 50 percent, not 75 percent — 100 percent of our vehicles," Obama said today at an appearance in Landover, Md., at UPS facility to urge private companies to green their vehicle fleets.

Obama noted that the federal government has more than 600,000 vehicles — the largest fleet in the United States — and has doubled the number of hybrids in its fleet over the last year — though they still account for less than 5 percent of government vehicles.

"That means we've got a lot of purchasing power.So what we're doing is we're using it to boost clean energy technologies," Obama said.

The White House says the advanced technology vehicles that the government will buy in 2015 include hybrids, electric vehicles and alternative fueled vehicles. Among those are "flex fuel" vehicles that can run on E85 ethanol or gasoline — something that costs automakers less than $100. Many full-size SUVs are flex-fuel models, and automakers get credits toward meeting fuel efficiency standards to build them even if drivers never use the higher blend of ethanol.

As a candidate for president in 2008, then Sen. Barack Obama unveiled an enegy strategy that called for boosting electric vehicles in the federal fleet.

"Within one year of becoming President, the entire White House fleet will be converted to plug -ins as security permits; and half of all cars purchased by the federal government will be plug-in hybrids or all electric by 2012," the fact sheet said.

The White House hasn't converted any vehicles yet. The government plans to buy 100 plug-in electric vehicles this year; it's not clear what federal agencies will use them.

No written guidance to federal departments has been issued about what types of models they can purchase or what agencies are exempt. It's not clear if it would apply to all military vehicles either.

This won't be the first time a president has exempted some vehicles from vehicle rules. In 2007, President George W. Bush issued an executive order calling for 2 percent annual reductions in gasoline usage among most federal vehicles. The order included language allowing agency heads to exempt intelligence and "law enforcement, protective, emergency response, or military tactical vehicle fleets."

Last year, Obama said he had asked the Secret Service if he could ride in a hybrid vehicle — he was rejected.

"Now, the reason is not because Secret Service are bad guys. It's because the cars that I'm in are like tanks. I mean, they, as you might imagine, they're a little bit of extra stuff on it. They're a little reinforced.So they weigh twice or three times what an ordinary car weighs. So they just couldn't get the performance, in terms of acceleration, using a hybrid engine," Obama said.

The presidential limousine is assembled by General Motor Co. at its Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly plant. In January 2009, GM delivered a new limousine for White House use — the 2009 Cadillac presidential limousine - which replaced the 2006 Cadillac DTS presidential limousine.

The vehicle has heavy armor that is reportedly at least 5 inches thick . The limousine also has run-flat tires, bulletproof glass and a completely sealed interior to ward off a chemical attack, among many other high-tech security features.It also has significant electronic communications equipment.

The limousine weighs more than 10,000 pounds and is built off a medium-duty trick platform. The government won't disclose its fuel efficiency.

This isn't the first time law enforcement has been exempted from a vehicle policy by the Obama administration.

Obama signed an October 2009 executive order banning texting behind the wheel by all federal employees. But he said agency heads may exempt "certain employees, devices, or vehicles in their respective agencies that are engaged in or used for protective, law enforcement, or national security responsibilities or on the basis of other emergency conditions."

dshepardson@detnews.com

(202) 662-8735



From The Detroit News: http://detnews.com/article/20110401/AUTO01/104010447/Presidential-limousine--security-vehicles-exempt-from-fed-‘green’-vehicle-policy#ixzz1IMpzhbXX

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 02, 2011, 07:54:21 AM
List of health reform waivers keeps growing (1,168 waivers)
The Hill ^ | April 2, 2011 | Jason Millman




The number of waivers the Obama administration has awarded for a provision of the year-old healthcare reform law grew by 128 in March.

With the new waivers, that means 1,168 businesses, insurers, unions and other organizations have received one-year exemptions from a healthcare reform provision requiring at least $750,000 in annual benefits.


(Excerpt) Read more at WWW.thehill.com ...
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: blacken700 on April 02, 2011, 08:16:22 AM
.Presidential limousine, security vehicles exempt from fed 'green' vehicle policy
David Shepardson / Detroit News Washington Bureau




Washington — The U.S. Secret Service said today that some federal vehicles for law enforcement and security purposes will be exempt from President Barack Obama's directive that all federal vehicles purchased starting 2015 be advanced technology models.

Secret Service spokesman Robert Novy said the directive wouldn't apply to vehicles used for some law enforcement or security reasons by various federal agencies.
 
"Certain specialized vehicles including those with law enforcement and security specifications are not subject to this directive," Novy said.

That would include the GM-built Cadillac presidential limousine and other vehicles in the motorcade. It also expected to include many law enforcement vehicles.

Obama announced the plan this week to "green" the federal fleet.

"I'm directing our departments and our agencies to make sure 100 percent of the vehicles they buy are fuel-efficient or clean energy cars and trucks by 2015.Not 50 percent, not 75 percent — 100 percent of our vehicles," Obama said today at an appearance in Landover, Md., at UPS facility to urge private companies to green their vehicle fleets.

Obama noted that the federal government has more than 600,000 vehicles — the largest fleet in the United States — and has doubled the number of hybrids in its fleet over the last year — though they still account for less than 5 percent of government vehicles.

"That means we've got a lot of purchasing power.So what we're doing is we're using it to boost clean energy technologies," Obama said.

The White House says the advanced technology vehicles that the government will buy in 2015 include hybrids, electric vehicles and alternative fueled vehicles. Among those are "flex fuel" vehicles that can run on E85 ethanol or gasoline — something that costs automakers less than $100. Many full-size SUVs are flex-fuel models, and automakers get credits toward meeting fuel efficiency standards to build them even if drivers never use the higher blend of ethanol.

As a candidate for president in 2008, then Sen. Barack Obama unveiled an enegy strategy that called for boosting electric vehicles in the federal fleet.

"Within one year of becoming President, the entire White House fleet will be converted to plug -ins as security permits; and half of all cars purchased by the federal government will be plug-in hybrids or all electric by 2012," the fact sheet said.

The White House hasn't converted any vehicles yet. The government plans to buy 100 plug-in electric vehicles this year; it's not clear what federal agencies will use them.

No written guidance to federal departments has been issued about what types of models they can purchase or what agencies are exempt. It's not clear if it would apply to all military vehicles either.

This won't be the first time a president has exempted some vehicles from vehicle rules. In 2007, President George W. Bush issued an executive order calling for 2 percent annual reductions in gasoline usage among most federal vehicles. The order included language allowing agency heads to exempt intelligence and "law enforcement, protective, emergency response, or military tactical vehicle fleets."

Last year, Obama said he had asked the Secret Service if he could ride in a hybrid vehicle — he was rejected.

"Now, the reason is not because Secret Service are bad guys. It's because the cars that I'm in are like tanks. I mean, they, as you might imagine, they're a little bit of extra stuff on it. They're a little reinforced.So they weigh twice or three times what an ordinary car weighs. So they just couldn't get the performance, in terms of acceleration, using a hybrid engine," Obama said.

The presidential limousine is assembled by General Motor Co. at its Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly plant. In January 2009, GM delivered a new limousine for White House use — the 2009 Cadillac presidential limousine - which replaced the 2006 Cadillac DTS presidential limousine.

The vehicle has heavy armor that is reportedly at least 5 inches thick . The limousine also has run-flat tires, bulletproof glass and a completely sealed interior to ward off a chemical attack, among many other high-tech security features.It also has significant electronic communications equipment.

The limousine weighs more than 10,000 pounds and is built off a medium-duty trick platform. The government won't disclose its fuel efficiency.

This isn't the first time law enforcement has been exempted from a vehicle policy by the Obama administration.

Obama signed an October 2009 executive order banning texting behind the wheel by all federal employees. But he said agency heads may exempt "certain employees, devices, or vehicles in their respective agencies that are engaged in or used for protective, law enforcement, or national security responsibilities or on the basis of other emergency conditions."

dshepardson@detnews.com

(202) 662-8735



From The Detroit News: http://detnews.com/article/20110401/AUTO01/104010447/Presidential-limousine--security-vehicles-exempt-from-fed-‘green’-vehicle-policy#ixzz1IMpzhbXX



your point
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 02, 2011, 08:25:13 AM
If his goofy green nonsense is good enough for me, its good enough for him.   


Is he better than you or I?   
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 03, 2011, 05:25:37 AM
Half of Latest Crop of Obamacare Waivers Are to Unions
Human Events ^ | 04/03/2011 | Jim Hoft



The Obama Administration has now granted over 1,000 health care waivers. Half of the latest 129 waivers went to unions.

Jamie Durpree at the AJC reported:

The Obama Administration has rolled out another 129 waivers to one provision of the new health reform law, with almost half of those new exemptions going to various union groups. The extra waivers bring the total to 1,168...

...The waivers now cover almost three million Americans, but the feds argue that is "less than 2 percent of all Americans who have private health insurance.

Almost half of the new round of waivers were given to union health benefit programs, a fact that is sure spur new complaints from health law critics in the Congress, who see these waivers as evidence that the Obama health plan is flawed.

Karl Rove previously reported that a disproportionate number of waivers, nearly one-third, were being granted to union workers even though unionized workers make up only 7% of the private work force.

The Washington based GOP think tank known as Crossroads GPS filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday in D.C. District Court against the Department of Health and Human Services. The group is seeking documents to better understand how HHS makes decisions to grant waivers to the new health care law.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 03, 2011, 02:03:35 PM
Obama’s energetic war on the young - Naive college kids don’t realize that big-government...
Washington Times ^ | April 1, 2011 | Robert Knight



________________________ ________________________ ______-


Naive college kids don’t realize that big-government servitude awaits

President Obama needs to reinvent reality, so where does he go? A college campus. And why not? With gas doubling in price toward $4 a gallon, what better place to talk energy than to backpacking cyclists at trendy, urban Georgetown University? It's a far friendlier crowd than, say, one composed of truckers, commuters or laid-off workers.

Besides, the last time Mr. Obama spoke at Georgetown, on April 14, 2009, college officials complied with a White House request to cover up pesky Christian symbols behind the presidential podium. Georgetown is a very friendly place for the O Force...

--snip--

Unemployment was 25.7 in February for teenagers and 15.7 percent for those 20 to 24 years old, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Recent college grads are despairing of landing anything above the fast-food counter, where they face stiff competition from millions of recent immigrants...

--snip--

"We've got to discover cleaner, renewable sources of energy that also produce less carbon pollution, which is threatening our climate. And we've got to do it quickly."

And then he issued the "don't ask what your car can do for you, but what you can do for your car" pitch, warning students that they had better buy the kind of vehicle Washington wants them to buy.

What he didn't say was that it's tough to buy any kind of car if you don't have a job.


(Excerpt) Read more at www.washingtontimes.com ...
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 03, 2011, 06:15:42 PM
Three Million and Counting Exempted from ObamaCare ($750K annual coverage exemption)
Commentary ^ | 04.03.2011 | Abe Greenwald



Sure, ObamaCare is great for you. So great that the president is now offering 3 million members of his base ObamaClemency:


The Obama Administration has rolled out another 129 waivers to one provision of the new health reform law, with almost half of those new exemptions going to various union groups. The extra waivers bring the total to 1,168....The waivers now cover almost three million Americans, but the feds argue that is "less than 2 percent of all Americans who have private health insurance."

The waiver gets you out of "a portion of the law that in 2011 requires an annual benefit limit of no less than $750,000." Sure beats a PBA card.

The left loves to perseverate on the threat to democracy posed by the top one percent of the country's earners. Wonder if they'll have any complaints about the two percent of Americans the president has officially exempted from obeying the law of the land.

We are deep in banana- republic territory here. The head of state forces an eccentric law onto his subjects and then lets his closest supporters get out of it so that they alone may continue to prosper. To call this more of the "same old" cynical Washington back-scratch machine is to underestimate the extent of the damage taking place before our eyes.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 04, 2011, 09:29:32 AM
Congrats Tim Wu! But Please Don’t Toss "The Regulatory Switch"
Tech Liberation ^ | February 8th, 2011 | Adam Thierer


________________________ ________________________ ______________________


Tim’s ideas on tech policy trouble me deeply. I’ll ignore the fact that he gave birth to the term “net neutrality” and that he chaired the radical regulatory activist group, Free Press. Instead, I just want to remind folks of one very troubling recommendation for the information sector that he articulated in his new book, The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires. While his book was preoccupied with corporate power and the ability of media and communications companies to posses a supposed “master switch” over speech or culture, I’m more worried about the “regulatory switch” that Tim has said the government should toss.


Tim has suggested that a so-called “Separations Principle” govern our modern information economy. “A Separations Principle would mean the creation of a salutary distance between each of the major functions or layers in the information economy,” he says. “It would mean that those who develop information, those who control the network infrastructure on which it travels, and those who control the tools or venues of access must be kept apart from one another.” Tim calls this a “constitutional approach” because he models it on the separations of power found in the U.S. Constitution.


I critiqued this concept in Part 6 of my ridiculously long multi-part review of his new book, and I discuss it further in a new Reason magazine article, which is due out shortly. As I note in my Reason essay, Tim’s blueprint for “reforming” technology policy represents an audacious industrial policy for the Internet and America’s information sectors. In concrete regulatory terms—and despite Tim’s insistence to the contrary, his approach most assuredly would require regulation—the Separations Principle would segregate information providers into three buckets: creators, distributors, and hardware makers. Presumably these would become three of the new “titles” (or regulatory sections) of a forthcoming Information Economy Separations Act.


While conceptually neat, these classifications don’t conform to our highly dynamic digital economy, whose parameters can change wildly within the scope of just a few years. For example, Google cut its teeth in the search and online advertising markets, but it now markets phones and computers. Verizon, once just a crusty wireline telephone company, now sells pay TV services and a variety of wireless devices. AOL reinvented itself as media company after its brief reign as the king of dial-up Internet access. Would firms that already possess integrated operations and investments (for instance, Microsoft or Apple) be forced to divest control of them to comply with the Separations Principle? If so, wouldn’t that hinder technological development?

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 04, 2011, 09:31:53 AM
Obama's plan to buy more public land draws GOP fire
Miami Herald ^ | 4/3/2011 | ROB HOTAKAINEN



WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama says he's constantly telling his two daughters to turn off the TV, stop using Skype and go outside. He wants to get more American kids off the couch and out the door, reconnecting with the world and its natural beauty.

And he wants to make it easier for them to use parks and public lands, saying that too many Americans "can go days without stepping on a single blade of grass."

Toward that end, the president wants Congress to double spending - to $900 million next year - on a conservation fund that's used to buy more property for the federal government. Currently, the government owns 635 million acres, or roughly three out of every 10 acres, with the largest chunk in Alaska.

But with the nation deep in debt and facing a long backlog of projects on its public lands, many Republicans are lining up against Obama's plan, leaving its fate uncertain.

[Snip]

The president's proposal has ignited a fight over the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which, since its beginning more than 45 years ago, has been used to buy more than 4.5 million acres at a cost of $6.1 billion.

Backers of the fund say it's important for Congress to keep pumping money into it as the nation loses roughly 3 million acres to development each year...

[Snip]

Obama is proud of his record on public lands. In his first months in office, he signed legislation that designated 2 million acres of wilderness, including more than 1,000 miles of wild scenic rivers and three national parks. He wants the impact of his new plan to be felt nationwide. It calls for creating "a new generation of safe, clean, accessible great urban parks and community green spaces."


(Excerpt) Read more at miamiherald.com ...
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 04, 2011, 10:17:43 AM

March 29, 2011
Tim Wu: The Man Who is Destroying the Tech Industry
Joshua Lipana



Tim Wu, the coiner of the term "network neutrality", and a senior adviser to the FTC, has an interesting solution to solve the non-existent problems plaguing the tech industry. As The Chronicle of Higher Education reports:

"In the class at MIT, Wu floats some hypothetical ways you could fight abuse... "something like term limits for monopolists. In theory, the government could say, 'Well, this company has clearly shown it's corrupt. ... So let's just nationalize their source code.'"


The monopolists, Mr. Wu is referring to, are the productive dynamos like Google, Facebook and Apple.


Apple in particular has earned Mr. Wu's ire. Wu, in a New York Times interview, says that he "fears" Apple. Why? Because of Steve Job's "vision" and because of its "undeniable appeal."


Partly because of Apple and its founder's much earned rise in the tech industry, Wu says that he seeks to "reinvigorate the role of a public counterforce to private power." This means stricter antitrust enforcement, and more controls on America's freest and most dynamic industry.


Apple, and companies like it, is not forcing anyone to buy its product. The relationship Apple has with its customers is one of mutual exchange to mutual benefit. Tim Wu wishes to harass Apple, not because it's done anything wrong, but precisely because it has done good. It is being targeted because of its productivity.


If we want to keep seeing the constant and magnificent innovation in the tech industry, we must condemn and stop this statist encroachment on the tech industry. And praise with moral certitude the heroic nature of entrepreneurs and businessmen in the tech industry.






Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/03/tim_wu_the_man_who_is_destroyi.html at April 04, 2011 - 12:14:42 PM CDT
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 04, 2011, 10:55:28 AM
Obama's Energy Policy: A Looming Disaster
Townhall.com ^ | April 4, 2011 | Lurita Doan




 Once again, on energy policy and action, President Obama talks the talk, but has no substance behind his teleprompted words.  In an address at Georgetown University, Obama touted his Administration's plans for energy dependence, outlined in the 44 page,   Blueprint for A Secure Energy Future, recently released by the White House.  The Blueprint is a banal and ineffective proposal more reminiscent of a poorly written, high school term paper than a substantive policy paper from the leader of the free world.  In it, Obama continues his worrisome trend of avoiding decisions, clouding the issues, and sidestepping any responsibility to lead.  The President should be ashamed.


Obama's speech made it clear that while he advocates making hard choices, he has very little experience and no plan for doing so.  So when he tried to talk down the price of oil by outlining a new energy policy which would make America less dependent upon foreign oil, the market quickly reacted.   Within hours of Obama's speech, the Stock Market apparently weighed, measured and found Obama's proposals hollow, and ineffective, and the price of oil went up.   Clearly, the President’s gift of persuasion is not what it used to be as we become more and more used to his unwillingness to make difficult decision or face problems squarely.

Obama said: "we will keep on being a victim to shifts in the oil market until we get serious about a long-term policy for secure, affordable energy."  Obama then made a powerful case to demonstrate his own lack of seriousness, by suggesting that American energy needs could be provided by solar, bio and wind.  We learn, once again, that Mr Obama hates coal (too dirty), he hates drilling for oil (BP spill), and now hates nuclear (after Japan). The obvious problem here is that coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear together account for almost 90% of US energy production and cannot possibly be replaced any time soon.

What Obama needed to do was to start a dispassionate conversation about how American know-how and technological abilities could be unleashed to make our sources of energy safer, less dangerous, and less expensive.  Instead, Obama left American with the impression that renewable energy could someday soon replace more conventional sources of energy.   Not once did he admit that  solar, wind and ethanol require massive government subsidies and a government diktat, forcing consumption    But then again, misleading the public while avoiding any difficult decision is becoming the Obama Way.


For example, the President states that he will call for a "100% alternative fuel, hybrid, or electric vehicles" government fleet within 4 years.

Left unsaid was the fact that this kind of energy policy actually makes the situation worse.  Obama is proposing to replace cars that don't need to be replaced (remember, in 2009 and 2010, he accelerated the replacement of 250,000 vehicles in the government fleet in support of Cash for Clunkers), for cars that must use fuel that doesn't exist in large enough quantity to keep the vehicles on the road, at a cost that the country cannot afford with out huge government subsidies.  Now that's some kind of a plan!

None of the President's proposals will meet his stated of goal of making America more energy dependent.  Instead, what Obama proposes is a transfer of energy dependence from the Middle East to Mexico, Canada and Brazil.  " We can partner with neighbors like Canada, Mexico, and Brazil, which recently discovered significant new oil reserves, and with whom we can share American technology and know-how."  We are left to wonder why Americans should not use these same  American resources and know-how to exploit even larger energy deposits in the US.


Obama says all the right things, such as: "Meeting this new goal of cutting our oil dependence depends largely on two things: finding and producing more oil at home, and reducing our dependence on oil with cleaner alternative fuels and greater efficiency."   And yet, time and again, President Obama proposes increasing the regulatory stranglehold that arcane and left-wing extremist rulemaking have on the industry, thus preventing any kind of energy independence.

Perhaps the cruelest fantasy advanced by Obama was when he dangled the possibility of natural gas as a potential solution.  Focusing attention on natural gas makes sense given the nation's enormous reserves, yet, Obama says that we aren't going to drill,  And, in the interests of safety, there will be more regulations imposed upon that industry, which shows Obama doesn't understand that the very regulatory regime he embraces is the single thing that most hinders utilizing more natural gas.

Obama likes to sound tough, so he told his audience of Georgetown students: " I don’t want to leave this challenge for future presidents."  But, a quick read of the plan he is proposing shows that all deliverables are for four or more years in the future-- which means, inevitably, it will become some other president's problem.


Of course, Obama isn't the only Democrat leader who just doesn't get it.  At almost the same time, that Obama was claiming that his Democrat leadership team was going to make energy independence a priority and focusing their efforts on the hard science needed to make this dream a reality, and that everyone one of them would "do their part", Harry Reid, Senate Majority leader, was getting advice on energy policy from  Chuck  Leavell, keyboardist for the Rolling Stones. 

So there you have it, confronted with a serious issue about what to do on energy, our President avoids making any decision at all, while the Democrat Senate Majority leader gets advice from a member of the Rolling Stones on what America should do.

Americans are left with this unmistakable reality--the greatest impediment to a coherent energy-independence policy is Obama, the man advancing the policy.

Churchill said it best: "So they [the Government] go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent."

Yep.  That's Obama for you.

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 05, 2011, 06:05:39 AM
US (Obama) lifts assets freeze on Libyan defector linked to Lockerbie bombing
msnbc ^ | 4/5/2011 | SCOTT SHANE/ ny times

________________________ ________________________ ____-


The Obama administration dropped financial sanctions on Monday against the top Libyan official who fled to Britain last week, saying it hoped the move would encourage other senior aides to abandon Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the country’s embattled leader.

But the decision to unfreeze bank accounts and permit business dealings with the official, Moussa Koussa, underscored the predicament his defection poses for American and British authorities, who said on Tuesday that Scottish police and prosecutors planned to interview Mr. Koussa about the 1988 Lockerbie bombing and other issues “in the next few days.”

Mr. Koussa’s close knowledge of the ruling circle, which he is believed to be sharing inside a British safe house, could be invaluable in trying to strip Colonel Qaddafi of support.

But as the longtime Libyan intelligence chief and foreign minister, Mr. Koussa is widely believed to be implicated in acts of terrorism and murder over the last three decades, including the assassination of dissidents, the training of international terrorists and the bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

“He was both the left arm and the right arm of the regime, its bloodhound,” said Dirk Vandewalle, a Dartmouth professor who has studied Libya for many years.


(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 05, 2011, 06:42:02 AM
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 05, 2011, 10:11:51 AM
www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/la-na-obama-records-20110405,0,15008.story

chicagotribune.com

Senators, Obama administration at odds over hiring records




Congressional auditors say they need employment data to check for possible federal disability fraud. The Health and Human Services Department says it's not authorized to disclose such data.


By Peter Nicholas, Washington Bureau

8:00 PM CDT, April 4, 2011

Reporting from Washington

Advertisement
 
The Obama administration is refusing to provide information that congressional auditors say they need to root out waste and fraud in federal programs that pay out billions of dollars in disability benefits, stirring complaints about White House open-government practices.

The position taken by the Health and Human Services Department has resulted in a standoff with congressional investigators, who want to flush out cases of people who obtain jobs while collecting federal disability payments. That could be a violation of law under certain circumstances.

Congress' investigative arm, the Government Accountability Office, hopes to match the names of those getting disability payments against a list of people who've been newly hired, a method of confirming whether healthy, gainfully employed people are receiving disability on top of their regular salary.

If that is the case, it would "certainly raise a huge red flag for fraud," said Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who has asked for an investigation into the issue.

But the health department, which keeps employment records, has refused to turn them over because of legal concerns.

The records are part of a federal database known as the National Directory of New Hires. It is used to help child support agencies find delinquent parents and enforce court orders.

Citing privacy concerns, Congress has placed restrictions on who gets to see the database. Because the GAO is not mentioned in law as an authorized user, the department has concluded that it is unable to share the directory with investigators, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius wrote in a letter last month to Collins.

Beyond holding back the records, the department has also told states not to comply with any request from congressional investigators for the same information, said Collins and two other senators who have intervened on the GAO's behalf.

They argue that the GAO has broad legal access to records needed to conduct oversight.

"This is ridiculous. We're trying to do oversight to solve a problem," said Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), who is pushing for the investigation.

The impasse comes amid a growing debate over Obama's record on government transparency, a signature promise of his 2008 campaign.

Two years into his term, the record is uneven. Obama aides insist they've set new standards for open government by revealing the names of White House visitors. Last month, Obama collected an award from good-government advocates for making transparency an important goal. But in an ironic twist, the White House neither disclosed the event nor allowed reporters in, prompting a rebuke from one of the groups that presented the award.

One study, by the nonpartisan National Security Archive, found last month that nearly half of 90 different federal agencies had failed to meet Obama's directive to make changes in public information laws aimed at opening up government.

In the dispute between the department and the GAO, Collins, Coburn and Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) sent a letter to Sebelius urging her to release the information. The three senators also asked her not to block states from cooperating with investigators' request for data.

"President Obama promised that his administration would be the 'most open and transparent ever,' " the senators wrote. "The American people deserve to see that promise kept. Withholding information from GAO, and directing that states do the same, undermines transparency and accountability that we know the president values."

Collins, in an interview, said the Obama administration's legal reasoning made no sense.

"HHS makes an absurd argument — that GAO is not an authorized user of the database because it's not specifically listed in the law," Collins said. "The reason this is an absurd argument is because if HHS is right, in every single law that we pass we would have to say, 'Oh, by the way, GAO has access to any data connected to this law.' "

A former general counsel to Health and Human Services, Thomas Barker, said the department probably had the better argument. When a similar issue came up during his tenure in President George W. Bush's administration, he said, the department withheld information from congressional investigators because the law did not expressly allow for them to have it.

Without the employment records, the GAO's investigation has been effectively blocked. That's not a familiar position for the office.

Since filing a lawsuit against then-Vice President Dick Cheney in 2002 over private meetings of his energy task force, GAO investigators have been able to resolve differences with the executive branch and move forward with investigations, a GAO official said in an interview.

But in a meeting with Senate staff this year, the GAO said it saw no way around the obstacle raised by the health department, according to people who were present. That didn't sit well with Senate aides at the meeting.

"Since the Cheney case we have either been able to work out our issues with the agencies or have found alternative means of doing the work," said Robert Cramer, general counsel for the GAO. "Here there's no alternative except going through the states, which HHS has cut off from us at this point."

Past investigations have uncovered fraud in federal disability programs, and all three senators have asked the GAO to look more deeply into the issue.

Last year, nearly 15 million people received federal disability benefits amounting to $153 billion under two programs run by the Social Security Administration.

peter.nicholas@latimes.com

Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times


________________________ ________________________ ___


Yeah, anther bogus award for Obama on transparency. 


   FUBO!   
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: freespirit on April 05, 2011, 12:54:29 PM
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 05, 2011, 01:06:12 PM
Ha ha ha ha ha ha - talk about incompetence. 
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 05, 2011, 06:46:16 PM
Obama Administration Continues To Bungle Caregiver’s Act Programs
Flopping Aces ^ | 04-05-11 | darden





Obama has faced the increasing pressure on him over the Caregivers and Veterans Omnibus Health Services Act that has included a bi-partisan letter from all of the Congressmen on the Veterans' Affairs Committee by still continuing to fail to implement any of the extended veterans' benefits of the Caregiver Act. However despite this complete inaction, the Obama administration continues to claim that the "VA and veterans are the president's top priority" as Deputy VA W. Scott Gould did in a high profile speech last week. The Caregiver Act, which Obama signed it into law nearly a year ago, extends veterans of the War on Terror's benefits and is meant to provide critical support services to those who take care of our nation's most severely wounded warriors and includes a stipend to be paid to the primary caregiver of a disabled veteran as well as provisions to pay lodging and meals to those caregivers who might accompany injured veterans on trips for VA healthcare evaluations and treatments.

Because of the obvious importance of providing financial stability for these veterans and their caregivers veterans' support groups like the Wounded Warrior Project claimed the program was a sign of hope when it was first signed into law on May 5th of last year. However in the intervening 11 months many people's bright expectation have been tamped into an undiluted pessimism as Obama has failed to get the programs up and running even though months have passed since the January 30th deadline.

And there's nothing to show that Obama has any plans of working towards getting the programs started either.

(Excerpt) Read more at floppingaces.net...

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 05, 2011, 08:52:39 PM
 ;D

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-april-4-2011/victory-lapse---obama-transparency-award?xrs=share_copy

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Option D on April 06, 2011, 06:20:40 AM
;D

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-april-4-2011/victory-lapse---obama-transparency-award?xrs=share_copy




Dont you talk shit when i post something by Stewart.. something about information from a comedian.. you dont watch cable news...hahahaha caught in another lie..
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 06, 2011, 06:23:10 AM

Dont you talk shit when i post something by Stewart.. something about information from a comedian.. you dont watch cable news...hahahaha caught in another lie..

Ok.   Care to dispute what he said?   
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Option D on April 06, 2011, 06:26:51 AM
Ok.   Care to dispute what he said?   

na.. its prob right..i havent even watched it////.but dont come on here all high and mighty, talking about "oh i dont watch cable news...i dont get information from a comedian..blah blah blah".. and then.. .............get information from a comedian..


What a fucking inconsistant joke you are
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: whork25 on April 06, 2011, 06:29:09 AM
Whats wrong with Stewart ???

He is the most unbiased news/comedian on air
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 06, 2011, 06:29:38 AM
na.. its prob right..i havent even watched it////.but dont come on here all high and mighty, talking about "oh i dont watch cable news...i dont get information from a comedian..blah blah blah".. and then.. .............get information from a comedian..


What a fucking inconsistant joke you are

I saw the clip posted at DU and laughed my ass off at thwe obama dildos melting down over it.   I watch maybe 2-3 hours of TV a week at best.    
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Option D on April 06, 2011, 06:30:46 AM
You know I am right.  Liberal guilt ridden jews in NY & CA largely funded NObama over Hillary and now those stokholm syndrome idiots have to deal with it.  

Screw em.  I really dont give a rats ass about them anymore.   Let them keep making asses of themselves like Stewart does.    

It was an off the cuff observation I had.  I live in NYC and see this garbage up front daily.  

To me, there is something hysterical about minorities supporting jews in public office or in the media like Stewart, Stern, Wiener, Schumer, etc not realizing that many of those same jews are far more more racist and far more prejudiced than any red neck or tea bagger on the earth.  
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 06, 2011, 06:34:52 AM


Good quotes.   I'm 10000% correct on that.  And in 2012 -Stewarts' white liberal guilt will make him fall in line just like the 95% of blacks who will vote for Obama even if he promises to re-impose slavery.       
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Option D on April 06, 2011, 06:42:05 AM
so he is awful when he mocks your hero.. there are all these reasons we shouldnt listen to him.. but when he mocks Obama.. hes cool?..lol i swear i think you are 12 years old
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 06, 2011, 06:49:22 AM
so he is awful when he mocks your hero.. there are all these reasons we shouldnt listen to him.. but when he mocks Obama.. hes cool?..lol i swear i think you are 12 years old

He can say whatever he wanyts - but at the end of the day I will bet everything I have he will fall into line and lockste just like you will no matter what.   
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Option D on April 06, 2011, 06:55:33 AM
He can say whatever he wanyts - but at the end of the day I will bet everything I have he will fall into line and lockste just like you will no matter what.   
what that fuck are you blabbering about.. end of day lockste... wtf? dude get some rest..
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 06, 2011, 06:57:06 AM
Washington Post and CBS receiving money from ObamaCare Slush Fund
Daily Caller ^ | 4/5/2011 | Matthew Boyle


________________________ ________________________ ____________



Two mainstream news organizations are receiving hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars from Obamacare’s Early Retiree Reinsurance Program (ERRP) — a $5 billion grant program that’s doling out cash to companies, states and labor unions in what the Obama administration considers an effort to pay for health insurance for early retirees. The Washington Post Company raked in $573,217 in taxpayer subsidies and CBS Corporation secured $722,388 worth of Americans’ money.

“It is fine with me if they continue covering the ObamaCare debate,” said Rep. Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, in an e-mail to The Daily Caller. “When NBC used to cover energy issues, they identified themselves as a subsidiary of General Electric. CBS and Washington Post just have to disclose that they are subsidiaries of the Obama Administration.”


(Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com ...
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 06, 2011, 09:26:37 AM
White House Promises Veto of Anti-E.P.A. Bill
NYT ^ | 4/5/2011 | JOHN M. BRODER




In case there was any doubt, the White House on Tuesday issued a formal statement opposing a bill now before the House that would bar the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gases for the purpose of combating climate change.

The bill, known as the Energy Tax Prevention Act of 2011, could come up for a vote as early as Wednesday and is almost certain to pass when it does. It has virtually unanimous support among the Republican majority and will probably draw votes from a few Democrats from coal and oil producing states.

The measure, sponsored by Representatives Fred Upton, Republican of Michigan, and Ed Whitfield, Republican of Kentucky, would overturn the E.P.A.’s finding that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases pose a danger to human health and the environment. That finding, based on a broad scientific consensus, is the basis for pending regulation of carbon emissions from vehicles and large stationary sources like power plants, factories and refineries.

Republicans assert the new rules are a hidden energy tax that will significantly raise production costs and drive jobs offshore.

Administration officials have spoken out against the bill in speeches and congressional testimony, but President Obama had not formally threatened to veto it. On Tuesday, the White House issued a strongly worded statement that erases any doubt.


(Excerpt) Read more at green.blogs.nytimes.com ...
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 06, 2011, 03:53:54 PM


Obama accused of 'rewarding terrorism' after dropping sanctions on Libyan Lockerbie 'mastermind'
dailymail.co.uk ^ | April 05, 2011



The Obama administration has been accused of ‘rewarding terrorism’ after dropping financial sanctions against the former Libyan foreign minister who defected to Britain.

Relatives of those who died in the Lockerbie bombing said that it ‘sent out totally the wrong message’ to unfreeze bank accounts belonging to Musa Kusa.

He will also be allowed to conduct business dealings with Americans and U.S. companies to ensure that he has access to any funds he has built up for himself.

The White House claimed the measure would encourage other Libyan officials to defect and share their knowledge of the regime.

But the Lockerbie relatives said they were deeply distressed by the decision and that it went against the interests of justice.

The move also comes after Washington was extremely harsh in its criticism of the British and Scottish governments for agreeing to free bomber Abdelbasset al-Megrahi.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton went so far as to say that his ongoing survival is ‘an affront to the victims’ families’.

Frank Duggan, president of Pan Am 103 inc, which represents the families of those who lost loved ones, said: ‘I’m flabbergasted. Unlocking the sanctions sends out totally the wrong message.’

Brian Flynn, who lost his 21-year-old brother John Patrick in the Lockerbie bombing, added he and other relatives were alarmed by the decision.

‘It’s all logical in the diplomatic game they need to play,’ he said.

‘We all want to see Gadaffi brought down but at what cost to justice if you are rewarding somebody who has been accused of terrorist attacks?’

Kusa, who defected to Britain last week, has been described by Libyan experts as ‘the left arm and the right arm of the regime, its bloodhound’.


(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 06, 2011, 04:00:25 PM
Obama’s New Energy Policy: A Lesson in Stealth Socialism
Pajamas Media ^ | April 6, 2011 | Mike McDaniel





His speech and policies utilize the bait-and-switch.

 President Barack Obama, facing political heat and plummeting poll numbers inevitably generated by rapidly rising gasoline and energy prices, is calling for a one-third reduction in oil imports over the next decade. How will this potentially laudable — but likely farcical — goal be accomplished?


By boosting domestic energy production, offering incentives to increase the use of biofuels and natural gas, and making cars and trucks more fuel-efficient.

According to the AP and Fox:

Obama long has said the U.S. needs to reduce its dependency on oil — particularly from overseas sources — for financial, security and environmental reasons. In his State of the Union address in January, he set a goal of having 80 percent of U.S. energy come from clean sources like wind, solar and nuclear by 2035.

But what about domestic oil production?


The administration says it still sees vast opportunities to expand on domestic oil and gas production. An Interior Department report released ahead of Obama’s speech Wednesday said more than two-thirds of offshore leases in the Gulf of Mexico are sitting idle, neither producing oil and gas nor being actively explored by the companies who hold the leases. The department said those leases could potentially hold more than 11 billion barrels of oil and 50 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

And what about nuclear energy?

Officials said Obama also would reaffirm his support for nuclear power, which has come under intense scrutiny in recent weeks after an earthquake and tsunami in Japan severely damaged a nuclear power plant there.

One might initially be tempted to see this as an admission of past failings and the adoption of new, rational policies to lower energy prices for Americans, but it is no such thing. In Clintonian fashion, it depends on what the meaning of “boost” is, but this is primarily one of the oldest cons in the book: bait-and-switch.

Mr. Obama, as I’ve previously argued in these pages, is provably a socialist, but a particularly American kind: a stealth socialist. Stealth socialism is a matter of tactics. Stealth socialists, recognizing that an open Marxist agenda will never fly with the American people, adopt a patient, long-term strategy whereby they attain the same goals but through misrepresentation, misdirection, lies, and bait-and-switch. These are, coincidentally, the tactics of the con man. Having been a community organizer, Mr. Obama is particularly adept at these tactics and with the use of the primary vehicle for their implementation: rhetoric.


In Radical-In-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism, Stanley Kurtz carefully and convincingly documents stealth socialism and Mr. Obama’s full immersion in it. Stealth socialists are careful never to allow themselves to be known as socialists, which is certainly Mr. Obama’s practice. Mr. Kurtz does what the media would not do in 2008, and still scrupulously avoids: he investigates and reports on Mr. Obama’s associations, motivations, and the truth of his policies.

Bait-and-switch, for those not familiar with the con man’s lexicon, is promising one thing but steering people into accepting another. A classic example is the appliance store that advertises an attractive microwave oven for $20, but when customers stream into the store, explains that the last of the $20 ovens (if such ovens ever existed) was just sold, and further explains that there are some wonderful $60 dollar ovens that are just as good. Having expended time, effort, and money, many people will be disposed to being steered to the more expensive product, which was the store’s dishonest intention all along.

The most egregious example of this execrable con is ObamaCare.

Misrepresentation? Mr. Obama promised a health care utopia that would not only insure tens of millions of the currently uninsured at no additional cost, but would improve health care in every way while costing less and simultaneously lowering the deficit. That’s right, ladies and gentlemen! Come on down to the BHO Discount Appliance Emporium for $20 health care with a $30 rebate! But act now! It’s going fast!

Misdirection? Large parts of the $20 health care oven don’t take effect until after the 2012 election cycle, and funding is frantically juggled into the future when the real economic bad news finally catches up and everyone is left with a far more expensive product, inferior to the product it replaced. The idea was that by imposing as much of ObamaCare as possible on the public for as long as possible, enough of the public would come to feel that they had too much invested to turn down the switch. This is the bait — the building of such huge bureaucracies and such addiction in huge constituencies that it would be virtually impossible to shut the bureaucrats down and to wean the addicts off the drug, thus cementing the switch. The entire system is designed to fail, and to fail obviously, because the final goal — intended all along — is a single payer system and maximum control over the health and the very lives of Americans. This is classic stealth socialism.


Fortunately, economic reality has already begun to catch up with Mr. Obama, and even he and many members of his party and his supporters have had to admit the misdirection and misrepresentation. As Nancy Pelosi forecast, the bill was passed, and people have been finding out what’s in it. But to her surprise, they’re not taking the bait. The switch has been prematurely exposed by more than a thousand waivers (and counting), bad budget news, and exploding deficits. Even Democrats who voted for ObamaCare have had no choice but to admit the truth. Democrats such as former Indiana Senator Evan Bayh admitted that ObamaCare doesn’t address rising health care costs:

The real issue that was not addressed, Laura, that you’ve raised now, and I think appropriately, is the cost, the cost to both the government and to your listeners. We need to take steps now to get the costs of health care under control. That was not dealt with really in an aggressive way in this legislation. I think it now needs to be.

Now comes Mr. Obama with his newest con, as always, using stealth socialist bait-and-switch tactics. He suggested that young people have a “responsibility” to buy fuel-efficient cars. To save the planet? Not quite. To provide a market for the manufacturers who make them, manufacturers such as GM, which makes the Chevy Volt. In a free market, if there is no demand for a product, no rational manufacturer will build it. But this is the new Obama age of green, socialist technology and government-owned auto companies, where the intentions of bureaucrats must drive demand. Mr. Obama added:

There are no quick fixes. And we will keep on being a victim to shifts in the oil market until we finally get serious about a long-term policy for a secure, affordable energy future.

Mr. Obama denied that he had any hand in higher gas prices, and argued that any claim that his administration had shut down oil production “doesn’t track with reality.” There are a great many Gulf Coast (where production is down some 360,000 barrels of oil per day), Alaskan, and other American oil companies and workers whose reality is quite obviously on a different track — a high-speed rail to unemployment and bankruptcy.

In this case, the bait is the promise of reasonable fuel prices, more American jobs, and economic prosperity. The switch is virtually everything he has proposed. Keep in mind that Mr. Obama’s first instinct is to handle every situation by making a speech about it. He seems to believe that whatever he says in a televised teleprompter reading is reality because he said it, and the public should be thanking him — not only for making the reading, but for the policies expressed, regardless of whether they are true or ever come to fruition. In the case of energy policy and much else, all that remains for the public is eloquent-sounding but ephemeral rhetoric.


Despite what Mr. Obama says, he knows that he has many supporting, stealthy resources to work his will. He can, with no fanfare or publicity, produce executive orders at odds with his rhetoric. His ever-expanding legion of bureaucrats will do everything possible to make end-runs around Congress and to prevent the implementation of his feigned intentions, particularly in the areas of energy and the environment. And failing those options, legions of environmentalists and animal-rights groups will file lawsuits to obstruct anything they might not like, relying on willing and helpful judges in the federal judiciary. To date, they have even opposed and litigated the very foundations of Mr. Obama’s brave new world of green energy, including on- and offshore windmills and even a solar plant in the Mojave Desert.

As a public service, an exposition/translation of Mr. Obama’s obviously intended switches:

(1) Reducing oil imports by one-third within 10 years

This could be done today, but the problem remains: what replaces it? Mr. Obama claims that America has only about 2% of the world’s oil reserves, but he is lying by means of cherry-picked statistics. To date, Mr. Obama has indulged only in magical thinking about current green technologies that absolutely cannot make up the deficit, or potential future technologies that will almost certainly always be future technologies. Without a plan to replace that oil with a substitute that is, this very day, completely viable in application and cost, reducing imports will only further cripple the economy.

(2) “Clean technology” comprising 80% of U.S. energy needs by 2035

Unicorn horns and fairy dust don’t conjure nonexistent technologies into being. Wind, solar, and similar technologies will produce only a marginal percentage of American energy needs, and only if they are fully exploited. Mr. Obama has shown no sign of doing that. The experience of other nations in subsidizing “green” jobs has proved an economic disaster, as countries like Spain have lost at least two jobs — often more — in the rest of the economy for each “green” job created. Replacing any significant portion of America’s current energy sources would take unprecedented scientific breakthroughs, stratospheric governmental and individual cash outlays, and wholesale changes in every facet of American life, particularly if imposed on a timetable picked out of a hat.

(3) “Incentives” for increased biofuel production


Ethanol has been a disaster. Gasoline is ubiquitous because it can be economically produced and because it contains substantial energy. Ethanol contains substantially less energy than gasoline, so it produces less engine power and reduced mileage. It adds complexity to the supply chain, which will raise the cost of the fuel, and it arguably takes more energy to produce a gallon of the stuff than it actually contains. In addition, it adds alcohol to the fuel, which absorbs moisture, and because it is an effective solvent, damages plastics and fiberglass and melts various rubber and plastic gaskets and seals. It is also corrosive, long-term, to automotive engines. Ethanol production has reduced the world corn supply, contributing to food shortages around the world and increased food prices in America. Of course, “incentives” mean that dollars, which must be borrowed, are being used to provide the aforementioned dubious benefits. Other biofuels promise to be no different, and potentially, worse, and all in the name of being “not” gasoline.

(4) “Support” for nuclear energy

It is very easy to express support for nuclear energy or universal hot tubs, but any politician — and particularly Mr. Obama — must be judged on what they do. To date, Mr. Obama has done nothing to allow or even to encourage additional nuclear capacity and has entirely shut down the Nevada Yucca Mountain radioactive waste storage facility intended to provide a safe national depository, which has been under development for decades. Unless and until all of the permits and authorities necessary to build new power plants are issued and construction begins, Mr. Obama’s support amounts to nothing more than rhetoric read from a teleprompter.

(5) Increased fuel efficiency for newly manufactured vehicles

It’s easy to mandate increased efficiency, and Mr. Obama has already done that. It’s much harder, and much more expensive, to produce the engineering necessary to match fanciful numbers pulled out of a hat. With current technology and the technologies that might reasonably be developed in the foreseeable future, significant increases in fuel efficiency will require much smaller, lighter, and more aerodynamic vehicles, all of which means far less passenger capacity and a much higher highway death rate.


(6) Being “serious about a long-term policy for a secure, affordable, energy future”

Being serious would acknowledge two simple facts: (1) Absent virtually inconceivable scientific breakthroughs, the only way to provide sufficient affordable energy supplies into the foreseeable future is through oil, coal, and nuclear energy development. (2) Mr. Obama has expressed his ardent desire to make energy costs “necessarily skyrocket” by artificially driving up the cost of oil products and by destroying the domestic coal industry. Absent the realization that unless we drill for oil wherever it is cost-effective (No, Mr. Obama, oil companies aren’t sitting on productive leases), dig coal, and build new power plants, new refineries, and new nuclear plants, America will continue to be reliant on hostile nations for a significant portion of our energy supplies.

Only significantly increased American production and development can possibly reduce our reliance on foreign suppliers, yet Mr. Obama wants to give Brazil our technologies and assistance so that he can spend money we don’t have to buy the fruits of our technologies and assistance from Brazil. This makes no national security or economic sense, yet it is in line with virtually all of Mr. Obama’s other energy policies and actions. If a Manchurian Candidate bent on destroying the nation assumed the presidency, how would their energy policies differ from Mr. Obama’s?

The only reasonable explanation is that his actions directly reflect the desires and plans that he and such “lightworkers” as Secretary of Energy Chu have long made public. In May of 2009, Mr. Obama said:

We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times … and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK.

They fully intend to reduce the supply of affordable energy so drastically that Americans will be forced to abandon their vehicles, to abandon air conditioning, to heat their homes in winter to only Scrooge-like levels, and to accept the transportation, comfort, and survival alternatives they deem fit to mandate. Mr. Obama maintains the White House thermostat on “Sahara Desert,” but of course, this is not in conflict with his desires for the rest of America. This, like the eventual forced acceptance of ObamaCare, is the ultimate big switch.


That most of America does not have access to public transportation, that most of America does not and cannot live within walking distance of their employment, and that their lunatic high-speed rail proposals would serve only a tiny portion of the population at ridiculous expense and at a great and perpetual financial loss seem to concern them not at all. The horrendously destructive effect of their ruinous policies on the economy is also apparently not a concern.

The con is on and the bait has been set. America’s redemption lies in enough of the American public understanding that they are being conned, and in their willingness to reject the switch. In this case, hope exists only if sufficient Americans realize that Mr. Obama has violated the con man’s prime directive: pull off the con and flee before the marks know what hit them. Stealth socialists are unable to flee. They must stick around to force their will on the marks and to ensure that they are never able to throw off government intrusion and control. Even so, Americans will have one chance in 2012 to limit and perhaps reverse the damage, one chance to redeem American prosperity and true international leadership and prestige. Buying the cons of con men and stealth socialists leads only to ruin.

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 11, 2011, 09:55:48 AM

Auto Industry Fights Obama Admin's Effort to Force Corn Ethanol on U.S.
Daily Tech ^ | April 8, 2011 2:24 PM | Jason Mick (Blog)




New legislation would force virtually all cars to run on ethanol


The Obama administration and Democrats in Congress are facing resistance from the auto industry about a controversial proposal that would force consumers to use more ethanol in a bid to reduce fossil fuels consumption.



I. What's in the Bill?

The new bill, The Biofuels Expansion Act of 2011, has a number of provisions, but among its most controversial are efforts to expand government spending on ethanol and force ethanol on consumers.

Sponsored by Senators Tom Harkin (D-Iowa); Tim Johnson (D-South Dakota); Amy Klobuchar (D/"Farmer-Labor Party"- Minnesota); and Al Franken (D/"Farmer-Labor Party"-Minnesota), the bill could massively benefit corn farmers in the Midwest, but may not be so rosy for the rest of the country.



Under its proposals, government spending on ethanol would leap from $50M USD in 2012 to $350M USD by 2016.  The government would also provide loan guarantees to construct new ethanol pipelines.

But most importantly, the bill would force 90 percent of automobiles sold by 2016 to capable of running on an E85 fuel blend -- fuel that is 85 percent ethanol, and 15 percent gas.

II.  The Good

There are some positives about the bill.  The bill could promote the growth of cellulosic ethanol research and production.

 Cellulosic ethanol has few downsides other than the cost.  It comes from waste, is completely renewable, has a net harvest-to-pump reduction in green house gases, nitrogen, and sulfur emissions.

And the bill could promote other non-corn biofuels such as algae, something the Navy has been actively dabbling in for several years.

In our past discussions with alternative biofuel companies like Coskata, most expressed that they didn't need subsidies to survive and eventually be profitable, but that subsidies could accelerate the process.

III. The Bad

Unfortunately the bad here is substantial as well.  The bill would push for higher consumption of corn-based ethanol.  That would be extremely lucrative for corn farmers who long struggled to find new ways to sell the massive amount of corn.



However, most economists agree that it would likely drive up food prices, at least temporarily.  An increase in the cost of corn meal, corn syrup, and livestock corn-feed would create a cascading effect, the net result of which would likely be higher prices at the super-market checkout.

Further, the auto industry would be forced to shoulder a $2B USD load in upgrading their engines, much of which would be passed on to the consumer.

Today, thanks to federal and state legislation, most of the fuel you get at the pump already is a 10 percent ethanol, 90 percent gasoline blend (E10).  Engines can tolerate E10, but it wears on them and is less energy dense (so you get fewer miles per gallon of fuel). 



E85, by contrast would break a normal engine.  So automakers would have to outfit their engines to be capable of running on such fuels.  Of the major automakers, GM is closest to this goal, having heavily invested in an ethanol push.  By contrast Ford, Chrysler, Toyota, Honda, and Hyundai/Kia have minimal investments in E85 vehicles.

Consumers would likely be hit by a triple price increase.  At the supermarket they'd pay more for food; at the pump they'd pay more for fuel (as ethanol, on average, currently costs more in mpg than gas); and they would pay more when purchasing new fuels.



Ultimately this may cut new automotive sales, in turn leading to job loss.

Essentially all this lost wealth would be funneled mostly to farmers, with a small cut going to researchers.

Further, corn ethanol has been scientifically shown to increase emissions.  Regardless of your opinion of more carbon dioxide being pumped into the atmosphere, you probably would be slightly more concerned about the increase in nitrogen and sulfur emissions that are harmful to human health, buildings, animal, and plant life.



IV. The Ugly



It’s no mystery why four farming state Senators would support a corn-bill.  It's good for the constituents.  But beyond that, it's good for their party.  The corn lobby has poured millions per year into "convincing" politicians of the "merits" of corn ethanol.  That stream of funding has drawn a degree of bipartisan support.  Former President George W. Bush (R) was a strong proponent of ethanol, even backing measures to increase loans, government use, and blending at the pump.



Surprisingly, though, one of the staunchest opponents of the bill comes from a farm state.  Sen. James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma), the Environment and Public Works Committee's top Republican, has led opposition to the bill.

Ironically the debate may be less about the merits of the bill and more a test of the political muscle of various lobbyists.

Supporting the opposition are the food and oil lobbies, the latter of which has been particularly active in recent years, funneling millions to federal political candidates.  The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, the trade association representing General Motors Co., Ford Motor Co., Chrysler Group LLC, Toyota Motor Corp. and eight others, has also thrown its weight behind the opposition, concerned about the cost increase to upgrade the nation's vehicles.

V. What's Next

The bill was just debated by the Senate Energy Committee on Thursday.  You can find an audio recording of that debate here.



The bill will now move to a procedural vote by the Committee.  If approved, a Senator can then motion to have it brought to the floor.

While the bill likely will stall in the Republican-controlled House, it's possible it could be approved in exchange for Democratic concessions during the budget debates.  And it’s also possible that the corn lobby might be able to sweeten the deal with campaign contributions enough to change the minds of enough House Republicans to pass the bill.
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 11, 2011, 01:46:56 PM
Obamacare Health Benefits Exchanges Are Flailing and Failing
NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE ^ | April 08, 2011 | John R. Graham






The most disappointing news on the Obamacare front these days is that at least two Republican governors cannot wait to implement Obamacare in their states. Apparently, one Republican state senator in Oklahoma has finally decided to prevent an Obamacare exchange bill from reaching Gov. Mary Fallin for signature. Fair enough, but how did it get this far in the first place?

In Virginia, Gov. Bob McDonnell has forced amendments to prevent health plans participating in his state’s Obamacare exchange from covering abortions — at least, that’s what he thinks he’s done. In fact, U.S. Secretary of Health & Human Services Kathleen Sebelius will decide whether Virginia’s health plans will cover abortions, because she’s the one who will certify the exchange — or not. Because 100 percent of Obamacare’s subsidies to individuals in the exchanges come from the federal government, Sebelius’s whims will decide the rules governing the cash flows. Virginia will simply be stuck with paying salaries to the bureaucrats and fees to the vendors and consultants who operate the exchange.

What is motivating these Republicans? They have surely fallen for the talking point that if they don’t implement a state-based exchange, the federal government will rush in and impose one on them. Oh, really? Is that what they’ve seen in Florida, where Gov. Rick Scott has gone so far as to send back the initial federal grant that his predecessor wheedled out of Secretary Sebelius?

In fact, the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services has shown zero will or ability to establish exchanges in states that resist Obamacare, and that is hardly going to change. Despite the Obamacrats’ brave talk that they will keep regulating despite the looming government shutdown, congressional Republicans’ commitment to defunding Obamacare only means that Secretary Sebelius’s ability to implement Obamacare will decrease in 2011 and 2012.

And it’s not like they achieved much in 2010 except to churn out thousands of pages of regulations and immediately issue waivers exempting their friends from those very regulations. And their friends’ performance has been equally underwhelming.

Look at California, the first state to establish an Obamacare exchange, signed by former Governor Schwarzenegger last September 30. Governor Brown’s secretary of health and human services wants California to be the “lead car” in imposing Obamacare. Governor Schwarzenegger’s former policy adviser Herb Schultz is now Secretary Sebelius’s director for the region covering California, so state and federal Obamacrats are surely moving together swiftly to implement health reform.

Or maybe not. Although it’s existed for over half a year, the California exchange’s board of directors has never had a meeting. Its only achievements so far are to have provided post-administration jobs for Kim Belshé, Schwarzenegger’s secretary of health and human services, and Susan Kennedy, his chief of staff. Governor Brown also found perches for two of his friends on the board, which means it needs only one more for its full complement of five. (Advocates hope that the board will be rounded out with a Latino or person of color.)

California’s Obamacare exchange’s only achievement has been to attach golden parachutes to friends of Schwarzenegger’s and Brown’s. The Obamacrats can’t even get an exchange operating in the state which is the most committed to Obamacare. They’re sure not going to do it in a state that resists them.

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 12, 2011, 09:06:42 AM
Feds Pay To Upgrade Mexican Trucks, US Trucks Not So Lucky
http://radioviceonline.com/ ^ | April 12, 2011 | Steve McGough




A story broke yesterday concerning the retrofit of more than 100 trucks from Mexico that do not meet United States environmental standards. Our federal government is paying to upgrade these trucks, yet when the state of California and the EPA set new rules for US-owned trucks, they fine companies who do not comply.  

This post is not about the environment, it concerns how US trucking companies are treated by the federal and state government as compared to Mexican-owned rigs. From AzCentral.com.

For air-quality regulators, the border creates a legal barrier. State and federal agencies can’t force vehicles manufactured and bought in Mexico to comply with U.S. emissions rules, even though the trucks cross into this country.

So the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality tried a different approach, offering to pay Mexican truck owners to replace old mufflers with new catalytic converters that will reduce harmful diesel emissions by up to 30 percent. The project in effect circumvents the more lax Mexican rules about exhaust systems.


(Excerpt) Read more at radioviceonline.com ...
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 12, 2011, 05:21:37 PM
Team Obama Spent Up to $200 Million on Obamacare Propaganda Campaign
Gateway Pundit ,Rightnetwork ^ | April12,2011 | Jim Hoft




Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that it has obtained documents from the Obama Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) detailing the agency’s massive taxpayer-funded multimedia campaign designed to promote the Affordable Health Care Act (also known as Obamacare) and other HHS policy initiatives. According to the records obtained by Judicial Watch pursuant to a March 23, 2011, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (No. 11-608)), the total cost of the campaign, which targets Obama’s electoral coalition, could reach as much as $200 million.

Among the highlights from the documents:

An April 27, 2010 Department of Health and Human Services Acquisition Plan entitled “National Multimedia & Education Campaign & Grassroots Outreach,” details a comprehensive five-year communications program covering a variety of HHS policy initiatives, including “health care reform.” According to a section of the Acquisition Plan entitled, “Independent Government Cost Estimate,” the Health and Human Services ASPA (Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs) states: “ASPCA is unable to provide a definitive government cost estimate. Campaigns vary is [sic] size and scope. Some campaigns involve radio, some TV, and some print. Other campaigns may involve all of those avenues plus on ground events, website, bus tours, etc.” However, ASPA “is letting this contract in order produce three to four campaigns per year through the life-cycle of the contract. We are requesting a contract with a $200,000,000 maximum.” According to a subsequent March 14, 2011, contract included among the documents, HHS hired The Ogilvy Group “to provide services to design, develop, and execute a multiplatform educational media campaign to promote the new website Healthcare.gov, including the new Spanish language version of the website.” The total amount of the contract award: $3,998,928. There’s more.


(Excerpt) Read more at gatewaypundit.rightnetwo rk.com ...
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Freeborn126 on April 12, 2011, 05:25:11 PM
ethanol is shit.  I get like 2 to 3 less mpg with tha 10% ethanol crap.
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 13, 2011, 05:16:32 AM
Obama and Mexican Trucks
Townhall.com ^ | April 12, 2011 | Phyllis Schlafly





Barack Obama's deal with the president of Mexico to allow Mexican trucks to carry their loads onto U.S. highways and roads is new evidence of his high-handed solo behavior that has become Standard Operating Procedure in the administration. Here are 10 reasons why Obama's plan is dangerous and must be stopped by Congress and public protest.

1. Obama's deal with President Felipe Calderon, announced on March 3, bypasses Congress, defies the wishes of the American people, and looks like the action of a Third World dictator who thinks representative government is a nuisance and can be ignored. Congress made its wishes emphatically clear in 2007 when it voted to continue our ban on Mexican trucks. The House roll-call vote was 411 to 3, and the Senate's was 75 to 23.

2. Obama's deal is a direct attack on the jobs available to U.S. truck drivers because it helps big-business interests cut their costs by hiring cheaper Mexican drivers. Obama's deal is also an attack on small business (i.e., the owner-operated and independent truck drivers) who constitute the big majority of U.S. trucks.

3. The claim that Obama's deal is reciprocal (i.e., U.S. trucks will be allowed to drive into Mexico) is so cynical that we can hardly believe anyone says it with a straight face. "South of the border down Mexico way" (in the words of the old popular song) is the most dangerous war zone in the world (more dangerous than Afghanistan or Libya), where U.S. truck drivers would become the targets of hijackings, theft, murder, kidnappings and even beheadings committed by the drug cartels.

4. Built into the Obama deal is the sneaky imposition of costs on both U.S. truck drivers and U.S. taxpayers. Each truck will be required to install an EOBR (electronic on-board recorder) costing $3,000 plus maintenance fees: U.S. drivers at their own expense and Mexican trucks as a gift from U.S. taxpayers paid out of the Highway Trust Fund. U.S. taxpayers are already paying $1,600 each for many Mexican trucks to replace their old mufflers with catalytic converters.

5. Obama's deal will make it easy for Mexican trucks to bring in loads of illegal aliens and illegal drugs. Border inspection will be a farce, maybe only one in 10 trucks inspected, perhaps merely one in 20.

6. Opening our southern border to Mexican trucks will be a giant step toward the goal of creating a North American Union with open borders between Mexico, the U.S. and Canada -- a proposal launched by President George W. Bush using a website called Security and Prosperity Partnership (since deactivated). Obama is advancing the plan under less threatening names -- the March 23, 2010, State Department fact sheet titled "United States-Mexico Partnership: A New Border Vision," a Nov. 30, 2010, "Trusted Traveler" agreement with Mexico signed by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, and a Feb. 4, 2011, declaration signed by Obama with Canada called "Beyond the Border: A Shared Vision for Perimeter Security."

7. When Mexican truck drivers have their layovers and turn-arounds in the U.S., what's to prevent them from enjoying a frolic and diversion? They could use that time to father a baby who would then be proclaimed a U.S. citizen and get generous financial benefits and handouts provided by U.S. taxpayers.

8. We can assume that Mexican truck drivers will not be required to speak and read English, as U.S. law requires. The previous secretary of transportation, Mary Peters, stated at a Senate hearing that if drivers respond to test questions in Spanish, the test-taker nevertheless checks the box that they are "English proficient."

9. While U.S. truck drivers are strictly limited to the number of hours per day they can be on the road, there is no way to figure out how many hours a Mexican truck driver has been on the road when he clocks in at the border. Has he been driving the typical Mexican 20-hour day?

10. Mexican trucks will make highway safety for Americans a major problem. We have no way to know a Mexican driver's record of accidents, alcohol or drugs, or a Mexican truck's record of brakes or emissions. Mexico doesn't bother with records or regulations.

Don't let anybody get by with saying that NAFTA requires us to admit Mexican trucks because it's a treaty. It isn't -- NAFTA never complied with the treaty provision in the U.S. Constitution and is merely a law passed by Congress that can be changed or overturned.

Tell your member of Congress to take action to cancel Obama's truck deal with the Mexican president. Solo deals like this one cannot be tolerated under constitutional government.
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 13, 2011, 08:56:40 AM

W.H. visitor logs leave out many
By: Viveca Novak and Fred Schulte - Center for Public Integrity
April 13, 2011 04:39 AM EDT

www.politico.com


 


A foot of snow couldn’t keep Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Jennifer Hudson and other celebrities away from a star-studded celebration of civil-rights-era music, hosted by President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama at the White House in February 2010.

Dylan’s haunting rendition of “The Times They Are a-Changin’” was a highlight of the dazzling evening. The digitally friendly White House even posted the video of his performance on its website.

But you won’t find Dylan (or Robert Zimmerman, his birth name) listed in the White House visitor logs — the official record of who comes to call at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., which is maintained by the Secret Service.

Ditto Joan Baez.

Similarly, the logs are missing the names of thousands of other visitors to the White House, including lobbyists, government employees, campaign donors, policy experts and friends of the first family, according to an investigation by the Center for Public Integrity.

The White House website proudly boasts of making available “over 1,000,000 records of everyone who’s come through the doors of the White House” via a searchable database.

Yet the Center’s analysis shows that the logs routinely omit or cloud key details about the identity of visitors, whom they met with and the nature of their visits. The logs even include the names of people who never showed up. These are critical gaps that raise doubts about the records’ historical accuracy and utility in helping the public understand White House operations, from social events to meetings on key policy debates.

Among the many weaknesses found by the Center’s review of the database:

• The “event” description in the logs is blank for more than 205,000 visits, including many that involved small meetings with the president and his key aides.

• Five junior staff aides together received more than 4,440 visits. By contrast, then-chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, famed for his workaholic schedule, is listed as having fewer than 500 visits.

• Less than 1 percent of the estimated 500,000 visits to the White House in Obama’s first eight months — a time when the new administration was bustling with activity — have been disclosed, according to the Center’s analysis.

• The logs include names of people cleared by the Secret Service for White House entry who apparently never showed up. The Center analysis found more than 200,000 visits with no time of arrival, an indication that the person didn’t enter the White House, though there is no way to be certain. For instance, actor Ryan Gosling is listed at a West Wing event with members of his band, Dead Man’s Bones, in October 2009. But Gosling’s representative, Carolyn Govers, said the actor did not go.

• Two-thirds of the more than 1 million names listed are people who passed through parts of the White House on guided group tours.

The Center’s analysis is based on visitor logs through February; additional names released in late March are not included in this analysis. “If this is transparency, who needs it?” said Steven Aftergood, director of the project on government secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists. He called the White House visitor logs “very thin gruel.”



A White House official conceded the system has limitations, asserting it was designed not as an archive but “first and foremost to protect the first family, second family and White House staff while imposing the smallest administrative burden possible.”

“The Obama administration has taken unprecedented steps to increase transparency by releasing visitor records from the system each month to provide the American people with more information about their government,” White House spokeswoman Kate Bedingfield said.

“No previous White House has ever adopted such a policy,” she said.

However, the White House agreed to release the data only as a result of settling a lawsuit. And the Obama administration has taken the same legal position as its Republican predecessor on the subject of whether the data are covered by the Freedom of Information Act. (They say no.)

Moreover, the settlement doesn’t cover visitor records generated from Jan. 20 to Sept. 15, 2009. According to the White House, the recordkeeping system was revamped when the settlement was reached, and going back into the old system would be extremely time consuming. The administration said it will respond to “reasonable, narrow and specific” requests for visitor information from Obama’s early months in office, but there will be no wholesale release of material.

It’s a sizable gap that provides the public and historians little insight into how key policy decisions were made and who played a role in them in the energetic early months of the new administration.

And it means it’s difficult to assess whether a major Obama campaign pledge to limit the influence of lobbyists in his administration has been kept, or if big donors have been given ready access to the White House, which Obama said during his campaign would not happen once he took office.

“It pains me to think that there are competent people processing this vast series of records for posting on the Web,” Aftergood said. “The overwhelming majority is of no consequence whatsoever.”

The records posted on the White House website, though voluminous, cover mostly mundane matters, such as tours and social events. In all, more than 50,000 names are listed for people who visited the president, POTUS in Secret Service parlance. Most were for 600 ceremonial or social gatherings, such as the July Fourth celebration in 2010, attended by more than 3,600 people.

But the logs reveal far less about the purpose of nearly half of the 300-plus private meetings listed with Obama, including those with politicians and even sports figures.

Case in point: Jeffrey Kindler, former chief executive of Pfizer, the world’s biggest drug company, is listed as visiting the White House complex eight times. Only three entries describe an event he attended; the rest are blank. Last month, Obama appointed Kindler to a presidential board with the duty to help the federal government improve its operations. Kindler did not return calls for comment.

AFL-CIO head Richard Trumka has been logged in at least four dozen times, often with other labor bigwigs, but the records tell why he was there in only 12 of those cases, and those are mostly ceremonial events or social functions. Twice last year, Trumka met privately with Obama and once with Vice President Joe Biden, the records show, but no details are given. The AFL-CIO declined to comment.


Chicago billionaire Penny Pritzker, the Obama’s campaign finance chairman, met with the president on Feb. 16, 2009, in the Oval Office, according to the logs. Several other “bundlers,” each of whom raised $200,000 or more for the Obama campaign, also met with the president, the visitors’ logs show.

Asked why no details are available, the White House said the Secret Service doesn’t need a description for security purposes, and it would be an unnecessary burden to provide it.

In other words, it’s up to the White House staffer being visited, who provides the other information the Secret Service needs for doing background checks on visitors, to decide whether to complete the log’s description field.

Another practice calling into question the veracity of the logs: Junior White House staff members routinely list themselves as the “visitee,” or person being visited, when in fact the visitor has arrived to see someone higher up the chain of command.

The practice appears to apply to the commander in chief in some instances.

Reggie Love is recorded as receiving nearly 300 visits in the West Wing of the White House. Love is Obama’s personal assistant, the young aide who is constantly at the president’s side. Celebrities like NBA star Kobe Bryant and some Obama friends are listed as visitors to Love.

In addition, nearly two dozen campaign fundraisers and their family members are listed as visiting Love. The records give no hint as to who else they saw once they entered the White House or the purpose of their meetings. Among them was Hildy Kuryk, a New York fundraiser for Obama who now is deputy national finance director of the Democratic National Committee.

While Emanuel is listed as having fewer than 500 visitors, the logs show health care czar Nancy Ann DeParle had three times as many visitors. But three young aides who scheduled meetings for Emanuel — Katherine Kochman, Amanda Anderson and Benjamin Milakofsky — collectively had more than 2,600 visits in their names. Emanuel did not respond to a request for comment.

Asked why junior staffers appear so often with top-flight visitors, the White House said administrative staff are often the point of contact for visitors to senior staff, and they receive guests as they arrive.

On the other hand, at times there is an absurd amount of detail for seemingly trivial visits. An example: Jackie Walker, a professional makeup artist, is listed for more than a dozen one-person meetings with Obama. She also made more than two dozen other trips to the White House, visiting various aides or press office staff. Walker, who runs Trackchicks in Chantilly, Va., told the Center that Obama is a client. She declined further comment.

Another lapse in the White House logs is due to Obama staff who met with people off-site. POLITICO has reported that some visitors believe Obama aides avoid listing such visitors in the logs by steering them to buildings just outside the White House complex. An Obama spokesman denied to POLITICO there was any such motive for holding the meetings off-site.

Despite the gaps, some analysts with an eye toward history think the Obama administration has made a good first move.

“I think we’re lucky to get what we’re getting,” said Martha Kumar, a political science professor at Towson University who writes about White House transitions.

“Would I like more? Yes.”

Viveca Novak and Fred Schulte are writers with the Center for Public Integrity, a Washington-based nonprofit group focused on investigative journalism. A fuller version of this report is at www.iwatchnews.org.
 
 
© 2011 Capitol News Company, LLC
 
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 13, 2011, 01:03:01 PM
Does Obama tell the truth about anything?
American Thinker ^ | April 13, 2011 | Ed Lasky





Barack Obama pledged that if elected he would make it a goal to have much more transparency in his administration than those Presidents who preceded him. There was going to be Change. The transparency would bring about ‘accountability" in his words.



One of the policies he trumpeted would be making available to the public the White House visitor logs so we can know who visited with the President, the Vice-President and key officials of his team. Only later did we discover -- through outside investigators

' efforts -- that these key officials were circumventing the new "policy" by meeting with lobbyists across the street from the White House at Caribou Coffee

, as well as other spots so that their meetings would not show up on the logs.



Now, it turns out that the vaunted White House logs themselves are filled with "inaccuracies."



Alana Goodman at Commentary Contentions

has more:

Here is a reminder of yet another Obama campaign promise unfulfilled. His administration would be the most transparent in history, Obama vowed, but a new study by the Center for Public Integrity finds that the White House has been omitting names and details from the visitors' log.


"Five junior staff aides together received more than 4,440 visits," Politico reported. "By contrast, then-chief of staff Rahm Emanuel famed for his workaholic schedule, is listed as having fewer than 500 visits."


Meanwhile, Obama's personal assistant Reggie Love is recorded as receiving nearly 300 visits in the West Wing-including celebrities and friends of Obama's.


The study also found that less than 1 percent of roughly 500,000 visits during Obama's first eight months in office have been disclosed.


The main problem with the shoddy visitors' log is that it obscures key details of meetings with relevant political figures. AFL-CIO head Richard Trumka, Obama campaign bundlers, lobbyists, and drug company CEOs regularly visit the White House. But the logs often don't explain the purpose of the visits, or who the meetings were with.


The Obama administration claims that it has "taken unprecedented steps to increase transparency by releasing visitor records from the system each month." But releasing the records matters very little if the information is absent or clouded with inaccuracies.


Needless to say, debates over ObamaCare were not broadcast on C-SPAN as was also promised. Bills were not posted on-line for five days before they were voted upon to allow citizen comment and time for politicians to read. As National Review's Jim Geraghty has observed, all of Obama's promises have an expiration date (and back in March of last year, he posted a partial listing of these expired promises). Time for an update, Mr. Geraghty.


One could go on and on regarding fibs about his budget, ObamaCare, and much else.


Louis Brandeis famously said that "sunlight is the best disinfectant". When combined with the administration's politically-motivated filtering of Freedom of Information requests (and the White House's refusal to release information that is the subject of the FOI requests), there does not seem to be much be much disinfecting-or change-going on during the Obama era.
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 14, 2011, 06:13:04 AM
(PJM Exclusive) Did Obama and Holder Scuttle Terror Finance Prosecutions?
High-level source concedes DOJ let off CAIR co-founders and others for political reasons.
April 14, 2011 - by Patrick Poole   Share | 



http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/did-obama-and-holder-scuttle-terror-finance-prosecutions/?singlepage=true



During the House Homeland Security hearing last month on the topic of radicalization in the American Muslim community, one exchange between L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca and Rep. Chip Cravaack (R-MN) concerned the relationship between the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department and Hamas terrorist front the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). Sheriff Baca told the congressman:

We don’t play around with criminals in my world. If CAIR is an organization that is a quote “criminal organization,” prosecute them. Hold them accountable and bring them to trial.

But according to a high-ranking source within the Department of Justice, who spoke exclusively to Pajamas Media on the condition of anonymity, Sheriff Baca, a long-time supporter of CAIR, was probably already in on the joke.

The joke is that a number of leaders of Islamic organizations (all of whom publicly opposed the King hearings on Muslim radicalization) were about to be indicted on terror finance support charges by the U.S. attorney’s office in Dallas, which had been investigating the case for most of the past decade.

But those indictments were scuttled last year at the direction of top-level political appointees within the Department of Justice (DOJ) — and possibly even the White House.

Included in those indictments was at least one of the co-founders of CAIR, based on “Declination of Prosecution of Omar Ahmad,” a March 31 DOJ legal memo from Assistant Attorney General David Kris to Acting Deputy Attorney General Gary Grindler. A second DOJ official familiar with the investigation independently confirmed these details. Omar Ahmad is one of CAIR’s co-founders and its chairman emeritus. He was personally named, along with CAIR itself, as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terror finance trial in 2007 and 2008. During the trial FBI Agent Lara Burns testified that both Omar Ahmad and current CAIR executive director Nihad Awad were caught on FBI wiretaps attending a 1993 meeting of Hamas leaders in Philadelphia.

Dean Boyd, public affairs representative for the DOJ National Security Division, declined to provide me a copy of the March 31, 2010, memo dropping the Omar Ahmad prosecution. Directing me to submit a FOIA request, Boyd did say that “as a general rule, internal DOJ deliberation memos spelling out arguments for or against potential prosecution of any particular suspect are not public.”

Pajamas Media will be filing a FOIA request for all the related documents in this case.

According to my source, the chief reason outlined in the DOJ memo declining to prosecute CAIR co-founder Omar Ahmad was the issue of potential jury nullification. The first Holy Land Foundation trial in 2007 ended in a hung jury. When the case was retried in 2008, all five defendants, former executives of the Holy Land Foundation, were convicted on all 108 counts.

But, according to our DOJ source, possible jury nullification was hardly the primary issue in the DOJ’s scuttling of the terror finance prosecutions. “This was a political decision from the get-go,” the source said.

It was always the plan to initially go after the [Holy Land Foundation] leaders first and then go after the rest of the accomplices in a second round of prosecutions. From a purely legal point of view, the case was solid. Jim Jacks [the U.S. attorney in Dallas who prosecuted the Holy Land Foundation executives] and his team were ready to go. There’s a mountain of evidence against all of these groups that was never introduced during the Holy Land trial and it is damning. We’ve got them on wiretaps. That’s exactly why many of these leaders and groups were named unindicted co-conspirators in the first round of prosecutions.

But from a political perspective there was absolutely no way that they could move forward. That’s why this decision came from the top down. These individuals who were going to be prosecuted are still the administration’s interfaith allies. Not only would these Muslim groups and their friends in the media be screaming “Islamophobia” at the top of their lungs and that this is a war against Islam, but the administration would look like absolute fools. It’s kind of hard to prosecute someone on material support for terrorism when you have pictures of them getting handed awards from DOJ and FBI leaders for their supposed counter-terror efforts. How would Holder explain that when we’re carting off these prominent Islamic leaders in handcuffs for their role in a terror finance conspiracy we’ve been investigating for years? This is how bad the problem is. Why are we continuing to have anything to do with these groups knowing what we know?

“By closing down these prosecutions,” the source added, “the evidence we’ve collected over the past decade that implicates most of the major Islamic organizations will never see the light of day.”

The FBI still has boxes and boxes of stuff that has never even been translated — just like what happened in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. But it’s already been made public that they have copies of money transfers sent by NAIT [the North American Islamic Trust, which holds the property titles of many of the mosques in America -- Ed.] directly to known Hamas entities and Hamas leaders. Those came out during the [Holy Land Foundation] trial. But what if we won the case against NAIT and its leaders and the U.S. government finds itself the landlord to hundreds of mosques across the country? How well do you think that would that play in the Muslim community?

The actions by the DOJ to crush these prosecutions are just another schizophrenic episode in the U.S. government’s ongoing relationship with Islamic organizations, especially CAIR. After CAIR was named unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land trial, the FBI was forced to cut ties with the group. In an April 2009 letter to Sen. Jon Kyl, FBI Assistant Director Richard Powers said that “the FBI does not view CAIR as an appropriate liaison partner.”

And a February 2010 letter from Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich to four congressmen who inquired about the termination of the relationship between the FBI and CAIR — just weeks before the DOJ officially ceased further prosecutions, including of CAIR co-founders — elaborated on the evidence about CAIR that had emerged from the Holy Land trial. Yet, according to my DOJ source, CAIR leaders continue to be regularly received by top DOJ and FBI officials despite the official ban and these statements made to members of Congress.

And just last November, a significant July 2009 memorandum order by Judge Jorge Solis, who supervised the initial Holy Land Foundation trial, was unsealed under direction of the Court of Appeals. It provides the court’s reasons for refusing to remove CAIR and two other prominent Islamic groups, the Islamic Society of North America and NAIT, from the list of unindicted co-conspirators in the case. Judge Solis concluded that “the four pieces of evidence the government relies on, as discussed below, do create at least a prima facie case as to CAIR’s involvement in a conspiracy to support Hamas” (p. 7), specifically naming Omar Ahmad’s part in the conspiracy (p. 6) and adding later that “the Government has produced ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR, ISNA and NAIT with HLF, the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP) and with Hamas” (p. 15).

As I reported here at Pajamas Media, FBI Director Robert Mueller reiterated these reasons for cutting ties with CAIR before a recent House Judiciary Committee meeting — just two days before The Daily Caller reported that White House officials had publicly praised CAIR.

Adding to the hypocrisy, after the Obama administration scuttled the next round of prosecutions in the Hamas terror financing investigation last March, Attorney General Eric Holder gave the prosecutors and FBI investigators in the Holy Land Foundation case the AG’s Award for Distinguished Service last October for their work in the case.

I asked my DOJ source why they decided to come forward now. The source said:

This is a national security issue. We know that these Muslim leaders and groups are continuing to raise money for Hamas and other terrorist organizations. Ten years ago we shut down the Holy Land Foundation. It was the right thing to do. Then the money started going to KindHearts. We shut them down too. Now the money is going through groups like Islamic Relief and Viva Palestina. Until we act decisively to cut off the financial pipeline to these terrorist groups by putting more of these people in prison, they are going to continue to raise money that will go into the hands of killers. And until Congress starts grilling the people inside DOJ and the FBI who are giving these groups cover, that is not going to change. My biggest fear is that Americans are going to die and it will be the very Muslim leaders we are working with who will be directly or indirectly responsible.

But if the U.S. government publicly acknowledges the terror ties of these groups why do they continue to deal with them?

We tried to do what we could during the Bush administration. After 9/11, we had to do something and [the Holy Land Foundation] was the biggest target. If the mistrial hadn’t have happened, we probably would have gone through the second round of prosecutions before the change in administrations.

To say things are different under Obama and Holder would be an understatement. Many of the people I work with at Justice now see CAIR not just as political allies, but ideological allies. They believe they are fighting the same revolution. It’s scary. And Congress and the American people need to know this is going on.

It remains to be seen how Congress, the American people, and the establishment media — who always seem eager to rise to the defense of CAIR and the other terror-tied Islamic groups — will proceed.

Patrick Poole is a regular contributor to Pajamas Media, and an anti-terrorism consultant to law enforcement and the military.
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Fury on April 14, 2011, 06:26:40 AM
(PJM Exclusive) Did Obama and Holder Scuttle Terror Finance Prosecutions?
High-level source concedes DOJ let off CAIR co-founders and others for political reasons.
April 14, 2011 - by Patrick Poole   Share | 



http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/did-obama-and-holder-scuttle-terror-finance-prosecutions/?singlepage=true



During the House Homeland Security hearing last month on the topic of radicalization in the American Muslim community, one exchange between L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca and Rep. Chip Cravaack (R-MN) concerned the relationship between the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department and Hamas terrorist front the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). Sheriff Baca told the congressman:

We don’t play around with criminals in my world. If CAIR is an organization that is a quote “criminal organization,” prosecute them. Hold them accountable and bring them to trial.

But according to a high-ranking source within the Department of Justice, who spoke exclusively to Pajamas Media on the condition of anonymity, Sheriff Baca, a long-time supporter of CAIR, was probably already in on the joke.

The joke is that a number of leaders of Islamic organizations (all of whom publicly opposed the King hearings on Muslim radicalization) were about to be indicted on terror finance support charges by the U.S. attorney’s office in Dallas, which had been investigating the case for most of the past decade.

But those indictments were scuttled last year at the direction of top-level political appointees within the Department of Justice (DOJ) — and possibly even the White House.

Included in those indictments was at least one of the co-founders of CAIR, based on “Declination of Prosecution of Omar Ahmad,” a March 31 DOJ legal memo from Assistant Attorney General David Kris to Acting Deputy Attorney General Gary Grindler. A second DOJ official familiar with the investigation independently confirmed these details. Omar Ahmad is one of CAIR’s co-founders and its chairman emeritus. He was personally named, along with CAIR itself, as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terror finance trial in 2007 and 2008. During the trial FBI Agent Lara Burns testified that both Omar Ahmad and current CAIR executive director Nihad Awad were caught on FBI wiretaps attending a 1993 meeting of Hamas leaders in Philadelphia.

Dean Boyd, public affairs representative for the DOJ National Security Division, declined to provide me a copy of the March 31, 2010, memo dropping the Omar Ahmad prosecution. Directing me to submit a FOIA request, Boyd did say that “as a general rule, internal DOJ deliberation memos spelling out arguments for or against potential prosecution of any particular suspect are not public.”

Pajamas Media will be filing a FOIA request for all the related documents in this case.

According to my source, the chief reason outlined in the DOJ memo declining to prosecute CAIR co-founder Omar Ahmad was the issue of potential jury nullification. The first Holy Land Foundation trial in 2007 ended in a hung jury. When the case was retried in 2008, all five defendants, former executives of the Holy Land Foundation, were convicted on all 108 counts.

But, according to our DOJ source, possible jury nullification was hardly the primary issue in the DOJ’s scuttling of the terror finance prosecutions. “This was a political decision from the get-go,” the source said.

It was always the plan to initially go after the [Holy Land Foundation] leaders first and then go after the rest of the accomplices in a second round of prosecutions. From a purely legal point of view, the case was solid. Jim Jacks [the U.S. attorney in Dallas who prosecuted the Holy Land Foundation executives] and his team were ready to go. There’s a mountain of evidence against all of these groups that was never introduced during the Holy Land trial and it is damning. We’ve got them on wiretaps. That’s exactly why many of these leaders and groups were named unindicted co-conspirators in the first round of prosecutions.

But from a political perspective there was absolutely no way that they could move forward. That’s why this decision came from the top down. These individuals who were going to be prosecuted are still the administration’s interfaith allies. Not only would these Muslim groups and their friends in the media be screaming “Islamophobia” at the top of their lungs and that this is a war against Islam, but the administration would look like absolute fools. It’s kind of hard to prosecute someone on material support for terrorism when you have pictures of them getting handed awards from DOJ and FBI leaders for their supposed counter-terror efforts. How would Holder explain that when we’re carting off these prominent Islamic leaders in handcuffs for their role in a terror finance conspiracy we’ve been investigating for years? This is how bad the problem is. Why are we continuing to have anything to do with these groups knowing what we know?

“By closing down these prosecutions,” the source added, “the evidence we’ve collected over the past decade that implicates most of the major Islamic organizations will never see the light of day.”

The FBI still has boxes and boxes of stuff that has never even been translated — just like what happened in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. But it’s already been made public that they have copies of money transfers sent by NAIT [the North American Islamic Trust, which holds the property titles of many of the mosques in America -- Ed.] directly to known Hamas entities and Hamas leaders. Those came out during the [Holy Land Foundation] trial. But what if we won the case against NAIT and its leaders and the U.S. government finds itself the landlord to hundreds of mosques across the country? How well do you think that would that play in the Muslim community?

The actions by the DOJ to crush these prosecutions are just another schizophrenic episode in the U.S. government’s ongoing relationship with Islamic organizations, especially CAIR. After CAIR was named unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land trial, the FBI was forced to cut ties with the group. In an April 2009 letter to Sen. Jon Kyl, FBI Assistant Director Richard Powers said that “the FBI does not view CAIR as an appropriate liaison partner.”

And a February 2010 letter from Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich to four congressmen who inquired about the termination of the relationship between the FBI and CAIR — just weeks before the DOJ officially ceased further prosecutions, including of CAIR co-founders — elaborated on the evidence about CAIR that had emerged from the Holy Land trial. Yet, according to my DOJ source, CAIR leaders continue to be regularly received by top DOJ and FBI officials despite the official ban and these statements made to members of Congress.

And just last November, a significant July 2009 memorandum order by Judge Jorge Solis, who supervised the initial Holy Land Foundation trial, was unsealed under direction of the Court of Appeals. It provides the court’s reasons for refusing to remove CAIR and two other prominent Islamic groups, the Islamic Society of North America and NAIT, from the list of unindicted co-conspirators in the case. Judge Solis concluded that “the four pieces of evidence the government relies on, as discussed below, do create at least a prima facie case as to CAIR’s involvement in a conspiracy to support Hamas” (p. 7), specifically naming Omar Ahmad’s part in the conspiracy (p. 6) and adding later that “the Government has produced ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR, ISNA and NAIT with HLF, the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP) and with Hamas” (p. 15).

As I reported here at Pajamas Media, FBI Director Robert Mueller reiterated these reasons for cutting ties with CAIR before a recent House Judiciary Committee meeting — just two days before The Daily Caller reported that White House officials had publicly praised CAIR.

Adding to the hypocrisy, after the Obama administration scuttled the next round of prosecutions in the Hamas terror financing investigation last March, Attorney General Eric Holder gave the prosecutors and FBI investigators in the Holy Land Foundation case the AG’s Award for Distinguished Service last October for their work in the case.

I asked my DOJ source why they decided to come forward now. The source said:

This is a national security issue. We know that these Muslim leaders and groups are continuing to raise money for Hamas and other terrorist organizations. Ten years ago we shut down the Holy Land Foundation. It was the right thing to do. Then the money started going to KindHearts. We shut them down too. Now the money is going through groups like Islamic Relief and Viva Palestina. Until we act decisively to cut off the financial pipeline to these terrorist groups by putting more of these people in prison, they are going to continue to raise money that will go into the hands of killers. And until Congress starts grilling the people inside DOJ and the FBI who are giving these groups cover, that is not going to change. My biggest fear is that Americans are going to die and it will be the very Muslim leaders we are working with who will be directly or indirectly responsible.

But if the U.S. government publicly acknowledges the terror ties of these groups why do they continue to deal with them?

We tried to do what we could during the Bush administration. After 9/11, we had to do something and [the Holy Land Foundation] was the biggest target. If the mistrial hadn’t have happened, we probably would have gone through the second round of prosecutions before the change in administrations.

To say things are different under Obama and Holder would be an understatement. Many of the people I work with at Justice now see CAIR not just as political allies, but ideological allies. They believe they are fighting the same revolution. It’s scary. And Congress and the American people need to know this is going on.

It remains to be seen how Congress, the American people, and the establishment media — who always seem eager to rise to the defense of CAIR and the other terror-tied Islamic groups — will proceed.

Patrick Poole is a regular contributor to Pajamas Media, and an anti-terrorism consultant to law enforcement and the military.


Disgusting. I'm not the least bit surprised, though. These terrorist-front groups have their tentacles in everything and the God-King Messiah just helps them right along.
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 14, 2011, 08:25:18 AM
Another Obama Constitutional Grab in the Works
Townhall.com ^ | April, 14, 2011 | Brad O'Leary




President Barack Obama, the confiscator-in-chief of your constitutional rights is at it again. As we’ve come to expect, when President Obama tramples on the Constitution it’s usually under the guise of some noble cause. He embraced new rules for broadcasters designed to silence conservative talk show hosts under the guise of localism and diversity. This year, he’s pushing for so-called “common-sense” legislation that ultimately deprives citizens of their Second Amendment rights.


The Obama administration is working with Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) to pass S. 679, the “Presidential Appointment Efficiency and Streamlining Act,” which would sharply curtail the number of presidential appointees that must be confirmed by the Senate.


Of course, Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution provides for the advice and consent of the Senate with respect to presidential appointments. This new bill would sharply curtail that provision, allowing the President to make high-level appointments to federal agencies without the consent of the governed.


Obama and Schumer claim that the bill is designed to end the backlog of unconfirmed appointees and that it would eliminate the need for the Senate to vote on roughly 200 executive nominations. You see, the confirmation process, let alone enacting annual budgets, is too arduous a task for the Senate, so in the name of efficiency, Obama and Schumer want to do away powers enumerated in the Constitution.


When our Founding Fathers gave the Senate its advice and consent role, they clearly intended for the Senate to be a mainstay against Presidents loading the government with cheerleaders, political operatives, or in Obama’s case, radical anti-First and Second Amendment Presidential supporters.


Some Republican leaders in the Senate, perhaps eager for a lighter workload, have taken the bait and co-sponsored S.679. They include Lamar Alexander (TN), Scott Brown (MA), Susan Collins (ME), Jon Kyl (AZ), Dick Lugar (IN), and Mitch McConnell (KY). Unfortunately, they can’t see the forest for the trees. If they could, they’d understand that this nefarious bill would enable President Obama to fill high-level positions with more anti-gunners, so that Cass Sunstein, Eric Holder, and Janet Napolitano won’t feel so alone.


Stop me if this sounds crazy, but we have a President who recently met with the anti-gun crowd in a secret meeting to discuss ways to make an end-around Congress on gun control, and now the Republican leadership is going to help President Obama by giving him a tool to further circumvent Congress? Incidentally, I filed a FOIA request with the Justice Department to get the details from this recent meeting, but given the Obama administration’s disdain for transparency, I’m not holding my breath waiting for the information.


I can just see the U.N. just wanting to credit President Obama for passing their new anti-gun treaty.


Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 14, 2011, 10:16:02 AM
Obama's Increasing Federal Debt $1,148 Per Month Per Household—Enough to Buy a Car or Pay Tuition...
CNS News ^ | April 13, 2011 | Terence P. Jeffrey




(CNSNews.com) - Under President Barack Obama, the federal debt has been increasing at a rate of $1,148 per month per American household.

Overall, according to the U.S. Treasury, the federal debt increased by $3,646,116,554,704.36 between Jan. 20, 2009, when Obama was inaugurated, and April 13, 2011, when he gave a major speech announcing a plan to deal with the debt.

Given that the Census Bureau estimated in March that there are 117,538,000 households in the United States, the $3.6461 trillion increase in the debt under Obama works out to $31,020 per household.

Obama has now been in office 27 months. The $31,020 per household increase in the federal debt under his watch thus equals a per-household increase of $1,148 per month.

That $1,148 per month per household is more than a household would need to finance the monthly payments on a new domestically manufactured automobile.


(Excerpt) Read more at cnsnews.com ...

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 15, 2011, 02:01:47 PM
White House draft bill would put DHS in charge of civilian computer networks
The Hill ^ | 4/15/11 | Gautham Nagesh




The White House is circulating a piece of draft legislation that would give the Department of Homeland Security oversight over cybersecurity at civilian agencies, according to a report from FedNewsRadio. The proposed legislation combines the comprehensive cybersecurity bill introduced last year by the Senate Homeland Security Committee with the administration's memo from July 2010 to expand DHS's responsibilities over non-military networks, according to the report. Like the Homeland Security bill sponsored by Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), Susan Collins (R-Maine)


(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 17, 2011, 07:44:04 AM
Obama moves forward with Internet ID plan
CNET ^ | April 15, 2011 | Declan McCullagh




The Obama administration said today that it's moving ahead with a plan for broad adoption of Internet IDs despite concerns about identity centralization, and hopes to fund pilot projects next year.

A 55-page document (PDF) released by the White House today adds a few more details to the proposal, which still remains mostly hazy and inchoate.

It offers examples of what the White House views as an "identity ecosystem," including obtaining a digital ID from an Internet service provider that could be used to view your personal health information, or obtaining an ID linked to your cell phone that would let you log into IRS.gov to view payments and file taxes. The idea is to have multiple identity providers that are part of the same system.

Another concern: Although the White House is describing the NSTIC plan as "voluntary," federal agencies could begin to require it for IRS e-filing, applying for Social Security or veterans' benefits, renewing passports online, requesting federal licenses (including ham radio and pilot's licenses), and so on. Then obtaining one of these ID would become all but mandatory for most Americans.


(Excerpt) Read more at news.cnet.com ...

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 17, 2011, 07:47:36 AM

 Czars Stay: Obama Ditches Campaign Promise to Never Use ‘Special Signing Statement’
Posted on April 15, 2011 at 8:06pm by 
Emily Esfahani Smith Print » Email » Tweet

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2705973/posts




The president signed into law today the $38 billion in budget cuts that the House and Senate approved earlier in the week week. But Obama said that there were certain provisions of the bill that he would not abide by.

Namely, the provision defunding the czars.

Jake Tapper of ABC explains:

Last week the White House and congressional Democrats and Republicans were involved in intense negotiations over not only the size of the budget for the remainder of the FY2011 budget, and spending cuts within that budget, but also several GOP “riders,” or policy provisions attached to the bill.

One rider – Section 2262 — de-funds certain White House adviser positions – or “czars.” The president in his signing statement declares that he will not abide by it.

But remember this?


Earlier this evening, Obama signed the budget bill, with the czars provision attached to it, according to the AP. At the same time, he issued a “signing statement”objecting to the defunding of the czars provision–and a couple others:

In an accompanying signing statement, however, Obama questioned the constitutionality of a provision in the spending bill that prevents the White House from retaining special policy advisers, or “czars.” He also objected to two other sections that block the transfer of terrorist suspects from the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to the United States or to other countries.

The president basically told Congress to shove it, issuing this statement about the provision defunding the czars:

 

The President has well-established authority to supervise and oversee the executive branch, and to obtain advice in furtherance of this supervisory authority…The President also has the prerogative to obtain advice that will assist him in carrying out his constitutional responsibilities, and do so not only from executive branch officials and employees outside the White House, but also from advisers within it. Legislative efforts that significantly impede the President‘s ability to exercise his supervisory and coordinating authorities or to obtain the views of the appropriate senior advisers violate the separation of powers by undermining the President’s ability to exercise his constitutional responsibilities and take care that the laws be faithfully executed.

The president went on, “the executive branch will construe section 2262 not to abrogate these Presidential prerogatives.”

Tapper translates:. “In other words: we know what you wanted that provision to do, but we don’t think it’s constitutional, so we will interpret it differently than the way you meant it.”
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 17, 2011, 07:50:34 AM
Obama Spares Arrested Illegal Immigrant Protesters
Judicial Watch ^ | April 15, 2011





In the Obama Administration’s latest move to protect illegal immigrants while an amnesty plan gets worked out, Homeland Security officials said they won’t take action against a group of outlaws arrested in Georgia last week.


The illegal immigrants participated in a disruptive Atlanta demonstration to protest a state measure that bans undocumented students from attending some public colleges. The seven self-described activists, who proudly boasted about their illegal status, were arrested by local police for blocking traffic in bustling downtown Atlanta for about an hour.


Local media followed up this week by inquiring about the arrested demonstrators and the Homeland Security agency responsible for removing illegal aliens, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), confirmed that it was not taking any “enforcement actions against the student demonstrators.” One ICE official pointed to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano’s well-documented stance on not deporting illegal immigrant students.


Last summer the Obama Administration ordered authorities to stop removing illegal immigrants who are students while lawmakers craft legislation to officially shield them from expulsion. The move, which has spared an estimated 700,000 illegal aliens, came in response to nationwide rallies by defiant illegal immigrants protesting their eminent removal or that of their undocumented parents.


The directive is part of Obama’s secret backdoor amnesty plan in case Congress doesn’t pass legislation to legalize the nation’s 12 million illegal immigrants. Devised by political appointees at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the plan aims to enact “meaningful immigration reform absent legislative action.”


This includes “deferred action” delaying deportation indefinitely, granting green cards, allowing illegal immigrants to remain in the U.S. indefinitely while they seek legal status (known as “parole in place”) and expanding the definition of “extreme hardships” so any illegal alien could meet the criteria and remain in the country.


Judicial Watch has sued the Department of Homeland Security to obtain records detailing the stealth amnesty plan because the agency has ignored a federal public records request that dates back to July 2010.

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 17, 2011, 09:05:24 AM
IBM exec offers to save $900 billion in health care costs, but Obama turned him down
The Washington Examiner ^ | 02/02/11 | By: Barbara Hollingsworth





The CEO of IBM offered the Obama administration a free software program that would have cut Medicare and Medicaid fraud by almost a trillion dollars, but he was turned down – twice.

"We could have improved the quality and reduced the cost of the healthcare system by $900 billion...I said we would do it for free to prove that it works. They turned us down, "IBM chairman and CEO Samuel Palmisano said during a Sept. 14, 2010 taping of the Wall Street Journal’s Viewpoints program.

FOX News confirmed that a second meeting between Palmisano and Obama administration officials yielded the same result: "No thanks!" – even though the proffered "fix" would have eliminated 90 percent of the nation’s health care deficit – and cost taxpayers nothing it didn’t perform as guaranteed.

Yet Medicare/Medicaid fraud is still rampant. According to the Manhattan Institute’s Steven Malanga,"abuses of Medicaid (alone) eat up at least 10 percent of the program’s total cost nationwide -- a waste of $30 billion a year. Unscrupulous doctors billing for over 24 hours per day of procedures, phony companies invoicing for phantom services, pharmacists filling prescriptions for dead patients, home health-care companies demanding payment for treating clients actually in the hospital -- on and on the rip-offs go."

Now that Republicans are trying to repeal Obamacare and drastically cut federal spending at the same time, perhaps Palmisano can be persuaded to offer his services again.

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/2011/02/ibm-exec-offers-save-900-billion-health-care-costs-obama-turned-h#ixzz1JkGsm1NL
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 18, 2011, 07:18:01 AM
DOJ Source: Gov’t Muslim ‘Outreach’ Jeopardized Active Terror Investigations
Pajamas Media ^ | April 18, 2011 | Patrick Poole


________________________ ________________________ __________


An explosive, must-read interview brings sunlight to our counterproductive "outreach" programs. The case of the missing Somali men from Minneapolis highlights the failure and the absurdity.

The nearly six-hour interview I conducted earlier this year with a top Department of Justice official on the condition of anonymity brought forth a number of revelations about serious problems within the U.S. government’s homeland security and law enforcement community.

Last Thursday, I reported here exclusively at PJM on a DOJ memo dated March 31, 2010, from Assistant Attorney General David Kris to Acting Deputy Attorney General Gary Grindler. The memo effectively ended the prosecution of Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) co-founder and Chairman Emeritus Omar Ahmad — in addition to the prosecution of other prominent American Muslim leaders — for helping support the Hamas terrorist organization. This decision, according to my source, was not made based on the overwhelming evidence that had been compiled over the past decade by the U.S. attorney’s office in Dallas, but was made due to potential political embarrassment for the Obama administration and out of fear of inflaming the American Muslim community.


But another troubling claim came out during our interview: “Muslim outreach” programs by U.S. government agencies to terror-tied Islamic groups have directly interfered with ongoing terrorism investigations.

My source began by complaining about the counterproductive nature of such programs:

In all my years working for the U.S. government I have rarely seen anything as mystifying as our outreach to Muslims. Do we really need it? Sure. We need to be reaching out to the Muslim leaders who are working to prevent radicalization, not the ones who are making it happen. But that isn’t what we’re doing.

Instead we’re having countless meetings from the Cabinet level on down with groups and individuals that we know are bad guys and who we’ve repeatedly said in court are actively working to support terrorist groups overseas. We even had [FBI General Counsel] Valerie Caproni meeting regularly with these Hamas guys to get their guidance. What advice do you think they were giving her?

And she knew exactly who she was dealing with. It was the FBI who went into federal court and said that CAIR is Hamas.

But at the same time that FBI agents were testifying in the [Holy Land Foundation] trial that CAIR is a Hamas front there was serious disagreement inside DOJ and the FBI about whether we should continue to work with CAIR or cut them loose. So now we do both.


We say publicly that we don’t have an official relationship, but CAIR still has most of the staff in [Attorney General Eric] Holder and [FBI Director Robert] Mueller’s offices on speed dial. Don’t think for a minute that we stopped dealing with them.

And what exactly is our end game for doing this? Nobody knows. Are we getting anything by reaching out to CAIR? Of course not.

Now think for a minute about what we’re doing in any other context. Thirty years ago we didn’t have government liaisons to the IRA. The FBI doesn’t have an interfaith outreach program to the Mafia. Janet Napolitano doesn’t sit down and have lunch meetings with the Mexican drug cartels. And we don’t appoint members of the Crips and Bloods to our advisory boards on gangs. Well, not yet, at least [laughs].

It sounds really silly when you put it like that, but we have been allowing the bad guys to dictate our national policy on terrorism since the World Trade Center bombing [in 1993]. Let’s not forget that during the Clinton administration we had one of al-Qaeda’s top operatives in America — Abdurahman Alamoudi — organizing iftar dinners at the White House! The same guy who stood beside President Bush right after 9/11. Two years later he’s in prison, but his people are still popping up all over Washington.

Then we had [CAIR Executive Director] Nihad Awad advising Al Gore’s aviation security commission back in the late 90s. We said absolutely nothing even though we had him on our wiretaps five years before at a major Hamas meeting in Philadelphia. Nobody from DOJ or the FBI said a goddamn word because CAIR was advising every single federal agency dealing with terrorism at the time. We wouldn’t have these problems if we had cut them off then and there.

Stuff like that really makes me wonder what in the hell are we doing. I could easily give a dozen more examples going on right now. This bizarre fetish we’ve had about Muslim outreach since 9/11 has even damaged ongoing terrorism investigations and is eventually going to get people killed. I really believe that.


I asked for an example of how these outreach programs jeopardized investigations:

Well the best example was the investigation into the missing Somali kids in Minneapolis two years ago.

When Al-Shabaab started gaining support in the Somali community after the Ethiopian invasion in late 2006 and early 2007, all of the government agencies started doing outreach to the Somali imams. But when these kids went missing in Minneapolis, did we get a call from these imams we were reaching out to?

No, they were telling the families to shut up and not to talk to the FBI.

[Author’s note: Subsequent to my interview, Abdirizak Bihi, the uncle of one of the missing kids who was later killed fighting with Al-Shabaab in Somalia, testified before the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee hearing on radicalization in the Islamic community making these same claims: religious leaders and CAIR were intimidating the families of the missing Somali men to prevent them from talking to law enforcement.]

It wasn’t long into the investigation before we started hearing that the ones primarily responsible for recruiting and raising the funds for these kids to go fight with Al-Shabaab were the same imams we had been doing outreach to all along. But everyone was saying “we must do outreach,” like they had all been hypnotized, so the outreach continued.

Now at the same time, the FBI was working to get information from these imams about what might have happened with these kids when somebody somewhere decides to put them on the no-fly list. [Author’s note: It was widely reported that Sheik Abdirahman Ahmed of Masjid Abubakar As-Saddique -- the largest mosque in Minnesota -- and the mosque’s youth director Abdulahi Farah were placed on and later removed from the no-fly list.] So they get stopped trying to leave the country, which tips them off that they’re part of the investigation. And the imams quickly lawyer up. Its months before we actually get their attorneys to agree to let them to talk to us. And we got nothing from them when we did.


Once we started to get a handle on how big this really was, it ended up being becoming the largest CT [counterterrorism] investigation since 9/11. And a couple of months in we finally convene a grand jury to look into this thing. So do we call these imams in? Hell no.

Subpoenas go out to a bunch of mid- and low-level people, but not the big fish. And when the low-level people get their subpoenas, who do they call? The imams who are our prime suspects, oh, and who also are supposed to be our outreach partners. And like magic, the low-level folks all suddenly get CAIR attorneys representing them. The result is that the indictments that have been handed down are virtually all minor players. Instead of going after the guys running the operation, we indict a couple of guys and a Somali woman who raised a couple of thousand of dollars for Al-Shabaab.

Don’t get me wrong, I think they should all go to jail, but do we really believe we’re winning the war on terror when this Somali woman gets indicted and the imams who recruited these kids and sent them to fight and die are allowed to walk free?

I asked: the outreach to the imams finally stopped, didn’t it?

Are you kidding me? They’re still working with these guys!

[Authors note: In fact, one Somali press outlet reported that Homeland Security, the FBI, and several other federal, state, and local agencies held an unpublicized outreach session at the Abubakar As-Saddique mosque earlier this month. According to that report, Sheikh Ahmed and other mosque leaders did not attend for fear of backlash from the Somali community.]


But here’s how we get twisted around our own outreach programs. About two months after all these kids disappear, the Al-Shabaab imams from all over the country get together at a meeting in Ohio, including the Minneapolis imams we’re looking at. Do we wiretap the meeting? Of course not.

Instead, a representative for the imams convinces some dimwit attorney from Homeland Security Civil Rights division to come talk at their meeting about outreach. And so they let this guy talk for about ten minutes, then he’s quickly ushered out of the building so they can get down to business. This gives them perfect cover. “Well we can’t be having a terrorist meeting because we had Homeland Security here!”

And can you guess what happened to the imam’s lackey who arranged for Homeland Security to be at that meeting? He’s now one of [Homeland Security Secretary] Napolitano’s senior advisors and running all of their Somali outreach! They gave this guy a security clearance! I’m not f***ing kidding you!

If anyone wants to understand how utterly insane our outreach policy is they should start right there.

Look, I have to admit that these guys are evil, but they’re absolutely brilliant. They are so inside our decision-making process they will always be twenty steps ahead of us. I honestly think if we stopped doing counterterrorism altogether we would be better off. I really don’t mean that, but for us to return to some semblance of sanity we have got to stop relying on the bad guys to make our counterterrorism policy. And we damn well have to stop hiring these people and putting them in charge of outreach.

We also need to get rid of all these supposed outside experts. Four years ago a bunch of these academic idiots were telling us that Al-Shabaab was a nationalist organization that was only concerned with liberating Somalia from U.S.-backed foreign occupation and there was nothing to worry about. Does anyone still believe that? I mean we just had that Somali kid from Portland [Mohamed Osman Mohamud] try to set off a bomb in the middle of a Christmas celebration that would have killed hundreds of people. The [FBI] ran a solid operation on that one, but they aren’t going to be able to catch them all.

And when the day comes that we have dead Americans lying in our streets, you know what we’re going to hear from these experts? We need more outreach! I guarantee it! And they’ll get huge grants from DOJ, FBI, and DHS to tell us that.

At the time of this interview there was considerable criticism from Muslim groups regarding the upcoming House Homeland Security hearing on Islamic radicalization (which I covered for PJM last month). So later in the conversation, I asked about the claims being made by the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) and CAIR that the Muslim community has been actively helping law enforcement identify potential terrorists in their midst:


That is complete and utter bulls***.

In all my years working counterterrorism I can’t recall a single case where we prosecuted someone based on a tip from MPAC or CAIR or any of these groups. The only time we hear from them is when they think that someone is a government informant. That’s how MPAC blew a big al-Qaeda case in California. When they thought they had somebody spying inside the mosque, they called the FBI and said he was a potential terrorist and the whole case ended up falling apart. So what do we do in response? Did we cut them off? No, DHS has them train thousands of TSA employees in cultural sensitivity. I almost fell out of my chair when I heard about that. Oh, and they still call us when they want to bitch about us arresting one of their friends or employees or board members. But under Obama and Holder that doesn’t happen so much anymore. Just ask Omar Ahmad.

I hear them take credit for all these cases they had absolutely nothing to do with. Like the Lackawanna case. The FBI got one anonymous letter from someone in the Muslim community saying that a group of men had left to train in Afghanistan with bin Laden and he can’t say who he is because he’s in fear for his life. He was probably right to be in fear for his life. Who was he afraid of? Probably the people from his mosque.

But what about the dozens of people in the community who knew that an al-Qaeda recruiter had come through their mosque and knew these men had left to go train with al-Qaeda? From all those people who knew what was going on we got a single anonymous tip. But they raise this example anytime someone dares to question their lack of cooperation. The Muslim community can’t have it both ways. If they don’t want to be tarred every time a Muslim commits a terror attack they can’t turn around and claim to be cooperative with law enforcement when one person does the right thing and everyone else stays silent.

And then you have the case a couple of years ago of the three guys in Toledo who wanted to fight Americans and join the Taliban. When they were arrested the Muslim leaders kept praising themselves that someone from the Muslim community turned them in. But it wasn’t until the trial that it came out that the tip didn’t come from the Muslim community but from an undercover agent. I’m sure that CAIR and MPAC take credit for that as an example of their cooperation with the FBI, and then use that same case to attack the FBI for using an agent provocateur to entrap innocent Muslims.

And these are the groups we have been using as the bridge to the Muslim community for going on twenty years now. I mean the best thing we could do is burn that bridge to the ground and start building some new ones.

I’ll be bringing you more from my exclusive interview here at PJM later this week.
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 18, 2011, 09:26:18 AM
Obama Plays Down S&P Outlook Change


The Obama administration moved swiftly Monday to downplay ratings agency S&P's downgrade of its U.S. credit outlook, calling the decision a political judgment that should not be taken too seriously.

The timing of S&P's announcement was unwelcome for the White House, coming just as President Obama tried to regain the initiative on the deficit debate in Washington.

Last week Obama laid out his plan to reduce the budget deficit by $4 trillion over 12 years, trying to give markets confidence that he was serious about tackling U.S. fiscal woes.

Standard & Poor's downgraded the outlook for the United States to negative, saying it believes there is a risk U.S. policymakers would not reach agreement on how to address the country's long-term fiscal pressures by 2013.

So much for market confidence.

The White House strategy:

1) Pan S&P.

"I don't think that we should make too much out of that," top White House economist Austan Goolsbee said on MSNBC, referring to the S&P downgrade.

"What the S&P is doing is making a political judgment and it is one that we don't agree with," he said on CNBC.

2) Praise Moody's.

The rival ratings agency said it viewed the direction of U.S. fiscal policy as "credit positive."

"It appears to me that Moody's and some others did not agree with that judgment," Goolsbee said.

3) Express optimism.

White House and U.S. Treasury officials said they believed lawmakers would be able to come up with an agreement to reduce the U.S. deficit. S&P's skepticism of that influenced its decision on the downgrade.

"We think that there has never been more momentum to try to get to fiscal consolidation, so we think that we should give that process its due," a Treasury official said.

4) Buy time.

Obama administration officials said it would take some time to get a solution, and S&P should have waited to allow that to happen.

"I think their timing is off," the Treasury official said.

"I think they should allow the process to work its course here. We have got a lot going on between the White House, Congress, the fiscal commission. I think there are some very serious proposals on the table so I think they should take some time to see what happens."


RELATED LINKS
S&P Cuts US Debt OutlookAmid Din, Serious Talk on DebtRepublican Budget Plan to Eliminate National Debt: Ryan
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TOPICS:Barack Obama | White House | United States | Debt | Politics and Government
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 19, 2011, 04:28:04 AM
U.S. Gov't Agency Plans $2.84 Billion Loan for Oil Refinery—In Colombia
Monday, April 18, 2011
By Terence P. Jeffrey


http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/feds-plan-284-billion-loan-oil-refinery



(CNSNews.com) - The U.S. Export-Import Bank, an independent agency of the federal government, is now planning a $2.84-billion loan for a massive project to expand and upgrade an oil refinery--in Cartagena, Colombia.

The money would go to Reficar, a wholly owned subsidiary of Ecopetrol, the Colombian national oil company.

“This is part of a $5.18 billion refinery and upgrade project in Cartagena, Colombia supplying petroleum products to the domestic and export markets,” the Export-Import Bank said in a statement.

The U.S. government-controlled bank says the $2.84-billion in financing it plans to undertake will be the second largest project it has ever done. The largest was $3 billion in financing for a liquid natural gas project in Papua New Guinea.

The statement released by the bank said that on April 7 the bank’s presidentially-appointed board of directors had “voted to grant preliminary approval for a $2.84 billion direct loan/loan guarantee” for the Colombian refinery project.

Export-Import Bank Spokesman Phil Cogan told CNSNews.com that the bank could not say at this time how much of the $2.84 billion would be directly loaned to the Colombian refinery company and how much would be in loans guaranteed by the bank--although he expected it to be a combination.

“It is conceivable it could be all a direct loan,” said Cogan. “Right now it is set up so that the board could do either a complete direct loan or a combination of direct loan and guarantee. That hasn’t been determined yet.”

Since December, the bank has also approved almost $880 million in other loans and loan guarantees to Reficar’s parent company, Ecopetrol. So, in total, if the new $2.84 billion in loans is finalized, the Columbian national oil company and its wholly owned subsidiaries will have received $3.72 billion in financing backed by a U.S.-government-controlled entity within a span of five months.

“Just last February and December the Bank approved nearly $880 million in export financing to help finance the sale of goods and services from various U.S. exporters to Ecopetrol S.A., Colombia's national oil company,” Export-Import Bank President Fred P. Hochberg said in the bank’s statement announcing preliminary approval of the refinery loan.

Export-Import Bank Spokesman Cogan stressed in an interview that although Reficar is wholly owned by Ecopetrol it remains a separate entity, and is considered as such for Export-Import Bank financing purposes

In its 2009 annual report, Ecopetrol says “we became 100% owners of Reficar, the company in charge of carrying out the Cartagena Refinery modernization plan.”

In its ordinary procedure for financing projects of this magnitude, the board of the Export-Import Bank votes its preliminary approval, notifies Congress of that preliminary approval, then waits five weeks before voting final approval of the deal. This allows members of Congress to comment on the planned financing project.

“The Reficar transaction is subject to congressional notification, with a final vote anticipated approximately 35 days following the expiration of the notification period,” says the bank’s press release on the loan.

When asked if Congress can veto the loan, Ex-Im Spokesman Cogan said, “No.”

The public-policy rationale for the $2.84 billion loan for the Colombian oil refinery project is the same as the rationale for all Export-Import Bank loans to foreign interests: to create jobs in the United States.

“The transaction will help create or sustain over 15,000 American jobs for a total of four years,” says the bank’s statement about the loan.

Spokesman Cogan says the bank calculates the jobs created or sustained by a loan or loan guarantee by using a formula that estimates how much money spent buying U.S. exports in a particular industry it takes to create a job.

If the $2.84 billion loan to Reficar to expand and upgrade its Colombian refinery creates or sustains the 15,000 jobs in the United States that the bank believes it will create or sustain that would work out to $189,333 per job.

According to the National Petrochemical & Refiners Association (NPRA), 95 percent of the gasoline purchased by U.S. consumers is refined inside the United States, meaning that expanding the gasoline refining capacity of Colombia is unlikely to have a significant impact on the supply of refined gasoline in the Untied States.

Also according to NPRA, the last time a new oil refinery was built in the United States was 1993, when a small facility was built in Valdez, Alaska.  The last time a new large oil refinery was built in the United States was 1976, says NPRA. Older U.S. refineries, however, have been upgraded and expanded in recent years.
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 19, 2011, 11:04:39 AM
LEAKED: Obama Executive Order Intends to Implement Portions of DISCLOSE Act
Pajamas Media ^ | April 19, 2011 | Hans A. von Spakovsky






Says our source: "They lost in the Supreme Court, they lost in Congress, they lost at the FEC, so now the president is just going to do it by edict."

An impeccable source has provided me with a copy of a draft Executive Order pdf that the White House is apparently circulating for comments from several government agencies. Titled “Disclosure of Political Spending By Government Contractors,” it appears to be an attempt by the Obama administration to implement — by executive fiat — portions of the DISCLOSE Act.


This was the bill introduced last year by Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Chris Van Hollen to overturn the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. FEC. The bill had onerous requirements that were duplicative of existing law and burdensome to political speech. It never passed Congress because of principled opposition to its unfair, one-side requirements that benefited labor unions at the expense of corporations. Democratic commissioners at the Federal Election Commission then tried to implement portions of the bill in new regulations. Fortunately, those regulations were not adopted because of the united opposition of the Republican commissioners.


As my source says:


It really is amazing — they lost in the Supreme Court, they lost in Congress, they lost at the FEC, so now the president is just going to do it by edict.


The draft Executive Order says it is intended to “increase transparency and accountability,” an interesting claim given the fact that federal contractors are already completely barred by 2 U.S.C. § 441c from making:


Any contribution of money or other things of value, or to promise expressly or impliedly to make any such contribution to any political party, committee, or candidate for public office or to any person for any political purpose or use.


Yet this proposed Executive Order would require government contractors to disclose:


(a) All contributions or expenditures to or on behalf of federal candidates, parties or party committees made by the bidding entity, its directors or officers, or any affiliates or subsidiaries within its control.

(b) Any contributions made to third party entities with the intention or reasonable expectation that parties would use those contributions to make independent expenditures or electioneering communications.


The problem is that this will require companies to delve into the personal political activities of their officers and directors — and require them to report political contributions those employees have made, not out of corporate funds (which is illegal), but out of their personal funds.


And note that these disclosure requirements will only apply to companies that make bids on government contracts. Federal employee unions that negotiate contracts for their members worth many times the value of some government contracts are not affected by this order. Neither are the recipients of hundreds of millions of dollars of federal grants.


Clearly, this administration is not interested in increasing “transparency and accountability” when it comes to forcing union leaders or the heads of liberal advocacy organizations such as Planned Parenthood from disclosing the personal political contributions they make to candidates running for federal office.


The draft order also tries to interfere with the First Amendment rights of contractors. It requires them to disclose independent expenditures that can be made legally on everything from politics to grassroots lobbying on issues. This is clearly intended to deter charitable and other contributions to third-party organizations, since the contractors will have to report any such contributions made with the “reasonable expectation” that the money will be used for First Amendment-protected activities.


“Reasonable expectation” is the kind of broad, nebulous legal term that can cover almost any situation that the government — and government prosecutors — want it to cover. This makes it almost impossible for contractors to know what the acceptable legal standard is for engaging in First Amendment activity.


This administration completely mischaracterized the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United, especially when President Obama attacked the Court in his State of the Union speech. It misrepresented the intended effects and requirements of the DISCLOSE Act, which former FEC Chairman Brad Smith correctly observed should really have been called the “Democratic Incumbents Seeking to Contain Losses by Outlawing Speech in Elections Now” Act.


With this proposed Executive Order, the administration is engaging in a back-door maneuver that promotes transparency only in the form of transparent political gamesmanship. It’s an alarming proposal that should raise great concern among members of Congress and the American public.


Hans A. von Spakovsky is a Senior Legal Fellow at the Heritage Foundation (www.heritage.org) and a former commissioner on the Federal Election Commission.
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 19, 2011, 11:49:56 AM
Obama administration eases pain of Medicare cuts
By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR, Associated Press Ricardo Alonso-zaldivar, Associated Press – 1 hr 12 mins ago




WASHINGTON – Millions of seniors in popular private insurance plans offered through Medicare will be getting a reprieve from some of the most controversial cuts in President Barack Obama's health care law.

In a policy shift critics see as political, the Health and Human Services department has decided to award quality bonuses to hundreds of Medicare Advantage plans rated merely average.

The $6.7 billion infusion could head off service cuts that would have been a headache for Obama and Democrats in next year's elections for the White House and Congress. More than half the roughly 11 million Medicare Advantage enrollees are in plans rated average.

In a recent letter to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, two prominent GOP lawmakers questioned what they termed the administration's "newfound support" for Medicare Advantage.

The shift "may represent a thinly veiled use of taxpayer dollars for political purposes," wrote Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah and Rep. Dave Camp of Michigan. Camp chairs the House Ways and Means Committee, which oversees Medicare. Hatch is his counterpart as ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee.

Seniors are among the deepest skeptics of the new health care law. A recent AP-GfK poll found that 62 percent disapprove of Obama's handling of health care, as contrasted with 52 percent approval among Americans overall. The poll also found that seniors are more likely to trust Republicans than Democrats on the issue, by a 51 percent to 36 percent margin.

The insurance industry says the bonuses will turn what would have averaged out as a net cut for Medicare Advantage plans in 2012 into a slight increase.

The administration says the reason for the bonuses is quality improvement, not politics.

"We are looking at whether an alternative payment incentive structure would lead to broader quality improvements across all Medicare Advantage plans, by giving incentives for a broader range of plans to improve," said Medicare spokesman Brian Cook.

Medicare covers seniors and disabled people. About one-fourth of beneficiaries are signed up in Medicare Advantage plans that offer lower out-of-pocket costs and more comprehensive benefits than the traditional program. Some of the heaviest enrollment is in states considered political battlegrounds, including Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Nevada, Minnesota and Colorado.

The health care law cut $145 billion over ten years from Medicare Advantage, partly to correct a widely acknowledged problem with overpayments to the plans. Those cuts start off modestly in 2012 and build up. Insurers were expected to shift the burden to beneficiaries in the form of fewer services and higher out-of-pocket costs, triggering an exodus back to traditional Medicare.

"The net result is that the boat didn't get rocked," said independent analyst Dan Mendelson, president of the information firm Avalere Health. "It's fair to say that (Medicare) could not tolerate dislocation, given the political climate."

But Mendelson also said he agrees with the administration that the new money will get more plans thinking about how to improve quality, if they want to remain profitable.

"They are giving the plans training wheels to improve their quality," he said.

The health care law itself tried to soften the impact of Medicare Advantage cuts by providing quality bonuses for highly-rated plans that received four or five stars in a government grading system.

But in a policy shift quietly completed this month, HHS decided that average-quality plans garnering three or three-and-a-half stars would also get bonuses. About half of all the plans fall into the three-star category, according to Avalere's analysis.

The HHS decision means that four of five Medicare Advantage enrollees are in plans now eligible for a bonus. That contrasts with the approach that Congress took in the health care law, where only one in four beneficiaries would have been in plans getting the extra payments.

HHS' nearly $7-billion bonus program is temporary. In 2015, the cuts called for in the health care law will kick in again.

But the episode could be an early sign that Medicare cuts used to finance much of Obama's coverage expansion for the uninsured will turn out to be politically unsustainable, as have other efforts to impose austerity. For example, Congress has routinely waived cuts in Medicare payments to doctors.

A nonpartisan agency that advises lawmakers on Medicare criticized the bonus plan. The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission said it amounts to "a mechanism to increase payments" and its design "sends the wrong message about what is important to the program and how improved quality can best be achieved."

At a time when government is urging health care providers to improve quality and cut costs, the bonus plan "lessens the incentive to achieve the highest level of performance," commission chairman Glenn Hackbarth wrote to HHS officials. Medicare spokesman Cook disagreed, saying even plans that get two stars will now have an incentive to improve.

Medicare has classified the bonuses as a demonstration program, relying on broad legal authority Congress gave the agency to experiment with quality improvements. It's the costliest demonstration program in Medicare history. The money will come from the Medicare trust fund.
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 19, 2011, 12:14:04 PM
Environmental Laws Stymie Border Patrol’s Effectiveness, Report Says
cnsnews.com ^ | 19 April 2011 | Edwin Mora




Federal land managers in Arizona, where about half of all illegal alien apprehensions took place in 2010, denied a U.S. Border Patrol station permission to build a road deemed necessary for “achieving or maintaining operational control” of an area along the southwest border.

According to an April 15 report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), land managers, including officials from the Department of Interior and Department of Agriculture, denied permission to build the road because of environmental restrictions related to the Wilderness Act.

The GAO, which surveyed 26 stations along the southwest border, also found that Border Patrol headquarters had denied two of them funding for infrastructure along the southwest border which was required to “achieve or maintain operational control.”

Federal lands comprise about 820 miles, or more than 40 percent, of the approximately 2,000-mile southwest border. As of Sept. 30, 2010, the U.S. government had established operational or “effective” control along less than half (873 miles) of that border.

The GAO says illegal cross-border activity on federal lands “has increased substantially” since the 1990s.


(Excerpt) Read more at cnsnews.com ...

________________________ ________________________ ___


So the Bama, piss and shit be upon him,  can give a waiver to bamacare but not this.  Got it.    ::)  ::)
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 19, 2011, 01:32:57 PM

 Czars Stay: Obama Ditches Campaign Promise to Never Use ‘Special Signing Statement’
Posted on April 15, 2011 at 8:06pm by 
Emily Esfahani Smith Print » Email » Tweet

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2705973/posts




The president signed into law today the $38 billion in budget cuts that the House and Senate approved earlier in the week week. But Obama said that there were certain provisions of the bill that he would not abide by.

Namely, the provision defunding the czars.

Jake Tapper of ABC explains:

Last week the White House and congressional Democrats and Republicans were involved in intense negotiations over not only the size of the budget for the remainder of the FY2011 budget, and spending cuts within that budget, but also several GOP “riders,” or policy provisions attached to the bill.

One rider – Section 2262 — de-funds certain White House adviser positions – or “czars.” The president in his signing statement declares that he will not abide by it.

But remember this?


Earlier this evening, Obama signed the budget bill, with the czars provision attached to it, according to the AP. At the same time, he issued a “signing statement”objecting to the defunding of the czars provision–and a couple others:

In an accompanying signing statement, however, Obama questioned the constitutionality of a provision in the spending bill that prevents the White House from retaining special policy advisers, or “czars.” He also objected to two other sections that block the transfer of terrorist suspects from the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to the United States or to other countries.

The president basically told Congress to shove it, issuing this statement about the provision defunding the czars:

 

The President has well-established authority to supervise and oversee the executive branch, and to obtain advice in furtherance of this supervisory authority…The President also has the prerogative to obtain advice that will assist him in carrying out his constitutional responsibilities, and do so not only from executive branch officials and employees outside the White House, but also from advisers within it. Legislative efforts that significantly impede the President‘s ability to exercise his supervisory and coordinating authorities or to obtain the views of the appropriate senior advisers violate the separation of powers by undermining the President’s ability to exercise his constitutional responsibilities and take care that the laws be faithfully executed.

The president went on, “the executive branch will construe section 2262 not to abrogate these Presidential prerogatives.”

Tapper translates:. “In other words: we know what you wanted that provision to do, but we don’t think it’s constitutional, so we will interpret it differently than the way you meant it.”




Obama shreds the Constitution again, this time with his signing statement
Flopping Aces ^ | 04-19-11 | Vince

Posted on Tuesday, April 19, 2011 4:08:50 PM by Starman417



Last week President Obama was overheard telling a room full of Democrats that during the most recent budget negotiations the GOP had sought to defund some of his priorities. He checked them into the boards with “Do you think we’re stupid”?

While the GOP members certainly don’t think the President is stupid, he definitely thinks the voters are. (Perhaps with good reason… If you haven’t seen the video “How Obama Got Elected” now as we roll towards 2012 it might be a good time to watch it. If you have, now is a good time to revisit it. The level of ignorance of some of people who exercise their right to vote is nothing short of extraordinary. Rather than giving out voter cards at the DMV like lollypops at a pediatrician’s office we might want to require prospective voters to pass the same citizenship test wannabe citizens must pass…)

Not that it should be a surprise to anyone that the President thinks Americans are stupid. It’s one thing to hoodwink people during the campaign as everyone expects politicians to stretch the bounds of credulity. This was perfectly demonstrated when candidate Obama suggested that he sat in Jeremiah Wright’s church for 20 years yet somehow never heard a single one of his racist anti-American diatribes. It’s another thing all together to expect citizens to believe their President is openly seeking to mislead them. Such was the case early on in the Obama presidency and that arrogance was never as clear when the administration introduced what is possibly the most absurd policy gauge ever uttered by any politician, the infamous: “Jobs created or saved.” How is it even remotely possible that the president thought that anyone with a functioning brain would consider “Jobs created or saved” as a legitimate measure for any policy anywhere? No idea, but they did… and did so with a straight face.

Now we jump ahead two years and we finding the President once again demonstrating low opinion he has of average American’s intelligence. Not only does he think that Americans will somehow forget his plethora of flip-flops, (which Victor Davis Hanson lays out brilliantly here) what’s worse, he thinks that no one else in the country is bright enough to understand the Constitution.

(Excerpt) Read more at floppingaces.net...
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 19, 2011, 01:42:02 PM
U.S. Hurries to Sell GM Stake (taxpayers get hosed)
WSJ ^ | April 19, 2011 | by Sharon Terlep




~ EXCERPT ~

The U.S. government plans to sell a significant share of its remaining stake in General Motors Co. this summer despite the disappointing performance of the auto maker's stock, people familiar with the matter said.

A sale within the next several months would almost certainly mean U.S. taxpayers will take a loss on their $50 billion rescue of the Detroit auto maker in 2009.

To break even, the U.S. Treasury would need to sell its remaining stake—about 500 million shares—at $53 apiece. GM closed off 27 cents a share at $29.97 in 4 p.m. trading Monday on the New York Stock Exchange, hitting a new low since its $33-a-share November initial public offering.


(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: 240 is Back on April 19, 2011, 01:58:20 PM
I can just see the U.N. just wanting to credit President Obama for passing their new anti-gun treaty.

WTF do you care about gun rights?  Your love affairs with Bloomberg (2009) and Trump (2011) show you care not about gun rights. 
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 19, 2011, 01:59:18 PM
WTF do you care about gun rights?  Your love affairs with Bloomberg (2009) and Trump (2011) show you care not about gun rights. 


You kneepad obama bro.   
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: 240 is Back on April 19, 2011, 02:00:54 PM

You kneepad obama bro.   

so youre a bag of shit anti gunner just like me?
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 19, 2011, 02:16:41 PM
so youre a bag of shit anti gunner just like me?

I'm not a single issue voter. 
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 21, 2011, 09:16:57 AM
Obama Justice Department Saves Brotherhood Fronts-drop unindicted co-conspirator prosecution
http://frontpagemag.com/2011/04/21/obama-justice-department-saves-brotherhood-fronts/ ^ | 4-21-11 | Ryan Mauro




- FrontPage Magazine - http://frontpagemag.com -

Obama Justice Department Saves Brotherhood Fronts

Posted By Ryan Mauro On April 21, 2011 @ 12:07 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | No Comments


Investigative journalist Patrick Poole has broken a blockbuster story about how the Obama Administration’s Justice Department blocked plans to prosecute a co-founder of the Council on American-Islamic Relations and others labeled “unindicted co-conspirators” in the Holy Land Foundation trial. Rep. Peter King, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, has written a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder and is requesting answers by April 25.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) were all designated by the federal government as “unindicted co-conspirators” in the trial of the Holy Land Foundation, a Muslim Brotherhood front found guilty of covertly financing Hamas. A total of 246 organizations and individuals received the label but have yet to face prosecution. Now, a high-level Justice Department source has informed Patrick Poole that this is because of a decision by the Obama Administration, in what the source called “a political decision from the get-go.” A second Justice Department source substantiated the tip.

A March 31, 2010 report titled “Declination of Prosecution of Omar Ahmad,” referring to one of the co-founders of CAIR, was sent from Assistant Attorney General David Kris to Acting Deputy Attorney General Gary Grindler. The document claims that Ahmad would not be prosecuted because of fears that jury nullification would result. The source of the information rejects this and says it is just an excuse to not move forward.

Rep. Peter King has confirmed the story and is now putting Attorney General Eric Holder in the hot seat. King writes that he has been “reliably informed” that the decision to not prosecute the unindicted co-conspirators “was usurped by high-ranking officials at Department of Justice headquarters over the vehement and stated objections of special agents and supervisors of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as well as the prosecution at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Dallas, who had investigated and successfully prosecuted the Holy Land Foundation case.”

King requests a reply by April 25 but it is unclear what will follow if the response is unsatisfactory. David Rusin, the director of Islamist Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum, told FrontPage that “if Congress subpoenas Justice Department files on the organizations, incriminating details go public.” Such an investigation would be “a nightmare in the making for groups like CAIR and ISNA, whose very lifeblood has been the ability to camouflage their radicalism with the aid of gullible dupes in government and the press.”

However, Politico reports that the Bush Administration originally decided against prosecuting CAIR in 2004. Poole told the website that this is not necessarily a contradiction, as it just means that “They decided to get the bigger fish after they convicted the smaller fish.”

The government has expressed certainty that these groups and individuals are part of a Muslim Brotherhood network with the objective of assisting Hamas. In December 2007, a federal court filing flatly stated, “From its founding by Muslim Brotherhood leaders, CAIR conspired with other affiliates of the Muslim Brotherhood to support terrorists” and “the conspirators agreed to use deception to conceal from the American public their connections to terrorists.”

Efforts by CAIR, ISNA and NAIT to get their designations as unindicted co-conspirators have failed. On July 1, 2009, U.S. District Judge Jorge Solis ruled that “The government has produced ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR, ISNA and NAIT with HLF [Holy Land Foundation], the Islamic Association of Palestine (IAP), and with Hamas.” The IAP is another charity that was shut down for acting as a Brotherhood-created front for Hamas.

Poole’s Justice Department source explained the decision not to prosecute Ahmad and the others involved. “These individuals who were going to be prosecuted are still the administration’s interfaith allies. Not only would these Muslim groups and their friends in the media be screaming ‘Islamophobia’ at the top of their lungs and that this is a war against Islam, but the administration would look like absolute fools,” the source said.

It isn’t hard to find out how close the Obama Administration has been to these groups and their defenders. The “most influential Muslim” in the White House is Dalia Mogahed, who sits on his Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. She is a close colleague of John Esposito, a staunch defender of the Muslim Brotherhood and a witness for the defense during the Holy Land Foundation trial. Officials from the Obama Administration, like the Bush Administration, have made a concerted effort to court these Brotherhood affiliates, including senior advisor Valerie Jarrett; chief counter-terrorism advisor John Brennan; Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano; Deputy National Security Advisor Denis McDonough and many other lower-level government officials that have sought to engage them as part of their outreach to the Muslim-American community.

David Rusin told FrontPage that there is “some hope” that public pressure will force the Obama Administration to change course. However, he thinks it is more likely that a major political battle is brewing as Attorney General Eric Holder could be “shown to have quashed prosecutions for political gain.”

“The major obstacle is that Democrats have so much to lose, given their long history of pandering to these groups and promoting the narrative of rampant anti-Muslim prejudice,” he said. “Thus, expect the party to pull out all the stops to ensure that such a day never comes.”


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 21, 2011, 12:07:25 PM
Vegas mogul Steve Wynn rips 'liar' Obama
Los Angeles Times ^ | April 21, 2011 | Tony Pierce


________________________ ________________________ ___________________


'Anybody who is a middle-class working person in this country is in serious trouble'

Steve Wynn, the billionaire casino mogul, says that even though his business is doing better this year compared with last year, the White House is not telling the whole truth when it says the economy is improving.

"Baloney is being slung at the American people," Wynn complained.

"It's a very misleading thing that is happening," Wynn told Fox Business' Neil Cavuto Wednesday morning, explaining that the people who frequent his fancy resorts are able to adjust to the current economic climates easier than the middle class employees who work for him. "Everything is more expensive. So the living standard of the working people -- of the middle class of America -- is being materially deteriorating because of the fiscal policies of our government," Wynn said.

When asked by Cavuto if Wynn is reacting to the cool-down of the "the devil-may-care" ways of corporate culture or factors that pre-date the current administration, Wynn turned his attention to President Obama, specifically, and how he is presented by the media.


(Excerpt) Read more at latimesblogs.latimes.com ...
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: dario73 on April 21, 2011, 12:19:10 PM
WTF do you care about gun rights?  Your love affairs with Bloomberg (2009) and Trump (2011) show you care not about gun rights. 

You dare talk about love affairs? You would let the whole Obama administration run a train on your rear end. And you would like it.
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 22, 2011, 05:28:38 AM
The Newest Labor War: Union, Feds Attack Boeing
By Tom Bevan


Welcome to South Carolina, the newest front in America's organized labor wars.

On Wednesday, the National Labor Relations Board filed a complaint against Boeing, seeking to prevent the aircraft manufacturer from opening a second production facility in Charleston, South Carolina for its new 787 Dreamliner.

 
The NLRB alleges that Boeing violated the law, opening the non-unionized South Carolina plant in retaliation against union workers for past strikes at its facility in Everett, Washington and also as part of an effort to discourage future strikes. The NLRB wants an administrative court to force Boeing to relocate its second production line back to a unionized plant in Washington.

Needless to say, with labor controversy still roiling some states across the country, particularly in Wisconsin, news of the story rang out like a shot at Fort Sumter.

South Carolina Republican Sen. Jim DeMint denounced the move as "nothing more than a political favor for the unions who are supporting President Obama's reelection campaign." DeMint vowed to "use every tool at my disposal to stop the president from carrying out this malicious act."

His GOP colleague in the Senate, Lindsey Graham, called the NLRB's complaint "one of the worst cases of unelected bureaucrats doing the bidding of special interest groups that I've ever seen."

On the other side, the International Association of Machinists District 571, which filed the grievance in March of last year, predictably hailed the filing as "a victory for all American workers."

At issue is not whether companies can retaliate against union workers - they can't - but whether they have the right to open new facilities (or relocate old ones) where they choose based on a variety of business factors, including the consideration of potential labor strikes in the future.

The IAM has had a collective bargaining agreement with Boeing since 1975, and in that time has led five strikes in the Seattle plants, two of them in the past six years. Boeing CEO Jim MnNerney has been open about his desire for "dual sourcing" capabilities so that the company can meet its obligations with "strikes happening every three to four years in Puget Sound."

The union contends that the opening of the new non-union facility in South Carolina amounts to intimidation, and that its workers will now be forced to either to accept employment concessions or face the prospect of seeing more and more production migrate from Everett to Charleston. Acting NLRB General Counsel Lafe Solomon fully embraced with the union's novel legal theory, and stated in his Wednesday order that he will seek an order requiring Boeing to build the second 787 Dreamliner assembly line in Washington.

In response to the uproar Thursday spokeswoman Nancy Cleeland responded in an e-mail: "As Acting General Counsel Lafe Solomon made clear in his statement yesterday, this is about the law. The right to strike is guaranteed by the National Labor Relations Act, and employers must stay within the law in making their business decisions."

Boeing's lawyers slammed that claim as "legally frivolous" and said the NLRB's effort to restrict the company's business represents a "radical departure" from precedent. They were quick to point out two 1965 Supreme Court cases affirming employers' right to consider potential strikes in making business decisions, and they refuted the union's claims of intimidation by pointing out that in the eighteen months since the announcement of the South Carolina plant, Boeing has added more than 2,000 union jobs in the Puget Sound area.

The NLRB's complaint is controversial because of its conspicuousness - labor experts can't seem to recall any similar complaints or comparable court cases - and also because of the board's inherently political nature. With Democrats taking control of the five-member board in 2008, the New York Times described the move against Boeing as "the strongest signal yet of the new pro-labor orientation of the National Labor Relations Board under President Obama."

The decision by the NLRB to go after Boeing is sure to resurrect tension among the President and the business community. During the first two years of his term, Obama had a testy relationship with many in the private sector and was viewed in some circles as anti-business.

Earlier this year Obama sought to smooth over his relations with the business community, giving a well received address to the Chamber of Commerce on February 7. But just one week later, Obama called Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's budget plan "an assault on unions," while his grassroots organization and political allies kicked off the fight on behalf of public unions which continues to rage today.

Unlike Wisconsin, however, the battle in South Carolina is unions and the federal government pitted against private business and "right to work" states. At stake is whether unions have the power to effectively veto companies' decisions about where they choose to do business.

Also unlike Wisconsin, South Carolina is a critical - some would even argue determinative - early primary state in the Republican presidential nominating process, which is just getting under way. Some, but not all, of the prospective Republican presidential hopefuls are scheduled be in South Carolina in less than two weeks for the first televised debate of the primary season, hosted by Fox News.

The subject of the NLRB's complaint will surely arise. This issue might even prompt candidates who hadn't figured on attending the South Carolina debate to tinker with their schedules. And because of South Carolina and Wisconsin, the war between the federal government and unions versus states and the private sector is sure to be a defining issue of next year's presidential race.

Tom Bevan is the co-founder and Executive Editor of RealClearPolitics. Email: tom@realclearpolitics.com
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 23, 2011, 06:45:04 AM
Former SEIU Official Appointed by Obama to Investigate Union Corruption
Big Government.com ^ | April 21, 2011 | by Don Loos




John Lund, Obama’s “overseer” of union financial reporting and disclosure at DOL’s Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS).

This Obama appointee is a former director of the now-defunct Pacific Northwest Labor College, a former SEIU union employee , a fomer IUOE union employee, and former director of the University of Wisconsin School for Workers. Lund’s appointment means that he is now in charge of investigating financial mismanagement and irregularities by the very labor union officials he has trained for decades.

Even though Obama campaigned on transparency and a focus on ethics, cronies at DOL focused on eliminating basic financial union disclosure and union officials’ conflict-of-interest disclosures requirements.

At DOL, John Lund cut the number of labor union investigators, rescinded disclosure of union officer benefits, eliminated financial reporting for unions like the Wisconsin Education Association Council, and eliminated conflict-of-interest reporting for thousands of union officials. Each of these actions benefits Big Labor Bosses, but undercuts those forced to pay union dues and fees as a condition of employment.

The AFL-CIO and other unions are former clients of John Lund , and these unions remain clients of his former and current employer, the University of Wisconsin School for Workers (Lund is currently on unpaid leave while at DOL). The Wisconsin School for Workers’ primary mission is to train union officials; the very officials that Lund now purportedly investigates for corruption.


(Excerpt) Read more at biggovernment.com ...

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 25, 2011, 05:19:54 AM
Obama's Regulatory Tsunami More Destructive than Taxes
Townhall.com ^ | April 25, 2011 | Lutita Doan





As Obama travels about the country, speaking of the need  for  “shared sacrifice” and the need to increase taxes, he doesn’t say a word about the tsunami of new Obama regulations ranging from light bulbs to ozone pollution to painkillers to foreign travel to vending machines that is about to hit America.  Their impact will be huge and do serious damage to our economy. 

Obama's regulatory tsunami began during his first month in office and has continued relentlessly since.  Each week, new, more intrusive rules are rolled out, some through Executive Order, but many issued from federal agencies, often without any fanfare or publicity.  In every month since his inauguration, President Obama has heaped regulations on unsuspecting Americans, non-profit organizations, large and small businesses. 


You can argue that some of these new regulations are not destructive to our economy, but just look at the number of regulations.   Their range, their grasp and their intrusiveness into American life is staggering.  And to think, several thousand new pages of new regulatory guidelines and added bureaucracy are still being drafted by the Obama Administration as required by healthcare, recovery act, financial reform, small business and TARP legislation.  These new regulations will be piled atop the Mt. Everest pile of regulations Obama has already produced.

January 2009-Housing Voucher regulations


February 2009-PLA (Project Labor Agreements) forcing government contractors to provide bids that show union labor as a component.

March 2009-Stem Cell regulations

April 2009-Hedge Fund regulations

May 2009-EPA issues new fuel standards


June 2009-Regulations issued to influence Venture Capital activity

July 2009-EPA Training requirements for workers on building renovation projects

August 2009-E-Rule (electronic rulemaking) regulation

September 2009-EPA issues ozone pollution regulations


October 2009-Greenhouse gas reporting requirements

November 2009-Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) regulations

December 2009-Natural Gas Pipeline safety regulations

January 2010-Visa regulations


February 2010-Organic Foods Program regulations

March 2010-Credit Card regulations

April 2010-Residential Water Heaters regulations

May 2010-Coal Ash regulations


June 2010-Truth in Lending regulations

July 2010-Revised ADA regulations

August 2010-Bedbugs and Pesticide regulations

September 2010-Portland Cement regulations


October 2010-Truck regulations

November 2010-Perfume / Fragrance regulations

December 2010-CAFE standards, MPG regulations

January 2011-New Cuba Travel regulations


February 2011-"Conscience protection" rules for health care providers

March 2011-Menu and Vending machine rules issued

April 2011-Tougher Painkiller regulations


This ubiquitous level of federal governmental involvement in almost every aspect of the lives of American citizens seems anti-Democratic and certainly anti-liberty.  Worse, Obama’s regulatory activities reek of a know-it-all, know-better-than-you kind of attitude that's un-American and certainly hostile to the laissez-faire kinds of policies that, in the past, spurred our nation to grow. Obama is championing an unabashed and rather dramatic new growth in government’s influence and control over virtually every aspect of our lives.

Regulatory reform is desperately needed in the federal government.  For example,it takes some 7 years for the federal government to construct a new building because of the difficulty navigating all the time-consuming and expensive regulations.  An astute leader would be willing to reduce the stifling bureaucratic process and regulatory regime that throttles all infrastructure projects in the US.  In this way, projects could hire builders and construction teams more quickly; projects would be completed faster, at less cost too. But that is not what Obama does.


Instead, in January 2011, after a mind-boggling two years of ever greater strangulation of the economy through regulation, Obama does lip service to the idea of regulatory reform and calls for a top-down review of all federal regulations to determine which, if any, need to be reformed.  And then, in typical, hypocritical, Obama-contradictory fashion, he delivers a State of the Union Address a week later that adds no less than a dozen, new regulations that he wants to impose on Americans.

The Obama Administration does not seem to understand that federal regulations have a cost, both in implementing and reporting as well as a cost in lost opportunity.  Many of these regulations are shrouded in smugness and imply that the regulations are intended to make us into better people-- and that somehow those in the Obama Administration know what criteria are important to make us better people. Unbelievable!


Innovation, competitiveness, job creation and economic growth have traditionally been the hallmark of our great nation. But the effect of these new, governmental regulations will throttle those once uniquely American virtues.  Permanently higher unemployment, less rapid business creation leading to far less innovation will be the result.   Our economy is going to continue to be smothered, and small businesses will continue to be strangled until a new, and more capable, national leader emerges to roll back the self-imposed regulatory destruction that Obama has unleashed.

On the other hand, for any company that manufactures red tape, this is going to be a bumper year.

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 25, 2011, 06:19:17 AM
www.wsj.com
APRIL 25, 2011.How Health Reform Punishes Work
The subsidies to buyers of 'qualifying' insurance policies will induce sharp reductions in the supply of labor.
By DANIEL P. KESSLER





Supporters of ObamaCare acknowledge it will have some unintended consequences. Yet surprisingly little attention has been focused on the law's most problematic provision: government subsidies to help individuals and families purchase health insurance.

This new entitlement—which the chief actuary of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services estimates will cost more than $100 billion per year once it is fully implemented—will damage the country's long-term fiscal outlook. It also will introduce far-reaching negative effects on rewards to work and bizarre new inequities into American life.

The health law establishes insurance exchanges—regulated marketplaces in which individuals and small businesses can shop for coverage—and minimum standards for the insurance policies that can be offered. Because the policies will be so costly, there's a subsidy for buyers that phases out as family income rises. This sounds reasonable—but the subsidies required to make a "qualifying" insurance policy affordable are so large that their phaseout creates chaos.

Starting in 2014, subsidies will be available to families with incomes between 134% and 400% of the federal poverty line. (Families earning less than 134% of poverty are eligible for Medicaid.) For example, a family of four headed by a 55-year-old earning $31,389 in 2014 dollars (134% of the federal poverty line) in a high-cost area will get a subsidy of $22,740. This will cover 96% of an insurance policy that the Kaiser Family Foundation predicts will cost $23,700. A similar family earning $93,699 (400% of poverty) gets a subsidy of $14,799. But a family earning $1 more—$93,700—gets no subsidy.

Economists call large, discontinuous changes in program benefits like this "notches." Although notches might be administratively convenient, they have terrible incentive effects. As Prof. Raj Chetty of Harvard points out in a recent National Bureau of Economic Research working paper, prior research on notches show that they induce sharp reductions in labor supply.

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Getty Images/Stock Illustration Source
 .Consider a wife in a family with $90,000 in income. If she were to earn an additional $3,700, her family would lose the insurance subsidy and be more than $10,000 poorer. In addition, she would also pay more in income and Social Security taxes. Taken together, these policies impose a substantial punishment on work effort.

Notches also lead to unfairness. The principle that families of the same size with similar incomes should be treated similarly by tax law and transfer programs has deep philosophical roots and appeals to basic notions of equity. The notch turns this principle on its head. Next-door neighbors with virtually identical circumstances could receive very different levels of government assistance, depending on which side of the notch they happen to fall. This feature will justifiably increase public cynicism about the law and government in general.

Fixing the notch is not so easy. To phase out the subsidy smoothly for families with incomes of 134% to 400% of poverty, the law would have to take away $22,700 in subsidies as a family's income rose to $93,700 from $31,389. In other words, for every dollar earned in this income range, a family's subsidy would have to decline by 36 cents. On top of 25% federal income taxes, 5% state income taxes, and 15% Social Security taxes, this implies a reward to work of less than 20 cents on the dollar—in economists' language, an implicit marginal tax rate of over 80%. Although economists may differ on the effect of taxes on work effort, it is hard to fathom how anyone could argue that this will not reduce economic activity.

It gets worse. There are also subsidies to cover the deductibles and copayments of insurance policies purchased through an exchange—and like the premium subsidies, these subsidies also phase out with income. There is also the likelihood that federal and state income taxes on upper-middle income families will have to be raised above current levels to finance the cost of the subsidy, the Medicaid expansion, and other provisions of the new law. Both of these effects exacerbate the law's negative work incentives.

Either leaving the notch in or smoothing the notch out seems impossibly unattractive. Yet these choices are the inevitable consequences of the law's attempt to redistribute around $20,000 to someone making $30,000, but nothing to someone making $94,000. The only fix is to drastically reduce or eliminate the premium subsidies. As the 2012 elections approach, voters will have to decide: For middle-income families, should economic success be determined by work and savings, or by participation in a government program?

Mr. Kessler is professor of business and law at Stanford University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 25, 2011, 11:04:37 AM
Obama Links America’s Greatness With Government Spending -- Again
CNSNews ^ | April 25, 2011 | Fred Lucas






(CNSNews.com) – President Barack Obama said that federal government spending makes America great -- a claim he has made before -- while speaking to a Democratic National Committee (DNC) gathering in San Francisco.


“Let me tell you something,” Obama said to applause from the crowd at Nob Hill Masonic Center in San Francisco on Apr. 20. “I will not reduce our deficit by sacrificing the things that have always made America great. The things that have made Americans prosper,”


“I won’t sacrifice our investments in education,” he said. “I will not sacrifice those. I won’t sacrifice our investments in science and basic research. I won’t sacrifice the safety of our highways or our airports. I won’t sacrifice our investment in clean energy at a time when our dependence on foreign oil is causing Americans so much pain at the pump. I will not sacrifice America’s future. That I will not do.”


House Republican leaders recently released a budget plan, which passed in the House, and is aimed at reducing the national debt and the federal deficit. President Obama released a framework for deficit reduction but not a detailed plan.


The Republican plan focuses on cutting spending and reforming entitlement programs, while Obama’s proposal focuses on increasing taxes for individual incomes of $200,000 or more and household incomes of $250,000 or more.


“If we want to reduce our deficit, yes, we need to cut spending, but we need shared sacrifice,” Obama told the San Francisco crowd. “And that means ending the tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans in this country. We can afford it.”


When he announced his fiscal plan at George Washington University on Apr. 13, Obama said, “We would not be a great country without those commitments,” referring to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and federal unemployment insurance.


In his San Francisco speech last week, Obama stressed that government spending was not the only thing that made America great.


“The America we know is great not because of our skyscrapers or the size of our GDP. It’s because we’ve been able to keep two ideas together at the same time,” Obama said. “The first idea is that we are all individuals endowed with certain inalienable rights and liberties; that we are self-reliant; we are entrepreneurs. We don't expect others to do for us what we can do for ourselves, and we don't really like people telling us what to do.”


“But the second idea -- just as important -- is that we’re all in this together; that we look out for one another; that I am my brother’s keeper; that I am my sister’s keeper,” Obama said. “That I want to make sure that a child born in a tough neighborhood has the same opportunities I had, and I do that -- I feel that way not out of charity, but because my life is richer, my life is better, when the people around me have some measure of security and some measure of dignity, and they, too, have a shot at the American Dream.”


Obama boasted about record spending in several areas of the federal budget.


“And along the way, we did a few other things: The largest investment in clean energy in our history,” Obama said. “The largest investment in science and basic research that we had seen in years. Largest investment in our infrastructure since Dwight Eisenhower built the Interstate Highway System.”


According to the Treasury Department, the national debt increased $1.652 trillion in the last fiscal year, while federal receipts were $2.0377 trillion.


Social Security cost $571.5 billion, rounded to the nearest hundred million, in FY 2010. Medicare cost $513.7 billion. Medicaid cost $268 billion, and unemployment insurance cost $156.7 billion. The interest on the national debt for the year was $186.3 billion. The federal government needed to pay $176.2 billion in salaries to federal workers and $63.7 billion for insurance benefits for these workers. This adds up to up to $1.9361 trillion -- or 95 percent of the government's $2.0377 trillion in tax revenue.


After paying all those expenses, the federal government had only $101.6 billion in tax revenue remaining. Education Department programs alone cost the federal government $251.9 billion in fiscal year 2010.


Thus, the federal government had to borrow to pay the cost of operating the Department of Defense, the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department, which carry out constitutionally defined functions.

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 25, 2011, 11:52:52 AM
Obama Clears the Way For America's 2 Largest Oil Wells to be Shutdown in Texas
ChicoER Gate ^ | 4/25/11 | Chuck Wolk


________________________ ________________________ ________________________ _____



From the moment Richard Nixon created the EPA in 1970, and signed the Endangered Species Act (ESA) into law, they have been the primary engines of social change used by leftists environmental elitists to destroy America. They have done so by infiltrating the EPA, and the US Fish & Wildlife (USF&W) the agency which decides what animals will be listed as endangered. Now, 28 years later, these renegade environmentalist wackos are prepared to use the ESA to shut down oil and gas operations in portions of Southeast New Mexico and in West Texas, including the state's top two oil producing counties. All because of a tiny lizard they claim to be endangered, and Obama who has the power to put it on a waiting list has cleared the way for it to be listed.



Through the years the EPA & the ESA have been used to shut down vast areas of America that we as Americans need to survive in a modern world. Areas that contain, rich farmland needed to grow food that both America and foreign countries need to feed billions of people. Forest areas so rich in timber that the price of building homes could be reduced dramatically if only we were allowed to harvest them. Instead, year after year we spend billions fighting fires that reduce the timber to ashes. When it comes to energy, these government paid earth worshipers have used their power to keep us from drilling for oil, and stand in the way of building needed power plants all across America. According to a recent Congressional report America has the largest oil, coal, and natural gas reserves in the world, if tapped we could be completely energy independent. Truth is, America has enough natural energy reserves, timberland, sustainable farm land, freshwater lakes and underground reservoirs that we could reduce the cost of living for each and every American by more than 50%, if only the governments chains of restrictions were removed.

The earth worshiping environmentalists running the USF&W have used an owl to shut down logging in the Northwest, a mouse to shut down wheat farming in Colorado, a minnow and rat to end vegetable growing in California, a frog has closed fish hatcheries in the deep South, while the reintroduction of wolves are endangering the lives of ranchers, farmers, and hunters all across America from the Rockies to Maine.  Now they are planning to use a lizard to shut down two of Americas largest oil wells in Texas. We already have one of the largest oil reserves put off limits by the EPA in Anwar Alaska, while Obama is ignoring a Federal judges order to allow drilling to continue in the Gulf. This while almost every communist country in the world has oil wells operating in our backyard, the Gulf of Mexico.


In a logical universe, we would have politicians that would do all they can to make sure Americans had a cost of living so low that no one in America would be struggling to make ends meet.  Instead these traitors would rather see Americans struggle to survive while they act as if their various government programs are saving the day. Never before in the history of the world has a countries leaders tried so hard to force its citizens to become so dependent and subservient to other countries. Many of which are our sworn enemies. Can anyone imagine Alexander, Caesar, or even George Washington forcing their citizens to humble themselves before an enemy of lesser power like Persia, Carthage, or England? No, only a modern day Judas, Ephialtes, or Benedict Arnold, would cause their own people to suffer the indignities our leaders so consistently force us to.


The current threat to America's freedom comes from a 3 inch lizard called the Sceloporus Arenicolus, or better known as the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard or the Sand Dune Lizard. It was originally classified as a subspecies of the Sceloporus Graciosus, or Common Sagebrush Lizard. Before they designated the Dune Lizards as a separate species, there were so many of them you could feed them to the Chinese as a delicacy and never run out. It was in 2002 that the Center for Biological Diversity first petitioned to have the lizard listed as endangered. The Bush administration stood in the way of the lizard being listed for 6 years, but last year Obama cleared the way by ordering his administration to back off from delaying the listing. This in spite of the news that Obama has repeatedly refused to grant species the protection for which they are known to qualify adding them instead to the waiting list. So why did he allow this lizard to be listed? There can be only one reason, and that is because Obama wants to destroy America's ability to be energy free. So his relentless attack on America's energy capabilities continues. Go figure.


There was a rally in Roswell NM last week on April 20th that had hundreds protesting the listing and there will be another one on Tuesday April 26th, in Midland Tx at the Midland Center that begins at 5 p.m. with Congressman Mike Conaway will speaking to the concerned citizens. Then on Wednesday April 27th, there will be a public hearing held at 6:30 p.m at the Midland Center. If you want to be heard then be there to support those at the front line in the battle to stop a lizard from shutting down Americas 2 largest working oil wells.

"It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate,
tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds."
-- Samuel Adams --
Leader in our Fight for Independence


The following is from the Federal register PDF file.  In it the USF&W explains what they are attempting to accomplish through the Endangered Species Act,
(here is the link to the official PDF file)

We, the USF&W, propose to list the dunes sagebrush lizard (Sceloporus Arenicolus), a lizard known from southeastern New Mexico and adjacent west Texas, as endangered under the Endangered Species Act of 1973, as amended. If we finalize the rule as proposed, it would extend the Act's protections to this species. We have determined that critical habitat for the dunes sagebrush lizard is prudent but not determinable at this time.


Proposed Listing Determination We have carefully assessed the best scientific and commercial information available regarding the past, present, and future threats to the dunes sagebrush lizard. The dunes sagebrush lizard faces immediate and significant threats due to oil and gas activities, and herbicide treatments. Habitat loss and fragmentation due to oil and gas development is a measureable factor impacting the species due to the removal of shinnery oak and creation of roads and pads, pipelines, and power lines that create habitat patches and increase the proportion of habitat edge to habitat interior. In addition, impacts that are not easily quantified such as climate change, competition, and pollution may exacerbate adverse effects caused by habitat loss. Cumulative threats to the dunes sagebrush lizard are not being adequately addressed through existing regulatory mechanisms. Oil and gas pollutants are a current and ongoing threat to the species throughout its range.


We believe the following actions may jeopardize this species, and therefore we would seek to conference with BLM and NRCS on these actions:


The lease of land for oil and gas drilling,
Applications to drill,
Applications for infrastructure through dunes (including, but not limited to pipelines and power lines),
OHV activities,
Seismic exploration,
Continued oil and gas operations (release of pollution and routine maintenance),
Grazing leases,
Renewable resource activities, and
Chemical and mechanical removal of shinnery oak habitat.
Do not place power lines and fences through shinnery oak dune complexes;
Develop transmission corridors for pipelines and power lines;
Limit pollution by inspecting pipelines and equipment;
Develop and implement plans for cleaning oil spills;
Limit hydrogen sulfide emissions;
Maintain wells; and
Limit any further infrastructure that would remove the shinnery oak dunes.

Possible measures that could be implemented to conserve the dunes sagebrush lizard and its habitat are:

Maintain 500-m (1640-ft) wide dispersal corridors in shinnery oak dunes for the dunes sagebrush lizards to disperse between habitat patches;
Discontinue chemical spraying within occupied or suitable habitat;
Place well pads outside of shinnery oak dunes and corridors between dune complexes;
Manage well density to limit development in habitat;
Minimize well pad size and carry out site reclamation;
Develop techniques to recreate shinnery oak dunes;
Limit OHV use in occupied habitat;
Minimize impacts of seismic exploration by thumper trucks;
Develop a public awareness program;

 




(Article has been posted in full, so there is no need to visit my site.
However if you wish to give my site a hit it would be much appreciated.)
-----------------------------GATE-----------------------------


Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 26, 2011, 05:12:58 AM
April 26, 2011
This WH Does Not Care About U.S. Interests
By Caroline Glick
www.realclearpolitics.co m




If only in the interest of intellectual hygiene, it would be refreshing if the Obama administration would stop ascribing moral impetuses to its foreign policy.

Today, US forces are engaged in a slowly escalating war on behalf of al-Qaida penetrated antiregime forces in Libya. It is difficult to know the significance of al-Qaida's role in the opposition forces because to date, the self-proclaimed rebel government has only disclosed 10 of its 31 members.

 
Indeed, according to The New York Times, the NATO-backed opposition to dictator Muammar Gaddafi is so disorganized that it cannot even agree about who the commander of its forces is.

And yet, despite the fact that the Obama administration has no clear notion of who is leading the fight against Gaddafi or what they stand for, this week the White House informed Congress that it will begin directly funding the al-Qaida-linked rebels, starting with $25 million in non-lethal material.

This aid, like the NATO no-fly zone preventing Gaddafi from using his air force, and the British military trainers now being deployed to Libya to teach the rebels to fight, will probably end up serving no greater end then prolonging the current stalemate. With the Obama administration unwilling to enforce the no-fly zone with US combat aircraft, unwilling to take action to depose Gaddafi and unwilling to cultivate responsible, pro-Western successors to Gaddafi, the angry tyrant will probably remain in power indefinitely.

In and of itself, the fact that the war has already reached a stalemate constitutes a complete failure of the administration's stated aim of protecting innocent Libyan civilians from slaughter.

Not only are both the regime forces and the rebel forces killing civilians daily. Due to both sides' willingness to use civilians as human shields, unable to separate civilians from military targets, NATO forces are also killing their share of civilians.

In deciding in favor of military intervention on the basis of a transnational legal doctrine never accepted as law by the US Congress called "responsibility to protect," President Barack Obama was reportedly swayed by the arguments of his senior national security adviser Samantha Power. Over the past 15 years, Power has fashioned herself into a celebrity policy wonk by cultivating a public persona of herself as a woman moved by the desire to prevent genocide. In a profile of Power in the current issue of the National Journal, Jacob Heilbrunn explains, "Power is not just an advocate for human rights. She is an outspoken crusader against genocide..."

Heilbrunn writes that Power's influence over Obama and her celebrity status has made her the leader of a new US foreign policy elite. "This elite," he writes, "is united by a shared belief that American foreign policy must be fundamentally transformed from an obsession with national interests into a broader agenda that seeks justice for women and minorities, and promotes democracy whenever and wherever it can - at the point of a cruise missile if necessary."

As the prolonged slaughter in Libya and expected continued failure of the NATO mission make clear, Power and her new foreign policy elite have so far distinguished themselves mainly by their gross incompetence.

But then, even if the Libyan mission were crowned in success, it wouldn't make the moral pretentions of the US adventure there any less disingenuous. And this is not simply because the administration-backed rebels include al-Qaida fighters.

The fact is that the moral arguments used for intervening militarily on behalf of Gaddafi's opposition pale in comparison to the moral arguments for intervening in multiple conflicts where the Obama administration refuses to lift a finger. At a minimum, this moral inconsistency renders it impossible for the Obama administration to credibly embrace the mantel of moral actor on the world stage.

Consider the administration's Afghanistan policy.

Over the past week, the White House and the State Department have both acknowledged that administration officials are conducting negotiations with the Taliban.

Last week, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton defended the administration's policy. During a memorial service for the late ambassador Richard Holbrooke, who at the time of his death last December was the most outspoken administration figure advocating engaging Mullah Omar and his followers, Clinton said, "Those who found negotiations with the Taliban distasteful got a very powerful response from Richard - diplomacy would be easy if we only had to talk to our friends."

Of course, the Taliban are not simply not America's friends. They are the enemy of every good and decent human impulse. The US went to war against the Taliban in 2001 because the Bush administration rightly held them accountable for Osama bin Laden and his terror army which the Taliban sponsored, hosted and sheltered on its territory.

But the Taliban are America's enemy not just because they bear responsibility for the September 11 attacks on the US. They are the enemy of the US because they are evil monsters.

Apparently, the supposedly moral, anti-genocidal, pro-women Obama administration needs to be reminded why it is not merely distasteful but immoral to engage the Taliban. So here it goes.

Under the Taliban, the women and girls of Afghanistan were the most oppressed, most terrorized, most endangered group of people in the world. Women and girls were denied every single human right. They were effectively prisoners in their homes, allowed on the streets only when fully covered and escorted by a male relative.

They were denied the right to education, work and medical care. Women who failed to abide in full by these merciless rules were beaten, imprisoned, tortured, and stoned to death.

The Taliban's barbaric treatment of women and girls probably couldn't have justified their overthrow at the hands of the US military. But it certainly justified the US's refusal to even consider treating them like legitimate political actors in the 10 years since NATO forces first arrived in Afghanistan. And yet, the self-proclaimed champions of the downtrodden in the administration are doing the morally unjustifiable. They are negotiating, and so legitimizing the most diabolical sexual tyranny known to man. Obama, Clinton, Power and their colleagues are now shamelessly advancing a policy that increases the likelihood that the Taliban will again rise to power and enslave Afghanistan's women and girls once more.

Then there is Syria. In acts of stunning courage, despite massive regime violence that has killed approximately two hundred people in three weeks, anti-regime protesters in Syria are not standing down. Instead, they are consistently escalating their protests. They have promised that the demonstrations after Friday prayers this week will dwarf the already unprecedented country-wide protests we have seen to date.

In the midst of the Syrian demonstrators' calls for freedom from one of the most repressive regimes in the Middle East, the Obama administration has sided with their murderous dictator Bashar Assad, referring to him as a "reformer."

As Heibrunn notes in his profile of Power, she and her colleagues find concerns about US national interests parochial at best and immoral at worst. Her clear aim - and that of her boss - has been to separate US foreign policy from US interests by tethering it to transnational organizations like the UN.

Given the administration's contempt for policy based on US national interests, it would be too much to expect the White House to notice that Syria's Assad regime is one of the greatest state supporters of terrorism in the world and that its overthrow would be a body blow to Iran, Venezuela, Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and al-Qaida and therefore a boon for US national security.

The Syrian opposition presents the likes of Obama and Power with what ought to be a serious moral dilemma. First, they seem to fit the precise definition of the sort of people that the transnationalists have a responsibility to protect.

They are being gunned down by the dozen as they march with olive branches and demand change they can believe in. Moreover, their plan for ousting Assad involves subordinating him to the transnationalists at the UN.

According to a report last week in The Washington Times, Washington-based representatives of several Syrian opposition groups have asked the administration to do three things in support of the opposition, all of which are consonant with the administration's own oft stated foreign policy preferences.

They have requested that Obama condemn the regime's murderous actions in front of television cameras. They have asked the administration to initiate an investigation of Assad's murderous response to the demonstrations at the UN Human Rights Council. And they have asked the administration to enact unilateral sanctions against a few Syrian leaders who have given troops the orders to kill the protesters.

The administration has not responded to the request to act against Assad at the UN Human Rights Council. It has refused the opposition's other two requests.

These responses are no surprise in light of the Obama administration's abject and consistent refusal to take any steps that could help Iran's pro-democracy, pro-women's rights, pro-Western opposition Green Movement in its nearly two-year-old struggle to overthrow the nuclearproliferating, terror-supporting, genocide-inciting, elections-stealing mullocracy.

Power's personal contribution to the shocking moral failings of the administration's foreign policy is of a piece with her known hostility towards Israel. That hostility, which involves a moral inversion of the reality of the Palestinian war against Israel, was most graphically exposed in a 2002 interview. Then, at the height of the Palestinian terror war against Israel, when Palestinian terrorists from Hamas and Fatah alike were carrying out daily attacks whose clear aim was the massacre of as many Israeli civilians as possible simply because they were Israelis, Power said in a filmed interview that she supported deploying a "mammoth" US military force to Israel to protect the Palestinians from the IDF.

In periodic attempts to convince credulous pro-Israel writers that she doesn't actually support invading Israel, Power has claimed that her statements calling for just such an invasion and additional remarks in which she blamed American Jews for US support of Israel were inexplicable lapses of judgment.

But then there have been so many lapses in judgment in her behavior and in the actions of the administration she serves that it is hard to see where the lapses begin and the judgment ends. Libya, Afghanistan, Syria, Iran and Israel are only the tip of the iceberg. Everywhere from Honduras to Venezuela, from Britain to Russia, from Colombia to Cuba, Japan to China, Egypt to Lebanon, to Poland and the Czech Republic and beyond, those lapses in judgment are informing policies that place the US consistently on the side of aggressors against their victims.

Back in the pre-Obama days, when US foreign policy was supposed to serve US interests, it would have mattered that these policies all weaken the US and its allies and empower its foes. But now, in the era of the purely altruistic Obama administration, none of that matters.

What does matter is that the purely altruistic Obama foreign policy is empowering genocidal, misogynist, bigoted tyrants worldwide.


caroline@carolineglick.com


Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 26, 2011, 05:16:58 AM


Home > Libya, Syria expose Obama's foreign policy incoherence

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Roosevelt famously talked softly but carried a big stick. President Obama does the opposite: He talks big but carries a stick that is steadily getting softer. And sometimes he doesn't say or do anything at all, which is the worst possible situation. Consider Obama's declaration that Libya's Moammar Gadhafi "must go." But after making a clear statement of aggressive intent, Obama refused to apply sufficient U.S. military power to make the dictator's departure a reality.

Then following several weeks of bloody fighting in which neither side was able to push through to final victory, it becomes evident that NATO, which assumed direction of the military effort against Gadhafi, lacks the will and resources to get the job done. So Obama decides to deploy two U.S. Predator drones. The Predator is lethal, being able to detect critically important targets, then destroy them without ever being heard or seen by the enemy. But deadly as the Predator is, it is no substitute for the systematic application of U.S. air power against what remains of the Gadhafi loyalists. Consequently, either the stalemate will go on, with a slow but steady loss of life among rebels and civilians, or Gadhafi will break through, slaughter his opposition and re-establish his dictatorial power.

Meanwhile, the situation in Syria has become a nightmare, with the security forces of dictator Bashar al-Assad slaughtering protesters in the streets. Nearly 300 protestors have now been killed, with a flood of grisly amateur videos of the clashes exhibiting the horrendous lethality of modern sniper weaponry. Obama's response has been virtual silence and inaction. Yes, he condemned the shooting of protestors, but, as the Washington Post pointed out in calling his response "shameful," none of the usual diplomatic actions have been taken to put pressure on Assad. Since Syria is Iran's closest ally, Obama's silence on the Syrian crisis chillingly recalls his utter lack of interest in aiding Iran's democratic protesters two years ago.

But we cannot separate Obama's conduct in these two crises from the overall context of American military capabilities. Our forces are involved in an escalating conflict in Afghanistan and remain significantly committed in Iraq. Plus, Obama has already killed or sharply cut back development and deployment of critically needed new weapons such as the F-22 stealth fighter, and promises to reduce our military forces even more if he is elected to a second term. That's the fundamental incoherence at the heart of Obama's foreign policy: Only a superpower can declare that a dictator like Gadhafi must be ousted, then make it stick. To do that, however, the superpower must possess unchallenged military capabilities; otherwise, it invites scorn from U.S. allies and boldness from our enemies. Obama must decide which stick he will carry for America.
.OpinionEditorialsNEP

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Source URL: http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/2011/04/libya-syria-expose-obamas-foreign-policy-incoherence

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 26, 2011, 06:08:30 AM
Nikki Haley Pressures Obama, ’12 Field on NLRB. Big Labor Battle goes to South Carolina
National Review ^ | 04/26/2011 | Robert Costa


________________________ __________________


Across the country, from Wisconsin to Ohio, Republican governors are battling Big Labor. Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, in an interview with National Review Online, says that her state is the next front. But Haley’s foes are not graybeard professors or drum-banging state workers; she is facing off against bureaucratic activists in Washington, D.C.

The National Labor Relations Board, a federal agency dominated by President Obama’s appointees, is attempting to block Boeing from building jets in Charleston, S.C. By producing planes in a nonunion plant thousands of miles from its base in Everett, Wash., the NLRB alleges that Boeing is retaliating against the strike-happy machinists in Puget Sound.

Boeing, which has poured billions into the new facility, calls the agency’s complaint “legally frivolous.” Haley, for her part, is baffled by how the feds think that they can kick around a private company, picking and choosing where it operates. “There is no case; this is ridiculous,” she says. “It is an embarrassment for the NLRB. The unions are losing and this is nothing more than a desperate attempt to see if they can make their voices relevant again.”
 

But it is, Haley asserts, a “national fight,” with political implications for both parties. “I am going to fight this every step of the way,” she says. “We absolutely will not accept the bullying. This is a direct assault on right-to-work states.” In the coming days, the governor will urge the president — and the Republicans hoping to beat him in 2012 — to take sides.

Haley challenges President Obama to rally behind her. “I want to ask him why he is allowing unelected bureaucrats to come in and do the unions’ dirty work on the backs of our businesses,” she says. “It’s hurting the jobs in South Carolina and every other right-to-work state. He owes us an answer.”

If the president does not back up Boeing, Haley argues that companies may decide to move their manufacturing overseas, since the president would be viewed by corporate leaders as someone who has little interest in protecting free enterprise. “He must stand up and fight for companies that want to do business in this country,” she says. “This slows down business in our country.”

Obama is not the only one catching heat from the first-term Republican. Haley notes that the NLRB brawl will be a litmus test for GOP presidential contenders. “Every presidential candidate needs to weigh in on what is happening with NLRB and Boeing,” she says. “I would expect the presidential candidates to speak up, to say that this is wrong, and also to go further than that: to say what they would do to make it right.”


________________________ ______________________-

And you leftist communists wonder why corporations off shore jobs?    Look in the damn mirror! 
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Option D on April 26, 2011, 06:10:06 AM
You are aware that these arent Objective articles right?

wait do you know what objective means?
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 26, 2011, 06:15:54 AM
You are aware that these arent Objective articles right?

wait do you know what objective means?

Pick out one article you think is not objective and why you disagree with it?

How about we discuss what the communist traitor Obama is doing to Boeing?   
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 26, 2011, 08:55:02 AM
U.S. Effort to Remove Drug CEO Jolts Firms
By ALICIA MUNDY

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704123204576283283851626952.html?mod=googlenews_wsj




A government attempt to oust a longtime drug-company chief executive over his company's marketing violations is raising alarms in that industry and beyond about a potential expansion of federal involvement in the business world.

The Department of Health and Human Services this month notified Howard Solomon of Forest Laboratories Inc. that it intends to exclude him from doing business with the federal government. This, in turn, could prevent Forest from selling its drugs to Medicare, Medicaid and the Veterans Administration. If the government implements its ban, Forest would have to dump Mr. Solomon, now 83 years old, in order to protect its corporate revenue. No drug company, large or small, can afford to lose out on sales to the federal government, a major customer.

 
Bloomberg
 
Forest Labs CEO Howard Solomon

.The campaign against drug-company CEOs is part of a larger Obama administration effort to pursue individual executives blamed for wrongdoing rather than simply punishing companies. The government has tried to prosecute Wall Street executives in connection with the 2008 financial crisis, but with limited success.

The Health and Human Services department startled drug makers last year when the agency said it would start invoking a little-used administrative policy under the Social Security Act against pharmaceutical executives. This policy allows officials to bar corporate leaders from health-industry companies doing business with the government, if a drug company is guilty of criminal misconduct. The agency said a chief executive or other leader can be banned even if he or she had no knowledge of a company's criminal actions. Retaining a banned executive can trigger a company's exclusion from government business.

The "action against the CEO of Forest Labs is a game changer," said Richard Westling, a corporate defense attorney in Nashville who has represented executives in different industries against the government.

According to Mr. Westling, "It would be a mistake to see this as solely a health-care industry issue. The use of sanctions such as exclusion and debarment to punish individuals where the government is unable to prove a direct legal or regulatory violation could have wide-ranging impact." An exclusion penalty could be more costly than a Justice Department prosecution.

He said that the Defense Department and the Environmental Protection Agency, for example, have debarment powers similar to the HHS exclusion authority.

The Forest case has its origins in an investigation into the company's marketing of its big-selling antidepressants Celexa and Lexapro. Last September, Forest made a plea agreement with the government, under which it is paying $313 million in criminal and civil penalties over sales-related misconduct.

A federal court made the deal final in March. Forest Labs representatives said they were shocked when the intent-to-ban notice was received a few weeks later, because Mr. Solomon wasn't accused by the government of misconduct.

Forest is sticking by its chief. "No one has ever alleged that Mr. Solomon did anything wrong, and excluding him [from the industry] is unjustified," said general counsel Herschel Weinstein. "It would also set an extremely troubling precedent that would create uncertainty throughout the industry and discourage regulatory settlements."

The pharmaceutical industry has paid billions of dollars in civil and criminal penalties over the past decade, but the government believes they no longer have much deterrent effect.

The new use of exclusion is meant to "alter the cost-benefit calculus of the corporate executives," said Lew Morris, chief counsel for the Department of Health and Human Services's inspector general, in congressional testimony last month.

The move against Forest's Mr. Solomon—its CEO, president and chairman—brings the campaign to a new level. Lawyers not involved in the Forest case said the attempt to punish an executive who isn't accused of misconduct could tie up the industry's day-to-day work in legal knots.

"This 'gotcha' approach to enforcement runs the risk of creating a climate within organizations that is inconsistent with the spirit of innovation that is critical to the industry," said Allen Waxman of Kaye Scholer LLP in New York, who was formerly an in-house counsel at a drug maker.

Mr. Solomon became chief executive in 1977 and built Forest from a maker of vitamin tablets into a global company with more than $4 billion in annual sales.

His son is writer Andrew Solomon, who won a National Book Award in 2001 for his book about struggling with depression. Inspired by his son, Howard Solomon pushed Forest into the antidepressant market and turned Celexa and Lexapro into successes. In the year ending March 2004, the two drugs accounted for about 82% of the company's sales.

In October 2010, HHS outlined how it could use the exclusion tool on individuals without proof of personal misconduct. The first application involved the CEO of a smaller pharmaceutical maker in St. Louis. The executive stepped down. He has since pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor marketing violation and was sentenced to prison and fined.

Forest pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor in connection with its marketing of Celexa as a treatment for children and adolescents before the drug won approval for pediatric use from the Food and Drug Administration. The company also paid fines over civil accusations.

Forest assumed it had put the matter behind it after the plea hearing in March. But on April 8, the Health and Human Services inspector general sent the letter declaring its intent to exclude Mr. Solomon from his roles at Forest. Mr. Solomon has 30 days to ask the inspector general to revoke the move, but if he loses and has to take his case to federal court, he may temporarily step down from his job, according to the company. The inspector general's office declined to comment; Mr. Solomon's personal attorney couldn't be reached.

The push to target executives comes in the wake of complaints in Congress that few executives bear the cost for bad corporate behavior. The U.S. has prosecuted only a handful of individuals in the Wall Street meltdown of 2008.

In November 2010, the government indicted a former attorney for GlaxoSmithKline PLC related to allegations of improper marketing of the antidepressant Wellbutrin for weight loss. The lawyer has pleaded not guilty, and her defense counsel has said her actions were based on advice from Glaxo's outside counsel. The company has said it is cooperating with the government.

—Scott L. Greenberg contributed to this article.

Write to Alicia Mundy at alicia.mundy@wsj.com
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 26, 2011, 09:08:57 AM
WH Working on Executive Order That Critics Say Will Stifle Political Speech
Monday, April 25, 2011
By Fred Lucas


http://cnsnews.cloud.clearpathhosting.com/news/article/white-house-confirms-work-underway-execu




President Obama and Sen. Charles Schumer, New York Democrat. (AP Photo)

Washington (CNSNews.com) –  In what the White House calls a push for transparency, a pending executive order would require companies doing business with the federal government to disclose political contributions to independent groups, but would not place the same requirement on public employee unions or federal grant recipients that typically donate to Democrats.

Entitled the “Disclosure of Political Spending By Government Contractors,” the order would implement parts of the DISCLOSE Act, which failed to get through Congress last year. The legislation sought to restrict campaign speech after the landmark Citizens United vs. Federal Elections Commission U.S. Supreme Court ruling that upheld the right of corporations and unions to donate to campaigns.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney confirmed Monday that work is underway on the draft order, and linked the move to President Obama’s stated commitment to transparency.

 
"It's fully acknowledged that there is a process underway; a draft is just that," Carney told CNSNews.com. "It could change as it makes its way through the process. But what the president is committed to is transparency, and he certainly thinks that the American taxpayer should know where his or her money is going.  So I -- this is part of the President’s commitment to transparency."

Government contractors are already required to disclose contributions to political candidates. This executive order would require the disclosure of any donations to independent groups, where conservative groups outspent liberal ones in the 2010 election.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said the executive order would stifle free speech.

“Democracy is compromised when individuals and small businesses fear reprisal, or expect favor from the federal government as a result of their political associations,” McConnell said in a statement last week, after reports of the draft emerged.

“So recent press reports about an unprecedented draft Executive Order raise troubling concerns about an effort to silence or intimidate political adversaries’ speech through the government contracting system,” he said. “If true, the proposed effort would represent an outrageous and anti-democratic abuse of executive branch authority. No administration should use the federal contracting system for campaign purposes.”

The DISCLOSE Act was pushed by Sen. Charles Schumer (D.-N.Y.), and Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.). Announcing the bill at a Feb. 11, 2010 press conference, Schumer said that its provisions “will make them [corporations] think twice before spending unlimited sums to influence elections. The deterrent effect should not be underestimated.”



The Supreme Court justices at the 2010 State of the Union address, as President Obama criticized the court’s campaign finance ruling. (Image: Network coverage screenshot)

Hans A. von Spakovsky, senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, was skeptical of Carney’s assertion that the president was merely committed to transparency.

“If transparency is the true goal, why isn’t the proposed executive order covering any outside entity that gets federal money? It only applies to government contractors, not grant recipients like Planned Parenthood,” he told CNSNews.com. “Public employee unions are also exempt from this order.”

Von Spakovsky, who was the first to report the existence of the draft executive order, on Pajamas Media last week, argued that the move would politicize the federal procurement process.

He is also troubled by the use of an executive order in this instance.

“This threatens the representational system,” he said. “The president wants to implement through the regulatory process what failed in Congress.”

The draft executive order would require government contractors to disclose:

-- “All contributions or expenditures to or on behalf of federal candidates, parties or party committees made by the bidding entity, its directors or officers, or any affiliates or subsidiaries within its control.”

-- “Any contributions made to third party entities with the intention or reasonable expectation that parties would use those contributions to make independent expenditures or electioneering communications.”

Obama has long railed against the Citizens United ruling. During his 2010 State of the Union speech he launched a verbal offensive against the Supreme Court, prompting a visible response from Justice Samuel Alito, who along with his colleagues were seated just feet from the podium.
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 27, 2011, 02:35:53 PM
Obama’s Green Energy Plants Create “Toxic Brew Of Pollutants”
ViewDiscussion.Last Updated: Tue, 04/26/2011 - 3:55pm

 
http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2011/apr/obama-s-green-energy-plants-create-toxic-brew-pollutants





A few days after the Obama Administration proudly announced its latest multi million-dollar infusion for green energy plants, a news report reveals that the government-backed projects actually infest the air with a “toxic brew of pollutants.”

To support the president’s aggressive push for renewable technology, the administration has steered hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to dubious projects that claim to create energy that’s environmentally friendly. Instead, the new power plants are polluting the earth with nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, ammonia and particulate matter. They also release thick plumes and visible dust and fail to monitor equipment or file emissions reports.

Details of how Obama’s precious green power plants are actually destroying the climate are featured in an in-depth story published this week by an investigative journalism group. Known as biomass power plants, the facilities are promoted as innovative and environmentally-friendly generators of electricity that are popping up nationwide thanks to Uncle Sam’s generous contributions.

Many powerful lawmakers, mostly Democrats, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) have put their weight behind the biomass plants, which burn trees, construction debris, poultry litter and agricultural mass to create alternative energy. However, concerns about health hazards have created alarms in communities where the plants operate.

Not to worry because the politically-connected and government-backed biomass industry has managed to delay for three years a study into claims that pollution from their factories contaminates the air and harms health. There have even been reports that the variety of pollutants contribute to asthma and heart disease.

In the meantime, the government keeps pouring big bucks into the biomass power industry. Earlier this month the USDA and the Department of Energy allocated $30 million to a “Biomass Research and Development Initiative” that promises to help advance “biofuels, bioenergy and high-value biobased products.” This is simply part of Obama’s goal to ensure a cleaner, safer and more secure energy future, according to his Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

Obama’s Energy Secretary (Steven Chu) asserts that the biomass projects will reduce America’s dependence on imported oil, which in turn, will improve the nation’s “energy security” and give it an “innovative edge in the global market for clean energy technologies.” How can you argue with that?



 
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 28, 2011, 10:14:23 AM
Obama’s new math
By Boston Herald Editorial Staff
Thursday, April 28, 2011 - Updated 14 hours ago



http://www.bostonherald.com/news/opinion/editorials/view/2011_0428obamas_new_math



Where the hell did Barack Obama learn economics?

So he’s in a panic at rising gasoline prices — because there’s nothing worse than angry voters furious at what it costs to fill up the tank, especially at the start of the summer driving season. In a letter sent to congressional leaders Tuesday Obama put part of the blame for the sharp spike in gas prices on “increased global demand” compounded by “unrest and supply disruptions in the Middle East.” Well, China’s demand didn’t spike overnight and any disruptions from the serial crises in the Middle East have far more impact in Europe than here.

So the president notes — again — that “there is no silver bullet.” However, when in doubt blame Big Oil and propose to “eliminate unwarranted tax breaks to the oil and gas industry,” which he insisted were “wasteful subsidies.” Now if you take away $4 billion in tax breaks from the oil industry, what do you suppose that will do to the price of gasoline? Make it go up or down?

We’re not sure how the natural gas industry gets fingered here, but then this White House simply won’t let facts get in the way of a good beat-down for corporate America.

And with $4 billion at stake, it’s no wonder the president wants to get his hands on those “subsidies” as part of his high-wire budget-balancing act. The current gas “crisis” is just another of those opportunities this administration can’t imagine going to waste.

What the current crisis ought to prove is that this nation needs to become energy independent — the smart way, by using the natural resources within our own reach — oil, gas and — oh, horrors! — coal included. The very inconvenient truth for Obama is that those “subsidies” for the oil and gas industry help encourage and fund exploration — that is if this administration would end its regulatory jihad against deep-water drilling.

It’s either that or we could all go out and buy ourselves one of those nifty new Chevy Volts the president is so fond of. That is if we have $40,000 sitting around we don’t know what to do with.
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 28, 2011, 10:37:37 AM
What Professor Obama Doesn't Understand
By Peter Ferrara on 4.27.11 @ 6:08AM


http://spectator.org/archives/2011/04/27/what-professor-obama-doesnt-un/print




President Obama's self-congratulatory "economic recovery" is way too little, way too late. By historical standards for the American economy, we should be in the second year now of a booming economic recovery. Instead the economy is still struggling to get off the ground, and what is booming instead is prices and inflation.

If you listen to what President Obama is saying in his reelection campaign, which is already underway in his town hall tour across America, the reason for this is clear. President Obama does not understand the basics of economics. What he says repeatedly is that increased government spending is the foundation of economic recovery and growth. But the economic reality is that incentives for increased production are the foundation for recovery and booming growth.

As a result, what we are witnessing is a historical reenactment of the 1970s, if not the 1930s, with the same throwback economic policies that caused the dismal economic downward spiral of those years. But this is not all that President Obama doesn't understand. He also doesn't understand the budget, taxes, business, the energy and oil markets, and even health care.

Consequently, the American people will continue to suffer high unemployment, rising inflation, soaring gas prices, falling real wages and incomes, record poverty, and ultimately worse. That is until this tragically unqualified President who has spent his entire life cloistered in the fever swamps of the far left is replaced by new leadership that will restore the American Dream.

Facebook Fallacies

On April 20, President Obama took his reelection campaign to a town hall at the corporate headquarters of Facebook in Palo Alto. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg began with a question on the budget, asking "what specifically do you think we can cut…?"

Obama responded by saying first let me explain why the problem is Bush's fault. (Get the transcript if you don't believe me.) This from the President whose own 2012 budget projects that after just one term of office he will have run up more national debt in four years than all prior Presidents combined, from George Washington to George Bush. A President who in that same budget proposed a fourth straight budget deficit of over a trillion dollars, including a record deficit for this year of $1,645 billion, when the highest previously in American history was $458 billion.

If President Obama didn't want those deficits, he could have proposed spending cuts 2 years ago. Instead he enacted an utterly failed, trillion dollar, government spending stimulus package. And despite his misdirection rhetoric, he continues to oppose any serious spending cuts to this day. The real cause of the record deficits and debt is that President Obama increased federal spending by 28% in his first two years alone. And in his 2012 budget he proposed to increase federal spending by another 57% by 2021.

Professor Obama told the Facebook audience that the deficits arose because "we had a massive tax cut that wasn't offset by cuts in spending." But from 2001 when the first round of the Bush tax cuts were adopted until 2007, federal revenues increased by almost 30%. From 2003 when the Bush tax cuts were completed until 2007, federal revenues soared by 44%.

Obama's excuse for his runaway spending is that it was necessary to counter the recession. So he is both blaming Bush for the deficits and taking credit for them in promoting recovery. At the Facebook town hall, Obama further advanced his theory that government spending is the foundation for economic growth and recovery, saying, "If all we're doing is spending cuts and we're not discriminating about it, if we're using a machete rather than a scalpel and we're cutting things that create jobs, then the deficit could actually get worse because we could slip back into a recession."

But it is obvious to everyone but Obama and his hypnotized true believers, party apologists, and bought and paid for special interests that his government spending has failed to produce a timely and robust recovery. That is because President Obama's Keynesian theory that increased government spending and deficits promote economic recovery and growth was proven fully and finally wrong to everyone who was awake over 30 years ago.

President Obama persisted at the Facebook town hall, however, explaining that his spending spree will promote recovery and growth because then "we can still…invest in high speed rail" and, "We can still invest in something called ARPA-E, which is like DARPA except just focused on energy, so that we can figure out what are the next breakthrough technologies that can help to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels."

Spoken like a true central planning neo-socialist, for it is not the government's role, nor does the government even have the capability, to figure out what the next breakthrough technology is to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. America has always enjoyed the world's highest standard of living precisely because we leave decisions like that to the competitive marketplace, not government bureaucrats. And no we are not going to create a booming recovery by wasting still more tens of billions of taxpayer funds on "high speed rail," which is a souped-up version of the mass transit boondoggles that have long proven so adept at wasting taxpayer funds without advancing any economic growth.

President Obama then thoroughly mischaracterized the differences between him and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan over the budget and taxes. Obama told the Facebook audience, "So what his budget proposal does is not only hold income tax flat, he actually wants to further reduce taxes for the wealthy, further reduce taxes for corporations, not pay for those, and in order to make the numbers work, cut 70 percent of our clean energy budget, cut 25 percent out of our education budget, cut transportation budgets by a third."

There he goes again with his idea that increased government spending on "clean energy" would enhance economic growth. But saddling the economy with high cost, unreliable energy, and burdening it with an entire energy industry that can survive only on corporate welfare, is only going to tank the economy rather than promote recovery and growth.

Moreover, exactly contrary to this misconceived rhetoric, Ryan's budget would only return federal taxes to their long run, postwar, historical level relative to the economy over the past 60 years at 18% of GDP. What President Obama is proposing is to increase the level of federal taxes well beyond that to new record levels, as I explained last week.

Then, indicating that he doesn't even understand his own tax proposals, President Obama told the Facebook audience, "Keep in mind, what we're talking about is going back to the rates that existed when Bill Clinton was President." Counting the end of the Bush tax cuts, Obama's proposed phaseout of deductions, the new Obamacare tax on investment, and Obamacare's increased Medicare payroll tax, the new top federal tax rate would be nearly 45%. State income taxes would put that over 50% in most states.

In his recent national budget speech, President Obama proposed adding another trillion dollars in increased taxes on the nation's job creators, investors and small businesses. Then he proposed an automatic tax increase trigger that would raise taxes still further in 2014 if "our debt is not projected to fall as a share of the economy." In his Virginia town hall on April 19, he raised the possibility of increasing the maximum taxable income for the Social Security payroll tax. All of these tax increases would leave the Clinton era tax rates in the dust.

A Tale of Two Budget Deals

Since President Obama doesn't understand economic growth or taxes, he fundamentally misconceives sound budget policy as well. Restoring robust economic growth is the essential foundation for balancing the budget. As revenues boom along with the economy, government spending reductions would eliminate the deficit relatively rapidly within a few short years. Trying to chase consistently lower than expected revenues because of a weak economy would lead to a vicious circle -- America's downward spiral of deficits, debt, and stagnation.

The foundation for that economic growth is not increased government spending, but incentives for increased production. Those incentives arise from lower tax rates, which enable producers to keep a higher percentage of what they produce, promoting still further production. Reducing unnecessary regulatory costs and barriers further promotes incentives to produce by increasing the net reward for production.

This is why Paul Ryan's reduced tax rates for both individuals and businesses promote a balanced budget, and lead ultimately to paying off the national debt entirely. In contrast, President Obama record increases in federal tax rates for virtually every major federal tax would have the opposite effect, on the economy and on the budget.

The contrast between the Ryan and Obama budgets is shown by the experience of the two budget deals of the 1990s. In 1990, then President Bush broke his famous "read my lips, no new taxes" pledge that won him the 1988 election, for a budget deal that supposedly reduced spending by $3 for every dollar of tax increases. But by 1992 the deficit, which had stabilized at around $150 billion in the late 1980s, almost doubled to $290 billion because the tax increases pushed the country into a brief recession. President Bush was booted out of office in the 1992 elections as a result.

This is exactly what President Obama is calling for today, only with much, much higher tax rates -- an increase of $1 trillion in taxes and more on top of the already scheduled tax increases from terminating the Bush tax cuts, Obamacare, and his proposed 2012 budget tax increases.

But the 1995/1996 budget fight between the Gingrich-led Republicans and President Clinton resulted in a budget balanced much like Ryan has proposed, with all spending cuts and tax cuts to promote the economy. The booming growth as a result cut the 1995 deficit of $164 billion to $22 billion by 1997, followed by 4 consecutive years of surpluses totaling $560 billion. That was the biggest reduction in the national debt in world history.

Confusing the Faithful

But President Obama's double talk was confusing even the faithful at the Facebook town hall. A very respectful, even worshipful Lauren Hale rose to ask the President:

"At the beginning of your term you spent a lot of time talking about job creation and the road to economic recovery, and one of the ways to do that would be substantially increasing federal investments in various areas as a way to fill the void left from consumer spending. Since then, we've seen the conversation shift from that of job creation and economic recovery to that of spending cuts and the deficit. So I would love to know your thoughts on how you're going to balance the two going forward, or even potentially shift the conversation back."

Now here is a student who has been paying careful attention to the Professor President. She has even adopted his language perversion of calling government spending investment. She thinks she has learned from the President's prior lectures that government spending is what promotes economic growth and jobs. But now she is confused, for if that's the case then why is he talking now about spending cuts and the deficit?

Her problem is Aristotelian logic. Under the new Marxian dialectic, you can both increase government spending to create jobs, until they show up some day, and cut government spending to close the deficit, if polls show that is what you need to do.

Letter to the Editor

StumbleUpon| Digg| Reddit| Twitter| Facebook

Peter Ferrara is Director of Policy for the Carleson Center for Public Policy and a Senior Fellow for the Heartland Institute. He served in the White House Office of Policy Development under President Reagan, and as Associate Deputy Attorney General of the United States under the first President Bush. He is the author of America's Ticking Bankruptcy Bomb: How the Looming Debt Crisis Threatens the American Dream, and How to Turn the Tide Before It Is Too Late, forthcoming from HarperCollins.
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 28, 2011, 03:14:20 PM
Billion-Dollar Global Health Care Plan Unveiled
 


http://www.tradeaidmonitor.com/2011/04/billion-dollar-global-health-care-plan-unveiled.html





A trio of additional healthcare projects of the Obama Administration are slated to be administered by a handful of private-sector vendors at a cost of nearly $1 billion—initiatives that contractors will carry out in Africa, Asia/Middle East and the Latin America/Caribbean regions.

According to contracting documents that U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor located through routine federal database research, the largest of the three health care packages (solicitation #SOL-OAA-11-000021) is the $500 million plan for Africa.

The Asia/Middle East plan will receive $300 million (solicitation # SOL-OAA-11-000022), while $100 million will go toward programs in Latin America and The Caribbean (solicitation #SOL-OAA-11-000020).

This nearly billion-dollar combination of foreign healthcare aid comes at a time when debate over implementation of domestic Obamacare is brewing to a boil. 

In addition to continuing concerns over the financial burden of the law’s requirements, compliance waivers granted to select companies have come under congressional scrutiny.

A subcommittee of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, for example, last month held hearings on the matter, questioning the legal authority of the Secretary for Health and Human Services to grant such waivers.

Similarly, Crossroads GPS—an organization affiliated with former Bush Administration Chief of Staff Karl Rove—is suing the Obama Administration for allegedly failing to comply with Freedom of Information Act request for data on the waivers.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which added the “population, health, and nutrition technical assistance and support” solicitations to the federal business opportunities system yon April 20 and April 21, respectively, will grant four contracts for each region over the next five years.

USAID, in an official justification for the endeavors, pointed out that for the past forty years the agency “has worked to improve the quality of life for millions of people around the world through its global programs in family planning and reproductive health, infectious disease prevention and control, child survival, maternal health, and other life-saving areas.

“In FY 2007, the US Department of State and USAID established the Foreign Assistance Standardized Program Structure that included the goal to ‘Help nations achieve sustainable improvements in the well-being and productivity of their populations through effective and accountable investments in education, health, and other social services.’

USAID additionally will devote $60 million toward communications and information technology acquisitions in further support of the global health plan. Solicitation # SOL-OAA-11-000018. Tasks under that segment include computer system design and infrastructure management. 

The communications and IT plan also entails and what USAID describes as “health communication services.”

Those services specifically would require the contractor to:

•Provide support, including but not limited to editing and publishing services, to the production of health reports and other related publications
•Create strategy for internet publishing and broadcasting for health programs and provide support for the implementation plan.
•In collaboration with local partners, design, create, and maintain web portals for specific health interests
•Coordinate, design and implement a strategy that utilize social media and mobile communication technology for the promotion of healthy behaviors
•Media and public relations services for local government and other local partners to support the promotion of health services and healthy behaviors.
The price tag for a separate but corollary initiative titled African Strategies for Health—whose goal is to “identify policy and implementation constraints” and to devise strategies for overcoming hurdles to further investments in Africa—was not revealed.

Estimated costs for that segment “will be determined at time of award” granted to the winning bidder, the draft Request for Proposals says in that solicitation (#M-OAA-GRO-EGAS-11-0001).

The USAID Global Health Bureau says it is embarking upon this ambitious plan in support of the U.S. government’s Investing in People program area. Elements of that program include AIDS/HIV and tuberculosis reduction, support of the President’s Malaria Initiative, limiting the spread of avian flu in animals, and increasing “the availability and use of proven life-saving interventions” for mothers and children.

Among other support areas is the targeted expansion of access to voluntary family planning services and information—plus what USAID characterize as “reproductive health care,” a program element that “contributes to reducing unintended pregnancy and promoting healthy reproductive behaviors of men and women, reducing abortion, and reducing maternal and child mortality and morbidity.”


________________________ ________________________ __

I have reached the conclusion that not only is obama a communist traitor, a marxist, a grifter, thief, liar, and sleeper cell neo-terrorist, but so are his supporters at this point.   
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 28, 2011, 06:39:12 PM
OPINIONAPRIL 29, 2011
Obama's Silence on Boeing Is Unacceptable
The president's appointees have moved to block the company from building planes in my state. He owes us an explanation.
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By NIKKI HALEY

In October 2009, Boeing, long one of the best corporations in America, made an announcement that changed the economic outlook of South Carolina forever: The company's second line of 787 Dreamliners would be produced in North Charleston.

In choosing to manufacture in my state, Boeing was exercising its right as a free enterprise in a free nation to conduct business wherever it believed would best serve both the bottom line and the employees of its company. This is not a novel or complicated idea. It's called capitalism.

Boeing has since poured billions of dollars into a new, state-of-the art facility in South Carolina's picturesque Low Country along the Atlantic coast. It has created thousands of good jobs and joined the long tradition of distinguished and employee-friendly corporations that have found a home, and a partner, in the Palmetto State.

This a win-win for South Carolina, for Boeing, and for the global clients who will see Dreamliners rolling off the North Charleston line at the rate of 10 a month, starting with the first one next year. But, as is often the case, a win for people and businesses is a loss for the labor unions, which rely on coercion, bullying and undue political influence to stay afloat.

South Carolina is a right-to-work state, and we're proud that within our borders workers cannot be required to join a labor union as a condition of employment. We don't need unions playing middlemen between our companies and our employees. We don't want them forcefully inserted into our promising business climate. And we will not stand for them intimidating South Carolinians.

That is apparently too much for President Obama and his union-beholden appointees at the National Labor Relations Board, who have asked the courts to intervene and force Boeing to stop production in South Carolina. The NLRB wants Boeing to produce the planes only in Washington state, where its workers must belong to the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.

Let's be clear: Boeing is a great corporate citizen in Washington and in South Carolina. The company chose to come to our state because the cost of doing business is low, our job training and work force are strong, and our ports are tremendous. The fact that we are a right-to-work state is an added bonus.

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AFP/Getty Images
The actions by the NLRB are nothing less than a direct assault on the 22 right-to-work states across America. They are also an unprecedented attack on an iconic American company that is being told by the federal government—which seems to regard its authority as endless—where and how to build airplanes.

The president has been silent since his hand-selected NLRB General Counsel Lafe Solomon, who has not yet been confirmed by the United States Senate as required by law, chose to engage in economic warfare on behalf of the unions last week.

While silence in this case can be assumed to mean consent, President Obama's silence is not acceptable—not to me, and certainly not to the millions of South Carolinians who are rightly aghast at the thought of the greatest economic development success our state has seen in decades being ripped away by federal bureaucrats who appear to be little more than union puppets.

This is not just a South Carolina issue, and President Obama owes the people of our country a response. If they get away with this government-dictated economic larceny, the unions won't stop in our state.

The nation deserves an explanation as to why the president's appointees are doing the machinist union's dirty work on the backs of the businesses and workers of South Carolina.

Ms. Haley, a Republican, is governor of South Carolina.
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 29, 2011, 06:40:40 AM
Updated: Fri., Apr. 29, 2011, 4:47 AM 
'Change' via executive power grab
By MICHAEL A. WALSH


Last Updated: 4:47 AM, April 29, 2011



Having lost the House of Representa tives in the last election, the Obama administration is now imposing "fun damental change" via executive order, regulatory fiat and political pressure. Talk about the unitary executive:

* The Environmental Protection Agency has ruled that Shell Oil Co. may not drill for oil this summer in the Arctic Circle off Alaska, where an estimated 27 billion barrels of domestic oil are waiting to be extracted.

Never mind that Shell's already spent nearly $4 billion on the project, including $2.2 billion to Uncle Sam for the leases. No, the EPA's appeals board said the oil giant had failed to include possible greenhouse-gas emissions from an icebreaking vessel in its calculations and that the project might somehow threaten the health of the 245 people in an Eskimo village 70 miles away.

So, thanks to a Nixon-era regulatory agency, our dependence on foreign oil will rise and gas prices will continue their relentless climb.

* Continuing President Obama's war on domestic oil production, the Fish and Wildlife Service is considering the three-inch Dunes Sagebrush Lizard for inclusion on the endangered species list -- a decision that could spell doom for two of Texas's top oil-producing counties. And right behind the lizard is the Lesser Prairie Chicken.

* The National Labor Relations Board has filed a complaint against a private employer, Boeing, for having the capitalist gall to want to move 30 percent of its Dreamliner jumbo-jet production from highly unionized Washington State to right-to-work South Carolina.

The NLRB accuses Boeing of union-busting in retaliation for the four strikes the union has staged since 1989. Boeing, not unreasonably, says it wants to make its assembly lines less vulnerable to union-led work stoppages.

So a federal agency formed by executive order in 1934 asserts the right to tell private companies where they may or may not do business.

* The NLRB is also suing Arizona and South Dakota over voter-approved state constitutional amendments that would require workers to vote in secret-ballot elections, instead of just signing cards saying they wished to unionize. The "card check" bill couldn't make it into law even in the old, hyper-Democratic Congress.

So a bunch of bureaucrats nonetheless mean to require card-check against the wishes of the voters in two sovereign states -- and have reserved the right to sue South Carolina and Utah for the same "offense," too.

* In a move to end-run the Supreme Court's recent Citizens United ruling, which held that corporations have the same free-speech rights as individuals, the White House is drafting an executive order that would require private companies with federal business to disclose contributions to independent political groups. (They already have to report candidate donations.)

So it's an attempt to accomplish by ukase what Democrats failed to do last year when Congress rejected the Disclose Act. And, naturally, public-employee unions would be exempt.

* Then there's this week's flap over the Defense of Marriage Act, which the administration says it will no longer defend. Under pressure from the gay lobby, the law firm hired by the House Republicans to step into the breach announced it was pulling out.

So, our elected representatives in Congress may pass a law and a president may sign it, but if Obama decides -- absent any Supreme Court ruling -- that the law is unconstitutional, out it goes.

It all boils down to this: Are we to be a constitutional government with three distinct branches, or a single executive entity that makes policy, carries it out and decides for itself whether it's constitutional or not?

That's what the next presidential race is really all about.
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 29, 2011, 09:59:32 AM
Do we need any more evidence that this is a sleeper cell neo-terrorist regime at 1600 PA Ave.  ?   

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/3-persons-convicted-terrorism-related-ca

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 29, 2011, 03:02:34 PM
Obama DOE: America’s Progress Depends On Latinos
Judicial Watch ^ | April 29, 2011





America’s progress is “impossible” if Hispanics keep lagging in education because their success is of “immediate and long term importance” to the U.S. economy, according to a new Obama Administration report that vows to enhance opportunities for the “Latino community.”

Published this week by the Department of Education, the enlightening document ( Winning the Future; Improving Education for the Latino Community ) says that the success of Hispanics in education and in the labor market is crucial to the nation’s economy. The information comes as the president launches a full-throttle campaign pandering to immigrants and their liberal advocates. It was also conveniently released to coincide with Obama’s junior college commencement speech today in MiamiFlorida, which has an immense Hispanic population that includes many illegal immigrants.


Tragically, Hispanics have the lowest education attainment level of any group in the country, which means that the nation’s economy is at stake if you believe the Obama Administration’s argument. That’s because Hispanics face “persistent obstacles to educational attainment.” Those include low enrollment in early learning programs, dismal high school graduation rates and the fact that few Hispanics complete graduate or professional degree programs.


This is unacceptable since Latinos (the report uses Hispanics and Latinos interchangeably) are by far the largest minority group in the American public education system, according to the DOE. More than 12.4 million Hispanics are enrolled in U.S. elementary, middle and highs schools, which accounts for about 22% of all students in the taxpayer-funded system.


“Hispanic students have graduated at lower rates than the rest of the population for years, making America’s progress impossible if they continue to lag behind,” according to Juan Sepulveda, the community activist Obama appointed to run the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics. “Strengthening and improving educational excellence in this community isn’t just a Hispanic problem,” he added. “It’s a challenge to the entire country.”


Sepulveda, who claims that Latino education attainment is important in the global contest for jobs and industries, was rewarded with his cushy DOE job after serving as chair of Obama’s presidential campaign in Texas. Truth is that the DOE, created by Jimmy Carter, is largely viewed as an unnecessary federal agency that interferes with public education, which is supposed to be run by states.


Before joining the Obama Administration Sepulveda ran a well-funded Texas nonprofit that works to reduce “cultural tensions” by doing things like creating a “bi-national community” in the San Diego/Tijuana border area. Part of his education initiative includes developing the next generation of Latino teachers with “minority-serving institutions.”
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 29, 2011, 08:00:43 PM
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Obama's Other Hand
IBD Editorials ^ | April 29, 2011 | Staff
Posted on April 29, 2011 8:41:57 PM EDT by Kaslin

Regulation: While we were distracted by the president's birth certificate show-and-tell, his EPA releases its guidelines for expanding federal power under the Clean Water Act. America's economy and freedom are at stake.

President Obama's long-form birth certificate wasn't the only thing released last Wednesday, but it was probably the least important. The Environmental Protection Agency also released its guidelines for expanding federal power over the nation's waterways, ponds and puddles.

These guidelines will take effect after a 60-day comment period and will serve as a reference for environmental agencies in determining their jurisdiction over a particular body of water, large or small. They will eventually morph into binding regulations as damaging to our economy and freedom as the EPA regulation of carbon dioxide emissions.

The 1972 Clean Water Act was originally intended to protect the "navigable waters of the United States" — you know, the kind boats travel down. It was broadly and quickly interpreted to any pool of water in America capable of supporting a bathtub-variety boat.

The word "navigable" was forgotten and ignored, and the act's scope expanded to the point that water that collected after a rainstorm was considered a "wetland" worthy of environmental protection.

A 2006 U.S. Supreme Court case from Michigan produced five different opinions and no clear definition of which waterways were covered. This essentially left the government with a clean slate on which to write its own interpretation — just about everything.

House Agricultural Committee Chairman Frank Lucas, R-Okla., says the expanded EPA guidelines would let the government "regulate essentially any body of water, such as a farm pond or even a ditch." A bipartisan group of 170 congressmen wrote a letter to the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers urging them not to issue the expanded guidelines.

(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 01, 2011, 05:40:11 AM
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Stimulus transparency: Nonprofit group declines to show how it spent taxpayer money
Chicago Tribune ^ | April 30, 2011 | By Kristen Schorsch and Julie Wernau
Posted on May 1, 2011 8:18:23 AM EDT by Oldeconomybuyer

With $5 billion in stimulus money for weatherization projects at stake, federal officials called for an unprecedented level of transparency to ensure citizens knew how their tax dollars would be spent.

It remains a big secret in Illinois.

In denying a Tribune request for records about its contractors and how it has spent millions of dollars, the nonprofit Community and Economic Development Association of Cook County said it wasn't a "public body" as defined in the state's Freedom of Information Act.

"There's no accountability," Pastika said. "There's no disclosure. A lot of times the public officials voting to allocate money aren't aware of how the money is being spent."

After CEDA refused to release information, the Tribune requested similar records, including names and addresses of contractors and invoices and receipts, from the state Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, which oversees the Illinois Weatherization Assistance Program.

The state provided contractors' names and addresses after five months, but not invoices and receipts, making it impossible to fully assess how the money was spent.

The Tribune requested similar records from the U.S. Department of Energy. The request, made in November, still wasn't filled Friday.

A look at recovery.gov, a federal website designed for taxpayers to track how stimulus dollars have been spent, revealed little more. CEDA contractors were listed, but there's no information about how much money they have received or how they've spent it.

(Excerpt) Read more at articles.chicagotribune. com ...
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 01, 2011, 06:03:02 AM
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Obama: We're working on gun control 'under the radar'
WorldNetDaily ^ | April 26, 2011 | Jeff Knox
Posted on April 29, 2011 2:41:28 PM EDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks

"I just want you to know that we are working on it," Barack Obama reportedly told Sarah Brady regarding gun control. "We have to go through a few processes, but under the radar."

This interesting bit of news was reported in an April 11 Washington Post Lifestyle section story about Obama's gun-control and regulatory policy wonk Steve Croley. Toward the end of the article the writer, Jason Horowitz, mentions a March 30 meeting between Jim and Sarah Brady and White House Press Secretary Jay Carney during which the President "dropped in."

Horowitz quotes Sarah Brady relating how President Obama gave his personal assurance that he and his administration were working hard on a gun-control agenda. Brady reported that Obama then told them about advancing the agenda "under the radar."

Apparently Mrs. Brady either doesn't grasp the concept of "under the radar," or, more likely, she expected the reporter to be discreet and keep the "good news" about Obama's stealth operations to himself. Thankfully this reporter chose to report the news, so we have direct corroboration of Obama's sneak-attack against the Second Amendment.

What is truly startling about this story is the way it has been totally ignored by the rest of the media. Compare the media's current silence with what happened during the 2000 presidential campaign when then NRA Vice-President (and GOP activist) Kayne Robinson told a group of rights supporters in California that electing Bush would mean "we'll have a president where we work out of their office, unbelievably friendly relations."

(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 03, 2011, 08:38:33 AM
ObamaCare Subsidies Won't Keep Up With Premiums
By JED GRAHAM, INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted 09:10 AM ET
 



 View Enlarged Image
If the health care law survives the current legal and political attacks, it will soon come up against the law of economics.

Initially, individuals buying insurance via exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) will get subsidies that rise in line with premium cost growth.

But, starting in 2019, individuals would have to shoulder an ever-greater share of premiums as cost curbs kick in if subsidies top 0.5% of GDP, as the Congressional Budget Office projects.

The law's shift of premium costs to individuals "may be difficult to sustain," CBO director Doug Elmendorf recently testified.

"Difficult" is putting it mildly.

Consider a single 42-year-old earning 250% of the poverty level in 2014, or $28,750. Imagine that worker gets a 3.3% raise every year, outpacing inflation by 1 percentage point. Good news, right?

Not so much. Under a perhaps optimistic assumption that premium costs grow just 4.3% a year (2% above inflation), rising premium payments would gradually eat 75 cents of every extra dollar in real income earned over the next two decades, IBD's analysis shows. This reflects the law's curbs on subsidies and its sliding scale that cuts subsidies as income rises.

Add in similar growth in out-of-pocket payments, and health costs would eat 90% of real wage gains.

And this assumes relatively contained health-care-cost growth and decent pay gains. For those stuck at 250% of the poverty level, rising health costs would shrink real wages by 10% over two decades.

Now consider premium subsidies for midcareer adults earning 300% of the poverty level, $34,520 in 2014. Initially, the $1,470 subsidy would cover 31% of premiums, limiting a 42-year-old's payment to 9.5% of income.

But two decades later, a 42-year-old at 300% of poverty would have to shell out 19% of income. So the subsidy would not only fail to keep up with health costs or even inflation, it would be cut in half in nominal terms to $700, based on CBO's interpretation of the law.

Democrats are attacking Paul Ryan's Medicare plan, in part because vouchers would only track inflation. James Capretta, the top health care budget official in the George W. Bush administration, sees that as "hypocritical," given that exchange subsidies might in some cases do the same or worse.

Still, the average premium subsidy would rise by about 4.8% a year after 2019, well above inflation, CBO projections show.

Here's why it matters: Exchanges are supposed to make nongroup insurance affordable by pooling the young and healthy with the old and sick. But once premium costs become prohibitive for the young and healthy, many will drop out — despite the individual mandate and its associated penalty capped at 2.5% of income.

"A growing number of families in relatively good health would likely choose to pay a relatively small penalty for going without coverage rather than pay a much larger and ever-increasing share of their income," Paul Van de Water of the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities wrote last year.

This exodus would further push up costs and drive out yet more families, making the mandate and market reforms "difficult or impossible to maintain," Van de Water wrote.

Would Congress would face heavy pressure to ramp up subsidies. Uncertainty over the law's subsidies and mandate are long-term issues with near-term implications as both political parties embrace talk of broadening the tax base while lowering marginal rates.

The biggest base-broadening option is to end the tax exemption for employer-sponsored health insurance. That reduces income tax revenue by about $180 billion a year, says Donald Marron, director of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.

But John Sheils of the health care consultancy Lewin Group told IBD last November that ending the tax break would result in an additional 22 million people receiving subsidies on ObamaCare exchanges.

As it is, CBO projects that about 20 million people will buy subsidized coverage via exchanges a decade from now. So scrapping the tax exemption for employer health benefits could double the stakes — and the uncertainty — over the subsidies and mandate.
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 05, 2011, 06:15:13 AM
Obama floats plan to tax cars by the mile
The Hill ^


Posted on Thursday, May 05, 2011 8:42:55 AM

Obama floats plan to tax cars by the mile By Pete Kasperowicz - 05/05/11 07:45 AM ET

The Obama administration has floated a transportation authorization bill that would require the study and implementation of a plan to tax automobile drivers based on how many miles they drive.

The plan is a part of the administration's "Transportation Opportunities Act," an undated draft of which was obtained this week by Transportation Weekly.

This follows a March Congressional Budget Office report that supported the idea of taxing drivers based on miles driven.

Among other things, CBO suggested that a vehicle miles traveled (VMT) tax could be tracked by installing electronic equipment on each car to determine how many miles were driven; payment could take place electronically at filling stations.  

The CBO report was requested by Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND), who has proposed taxing cars by the mile as a way to increase federal highway revenues.

Obama's proposal seems to follow up on that idea in section 2218 of the draft bill. That section would create, within the Federal Highway Administration, a Surface Transportation Revenue Alternatives Office. It would be tasked with creating a "study framework that defines the functionality of a mileage-based user fee system and other systems."

The administration seems to be aware of the need to prepare the public for what would likely be a controversial change to the way highway funds are collected. For example, the office is called on to serve a public relations function, as the draft says it should "increase public awareness regarding the need for an alternative funding source for surface transportation programs and provide information on possible approaches."

The draft bill says the "study framework" for the project and a public awareness communications plan should be established within two years of creating the office, and that field tests should begin within four years.

The office would be required to consider four factors in field trials: the capability of states to enforce payment, the reliability of technology, administrative costs, and "user acceptance." The draft does not specify where field trials should begin.

The new office would be funded a total of $200 million through FY 2017 for the project.

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 06, 2011, 10:13:31 AM
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Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 10, 2011, 05:50:58 AM
Don't Trust the Boss: Labor Dept. Offers Smartphone 'App' for Tracking Wages
Cybercast News ^ | 5/10/11


________________________ ________________________ ________________________ __



(CNSNews.com) - Instead of relying on the company’s records, employees can now track their own work hours through a new application for smartphones.

The U.S. Labor Department on Monday announced the launch of its first app -- a timesheet to help employees independently track the hours they work and determine the wages they are owed.

“I am pleased that my department is able to leverage increasingly popular and available technology to ensure that workers receive the wages to which they are entitled,” said Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis. “This app will help empower workers to understand and stand up for their rights when employers have denied their hard-earned pay.”

The free app, available in both English and Spanish, allows users to track regular work hours, break time and any overtime hours.  A glossary, contact information and materials about wage laws are easily accessible through links to the Labor Department's Wage and Hour Division.

"This new technology is significant because, instead of relying on their employers’ records, workers now can keep their own records," the news release said. "This information could prove invaluable during a Wage and Hour Division investigation when an employer has failed to maintain accurate employment records."

The free app is compatible with the iPhone and iPod Touch, and eventually it may also work with other smartphone platforms, such as Android and BlackBerry.


For workers without a smartphone, the Wage and Hour Division offers a printable work-hours calendar in English and Spanish to track rate of pay, work start and stop times, and arrival and departure times. "The calendar also includes easy-to-understand information about workers’ rights and how to file a wage violation complaint," the Labor Department said.

Both the app and the calendar can be downloaded from the Wage and Hour Division’s home page.



________________________ _________-


and you guys wonder why employers are moving overseas?   ha ha ha ha. 
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: whork25 on May 10, 2011, 06:08:36 AM
Yeah employers is moving overseas because of this ::)
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 10, 2011, 06:10:58 AM
Yeah employers is moving overseas because of this ::)

Yes they are!  Its everything, between the EPA, DOL, state DOL, Workers Comp boards, county DOL, etc etc etc.   

Why even bother anymore?    Even Steve Jobs has said he cant do production in the USA since the costs are so prohibitive. 

 
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: whork25 on May 10, 2011, 06:19:10 AM
Yes they are!  Its everything, between the EPA, DOL, state DOL, Workers Comp boards, county DOL, etc etc etc.   

Why even bother anymore?    Even Steve Jobs has said he cant do production in the USA since the costs are so prohibitive. 

 

And yet they have billions in profit each year...
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 10, 2011, 06:23:09 AM
And yet they have billions in profit each year...

No shit!   

Businesses dont exist to be a jobs program or employment agency like you left wing illiterates think.  So its better they lose money?   
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: whork25 on May 10, 2011, 06:29:32 AM
No shit!   

Businesses dont exist to be a jobs program or employment agency like you left wing illiterates think.  So its better they lose money?   

Them making less profit but staying on American soil and not selling out and weakening the country= FUCK YEAH

But instead you support flushing this country down the drain so the riches people in the world can be even richer
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 10, 2011, 06:35:31 AM
Them making less profit but staying on American soil and not selling out and weakening the country= FUCK YEAH

But instead you support flushing this country down the drain so the riches people in the world can be even richer

 ::)  ::)


You are so fucking clueless its not funny.   Seriously - how old are you and have you EVER taken even an econ 101 class? 
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 10, 2011, 06:39:13 AM
NLRB Attack on Right-to-Work States is Bad Politics and Worse Economics
www.Townhall.com

May 10, 2011 | Fred Wszolek


________________________ ________________________ _____________________



Defying efforts by both small and large businesses to create jobs and protect workers, whether union or non-union, President Obama’s labor board, namely the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has undertaken an assault against non-union jobs created in right-to-work states. On two fronts in recent days, the regulatory agency has gone after right-to-work states to the benefit Big Labor bosses, who happen to the top political contributors and supporters of this White House.

The NLRB has begun to sue states whose citizens voted to protect themselves from coercion and intimidation by adding secret ballot guarantees to their state constitutions, as well as attempting to deny a major corporation from operating a facility in a right-to-work state, which would create thousands of new jobs.

Why is the board attacking right-to-work states in a down economy? Perhaps it is due to the overwhelming and unmistakable connection between this administration and Big Labor bosses whose political spending has propelled not just President Obama to his position, but consequently, their allies into appointed positions of influence within government, starting with agencies such as the NLRB.

And it’s not as if union bosses are shying away from bragging about their access and influence. Just a few weeks ago, the president of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) Richard Trumka said, “I’m at the White House a couple times a week – two or three times a week … I have conversations every day with someone in the White House or in the administration. Every day. And that includes weekends, by the way.”

What are they talking about?

They are discussing ways to pursue job-killing strategies that reward labor bosses, but hurt job creators.

What the NLRB and their union boss friends cannot escape is the overwhelming proof that states with right-to-work laws are more financially and educationally accomplished than states where unionization is forced.

It’s no wonder South Dakota and Arizona, two right-to-work states, let the voters speak for themselves guaranteeing a secret ballot election in union organizing elections. By ensuring a secret ballot in this manner, workers are better able to vote their conscience and not be unfairly swayed, or even bullied, by union organizers who desperately seek new members to increase dues. By putting this notion into state law, they sent a message to Big Labor – we do not want forced unionization.

At its core, that’s what right to work is about. Right to work protects a worker’s freedom of association. It prohibits agreements between labor unions and employers making membership or payment of union dues or fees a condition of employment.

And if that wasn’t enough evidence of the Obama Administration’s gross favoritism and advocacy on the part of union bosses, the NLRB’s ludicrous actions in its complaint against Boeing regarding its new facility in South Carolina should suffice.

South Carolina – like many other states – is struggling through a difficult economy and is clearly concerned with bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. advancing policies that increase unemployment and hurt businesses. And the NLRB’s attack against Boeing for deciding to build a new facility in a right-to-work state is just that, government run amok and carrying water for special interests whose agenda takes precedence over the livelihoods of everyday Americans.

But to understand the reason for the animus both Big Labor and the Obama Administration have toward right-to-work states, one only has to look at the facts.

Unemployment is lower in right-to-work states and home ownership is higher. Right-to-work states produce more highly-educated workers than forced unionization states, and it comes as no surprise that the overwhelming majority of young professionals – 94.3% to be exact, choose to live in right-to-work states.

Additionally, in states without forced unionization, employers are more capable of providing health insurance to their employees – something forced unionization states have struggled to do. In the decade between 1999-2009, the number of people covered by any form of private health insurance decreased by 5.7% in forced-unionization states, but in right-to-work states, that number actually increased one percent. The freedom provided by right-to-work states affects the stability of its businesses; therefore, it secures the stability of benefits for workers.

And the list goes on and on. By any and just about every measurable indicator, it is more beneficial to live and work in a right-to-work state, which today is under threat by Big Labor and by extension, the Obama Administration and its administrative agents at the NLRB.

Thankfully, numerous Members of Congress have stepped up to speak on behalf of their constituents by signing a letter to President Obama demanding that the blatant advocates of Big Labor’s agenda in government namely NLRB Acting General Counsel Lafe Solomon and Board Member Craig Becker be withdrawn from consideration as nominees to the regulatory agency. As Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina stated, “America will not win the future if Washington penalizes workers in states that have discovered winning economic strategies.”
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: whork25 on May 10, 2011, 06:40:31 AM
::)  ::)


You are so fucking clueless its not funny.   Seriously - how old are you and have you EVER taken even an econ 101 class? 

30 and no

Why?
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 10, 2011, 06:45:51 AM
30 and no

Why?

Case closed.   Businesses go based on projections of the future costs, etc.  They dont say "Ok, we project we will make x dollars next year, so lets make sure we spend x dollars so that we are doing our patriotic duty"    Thats pure madness and psycho shit.     
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: whork25 on May 10, 2011, 06:54:41 AM
Case closed.   Businesses go based on projections of the future costs, etc.  They dont say "Ok, we project we will make x dollars next year, so lets make sure we spend x dollars so that we are doing our patriotic duty"    Thats pure madness and psycho shit.     

Well from this point of wiev selling nuclear arms secrets to the Russians during the cold war for profit would be cool though right?

Im exagerating here but both are done for profit and simultanously hurts the country

And i understand they do it for profit and all but if they hurt this country for own personal gain well then FUCK you to them
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 10, 2011, 12:32:53 PM
Obama Ready to Roll Out New Amnesty Carpet for Illegals
www.sunshinestatenews.co m ^ | May 9, 2011 3:00 PM | Kenric Ward





Amnesty or bust. Though not using those words, that's expected to be the message President Barack Obama will deliver in the border town of El Paso, Texas, on Tuesday.

Obama, according to unofficial reports, will argue that his administration has tightened America's borders and stepped up deportations, and that it is time for Congress to enact a "path to citizenship" for at least some of the estimated 11 million illegal aliens in this country.

Wary congressional Republicans and even a few Democrats say that "path to citizenship" means "amnesty," and they're not willing to go down that road again. Previous amnesty programs, which effectively rewarded lawbreakers, simply enticed more illegals to enter the country.

Obama, eager to make good on campaign promises from 2008 and bolster his Hispanic base for 2012, says the time is ripe for immigration reform. The administration reports that it deported a record 392,000 immigrants, and has put more "boots on the ground" along America's southern border.

Workplace raids have stepped up, too, and more businesses are using the federal E-Verify program to screen new hires.

As for the illegals who remain, reformers argue that it is unrealistic to expect the government to deport some 11 million people.

But the experience in Arizona suggests that self-deportation occurs when and where immigration laws are toughened.

Weeks before Arizona's strict law went into effect, large numbers of Hispanics left the state for good.

Schools in Hispanic areas reported unusually big drops in enrollment, USA Today reported. A district superintendent said parents told him the Arizona law was the reason for them leaving.

Arizona's immigration-control measure, signed into law by Republican Gov. Jan Brewer, requires a police officer to determine a person's immigration status if they are stopped, detained or arrested and there is "reasonable suspicion" they are in the country illegally.

Paul Senseman, a spokesman for Brewer, said it's difficult to gauge how many people are leaving because of the law, but "If that means that fewer people are breaking the law, that is absolutely an accomplishment."

A court challenge by the U.S. Justice Department has since put the law into legal limbo. The administration's action indicates that Obama will not be calling for tougher national enforcement on Tuesday.

Still, Washington and Arizona appear to have found common ground with at least one effective immigration tool -- E-Verify.

When Arizona passed a 2007 law that enhanced penalties on businesses that hired undocumented workers, some 100,000 illegals left the state, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

E-Verify -- which combines Social Security and driver's license databases -- enables employers to check new employees' eligibility to work legally in this country. The federal program is free and the latest studies show it has a high accuracy rate.

Upgraded to handle up to 60 million requests at a time, E-Verify has an accuracy rate exceeding 95 percent, according to independent and government studies.

In addition to Arizona, several states and thousands of businesses have adopted E-Verify. Florida Gov. Rick Scott ordered its use by agencies under his control, but the state Legislature killed bills that would have extended it to the private sector.

Immigration-control advocates say that shutting off employment to illegals will inevitably result in self-deportation. If there is no work, there is no reason to stay, they contend.

The Center for Immigration Studies, a pro-enforcement think tank based in Washington, D.C., adds that tighter control of welfare benefits can also have a salutary effect.

Census Bureau data show that 57 percent of immigrant-headed households (legal and illegal) use at least one welfare program (versus 39 percent for native households). Illegal residents can obtain benefits because few agencies require recipients to provide proof of citizenship.

In the meantime, in advance of Obama's speech, the rhetoric is ramping up for immigration "reform" by any means necessary.

Speaking at a South Bend, Ind., church Sunday, U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez quoted Obama from 2008, talking about the need to change an immigration system where communities are "terrorized" by immigration raids and where "nursing mothers are torn from their babies."

Worried that the GOP-controlled House will oppose anything that smacks of amnesty, the Illinois Democrat said he's looking for the president to use "discretionary powers" to enact the changes.

In an indication of where he is heading Tuesday, Obama recently conducted a series of private meetings with business executives, evangelical leaders and Hispanic activists -- the same groups that repeatedly blurred the distinction between "legal" and "illegal" immigrants in helping to defeat Florida's modest E-Verify legislation.
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 10, 2011, 12:48:22 PM
GOP Sen. Rand Paul questions whether White House has 'enemies list'
The Hill ^ | 5/10/11 | Kevin Bogardus






Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) asked Tuesday if the White House had an "enemies list" in light of the National Labor Relations Board's complaint against Boeing for moving some of its operations to South Carolina.

The complaint stems from Boeing's decision to move some of its production line for the Dreamliner jet to the right-to-work state to avoid the work stoppages that have hampered the company in the state of Washington. The labor board contends that the move is retaliation against unionized workers, while Boeing says it is a business decision designed to keep production running smoothly.

Speaking at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce with several other GOP lawmakers and business lobbyists, Paul implied that President Obama was playing politics, since the complaint could see Boeing move jobs out of South Carolina.

"I have a question for the president. Mr. President, do you have an enemies list? Is this decision based on the fact that South Carolina appears to be a Republican state, has two Republican senators? Is this decision based on the fact that South Carolina is a right-to-work state? Are they on your enemies list?" Paul said.

The freshman senator also mentioned a draft executive order under consideration by the White House that would have government contractors disclose their political contributions.

"Will you now punish contractors who have given money to Republican candidates?" Paul asked.

Paul rattled off several other states, including Kentucky, Alabama and Texas, that he said could fall under the administration's cross-hairs for voting Republican in the last election.

"Are we going to use the whole power and bully nature of government to say that business cannot be located in a state that might happen to vote Republican?" Paul said. "I find this appalling and I respectfully ask the president to immediately rescind this assault on business."


Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 10, 2011, 01:35:43 PM
Obama mocks Republican position on immigration
Associated Press ^ | 5-10-11 | DARLENE SUPERVILLE and ERICA WERNER




Delving anew into an explosive issue, President Barack Obama stood near the border with Mexico on Tuesday and declared it more secure than ever, trying to build pressure on Republicans to take on a comprehensive immigration overhaul—and eagerly working to show vital Hispanic voters that he is not the one standing in the way. Countering Republican calls to focus on border security before moving to a comprehensive overhaul, Obama said their demands have been more than met by his administration but "they'll never be satisfied."

He boasted of increasing border patrol agents, nearing completion of a border fence, and screening more cargo.

"We have gone above and beyond what was requested by the very Republicans who said they supported broader reform as long as we got serious about enforcement," Obama said. "But even though we've answered these concerns, I gotta say I suspect there are still going to be some who are trying to move the goal posts on us one more time."

"Maybe they'll need a moat," Obama said mockingly to laughter from the crowd. "Maybe they'll want alligators in the moat."  

Trying to build public support for legislation congressional Republicans don't want to pass, Obama said: "The question is whether those in Congress who previously walked away in the name of enforcement are now ready to come back to the table and finish the work we've started."


(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...



________________________ ________________________ _____________

Maybe this communist sleeper cell terrorist potus needs to talk to the family of the ATF Agent killed by his owen policies sending AK's and AR's over the border.


What a freaking disgraceful asshole.   

Fuck you whoever still supports this freak of nature.     
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 10, 2011, 08:38:06 PM
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Poor Distraught Fishermen Are Attempting Suicide After One Year of Obama Job-Killing Regulations
GatewayPundit ^ | 5/10/11 | Jim Hoft
Posted on May 10, 2011 9:53:09 PM EDT by SanFranDan

East Coast fishermen say the new Obama job-killing regulations are killing the industry. Poor distraught fishermen are attempting suicide.

WMUR reported:

Fishermen on New Hampshire’s Seacoast are warning that new fishing regulations could destroy their industry and have already caused them severe emotional stress.

The U.S. Department of Commerce has sent a team to Seabrook to look at the effects of the new regulations.

“If they don’t do something to modify the fishing regulations, we won’t have a fishing industry on the Seacoast, is what it boils down to,” said Hampton Town Manager Fred Welch.

Many in the fishing industry said they want the federal team to do more than its stated task of creating an economic development assessment report. The team is spending three days in Seabrook and visiting five other New England fishing towns…

…“One of the fishermen from Rye had said that there had been three suicide attempts and a half dozen divorces during this first year of catch-shares,” said Bob Campbell of the Yankee Fisherman’s Cooperative. “Commercial fishermen are usually pretty tight-lipped, and for something this serious to come out, I mean, you know that the whole situation is grave.”

Campbell said the cooperative has lost about $750,000 in business since the new regulations went into effect.

“We’re off 1.1 million pounds of fish from last year, and over a million and a half pounds from the year before,” he said.

TOPICS: Business/Economy; Government; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections; Click to Add Topic
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Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: whork25 on May 11, 2011, 02:14:50 AM
Well from this point of wiev selling nuclear arms secrets to the Russians during the cold war for profit would be cool though right?

Im exagerating here but both are done for profit and simultanously hurts the country

And i understand they do it for profit and all but if they hurt this country for own personal gain well then FUCK you to them

BUMP
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 11, 2011, 11:20:52 AM
Obama Admin Defends Dropping Doctors’ Conscience Protections
Life News ^ | 5/11/11 | Steven Ertelt





In a letter to several pro-life groups complaining about President Barack Obama’s decision to drop some of the conscience protections for medical professionals, the administration is defending the decision.

Several pro-life groups sent a letter to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius warning her of the alarming effects on patients that will follow the Obama administration’s recent move to strip the medical community of key conscience protections on abortion.

As LifeNews.com reported in February, the Obama administration overturned some of the conscience protections the Bush administration put in place to protect pro-life medical workers who don’t want to be involved in certain medical procedures. The administration rescinded part of the protections by removing protections for medical workers who have moral or religious objections to dispensing or giving to women the Plan B drug or other emergency contraception that could act in some cases as an abortion drug.


(Excerpt) Read more at lifenews.com ...

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 11, 2011, 02:18:10 PM
May 11, 5:14 PM EDT
Obama plan for health care quality dealt a setback
By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR
Associated Press
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_HEALTH_CARE_SETBACK?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2011-05-11-16-10-25


 

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama's main idea for getting quality health care at less cost was in jeopardy Wednesday after key medical providers called his administration's initial blueprint so complex it's unworkable.

Just over a month ago, top officials released long-awaited draft regulations for "accountable care organizations," networks of doctors and hospitals that would collaborate to keep Medicare patients healthier and share in the savings with taxpayers. Obama's health care overhaul law envisioned quickly setting up hundreds of such networks around the county to lead a bottom-up reform of America's bloated health care system.

But in an unusual rebuke, an umbrella group representing premier organizations such as the Mayo Clinic wrote the administration Wednesday saying that more than 90 percent of its members would not participate, because the rules as written are so onerous it would be nearly impossible for them to succeed.

"It's not just a simple tweak, it's a significant change that needs to be made," said Donald Fisher, president of the American Medical Group Association, which represents nearly 400 large medical groups around the country providing care for roughly 1 in 3 Americans. Its members, including the Cleveland Clinic, Intermountain Healthcare in Utah, and Geisinger Health System in Pennsylvania, had been seen as the vanguard for accountable care.

The medical groups say they are worried they will be left holding the bag for losses, that the government has designed things so there is no easy way to tell which patients are part of the program, and that there's no reliable way to adjust for patients who are sicker and require closer follow-up and more expensive treatments.

The deadline for public comments on the proposed regulations is still weeks away, but Fisher said "we needed to get their attention early on, so (the administration) could be thinking about how major changes are needed to make these regulations viable."

Medicare spokesman Brian Cook said the agency is doing extensive outreach to explain and take feedback on the regulations and hat "we will carefully consider this input."

"We are confident that providers' decisions on whether to participate in the program will be made on the basis of the final rule, which will reflect the feedback we receive," added Cook.

Many in the health care industry were silent partners backing Obama's overhaul law, but disappointment over the accountable care rules has put a chill into the relationship. During the congressional debate, Obama extolled Mayo and Geisinger, holding them up as a model of what he wanted to achieve for the nation. Industry criticism of his administration's proposal has been building up for weeks in online forums.

"This has all the hallmarks of a party that nobody comes to, unless there is a serious rethinking," said former Medicare administrator Gail Wilensky, who ran the agency under President George H.W. Bush.

Wilensky said the idea of coordinating care isn't the problem, but "it sounds like (the administration) really overshot the mark."

The regulations are "overly prescriptive, operationally burdensome, and the incentives are too difficult to achieve to make this voluntary program attractive," the medical group association said in its letter. One of the major problems seems to be that medical groups have little experience in managing insurance risk, and the administration blueprint rapidly exposes them to potential financial losses.

Without major changes, "we fear that very few providers will enroll ... and that (Medicare) and the provider community will miss the best opportunity to inject value and accountability into the delivery system."

Private insurers are also experimenting with versions of the accountable care idea, but successful adoption by Medicare is seen as the key to spreading it across the country. The Obama administration had estimated as much as $960 million in savings from the first three years of the program, and bigger amounts thereafter.

Fisher, the medical association head, said he does not think the administration will easily back off its approach, because on paper it saves the government money.

© 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
 
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 12, 2011, 09:19:35 AM
Obama: There Is "Nothing More Important" Than A Government Job (video)
RealClearPolitics ^ | May 12, 2011 | RealClearPolitics


________________________ ________________________ _____________________



President Obama responds to a woman who was laid off from her government job: "Let me just first of all say that workers like you, for the federal, state, and local governments, are so important for our vital services. And it frustrates me sometimes when people talk about 'government jobs' as if somehow those are worth less than private sector jobs. I think there is nothing more important than working on behalf of the American people."

(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 13, 2011, 06:01:46 AM
May 13, 2011 12:00 A.M.

The Persecution of Boeing
The NLRB’s claims are laughable on their face.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/267134/persecution-boeing-rich-lowry




H. L. Mencken defined puritanism as the haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy. The National Labor Relations Board is haunted by the fear that a company somewhere might be creating jobs with a nonunionized work force.

Boeing has run afoul of that fear by investing more than $1 billion in a new plant in the right-to-work state of South Carolina. With only the flimsiest legal justification, the board wants to force Boeing to reverse course and locate the facility with its current operations in Washington State, where its workers are unionized.


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The NLRB’s claims are laughable on their face, although Boeing — trying to run a business in a highly competitive global market — can be forgiven for missing the joke. The board accuses Boeing of “interfering with, restraining, and coercing” its union employees in the exercise of their rights by making a thoroughly understandable business decision.

This is putting not a thumb, but a fist on the scale in favor of the unions. A writer at the liberal The New Republic says it “may be the most radical thing the Obama administration has done.” It’s an attempt to keep companies with the misfortune of operating in union-heavy states in perpetual thrall to organized labor.

The CEO of Boeing stands accused of saying the company could ill afford the “strikes happening every three to four years in Puget Sound.” In a memo, paraphrased in the NLRB complaint, Boeing management said it wanted “to reduce vulnerability to delivery disruptions caused by work stoppages.” What’s notable about these statements is that they are so obvious, they should go without saying.

As the NLRB itself notes, Boeing suffered strikes with some regularity, in 1977, 1989, 1995, 2005, and 2008. These job actions weren’t good for business, or the unions wouldn’t have undertaken them: Their express purpose is to inflict pain on the company. The logic of the NLRB’s position is that businesses shouldn’t notice strikes, and if they do, they should learn to like them and never factor their potential cost into investment decisions. At bottom, the executives of Boeing are guilty of a thought crime.

There are rules against “runaway shops” (i.e., picking up and moving a plant to evade a union) and against retaliating against workers for striking or organizing. Boeing’s decision to expand its business in South Carolina is manifestly none of those things. It is leaving its Washington State facility intact. In fact, Boeing has expanded it, adding 2,000 jobs. When the Charleston facility is brought online, Boeing will build ten of its 787 Dreamliners a month — seven of them still in Washington State.

If every company were abusing its workers by continuing to employ them and adding to their ranks, the unemployment rate wouldn’t be 9 percent. The NLRB can’t point to any Boeing worker in Washington who has been harmed — let alone restrained or coerced — by the company’s decision to hire additional workers in South Carolina.

If the drift of jobs to right-to-work states in the South and elsewhere is a violation of the law, the union-dominated dinosaur of Michigan is the victim of the greatest mass breach of the National Labor Relations Act of all time. Perhaps the NLRB needs to give Nissan a stern talking-to; the company has done union workers everywhere the disservice of locating its American manufacturing plants in Tennessee and Mississippi.

The desperation of Pres. Barack Obama’s NLRB is understandable. It is fighting a losing battle against the inexorable erosion of the supports of the semi-guild system of 20th-century unionization. In its overreach, though, it is creating yet another disincentive for business to locate in union-heavy blue states. What company wants to risk having to fight a union and the federal government for years in court just to defend a common-sense business decision?

Clearly, Boeing made a grave mistake in its labor relations. It should have located its production in South Carolina from the beginning.

— Rich Lowry is editor of National Review. He can be reached via e-mail, comments.lowry@nationalreview.com. © 2011 by King Features Syndicate.
 

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Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 14, 2011, 11:57:48 AM


 



HHS approves 200 more new healthcare reform waivers
By Julian Pecquet    - 05/13/11 04:52 PM ET
The Obama administration approved 204 new waivers to Democrats' healthcare reform law over the past month, bringing the total to 1,372.

The waivers are temporary and only apply to one provision of the law, which requires health plans to offer at least $750,000 worth of annual medical benefits before leaving patients to fend for themselves. Still, Republicans have assailed the waivers as a sign of both favoritism and of major problems with the law.

"The fact that over 1,000 waivers have been granted is a tacit admission that the healthcare law is fundamentally flawed," Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) said in March. Upton is one of three House committee chairmen who has used new oversight powers to investigate the annual limit waivers. 
Administration officials say the law allows the Health and Human Services Department to grant the waivers to avoid disrupting the insurance market before the law overhauls the insurance system in 2014. They say the waivers are granted through a transparent process.


Www.thehill.com


Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 16, 2011, 04:33:41 AM
Nursing Homes Seek Exemptions From Health Law
Rick Scibelli Jr. for The New York Times
Joanna D. Knox says her New Mexico nursing home cannot pay more for employee coverage.
By ROBERT PEAR
Published: May 15, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/16/us/16nursing.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all
   


WASHINGTON — It is an oddity of American health care: Many nursing homes and home care agencies do not provide health insurance to their workers, or they pay wages so low that employees cannot afford the coverage that is offered.

Vanessa Valerio, a nursing assistant, says she cannot afford the $25 monthly payment toward insurance at Ms. Knox's facility.

The numbers are stark. Among workers who provide hands-on care to nursing home residents, one in four has no health insurance. Among those who provide care to people living at home, one in three is uninsured.

The new health care law is supposed to fix the problem by guaranteeing access to affordable coverage for all. But many nursing homes and home care agencies, alarmed at the cost of providing health insurance to hundreds of thousands of health care workers, have started a lobbying effort seeking some kind of exemption or special treatment.

Mark Parkinson, president of the American Health Care Association, the largest trade group for nursing homes, says the problem is that reimbursement rates for Medicaid and Medicare, set by government agencies, do not pay them enough to offer their employees medical coverage. “We do not have much ability to increase prices because we are so dependent on Medicaid and Medicare” for revenue, he said.

Mr. Parkinson acknowledged that when nursing homes do offer health insurance to employees, the benefits are often limited. The coverage “is probably not up to what will be required” by the federal law, he said.

Medicaid covers about two-thirds of nursing home residents. States set Medicaid rates, and many states, facing severe budget problems, have reduced payments for nursing homes.

Starting in 2014, the law will require employers with 50 or more full-time employees to offer affordable coverage or risk paying a penalty. For a midsize nursing home, that penalty could easily exceed $200,000 a year. Nursing home executives are urging Congress and the Obama administration to spare them from the penalties.

Vanessa Valerio, 25, a certified nursing assistant who earns $10 an hour at Lakeview Christian Home in Carlsbad, N.M., said she was uninsured because she could not afford the coverage offered by her employer.

The chief executive of the Lakeview nursing home, Joanna D. Knox, said the company used to pay the entire premium for employees. It now requires workers to pay $25 of the $585 monthly premium for individual coverage.

“When we started charging $25 a month,” Ms. Knox said, “many employees dropped coverage.” Of the home’s 200 employees, only 87 have elected it, she said, adding, “I don’t know how we could possibly absorb the additional cost of providing coverage for the other employees.”

Charlene A. Harrington, a professor at the School of Nursing at the University of California, San Francisco, said it would be a mistake for Congress or the administration to relieve nursing homes of the obligation to provide coverage to employees.

“It’s scandalous to have nursing home employees taking care of people when they themselves lack coverage and go without care,” Ms. Harrington said. “If employees have health insurance, they are more likely to be treated for illnesses, less likely to pass on infections to nursing home residents and more likely to get early treatment for occupational injuries.”

The rate of injuries in nursing homes is about twice the rate for all occupations, according to the Labor Department. Back injuries are common among those who lift patients and help them get in and out of bed.

Since the law was signed 14 months ago, the focus of lobbying has shifted. A tumultuous battle over the future of the health care system has given way to more concentrated efforts to undo or rewrite particular provisions.

Mr. Parkinson, a former Democratic governor of Kansas who is now the top Washington lobbyist for nursing homes, is pushing several ideas.

One option would give nursing homes more time to comply with the requirement to offer coverage. Another proposal, according to a list of options prepared by lobbyists for the industry, would waive or reduce the penalties for nursing homes “placed in financial distress as a result of the new mandates and fines.” Alternatively, Mr. Parkinson said, Congress could allow nursing homes to take tax deductions for the penalties, which under the 2010 law are nondeductible.

Home care agencies, which are even less likely than nursing homes to offer coverage to employees, are also seeking an exemption or financial assistance, contending that they would otherwise have to increase charges to their clients, older Americans and people with disabilities.

William A. Dombi, vice president of the National Association for Home Care, said the new law would impose “huge costs” on some of his members, who provide medical and social services to people living at home. In its legislative agenda for 2011, the association recommends that Congress “exempt home care providers from the employer responsibilities” or require Medicaid and Medicare to help defray the costs.

Debbie D. Gantz, administrator of the Sunset Estates nursing home in Purcell, Okla., south of Oklahoma City, said Sunset Estates did not offer health insurance to its employees.

“If I could afford to pay for it, I would,” Ms. Gantz said. “We are a small home. We are not part of a chain. We could not provide health insurance to our employees and still be able to pay all our bills and make the payroll.”

The Paraprofessional Healthcare Institute, a nonprofit group that studies the industry, says that 26 percent of front-line workers in nursing homes and 37 percent of those employed by home care agencies are uninsured.

Under the new law, coverage is deemed unaffordable if an employee’s share of the premium exceeds 9.5 percent of his or her household income. That could often be the case for nursing assistants, who provide the bulk of direct care in nursing homes, for wages that typically range from $10 to $12 an hour. In such cases, employers would be subject to penalties.

Supporters of the law say several provisions will help low-wage workers who are uninsured or have bare-bones coverage. The law will expand Medicaid to cover people under 65 with income less than 133 percent of the federal poverty level, and it will offer subsidies to make insurance more affordable to those with incomes from 133 percent to 400 percent of the poverty level ($24,645 to $74,120 a year for a family of three).

“This assistance could significantly increase coverage among direct-care workers because 80 percent of them have income less than 400 percent of the poverty level,” said Dorie K. Seavey, director of policy research at the Paraprofessional Healthcare Institute.


________________________ ________________________ --
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 17, 2011, 05:50:26 AM
Nearly 20 percent of new Obamacare waivers are gourmet restaurants, nightclubs, fancy hotels
The Daily Caller ^ | 5/16/11 | Matthew Boyle




Of the 204 new Obamacare waivers President Barack Obama’s administration approved in April, 38 are for fancy eateries, hip nightclubs and decadent hotels in House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s Northern California district.  

That’s in addition to the 27 new waivers for health care or drug companies and the 31 new union waivers Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services approved.

Pelosi’s district secured almost 20 percent of the latest issuance of waivers nationwide, and the companies that won them didn’t have much in common with companies throughout the rest of the country that have received Obamacare waivers.

Other common waiver recipients were labor union chapters, large corporations, financial firms and local governments. But Pelosi’s district’s waivers are the first major examples of luxurious, gourmet restaurants and hotels getting a year-long pass from Obamacare.


(Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com ...
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 17, 2011, 06:03:30 AM
Updated: Tue., May. 17, 2011, 12:23 AM 
Obama's debt-limit truth-twisting
By STEPHEN B. MEISTER


________________________ _____________________


The battle over raising the federal debt limit is pretty confusing to most Americans -- and it doesn't help matters that the Obama administration is twisting the facts in a bid to get the public on its side against congressional budget-cutters.

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, in particular, is playing the "dire warning" game. Back in April, he wrote Congress: "If the debt limit is not increased by May 16," Treasury will have to take "extraordinary measures . . . to temporarily postpone the date the United States would other wise default on its obligations."

Well, here we are on May 17, with no sign that the sky has fallen. As his deadline approached last week, Geithner issued a new doomsday alert for Aug. 2, and took the rhetoric up a notch: "Default . . . would have a catastrophic economic impact . . . [including] sharply higher interest rates . . . declining home values and . . . [and an even worse] financial crisis." At risk are "military salaries, Social Security and Medicare payments, interest on debt, unemployment benefits and tax refunds . . . "

But he also hedged: Catastrophe would only result from a default in US "legal obligations" and affected payments wouldn't necessarily be stopped, they might just be "limited or delayed."

The real issue is that Team Obama wants Congress to raise the limit on how much the federal government can borrow -- now set at $14.29 trillion -- without any strings. House Republicans and some senators in both parties want to pair any such increase with substantial spending cuts.

Here's a rundown of the myths and facts:

Myth: America will "default" if the debt ceiling isn't raised.

Truth: Treasury can still roll over debt as its bills and bonds come due -- and easily cover the interest out of its monthly receipts. It simply can't engage in new borrowing because that would raise the total amount of debt beyond the statutory limit.

Myth: The government will "shut down" if the debt ceiling is not raised.

Truth: The feds simply won't be able to spend in excess of what they take in. So they'll have to prioritize outlays -- a gov ernment cutback, not shutdown. They can delay paying some bills, or even furlough some nonessential federal employees.

The latter seems only fair -- as you may recall, US public-sector payrolls swelled by 500,000 during the Great Recession, even as the private sector suffered nearly 8 million in job losses.

(As time marches on, it's true the feds wouldn't be able to fully spend the agreed upon budget, but all that means is that the feds -- like the taxpayers -- would have to live within their means, at least for a while.)

Myth: Aug. 2 is a hard date.

Truth: The "extraordinary measures" Geithner can take, including not issuing more IOUs to Social Security and Medicare and state and local governments, will push the date out even further -- and that's just when Treasury needs to start its belt tightening. Indeed, Treasury has taken such measures time and again in past battles over raising the debt limit.

Myth: Not raising the debt ceiling will send shock waves through the debt markets, bringing a downgrading of Uncle Sam's credit rating and sending federal borrowing costs through the roof.

Truth: The debt markets fear the debt (and debt limit) going up, not the reverse. When credit rater Standard and Poor's recently lowered its "outlook" on US debt from "stable" to "negative," it did so based on its prediction that "in two years" US debt, now 99 percent of GDP, would hit 105 percent of GDP. Investors fear a lack of major spending cuts not a failure to raise the debt limit.

Myth: The United States will "default" on its "commitments to seniors" if the debt ceiling isn't raised.

Truth: Social Security checks and Medicare reimbursements will still go out unless the Obama administration decides to withhold them. Yes, both programs are headed for bankruptcy, so benefits must come down eventually -- but that's a dif ferent fight. No one's pushing major reform of either program as part of the debt-limit battle.

Myth: It would be grossly irresponsible to "close the gap" without raising taxes "on millionaires and billionaires."

Truth: According to the IRS, all income for people earning (as joint filers) more than $200,000 comes to less than $1.9 trillion. The Bush tax cuts run 4.6 percent at the highest bracket. That amounts to $87 billion for all joint returns over $200,000 -- barely a 20th of the Obama-era deficit levels. Even if the feds took every penny of that income, it wouldn't cover the gap.

Geithner's right; we're headed for financial Armageddon. He just got three things wrong: the cause, the cure and the timing. The US fiscal supernova will come in a couple of years from too much debt, so spending what we take in and no more -- starting now -- would be pretty good medicine. That's precisely what not raising the debt ceiling would ensure.



Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/obama_debt_limit_truth_twisting_QgMC6YT1SDi6yIf1TrHtaP#ixzz1Mc8rEc7K

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 17, 2011, 12:05:58 PM

http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/watercooler/2011/may/17/gm-sponsors-and-celebrates-soon-be-released-chi-co

PICKET: GM sponsors and celebrates soon to be released Chi-Com propaganda film
Kerry Picket
Published on May 17, 2011

(Photo credit: China AutoWeb)

In late 2010, General Motors agreed to sponsor a propaganda film celebrating the 90th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The CCP made film titled (translated to English) “The Birth of a Party” or “The Great Achievement of Founding the Party" is set to premiere all over the Communist nation on June 15 reported China AutoWeb last September. The auto website adds:

"According to an announcement posted on Shanghai GM’s official web site yesterday, whose title reads "joining hands with China Film Group, Cadillac whole-heartedly supports the making of the Birth of a Party..."

The report goes further:

"As the CCP marries totalitarianism with capitalism and fools the people with entertainment, only the "politically correct" or stupid–or those who pretend to be so–can get rich. And GM seems to know this very well. While Audi, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Volvo have all rushed to please China’s rich and powerful through physical enlargement (offering models of extended wheelbases), Cadillac gratifies the party orally, singing praises through a film."

According to the above report, the film will discuss events that led up to the formation of the CCP following the 1917 Russian Revolution. When the movie first went into production GM signed up Cadillac as the “chief business partner” with the Communist Party, stating: “Cadillac whole-heartedly supports the making of the Birth of a Party.”

In fact, an AP article in early May points out, "Chinese TV regulators have reportedly ordered local broadcasters to stay away from spy and crime thrillers as part of a propaganda buildup for the ruling Communist Party's 90th anniversary July 1." Stars of the film are reportedly chauffeured around China in the Cadillac SLS in an effort to promote the movie all over the Communist led country. 

The United States government currently own 33% of the GM company following the auto-bailouts of 2009, and GM CEO Daniel Akerson describes China, as the "key to [GM's] success." (h/t The Detroit Bureau)

Presently, GM's business in China is selling more autos in the Asian country than in the United States. The Washington Post noted last week that China was GM's solution to help the car-maker recover from bankruptcy, so the company "is only expected to widen as an increasing number of Chinese grow rich enough to purchase their first car.”

Along with concern over China's ownership of trillions of dollars of U.S. debt, it is truly troubling that an American company financially supported now by the U.S. taxpayer is happily promoting Communist propaganda that glosses over the atrocities of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. What's next for GM? Selling military vehicles for the Chinese to threaten their own people with?
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 18, 2011, 07:53:45 PM
Obama to offer debt relief to Egypt in Mideast speech (while putting US further in debt)
reuters ^ | 5/18/2011 | By Jeff Mason
Posted on May 18, 2011 9:44:17 PM EDT by tobyhill

President Barack Obama will unveil an economic aid program for Egypt and Tunisia on Thursday as part of a broad effort to support democratic reform in the Middle East and North Africa, U.S. officials said.

Senior advisers to Obama, previewing parts of his speech, said Wednesday the United States would offer debt relief totaling roughly $1 billion "over a few years" to Egypt through a debt swap mechanism that would invest the money to boost youth employment and support entrepreneurs.

Washington would also loan or guarantee loans up to a total of $1 billion through the Overseas Private Investment Corp (OPIC) for Egypt to finance infrastructure development and boost jobs, the officials told reporters on a conference call.

(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 19, 2011, 03:09:41 PM
ICE Halts Deportation At ACLU’s Request
Judicial Watch ^ | May 19, 2011


________________________ ______________________-



In the latest collusion between the Obama Administration and the leftwing American Civil Liberties Union, Homeland Security officials have suspended the scheduled deportation of an illegal immigrant at the ACLU’s request.

The move is part of a bigger plan to perhaps eliminate the federal program (Secure Communities) that identified the illegal alien in the first place. The influential open borders movement—which includes the ACLU—has aggressively pressured the administration to nix Secure Communities, which requires local authorities to check the fingerprints of arrestees against a federal database. The idea is to deport dangerous criminals, many of whom have fallen through the cracks over the years.

But immigrant rights advocates insist the program is racist, has led to the removal of hard-working immigrants who contribute to society and has tragically separated families. They want the Obama Administration to get rid of it and that could very well happen as the president panders for votes in 2012. In fact, the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General announced this week that it’s planning an investigation of Secure Communities.


The probe will determine the extent to which the program is used to identify and remove dangerous criminal aliens from the United States, according to a news report of the inspector general’s plans. The IG will also examine cost and the accuracy of the data collection and determine if Secure Communities is being applied “equitably across communities.”


Those who dare to read between the lines can probably see where this is going. The illegal immigrant whose deportation was abruptly halted by the government headlined an ACLU-sponsored press conference decrying Secure Communities. She was arrested earlier this year in Los Angeles after a domestic violence dispute and was identified as an illegal alien when the county jail forwarded her fingerprints to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).


At the ACLU’s behest ICE conducted a “comprehensive review” of the illegal immigrant’s case and determined to “terminate the removal proceedings against her,” according to an agency statement published in a local newspaper. Immigration advocates used the case as an opportunity to chastise Secure Communities as a “destructive program” that endangers public safety because immigrants won’t cooperate with police out of fear of being deported.


Interestingly, the elected sheriff who operates jails in Los Angeles and patrols a huge chunk of the sprawling county insists that Secure Communities works. In a piece published this week by the state’s largest newspaper, L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca writes that many serious criminals have been deported. Prior to implementing Secure Communities a “growing number of criminal illegal immigrants who were taken into custody” were eventually released back into the community, according to Baca who has been sheriff since 1998.


In the piece Baca offers several examples of violent illegal aliens who were removed from the U.S. thanks to Secure Communities. Among them is a felon who lived in the area despite three drug-trafficking convictions and six deportations and another who had been previously removed after getting convicted for killing a child in the late 1990s.


Back to the unscrupulous collaboration between the Obama Administration and the ACLU; earlier this year Judicial Watch uncovered documents from the Department of Justice that show the agency worked hand-in-hand with the ACLU in mounting their respective legal challenges to Arizona’s immigration control law.
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 23, 2011, 07:08:10 PM
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Obama Adviser GE Shipping Jobs and Profits Overseas
http://nation.foxnews.com/general-electric/2011/05/23/obama-advisor-ge-shipping-jobs-and-profits-overseas ^
Posted on May 23, 2011 6:11:32 PM EDT by kcvl

Seven publicly traded U.S. corporations represented on President Barack Obama's advisory council for jobs and competitiveness -- including General Electric Co. (GE) and Intel Corp. (INTC) -- have devoted a growing pool of their non-U.S. earnings to investments in other countries.

As a group, multinational companies with current or former chief executive officers on Obama's jobs council have, over the past four years, almost doubled the cumulative amounts they've reinvested overseas, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

By doing so, companies may be able to take advantage of faster-growing markets or lower production costs, and they can defer U.S. income taxes on profits from overseas sales. Underscoring the difference between corporate interests and the national interest, they're also investing money elsewhere that could be helping the U.S. economy, said former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich.

"That's a signal that they are betting less on America," Reich said. "We've got to understand there's a fundamental difference between the competitiveness of these companies and the competitiveness of America and American workers."

(Excerpt) Read more at nation.foxnews.com ...
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 25, 2011, 02:39:49 PM
Obama skirts rule of law to reward pals, punish foes
Share Print By: Michael Barone 05/24/11 8:05 PM
Senior Political Analyst Follow Him @MichaelBarone



 
If Obamacare is so great, why do so many people want to get out from under it?-J. Scott Applewhite/AP FileQuestion: What do the following have in common? Eckert Cold Storage Co., Kerly Homes of Yuma, Classic Party Rentals, West Coast Turf Inc., Ellenbecker Investment Group Inc., Only in San Francisco, Hotel Nikko, International Pacific Halibut Commission, City of Puyallup, Local 485 Health and Welfare Fund, Chicago Plastering Institute Health & Welfare Fund, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee, Teamsters Local 522 Fund Welfare Fund Roofers Division, StayWell Saipan Basic Plan, CIGNA, Caribbean Workers' Voluntary Employees' Beneficiary Health and Welfare Plan.


Answer: They are all among the 1,372 businesses, state and local governments, labor unions and insurers, covering 3,095,593 individuals or families, that have been granted a waiver from Obamacare by Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius.

All of which raises another question: If Obamacare is so great, why do so many people want to get out from under it?

More specifically, why are more than half of those 3,095,593 in plans run by labor unions, which were among Obamacare's biggest political supporters? Union members are only 12 percent of all employees but have gotten 50.3 percent of Obamacare waivers.

Just in April, Sebelius granted 38 waivers to restaurants, nightclubs, spas and hotels in former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco congressional district. Pelosi's office said she had nothing to do with it.

On its website HHS pledges that the waiver process will be transparent. But it doesn't list those whose requests for waivers have been denied.

It does say that requests are "reviewed on a case by case basis by Department officials who look at a series of factors including" -- and then lists two factors. And it refers you to another website that says that "several factors . . . may be considered" -- and then lists six factors.

What other factors may be considered? Political contributions or connections? (Unions contributed $400 million to Democrats in the 2008 campaign cycle.) The websites don't say.

In his new book "The Origins of Political Order," Francis Fukuyama identifies the chief building blocks of liberal democracy as a strong central state, a society strong enough to hold the state accountable and -- equally crucial -- the rule of law.

One basic principle of the rule of law is that laws apply to everybody. If the sign says "No Parking," you're not supposed to park there even if you're a pal of the alderman.

Another principle of the rule of law is that government can't make up new rules to help its cronies and hurt its adversaries except through due process, such as getting a legislature to pass a new law.

The Obamacare waiver process appears to violate that first rule. Two other recent Obama administration actions appear to violate the second.

One example is the National Labor Relations Board general counsel's action to prevent Boeing from building a $2 billion assembly plant for the 787 Dreamliner in South Carolina, which has a right-to-work law barring compulsory union membership. The NLRB says Boeing has to assemble the planes in non-right-to-work Washington state.

"I don't agree," says William Gould IV, NLRB chairman during the Clinton years. "The Boeing case is unprecedented."

The other example is the Internal Revenue Service's attempt to levy a gift tax on donors to certain 501(c)(4) organizations that just happen to have spent money to elect Republicans.

A gift tax is normally assessed on transfers to children and other heirs that are designed to avoid estate taxes. It has been applied to political donations "rarely, if ever," according to New York Times reporter Stephanie Strom.

"The timing of the agency's moves, as the 2012 election cycle gets under way," continues Strom, "is prompting some tax law and campaign finance experts to question whether the IRS could be sending a signal in an effort to curtail big donations."

In a Univision radio interview during the 2010 election cycle, Barack Obama urged Latinos not "to sit out the election instead of saying, 'We're going to punish our enemies and we're going to reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us.' "

Punishing enemies and rewarding friends -- politics Chicago style -- seems to be the unifying principle that helps explain the Obamacare waivers, the NLRB action against Boeing and the IRS' gift-tax assault on 501(c)(4) donors.

They look like examples of crony capitalism, bailout favoritism and gangster government.

One thing they don't look like is the rule of law.

Michael Barone, The Examiner's senior political analyst, can be contacted at mbarone@washingtonexaminer.com. His column appears Wednesday and Sunday, and his stories and blog posts appear on ExaminerPolitics.com.
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 26, 2011, 07:39:36 AM
Issa Report: Obama Deliberately Driving Up Fuel Prices (Energy agenda Manipulates gas price)
Fox ^ | May 25,2011 | Amanda Carey




Rep. Darrell Issa of California, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, has found another target in the Obama administration’s policy agenda: energy. Late Monday, Issa released a scathing report accusing the White House of being complicit in driving up oil prices to push a move to alternative energy sources.


Among other things, the report — “Rising Energy Costs: An Intentional Result of Government Action” — accused the administration of restricting access to domestic energy sources, hindering “fracking” technology and hampering the economic recovery by proposing new taxes on the energy industry.


The report also says the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) coordinated with environmental groups to target energy producers with environmental concerns.

read full report at: http://dailycaller.com/2011/05/24/new-issa-report-goes-after-obama-administrations-energy-agenda




(Excerpt) Read more at nation.foxnews.com ...
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Option D on May 26, 2011, 07:43:19 AM
Issa Report: Obama Deliberately Driving Up Fuel Prices (Energy agenda Manipulates gas price)
Fox ^ | May 25,2011 | Amanda Carey




Rep. Darrell Issa of California, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, has found another target in the Obama administration’s policy agenda: energy. Late Monday, Issa released a scathing report accusing the White House of being complicit in driving up oil prices to push a move to alternative energy sources.


Among other things, the report — “Rising Energy Costs: An Intentional Result of Government Action” — accused the administration of restricting access to domestic energy sources, hindering “fracking” technology and hampering the economic recovery by proposing new taxes on the energy industry.


The report also says the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) coordinated with environmental groups to target energy producers with environmental concerns.

read full report at: http://dailycaller.com/2011/05/24/new-issa-report-goes-after-obama-administrations-energy-agenda




(Excerpt) Read more at nation.foxnews.com ...


is gas not down from a month ago?
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 26, 2011, 07:45:29 AM
Audit Report: Obama Administration Handed Out $24 Billion in Stimulus Money to Tax Cheats
CNSNews ^


Posted on Thursday, May 26, 2011

Audit Report: Obama Administration Handed Out $24 Billion in Stimulus Money to Tax Cheats Wednesday, May 25, 2011
By Fred Lucas





(CNSNews.com) - Lawmakers from both parties are calling for a fix to prevent tax cheating companies from getting federal contracts in light of a government investigation that found $24 billion in stimulus act funds went to companies owing $757 million in unpaid taxes.

“Average Americans are likely wondering why we gave such a huge amount of federal money to tax cheats when our national debt is more than $14 trillion,” Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) said in a statement. “That $24 billion went to such people looks like we are rewarding people for potentially criminal behavior.”

The report by the Government Accountability Office on money from the $800 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act going to tax delinquent firms did not name any specific companies, but it gave general examples of firms with delinquent taxes receiving tax dollars.

One example was a construction company that owed $700,000 in back taxes getting $1 million in stimulus contracts. In another example, a security firm with $9 million in unpaid taxes got $100,000 in stimulus funds. A technical services company got $100,000 in stimulus funds despite owing $4 million in taxes, was also found to own $4 million in real estate and earned hundreds of thousands of dollars in adjusted gross income in a recent tax return.


(Excerpt) Read more at cnsnews.com ...


________________________ ________________________ ______________-


Hey obamadouches - want to talk about those supposed oil breaks oil companies get?
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Option D on May 26, 2011, 07:46:01 AM
is gas not down from a month ago?

so is that a no?
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 26, 2011, 07:53:01 AM
so is that a no?

Oil is back over $100 a barrell.  and gas is still more than double since your messiah came in to office.   
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Option D on May 26, 2011, 08:10:44 AM
Oil is back over $100 a barrell.  and gas is still more than double since your messiah came in to office.   

and its obamas fault is what youre saying..
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Option D on May 26, 2011, 08:15:32 AM
No. He couldn't affect them if he wanted to.

Blaming the president for rising gas prices is nothing new, and it’s a bipartisan tactic. In 2004, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) blamed President George W. Bush for higher gas prices and for continuing to fill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve as oil prices climbed.

Just one problem: Even if domestic supplies were developed, American presidents couldn’t really control oil prices. The U.S. government has estimated that there are 18 billion barrels of oil in the outer continental shelf of the lower 48 states that are off limits to development. That may sound like a lot, but it is only about 2 1/ 2 years of supply for the United States, and it would take several years to allocate leases and drill exploratory wells. Even if the estimated 10 billion barrels of oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge were available for development, today’s policy decisions would have no impact on gasoline supplies for as much as a decade. Obama can’t dictate what you’ll pay for premium tomorrow.

And the war on Libya is also not causing the increase. We import less than 50,000 barrels per day from Libya — a tiny fraction of the 9.2 million barrels per day the United States imported in 2010. Worldwide, the story is no different: Of the 86 million barrels consumed globally each day, less than 2 percent come from Moammar Gaddafi’s regime.
Source(s):
Five myths about gas prices:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/f…
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Straw Man on May 26, 2011, 08:32:17 AM
Oil is back over $100 a barrell.  and gas is still more than double since your messiah came in to office.   

you're saying gas was $2 a gallon in January 2009?

I don't remember that

I do remember $4.50 a gallon (higher than it is now) in the summer of 2008 when Bush was POTUS

I guess that was also somehow Obama's fault
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: OzmO on May 26, 2011, 09:02:43 AM
is gas not down from a month ago?

5-10 cents per gallon in Cali.  Down, but not much  >:(
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Option D on May 26, 2011, 09:10:58 AM
5-10 cents per gallon in Cali.  Down, but not much  >:(

Im in Cali. It was 4.29 . now its 3.97

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 26, 2011, 09:23:27 AM
4 17 here.
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Straw Man on May 26, 2011, 09:42:10 AM
4 17 here.

and what was it when Obama took office in January 2009?
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Option D on May 26, 2011, 10:13:54 AM
4 17 here.
[/quote

and please tell me that was obamas fault
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 26, 2011, 10:15:52 AM
4 17 here.
[/quote

and please tell me that was obamas fault

most   
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Option D on May 26, 2011, 10:16:55 AM
most   

lmao...most....

225 for 70 has a pretty good thread going
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 26, 2011, 10:18:08 AM
And what has obama done to curb thatisse since January 2009 - BEFORE it hit over $4 a gallon?   

 . . . . . .  .. .
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Option D on May 26, 2011, 10:28:29 AM
And what has obama done to curb thatisse since January 2009 - BEFORE it hit over $4 a gallon?   

 . . . . . .  .. .
You mean manipulate the market from the presidency hmm..
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: dario73 on May 26, 2011, 11:40:48 AM
and what was it when Obama took office in January 2009?
How about December 2008 when Bush left office?

The answer: $1.61/gallon. 

How much is it now?  Oh wait, wait. It's still Bush's fault.
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 26, 2011, 12:34:43 PM
EDITORIAL: Obama versus Boeing
House GOP takes aim at job-killing regulators
14 Comments and 25 Reactions|Tweet|Share|Print|Email|More   By THE WASHINGTON TIMES
The Washington Times
7:32 p.m., Wednesday, May 25, 2011




House Republicans are fighting back against President Obama's misuse of administrative power to punish right-to-work states. On Tuesday, Rep. Tim Scott introduced legislation to protect a Boeing 787 Dreamliner production plant in his South Carolina district from the outrageous complaint filed by pro-union thugs at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The agency wants to force the airline manufacturer to close up operations in Charleston and move the jobs to Puget Sound, where the labor bosses reign, because setting up in South Carolina was allegedly an example of "unfair labor practices."

The Job Protection Act would, if enacted, clarify that federal law gives the NLRB no power to decide where any U.S. company should or should not do business. "For the NLRB to punish a company for locating in a right-to-work state is an abuse of federal executive power," Mr. Scott explained to The Washington Times' Emily Miller. "This administration has clearly overstepped its bounds through the inappropriate actions of an unelected regulatory board."

Mr. Scott's district would take a big hit if the plant, which is slated to open for production in July, were to close its doors. The facility would create at least 4,000 direct hires from Boeing and an estimated 4,000 indirect hires. Local suppliers and others firms in nearby communities would also receive a boost from the large production order. "Unemployment in South Carolina is above 9 percent," Mr. Scott said. "This isn't helping." Mr. Scott called for Mr. Obama to fire the man responsible for the decision, NLRB acting general counsel Lafe Solomon, saying, "Taxpayers should not be paying a salary for someone whose actions are destroying jobs."

House Education and Workforce Committee Chairman John Kline, Minnesota Republican, has been trying to secure documents from the NLRB related to the Boeing case. So far he has received a short reply and no documents from the agency. "The NLRB is not immune from congressional oversight or public scrutiny," Mr. Kline said in a statement. The committee is requesting information on the Boeing case because "there are legitimate questions over public statements made by NLRB officials and the timing of its complaint." The NLRB needs to come clean on how and why it has taken action against Boeing.

The way the White House has treated this major employer is a perfect example of why unemployment stands at 9 percent. Instead of allowing the Boeing's leadership team to make the decisions in the best interest of its employees and shareholders, unelected Beltway bureaucrats demand the right to substitute their personal judgment. It's just a bit suspicious that the NLRB decision appeals to the liberal union demographic that is going to be playing such a key role in the 2012 elections.

If Mr. Obama wants a second term, he ought instead to focus on doing what it takes to get America working. The only way to move the needle on unemployment is to get businesses hiring again, which will happen when government gets out of the way.

© Copyright 2011 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Straw Man on May 26, 2011, 01:16:18 PM
How about December 2008 when Bush left office?

The answer: $1.61/gallon. 

How much is it now?  Oh wait, wait. It's still Bush's fault.

I checked and you're right that the national average crashed from high in June 2008 to a low in January 2009 before it started going back up again

Do you have any recollection of what might have caused the price to crash starting in the summer of 2008

http://gasbuddy.com/gb_retail_price_chart.aspx
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: dario73 on May 26, 2011, 01:29:04 PM
I checked and you're right that the national average crashed from high in June 2008 to a low in January 2009 before it started going back up again

Do you have any recollection of what might have caused the price to crash starting in the summer of 2008

http://gasbuddy.com/gb_retail_price_chart.aspx

Does it matter? Bush can only get the blame in the eyes of the left. No credit at all. If the gasoline price went up, it's Bush's fault. If the price crashed, it's not because of Bush, it's because of something ELSE.

Now that Obama is president. Well, HEHEHEH!! It's not Obama's fault that the price increased, it's something ELSE that caused it to go up. But, Good Lord, if it comes down, let us all blow Obama because HE, THE MESSIAH, worked another MIRACLE!!!
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Straw Man on May 26, 2011, 02:36:08 PM
Does it matter? Bush can only get the blame in the eyes of the left. No credit at all. If the gasoline price went up, it's Bush's fault. If the price crashed, it's not because of Bush, it's because of something ELSE.

Now that Obama is president. Well, HEHEHEH!! It's not Obama's fault that the price increased, it's something ELSE that caused it to go up. But, Good Lord, if it comes down, let us all blow Obama because HE, THE MESSIAH, worked another MIRACLE!!!

of course it matters and I don't blame Bush for the high gas prices in the last months of his administration

Gas hit a high in July of just over $4 (national average - I recall seeing 4.50 in San Jose) and then hit a low in early 2009 before it starting going back up again (and never reached the high of summber 2008)

Now think really hard what was happening in the market during that time

Let me know when you figure it out
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 29, 2011, 07:06:57 PM
Senior Executives Give Low Marks to Obama Appointees (The blind leading the blind)
 National Journal.com ^ | May 27,2011 | Erin Dian Dumbacher






A new survey shows strained relationships between senior career federal managers and executives and the political appointees they work with.

In the survey, respondents rated Obama appointees lower than those in previous administrations. Obama appointees earned a C average, or 2.0, compared with a 2.3 for those in the George W. Bush and Clinton administrations. More than 30 percent gave Obama appointees a D or an F for overall job performance, while only 20 percent awarded past appointees such low marks.

The study, conducted in April by Government Executive's research division, the Government Business Council, involved surveying 148 Senior Executive Service members and GS-15s about their attitudes toward current challenges and Obama administration initiatives.

The survey revealed skepticism about the ability of current political appointees to improve agency performance. One respondent said, "The role [of senior leadership] has increased, but the effectiveness, skill and knowledge has dramatically decreased."

Obama officials lack functional and agency-specific knowledge, according to survey respondents. Nearly 60 percent of respondents gave Obama appointees a grade of C or lower for their functional expertise, with less than 37 percent giving them A or B grades. Many believe appointees don't understand human resources and procurement rules, saying they presume the "institution is there as an obstruction" and attempt to "break organizations."

Appointees have "unbelievably poor communication with career employees," one respondent commented. Almost 40 percent of managers gave appointees Ds or Fs on collaboration and communication with their staffs. Some "have a divide-and-conquer strategy, and there are way too many industry fingers allowed in decision-making," a respondent noted. At another agency, a manager said the result has been "politicization of normal agency functions."



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FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIII IILLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 29, 2011, 08:27:47 PM
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Top Obama health aide cashes out after health 'reform'
washington examiner ^ | 5/29/11 | Timothy P. Carney
Posted on May 29, 2011 11:33:10 PM EDT by Nachum

An Obama appointee who played a central role in crafting the 2010 health care bill has cashed out to a well-connected lobbying firm, where her first clients are two of the bill's beneficiaries: abortion provider Planned Parenthood and a hospital chain.

Liz Engel was deputy assistant secretary for legislation at the Department of Health and Human Services. Today she is a managing director at the Glover Park Group in the health and wellness practice. Her story further highlights the coziness of this administration with the abortion industry, and also undermines President Obama's portrayal of the health care bill as a broadside against special interests.

Most importantly, Engel's spin through the revolving door shows the emptiness of the new ethics rules that the White House brags about at every opportunity.

Engel was already an accomplished private-sector lawyer in 2007 when she came to the Democratic Senate Policy Committee to serve as "health policy adviser." After the 2008 election, she joined Obama's transition team, working on the health care policy working group.

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ..
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 31, 2011, 09:23:38 AM
The White House [1]
Limousine liberals? Number of government-owned limos has soared under Obama [2]

State Department dominates the limo count, says purchases reflect need to protect diplomats and foreign visitors in a dangerous world
By Joe Eaton [3]





Limousines, the very symbol of wealth and excess, are usually the domain of corporate executives and the rich. But the number of limos owned by Uncle Sam increased by 73 percent during the first two years of the Obama administration, according to an analysis of records by iWatch News.

Most of the increase was recorded in Hillary Clinton’s State Department.

Obama administration officials said most of the increase reflects an enhanced effort to protect diplomats and other government officials in a dangerous world. But a watchdog group says the abundance of limos sends the wrong message in the midst of a budget crisis. The increase in limos comes to light on the heels of an executive order from President Obama last week that charges agencies to increase the fuel efficiency of their fleets.

According to General Services Administration data [4], the number of limousines in the federal fleet increased from 238 in fiscal 2008, the last year of the George W. Bush administration, to 412 in 2010. Much of the 73 percent increase—111 of the 174 additional limos—took place in fiscal 2009, more than eight months of which corresponded with Obama’s first year in office.  However, some of those purchases could reflect requests made by the Bush administration during an appropriations process that would have begun in the spring of 2008. 

The GSA said its limousine numbers are not reliable, even though the federal fleet numbers are officially recorded every year.  In a statement, GSA spokeswoman Sara Merriam said, “The categories in the Fleet Report are overly broad, and the term 'limousine' is not defined,” adding that “vehicles represented as limousines can range from protective duty vehicles to sedans.” Asked whether the GSA actually knows how many limos it has in its fleet, Merriam responded that GSA “cannot say that its report accurately reflects the number of limousines.”   

Leslie Paige, a spokeswoman for the nonprofit watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste, was outraged that the GSA’s numbers may not be accurate. “They can’t figure out a way to define a limo? How hard can it be? If the government can’t track limos, I’m not sure we should trust the numbers they put out there on anything,” she said.

 Although the overall limo numbers in the fleet report were up in 2010, federal agencies and departments did not benefit equally. The State Department, with 259, had more limos than any other agency in 2010 and has gained 194 limos just since fiscal 2008. Of those new limos, 98 were defined as “law enforcement,” which the GSA said means they are equipped with sirens or lights, high-performance drivetrains, or are used for surveillance or undercover operations.   

The State Department in a statement said its limos are deployed by overseas diplomats and in the United States by Secretary of State Clinton and “distinguished foreign visitors.”  Many of the limos in its fleet are armored to protect against attack. The department said its Obama-era increase in armored limos is “both in proportion to the increased threat to diplomats serving overseas and is in proportion to the increase number of diplomats we have serving in high threat environments.” Appropriations documents indicate the State Department was engaged in a longer-term effort to increase the number of armored vehicles that would have stretched back to at least 2007. 

The department said it defines a limo as a vehicle that carries a VIP or “other protectee,” rather than by the type of car, but said most of its limos are Cadillac DTSs, which cost the taxpayer more than $60,000 for a 2011 base model and support the additional weight of armoring. The department said it also purchased a limited number of 7-Series BMWs for ambassadors in countries where vehicles are right-hand drive.

The Department of Homeland Security, which in 2010 had the second largest number of limos at 118, dropped four limos from 2008 to 2010. A spokesman for DHS said the majority of its limos are used by the Secret Service, which is part of the department, but declined to elaborate on exact numbers, citing security concerns.

Paige, of CAGW, called the new federal limos “one more reason why there is so much cynicism in the public about what goes on in Washington.” She said terrorism and security has become the catchall justification for increased federal spending.

The increase in limos comes at a time when the Obama administration is increasingly working to burnish its green energy credentials by targeting the federal fleet.  On Tuesday, Obama released a presidential memorandum [5] requiring agencies to purchase only alternative fuel vehicles by 2015. The memorandum limits executive fleets to mid-sized and smaller cars “except where larger sedans are essential to the agency mission.” It also exempts law enforcement and security vehicles, which could make up the majority of the federal  limo fleet.

According to a March report by the GAO, [6] the federal government spent $1.9 billion on new vehicles in fiscal 2009, and burned through 963,000 gallons of fuel  a day with its fleet of 600,00 vehicles.

 The number of limousines in the federal fleet has varied over the years. In 2007, the number dropped to 217 from 318 a year before. But due to the fuzzy GSA accounting, it’s unclear exactly how many federal limos have been on the road.

According to the GSA report, for example, the U.S. Agency for International Development, which had zero limos in 2008, added six limos to its fleet in 2009. But agency spokesman Lars Anderson said that’s because six standard overseas sedans, including a 1997 Ford Crown Victoria in Bangladesh, and a 2009 Mercury Grand Marquis in El Salvador, were incorrectly recorded as limos.

If the data is correct, some federal employees who once rode in style now face more proletarian transportation options. The Department of Veterans Affairs, for example, ran a fleet of 21 limousines in 2008 under George W. Bush, according to the fleet report. It now makes do with only one.  The Government Printing Office also lost

all of its six limos between 2009 and 2010. The VA and the Government Printing Office did not respond to calls for comment.

.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Source URL: http://www.iwatchnews.org/2011/05/31/4765/limousine-liberals-number-government-owned-limos-has-soared-under-obama



________________________ _________________


Hope and change you girls!   

You voted for this - take ownership of your mistakes. 
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 31, 2011, 09:27:56 AM
Obama nominates another CEO to his cabinet!

  CNN's Ed Henry reports that President Obama will nominate John Bryson to be the next commerce secretary. He is the former CEO of Edison International.
<snip>

Obama will make the announcement at 1:15 p.m. ET in the Rose Garden.

Bryson, who must be confirmed by the Senate, would replace current Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, who has been nominated to serve as ambassador to China.

More career highlights after the jump:

– CEO of Edison International, the parent company of Southern California Edison and Edison Mission Group, from 1990 to 2008.

Director of The Boeing Company, The Walt Disney Company and Coda Automotive, Inc., and is a senior advisor to KKR.  
<snip>

http://whitehouse.blogs.cnn.com/2011/05/31/breaking-bry...
 


________________________ ________________________ ______________-


Ha ha ha ha ha - eat shit - TEAM DILDO.   
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 01, 2011, 04:18:03 AM
Health Reform Creates Chaos With 50 States, 50 Sets Of Rules
IBD Editorials ^ | May 31, 2011 | DR DAVID GRATZER


________________________ ________________________ _________



'Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore." The line from the Wizard of Oz comes to mind with reports of the ongoing implementation of ObamaCare. In Kansas, the state government is reportedly charging ahead, excited to receive $32 million as its share of $241 million in federal grants. Kansas is eligible for the cash because it will be among the first 7 states to launch one of the health-insurance exchanges the law calls for.

There's some irony here. After all, the State of Kansas is also suing the federal government to declare ObamaCare unconstitutional. But the bigger irony is that anyone's in any hurry to open a health exchange at all, given current legal constraints.

Although ObamaCare is mostly a patchwork of bad ideas, President Obama's earliest proposal for health reform actually included a very good idea: the plan for a national health exchange, similar to what federal employees use to buy their own health insurance.

A national insurance market would have allowed consumers to compare insurance costs across state lines. This would have helped to curb high costs in states which artificially raise the price of health insurance through unnecessary benefit mandates and other regulations.

If the president had carried through with his rhetoric on a national health exchange, consumers could soon be buying insurance plans that suited them directly, from any state they chose, comparing low-cost and high-cost plans without regard for artificial regulatory boundaries. In turn, lower-cost insurers could have marketed new products to lower-income customers more easily, since it would be easier to make a fair return on a basic health plan if it could be sold to a national market.

In the current model, discount insurers must re-price and repackage insurance plans for 50 small markets and 50 sets of regulations.


(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 01, 2011, 10:59:09 AM
VIDEO: Obama Commerce Nominee Calls for Implementation of Cali. Energy Regulations Nationwide
MRC TV (Media Research Center TV) ^ | 6/1/2011 | Joe Schoffstall


Posted on Wednesday, June 01, 2011 1:25:22 PM by blog.Eyeblast.tv

On May 31, President Obama said he would nominate John E. Bryson for the position of United States Commerce Secretary. Bryson, who was the former Chairman and CEO of Edison International, spoke in front of the UN on September 1, 2009 at the International Energy Conference and praised California's regulatory system on energy, and called for the same to be applied to the United States as a whole. However, he didn't stop there. He went on to say they should place the same regulations globally:

"The academic debate around this has often been should we send price signals, or should we regulate, and for some this is a negative sense about regulation. The fact is, regulation is setting minimum standards means that markets come to meet those standards and nothing is sold- nothing in the way of new goods is sold-without meeting those standards. So that's step number one, high energy efficiency standards. I believe they should be increased. Interesting thing is the new Obama administration is taking a look and has said encouraging things about adopting these kinds of standards across the United States that would have a huge impact. These ought to have impacts elsewhere around the world. I believe these are applicable to developing countries, just as they are applicable to developed countries, and they make a huge difference. They don't involve, kind of, the responses that we get simply to price signals that are often transitory, that often fade away over time, and in any event are very slow in having impacts. So I argue- number one- for this kind of regulation."


(Excerpt) Read more at mrctv.org ...


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Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: 225for70 on June 01, 2011, 11:30:06 AM
lmao...most....

225 for 70 has a pretty good thread going

I didn't start the thread Big Malthus
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 01, 2011, 01:26:43 PM
Govt to lose $14B of auto bailout funds
– Wed Jun 1, 12:19 pm ET

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110601/ap_on_re_us/us_obama_autos_2




WASHINGTON – The Obama administration said Wednesday that the government will lose about $14 billion in taxpayer funds from the bailout of the U.S. auto industry.

In a report from the president's National Economic Council, officials said that figure is down from the 60 percent the Treasury Department originally estimated the government would lose following its $80 billion bailout of Chrysler and General Motors in 2009.

The report's release coincides with the administration's efforts to tout the bailout's role in the revitalization of the U.S. auto industry after last week's announcement that Chrysler is repaying $5.9 billion in U.S. loans and a $1.7 billion loan from the Canadian government. Those payments cover most of the federal bailout money that saved the company after it nearly ran out of cash in and went through a government-led bankruptcy.

GM previously announced that it had repaid a little more than half of the $50 billion it received in federal aid.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said U.S. auto companies are now at the forefront of a comeback in American manufacturing.

"We cannot guarantee their success, and at some point they may stumble. But we've given them a better shot," Geithner wrote in an opinion piece in Wednesday's edition of The Washington Post.

"While we will not get back all of our investments in the industry, we will recover much more than most predicted, and far sooner," he wrote.

Obama will visit a Chrysler plant in Ohio Friday to tout highlight the company's success.

GM and Chrysler were on the verge of collapse in the final days of the Bush administration after Congress failed to approve an emergency loan package. The Bush administration gave the companies $17.4 billion in loans and required them to develop a restructuring plan by mid-February 2009.

Obama's administration pumped billions more into the carmakers later that spring but won concessions from industry stakeholders, allowing it to push GM and Chrysler through bankruptcy court in the summer of 2009.
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 02, 2011, 06:36:26 AM
Obama's Cloud Economy The economy is flying without instruments because of the White House's policy choices.
By DANIEL HENNINGER

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303745304576359570364488858.html#articleTabs%3Darticle


________________________ ________________________




You just know the American economy is out there somewhere. If only someone knew which buttons to push to retrieve it from the storage cloud.

Here are three headlines that floated by on yesterday morning's screens alone:

"U.S. Manufacturing Growth Slows Substantially"

"Housing Imperils Recovery"

"Private Sector Added Few Jobs in May"

Let it be noted for the record that presidents normally do not take ownership of a weak economy. Jimmy Carter owned the 1980 election-year economy. George H.W. Bush owned the 1992 election-year economy. Both were one-term presidents. Happily for his opponents, Barack Obama has taken ownership of the 2011 economy, a full year and half before he has to face the voters. The Obama self-confidence is famously limitless.

Still, a doubter might ask if President Obama hasn't suffered his John McCain moment on the economy.

John McCain's presidential bid blew up for good when he announced in September 2008 that he was suspending his campaign and returning to Washington to address the national financial crisis. In the event, Mr. McCain had nothing to contribute, and the White House passed to Barack Obama.

Mr. Obama's McCain moment—raising expectations of economic seriousness and then dropping them over the cliff—was his hyperpartisan deficit speech at George Washington University in April.

 
Daniel Henninger says the economy is flying without instruments because of the White House's policy choices.
Podcast: Listen to the audio of Wonder Land here. The day before that speech, all Washington expected Mr. Obama to make a major policy statement about the big deficit-reduction debate then unfolding. Agree or disagree, Paul Ryan's budget released the week before was all about policy. The Republicans were actually offering to take part-ownership of the economy by spending the year in dense discussions about the deficit and spending.

Expectations raised, the president contributed nothing. Instead he dumped ridicule and derision on the Republican leadership seated before him. With that speech, Mr. Obama kicked off his 2012 presidential campaign, and in so doing politicized the economy.

The timing was not good. Whether it's this week's report that consumer confidence has fallen to a six-month low or anecdotal conversation ("So what do you think happens when QE2 ends?"), the sense grows that people are starting to freak out over the economy—over persistently high unemployment and persistently weak growth.

With the U.S. economy, a Lazarus rising is always possible (or was). But the informed betting is going the other way. Private forecasters have reduced their estimates for economic growth the rest of the year well below the 3%-plus the Federal Reserve predicted in April. The Fed's 2012 growth forecast runs as high as 4.2%. They must be using high-powered telescopes.

It's ironic indeed that Barack Obama, in a slap at his predecessor, routinely said that his policies would be "smart" this or "smart" that. A "smart" economy would at least have the virtue of clarity for the purposes of planning and capital investment. The Obama economy does not. Economic decision-makers—from 401(k) investors to Fortune 500 CFOs—are flying instrument-less through the clouds because that is where the policy choices made by this White House have left them.

The policy most explicitly intended to reboot the economy was 2009's $814 billion stimulus and successive budgets that raised federal spending to 25% of a $14 trillion economy. In this year's first quarter, the economy grew at 1.8%. Liberal economists, such as former Obama economic adviser Christina Romer, argue the stimulus should have been bigger, $1.2 trillion. Others wanted $2 trillion. We leave that to a generation of seminars in macroeconomics. Barack Obama, believing that $800 billion of injected "demand" would lift the economy, decided to devote his political capital and congressional majorities to reorganizing two major American industries, health care and finance.

Merits aside, both creations rose from the table as 2,000-page laws. Hundreds of thousands of economic actors across the country now wait while the bureaucracies struggle to interpret 4,000 pages of "smart" legislating. What evidence do liberals cite for their vestigial faith that these industries, employing millions of people in complex daily activities, can grow long term at greater than 3% from beneath the morass of Dodd-Frank and the Obama health-care law?

The housing sector, a monumental and intractable mess, chokes the economy. No matter. The president allowed (or told) "adviser" Elizabeth Warren of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to engulf banks and mortgage servicers in negotiations over a complex regulatory scheme whose goal, literally, is to fix their "business model."

The White House now says the free trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea will be delayed absent payouts of more money for "trade adjustment assistance." Ergo, the past two years of uncertainty for trade commitments will be extended.

It is sometimes unfair to tag presidents with blame for an underperforming economy. Not this time. This president made conscious policy choices during a deep recession to reorder vast swaths of American industry. Strong-performing economies need clarity. Barack Obama has given ours indecision stretching to the horizon. And economic growth, like a long gray day, sits still below 3%.

Write to henninger@wsj.com
 
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 02, 2011, 07:47:16 AM
Obama Advisor Compares Bin Laden To US Christians
ELVISNIXON.com ^ | 6/1/2011 | ELVISNIXON.COM






Mr. Obama and his stooges continue their campaign of hatred and intolerance against Christianity.

In the latest example of bigotry President Obama's "faith adviser", Eboo Patel, likened television evangelist Pat Robertson to Osama bin Laden, calling both "totalitarians" who worked collectively against coexistence.  

The statements by Patel mark the latest in a series of controversial remarks by the faith adviser against the U.S. and Christianity.

WND.com reports that in February 2010, Obama named Patel to his Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.He is paid by your tax dollars.

Patel, a Muslim activist, compared Robertson to the al-Qaida chief in his book, "Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation"

Wrote Patel: "Religious totalitarians have the unique advantage of being able to oppose each other and work together at the same time.

Continued Patel: "Bin Laden says he is moving Muslims to his side of the faith line. Robertson claims he is moving Christians to his. But if you look from a certain angle, you see that they are not on opposite sides at all. They are right next to each other, standing shoulder to shoulder, a most unlikely pair, two totalitarians working collectively against the dream of a common life together."

Patel failed to point out bin Laden incited violence and directed and planned terrorism targeting civilians, while Robertson routinely condemns terrorism.

Patel compared al-Qaida to what he called Christian "totalitarians" in the U.S. and Jewish "totalitarians" in Israel.

Patel declared that everything he was taught about Christopher Columbus, Thomas Jefferson and American "fairness" and "equality" was wrong.

Patel blasted what he called the "myths" of America – describing them as beliefs that the country is "a land of freedom and equality and justice."

Patel explained how he used the "faith-based movement" to channel his rage at America "in a direction far more compassionate and far more merciful."

Patel further implied that had he grown up in the 1960s, he may have joined the Weather Underground terrorist group led by William Ayers.

Like Obama, Patel is deeply tied to Ayers.

In 2005, he co-authored a book with Ayers' adopted son, Chesa Boudin. The book, "Letters from Young Activists: Today's Rebels Speak Out," was co-written by several young radicals, including Ismail Khalidi, the son of Columbia University Professor Rashid Khalidi.

The Obama's have a close relationship with Khalidi, who has been tied to the Palestinian Liberation Organization and who has described Israel as a "racist" state with an "apartheid" system.

The preface of Patel's 2005 book, meanwhile, was written by Ayers' wife, Weather Underground co-founder Bernardine Dohrn.

Dohrn describes the book as "a clarion call of hope, defiance, critical analysis, humor, irony, and self-conscious insistence that the queer, the Palestinian, the immigrant, the privileged, the children of prisoners and hip-hopsters have arrived."

The back cover of the book boasts an endorsement from Mumia Abu-Jamal, the convicted cop-killer and former member of the Black Panther Party.

On the acknowledgments page, Patel and co-authors thank Ayers himself for "guidance" and "encouragement."..."

It is unclear as to whether Mr Obama prefers atheism to islam but it is clear he prefers both to the traditional Christianity of the American people. Unlike islam Christianity is a religion based on love.

Love REQUIRES Choice.

FREE WILL is necessary for choice to be meaningful

That is why Christianity is not and has never been a theocracy - unlike islam.

Islam "converts" by the sword.

"Convert or die" is the message of Muhammad- UNLIKE Jesus Christ.

Atheists are also opposed to the notion of FREE WILL as they are deterministic. To an atheist we are nothing but matter in motion and all "choices" are merely epiphenomena based on random chemical/electrical impulses.

For an atheist "free will" is an illusion.

Islam REQUIRES theocracy. There is NO separation of mosque and state.

Obama and his ilk are the ones lurching towards totalitarianism.
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: George Whorewell on June 02, 2011, 07:51:41 AM
Ba Ba Ak is Obama's other spiritual advisor. Here is an excerpt of how Obama does fundraising in the black community.



Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 02, 2011, 08:22:15 AM
Obama Nominee: Redistribute Wealth To Keep Poor From Cutting Trees
CNSNews ^ | 6/1/11 | Matt Cover




(CNSNews.com) – John Bryson, President Obama’s nominee to head the Commerce Department, told a UN energy conference in 2009 that a global wealth redistribution program was needed to keep poor people in developing countries from using their own forest resources.

“What we’ve got to do is find ways to map out the affected lands, to develop plans for addressing them, find economic models in which the people who are driven to do these things to try to raise the livelihoods of their families, find alternative means,” Bryson said in laying out his vision for stopping people in poor countries from cutting down forests.

“Training of peoples, to maybe help in supporting this, development of law enforcement regimes, development of strong governance practices, all of those things have to be done,” Bryson continued.


(Excerpt) Read more at cnsnews.com ...

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 02, 2011, 11:13:58 AM
FCC Colluded with Leftist Organization Free Press to Push Government Regulation of Internet...
Judicial Watch ^ | June 2, 2011



Complete title: FCC Colluded with Leftist Organization Free Press to Push Government Regulation of Internet, Documents Show

Organization with Socialist Ties Driving “Net Neutrality” Agenda inside the Obama FCC?

Washington, DC

Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that it has uncovered documents from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that indicate officials at the FCC colluded with the leftist Free Press organization to publicly push a new plan to regulate the Internet under the FCC’s so-called “net neutrality” program. Judicial Watch obtained the documents pursuant to a December 27, 2010, Freedom of Information Act request.

In December 2010, the FCC voted 3-2 to advance its “net neutrality program.” This decision seems to fly in the face of an April, 2010 federal appeals court ruling that the FCC had exceeded its authority in seeking to regulate the Internet and enforce “net neutrality” rules.

The supporters of “net neutrality,” including Free Press, argue that high-speed Internet access is a “civil right,” and are recommending new government regulations to provide taxpayer-funded broadband Internet access to all populations, especially those deemed “underserved.” Opponents of “net neutrality” argue the program is designed to impose greater government control over the Internet and will result in less access, not more. Moreover, opponents of “net neutrality,” also dispute the claim that Internet access is a basic civil right protected by the U.S. Constitution.

Judicial Watch uncovered internal correspondence showing unusual coordination by some officials at the FCC and Free Press in pushing the “net neutrality” agenda in the run up to the controversial FCC vote in December:

On November 2, 2010, Free Press Associate Outreach Director Misty Perez Truedson sent an email to John Giusti, Chief of Staff to FCC Commissioner Michael Copps asking if Copps would write an op-ed for the Albuquerque Journal in advance of a November 16 hearing on Internet access: “Would Commissioner Copps be interested in drafting an Op-ed in advance of the hearing? It’s a great way to get the word out and to spark conversations in advance of the event,” Truedson wrote. “We’re working on the op ed,” Giusti wrote back on November 9.

The documents also include a series of emails sent to set up meetings between Copps and former Free Press President John Silver. “We are starting to get a good sense of how we’d like to proceed during the next three tricky months on NN [net neutrality]…”Silver wrote in the same October 8, 2010, email: “I think it may make sense for us to get together next week when I’m in town.” The documents also include a written summary of a phone call between Silver and Copps on November 28, 2010, just prior to the FCC vote in December: “Silver emphasized that a strong net neutrality rule is critical to preserving the Internet as a vibrant forum for speech, commerce, innovation and cultural expression…” the summary noted.

One set of documents includes correspondence between FCC Special Counsel David Tannenbaum and Free Press Policy Director Ben Scott establishing lists of speakers for FCC “internet workshops.” Among the speakers proposed by Scott: “Joe Respars (ran online activism for the Obama campaign – he’s at Blue State Digital);” “Alex Nogales – National Hispanic Media Coalition;” “Jay Stanley – ACLU;” and “Clothilde de Coz [redacted] Reporters without Borders.”

When Tannenbaum asked Scott about inviting a speaker from Color for Change in a November 17, 2010 email, Scott writes: “Yes – we know them well. I should have put James Rucker on my list. He’s very good. Up and coming civil rights leader. They are awesome.

However, you should be aware that Color of Change is rather highly politicized. They are lead on the campaign to strip Glenn Beck of advertisers. And Van Jones is one of the founders. Not that these things should dissuade you from inviting them – I just wanted you to know.”

(Van Jones was forced to resign from his position as Obama’s “Green Jobs czar,” in part because he had signed a petition in support of the 9/11 “Truther” movement, which believes the Bush administration masterminded the 9/11 terrorist attacks.)


Free Press has deep ties to radical leftists and socialists. Robert McChesny, former editor of the socialist magazine Monthly Review, is the co-founder and president of Free Press. Kim Gandy, the Chairman of the Free Press Board of Directors, served as the President of the National Organization for Women from 2001-2009. Craig Aaron, Free Press’s President and CEO, formerly worked as managing editor of the socialist tabloid In These Times. Free Press is financially supported by George Soros’s Open Society Institute and other hard-left groups such as the Ford Foundation and Democracy Alliance.

“Net neutrality is just another Obama power grab. This is nothing less than the Obama administration’s attempt to stage a government takeover of the Internet under the guise of ‘net neutrality.’ So it should come as no surprise that Free Press, the hard left organization with socialist ties, is improperly driving the so-called net neutrality agenda from inside the Obama administration. The FCC is supposed to be an independent agency that follows the law,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “The American people should be deeply troubled by the fact that the Obama administration, on issue after issue, seems to be run by shadowy leftist organizations. Our government is supposed to be ‘of the people, by the people, and for the people’, not ‘of the Left, by the Left, and for the Left.’”

To access the FCC-Free Press net neutrality documents uncovered by Judicial Watch, please click here.


Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 02, 2011, 11:25:01 AM
Big Government Obama’s War on Coal Takes a New Turn
big government ^ | 6/2/11 | Capitol Confidential




Cap-and-trade legislation may have failed in Congress in 2010, but that doesn’t mean that this is the last we will hear from this economically-harmful policy. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) through the Clean Air Act has been busily proposing and finalizing nearly 200 major policy rules aimed at curbing carbon and other particulate emissions. This despite the fact that the Clean Air Act was never intended for this purpose and widespread opposition exists among the business community, citizens and states. One particular regulation that is generating deep concern among the business community is the Utility Maximum Achievable Control Technology rule or better know as the MACT rule. This rule would require coal-fired plants to reduce emissions of particular toxic air pollutants.


(Excerpt) Read more at biggovernment.com ...

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 02, 2011, 11:27:28 AM
Obama solicitor general: If you don't like mandate, earn less money
Washington Examiner ^ | 6/2/11 | Philip Klein


________________________ ______________________



President Obama's solicitor general, defending the national health care law on Wednesday, told a federal appeals court that Americans who didn't like the individual mandate could always avoid it by choosing to earn less money. Neal Kumar Katyal, the acting solicitor general, made the argument under questioning before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati. The three-judge panel, which was comprised of two Republican-appointed judges and a Democratic-appointed judge, expressed more skepticism about the government's defense of the health care law than the Fourth Circuit panel that heard the Virginia-based Obamacare challenge last


(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 03, 2011, 04:29:22 AM

O's jobs-export economy
Businesses afraid to hire here
Last Updated: 3:26 AM, June 3, 2011

More  Print Charles Gasparino




Wall Street economists I speak to feel pretty confi dent that -- for all the news about housing prices falling, gas prices rising and the stock market zig-zagging and a possible downgrade of US -- the chances of a "double dip" recession are pretty remote. After all, companies are still profitable two years after the financial collapse, and judging by the job listings even at banking basket-case Citigroup, people are finding work on Wall Street.

But that doesn't mean the broader economy, defined by how many people are working, is getting noticeably better anytime soon. In fact, don't expect any major hiring sprees by corporate America in the next two years -- and, if policies don't change in Washington, possibly not in our lifetimes.


Angel Chevrestt

Well, Wall Street's doing fine: Much of the private sector, like this store in Harlem, is finding it harder to get buy.

The problem for the average American worker: Businesses have learned to make money by cutting costs (i.e., jobs) or relocating to China and India. And it's not merely that it's cheaper to operate overseas; a huge part of the problem is the fear that it's going to keep getting more expensive to hire here.

Both small-business owners, and analysts who cover these companies tell me that many American businesses would like to stay here, but they see no letup in sight in the endless stream of taxes and regulations coming from an administration most of them consider anti-business.

And now the weakness of the Republican presidential field raises the chances for President Obama's re-election in 2012 -- and even more Washington-imposed woes.

Veteran analyst Peter Sidoti covers the stocks of small corporations -- those that have traditionally been the engines of hiring and growth, particularly coming out of a recession. He points to the experience of AT Cross Co., the manufacturer of the famous Cross pen.

Sidoti, who covers Cross' stock, notes that the company shut down one of its manufacturing plants in Rhode Island a few years back, and set up shop in China. "The move seemed so unnecessary," he says. "The plant was small and it costs money to relocate to China." That is, until Sidoti began adding up the costs of staying in a high-tax state like Rhode Island: Not just federal ones, but state and local, too.

And those problems have only been compounded now: ObamaCare's on track to add serious costs; the administration may yet give us some crazy energy plan; the president's reaffirmed his desire to reverse the Bush-era tax rates, which would amount to one of the largest tax-hikes in history.

Sidoti's actually an example of the problem. With federal, state and city taxes, Sidoti & Co. gets hammered with around a 75 percent tax rate. With his health-care costs rising 10 percent alone this year, he estimates that the first $1 million his company earns goes toward paying those costs.

"That's why I'm looking to open an office in Austin, Texas, where taxes are lower," he tells me.

He adds: "Washington has to decide what they want the country's future to be. Is it going to be Detroit, which did nothing to help business, so people and capital have fled, or will it be Texas, which at least for the moment is attracting people and capital because taxes are low?"

If there's good news in any of this, it's that more businesses can recover -- it's easier than ever to move a factory to China or the Philippines and slash your operating costs. Stocks of these companies will rise as they become more efficient. Take a look at a one-year stock chart of Cross pen and you'll see what I'm saying.

The bad news is that not everyone in this country is wealthy enough to own stocks or can afford to move to China for a factory job.

Charles Gasparino is a Fox Business Network senior corre spondent.



Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/jobs_export_economy_68cw8tK1iwVYYEd2dJUxmL#ixzz1ODAE4IhM

Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 06, 2011, 10:52:58 AM
Political firestorm over NLRB suit to prevent Boeing move to SC
MSNBC ^ | June 6, 2011






It started as bad blood between aerospace giant Boeing Co. and its unionized production workers.

But now a feud over Boeing’s decision to assemble some of its 787 jetliners at a new, non-union facility in South Carolina has mushroomed into a very public and highly political fight over outsourcing, right-to-work states and the future of the National Labor Relations Board.

The clash's outcome could hinge on whether Boeing executives publicly said more than they should have about their motivation for opening the new plant in South Carolina.

“This is a unique case,” said Ross Runkel, professor of law emeritus at Willamette University and an expert in labor law.

The battle centers around Boeing’s 2009 decision to build a second assembly line for its much-delayed 787 "Dreamliner" in North Charleston, S.C. That’s in addition to a 787 assembly line in Washington state, where Boeing also assembles its other commercial jets.

The new factory is set to open in July. But in April the NLRB, a government agency charged with safeguarding union rights, filed a complaint accusing Boeing of violating labor law in its motive for locating the work in South Carolina.

more at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43243531/ns/business-us_business/


(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...


________________________ ______________

Another WTF from Obama Admn
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 06, 2011, 11:21:34 AM
True cost of Fannie/Freddie bailout more than twice Obama administration claim
Hot Air ^ | 6/6/11 | Ed Morrissey





The CBO has a problem with the Office of Management and Budget’s calculation on the cost of the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac bailouts, and it’s no small calculation error. OMB has calculated the costs of the bailout at $130 billion, a number repeated on occasion by the Obama administration. By the CBO’s calculation, the cost of the bailouts reaches $317 billion, more than twice the White House estimate:

In a report delivered to the House Budget Committee on June 2, the CBO said a “fair value” accounting of guaranteeing the two defunct mortgage companies – known as Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs) – was more than twice as high as the Office of Management and Budget had accounted for.

“Specifically, CBO treats the mortgages guaranteed each year by the two GSEs as new guarantee obligations of the federal government,” the CBO report said. “For those guarantees, CBO’s projections of budget outlays equal the estimated federal subsidies inherent in the commitments at the time they are made.”

“In contrast, the Administration’s Office of Management and Budget continues to treat Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as nongovernmental entities for budgetary purposes, and thus outside the budget,” the report stated. “It records as outlays the amount of the net cash payments provided by the Treasury to the GSEs.”


(Excerpt) Read more at hotair.com ...
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 06, 2011, 02:57:00 PM
June 6, 2011, 2:40 p.m. EDT
Firms halting coverage as reform starts: survey
30% of companies say they’ll stop offering health plansStories You Might Like
By Russ Britt, MarketWatch
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/firms-halting-coverage-as-reform-starts-survey-2011-06-06





LOS ANGELES (MarketWatch) — Once provisions of the Affordable Care Act start to kick in during 2014, at least three of every 10 employers will probably stop offering health coverage, a survey released Monday shows.

While only 7% of employees will be forced to switch to subsidized-exchange programs, at least 30% of companies say they will “definitely or probably” stop offering employer-sponsored coverage, according to the study published in McKinsey Quarterly.

The survey of 1,300 employers says those who are keenly aware of the health-reform measure probably are more likely to consider an alternative to employer-sponsored plans, with 50% to 60% in this group expected to make a change. It also found that for some, it makes more sense to switch.

Click to Play  Are profit forecasts too optimistic? A 4% economic-growth rate for 2011 now looks like a pipe dream. In that case, assumptions about corporate earnings may be high, especially with the Federal Reserve's latest bond-buying program winding down. Kelly Evans discusses.
“At least 30% of employers would gain economically from dropping coverage, even if they completely compensated employees for the change through other benefit offerings or higher salaries,” the study says.

It goes on to add: “Contrary to what employers assume, more than 85% of employees would remain at their jobs even if their employers stopped offering [employer-sponsored insurance], although about 60% would expect increased compensation.”

A number of competitors will emerge in the insurance market once reform provisions start to take effect, according to the McKinsey Quarterly study. These firms will be needed to provide a transition for those moving from employer-sponsored insurance to other coverage options.

Insurers will have to adapt to new realities and look for ways to keep the policy holders they have, the study says, but that shouldn’t be difficult. “Our research shows that more than 70% of employees would stay with their insurer if it offers a seamless transition and appropriate products. Each payer also must understand how changing employer-benefit strategies will shift the risk profile of its membership and set prices appropriately.”

Russ Britt is the Los Angeles bureau chief for MarketWatch.
 
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 07, 2011, 10:05:41 AM
REVEALED: Waiving Obamacare: HHS never had authority to issue exemptions (Not in the original law)
Hotair ^ | 06/07/2011 | Tina Korbe

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2731197/posts





According to testimony at a recent hearing of the House Oversight health care subcommittee, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare) doesn’t actually grant the Department of Health and Human Services the authority to exempt employers from the law’s annual minimum health care coverage requirements. The Daily Caller reports:

Language granting HHS that power was never in the original law. Instead, through new rules and regulations, HHS gave itself the power last summer using a broad interpretation of certain parts of the law.

The annual limit requirement waivers exempt recipients for one year from having to increase the amount of health care coverage they provide their workers. Each year between now and 2014, the minimum annual limit rises to a new, higher amount. Though the waivers are only for one year, recipients can reapply and be re-approved every year through 2014.

Heritage Foundation health policy expert Edmund Haislmaier said HHS “exceeded its statutory authority” by issuing such waivers.

And as of May 13, 2011, HHS had issued quite a few — 1,372. But maybe such a wide interpretation of the regulatory power granted to HHS by Obamacare was warranted? Not so, says Haislmaier. In 21 other sections of PPACA, Congress explicitly grants HHS waiver authority with respect to other provisions. Obviously, that suggests Congress would have explicitly granted the Department the authority to waive the minimum annual coverage requirements, as well.

Why does this not surprise me? This administration has made no secret of its willingness to legislate through the executive branch. But this example exudes a special irony: The executive branch has to improperly legislate to undo — not extend – the legislative branch’s unwieldy legislation.

It’s all made worse, of course, by the way in which HHS has granted the waivers — with little to no transparency and with every appearance of political favoritism. But one congressman seeks to change that. Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-Kan.), along with 31 of his Congressional colleagues, recently sent a letter to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to request clarifications about the waiver application and grant process.

“It is sheer hypocrisy to say that this is about healthcare ‘equality,’ but still grant special privilege exemptions to labor unions and businesses,” Huelskamp said in a news release. “Evidence continues to flow forth that these waivers are sometimes about who you know, as a multitude of them have been granted to labor unions that have supported the president or to businesses that are in former Speaker Pelosi’s district. This entire waiver process screams of political favoritism and is an abomination to the democratic process, to the concept of equality under the law, and to individual freedom and liberty.”

The letter asks Sebelius to identify the number and type of denied applications, the number and type of pending applications and the average time it takes to make a decision about whether to grant a waiver. That information would be a good start — if Sebelius responds — but, in light of Haislmaier’s testimony, the secretary has even more explaining to do.
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 07, 2011, 06:58:45 PM
Commerce nominee appears to endorse world government in video, Republicans say
The Daily Caller ^ | 6/7/11 | John Rossomando
Posted on June 7, 2011 10:02:42 PM EDT by Nachum

Does John Bryson, Barack Obama’s nominee for commerce secretary, want a world government? Critics say a newly uncovered video of the nominee suggests that he does. In the video – given to The Daily Caller by sources on Capitol Hill – Bryson refers to the 2009 United Nations climate negotiations in Copenhagen as “the closest thing we have to a world governance organization,” implying it provided the best model for imposing climate regulations on countries around the globe. Bryson also boasts about his role as an adviser to the U.N. secretary general on climate change in the video.

(Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com ...




Fubo.     
Title: Re: Step by Step: How Obama is collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 08, 2011, 03:57:36 PM

Coal Regs Would Kill Jobs, Boost Energy Bills
By Paul Bedard

Posted: June 8, 2011




Two new EPA pollution regulations will slam the coal industry so hard that hundreds of thousands of jobs will be lost, and electric rates will skyrocket 11 percent to over 23 percent, according to a new study based on government data.

Overall, the rules aimed at making the air cleaner could cost the coal-fired power plant industry $180 billion, warns a trade group.

[Check out a roundup of political cartoons on energy policy.]

“Many of these severe impacts would hit families living in states already facing serious economic challenges,” said Steve Miller, president of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity. “Because of these impacts, EPA should make major changes to the proposed regulations before they are finalized,” he said.

The EPA, however, tells Whispers that the hit the industry will suffer is worth the health benefits. “EPA has taken a number of sensible steps to protect public health, while also working with industry and other stakeholders to ensure that these important Clean Air Act standards—such as the first ever national Mercury and Air Toxics Standards for coal-fired power plants—are reasonable, common-sense, and achievable,” said spokesman Brendan Gilfillan. [Read Rep. Darrell Issa: Obama's Bad Policy, Harmful Regulations Add to Gas Prices.]

What’s more, officials said that just one of the rules to cut sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions will would yield up to $290 billion in annual health and welfare benefits in 2014. They say that amounts to preventing up to 36,000 premature deaths, 26,000 hospital and emergency room visits, and 240,000 cases of aggravated asthma. “This far outweighs the estimated annual costs,” says an official on background. [Check out political cartoons on the economy.]

Still, the EPA did note that the two new antipollution rules are “pending” and that the agency has “accepted and are considering feedback” from the industry.

The industry says the costs and potential to lose four jobs for every new clean energy job created isn’t worth the rules, especially in a job-starved economy. [See a slide show of the best cities to find a job.]

Referring to the analysis of the EPA regulations from National Economic Research Associates, Miller said they would be the most expensive rules ever imposed on power plants.

Coal-fired energy plants currently fuel about half of the nation’s energy supply.

http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2011/06/08/coal-regs-would-kill-jobs-boost-energy-bills

Title: Re: How Obama is INTENTIONALLY collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 08, 2011, 04:00:02 PM
Another thing - whoever still supports obama  -   go kill yourselves and rot in hell with osama.
Title: Re: How Obama is INTENTIONALLY collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 08, 2011, 07:15:25 PM
Obama Administration Spends $17.4 Million to Explore Market for Carbon Credits
CNSNews ^ | June 8, 2011 | Matt Cover
Posted on June 8, 2011 8:52:50 PM EDT by jazusamo

(CNSNews.com) – The Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced that it has awarded $17.4 million for pilot projects that will begin exploring how to establish a market for greenhouse gas (GHG) credits, a key component of a cap and trade system, to help reduce carbon and other emissions that apparently contribute to global warming.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said the projects were the “foundational work” for establishing an American carbon market.

“This is really sort of foundational work that’s being done,” Vilsack told reporters on a conference call on Wednesday.

The $17.4 million in funding is part of the Conservation Innovation Grant (CIG) program, which is supposed to foster innovation in environmental conservation technology and business. In this case, the administration has received special funding to provide CIG grants for projects that demonstrate methods for establishing a GHG-offset markets in agriculture.

Greenhouse gas offsets, often called carbon credits, are a key component of a cap and trade system – the ‘trade’ part of the system in fact. Under cap and trade, businesses with GHG offsets can sell them to other businesses that need the offsets to stay under the emissions cap – the legal limit on carbon-dioxide and other GHG emissions.

(Under cap and trade, in general, companies that exceed their “cap” on greenhouse gas emissions can “trade” (buy) credits as compensation, the money for which is applied to more environmentally friendly industries; you pollute, you pay, and the money goes to green companies.)

GHG offsets can theoretically come from anything that reduces the amount of carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gasses in the air, from a pledge to keep rural land undeveloped to planting trees to changing how farms handle animal waste or fertilizer.

“We want to help farmers and ranchers make important and innovative contributions to reducing greenhouse gas emissions,” Vilsack said. “These grants are designed to test and verify exciting new approaches to greenhouse gas reduction that other conservation-minded producers will want to put to work on their operations.”

In other words, the CIG grants fund projects that attempt to measure the quantity of GHGs that are saved – by not farming rural land, for example – and how those savings affect the value of the offsets – how many GHG credits a particular action is worth.

In a cap and trade system, farmers, ranchers, and other agriculture producers theoretically stand to make money by selling credits to other, GHG-intense businesses such as manufacturers and power companies.

Among the projects being funded is a $1 million program across eight states to show that beef and dairy farmers can be incentivized to change how they handle animal feeding and manure to produce less methane emissions.

Another $1.2 million grant given to an Indian tribe in Washington State will examine how to value and trade GHG offsets for planting trees, improved forest management, and not developing forested lands in tribal areas.

Each of the nine projects funded under the special CIG grants – totaling $7.4 million – aim to develop ways to integrate conservation and agriculture reforms into a GHG offset market, the type of market that would be critical to a functioning cap and trade system.

The USDA will also disburse an additional $10 million through its Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) grant program to aid these efforts.

Vilsack said the reason the Agriculture Department was getting involved in the establishment of carbon markets, which currently exist only in states like California and the Northeast, was to better integrate the federal government into regional cap and trade systems, so that the government has a better understanding of how GHG offset markets function.

“[W]e’re hopeful that this would create opportunities for better collaboration for ourselves at USDA and the various states that are themselves establishing markets and that this would assist us in building the capacity within USDA to understand how these markets work and how we might be able to do more of this in the future,” said Vilsack.
Title: Re: How Obama is INTENTIONALLY collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 08, 2011, 07:38:38 PM
Another slap in the face for Britain:...sides with Argentina and Venezuela
The Telegraph ^ | June 8th, 2011 | Nile Gardiner
Posted on June 8, 2011 10:15:44 PM EDT by CharlyFord

Another slap in the face for Britain: the Obama administration sides with Argentina and Venezuela in OAS declaration on the Falklands.

President Obama was effusive in his praise for the Special Relationship when he visited London recently, but his administration continues to slap Britain in the face over the highly sensitive Falklands issue. Washington signed on to a “draft declaration on the question of the Malvinas Islands” passed by unanimous consent by the General Assembly of the Organisation of American States (OAS) at its meeting in San Salvador yesterday, an issue which had been heavily pushed by Argentina. In doing so, the United States sided not only with Buenos Aires, but also with a number of anti-American regimes including Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela and Daniel Ortega’s Nicaragua.

The declaration calls for Argentina and Great Britain to enter into negotiations over the sovereignty of the Falklands, a position which London has long viewed as completely unacceptable. It also comes in the wake of increasing aggression by the Kirchner regime in the past 18 months, including threats to blockade British shipping in the South Atlantic.

(Excerpt) Read more at







Fuck you Obots. 
Title: Re: How Obama is INTENTIONALLY collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 08, 2011, 08:05:56 PM
Skip to comments.

Obama’s EPA Regulations Will Cost Coal Industry $200 Billion & Electricity Rates to Skyrocket
GatewayPundit ^ | 6/8/11 | Jim Hoft
Posted on June 8, 2011 10:53:27 PM EDT by SanFranDan

In January 2008 Barack Obama told the San Francisco Chronicle:

“Under my plan of a cap and trade system electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. Businesses would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that cost onto consumers.”

He promised that his plan would cause electricity rates to skyrocket. He wasn’t kidding.

In January, 2011 the Obama Administration, for the first time ever, blocked an already approved bid to build one of the largest mountaintop removal coal mines in Appalachian history.

And, today it was reported that Obama’s energy plans will cause electricity rates to necessarily skyrocket Just as he promised.

Via US News and World Reports:

Two new EPA pollution regulations will slam the coal industry so hard that hundreds of thousands of jobs will be lost, and electric rates will skyrocket 11 percent to over 23 percent, according to a new study based on government data.

Overall, the rules aimed at making the air cleaner could cost the coal-fired power plant industry $180 billion, warns a trade group.

“Many of these severe impacts would hit families living in states already facing serious economic challenges,” said Steve Miller, president of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity. “Because of these impacts, EPA should make major changes to the proposed regulations before they are finalized,” he said.

The EPA, however, tells Whispers that the hit the industry will suffer is worth the health benefits.
Title: Re: How Obama is INTENTIONALLY collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: quadzilla456 on June 08, 2011, 11:14:13 PM
*sigh*

Obama is not doing this, his puppet master are. The president "fairy tale" really needs to end. We are all grownups now - come on, do you really think the mongrel is in charge?
Title: Re: How Obama is INTENTIONALLY collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 09, 2011, 06:03:17 AM
Giving Away the Farm

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/06/07/giving_away_the_farm?print=yes&hidecomments=yes&page=full


The Obama administration is freely giving Russia sensitive information about missile defense that weakens U.S. national security.

BY R. JAMES WOOLSEY, REBECCAH HEINRICHS | JUNE 7, 2011


President Barack Obama's administration recently threatened to veto the defense budget, citing "serious concerns" over provisions that limit the U.S. missile defense know-how that the White House is permitted to share with Moscow. This is the sort of information that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, in his earlier days, would have assigned his spies to steal. Through its single-minded pursuit of "resetting" relations with Russia, the Obama administration may simply be willing to hand over this information and, in doing so, weaken U.S. national security.

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Only two days after issuing the veto threat -- and as Obama tried to warm Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to U.S. missile defense plans at the G-8 Summit in Deauville, France -- the House of Representatives passed the defense bill. It included the provision that the president's team finds so offensive: Section 1228 requires that no funds can be used to provide the Russian Federation with sensitive U.S. missile defense technology.

This act of congressional prudence did not come out of nowhere. The Senate debate over New START raised questions about what the Obama administration may have promised Moscow regarding U.S. missile defense plans. The debate stemmed from the treaty's preamble, which linked offensive and defensive weapons, and a Russian unilateral statement that stated ratification of the treaty was conditional on whether the United States made improvements to its missile defense systems. In a treaty about reducing offensive weapons, it was clear the Russians required the Obama administration to include U.S. defenses in the bargain.

With that issue still unresolved, Congress discovered that the administration has been working on a missile defense agreement with the Russians and that Moscow had requested that the United States share with it loads of sensitive U.S. missile defense technology and operational authority as part of that deal. In the administration's eagerness to please the Kremlin, it may just oblige.

The House of Representatives has given a firm "no" to that prospect through its decision to ignore Obama's veto threat and approve the defense appropriations bill by a veto-proof vote of 322 to 96. The Senate may act similarly. On April 14, 39 Republican senators sent a letter to the president expressing their concern over the administration's consideration of granting to the Russians sensitive U.S. technology and "red button" authority to prevent the interception of incoming missiles headed for U.S. troops or allies. This would allow Russia to deny the United States the ability to intercept a missile Washington had determined to be a threat.

The letter, spearheaded by Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), requested the administration provide the Senate with assurances that it will not share sensitive information with Moscow. The senators cited the problem that sharing this information with Russia poses in light of its history of espionage and technological cooperation with Iran and Syria.

They're right to be concerned. Tehran is thumbing its nose at Washington and doubling down on its missile program. The director of national intelligence, James Clapper, told a congressional panel in March that Iran "would likely choose missile delivery as its preferred method of delivering a nuclear weapon" and that the Islamic Republic "continues to expand the scale, reach and sophistication of its ballistic missile forces, many of which are inherently capable of carrying a nuclear payload."

Russian assistance has contributed to the progress made by Iran's nuclear and missile programs. Should the United States share critical information about its missile defenses with the Russians, a Russian entity -- official or otherwise -- could pass that information along to Tehran, enabling the Iranians to capitalize on the weaknesses in the U.S. system.

Nevertheless, the Obama administration continues to demonstrate its penchant for bargaining away missile defense, and the United States is not currently developing and deploying missile defense technology at the rate and quantity the threat demands.

The proliferation of missiles, especially short-range devices, continues to accelerate. As a result, the United States has a greater need than ever for short-range defensive systems like the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) and the Patriot air and missile defense system. The United States, its forces abroad, and its allies are also vulnerable to short-range missiles fired from ships at sea and long-range missiles fired in large quantities. The only system the United States currently has to defend against intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) is the ground-based midcourse defense (GMD) system, which is limited in its ability. The sea-based Aegis system is supposed to complement the GMD system in defending the homeland against long-range missiles by 2020, but the intelligence community continues to estimate that Iran will have an ICBM by 2015.

Leaders in the House, and particularly the Armed Services Committee, deserve commendation for trying to address these weaknesses. The House defense bill added funds for short-range defenses, the GMD system, and Aegis; and perhaps most strikingly, it mandated the administration to conduct a study on the technical and operational feasibility of space-based interceptors -- the ideal type of system to intercept missiles at the optimal point, during their boost phase.

But as the administration's veto threat demonstrates, the future of U.S. missile defense requires more than Congress alone can provide. Here's hoping that the White House comes to its senses and stops trying to use a degradation in U.S. national security to purchase a Russian "reset."

Save big when you subscribe to FP. Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

 R. James Woolsey is chairman of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Rebeccah Heinrichs is an adjunct fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former manager of the Congressional Missile Defense Caucus.
Title: Re: How Obama is INTENTIONALLY collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 09, 2011, 06:20:45 AM
Obama's Undeclared War on America
American Thinker ^ | 6-9-11 | Geoffrey P. Hunt


________________________ ________________________ ___________--



Republican US House Speaker John Boehner, and US Senate Foreign Relations Committee ranking minority member Richard Lugar, are both obsessed with bringing President Obama to account under the War Powers Act for his intervention in Libya.

Libya is typical of Obama's foreign policy: timid, tardy, aloof, and counterproductive. Accordingly, the outcome from Obama's Libyan humanitarian adventure has been predictable, needlessly adding over $1 billion to the US federal deficit while emboldening a stalemate benefitting Gaddafi, who continues to inflict civilian casualties with impunity.

Whatever Obama's disposition of the War Powers Act concerning Libya, it is still trivial stuff compared with Obama's undeclared War on America. Boehner and Lugar need to stand down from the snipe hunt over Libya and pay attention to Obama's destruction here at home.

Obama's undeclared War on America has been as intense, unrelenting, costly, and devastating as any undeclared war since Korea. Obama's carpet-bombing through taxes, regulations, energy policies, and pledging to do more of the same has paralyzed and bankrupted the nation, plunging it into a despondency not seen since eight decades ago.

Apart from James Buchanan, no president has been so ill-prepared and willfully ignorant as Obama when presented with an unprecedented national crisis. We are now mired in the 21st century Great Gloom, our nation's 2nd Great Depression, having identical features with the first one: millions of Americans are out of work with few prospects for any; millions more Americans have lost their homes with even more facing foreclosure and owing more on their mortgages than the homes are worth; the private sector is calcified; high taxes and regulations frustrate capital formation and job creation.

Obama's inability or unwillingness to read history, compounded by his stubborn big government ideology, has led him to adopt or advocate for the single most devastating tactic that doomed Herbert Hoover when the Great Depression began and plagued FDR as the wretchedness of the 1930s persisted for nearly another decade: higher taxes.

The Great Depression's illiquidity closed thousands of banks, wiped out savings, and obliterated home and farm ownership. High tariffs choked international trade, idling more businesses and spoiling more stockpiles of foodstuffs.

Today's analog -- regulatory fever -- has strangled job creation, demolished the real estate markets, and crushed any hope to restore self-confidence by heaping nearly $2 trillion of unrelieved costs on American business.

Except for taxes and tariffs -- as David M. Kennedy argues in his Freedom From Fear-The American People in Depression and War 1929-1945, at least President Herbert Hoover didn't deliberately make the Depression worse. Hoover was physically exhausted and mentally drained in tirelessly applying any remedy that would ease the suffering and stop the economic bleeding.

Says Kennedy ( p. 94) "He kept up a punishing regimen of rising at six and working without interruption until nearly midnight. His clothes were disheveled, his hair rumpled, his eyes bloodshot, complexion ashen.

"By the fall of 1932 he had lost all stomach for political campaigning...seemed to campaign more for vindication of the historical record than for the affection in the hearts of voters.

"Just four years earlier he had won one of the most lopsided victories in the history of presidential elections...The Great Engineer, so recently the most revered American, was the most loathed and scorned figure in the country."

Contrast that scene with Obama on another golf outing, wolfing down chilidogs and cheeseburgers, and launching his 2012 re-election campaign eighteen months in advance.

Hoover gets a bum rap for allowing a recession to turn into the Great Depression. He tried everything at his disposal that contemporaneous economists and banker/financiers thought would work. But as Kennedy further observes, through the lens of economist Herbert Stein, the federal government at the time was too small to be leveraged; state and local governments had collective budgets five times larger than the federal government and some states had statutory restrictions on incurring more indebtedness. According to Kennedy, even Pennsylvania by its own constitution could not borrow more than $1 million.

The federal budget in 1929 was only 3% of GDP. Obama's 2012 budget would approach 25% of GDP. Obama sees no limit to bloated bureaucracies, the size of government tenfold larger and growing even more immense than Hoover could ever have imagined, and the debt to go with it flirting with sovereign default.

In the beginning Hoover, not gregarious by nature, engaged every politician and business leader who he thought could be enlisted for advice or action. Only after exhausting all possibilities, while the nation's fortunes plummeted further, did Hoover become isolated and withdrawn. Kennedy relates a dark joke circulating at the lowest point of Hoover's presidency: "the president asked for a nickel to make a telephone call to a friend, an aide flipped him a dime and said 'call them both'."

Hoover was a man of broad and deep intellect, a voracious student of economics and finance. Kennedy (p 94) recounts a quote from Theodore Joslin, a secretary to Hoover:

His was a mathematical brain...Let banking officials for example come into his office and he would rattle off the number of banks in the country, list their liabilities and assets, describe the trend of fiscal affairs, and go into the liquidity or lack of it, of individual institutions, all from memory.

What a contrast to Obama's teleprompter presidency, uttering shopworn political clichés with it, occasionally unable to string together anything coherent without it.

Prior to becoming president, Hoover was regarded as the most experienced organization titan, ironically owing to his single-handed leadership in the acclaimed Belgian food relief program upon the outset of WWI. As Kennedy notes, at the end of the War, Hoover was President Wilson's personal advisor, "as much as any one man could he got the credit for reorganizing the war-shattered European economy."

Yes, Hoover is tagged with failure. Yet he was serious, purposeful, and above all, even willing to abandon his own ideology in search for a cure. Hoover's acquiescence to the formation of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation capped a sequence of measures harnessing the potential power of government intervention when it was clear private means were insufficient. In fact, as Kennedy continues, noted Columbia University economist Rexford Tugwell, FDR's behind-the-scenes architect for much of the New Deal, "later conceded that practically the whole New Deal was extrapolated from programs that Hoover started[.]"

Obama shares but two likenesses with Hoover. The first one in public utterances prone to underestimating the severity of the crisis.

Remarked Hoover in his famous understatement in May 1930, "I am convinced we have passed the worst and with continued effort we shall rapidly recover...the depression is over[.]" Last week we heard from Obama that "the economy is taking a while to mend...and faces bumps on the road to recovery."

Hoover's comments were accidents of timing, Obama's deliberate obfuscations.

And second, not unlike Hoover's (and later FDR's) addiction to tax hikes, Obama has overseen piles of costs heaped on everyday Americans from deliberately high energy prices to environmental regulatory roadblocks on energy production to $1 trillion in taxes and mandates under ObamaCare.

Who can objectively deny Obama has made the extant condition worse? Whether he has purposefully made things worse is up for some debate; after all he has no expertise in anything from which to conjure a sinister plan. Yet economic destruction derived from ignorance, folly, and neglect is still destruction. At least Hoover, by contrast, was a self-made economist who understood capital formation and liquidity, monetary and fiscal theory, and international trade, debt, and currency flows.

Arguably, international isolationism contributed to and prolonged the Great Depression. Obama's own personal isolationism, evidenced by his contempt for regular Americans and standoffish relations with foreign leaders, handmaiden to the scorn and hostility he shows towards Republicans, is a continual roadblock in finding solutions.

Even Obama's own erstwhile cheerleader for doomed Obamanomics, Austan Goolsbee, chief economic advisor to the president, has found either the task overwhelming or the companionship insufferable -- take your pick -- after only 10 months on the job.

Temperamentally Obama is a drone unleashing as much destruction on the American psyche as his drones have done to destroy military targets in Afghanistan. Devoid of honest analytics, Obama continues to issue phony reports from the domestic battlefront. Even the Washington Post, fiercely loyal to Obama's personality and politics, has had enough of his lies about the success from the auto industry bailouts.

If Obama's game is to perfect an undeclared War on America, he is succeeding. It remains to be seen whether the Republicans can summon enough nerve to reprise Gen McAuliffe's famous retort to the German demand for surrender at Bastogne in December of 1944, "Nuts."

Only Congress can now do what the voters sent them to do -- disarm and defund Obama's undeclared War on America. And for 2012, who shall be the Republicans' Gen Patton, coming to America's rescue?
Title: Re: How Obama is INTENTIONALLY collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 09, 2011, 06:56:21 AM
Obama to create White House Rural Council
Associated Press ^ | June 8, 2011 | DARLENE SUPERVILLE


________________________ _________________-



WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama plans to create a special advisory council to recommend ways to boost the economic outlook and quality of life for the estimated 60 million people who live in rural areas of the U.S., a White House official said.

Obama was expected to sign an executive order Thursday establishing the White House Rural Council and naming Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, of Iowa, to be its chairman.


(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...





________________________ _________


Sounds like Stalins' Ukraine policy. 


FUCK YOU OBAMA!     
Title: Re: How Obama is INTENTIONALLY collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 09, 2011, 02:00:40 PM
The EPA’s New Move - Is the NAT GAS Act an EPA Trojan horse?
NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE ^ | June 9, 2011 | Phil Kerpen



The EPA's New Move
Is the NAT GAS Act an EPA Trojan horse?



The debate over the New Alternative Transportation to Give Americans Solutions Act of 2011, or NAT GAS Act, has focused mostly on the question of whether the federal government should use hefty subsidies — $64,000 per truck — to interfere with the free-market allocation of resources. On that point, a surprisingly large number of Republicans are siding with their central-planning-advocate colleagues on the other side of the aisle.

But why are so many Democrats enamored with big corporate-welfare giveaways to the natural-gas industry in the first place? The answer might be a little-noticed provision called “Section 403” that could clear the legal path for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to pursue the Obama administration’s entire energy agenda via back-door regulations.

Club for Growth president Chris Chocola first rang the alarm bell about Section 403 in a post on RedState, writing that it “lends credibility to the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.” The implications are even more profound than that.

Up to now, Congress had never approved of the EPA’s attempts to shoehorn greenhouse-gas regulation into the 1970 Clean Air Act. In fact, the House voted overwhelmingly to prohibit the EPA from doing so, and while the Senate failed to achieve a 60-vote consensus on any particular solution, 50 senators voted for outright pre-emption and another 14 voted for deeply flawed, political-cover alternatives that nonetheless objected to the EPA regulating greenhouse gases without congressional approval.

Section 403 of the NAT GAS Act accepts as a given that the EPA has the authority to regulate greenhouse gases, saying: “It is the sense of the Congress that the Environmental Protection Agency[’s] new fuel economy and greenhouse gas emission regulations for medium- and heavy-duty engines and vehicles should provide incentives to encourage and reward manufacturers who produce natural gas powered vehicles.”

The regulations it is referring to were negotiated in an infamous backroom deal in which then–climate czar Carol Browner threatened to allow states to pass their own regulations if the auto industry didn’t acquiesce to expensive new federal regulations. Mary Nichols, chairwoman of the California Air Resources Board, another party to the secret negotiations, confirmed to the New York Times that Browner took the lead. “We put nothing in writing, ever.” Nichols said.

Now the EPA is poised to take the next step and impose an absurd 62-miles-per-gallon fuel-economy standard by 2025 that will take safe family vehicles off the road and force us all to buy the tiny, underpowered, politically correct cars favored by bureaucrats. The EPA is also moving beyond regulating motor vehicles to twisting the Clean Air Act as a way to pursue the entire failed cap-and-trade energy-tax agenda, with a particular emphasis on regulating the coal industry into oblivion and sending the price of gasoline skyrocketing.

While Congress of course should step in and stop the EPA, so far it has failed to do so. That makes the dubious legal status of the EPA regulations critical. Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli and Texas attorney general Greg Abbott have taken the lead with aggressive legal challenges. Texas has even refused to comply with EPA dictates it considers unlawful. There are also several private legal challenges to the EPA.

Unfortunately, Section 403 could knock the legs out from under these lawsuits by creating a clear legislative history that takes as a given the existence of EPA authority to regulate greenhouse gases. If the bill passes, EPA will argue it is conclusive proof that their authority exists, and will likely find a sympathetic ear from a judiciary that has consistently favored expansive interpretations of the Clean Air Act.

Republican proponents of the bill make a variety of arguments, contending essentially that advancing natural-gas vehicles is such a national imperative that free-market principles should be set aside and government should step in. But the biggest impact of the bill may be something entirely different and wholly unintended: a green light for the EPA’s whole agenda of skyrocketing energy prices via greenhouse-gas regulation. That’s more than enough reason to kill this bill.

— Phil Kerpen is vice president for policy at Americans for Prosperity and the author of the forthcoming book Democracy Denied (BenBella Books, October 2011) on Obama’s regulatory agenda).

Title: Re: How Obama is INTENTIONALLY collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: OzmO on June 09, 2011, 02:02:37 PM
But did he promise?

 ::)
Title: Re: How Obama is INTENTIONALLY collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 09, 2011, 02:30:44 PM
But did he promise?

 ::)

YES! 

"UNDER MY PLAN ELECTRIC RATES WILL SKYROCKET" 


Guess what happens then Ozmo? 


Title: Re: How Obama is INTENTIONALLY collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: OzmO on June 09, 2011, 03:17:36 PM
YES! 

"UNDER MY PLAN ELECTRIC RATES WILL SKYROCKET" 


Guess what happens then Ozmo? 




 ::)

NO, show where he promised he would bankrupt the coal industry. 

I am starting to think you aren't even a NBC. 
Title: Re: How Obama is INTENTIONALLY collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 09, 2011, 03:35:19 PM
James already did.
Title: Re: How Obama is INTENTIONALLY collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: OzmO on June 09, 2011, 04:47:01 PM
No, he regurgitated the same stuff you did, that didn't show where Obama promised to bankrupt the coal industry.

same old bull shit spin (lie) from you.   ::)
Title: Re: How Obama is INTENTIONALLY collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 09, 2011, 05:11:42 PM
Right - his own words are lies now. 
Title: Re: How Obama is INTENTIONALLY collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 09, 2011, 05:43:00 PM
Capito said she will write a letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson asking whether the agency took into account the economic impact of its regulations.

"Let me be clear, it’s decisions like the one made by AEP today that demonstrate the urgent need to rein in government agencies like the EPA, preventing them from overstepping their bounds and imposing regulations that not only cost us good American jobs, but hurt our economy," said Manchin, an outspoken critic of the EPA.

But EPA defended its regulations Thursday, noting that the agency has worked closely with industry to ensure that its regulations are “reasonable, common-sense and achievable.”

The agency also stressed that the regulations are essential for protecting public health.

“These reasonable steps taken under the Clean Air Act will reduce harmful air pollution, including mercury, arsenic and other toxic pollution, and as a result protect our families, particularly children,” EPA said in a statement.

In a statement outlining its plan to comply with EPA's regulations, AEP said it would need to retire 6,000 megawatts of coal-fired power generation in the coming years.

The company, one of the country’s largest electric utilities, estimated that it will cost between $6 billion and $8 billion in capital investments over the next decade to comply with the regulations in their current form.

The costs of complying with the regulations will result in an increase in electricity prices of 10 to 35 percent and cost 600 jobs, AEP said.

In total, AEP estimated it will have to close five coal-fired power plants by the end of 2014. Six additional plants would see major changes, including retiring some generating units, retrofitting equipment and switching to natural gas.

“We support regulations that achieve long-term environmental benefits while protecting customers, the economy and the reliability of the electric grid, but the cumulative impacts of the EPA’s current regulatory path have been vastly underestimated, particularly in Midwest states dependent on coal to fuel their economies,” AEP CEO Michael Morris said in a statement.

The company said its compliance plan could “change significantly” if EPA’s regulations are altered.
Title: Re: How Obama is INTENTIONALLY collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: OzmO on June 09, 2011, 05:50:01 PM
Right - his own words are lies now. 

 ::)

More of your stupid attempts at spinning.

show me  where he says: I promise to bankrupt the coal industry
Title: Re: How Obama is INTENTIONALLY collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 09, 2011, 05:55:41 PM
::)

More of your stupid attempts at spinning.

show me  where he says: I promise to bankrupt the coal industry

James quoted it. 
Title: Re: How Obama is INTENTIONALLY collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 09, 2011, 05:56:44 PM
AEP says it will close five coal plants to comply with EPA regs
By Andrew Restuccia    - 06/09/11 03:55 PM ET
Utility giant American Electric Power said Thursday that it will shut down five coal-fired power plants and spend billions of dollars to comply with a series of pending Environmental Protection Agency regulations.

The company’s dramatic plan to comply with the regulations could give Republicans and moderate Democrats ammunition in their ongoing fight against EPA's efforts to impose new regulations aimed at limiting greenhouse gas emissions and air pollutants including mercury and arsenic.

Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) immediately pounced on AEP's announcement.

“This is a perfect example of the EPA implementing rules and regulations without considering the devastating impact they may have on local economies and jobs,” Capito said. 

Capito said she will write a letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson asking whether the agency took into account the economic impact of its regulations.

"Let me be clear, it’s decisions like the one made by AEP today that demonstrate the urgent need to rein in government agencies like the EPA, preventing them from overstepping their bounds and imposing regulations that not only cost us good American jobs, but hurt our economy," said Manchin, an outspoken critic of the EPA.

But EPA defended its regulations Thursday, noting that the agency has worked closely with industry to ensure that its regulations are “reasonable, common-sense and achievable.”

The agency also stressed that the regulations are essential for protecting public health.

“These reasonable steps taken under the Clean Air Act will reduce harmful air pollution, including mercury, arsenic and other toxic pollution, and as a result protect our families, particularly children,” EPA said in a statement.

In a statement outlining its plan to comply with EPA's regulations, AEP said it would need to retire 6,000 megawatts of coal-fired power generation in the coming years.

The company, one of the country’s largest electric utilities, estimated that it will cost between $6 billion and $8 billion in capital investments over the next decade to comply with the regulations in their current form.

The costs of complying with the regulations will result in an increase in electricity prices of 10 to 35 percent and cost 600 jobs, AEP said.

In total, AEP estimated it will have to close five coal-fired power plants by the end of 2014. Six additional plants would see major changes, including retiring some generating units, retrofitting equipment and switching to natural gas.

“We support regulations that achieve long-term environmental benefits while protecting customers, the economy and the reliability of the electric grid, but the cumulative impacts of the EPA’s current regulatory path have been vastly underestimated, particularly in Midwest states dependent on coal to fuel their economies,” AEP CEO Michael Morris said in a statement.

The company said its compliance plan could “change significantly” if EPA’s regulations are altered.

Comments (15)
Title: Re: How Obama is INTENTIONALLY collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: OzmO on June 09, 2011, 05:58:43 PM
James quoted it. 

 ::)
Title: Re: How Obama is INTENTIONALLY collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 09, 2011, 07:07:53 PM
EDITORIAL: GM’s gas-tax fraud--Ripping off motorists is key to the leftist agenda
The Washington Times ^ | June 9, 2011 | Editorial
Posted on June 9, 2011 9:14:23 PM EDT by jazusamo

Government Motors has become yet another mouthpiece for the Obama administration. General Motors Co. CEO Dan Akerson told the Detroit News Saturday that he wants a $1 per gallon hike in the gas tax. Consumers already facing nearly $4 a gallon prices at the pump aren’t going to be pleased to see that figure jump overnight to $5, but the left and its crony capitalist allies don’t care what the public thinks.

Mr. Akerson wants to use the power of government to make buying a Chevy Volt, GM’s entry into the electric car market, more economically attractive. Such marketplace intervention is apparently needed because a mere 481 Volts were purchased last month, despite government subsidies and incentives worth thousands of dollars. By comparison, Ford sold 42,399 unsubsidized F-series pickup trucks over the same period. That’s almost one big gas-guzzler every minute.

The bureaucratic class at the state and federal level wants you to think the opposite is the case. They perpetuate the myth that gas-tax revenues are dangerously low because everyone is driving a Prius or some kind of electric car. “In the past, the Highway Trust Fund has been largely user-supported through fuel-tax revenue,” Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood’s blog explained last year.

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Title: Re: How Obama is INTENTIONALLY collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 10, 2011, 03:27:24 AM
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AEP to close plants, trim 600 jobs to comply with EPA rules
Kingsport (TN) Times News ^ | June 10, 2011
Posted on June 10, 2011 6:26:38 AM EDT by don-o

American Electric Power on Thursday announced it plans to shut down several coal-fired power plants, convert or retrofit others, and cut as many as 600 jobs in the next few years to comply with regulations proposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Based on the proposed regulations, AEP will have to retire nearly 6,000 megawatts of coalfueled power generation; upgrade or install new advanced emissions reduction equipment on another 10,100 megawatts; refuel 1,070 megawatts of coal generation as 932 megawatts of natural gas capacity; and build 1,220 megawatts of natural gas-fueled generation.

(Excerpt) Read more at timesnews.net ...
Title: Re: How Obama is INTENTIONALLY collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 10, 2011, 10:11:39 AM
Obama Betrays Great Britain on Falkland Islands
Pundit Press ^ | 6/10/2011 | Timothy Knight


________________________ ________________________ ___________



President Barack Obama joined forces with Venezuelan despot Hugo Chavez, Argentinian President Cristina Kirchner and the unanimous Organization of American States in "reaffirming the need" of Argentina and Britain to resume negotiations on the sovereignty of the Malvinas Islands.

I'm sorry - the Falkland Islands.

What the hell is wrong with Obama?

Not only did he side against our most important ally in the entire world over territorial claims that were settled almost three decades ago, but he called the islands by their Argentinian name - instead of their accepted British title.


(Excerpt) Read more at punditpress.blogspot.com ...


________________________ ________________________ __

I guess he is still pissed off at not getting invited to the wedding.   
Title: Re: How Obama is INTENTIONALLY collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: OzmO on June 10, 2011, 10:13:18 AM
Wow.   :o
Title: Re: How Obama is INTENTIONALLY collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 11, 2011, 10:18:35 AM
Mark Steyn: Obama’s Road to Nowhere - This is Main Street, Obamaville: All bumps, no road.
NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE ^ | June 11, 2011 | Mark Steyn




Obama's Road to Nowhere
This is Main Street, Obamaville: All bumps, no road.


‘There are always going to be bumps on the road to recovery,’’ President Obama said at a Jeep plant in Toledo the other day. “We’re going to pass through some rough terrain that even a Wrangler would have a tough time with.’’ His audience booed. They’re un-fire-able union members with lavish benefits, and even they weary of the glib lines from his twelve-year-old speechwriters.

We’re not on the road to recovery. You can’t get there from here, as they say. Obama was in Toledo to “celebrate” the sale of the government’s remaining stake in Chrysler to Fiat. That’s “Fiat” as in the Italian car manufacturer rather than “an authoritative or arbitrary decree (from the Latin ‘let it be done’),” which would be almost too perfect a name for an Obamafied automobile. The Treasury crowed that Fiat had agreed to pay a whopping $560 million for the government’s Chrysler shares.

Wow! 560 million smackeroos! If you laid them out end to end, they’re equivalent to what the federal government borrows every three hours. That’s some windfall! In the time it takes to fly Obama to Toledo to boast about it, he’d already blown through the Italians’ check. But who knows? If every business in the U.S. were to be nationalized and sold to foreigners to cover another three hours’ worth of debt, this summer’s “Recovery Summer” would be going even more gangbusters. I’d ask one of Obama’s egghead economists to explain it to you simpletons, but unfortunately they’ve all resigned and returned to cozy sinecures in academia. The latest is chief economic adviser Austan Goolsbee, the genius who in 2007, just before the subprime hit the fan, wrote in the New York Times that this exciting new form of home “ownership” was an “innovation” that had “opened doors to the excluded” and was part of an “incredible flowering of new types of home loans.”

Where have all the flowers gone? Not to worry. By now, some organization of which you’re a member has already booked Professor Goolsbee to give an after-dinner speech at your annual meeting where you’ll be privileged to get a glimpse of his boundless expertise for a mere six-figure speaking fee.

“I’m not concerned about a double-dip recession,” Obama said last week. Nor would I be if I had government housing, a car and driver, and a social secretary for the missus. But I wonder if it’s such a smart idea to let one’s breezy insouciance out of the bag when you’re giving a press conference. In May the U.S. economy added just 54,000 jobs. For the purposes of comparison, that same month over 100,000 new immigrants arrived in America.

So what kind of jobs were those 54,000? Economics professorships at the University of Berkeley? Non-executive directorships at Goldman Sachs? That sort of thing? No, according to an analysis by Morgan Stanley, half the new jobs created were at McDonald’s. That’s amazing. Not the Mickey D supersized hiring spree, but the fact that there’s fellows at Morgan Stanley making a bazillion dollars a year analyzing fluctuations in minimal-skill fast-food service-job hiring trends. What a great country! For as long as it lasts. Which is probably until some new regulatory agency starts enforcing Michelle Obama’s dietary admonitions.

Until then, relax. That bump in the road is just a quarter-pounder with cheese that fell off the counter on the drive-thru lane to recovery. Like every other blessing, we owe the Big MacConomy to the wisdom of Good King Barack. “This plant indirectly supports hundreds of other jobs right here in Toledo,” Obama told the workers at Chrysler. “After all, without you, who’d eat at Chet’s or Inky’s or Rudy’s? . . . Manufacturers from Michigan to Massachusetts are looking for new engineers to build advanced batteries for American-made electric cars. And obviously, Chet’s and Inky’s and Zinger’s, they’ll all have your business for some time to come.”

A couple of days later, Chet’s announced it was closing after nine decades. “It was the economy and the smoking ban that hurt us more than anything,” said the owner. But maybe he can retrain and re-open it as a community-organizer grantwriting-application center. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the median period of unemployment is now nine months — the longest it’s been since they’ve been tracking the numbers. Long-term unemployment is worse than in the Depression. Life goes slowly waiting for a fast-food job to open up.

This is Main Street, Obamaville: All bumps, no road. But shimmering on the distant horizon, beyond the shuttered diner and the foreclosed homes, is a state-of-the-art electric car, the new Fiat Mirage, that should be wheeling into town in a half-decade or so provided it can find somewhere to charge. “We will be able to look back and tell our children,” declared King Barack the Modest of his own candidacy in 2008, “this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow.” Great news for the oceans! Meanwhile, back on dry land, a quarter of American mortgages are “underwater” — that’s to say, the home “owners” owe more than the joint is worth. In Harry Reid’s Nevada, it’s 63 percent. Perhaps Obama’s Aquatic Bodies Water-Level Regulatory Authority, no doubt headed by Jamie Gorelick or Franklin Raines or some other Democrat worthy, could have its jurisdiction extended to the Nevada desert.


“Hope”? “Change”? These are the good times. What “change” are you “hoping” for in Obama’s second term? The loss of America’s triple-A credit-rating? The end of the dollar as global currency? Or just a slight upward tick in the same-old-same-old multi-trillion dollar binge-spending?

On what?

Random example from the headlines: The paramilitarization of the education bureaucracy. The federal Department of Education doesn’t employ a single teacher but it does have a SWAT team: They kicked down a front door in Stockton, Calif. last week and handcuffed Kenneth Wright (erroneously) in connection with a student-loan “investigation.” “We can confirm that we executed a search warrant,” said Department of Education spokesperson Gina Burress.

The Department of Education issues search warrants? Who knew? The Brokest Nation in History is the only country in the developed world whose education secretary has his own Delta Force. And, in a land with over a trillion dollars in college debt, I’ll bet it’s got no plans to downsize.

Nor has the TSA. A 24-year-old woman has been awarded compensation of $2,350 after TSA agents exposed her breasts to all and sundry at the Corpus Christi Airport security line and provided Weineresque play-by-play commentary. “We regret that the passenger had an unpleasant experience,” said a TSA spokesgroper, also very Weinerly. But hey, those are a couple of cute bumps on the road, lady!

The American Dream, 2011: You pay four bucks a gallon to commute between your McJob and your underwater housing to prop up a spendaholic, grabafeelic, paramilitarized bureaucracy-without-end bankrupting your future at the rate of a fifth of a billion dollars every hour.

In a sane world, Americans would be outraged at the government waste that confronts them everywhere you turn: The abolition of the federal Education Department and the TSA is the very least they should be demanding. Instead, our elites worry about sea levels.

The oceans will do just fine. It’s America that’s drowning.

— Mark Steyn, a National Review columnist, is author of America Alone. © 2011 Mark Steyn.

Title: Re: How Obama is INTENTIONALLY collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 13, 2011, 11:16:56 AM
Obama plans to discuss jobs at company shifting focus to China
The Daily Caller ^ | June 13, 2011 | Amanda Carey

Posted on Monday, June 13, 2011 2:10:15 PM by Kaslin

President Barack Obama will visit the North Carolina-based Cree LED Light Company Monday to tour the plant and meet with his Council on Jobs and Competitiveness to discuss job creation and policies to spur economic growth.


But Cree, a major recipient of Recovery Act funds, may be sending that money straight to China. At the very least, its CEO, Chuck Swoboda, has a very China-centered strategy that involves building a new plant overseas, two facts that the Republican National Committee plans to highlight Monday morning prior to the president’s visit.

Cree received a $39 million as an Advanced Energy Manufacturing Tax Credit from the Recovery Act.

The company began developing clean energy technology, hired a few more hundred workers, and the administration touted it as a “true American success story” on the White House Web site.



Then in late 2010, the company opened its first plant in Huizhou City,China. That made Cree the first global LED company to locate a manufacturing plant in China.


But that plant is only beginning of an expansion in China, says Swoboda. At the opening of the plant, Swoboda boasted that more than 50 percent of Cree’s employees live and work in China.

“We will continue to invest here for both human talent and the most state-of-the-art technologies,” Swoboda said. “We have committed that in the coming three to five years, we will continue to expand our operation in Huizhou.”

Swoboda also promoted the company’s new strategy as “Cree Chip, China Heart,” adding that Cree will “push the health, scientific and orderly development of the LED industry in China … and make many more contributions to energy savings and emissions reductions in China.”

(Huntsman close to announcing presidential run)

Moreover, Swoboda told his Chinese audience that though it is a U.S. company traded on the Nasdaq, “Cree management never runs this company as a U.S. company.” This despite the millions it got from American taxpayers.


“This is just another example of an administration that talks about an economy that has turned around while ignoring what is happening to American families who are struggling to find jobs, pay higher food and gas prices and are dealing with the decline of their home value,” one Republican source told The Daily Caller.

This isn’t the first time, however, that Recovery Act funds have gone overseas. The Department of Energy, for example, acknowledged last year that for all the focus on green jobs, $2.3 billion in manufacturing tax credits eventually went to foreign firms in China, South Korea, and Spain.
Title: Re: How Obama is INTENTIONALLY collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 16, 2011, 07:17:32 PM
Obama Admin Objects to Alaska Oil and Gas Development Bill
New York Times ^ | 6/16/11 | Phil Taylor
Posted on June 16, 2011 9:23:01 PM EDT by Nachum

The Obama administration today said a proposal from House Natural Resources Chairman Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) to expedite oil and gas leasing and energy infrastructure permitting in an Alaska reserve could force federal regulators to flout environmental laws and includes a costly, redundant resource assessment. Mike Pool, deputy director of the Bureau of Land Management, also announced the agency will hold lease sales in the National Petroleum Reserve, known as NPR-A, in December 2011 and each year after, making good on the administration's mid-May promise to expedite development in the 23-million-acre reserve.

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...



Title: Re: How Obama is INTENTIONALLY collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 17, 2011, 04:52:37 AM
$5 billion-a-year ethanol subsidy nearing its end? (Obama threatens a veto)
MSNBC ^ | 6/17/2011 | nbc



How to remove $5 billion from the federal deficit in one fell swoop? Eliminate the $5 billion-a-year subsidy given to oil refiners for blending ethanol into gasoline.

The Senate voted Thursday to do just that, and even though the amendment is attached to a bill that probably won’t pass, the 73-27 vote sends a message that many Democrats and Republicans are behind an idea supported by an odd coalition that ranges from Tea Partyers to the Sierra Club.

Thirty-three Republicans joined 40 Democrats in voting to eliminate the subsidy.

Provided in the form of tax credits, the subsidy gives 45 cents a gallon to refiners who use ethanol, a renewable fuel additive that comes mainly from corn in the U.S.

These tax breaks long have been supported as a way to reduce oil imports by politicians in both parties — emphatically so for many who run for president and look to woo the farm vote.

,,,,,,,,,

The White House issued a statement saying it was against a full repeal of ethanol subsidies, indicating it could use its veto power if the amendment continued to advance in Congress.  

"We need reforms and a smarter biofuels program, but simply cutting off support for the industry isn't the right approach," said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.


(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...

Title: Re: How Obama is INTENTIONALLY collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 17, 2011, 05:13:09 AM
White House’s Daley seeks balance in outreach meeting with manufacturers
By Peter Wallsten and and Jia Lynn Yang, Published: June 16




It was supposed to be the White House’s latest make-nice session with corporate America — a visit by Chief of Staff William M. Daley to a meeting with hundreds of manufacturing executives in town to press lawmakers for looser regulations.

But the outreach soon turned into a rare public dressing down of the president’s policies with his highest-ranking aide.

One by one, exasperated executives stood to air their grievances on environmental regulations and stalled free-trade deals. And Daley, the former banker tasked with building ties with industry, found himself looking for the right balance between empathy and defending his boss.

At one point, the room erupted in applause when Massachusetts utility executive Doug Starrett, his voice shaking with emotion, accused the administration of blocking construction on one of his facilities to protect fish, saying government “throws sand into the gears of progress.”

Daley said he did not have many good answers, appearing to throw up his hands in frustration at what he called “bureaucratic stuff that’s hard to defend.”

“Sometimes you can’t defend the indefensible,” he said.

The exchange suggests the limits of the elaborate courtship of corporations begun by President Obama and his top aides after Democrats’ big losses in the 2010 elections — an effort that has taken on new urgency in recent weeks.

Top aides have been reaching out to business leaders as Obama’s reelection campaign seeks to expand its network of potential new donors and fundraisers. And the White House has hoped that a closer alliance with businesses would help spur job growth.

Even as the White House pledges more receptivity to corporate concerns, business continues to spar with the administration on numerous fronts.

Wall Street is lobbying to undo many of the new regulations signed into law last year. Manufacturers say environmental policies are hindering growth. And, in a high-profile case that tests the administration’s allegiances, aerospace giant Boeing is warring with labor regulators over its decision to open a plant in South Carolina, which is hostile to unions.

In his speech and during a question-and-answer session Thursday, Daley laid out the administration’s efforts to help business, promoting Obama’s support for changing the corporate tax structure and for new free trade agreements.

He pointed to the administration’s effort, led by regulatory czar Cass Sunstein, to identify hundreds of rules that could be costing businesses money and time.

When a paper company executive said Environmental Protection Agency regulations might cost her $10 million to $15 million to upgrade a mill, Daley said the number of rules and regulations “that come out of agencies is overwhelming.”

Later, he added: “We’re trying to bring some rationality to it.”

Daley’s appearance before Thursday’s meeting of the National Association of Manufacturers was an unusual public appearance for Obama’s relatively new chief of staff. He invited the executives to offer candid views and extended the question-and-answer session, at one point joking, “I’ll probably regret saying that.”

He acknowledged the touchy political calculation the White House faces as Obama tries to promote his economic record on the campaign trail while being sensitive to the reality that many Americans are struggling. This month, the White House was thrown a political curveball with a surprisingly glum jobs report in which the unemployment rate ticked up to 9.1 percent, giving several of Obama’s potential GOP rivals an opening to attack his leadership.

“You can’t sound Pollyannaish,” Daley told the business leaders. “I believe this economy of ours is better than the perception right now.”

Daley offered blunt assessments on key issues of interest to executives in the room.

On the status of free-trade agreements with South Korea, Panama and Colombia, he suggested politics was proving to be a challenge. He said there are “people who lose from these agreements” and urged businesses to lobby their workers to help overcome opposition on Capitol Hill.

“No politician loses an election because they voted against trade,” he said.

On lowering the corporate tax rate, a top goal of business groups, Daley said again, “there are winners and losers.” He warned that some small businesses might face a tax increase.

Mary Andringa, head of NAM, described the meeting as “constructive” and was “quite pleased” that Daley devoted more than an hour to the group’s concerns.

But some business executives in the room said they were unimpressed by the White House’s attempts to woo industry.

“We think there’s a thin facade by the administration to say the right things, but they don’t come close to doing things,” said Barney T. Bishop III, chief executive of the business group Associated Industries of Florida. He called the efforts to streamline regulations “immaterial.”

“We love the platitudes, but we want to see action,” Bishop said.

White House officials described Thursday’s encounter as part of a work in progress. Spokesman Eric Schultz described the meeting as a “frank and open conversation . . . about steps we can take to drive private-sector job growth.”

Daley said afterward that he’s sympathetic to the gripes he heard. “This is a practical world you’ve got to live in,” he said. “These people run businesses.”



http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/white-houses-daley-seeks-balance-in-outreach-meeting-with-manufacturers/2011/06/16/AG177yXH_print.html

Title: Re: How Obama is INTENTIONALLY collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 17, 2011, 08:00:10 AM
Oil CEO: “We can create jobs” (Chevron CEO wants government to stop creating impediments)
Hotair ^ | 06/17/2011 | Jazz Shaw




A recent conference on jobs and competitiveness in Washington, DC brought together business leaders who attempted to address some of the business challenges facing the nation today. As part of this, Chevron CEO John Watson spoke to reporters at CNBC, casting a harsh light on one of the disturbing ironies in federal government policy. At a time when the White House is supposed to be focusing on job creation and economic growth they are not only leaving major opportunities on the table, but actively working to avoid huge potential gains in those areas. (View the video and transcript here.)


“I was very concerned about the tax proposals in the Menendez bill that came forward that day because i never thought I would see the day when an administration and more than half the U.S. senate would propose a tax bill that actually would disadvantage 132-year-old company like Chevron relative to Russian, Chinese, French, Italian and other companies, not just outside the united states, but inside the united states of America. So we did push back on bills that were being critical trying to impose punitive taxes on our business. We can create jobs, we can play a positive role and that’s my message.”

The interviewers did a good job of bringing up other concerns being heard around the country, such as the image of “Big Oil” raking in huge profits and doing well while so many Americans are out of work and unable to share in that prosperity. Watson points out that, first, while Chevron reported profits of $19B last year, they are actively investing more than $26B this year in exploration and other industry costs in the race to stay ahead of field depletion. Further, he seemed to express some frustration with the fact that energy companies are ready – today – to provide jobs and allow more Americans to share in prosperity, but it is our own government that’s slowing down the process.

CNBC: So do you think… we’re in D.C., this is the red tape capital, are the policies or lack of policies that we’re seeing here hurting job creation at Chevron?

Watson: They are. In fact, we told a group of senators this morning, that there’s a long list of regulations that have been enacted and been in place for a long time and new ones that keep coming that are restricting our ability to create jobs. We’ve provided that list to the senators. but for our industry in particular, you know, deep water drill ship employs about 200 people directly and 1,000 indirectly. It raises revenue for the government, puts people back to work, reduces imported oil. We just want to be put in the game. We can create jobs if we’re given the opportunity.

The list of “demands” that the oil companies have in order to make this happen don’t appear to be particularly onerous.

Opening up acreage to development

Issuing permits in a timely fashion

Keeping in place a tax structure that allows the investment to create those jobs

This isn’t rocket science and, as Watson points out, industry leaders have now placed the list of requirements directly into the hands of the senators. The jobs and investment capital are there waiting, as he puts it, to just be put into the game. If Congress wants to improve their not particularly impressive approval ratings, this might be a pretty good place to start.


Title: Re: How Obama is INTENTIONALLY collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 19, 2011, 05:45:26 PM

Return to the Article

June 16, 2011
Our Reactionary President

By Victor Davis Hanson
Barack Obama is the most reactionary president in the recent history of the United States. Obama seems intent on turning back the clock to the good old days of the 1960s and 1970s, when rigid political orthodoxy, not an open mind, once guided government.

Take the economy. The 1980s implosion of communism in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union proved that state control of the means of production guaranteed poverty and worse. The current insolvent and fragmenting European Union, and the stagnant economics of the exploding Middle East, remind us that state socialism does not work.

Why, then, would Obama, in horse-and-buggy fashion, go back to such fossilized concepts as absorbing the nation's health care system, increasing the federal government's role in the economy by taking over automobile corporations, borrowing $5 trillion to spend on new entitlements, or proposing an array of much higher taxes -- all in a vain effort to ensure an equality of result?

Almost every key indicator of the current economy -- unemployment, deficits, housing, energy -- argues that Obama's reactionary all-powerful statist approach has only made things far worse.

In a bygone era without full workers' compensation, unemployment insurance and overtime pay, big unions ran the United States. Today less than 7 percent of Americans belong to them.

Yet President Obama wants to block the Boeing aircraft company from opening an assembly plant in South Carolina, on the grounds that it is a right-to-work state and new assembly workers might be free to reject union representation. The administration is now allowing union-backed Democrats in Congress to block free-trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea in order to limit competition with domestic unionized industries.

Apparently the decades-old idea that globalized free trade encourages competition, enhances productivity, lowers prices for strapped consumers and helps developing nations never existed.

Obama is still bragging about massive federal subsidies to the wind and solar power industries, while making it nearly impossible to obtain new leases for fossil fuel exploration. Yet for all the billions spent, the percentage of new energy produced by subsidized high-cost "green" projects has not changed much.

Meanwhile, revolutionary breakthroughs in the exploration for and recovery of natural gas, oil, tar sands, shale oil and coal deposits in just a year or two have vastly expanded the nation's fossil fuel reserves and the ability to produce clean energy from them.

It turns out that the U.S. may be the world's new Saudi Arabia when it comes to known reserves of all forms of gas, oil and coal. As our president still harps on solar panels and windmills, private enterprise on its own is exploring new ways of powering industries, homes and cars with cheap and plentiful natural gas -- hoping to free us from dependence on OPEC.

On illegal immigration, the president sounds like he's a calcified relic from the 1960s, as he evokes the southern border in terms of civil rights and racial prejudice. Those blinders explain why he recently suggested that Latinos "punish" their supposed conservative "enemies," and quite falsely claimed that the border fence was completed, despite the wish of his Republican opponents supposedly to add moats and alligators. All that rhetoric sounds like it came from a beads and bell-bottoms '60s campus activist, not the 21st century White House.

In the coming decades, the United States will need new legal immigrants -- those of all races and from all places of origin who are skilled and highly educated, or who have capital. The new critical benchmark to keep America competitive will be an immigrant's merit -- not just his race, family ties, proximity to the border, or his use as a pawn in partisan politics.

The United States is now a multiracial society, one never more intermarried and assimilated. Yet this administration still acts as if particular racial groups are forever ossified in amber, and so deserve particular racial set-aside spoils. The attorney general weirdly talks of "my people." The president himself offered a campaign video in 2010 targeted in part to those defined by their race, as part of a larger strategy to appeal to racial block voting. Promises of more federal entitlement money are still couched in thinly veiled racial terms -- as if there is no awareness that five decades of such Great Society programs have done much to ensure dependency and destroy the traditional inner-city family.

"Hope and change" turned out not to be a liberal call to consider new ways of solving problems. It was not even a conservative slogan to keep all that has worked well in the past.

Instead, Barack Obama proved to be an old-fashioned reactionary. He hoped to change things back to the politically correct 1960s and 1970s way of doing things -- whether it ever worked or not.

 


Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and author, most recently, of "A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War." You can reach him by e-mailing author@victorhanson.com.
Copyright 2011, Tribune Media Services Inc.

Page Printed from: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/06/16/our_reactionary_president_110229-full.html at June 19, 2011 - 05:44:12 PM PDT
Title: Re: How Obama is INTENTIONALLY collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 21, 2011, 07:10:31 PM
APNewsBreak: Rules would speed up union elections (Sweeping new pro-union election rules from NLRB)
AP via Breitbart.com ^ | 6/21/2011 | SAM HANANEL
Posted on June 21, 2011 12:44:49 PM EDT by Qbert

WASHINGTON (AP) - Labor regulators are set to propose sweeping new rules Tuesday that would dramatically speed up the time frame for union elections, a move that could make it easier for struggling unions to organize new members, and cut the time businesses have to mount anti-union campaigns.

A copy of the planned rules, to be announced by the National Labor Relations Board, was obtained by The Associated Press. The proposal is expected to irritate Republicans and business groups who have complained about the board's pro-labor actions.

Most labor elections currently take place within 45-60 days after a union gathers enough signatures to file a petition, a time many companies use to discourage workers from unionizing. The new plan could cut that time by days or even weeks—depending on the case—by simplifying procedures, deferring litigation and setting shorter deadlines for hearings and filings.

(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Title: Re: How Obama is INTENTIONALLY collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 22, 2011, 05:01:04 AM
Boosting unions & killing jobs
By BRET JACOBSON


Posted: 10:24 PM, June 21, 2011

Here's a truth-in-advertising warning to foreign investors about this week's glossy White House sales pitch: Even as President Obama promises he's "taking steps to ensure that we remain the destination of choice for investors," his National Labor Relations Board is putting the screws to America's employers.

The most obvious example is the NLRB's ham-fisted attack on aircraft-manufacturer Boeing. Arguing that the company moved production of some of its Dreamliner jets to right-to-work South Carolina from Washington state in order to punish a union, the board ordered Boeing to close its new South Carolina plant and do the work back in Washington.

Obama insists he wants government to "partner with the private sector" to create jobs, but the NLRB's action will have the opposite effect. Indeed, it could cost 1,000 existing Boeing jobs in South Carolina, and eliminate still more jobs that would've been created once the new production line was fully up and running.

Add in the chilling effect: Any businesses looking to expand will have to worry that the heavy hand of the NLRB could come down on them should they shift work to one of the 22 right-to-work states.

Bill Gould, who served on the NLRB during the Clinton administration and agrees with much of what the NLRB is doing these days, has called the Boeing challenge "unprecedented."

But the Obama NLRB has clearly signaled that it puts the interests of Big Labor ahead of everything else, including its proper role as neutral enforcer of the nation's labor laws. Examples from just this year:

* The board is pushing to give unions the right to enter a workplace even if their intent is to harass customers and employees. The NLRB says companies shouldn't be allowed to treat union officials any differently than they do charitable organizations they let on their premises, such as the Girl Scouts or the Red Cross.

* It wants to force employers to post pro-organizing notices in about 6 million workplaces, most of which aren't unionized, under the guise of informing workers about the National Labor Relations Act. But the posters wouldn't inform these workers about aspects of the law the unions don't like -- such as the right to vote out a union or withhold union dues spent on politics.

* The board is moving ahead with lawsuits against Arizona and South Dakota over provisions in their state constitutions -- enacted through ballot initiatives last fall -- that require secret ballots for union-organizing votes. Labor unions, in an effort to expand their ranks, have been pushing hard for the opposite -- a "card check" system that would let them know who has and hasn't voted to organize. The NLRB's lawsuit conveniently fits into this effort.

* The NLRB is also pushing to let unions cherry-pick groups of workers within a company to organize, without giving those who oppose the union the opportunity to vote, changing an established definition of a "bargaining unit" that has been in place for more than 50 years. The result would be a costly, chaotic mess for businesses trying to juggle multiple unions and different sets of work rules, benefits and wage rates.

* The board is now pushing through rules that eliminate key checks and balances from the process by which a workplace can be unionized -- in the name of speeding things up, it's upending decades of precedent to make it easier for unions to force themselves on workers, who will have less information.

In all this, Obama shares full responsibility. He not only appointed the NLRB's acting general counsel, Lafe Solomon, he did an end-run around Congress by using a "recess appointment" to put Craig Becker, a former lawyer for the Service Employees International Union and the AFL-CIO, on the board over bipartisan objections.

In this year's State of the Union speech, the president said that to "win the future," the country has to "make America the best place on Earth to do business." If he really wants to achieve that, he must tell the people he's appointed to run the National Labor Relations Board: Arbitrary, costly and unfair enforcement of labor laws isn't the way to win the future or attract foreign investment.

Bret Jacobson is partner at Maverick Strategies + Communications, which serves employers and free-market advocates.

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Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/boosting_unions_killing_jobs_wTH6UrpR7RsZXqlJsREDZN#ixzz1Q0OBymlj

Title: Re: How Obama is INTENTIONALLY collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 22, 2011, 05:02:43 AM
The Looming ObamaCare Disaster - You ain’t seen nothing yet.
Human Events ^ | 06/21/2011 | John Hayward



________________________ ________________________ ____________-



PricewaterhouseCoopers, a professional services firm created in a merger that destroyed several spaces and capital letters, has just issued their forecast for the future of America under ObamaCare. The Heritage Foundation provides a summary of the results. It’s not pretty.

The important thing to remember about ObamaCare is that the past two years have been its salad days. The really hideous damage is still on the way. Thousands of jobs destroyed, health care costs rising, rampant corruption through the waiver program… and it’s just getting warmed up. This baby hasn’t even popped out of first gear yet.

What does PricewaterhouseCoopers see ahead for us? Health care costs continue to rise at an accelerating pace, from a 7.5% increase in 2010 to 8.5% in 2012. As Heritage’s Margot Crouch notes, this is the exact opposite of the promises made by President Obama.

But wait, that’s not all! “Even steeper rises in the cost of private insurance are possible, due to ObamaCare’s reductions in Medicare payment rates and its expansion of the Medicaid program,” warns Crouch. That’s because private parties have to make up the difference when those programs pay less.

The chief actuary of Medicare thinks “15 percent of hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, and home health agencies” will become unprofitable by 2019. What happens to unprofitable businesses again? I mean, after all the bailouts have been exhausted? What will the health care industry look like in eight years, when at least fifteen percent of the providers are gone?

The really awful news is PWC’s projection of employer reaction to ObamaCare’s crushing mandates. Their survey shows “nearly half of employers will drop their coverage, dumping employees into the government-run exchanges.” Also, “four out of five employers will make changes to help cover new costs under ObamaCare, including raising premiums, deductibles, and co-payments.”

So much for “if you like your plan, you can keep your plan.” The tidal wave of people slamming into the federal exchanges will become a nuclear deficit explosion. We’ll all be able to look back at the charlatans who claimed ObamaCare would be deficit-neutral, and the simpletons who believed them, and laugh through our tears.

“The negative consequences of ObamaCare’s changes will be threefold: higher costs for those with employer-sponsored coverage; a greater debt burden on current and future taxpayers; and slower growth in job creation and the overall economy,” Crouch concludes. In other words, precisely the things ObamaCare critics said would happen. ObamaCare critics will go down in history as the most thoroughly vindicated group to ever pick up a keyboard.

Remember that every single politician who opposes the complete repeal of ObamaCare is willfully and knowingly condemning you to the future PricewaterhouseCoopers projects. Ignorance and fantasy are no longer excuses, and never should have been.
Title: Re: How Obama is INTENTIONALLY collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 22, 2011, 06:06:38 AM
Fishermen protest regulations
Anglers: Restrictions are hurting local small businesspeople
November 08, 2009
By S. BRADY CALHOUN / News Herald Writer
http://www.newsherald.com/articles/style-78901-fishermen-0in.html







PANAMA CITY BEACH — The Jimi Hendrix version of the Star Spangled Banner was playing out of one of the vessels and it was a cool, clear day on the Bay near Hathaway Bridge but Saturday’s gathering of charter boat captains was not a party.

It was their last stand, local captains and their supporters said.

See photos from the protest >>

New regulations from the National Marine Fisheries Service of amberjack and red snapper are destroying the local fishing industry, the captains said. About 50 boats, including small two-man skiffs, large pleasure boats and mid-size trawlers took part in the watery protest. On the bridge, supporters waved signs and thanked dozens of motorists who honked their support.

“We’re all about conservation,” Capt. Bill Little said. “We don’t want to rape the resources. We want to do what’s right.”

Little runs the Fishing Express in Port St. Joe.

The new restrictions were instituted by scientists who are relying on old and outdated data, the captains said. One supporter held up a sign that said, “Get the data right.” Another sign, on one of the boats, said, “Flawed data, no fish, no income, no jobs.”

Jim Crowell said he ran a charter fishing business for 20 years until the regulations forced him to sell and find a new line of work.

“They have pretty much closed the industry,” he said. He added that there are dozens of for sale signs on local charter boats.

Peggy Rhodes, a longtime charter fishing customer, also came to the protest Saturday.

“We just want a fair shake,” she said. She also predicted that the destruction of the charter fishing industry would have far-reaching consequences for hotel owners, restaurants and others who make their living off tourism.

“It’s ridiculous,” she said.




________________________ _____________________

Obama the Destroyer - killing one industry after the next.   


Title: Re: How Obama is INTENTIONALLY collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 22, 2011, 07:03:22 AM
White House loosens border rules for 2012
Published: 6:28 PM 06/20/2011 | Updated: 12:12 AM 06/21/2011
 By Neil Munro




Relations between the immigrant population of Forks -- many who work in the surrounding forests -- and the Border Patrol have been strained for many months, and tensions have increased due to the recent death of an immigrant who was trying to evade a Border Patrol agent. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

President Barack Obama’s administration is quietly offering a quasi-amnesty for hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants, while aiming to win reelection by mobilizing a wave of new Hispanic voters, say supporters of stronger immigration law enforcement.

The new rules were quietly announced Friday with a new memo from top officials at the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency. The “prosecutorial discretion” memo says officials need not enforce immigration laws if illegal immigrants are enrolled in an education center or if their relatives have volunteered for the US military.

“They’re pushing the [immigration] agents to be even more lax, to go further in not enforcing the law,” said Kris Kobach, Kansas’ secretary of state. “At a time when millions of Americans are unemployed and looking for work, this is more bad news coming from the Obama administration… [if the administration] really cared about putting Americans back to work, it would be vigorously enforcing the law,” said Kobach, who has helped legislators in several states draft local immigration-related laws.

“We think it is an excellent step,” said Laura Vasquez, at the Hispanic-advocacy group, La Raza, which pushed for the policies, and which is working with other groups to register Hispanics to vote in 2012. “What’s very important is how the prosecutorial discretion memo is implemented” on the streets, she said.

The Hispanic vote could be crucial in the 2012 election, because the Obama campaign hopes to offset its declining poll ratings by registering new Hispanic voters in crucial swing states, such as Virginia and North Carolina.

To boost the Hispanic vote, the administration has enlisted support from Hispanic media figures, appointed an experienced Hispanic political operative to run the political side of the Obama reelection campaign, and has maintained close ties to Hispanic advocacy groups, including La Raza. For example, La Raza’s former senior vice president and lobbyist, Cecilia Munoz, was hired by the Obama administration as director of intergovernmental affairs in 2009.

On Friday, officials at ICE announced several new administrative changes to immigration enforcement.

The primary document was the six-page “prosecutorial discretion” memo, which provided new reasons for officials to not deport illegal immigrants.

“When weighing whether an exercise of prosecutorial discretion may be warranted for a given alien, ICE officials, agents and attorneys should consider all relevant factors, including, but not limited to – the circumstances of the person’s arrival in the United States … particularly if the alien came to the United States as a young child; the Person’s pursuit of education… .. whether the person, or the person’s immediate relative, has served in the U.S. military,” said the memo.

“The factors are extremely broad and very troubling … [it] look like a stealth DREAM Act enforcement through non-enforcement,” said Kobach.

The Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act has been repeatedly rejected by Congress from 2001 to 2010. “The deliberate non-enforcement of our immigration laws in this administration certainly seems politically motivated,” said Kobach, adding “how exactly they expect to win votes by doing this is beyond me.”

In practice, the new memo won’t make much of a difference because “ICE isn’t deporting people now,” said Jessica Vaughan, an analyst at the Center for Immigration Studies. While pleading limited resources, “they only [deport] individuals with criminal charges,” such as felonies or several misdemeanors, she said.

There are roughly 10 million illegal immigrants in the United States, of which roughly 7 million are working. Business and Democrat-allied advocacy groups have stoutly opposed federal and state efforts to identify and deport the immigrants, but public opposition has repeatedly stopped proposals – including the Obama-backed DREAM Act – to provide the illegal immigrants with amnesties and residency permits.

On Friday, officials also announced a new advisory panel intended “to implement policies stopping the [deportation and] removal of individuals charged with, but not convicted of, minor traffic offenses who have no other criminal history or egregious immigration violations.”

Advocates for illegal immigrants have long argued that police should not deport illegal immigrants who are identified following a traffic violation. “It is not a crime to be be here illegally,” claimed B. Loewe, a spokesman for the National Day Laborers Organizing Network. “Local law-enforcement enforcing immigration laws is a bad idea.”

“It is a misperception that local police are going out to pull people who look like immigrants on trumped-up traffic violations,” countered Vaughan. “They’re not removing people who made a right turn on red light without stopping, because you don’t get arrested for that.”

The agency also announced new training policies for immigration officials, a new policy to shield illegal immigrants from deportation if they seek police protection during a domestic violence episode, and a new form to be given to detained immigrants which tells them they can’t be detained for more than 48 hours by state officials.

These announcements are solutions in search of a problem, said Vaughan. For example, illegal immigrants who successfully show they are domestic violence victims already can get a “U Visa” under an established law, she said. “This is absolutely unheard of for a law enforcement agency to be told to practically apologize for doing its job” of enforcing the law,” she said.

Immigrant advocacy groups said they want to get more from the administration. “We’re continuing to work with the administration for them to show strong leadership and advancing immigration reform,” said Vasquez. “We think there are further steps the administration can take.” For example, the administration should allow people to stay in the United States while their immigration cases are settled, she said.

The administration should end the “Secure Communities” program, which allows state and local police to detain illegals for subsequent deportation by federal authorities, said Loewe. “Secure Communities is an experiment they unleashed on the public without any safeguards or regulations… local law-enforcement of immigration laws is a bad idea,” he said.

Tougher enforcement of immigration laws shouldn’t be used to combat high unemployment among poor Americans, he said. Instead, the government should start a major spending program to build schools and libraries, and levy taxes on major corporations. “When were talking about a drain on the economy,” he said, “we should look at the corporations that refuse to pay back their due.”

But the overall goal of the new memos is victory in the 2012 election, not law enforcement, said Vaughan. It is “kabuki theater… designed [by the administration] to send a signal to these groups that they are taking their concerns very seriously.”

“Latino voters are very engaged and watching carefully what is happening with immigration policies,” said Vasquez, “because they’re deeply effected by it, either because they know someone impacted by it, or themselves are impacted by it.”

Tags: Barack Obama, Illegal immigration

http://dailycaller.com/2011/06/20/white-house-loosens-border-rules-for-2012


________________________ ________________________ ________________________ ____


Time to imprison and Impeach Obama. 
Title: Re: How Obama is INTENTIONALLY collapsing America and destroying the nation
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 22, 2011, 01:47:13 PM
Private emails detail Obama admin involvement in cutting non-union worker pensions post-GM bailout
Yahoo ^ | 6/22/11 | Matthew Boyle - The Daily Caller


________________________ ________________________ _______-

New emails obtained by The Daily Caller contradict claims by the Obama administration that the Treasury Department would avoid “intervening in the day-to-day management” of General Motors post-auto bailout.

These messages reveal that Treasury officials were involved in decision-making that led to more than 20,000 non-union workers losing their pensions. (General Motors not eager to be political talking point in 2012)

Republican Reps. Dan Burton and Mike Turner say that during the GM bailout, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner decided to cut pensions for salaried non-union employees at Delphi, a GM spinoff, to expedite GM’s emergence from bankruptcy.

At a Wednesday hearing, the House Oversight Committee’s Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs, Stimulus Oversight and Government Spending started pushing the Treasury Department for answers on the effects of the bailout and on how much of a role the department played in picking winners and losers.

...

In 2009 congressional testimony, senior Obama administration official Ron Bloom said the president told the Treasury Department to stay out of the management of these companies and downplayed any administration intervention.

“From the beginning of this process, the President gave the Auto Task Force two clear directions regarding its approach to the auto restructurings,” Bloom said then. “The first was to behave in a commercial manner by ensuring that all stakeholders were treated fairly and received neither more nor less than they would have simply because the government was involved. The second was to refrain from intervening in the day-to-day management of these companies.”

But the emails TheDC obtained show high-ranking Treasury Department officials, including Matthew Feldman of Treasury’s Auto Task Force, corresponding with senior GM officials on how to make certain decisions regarding who was going to win and who was going to lose.

....


(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Criminal flash mob intentionally destroying and collapsing America
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 23, 2011, 06:34:28 AM
Stacking the deck for unions
Last Updated: 3:34 AM, June 23, 2011




With the 2012 election season already under way and the president's poll numbers continuing to sink, Team Obama is desperately trying to shore up his labor-union base, courtesy of the now heavily radicalized National Labor Relations Board.

Since taking office, Obama has packed the NLRB with veteran union activists, like Craig Becker, previously the SEIU's top lawyer and associate general counsel of the AFL-CIO.

That's led to one-sided pro-union decisions like the one trying to block Boeing from opening a new plant in South Carolina, a right-to-work state, saying it constitutes illegal punishment of union workers in Washington state.

The NLRB -- founded in 1935 as an independent arbiter of labor-management disputes -- has effectively become an arm of Big Labor.

Now the board has issued one of its most blatantly union-friendly decisions yet -- rewriting the rules for unionization elections in a way that cripples employers' right to mount a counter-organizing campaign.

The new rules shorten the period for elections to as little as 10 days and limits employers' (but not unions') right to conduct a campaign. In fact, unions can start a campaign long before an actual certification petition is filed; employers are effectively limited to the period starting with the filing of that petition.

Little wonder that the unions consider the rule change as important as the right to automatic dues deductions.

At the same time, the NLRB demanded that employers disclose much more information about the consultants they hire to respond to union-organizing campaigns -- a requirement from which unions have been immune since 1959.

The stated reason for both actions -- ensuring more accurate election tabulations -- is mystifying on the face of it: The NLRB's general counsel has described the current record of union elections as "outstanding."

The lone Republican left on the NLRB exposed the real reason: to "effectively eviscerate an employer's legitimate opportunity to express its views about collective bargaining."

Fortunately, the tide of history is turning against Big Labor -- union membership nationwide stands at less than 7 percent, the lowest in a century.

But with President Obama's disastrous handling of the economy costing him more and more votes every day, he needs all the friends he can get.

Their dollars won't hurt his re-election chances, either.

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Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/editorials/stacking_the_deck_for_unions_president_BJHvhVwkMbJTHRK1jtSniL#ixzz1Q6c3mT4A

Title: Re: Obama Admn: Criminal flash mob intentionally destroying and collapsing America
Post by: kcballer on June 23, 2011, 03:42:13 PM
What a stupendously ridiculous thread.  Conjecture and opinion are not proof of anything, other than your ability to hit ctrl - c, ctrl - v over and over again.

Does this somehow make your life any better?  Reading the same old bullsh*t about communist progressives enslaving the liberty and destroying the 'free' market?  Really it's time to peal back the hyperbole.  This thread is nothing more than getbigs version of the national enquirer. 

Sad show from a sad little man with nothing else to do...
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Criminal flash mob intentionally destroying and collapsing America
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 23, 2011, 05:48:51 PM
No I use it for dupes like yourself who sit in wonderment why the economy sucks and things are getting worse. 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Criminal flash mob intentionally destroying and collapsing America
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 23, 2011, 05:52:06 PM
Kc - can you tell me what articles in this thread you disagree with.
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Criminal flash mob intentionally destroying and collapsing America
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 23, 2011, 06:41:47 PM
Geithner: Taxes on ‘Small Business’ Must Rise So Government Doesn’t ‘Shrink’
CNSNews.com ^ | June 23, 2011 | By Terence P. Jeffrey
Posted on June 23, 2011 8:34:02 PM EDT by jacknhoo

(CNSNews.com) - Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told the House Small Business Committee on Wednesday that the Obama administration believes taxes on small business must increase so the administration does not have to “shrink the overall size of government programs.”

The administration’s plan to raise the tax rate on small businesses is part of its plan to raise taxes on all Americans who make more than $250,000 per year—including businesses that file taxes the same way individuals and families do.

(VIDEO AT LINK)

(Excerpt) Read more at cnsnews.com ...

TOPICS: Extended News; Government; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections; Click to Add Topic
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Criminal flash mob intentionally destroying and collapsing America
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 23, 2011, 07:55:29 PM
Is Obama embracing unconstitutional powers?
A recent Hill article on Libya reveals the administration's disturbing disdain for checks on presidential authority
BY DAVID SIROTA

Reuters
President Barack Obama
Thursday's Hill newspaper story on the White House's new Libya War is one for the history books. It is probably the most concise summation of two of the most powerful post-9/11 tropes in our politics.

First and foremost, as my Salon.com colleague Glenn Greenwald deftly shows, it exemplifies the unprincipled, hyper-partisan nature of our public policy discourse, to the point where on the gravest matters of war and peace, professional politicians and activists are thrilled to use the same jeremiads they previously criticized once it is in their momentary self-interest to do so.

But that's not all that this article so perfectly captures. In quoting the Obama administration's petulant criticism of Congress, it gives us a candid-camera snapshot of the executive branch's Kingly Presumption of blatantly unconstitutional authority. Here's what I mean (emphasis mine):

President Obama and his aides appear increasingly angered by threats from Congress over the president's authority to intervene in Libya.

Both in remarks the president made during his address on Afghanistan Wednesday night and in comments made by senior administration officials, the White House is losing patience with Congress...

One senior administration official, on a conference call with reporters Wednesday afternoon, seemed even more angered by the defunding threats from both sides of the aisle.

"And I think, astoundingly, there is a move in the House of Representatives to take an effort as it relates to the ongoing effort to stop a tyrant in Libya and to turn it into a political football in such a way here as to give, at a critical time -- potentially send a very negative signal to the leadership of that country, which, as we all know, has over the course of time carried out hateful and heinous attacks against U.S. citizens, including terrorist attacks."

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/barack_obama/?story=/news/david_sirota/2011/06/23/obama_libya


Title: Re: Obama Admn: Criminal flash mob intentionally destroying and collapsing America
Post by: kcballer on June 24, 2011, 09:15:22 AM
No I use it for dupes like yourself who sit in wonderment why the economy sucks and things are getting worse. 

I don't wonder why the economy is struggling.  The recovery was never going to be quick or painless.  No matter what anyone promised or said.  Dupes like yourself believe we would be out of this by now without Obama.  A foolish statement if ever there was one. 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Criminal flash mob intentionally destroying and collapsing America
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 24, 2011, 09:18:50 AM
I don't wonder why the economy is struggling.  The recovery was never going to be quick or painless.  No matter what anyone promised or said.  Dupes like yourself believe we would be out of this by now without Obama.  A foolish statement if ever there was one. 

Title: Re: Obama Admn: Criminal flash mob intentionally destroying and collapsing America
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 24, 2011, 09:24:01 AM
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Criminal flash mob intentionally destroying and collapsing America
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 24, 2011, 10:05:59 AM
Obama’s Environmentalists Destroy Marine Environment

Posted By Humberto Fontova On June 24, 2011 @ 12:25 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | No Comments



________________________ ________________________ _______



The most prolific marine ecosystem on earth is being systematically destroyed on orders of the U.S. Department of the Interior. Where the BP oil spill failed miserably, Obama’s Dept. of the Interior now triumphs.

First came the “moratorium” on Gulf drilling. “That’s kicking a man when he’s already down,” said former offshore oil worker (and current country music superstar) Trace Adkins last May in an interview with CNN. The Obama administration itself admits to 8-12,000 job losses in Louisiana from the moratorium. But Louisiana now has 25,000 more unemployed than before the moratorium, which continues de facto in the form of stonewalling and lollygagging on the issuance of new drilling permits. So, that “man” is still down and reeling from federal kicks.

Another kick came last September in the form of a federal “notice to lessees.” “As part of our sustained effort to improve the safety of energy production on the Outer Continental Shelf and strengthen environmental protections,” decreed U.S. Dept. of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar last September 15, “We are notifying offshore operators of their legal responsibility to decommission and dismantle their facilities when production is completed.”

Dismantling their production platforms could cost oil operators “$6 billion to $18 billion in lost future production,” according to a report by Mark Kaiser and Allan Pulsipher of the Louisiana State University Center for Energy Studies.

The federal government, however, is unmoved by such projections. Production? Costs? Profits?—come on! Where’s the federal “environmental expert” affected by such stuff?

So let’s try this: the most prolific and “diverse marine ecosystem” ever recorded by marine scientists was created by the “facilities” the U.S. Dept. of the Interior is hell-bent on dismantling (offshore oil platforms). Acting as artificial reefs over the past half century, the natural beauty, teeming fish life, coral colonies, and “bio-diversity,” created by these structures is amply documented in several studies commissioned by none other than the U.S. Dept. of the Interior.

One recent report by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Minerals (a division of the U.S. Dept. of the Interior) boasts that “fish densities are 20 to 50 times higher at oil and gas platforms than in nearby Gulf water, and each platform seasonally serves as critical habitat for 10 to 20 thousand fishes.”

In fact, “villainous” Big Oil produces marine life at rates that puts to shame “wondrous” Earth Goddess Gaia. “The fish Biomass around an offshore oil platform is ten times greater per unit area than for natural coral reefs,” found Dr. Charles Wilson of LSU’s Dept. of Oceanography and Coastal Science (emphasis added). ”Ten to thirty thousand adult fish live around an oil production platform in area half the size of a football field.” For proof click on this video.

An LSU study found that 75 per cent of all offshore fishing trips in Louisiana target these fish-teeming “reefs.” Recreational fishing and diving trips to these structures generate an estimated 5,560 full time jobs and $324 million annually for Louisiana. But Salazar’s decree now forces oil producers to plug 3,500 non-producing wells and dismantle about 650 platforms by 2020. These represent 800 acres of critical Marine habitat. 80 per cent of these oil production “facilities,” by the way, are owned by independent producers rather than “Big Oil” companies such as Exxon or BP.

The feds mandated this dismantling and plugging from the days the very first platforms went up over half a century ago. But production from these wells wasn’t a simple matter of letting them gush until the oil ran out. “Many wells fall idle when extracting the oil becomes unprofitable at a certain price,” explains Don Briggs, president of the Louisiana Oil & Gas Association. “Plugging wells and tearing down platforms will ultimately lead to the loss of oil from idled wells that would become attractive for further production down the road as the price of energy rises, but not if the companies have to rebuild the infrastructure to tap it.”




Environmentalists like to look at this as oil companies hoarding their product in order to “price gouge” us. Others call it the law of supply and demand. And if it’s “not nice to fool mother nature,” history shows it’s even more catastrophic to try and fool markets. The point is, historically, federal rules proved elastic, even by federal standards. A modus vivendi had existed where platforms remained standing and wells unplugged until “one year after the lease [by the oil producer from the feds] expired,” rather than until “production stopped.”

No longer. The Obama team has cracked the whip. “We have placed the [oil] industry on notice that they will be held to the highest standards of planning and operations in developing leases,” stressed Sec. Ken Salazar.

Accidently drop your boat anchor over coral off the Florida coast and you’ll be fined up to $25,000 pursuant to federal regulations. Catch and keep a Gag Grouper, Amberjack or more than 2 Red Snapper per fishing trip in any U.S. federal waters and you’ll be fined $600 per fish, pursuant to federal regulations.

Yet endangered coral in the Gulf of Mexico is being blown up, blow-torched, and winched out of the Gulf by the ton to bleach in scrapyards — as mandated by federal regulations. Tons of Red Snapper, Grouper, Amberjack and thousands of other “endangered” or “threatened” fish species are being dynamited in the Gulf of Mexico and left as shark-chum—as mandated by the same federal regulations. Most of these “facilities,” you see, are “dismantled” with explosives detonated around their legs below the Gulf floor. Behold the usual collateral damage here.

“It smells like death here,” said Texas fishing captain Brent Casey about a Gulf coast scrapyard piled with sections of dismantled oil platforms. “I wish you could see these 75-foot piles of metal covered in coral. It’s just insane. Forty years of habitat — gone.”

Not exactly “gone.” After the production of endangered fish stops and the endangered coral is sandblasted off, the habitat is mostly sold as scrap metal to China, as reported by David Sikes of the The Corpus Christi Caller-Times.

So, where are the greenies on this, you ask?

They’re with the despoilers. “This [Dept. of Interior decree] is an important first step in cleaning up what’s become a dumping ground for the offshore oil and gas industry,” said Peter Galvin of the Center for Biological Diversity. Galvin’s Center, by the way, bemoans the fate of the Earth’s coral reefs in particular, and filed a petition with the feds to place 83 species of corals (including several that thrive on those very offshore oil platforms) on the Endangered Species list. “The world’s corals and coral reef ecosystems—these rainforests of the sea– are in crisis,” wails the Center for Biological Diversity. “In just a few decades all their rich biodiversity could disappear completely.”

“Global warming,” needless to add, is the culprit according to the Center for Biological Diversity.

The marine habitat responsible for this proliferation of (so-called) endangered species from coral to Gag Grouper is human-made, you see. And as PETA chieftain Ingrid Newkirk observed: “Humans are the biggest blight on the face of the Earth.”  Earth Goddess Gaia certainly helped the proliferation of marine life in the Gulf of Mexico—but only by piggy-backing on habitat erected by this infernal “blight” known as man. Worse still, this amazing marine habitat was created by the Snideley Whiplash/Darth Vader of Greenie nightmares: oil companies.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Article printed from FrontPage Magazine: http://frontpagemag.com

URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2011/06/24/obama%e2%80%99s-environmentalists-destroy-marine-environment



Title: Re: Obama Admn: Criminal flash mob intentionally destroying and collapsing America
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 24, 2011, 12:50:53 PM
Obama Calls for More Housing Projects
Economic Policy Journal ^ | 06/24/2011 | Economic Policy Journal


________________________ _____________



Since the projects work so well for the poor under LBJ, Obama wants to bring them to all over America. There is no other way to read this Reuters report:

The Obama administration is exploring ways to support rental housing as the troubled U.S. real estate sector has kept potential buyers on the sidelines, a top U.S. Treasury official said on Friday.

"We support a housing finance market that provides liquidity and capital to support affordable rental options and help alleviate the burdens that many low-income households face," Treasury Under Secretary Jeffrey Goldstein told a housing conference.

"We are also exploring how private channels can finance affordable multi-family housing, perhaps with limited, targeted governmental support," he said.

Goldstein said the administration's range of options to expand support for lending for multifamily rental properties include reforms such as risk-sharing with private institutions.

He said private credit markets have generally underserved the multifamily segment that caters to low-income households. Instead, they prefer to invest in high-end developments, Goldstein said

A broke government funneling money to developers willing to build housing for people who can't pay. This should work well.










Cabrini ouses really woked out well in Chicago Obama! 


Fucking idiot. 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Criminal flash mob intentionally destroying and collapsing America
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 24, 2011, 07:55:07 PM
ICE agents warn Americans "to brace themselves for what's coming"

June 23, 2011 9:04 pm ET
Dave Gibson
Immigration Reform Examiner
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In the wake of the recent memo from the Obama administration which announced “prosecutorial discretion” in dealing with illegal aliens, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents across the country have been speaking out what many of them are calling a “backdoor amnesty.”

On Wednesday, ICE Union president Chris Crane told PRNewswire: “Any American concerned about immigration needs to brace themselves for what's coming. This is just one of many new ICE policies in queue aimed at stopping the enforcement of U.S. immigration laws in the United States.  Unable to pass its immigration agenda through legislation, the Administration is now implementing it through agency policy.”

Crane continued: “ICE and the Administration have excluded our union and our agents from the entire process of developing policies, it was all kept secret from us, we found out from the newspapers.  ICE worked hand-in-hand with immigrants rights groups, but excluded its own officers.”

Also ignored by the press, was last year's no confidence vote ICE agents gave Obama appointee, ICE director John Morton.

The National ICE Council represents about 7,000 agents and support staff.

Those agents, just as many American citizens are also convinced that the new policy, which gives special preference to illegal aliens who have a relative who has served in the military, those who are enrolled in any education program and even those who are pregnant or nursing is simply to a move from an unpopular president, desperate for re-election.

Crane said: “The desires of foreign nationals illegally in the United States were the framework from which these policies were developed. The result is a means for every person here illegally to avoid arrest or detention, as officers we will never know who we can or cannot arrest.”

Advertisement

Perhaps, most troubling are the “secret” orders under which ICE agents are reportedly now operating.

“Our officers are already under orders not to make arrests or even talk to foreign nationals in most cases unless another agency has already arrested them; you won't find that written in any public ICE policy,” Crane said.  

Finally, this warning from the ICE Union president: “I think the writing is on the wall for every person concerned about good government and effective immigration reforms - the things happening at ICE represent neither. We are asking everyone to please email or call your Congressman and Senators immediately and ask them to help stop what's happening at ICE, we desperately need your help.”

Of course, the DREAM Act and so-called Comprehensive Immigration Reform (amnesty) have been defeated many times in Congress, due to public outrage.

However, as Obama’s poll numbers continue to slip, he has apparently once again, decided to bypass Congress this time in his pursuit of Latino votes.

Click here to read the now infamous memo: http://www.ice.gov/doclib/secure-communities/pdf/prosecutorial-discretion-memo.pdf


Title: Re: Obama Admn: Criminal flash mob intentionally destroying and collapsing America
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 29, 2011, 03:34:14 PM
Posted on June 28, 2011 8:16:59 PM EDT by Sub-Driver

White House dumps 'secret shopper' survey of doctors

By: Sarah Kliff June 28, 2011 05:57 PM EDT

The Obama administration will not move forward on a controversial proposal to have “secret shoppers” pose as patients to investigate how difficult it is for Americans to obtain primary care.

“On April 28th, the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services submitted a notice to the Federal Register regarding a proposed study that would examine access to primary care,” an HHS spokesman said in a statement.

“After reviewing feedback received during the public comment period, we have determined that now is not the time to move forward with this research project. Instead, we will pursue other initiatives that build on our efforts to increase access to health care providers nationwide.”

While the administration announced the program two months ago, it did not get widespread notice until a New York Times article that ran on Monday.

The program, as outlined in the Federal Register, would have a federal contractor call the offices of 4,185 doctors in nine states. The plan, which the Times characterized as a “stealth survey,” came under criticism from some physicians. As one Texas doctor said in the story, “Is this a good use of tax money? Probably not. Everybody with a brain knows we do not have enough doctors.”

Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) also attacked the program. On Tuesday, he began circulating a letter to send to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius demanding more information about the program.

(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Criminal flash mob intentionally destroying and collapsing America
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 29, 2011, 06:34:43 PM
Obama’s Suspicious Connections to Clean Tech Companies Receiving Federal Money
By Aubrey Vaughan | June 29, 2011 | 18:06

Having friends in Washington is one of the quickest and dirtiest paths to success, but when President Barack Obama is the one helping you out by discriminately favoring your company's products over others, very few in the media seem to care.

Flashback to the early 2000s during former President George Bush's first term. The mainstream media pounced on former Vice President Dick Cheney's association with Halliburton, an oil company for which Cheney once served as CEO. The Bush administration supposedly favored Halliburton by rewarding the company with a number of multi-million dollar oil contracts in the Middle East, purportedly only using a bidding process to make the game look fairer.

Today it's a different fuel and a different president, but Obama has an almost identical story: favoring the clean-technology companies of his financial supporters through rewards of federal money. This time around, though, the media is giving his shady dealings a free pass.

Since March of 2009, Obama has spent over half of his out-of-town business trips visiting 22 different clean-tech projects with a $90 billion stimulus check to promote the clean-tech companies of his choosing. Superficially, Obama looks like he's supporting an industry he champions as the next big thing and a creator of an entirely new sector of jobs.

Hiding behind the curtain is a different story, though. The focus of his clean-tech trips has been to support ventures backed by his donors. The projects not only receive free publicity from Obama's visits, but also huge sums of federal money to support their success. As the Washington Post explains,

The most attention has focused on Solyndra, a Silicon Valley solar company that ran into financial trouble after receiving a $535 million federal loan guarantee commitment.
[...]
Some of the biggest investors in Solyndra, which makes easy-to-install solar panels, were venture capital funds associated with Tulsa billionaire George Kaiser, a key Obama fundraiser. Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.), chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee's subcommittee on oversight and investigations, said he is "concerned that there was a hurry to get this money out of the door and that companies and individuals that supported the president were among the beneficiaries."
Much like Halliburton, which supposedly gouged oil prices, making it an illogical choice as the best oil company to federally support, Solyndra is far from being the most efficient solar company in the market.

 Solar analyst Ramesh Misra, who works for the investment firm Brigantine Advisors, was skeptical about Solyndra's signature product. Its solar panels are composed of an array of glass tubes that are expensive to produce, causing investment advisers to question whether the product could compete with less-expensive Chinese models. Misra, who has no financial interest in Solyndra or its rivals, questioned the administration's decision.
"To think they could compete on any basis, that took a very big leap of faith," Misra said.
Solyndra is not the lone example, either. Most of the clean-tech companies Obama has visited over the past two years share some connection to his 2008 presidential campaign.

Over the months, Obama touted a Florida's utility's electric grid project (a company in an Obama fundraiser's portfolio was doing extensive business with the project) and a Nevada company that generates emission-free power from waste heat, the warmth radiated by machines or industrial processes (an Obama fundraiser is a partner in a venture fund that has a small stake in the company).
While Obama is no champion of the free market, his actions epitomize the opposite, rewarding a select few companies that will benefit his success in office, and put all other competitors at an extreme disadvantage.

As the American Thinker explains,

American taxpayers are being used to fund the high-flying ventures of Democratic donors. If the projects fail (and they are failing left and right) we lose. If they succeed (at least for a short-time) by going public, private investors (those Obama donors) win big. Taxpayers do not see any return.
The game has been rigged by Obama and his fellow Democrats. "Clean" indeed in two meanings of the word. The donor money is being returned to them multiplied by Obama's sending taxpayer dollars back to them. And we, the American taxpayers, are being taken to the cleaners.
Other companies, including battery-producing Celgard and lightbulb-producing Orion Energy Systems, were also buoyed by Obama visits. Celgard has pictures from Obama's visit hanging in its hallways, while Orion is held largely in investments by John Rogers Jr., a friend and fundraiser for Obama.

Competitors dream of the same kind of exposure a presidential visit brings. From the Post,

 Mark Eubanks, president of Cooper Lighting in Atlanta, estimated that his company sells six times more energy-efficient lighting than Orion, but it is based in a Republican stronghold.
 "We'd be happy to host the president," Eubanks said. He added that he's not expecting the phone to ring anytime soon.

So far, the Post is the only mainstream media outlet to cover this story. The complaints of having friends in the government ever present in the association of the Bush administration with oil companies seem to have all but vanished in covering Obama's campaign connections with his carefully supported clean-technology companies.


http://m.newsbusters.org/blogs/aubrey-vaughan/2011/06/29/obama-s-suspicious-connections-clean-tech-companies-receiving-federa




Title: Re: Obama Admn: Criminal flash mob intentionally destroying and collapsing America
Post by: Straw Man on June 29, 2011, 07:05:51 PM
333 - with so much "proof" why do you think no journalist has asked Obama if/why he is intentionally trying collapse America

they say all kinds of other ridiculous shit about his so why not this?
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Criminal flash mob intentionally destroying and collapsing America
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 29, 2011, 07:10:44 PM
Because they are completely in the tank for him and anything he does.

Most of it is liberal white guilt.
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Criminal flash mob intentionally destroying and collapsing America
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 30, 2011, 05:58:27 AM
Wall St. jobs exodus
By CHARLES GASPARINO




Posted: 10:34 PM, June 29, 2011

Why is Goldman Sachs pre paring to outsource traders, salespeople and investment bankers from here in America, where it has made untold billions over the years as Wall Street's premier trading firm, to places like Singapore and India?

The answer can be found largely in the 2,000-plus pages of last year's Dodd-Frank financial "reform" law -- which will eventually translate into some 40,000 pages of regulations. The financial industry is still frozen, waiting to find out how bad these regs will turn out; but what all the CEOs of the big banks know for sure is that it's about to get a lot more expensive to do business here.  

The only real question is by how much more expensive. And the banks aren't sitting around to find out.

Of course, the slowdown that's crimping Wall Street profits is a factor in banks' frenzy to cut costs by eliminating US jobs while expanding in lower-cost places overseas. But they'd expect the business environment to get better eventually -- if the regulatory environment weren't sure to get worse.

Then-Sen. Chris Dodd, Rep. Barney Frank and President Obama all said that they pushed for regulatory reform to prevent another financial meltdown. But their legacy may well be the decimation of the US financial-services industry, which for all its bailouts, blunders and other ills pumped billions upon billions into the economy over the years, especially here in New York.

It's not just Goldman, which wants to expand a once-tiny Singapore office by hiring 1,000 executives while it contemplates a major job reduction at home. (Yesterday, Goldman told the labor department it's cutting at least 230 jobs.) Just about every major US bank is looking at outsourcing as a way to pay for the new costs of doing business as regulators hammer out new rules.

JP Morgan chief Jamie Dimon recently lambasted Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, saying the prolonged uncertainty over the Dodd-Frank regulations is making it difficult for his bank to lend money to small businesses to help grow the economy. What he didn't say during his mini-tirade is how much his bank is committed to growing outside America to keep pace with competitors like Citigroup, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and Goldman.  

"Everyone is screaming that the money is now overseas," said veteran market analyst Richard Bove. "Well it's overseas in American banks. What we are seeing is an escape from US regulation."

The biggest irony is that Wall Street has long been the engine financing the New York welfare state -- yet it's being squeezed by lefty politicians who believe in expanding the national welfare state. The winners are places with well-educated, English-speaking workforces plus lower taxes and less regulation -- in Goldman's case, Singapore and India.

These same people also claim the mountain of new regs will prevent another banking collapse. But regulations didn't do the job in 2008 and won't in the future. Dodd-Frank fails to get at the root of the problem: Banks were bailed out so many times in the past, they came to expect it -- and so they took on ever-greater risks while chasing ever-greater profits, until some players' huge bad bets were enough to take everybody down.

Of course, the banks expected some response to that mindless risk-taking. But the monstrosity of Dodd-Frank is that it doesn't touch the real problem -- even as it squeezes profit margins and sends jobs overseas.

Charles Gasparino is a Fox Busi ness Network senior correspondent.

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Title: Re: Obama Admn: Criminal flash mob intentionally destroying and collapsing America
Post by: Freeborn126 on June 30, 2011, 06:40:21 AM
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Criminal flash mob intentionally destroying and collapsing America
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 30, 2011, 06:52:17 AM


I felt bad for Ron Paul in that.   If ever the term "Kneepadder for Obama" needed a real life example -that was it.  The interviewer was pathetic. 

Glad RP put her in her place, albeit much nicer than he should have.
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Criminal flash mob intentionally destroying and collapsing America
Post by: Straw Man on June 30, 2011, 08:07:27 AM
Because they are completely in the tank for him and anything he does.

Most of it is liberal white guilt.

all journalists are "in the tank" with Obama?

even all the Repub  journalist?

Title: Re: Obama Admn: Criminal flash mob intentionally destroying and collapsing America
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 30, 2011, 08:08:25 AM
all journalists are "in the tank" with Obama?

even all the Repub  journalist?



Probably 88% at least voted for him.   
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Criminal flash mob intentionally destroying and collapsing America
Post by: Straw Man on June 30, 2011, 08:29:03 AM
Probably 88% at least voted for him.   

you think 88% of Republican journalist voted for Obama and are "in the tank" with Obama ?

really?

do you think they know he is intentionally trying to collapse the country or are they oblivious

what about the other 12%

why aren't bringing it up when they ask him or people in his administration questions ?
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Criminal flash mob intentionally destroying and collapsing America
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 30, 2011, 08:30:43 AM
you think 88% of Republican journalist voted for Obama and are "in the tank" with Obama ?

really?

do you think they know he is intentionally trying to collapse the country or are they oblivious

what about the other 12%

why aren't bringing it up when they ask him or people in his administration questions ?


They are.   If you read something other than the NYT, The New Republic, HP, etc, you would realize that.   

   


Title: Re: Obama Admn: Criminal flash mob intentionally destroying and collapsing America
Post by: Straw Man on June 30, 2011, 09:09:16 AM

They are.   If you read something other than the NYT, The New Republic, HP, etc, you would realize that.   

just to clarify the "they" you're referring to are the 88% of Republican journalist

is that correct?

if "they" are "in the tank" for Obama then do they also want to collapse the nation or do they not know his real agenda

also, what about the other 12%
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Criminal flash mob intentionally destroying and collapsing America
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 30, 2011, 01:49:59 PM
Politics
Older Workers Could Face Cost Disparities in Health Law Glitch
Published June 30, 2011



Jan. 19, 2011: Senior citizens do physical therapy at the Glendale Gardens Adult Day Health Care center in Glendale, Calif.

WASHINGTON -- Older adults of the same age and income with similar medical histories would pay sharply different amounts for private health insurance due to what appears to be an unintended consequence of the new health care law.

Aware of the problem, the administration says it is exploring options to address a potential disparity that could mean added controversy for President Barack Obama's health care overhaul. The law expands coverage to more than 30 million uninsured people and would require most Americans to carry insurance.

The glitch mainly affects older adults who are too young for a Medicare card but have reached 62, when people can qualify for early retirement from Social Security. Sixty-two is the most common age at which Americans start taking Social Security, although their monthly benefit is reduced.

As the health care law is now written, those who take early retirement would get a significant break on health insurance premiums. That's because part or all of their Social Security benefits would not count as income in figuring out whether they can get federal subsidies to help pay for coverage until they become eligible for Medicare at 65.

"There is an equity issue here," said Robert Laszewski, a former health insurance executive turned policy consultant. "If you get a job for 40 hours a week, you're going to pay more for your health insurance than if you don't get a job."

The Obama administration says it is working on the problem.

"We are monitoring this issue and exploring options that would take into account the needs of Social Security beneficiaries, many of whom are disabled or individuals of limited means," Emily McMahon, a top Treasury Department policy official, said in a statement to The Associated Press.

Other officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because the issue is politically sensitive, said the administration is concerned because the situation could create a perception that some people are getting a worse deal compared with their less-industrious peers.

McMahon doubted that what amounts to a hefty health care discount would start a stampede toward early retirement at a time when many experts are urging older Americans to stay on the job longer. Only a "limited number of individuals" would decide they're better off not working, she said.

To see how the Social Security wrinkle would work, consider a hypothetical example of two neighbors on the same block.

They are both 62 and have the same income of $39,500 a year. But one gets all his income from working, while the other gets $20,000 from part-time work and $19,500 from Social Security.

Neither of them gets health insurance on the job. Instead, they purchase it individually.

Starting in 2014, they would get their coverage through a new online health insurance market called an exchange. Millions of people in the exchanges would get federal tax credits to make their premiums more affordable. Less-healthy consumers could not be charged more because of their medical problems.

The neighbor who is getting Social Security would pay an estimated $206 a month in premiums.

Half of his income from Social Security, or $9,750, would not be counted in figuring his federal health insurance tax credit. On paper, he would look poorer. So he would get a bigger tax credit to offset his premiums.

But the neighbor who makes all his income from work would not be able to deduct any of it. He would pay $313 for health insurance, or about 50 percent more.

The estimates were produced using an online calculator from the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation.

The disparities appear to be even greater for married couples and families in which at least one member is getting Social Security. With a bigger household, both the cost of coverage and the federal subsidies involved are considerably larger.

The glitch seems to be the result of an effort by Congress to make things simpler. Lawmakers decided to use the definition of income in the tax code, which protects Social Security benefits from taxation.

"The practical effect is if more of your income is in the form of Social Security benefits, you are going to be eligible for bigger tax credits in the exchange," said Chapin White, a senior researcher at the nonpartisan Center for Studying Health System Change.

It's unclear whether the Obama administration can fix the problem with a regulation, or whether it will have to go back to Congress. In case of the latter, it will have to deal with Republicans eager to repeal the health care law.

The decision to use the tax code's definition of income for the health care law has created other problems.

Medicare's top number-cruncher is warning that up to 3 million middle-class people in households that get at least part of their income from Social Security could suddenly become eligible for nearly free coverage through Medicaid, the federal-state safety net program for the poor. Chief Actuary Richard Fosters says that situation "just doesn't make sense."



Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/06/30/older-workers-could-face-cost-disparities-in-health-law-glitch/#ixzz1QnK3G2SN



________________________ _____________________


What a fail this admn is.    But we hae to pass the bill to find out what is n it.      ::)  ::)   
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Criminal flash mob intentionally destroying and collapsing America
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 30, 2011, 06:51:02 PM

Return to the Article   


June 28, 2011
President Quixote's Legacy: Confused, Ill-Educated and Not Too Bright

By Monty Pelerin
The number of Obama supporters seems inversely related to his time in office.  Many wonder what happened to "The One We Are Waiting For."

Obama assumed office in difficult economic times.  After a couple of years of excuses -- which included "the problems were worse than we knew" and the generic, all-purpose "it's Bush's fault" -- Obama now owns the original problems and new ones of his own doing.  An incomplete report card on his "accomplishments" would include the following:

the economy worsened
discretionary military efforts ("kinetic" if you prefer) increased
an unpopular, flawed health care plan was forced on the public
inflation increased, especially in critical goods like food and gasoline
job prospects decreased
the stimulus failed miserably
"transparency in government" became a laugh-line for late night TV
corruption in government accelerated to Chicago-style warp speed
Housing worsened and shows no sign of bottoming soon
Government debt and spending spun out of control
Wall Street was bailed out and continues to enrich themselves
Main Street was ignored and becomes poorer as bankruptcies and foreclosures mount
race relations appear to have worsened
There are a plethora of other problems that could be attributed to Obama.  In short, it is difficult to ascertain what, if anything, has improved other than the demise of Osama bin Laden.

Two hypotheses are often cited to explain why things have gotten so much worse:

Obama is incompetent.
Obama knows what he is doing and is deliberately destroying the country.
These hypotheses are not mutually exclusive.  Evidence is consistent with either or a combination of both.  The remainder of this article deals only with the first.  Readers should not assume that the second is unimportant, inoperable, or impossible.

Dr. Thomas Sowell wrote about "seductive beliefs" in a two-part article (second part here).  He touched on some of the incorrect beliefs guiding President Obama.  In short, Obama is an ideologue, narrowly (and poorly) educated.  As a result, he is ignorant in the ways of the world.

Economics versus Morality

Sowell's analysis provides perspective on Obama's behavior.  Obama has virtually no understanding of basic economics.  Exploitation ideology is the basis for his world- and economic view.  This ideology sees the world as a zero-sum game.  In essence a fixed pie is divided.  If one person gets more, others necessarily get less.

A country becomes successful by taking advantage of other countries.  This naive view, based on the long-discredited concept of mercantilism, sees success as exploitation.  Freedom, markets, institutions, incentives, and voluntary trade have no place in Obama's world.  Success or failure is determined by one variable -- whether you are the exploiter or the exploited.

Exploitation theory does not comport with economic theory, history, or reality. As Sowell points out:

It is hard to reconcile "exploitation" theories with the facts. While there have been conquered peoples made poorer by their conquerors, especially by Spanish conquerors in the Western Hemisphere, in general most poor countries were poor for reasons that existed before the conquerors arrived.  Some Third World countries are poorer today than they were when they were ruled by Western countries, generations ago.

Obama's ideology blinds him to relevant variables.  Incentives, institutional frameworks, profit and loss, individual initiative, saving and investment, hard work, etc. have no role in his simplistic world.  He is a political creation with no experience in relevant matters.  He does not understand markets, business, meeting a payroll, or managing an organization.  This vacuum in knowledge produces failed economic results because policies do not consider the relevant variables for economic success.

In Obama's world, success and failure are moral rather than economic outcomes.  Success is a marker for evil.  Failure is due to someone else's success rather than personal shortcomings.  Failure represents passivity, the choice to not exploit others.  Proper moral behavior produces failure.

For Obama, economics itself is inconsistent with morality.  Hence economics itself must be evil.  This view of the world is both simple and ignorant.  No, it is beyond that.  It is a sign of stupidity!  Recognition of this stupidity is the key to understanding Obama's behavior and policies.

An Interpretation of Some Obama Policies

The key to understanding much of Obama's behavior is the notion that economics itself is necessarily evil and must be constrained or even remedied.  

Successful allies (think Israel and Great Britain among others) are morally inferior to unsuccessful, backward nations who only are so as a result of exploitation.  Third-world nations require restitution for the evils imposed by successful nations.  That some of these are enemies of the US makes them even more deserving.  The US, heretofore the greatest success, therefore represents the greatest evil.  Obama's world-apology tours and treatment of allies can be understood in light of such convoluted beliefs.

Moral judgments also drive domestic policy.  Individual success is simply a microcosm of national success.  It too is achieved by exploiting others.  That explains Obama's "Joe the Plumber" moment.  If the pie is fixed in size, the rich make others poor.  That is the fallacy underlying Obama's belief that people are entitled to only so much income or wealth.

In his mind, he has a right, probably a moral obligation, to confiscate and redistribute wealth.  The rich and successful must be punished at some level of success.  Their success causes the poor their pain.

Talent, hard work, ingenuity, risk-taking, etc. are not relevant in Obama's third-grade level of economic understanding.  As expressed by Tom Sowell, "[w]hether at home or abroad, Obama's ideology is an ideology of envy, resentment and payback."

The Bigger Problem

Obama is doing what he believes right and just.  Sophomoric understanding, however, does not explain why the inequities of the world are assumed to be Obama's responsibility.  How does one go from President of the US to a modern-day Don Quixote for the entire world?

Some psychologists and psychiatrists have answered this question in terms of Obama's ego and pathological narcissism.  The psychological conditions that motivate a person are less clear than the ensuing actions.  They also can be much more frightening.  To understand a person, it is sometimes necessary to speculate on such motivations.

Obama's narcissistic disorder apparently enables him to see himself as the President of The World, the Great Rectifier and the One We Have Been Waiting For.  Some supporters speak of Obama in messianic terms, as he himself has arrogantly done.  This behavior pattern could be indicative of severe delusion, even megalomania.

The original Don Quixote's tilting at windmills was charming and harmless.  This knight of old was noble and honorable.  He possessed character and integrity.  While a bit crazed, his motives were pure.  It was difficult not to admire him.

None of that holds true for President Quixote.  The only thing these two delusional people have in common is a fascination with windmills.  The old knight imagined them as dragons to be slain, the modern one as solutions to the world's problems.  Which belief is more rational is left to the reader to decide.

Obama's faults are neither charming nor harmless.  He is in a position of extreme power, capable of doing massive damage.  His quixotic behavior squanders this nation's resources and destroys its economy.  Obama, like his predecessor of old, intends to solve all the injustices of the world.  His Quest is to compensate for the sins of the successful.

The downtrodden are his protectorate, just as they were the delusional knight of old.  The modern Quixote, however, exploits them for political gain rather than true concern.  The successful, fewer in number, are targets unless they can assist him in his goals.

Obama's Superior Intellect

How dangerous this delusional man might be is moot.  What seems no longer at issue is Obama's "superior intelligence."  Obama's belief system is dominated by the dismissed exploitation theories of Karl Marx and the 60's-style radicals he grew up around.  The Reverend Wright preached to him for twenty years about exploitation in terms of Black Liberation Theology.  An unrepentant terrorist, Bill Ayers, was a close friend and arguably author of one of Obama's autobiographies.  His personally selected "Czars" are the sorriest collection of Presidential advisors ever, at least in terms of reflecting American values and beliefs.

Many went on the same intellectual voyage that Obama did.  Most of us outgrew this nonsense, usually by our mid-twenties.  Obama never did.  He is still a child, intellectually undeveloped and locked into the ideas from the 60's -- both the 1960s and the Marxist 1860s.  In that sense he is an intellectual dwarf, frozen in the equivalent of a state of intellectual puberty.  His "knowledge" is based on nothing but the discredited ideologies of Socialism. 

The claim that Obama is the smartest man to ever hold presidential office is absurd and a reflection on the state of our media who insist on propping up this man-child.  Obama's obsession with keeping his college records and personal past secret is prima facie evidence that the claim is untrue.  His knowledge base and dismal performance on the world stage is even more damning.

Instead of having a superior intellect, we likely have the most ignorant, ideological, brainwashed dupe this country has ever elected to high office.  The man's intellectual development never progressed beyond the stage of all-night freshman bull sessions where all the world's problems were solved (with help from adequate amounts of beer of course).

This intellectual pygmy must be removed from office by whatever possible peaceful means.  Impeachment is in order, but will not happen.  Thus the 2012 election is critical.

The Democratic Party knows what happened in 2010.  They also know that they have an albatross at the top of their ticket.  It is likely they will turn on this poseur before the election.  If so, this act will be their most significant public service in years.

Obama will not be reelected, but that may not be enough.  A country filled with enough fools to elect this modern-day version of a snake oil salesman, this American Idol wannabe, this empty suit, is clearly dumb enough to replace him in kind.  H. L. Mencken had it correct: "Democracy is a form of worship. It is the worship of jackals by jackasses."

The Democratic Party is and should be worried about 2012.  No Democrat, save the hapless Jimmy Carter, can be happy about their current situation.  Carter is the exception because his lock on "worst President ever" is about to be broken by the current occupant.

Monty Pelerin blogs at Monty Pelerin's World.


Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2011/06/president_quixotes_legacy_confused_ill-educated_and_not_too_bright.html at June 30, 2011 - 08:47:16 PM CDT

Title: Re: Obama Admn: Criminal flash mob intentionally destroying and collapsing America
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 01, 2011, 11:45:17 AM
New York to Lose Place as World's Financial Capital: Bove
CNBC ^ | 1 Jul 2011 | Jeff Cox


________________________ ________________________ _______________



New York soon will no longer be the financial capital of the world thanks to a hostile government that has served up a menu of punitive regulations aimed at driving big banks out of the country, says analyst Dick Bove.

 In his latest broadside against the post-crisis regulatory environment, Bove asserts that a recent spate of layoffs, particularly by Goldman Sachs, is just the latest sign that large financial institutions will have to take their operations overseas.

The result, he says, will not be good both for New York and the nation.

...

In the current climate, Bove says the worst may be yet to come.

“Money, intellectual capital, and manufacturing in the financial industry are steadily moving away from the United States,” he writes. “The challenge to this country is to create competitive advantages to do business here as opposed to somewhere else or New York will lose its position as the world’s financial capital just as London did.”

At a time when the government faces the pernicious costs of financing its debt, which would be exacerbated by a rise in rates, Bove worries that the banks have become too convenient a punching bag.


(Excerpt) Read more at cnbc.com ...



________________________ ________________________ _____

Thank you obama/dodd/frank   - communist traitors. 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Criminal flash mob intentionally destroying and collapsing America
Post by: Straw Man on July 01, 2011, 12:08:41 PM
just to clarify the "they" you're referring to are the 88% of Republican journalist

is that correct?

if "they" are "in the tank" for Obama then do they also want to collapse the nation or do they not know his real agenda

also, what about the other 12%

still no answer for these simple questions?
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Criminal flash mob intentionally destroying and collapsing America
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 01, 2011, 12:11:21 PM
still no answer for these simple questions?


No fool - at least 88% of those in the media voted for the communist traitor obama and he even laughed about it at the first gridiron dinner.   
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Criminal flash mob intentionally destroying and collapsing America
Post by: Straw Man on July 01, 2011, 12:27:20 PM

No fool - at least 88% of those in the media voted for the communist traitor obama and he even laughed about it at the first gridiron dinner.   

so those were all Republicans then?

what about the other 12%

what about the Republican candidates

Why don't you call Bachmann and fill her in on your theory about how Obama is secretly trying to collapse the country

You'd think she's be all over that by now
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Criminal flash mob intentionally destroying and collapsing America
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 01, 2011, 12:29:28 PM
so those were all Republicans then?

what about the other 12%

what about the Republican candidates

Why don't you call Bachmann and fill her in on your theory about how Obama is secretly trying to collapse the country

You'd think she's be all over that by now


Other than you far leftist freaks, more and more agree with me.  He is already in the low - mid forties on gallup and after the jobs and economy keep getting worse and worse as a result of his policies, i will be surprised if he even makes it to 2012.   
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Criminal flash mob intentionally destroying and collapsing America
Post by: Straw Man on July 01, 2011, 12:31:20 PM

Other than you far leftist freaks, more and more agree with me.  He is already in the low - mid forties on gallup and after the jobs and economy keep getting worse and worse as a result of his policies, i will be surprised if he even makes it to 2012.   

who agrees with you that Obama is intentionally trying to collapse the nation ?

Title: Re: Obama Admn: Criminal flash mob intentionally destroying and collapsing America
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 01, 2011, 12:34:12 PM
who agrees with you that Obama is intentionally trying to collapse the nation ?



Many, just look at his poll numbers, look at the tone of many editorials in many main stream papers, etc.   more and more are asking the question "is it sheer incompetence, ignorance, illiteracy, ineptness, that governs his actions and polices, or is it intentional?"
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Criminal flash mob intentionally destroying and collapsing America
Post by: Straw Man on July 01, 2011, 12:44:36 PM
Many, just look at his poll numbers, look at the tone of many editorials in many main stream papers, etc.   more and more are asking the question "is it sheer incompetence, ignorance, illiteracy, ineptness, that governs his actions and polices, or is it intentional?"

I'm not talking about his poll  #'s

I'm talking specifically about your INSANE belief that Obama is intentionally trying to collapse the nation

why can't you ever pay attention to the topic at hand

don't you think Bachmann should start talking about this?

once the media and general public hear the evidence don't you think she'd win in a landslide?
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Criminal flash mob intentionally destroying and collapsing America
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 01, 2011, 12:53:17 PM
I'm not talking about his poll  #'s

I'm talking specifically about your INSANE belief that Obama is intentionally trying to collapse the nation

why can't you ever pay attention to the topic at hand

don't you think Bachmann should start talking about this?

once the media and general public hear the evidence don't you think she'd win in a landslide?

She has many times.

Title: Re: Obama Admn: How to destroy, collapse, and nuke the nation day by day.
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 01, 2011, 06:17:05 PM
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Obama’s Obsession with Sexual Orientation
The Catholic Thing ^ | Friday, 01 July 2011 | Austin Ruse
Posted on July 1, 2011 3:19:17 PM EDT by GonzoII

A few weeks ago, Malawi’s Ambassador to the United Nations said privately that the Obama administration had threatened to withhold $350 million in aid unless Malawi’s government struck down its laws on sodomy.

Let’s take a look at tiny Malawi. According to the CIA World Fact Book, among Malawi’s roughly 16-million inhabitants, the life expectancy is a paltry 5I.7 years, which turns to be the 211th lowest life expectancy in the world. Malawi has the eleventh highest infant mortality rate in the world. And 44 percent of the population does not have safe sanitation, meaning they very well might be peeing where they drink.

Malawi is also among the poorest countries in the world. A $350-million aid package goes a long way there, yet here are President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton holding Malawi hostage to the new U.S. homosexual agenda. Make sodomy legal or your people can twist in the wind.

Malawi did not exactly arrive at its sodomy laws through a fatwa. It is 82-percent Christian and a multi-party democracy with a bi-cameral legislature and judicial review.

Within days, its government committed to changing Malawi’s sodomy laws. Obama the Bully hailed this as a great victory. Yes, you can usually get your way by threatening the world’s poorest people.

This is just a small and shocking measure of how the LGBT agenda has come to dominate at least part of our young president’s foreign policy.

(Excerpt) Read more at thecatholicthing.org ...










Funny Obama doesn't pressure Muslim nations to change their ways to get $$$$$. 

What a disgusting animal we have in office. 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: How to destroy, collapse, and nuke the nation day by day.
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 04, 2011, 05:46:37 PM

Published on The Weekly Standard (http://www.weeklystandard.com)

Obama’s Economists: ‘Stimulus’ Has Cost $278,000 per Job

The stimulus is now causing the economy to shed jobs.

Jeffrey H. Anderson

July 3, 2011 12:07 PM

When the Obama administration releases a report on the Friday before a long weekend, it’s clearly not trying to draw attention to the report’s contents. Sure enough, the “Seventh Quarterly Report” on the economic impact of the “stimulus,” released on Friday, July 1, provides further evidence that President Obama’s economic “stimulus” did very little, if anything, to stimulate the economy, and a whole lot to stimulate the debt.

The report was written by the White House’s Council of Economic Advisors, a group of three economists who were all handpicked by Obama, and it chronicles the alleged success of the “stimulus” in adding or saving jobs. The council reports that, using “mainstream estimates of economic multipliers for the effects of fiscal stimulus” (which it describes as a “natural way to estimate the effects of” the legislation), the “stimulus” has added or saved just under 2.4 million jobs — whether private or public — at a cost (to date) of $666 billion. That’s a cost to taxpayers of $278,000 per job.   

In other words, the government could simply have cut a $100,000 check to everyone whose employment was allegedly made possible by the “stimulus,” and taxpayers would have come out $427 billion ahead. 

Furthermore, the council reports that, as of two quarters ago, the “stimulus” had added or saved just under 2.7 million jobs — or 288,000 more than it has now.  In other words, over the past six months, the economy would have added or saved more jobs without the “stimulus” than it has with it. In comparison to how things would otherwise have been, the “stimulus” has been working in reverse over the past six months, causing the economy to shed jobs.

Again, this is the verdict of Obama’s own Council of Economic Advisors, which is about as much of a home-field ruling as anyone could ever ask for. In truth, it’s quite possible that by borrowing an amount greater than the regular defense budget or the annual cost of Medicare, and then spending it mostly on Democratic constituencies rather than in a manner genuinely designed to stimulate the economy, Obama’s “stimulus” has actually undermined the economy’s recovery — while leaving us (thus far) $666 billion deeper in debt. 

The actual employment numbers from the administration’s own Bureau of Labor Statistics show that the unemployment rate was 7.3 percent when the “stimulus” was being debated. It has since risen to 9.1 percent. Meanwhile, the national debt at the end of 2008, when Obama was poised to take office, was $9.986 trillion (see Table S-9). It’s now $14.467 trillion — and counting.

All sides agree on these incriminating numbers — and now they also appear to agree on this important point: The economy would now be generating job growth at a faster rate if the Democrats hadn’t passed the “stimulus.”

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Copyright 2010 Weekly Standard LLC.

Source URL: http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obama-s-economists-stimulus-has-cost-278000-job_576014.html
Title: Re: Obama Admn: How to destroy, collapse, and nuke the nation day by day.
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 04, 2011, 06:14:55 PM
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EPA sets Shell Alaska emissions task
Upstream Online.com ^ | July 1,2011 | EPA sets Shell Alaska emissions task
Posted on July 3, 2011 4:32:16 PM EDT by Hojczyk

The green regime has slashed the amount of air pollutants allowable from the supermajor at its Beaufort and Chukchi plays by 50% from the original set of permits.

Anglo-Dutch outfit must obtain permits from US authorities as it proposed drilling activities off Alaska “would emit more than 250 tonnes of air pollutants a year”, the EPA wrote in a statement today.

“The revised permits have reduced emissions of most key air pollutants by more than 50% from the levels allowed in the 2010 permits.

“These reductions are largely due to the new NO2 standard that went into effect after the permits were issued last year.

“The draft permits are subject to a 30-day public comment period as well as a public hearing before EPA issues final permits.” That hearing will be held in Barrow, Alaska on 4 August.

The EPA had in early 2010 issued Shell with two permits to drill in the area but this was appealed by concerned third parties. Although this appeal was quashed in December the EPA revised the permits.
Title: Re: Obama Admn: How to destroy, collapse, and nuke the nation day by day.
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 04, 2011, 07:08:26 PM
Schumer confirms White House considering ignoring debt limit
The Washington Examiner ^ | July 1, 2011 | Conn Carroll
Posted on July 2, 2011 10:08:07 AM EDT by opentalk

This morning we speculated that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner was seriously considering just ignoring the statutory debt limit by claiming it was superseded by section Four of the 14th amendment. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., confirmed that that course of action has been considered by the White House. Talking Points Memo‘s Brian Beutler reports on a conference call with Schumer today:

I asked Schumer, a lawyer, whether, in his view, the administration had the power to continue issuing new debt even if Congress fails to raise the debt limit. He acknowledged that the question’s been discussed, but said the White House probably shouldn’t go there just yet.

[emphasis mine] Considering the ease with which Obama has violated bankruptcy law, refused to enforce voter fraud laws, and ignored the War Powers Act, what is stopping him from ignoring the debt ceiling.q
Title: Re: Obama Admn: How to destroy, collapse, and nuke the nation day by day.
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 05, 2011, 08:35:51 AM
Beginning of the end for small fishermen’
Captains issue S.O.S., claiming new rules meant to save the fish are killing their way of life
By Jessica Fargen  |   Sunday, July 3, 2011  |  http://www.bostonherald.com  |  Local Coverage
Photo by Patrick Whittemore



With the height of the New England fishing season getting under way this week, small family fishermen say controversial new rules are destroying their livelihood — forcing them to sell their boats and instead search for work as laborers on larger vessels.

“It’s a death knell. It’s the beginning of the end for small fishermen,” said Rhode Island fisherman Joel Hovanesian, 54, who recently sold his boat.

Plymouth fisherman Stephen Welch, 50, a father of two, said: “We’re in a crisis right now.”

The new rules — put into place one year ago — place hard catch limits that restrict how much groundfish, such as cod and haddock, a fisherman can catch. Fishermen are given allotments of fish and can buy and sell those.

Under the old system, fishermen were allowed a certain number of days at sea.

Figures from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show larger operations appear to have benefited. Annual revenue for boats larger than 75 feet increased approximately 33 percent in 2010 — up to $800,000, from $600,000 in 2009.

New Bedford Mayor Scott Lang, who, along with the city of Gloucester, sued NOAA over the new rules and recently lost, said he plans to ask the Commerce Department’s Inspector General to investigate.

“New Bedford and Gloucester are letting everyone know we will challenge anything that threatens the culture, history and traditions of our seacoast communities,” he said. “The average fisherman, the family fishermen, are being driven out.”

The fight over fishing rules has stretched all the way to the White House and crossed party lines.

Congressional members of both parties, including Republican U.S. Sen. Scott Brown and Democrat U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, are skeptical about the environmental ties of President Obama’s pick for Department of Commerce secretary, who oversees the nation’s fisheries. Environmental groups have backed the new rules.

“The industry is hurting deeply,” Brown told the Herald this week. “It’s putting people out of business,” he said of the new rules.

NOAA, which regulates fishermen, says the changes are necessary to protect the region’s fish stock. They say it’s too early to tell the impact of the new rules on small-boat fishermen and seacoast communities, but they are studying the issue.

NOAA spokeswoman. Maggie Mooney-Seus said overfishing would have killed the industry had the new rules not been in place.

“We are going to prevent the stocks from deteriorating,” Mooney-Seus said. “Every measure put in place over the last several years is helping to rebuild the stock. If you talk to fishermen they are saying, ‘I’m seeing more fish out there than I’ve ever seen before.’ ”

But locals say they’re struggling to survive.

“It’s very hard,” said Jim Keding, 42, as he stood on a dock in Plymouth Harbor on Friday.

Keding, a dad of two, recently sold his boat, the Zachary Nicholas, because his allotment of 15,000 pounds of groundfish wasn’t enough. In 2009, he brought in 73,000 pounds. “It’s putting us out of business,” said Keding.

Lifelong fisherman Rich Burgess, 57, is selling two of his four boats.

“They just can’t afford to go fishing,” said Burgess, as he cleaned up his boat, the Heidi & Heather, docked in Gloucester Harbor last week. Under the new rules last year, he caught 50 percent less groundfish — cutting his income in half.

Larry Ciulla, owner of the Gloucester Seafood Display Auction, where crews unload the day’s catch, has seen a downturn in the last year.

“There are a lot of boats that just don’t go fishing and that’s sad,” he said. “Each small boat is a business.”

Supporters of the new rules say they have brought stability and reduced wasteful discards of fish.

“What this all amounts to is more flexibility and predictability for fishermen, and the necessary ingredients for recovering groundfish stocks,” Johanna Thomas, director of Pacific and New England regions at the Environmental Defense Fund oceans program, said in an e-mail.

However, according to Tina Jackson, president of the American Alliance for Fishermen and their Communities: “This has been so devastating to communities up and down the East Coast. . . . It’s a bad program. It doesn’t work. It doesn’t save fish stock.”

Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1349376



 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: How to destroy, collapse, and nuke the nation day by day.
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 05, 2011, 08:47:01 AM
FCC Moves Forward its Plans to Enact Net Neutrality
Digital Liberty ^ | 2011-07-01 | [Staff]


________________________ ________________________ ________-



...The proposed Net Neutrality rules look to limit how Internet Service Providers manage data flowing on their networks. Yet, under the FCC’s new interpretation of its statutory authority, if the rules are legitimized they open the door to regulating virtually any aspect of the Internet. What the FCC fails to recognize is that the Internet did not come to be the powerful entity that it is today by acting under burdensome government regulations. The Internet grew in a relatively free marketplace, unfettered by harmful governmental policies.

While the FCC has stated that they have regulatory authority to enact Net Neutrality under Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act, this section does not grant them such authority. Section 706 moves to “encourage the deployment on a reasonable and timely basis of advanced telecommunications capability” through “regulatory forbearance” and measures to “remove barriers to infrastructure investment.” Essentially, it calls for an expansion of broadband by deregulating the industry, rather than the FCC’s plan of onerous regulation. Even the Court of Appeals for D.C. ruled in a prior Net Neutrality challenge that Section 706 did not grant the FCC legal authority to regulate the Net.

As Net Neutrality moves toward being codified into law, Digital Liberty will keep you updated as the rules (and the impending lawsuits) unfold.


(Excerpt) Read more at digitalliberty.net ...




________________________ _______________________


HOPE & CHANGE BITCHES! 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: How to destroy, collapse, and nuke the nation day by day.
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 05, 2011, 09:07:56 AM
Obama’s ICE amnesty puts us in physical danger as he tells the Middle Class to “go to hell”
coachisright.com ^ | July 5, 2011 | Kevin “Coach” Collins


________________________ ________________________ _________________



Obama’s latest backdoor ICE amnesty will bring death to some innocent Americans; bank on that. By ordering ICE agents to virtually stop deporting illegal aliens Obama is importing fraudulent voters with serious diseases. He has deliberately placed us all in danger and said, “The American Middle Class can go to hell.”

Over the years Democrat presidents have betrayed America to various degrees. A feckless John Kennedy double crossed CIA efforts to overthrow Castro; Carter gave away the Panama Canal and Clinton sold the Chinese secret missile technology.

Now Barack Obama may have topped these dubious “achievements” by stepping up his war on the Middle Class and threatening our very lives in his lust for power.

Not content to tax us into numbing poverty and hopelessness, Obama is throwing our borders open to bring in fraudulent new Democrat voters without regard for the fact they are bringing deadly diseases with them. The consistent evidence is that, many of these illegal aliens are carriers of virulent diseases.

Diseases sneaking in…. illegals

Whooping Cough a disease associated with third world sanitation failures is being found in growing numbers in locations where illegals congregate and live. Smithtown Long Island is such a place. Without reporting the high level of illegals in the area, a media report told of “dozens” of Whooping Cough cases.

Dysentery, a deadly and very contagious disease for babies has been found to have infected a Phoenix Police officer.

Malaria which we beat sixty years ago has re-appeared in California (of course) New York City and Houston.

Malaria infected blood supplies have been found as well. Dengue fever which kills children is now increasingly found where immigrants both legal and illegal congregate.

Leprosy currently known as Hansen’s disease to hide its presence, it steadily rising….


(Excerpt) Read more at coachisright.com ...

Title: Re: Obama Admn: How to destroy, collapse, and nuke the nation day by day.
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 06, 2011, 10:04:06 AM
ICE Memo Reveals new Obama Administration Plan to Incentivize Illegal Immigrants
The American Thinker ^ | 7/6/2011 | Tara Servatius


________________________ ________________________ _____



By now, the word is probably spreading like wildfire on the country's Spanish language radio stations that cater to illegal immigrants. Get pregnant, or conceive a child with your spouse or significant other, and you likely won't be deported.


Already have a child? Bring them here to America illegally. If you can prove you are the guardian of a minor, the government will likely take deportation off the table.


It's all part of what appears to be a new Obama Administration plan to incentivize illegal immigrants not just to come to America, but to stay, have and expand families, and put down roots that will hold them here.

Follow the news and you can see what's driving this. Democrats hoping to build a new, undefeatable super party by turning today's illegal aliens into tomorrow's voters are getting nervous. News reports have been popping up about illegal immigrants fleeing the country by the thousands as the economy sputters and states pass laws that make functioning here tougher for them.


(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Title: Re: Obama Admn: How to destroy, collapse, and nuke the nation day by day.
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 06, 2011, 01:57:05 PM
money
White House Staffers Got a Raise Last Year, And You Did Not
By John Cook, Jul 6, 2011 3:21 PM
www.drudgereport.com




The White House released its annual salary report last week, and as usual, it's nice to work for Barack Obama: Most staffers who were there for more than a year got a salary bump. A bigger one than you did.

The last time we checked in on White House salaries, we found that an astonishing 75% of continuing staffers got raises from 2009 to 2010—a huge number given the fact that, according to compensation experts, most companies had skipped routine raises that year in reaction to the economic crisis that the White House was busy failing to solve. This time around—from 2010 to 2011—the ratio is a little less dramatic. Of the 270 White House staffers who have been there for more than a year, 146—or 54%—received raises. The average salary increase was 8%. If you look at only staffers who got raises, the average increase was twice that.

That's a much bigger raise than the average white-collar worker got. According to a survey conducted last year by the human resources consulting firm Mercer, most firms were projecting a 3% increase in base pay for executives. White House workers did nearly three times as well. Overall, it should be noted, the White House's salary budget contracted slightly, from $38.8 million to $37.1 million, largely because the number of staffers fell. The average salary also dropped from $82,721, or 65% above the median household income, to $81,765—or 65% above the median household income.

But high turnover left plenty of room for White House staffers climb up the ladder and snag huge pay boosts. One of Obama's first acts as president was to freeze the salaries of all White House officials earning more than $100,000 because "during this period of economic emergency, families are tightening their belts, and so should Washington." Two years later, he extended that policy to all federal workers, using the same logic: "Small businesses and families are tightening their belts. Their government should too." But the across-the-board freeze didn't take effect until January 1, 2011, so the most recent report (which goes back to July 2010) features some eye-opening raises, like special assistant to the president for economic policy Matthew Vogel's $59,000, 82% raise to an annual salary of $130,500, or director of African American media Kevin Lewis' $36,000, 86% pay hike.

Both of those were accompanied by title changes indicating that the bigger paychecks came along with new duties. But almost half of the raises doled out by the White House in the last year—59, or 40% of all raises—weren't accompanied by new job descriptions. One of them—special assistant and associate counsel to the president Michael Gottlieb's 14% pay bump from $114,000 to $130,500—was a clear violation of Obama's freeze on salaries over $100,000.

The White House says that many of those positions are considered nonpolitical jobs that come with their own pay schedules, and that what matters is that the total budget and average salary are decreasing slightly. But that doesn't change the fact that White House staffers who stick it out are being rewarded, on average, for their continued service at a rate that far outstrips how the average white-collar worker is doing. The rhetoric behind the White House salary freeze was about making sure that the people engaged in leading the nation out of its economic mess share a sense of what American workers are experiencing. Unless roughly half of American workers saw their paychecks go up by an average of 8% last year (hint—they didn't), that's not the case.

Here's the statement White House spokesman Eric Schultz released in response to our inquiries:

President Obama is committed to continuing to reduce costs in government, and that is why over the past year, the average salary of a White House employee went down, the total number of White House staffers went down, and the total amount spent on White House salaries went down. Pay increases were given for a variety of reasons, ranging from promotions to additional work responsibilities.
Title: Re: Obama Admn: How to destroy, collapse, and nuke the nation day by day.
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 07, 2011, 11:29:32 AM
Obama Officials Misled Congress Regarding Scope of Illegal Immigration Deportation...
Judicial Watch ^ | July 7, 2011





Complete title: Obama Officials Misled Congress Regarding Scope of Illegal Immigration Deportation Dismissals According to Documents


Local Immigration Officials Given Wide Latitude to Dismiss Illegal Immigration Deportation Cases, Including For Those Involving Violent Crimes


Washington, DC -- July 7, 2011

Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that it has obtained documents from the Obama Department of Homeland Security (DHS) showing that DHS officials misled Congress and the public about the scope of an immigration enforcement policy change that gave wide latitude to local immigration officials to dismiss illegal alien deportation cases. According to the documents, obtained pursuant to a Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, immigration officials sought the dismissal of charges against a wide range of illegal alien criminals, including those convicted of violent crimes, despite claims by the Obama administration to the contrary.

The documents concern the response by Houston immigration officials to a June 30, 2010, memo from John Morton, Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), to all ICE employees instructing local immigration officials to use their discretion in “prioritizing” illegal immigration deportation cases. This new policy resulted in the dismissal of hundreds of immigration cases and an overall 40% increase in deportation dismissals with the City of Houston taking a particularly aggressive approach to the policy’s implementation.

In response to calls by members of the Senate Judiciary Committee for more information regarding this new deportation policy, DHS spokesman Matt Chandler said, “The idea that DHS is engaged in ‘selective enforcement’ couldn’t be further from the truth.” However, the documents uncovered by Judicial Watch show that Houston immigration officials moved quickly to implement a broad interpretation of Morton’s memo, earning praise from ICE agency headquarters:

Email from Gary Goldman, Chief Counsel for Houston ICE to Riah Ramlogan, ICE’s Director of Field Operations, August 6, 2010:

I was uncertain whether to write you this short note but I am comfortable in doing so.

In brief, I will push every policy that was disseminated to the Chief Counsels to my staff…effectively and quickly. I understand the responsibilities of my position and I take great pride in my work. I will…ensure each attorney is fully knowledgeable and compliant with policies regarding courtroom expectations, written work, humanitarian cases, reporting requirements, etc.


(Ramlogan’s response to Goldman’s efforts, August 10, 2010: “Outstanding, Gary.”)

Memo from Goldman to all attorneys, Office of Chief Counsel, August 12, 2010 (ultimately rescinded per the instruction of ICE headquarters):

Beginning immediately on all duty files and court files every attorney must determine whether the case may be amenable to the exercise of prosecutorial discretion pursuant to guidelines outlined in the June 30, 2010 Assistant Secretary John Morton memorandum…If the crime is remote in time and the alien has a substantial number of equities, all factors will be weighed to determine if an exercise of PD [prosecutorial discretion] is appropriate.


Memo from Goldman to all attorneys, Office of Chief Counsel, August 16, 2010 (ultimately rescinded per the instruction of ICE headquarters):

ICE Senior Leadership does not want their attorneys to merely fill a seat in immigration court and blindly prosecute every case handed to them. The current administration wants attorneys of greater sophistication, independence and complexity in decision making…


Moreover, despite the claims of immigration officials, ICE attorneys sought to block deportation proceeding for illegal aliens with violent crime offenses. A spreadsheet obtained by Judicial Watch lists the specific violent crimes that immigration officials were prepared to overlook. They include: sexual assault, solicitation of murder, aggravated assault, assaulting a police officer, and kidnapping, as well as numerous drug charges.

Following the press coverage of the memo, which resulted in widespread outrage, immigration officials sought to contain the damage by narrowing the scope of the policy change:

An email from Raphael Choi, Chief Counsel for Arlington ICE to Gary Goldman, August 18, 2010:

…in-house I’m way behind. We continue to review cases piecemeal. The problem is every time I'm about to wield a blunt instrument to our docket, some case shows up in the press that gives me pause. I think its given Riah pause too.


Letter from Ramlogan to Goldman on the day the Houston Chronicle exposed the new policy on deportations, August 25, 2010:

I am concerned that your interpretation of the memorandum, although well-intentioned, could create a gap in basic immigration enforcement. Your approach that our attorneys should only litigate cases within the agency’s highest priorities is not an accurate interpretation of the Assistant Secretary’s guidance and is not consistent with agency policy…please immediately rescind your memoranda.


(Note: Ramlogan had been provided a copy of Goldman’s memo on August 10, 2010 but provided no comment until the day the Houston Chronicle story was published.)

On June 17, 2011, John Morton sent another memo to all field officers, special agents and to the chief counsel further defining the term “prosecutorial discretion.” “In basic terms, prosecutorial discretion is the authority of an agency charged with enforcing a law to decide to what degree to enforce the law against a particular individual,” Morton writes. Critics point out that this is precisely the type of “selective enforcement” the DHS has denied fostering with its new deportation policy.

“These documents show that the Obama administration is implementing ‘stealth amnesty,’ which is an end-run around the rule of law and Congress.” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “The Obama administration doesn’t seem to care about its constitutional responsibility to ‘take care that the laws be faithfully executed’ by pushing the selective enforcement of immigration laws. And they are thumbing their noses at Congress and the American people by stonewalling information requests and lying to cover up their stealth amnesty scheme. Congress should initiate a full investigation to get to the truth of the matter. The lawlessness must stop.”

Documents Uncovered
DHS documents, part 1
DHS documents, part 2
DHS documents, part 3
DHS documents, part 4
Title: Re: Obama Admn: How to destroy, collapse, and nuke the nation day by day.
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 07, 2011, 07:06:18 PM
Skip to comments.

EPA finalizes stricter air pollution rules for Wisconsin, other states
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal ^ | 7/7/11 | Lee Bergquist and Thomas Content
Posted on July 7, 2011 9:36:17 PM EDT by Jean S

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday finalized stronger regulations for Wisconsin and 26 other states aimed at curbing air pollution from long-distance sources.

The rules will help those states fight ozone and particle pollution caused by power plants in Illinois, Indiana and other states.

But Wisconsin utilities - whose pollution can contribute to air-quality problems elsewhere - will also need to find ways to reduce their own emissions.

The likely result: Higher electric bills in the coming years.

A group of power companies known as the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity called the action one of the most costly crackdowns on coal ever.

Nationwide, the EPA estimated utilities will spend $1.2 billion next year and $800 million in 2014 to comply with the rule.

(Excerpt) Read more at jsonline.com ...
Title: Re: Obama Admn: How to destroy, collapse, and nuke the nation day by day.
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 07, 2011, 07:22:39 PM
Documents confirm Obama administration’s ‘catch and release’ immigration policy
Washington Examiner ^ | 7/7/11 | Barbara Hollingsworth
Posted on July 7, 2011 10:10:51 PM EDT by Nachum

Well, what do you know. Obama administration officials at the Department of Homeland Security deliberately misled Congress when they denied using “selective enforcement” to deport convicted criminals in the U.S. illegally. Their much-criticized “catch and release” policy was confirmed by documents obtained by Judicial Watch under the Freedom of Information Act. The documents “show that the Obama administration is implementing ‘stealth amnesty’ which is an end-run around the rule of law and Congress,” said Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton.

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
Title: Re: Obama Admn: How to destroy, collapse, and nuke the nation day by day.
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 07, 2011, 07:24:32 PM
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Texas fight with EPA grows with power-plant rule
Reuters ^ | July 7, 2011 | Eileen O'Grady
Posted on July 7, 2011 10:16:57 PM EDT by Clairity

Texas Governor Rick Perry and two top state regulators on Thursday blasted the U.S. environmental agency for including Texas in a rule to slash sulfur dioxide emissions from power plants, warning that the last-minute action could threaten the state's electric supply.

The Environmental Protection Agency finalized a rule to reduce air pollution from coal-fired power plants in states east of the Rocky Mountains.

"Today's EPA announcement is another example of heavy-handed and misguided action from Washington, D.C., that threatens Texas jobs and families and puts at risk the reliable and affordable electricity our state needs to succeed," said Perry,
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 08, 2011, 07:52:34 AM
Obama's Stimulus Waste: $7 million per House on Internet Access
Townhall.com ^ | July 8, 2011 | Bob Beauprez


________________________ ________________________ ______________


In our blog post of July 5, 2011 we cited analysis of the recently release quarterly summary report of Barack Obama's Stimulus that concluded the Administration spent $278,000 per job they claimed to have "saved or created" with the $666 billion the White House has spent thus far of the more than $800 billion authorized by the legislation approved in 2009.   

The Administration used the Stimulus as a private slush fund to funnel vast amounts of money to programs and industries favored by the President. 

One of his campaign pledges was to expand broadband internet access, particularly to rural areas, and with the Stimulus check book in hand, Obama proceeded to deliver on that promise spending a total of $7.2 billion, with $2.5 billion specifically allocated to "Rural Utilities Service" (RUS). 

Jeffry Eisenach and Kevin Caves of Navigant Economics, a financial and economic analysis and consulting firm looked at the results of Obama's rural broadband expansion efforts.   The results aren't very pretty.


The Navigant analysts evaluated programs in three areas: Southwestern Montana, Northwestern Kansas, and Northern Minnesota that received Stimulus funds to extend broadband access to homes currently lacking service.   

According to their report, it cost on average $349,234 per household. 

But, it gets worse.

In the Montana region, there were actually a number of providers, including wireless, that already provided service in the area. 

Eisenach and Caves found that if 3G wireless was included, only seven households in the entire region could be considered to be without any option for access.  Thus, the cost to extend access to those seven homes was about $7 million each. 

Like Einstein said of insanity, this was doing the same thing over again and expecting different results.   


According to the Eisenach and Caves, "Prior investigations have shown that RUS' broadband subsidy programs were not cost effective, and often funded duplicative coverage in areas already served by existing programs." 

But, Obama funded it anyway – and sent American taxpayers the bill. 

Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 08, 2011, 08:32:25 AM
Stunner: NFP Up Just 18K, Unemployment Rate 9.2%, Household Survey Down 445K, Birth Death +131K
Zero Hedge ^ | July 8, 2011 | Tyler Durden

________________________ ________________________ _______________



Absolute disaster. Total jobs per the establishment survey: +18K on expectations of 105K, Private Jobs + 57K on expectations of 132K. Last month total was revised from 54K to 25K. Combined April and May revision down 44K. The household survey was down by 445K from 139,779 to 139,334. Birth death adjustment + 131K. Complete humiliation for Wall Street's economists, the lowest prediction of whom came Bob Brusca at +60K. From the NFP: "Nonfarm payroll employment was essentially unchanged in June (+18,000), and the unemployment rate was little changed at 9.2 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment in most major private-sector industries changed little over the month. Government employment continued to trend down." It is time for Joe LaVorgna to retire, with his 175K forecast, or off by a factor of 972%.


Some key jobs categories:


Employment in government continued to trend down over the month (-39,000). Federal employment declined by 14,000 in June. Employment in both state government and local government continued to trend down over the month and has been falling since the second half of 2008.

Manufacturing employment changed little in June. Following gains totaling 164,000 between November 2010 and April 2011, employment in this industry has been flat for the past 2 months. In June, job gains in fabricated metal products (+8,000) were partially offset by a loss in wood products (-5,000).

Construction employment was essentially unchanged in June. After having fallen sharply during the 2007-09 period, employment in construction has shown little movement on net since early 2010.

There is no sugarcoating this report. Absolutely abysmal.



________________________ ________________________ _______

HOPE & CHANGE!!!!
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 10, 2011, 06:24:32 AM
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Oops I Forgot To Create Jobs: A Review Of Obamanomics
Townhall.com ^ | July 10, 2011 | Austin Hill
Posted on July 10, 2011 9:10:51 AM EDT by Kaslin

How seriously are we to take President Obama on economic matters? Is anybody still expecting him to “create jobs?”

Since the early days of his presidential bid in 2007, many have marveled at Barack Obama’s dulcet-toned voice and charming demeanor, while applauding at every word he utters – including what he says about the economy and employment. Now, roughly two and a half years into his presidency, it is painfully apparent that mere charisma and smooth talk don’t “create jobs.”

But why not? What, possibly, could have gone wrong? When Mr. Obama began his presidency in January of 2009 he noted that his “economic stimulus plan” would “save or create three to four million jobs.” Why hasn’t that happened?

The only plausible, reasonable answer to this question has to go something like this: in order for any economy to be sustainable, the majority of its employment opportunities absolutely must come from the for-profit, private sector of our economy. Sure, government agencies employ people too, but they should only employ people in numbers necessary for those agencies to provide essential basic services, and pay these employees commensurate with their private sector counterparts.

The most important thing government can do for the economy is to help to expand employment in the private sector, for-profit arena of our economy. And government can help make this happen, not by cajoling and manipulating and threatening businesses into “hiring,” but rather, by providing a stable and consistent regulatory environment, reasonably low tax rates to businesses and their investors, and encouraging free trade.

Unfortunately, both President Obama’s words and deeds have been hostile towards the private sector, while at the same time he has encouraged the expansion of the government sector. Thus here we are in July of 2011, with many government employees having their compensation and benefits packages expanded, as many private sector businesses continue to eliminate eliminate jobs. President Obama has said and done the opposite of what a President should be doing on economic matters, and – not surprisingly – he has produced the opposite of what we would all want.

If you think this is harsh or unfair, consider some of what the President has been saying over the last few years. Let’s start with this quote from August of 2008, when candidate Obama was speaking before a stadium full of his true believers.

Several American oil companies had just posted some robust profits, and the soon-to-be-President Obama seemed to think this was a bad thing. “First of all,” candidate Obama stated, “you’ve got oil companies making record profits…no… no companies in history have made the kind of profits the oil companies are makin’ right now…They..they…….one company, Exxon Mobil, made eleven billion dollars…billion, with a “b” ….last quarter….they made eleven billion dollars the quarter before that…makin’ money hand-over-fist…makin’ out like bandits…”

That was some great campaign rhetoric back then. But today we are in dire need of great policies from our President – and maligning American companies for being “too profitable” doesn’t incentivize them to grow.

Fast-forward to January 29th of 2009. Despite the economic decline, some of the nation’s largest financial and lending institutions had actually just posted some hefty profits, and had paid their executives bonuses. And once again President Obama chastised the achievement, stating “there will be time for them to make profits, and there will be time for them to get bonuses…now’s not that time, and that’s a message I intend to send directly to them..” Apparently, in Mr. Obama’s view, it is sometimes preferable for companies to be unprofitable – yet unprofitable companies don’t “create jobs.”

And here’s one of my favorites, from May of 2009. Speaking at the commencement exercises at Arizona State University, President Obama advised the new college graduates against private-sector success: “…You’re taught to chase after all the usual brass rings,” the President lamented. “Yah try to be on this ‘who’s who’ list or that ‘top 100 list’…ya chase after the big money, ya figure out how big your corner office is…ya worry about whether or not ya have a fancy enough title, or a fancy enough car…Now you can take that road, and it may work, for some. But at this critical juncture in our nation’s history, at this difficult time, let me suggest that such an approach won’t get you where you want to go. Did you study business? You can go start a company…or, why not go help a struggling not-for-profit find better and more effective ways to help folks in need?”

From there the President went on to extol the many virtues of “public service” – that is, becoming a government employee – and how important it is for people to become public school teachers. Yet he had nothing positive to say about how to create the wealth that funds the non-profit groups and that pays for the labor of the government employees.

Barack Obama is the President who loathes and chastises for-profit enterprise while praising and expanding government bureaucracies. Our current economic conditions provide a mirror image to the President’s vision.
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 10, 2011, 08:05:50 AM

Return to the Article   


July 8, 2011
Obama's Plan for $10 Gas

By Jeffrey Folks
American drivers are angry at having to pay $4 a gallon for gas, and understandably so.  Their anger is often directed at the oil companies that supply the gas.  It should be directed at Barack Obama instead.

From the beginning of his appearance on the national stage, Obama has focused on the goal of driving up energy prices with the idea of "weaning" America off fossil fuels.  He has succeeded in driving up prices, all right, but not in reducing dependence on fossil fuels.  According to "The Outlook for Energy 2011," fossil fuels now supply 80% of global demand.  That percentage will remain unchanged through 2030 despite hundreds of billions in subsidies squandered on wind and solar.

Nor has Obama succeeded in reducing our dependence on foreign sources of oil.  According to the American Petroleum Institute imports now amount to some 11 million barrels per day or 56% of deliveries.  That compares with 35% in 1973 and 42% in 1990.  Despite imposition of strict mileage standards and the burden of higher prices on the consumer, the level of imports has not declined significantly under President Obama.

In fact, Obama's energy policies have created the worst of all possible worlds for American consumers: higher prices and continued dependency on imported oil.

Now, in the ongoing deficit reduction talks, the President is insisting on cutting $45 billion of incentives for oil and gas companies over the next decade.  The Democrats like to portray these incentives as "special breaks" for Big Oil, but in fact they are no different from expensing and depreciation allowances enjoyed by most manufacturing businesses.  In reality, Obama's proposal has nothing to do with "special breaks" for oil companies.  Instead, it is a "special tax" aimed specifically at oil and gas.

The proposed $45-billion tax on America's oil companies would be in addition to the excessive and disproportionate taxes already paid by the industry.  The oil majors already pay $35.7 billion in taxes annually.  That's 41.1% of net income, far more than the average of 26% for S&P500 companies outside the energy sector (2009 figures).  Between 1980 and 2009 American oil and gas companies paid $1 trillion in taxes, and at current levels American producers will be paying another $714 billion in taxes over the next decade.

No unbiased observer can say that the American oil and gas industry is under-taxed.  And yet Obama wants to pile on more taxes with the aim of bringing some of our nation's greatest corporations under the heel of government control.

Oil and gas is one sector where American companies still enjoy a distinct advantage over foreign competitors in the form of superior management and technological know-how.  It is one area, in other words, where American workers are able to compete effectively with foreign workers.  A $45-billion tax would go a long way toward destroying that advantage.  Obama's energy tax would also reduce funds available for exploration and production, thus reducing output and raising the cost of energy for American consumers.  It would reduce domestic production, thus exacerbating our balance of payments problem.  It would put American energy companies at a disadvantage to foreign competitors, thus reducing the number of jobs for American workers in the oil and gas sector.

This, of course, is exactly what the President wants.  By driving up gas prices, Obama hopes to force Americans to purchase hybrid and electric vehicles.  And by reducing the size and influence of America's oil and gas companies, Obama plans to make these companies even more susceptible to government control and de facto nationalization. 

Just how high gas prices will go is a matter of serious debate at the present time.  Despite recent declines and futures prices that suggest the possibility of further declines in the near term, the price of oil may be headed up.  Respected energy analysts have suggested that oil may hit $170 a barrel by spring 2012.  That would translate into $7 a gallon at the pump.

If American drivers are angry at paying $4 a gallon, they would be furious when gas hits $7.  But Obama knows that their fury will be directed at oil companies.  At that point he could score points by proposing another windfall profits tax, enough to drive prices up even further.

For this President the goal all along has been $10 gas, and he is closer to achieving it than most observers realize.  If Obama manages to negotiate $45 billion of new taxes on oil companies, those taxes will be passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices.  Combine that with the spike in global oil prices that many predict and further "windfall" taxes on oil companies once they have been forced to raise prices at the pump, and you have $10 gas.

The best part for Obama is that he gets to pretend he had nothing to do with it.  After all, he has been a leading critic of "greedy oil companies."  He has supported one proposal after another for "punishing" Big Oil.  Despite the fact that oil companies have been pleading with the Obama administration for the chance to drill offshore and bring down prices, they are the guilty ones, and he is somehow on the side of the struggling middle class.

Yes, and he is also the chief architect of $10 gas.

That's what Obama is trying to do with his $45 billion in new taxes.  Since America's oil companies already pay 41% of their profits in taxes, piling on more taxes has nothing to do with "fairness."  It is merely a step toward one of the left's cherished goals: Chavez-style nationalization of the energy industry and ultimately of the entire economy.

Conservatives need to draw a line in the sand on Obama's revenue proposals: no new taxes on anyone.  No new taxes on oil and gas, financial managers, or producers of private jets.  All of these are bad ideas that will lead to less investment, less growth, and less job creation.  There is more than enough waste in the federal budget to cut $4 trillion over the next decade.  Republicans should not let Obama get away with using this crisis to advance his purposes of nationalizing the American economy. 

Jeffrey Folks is the author of many books and articles on American culture.


Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2011/07/obamas_plan_for_10_gas.html at July 10, 2011 - 10:02:51 AM CDT
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 11, 2011, 08:51:13 PM
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NYC business owners sick over ObamaCare
NY Post ^ | July 2, 2011 | JOHN AIDAN BYRNE
Posted on July 3, 2011 8:45:22 AM EDT by lowbridge

Rohit Arora runs a small business credit service. His firm provides the much-needed capital for companies to grow, expand and to hire.

So when Arora, the CEO of Biz2Credit, a Midtown finance company, says his latest research shows businesses large and small are making every effort to avoid hiring full-time workers, Washington should take notice.

The reason, Arora says, is because of rising health-care costs and fears about ObamaCare, the red tape and paperwork. He is also practicing what he hears with his own firm.

"ObamaCare has cast a long shadow over my plans to hire more staff," Arora said.

Employers across the metro area have had to put off hiring workers. They blame spiraling health-care costs and the uncertain future price tag of ObamaCare.

Another owner, Frank Passantino, is furious.

(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...






Bump for team dildo.
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 12, 2011, 12:47:21 PM
Jobless Presidencies Should Result in Jobless Presidents
Townhall.com ^ | July 11, 2011 | Jon Sanders




In the religious ecstasy of early 2009, when Barack Obama was yet in mid-ascension operating the "Office of the President-Elect" (complete with custom-made seal), he was campaigning hard for his stimulus plan.

On January 10 of that year, the Obama "administration-in-waiting" released a report by its chief economists Christina Romer and Jared Bernstein titled "The Job Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan." The thrust of the report was to show how the stimulus plan was far preferable to doing nothing.

"In the absence of stimulus, the economy could lose another 3 to 4 million more [jobs]," Romer and Bernstein estimated. With the stimulus, "we believe a reasonable range for 2010Q4 is 3.3 to 4.1 million jobs created."

The report included a handy graph (ours being such a visually motivated society) that showed exactly the choice we faced. Without the recovery plan, unemployment would peak at a whopping and then-unfathomable 9 percent through the first three quarters of 2010.


With the recovery plan, however, unemployment would peak at just below 8 percent by late 2009 and steadily fall to 7 percent by the end of 2010. By now it would be around 6.6 percent.

Hundreds of other economists, including some Nobel laureates, warned against the folly of the stimulus plan. In full-page ads in major newspapers across the U.S., the Cato Institute published their open letter to the president, which stated,

More government spending by Hoover and Roosevelt did not pull the United States economy out of the Great Depression in the 1930s. More government spending did not solve Japan's "lost decade" in the 1990s. As such, it is a triumph of hope over experience to believe that more government spending will help the U.S. today. To improve the economy, policymakers should focus on reforms that remove impediments to work, saving, investment and production. Lower tax rates and a reduction in the burden of government are the best ways of using fiscal policy to boost growth.

It is now mid-July 2011. The latest jobs report is now out, and unemployment is not around 6.6 percent as Obama's economists predicted. Instead it is at 9.2 percent and rising. The same economists predicted that the worst that unemployment would have gotten without the stimulus was 9 percent. With the stimulus, it not only is above that rate, but it has been above that rate since early 2009, shortly after the stimulus passed.

When the stimulus passed in February 2009, there were 141.7 million people employed in the U.S. That number has fallen to 139.3 percent.

That means there are 2.4 million fewer people employed now than when the stimulus passed in February 2009.

It costs a lot of money to throw this many Americans out of work. The stimulus costs $814 billion, according to the CBO. In essence, we are spending about $340,000 for each net new person put out of work since the stimulus passed.

"Lower tax rates and a reduction in the burden of government are the best ways of using fiscal policy to boost growth," counseled the economists who proved to know what they were talking about. To his very core Obama resists that truth, even at this late hour with so many more of his fellow Americans out of work. Three separate wars in the Middle East but still the president's bitterest fight is against lowering tax rates and reducing the burden of government. Witness the debt ceiling standoff in Washington right now.

Epilogue: On February 2, 2009, the new president was interviewed by Matt Lauer on NBC's "Today." He spoke confidently of the stimulus plan. "One nice thing about the situation I find myself in," he said, "is that I will be held accountable. I've got four years."


He added that "a year from now I think people are going to see that we're starting to make some progress, but there's still going to be some pain out there. If I don't have this done in three years," he said, two and a half years ago, "then there's going to be a one-term proposition."

The one term, in the president's stilted speech, undoubtedly refers to one presidential term. It cannot refer to a descriptive term. No single word could capture the colossal failure of the stimulus nor the staggering, stultifying ignorance behind it. Not yet, anyway. One day, however, the term "Obamanomics" may suffice.

Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 18, 2011, 05:22:54 AM
The hubris of O, &c.
National Review ^ | 7/18/2011 | Jay guy




There was a headline last week: “Obama’s ratings plummet in Arab World.” (Article here.) Obama’s ratings are below those of George W. Bush, when that much maligned president left office.


I couldn’t help thinking of something that Obama said during the ’08 campaign: “I truly believe that the day I’m inaugurated . . . not only does the country look at itself differently, but the world looks at America differently.” The candidate went on, “The world will have confidence that I am listening to them, and that our future and our security is tied up with our ability to work with other countries in the world.”


Was Obama an egomaniac or a fool? The thing about egomania, it tends to make one look foolish, among other things.


An Associated Press report about Syria bears attention. Tens of thousands marched through Damascus shouting “We want freedom!” You know what I think these Arabs mean when they shout “We want freedom!” Oddly enough, I think they mean “We want freedom!”


Haitham al-Maleh said something rather moving. He is an 80-year-old lawyer and dissident, who has spent time in Syrian jails. He recently left his country “out of fear for his life,” as the AP says.


Anyway, Maleh was in Turkey, attending a conference. And he said, “The regime” — meaning the Assad dictatorship — has “kidnapped the entire state, and we want it back.” He also called the dictatorship a “fascist regime.”


Which is exactly what it is.


Let me do some quoting of that report:


Saturday’s opposition conference in Turkey — called the National Salvation Conference — was attended by some 400 dissidents looking to form a unified opposition to Assad, whose family has ruled Syria for more than 40 years.


Some more:


Organizers had planned to hold a conference in Damascus in tandem with the Turkey meeting, but it was canceled after Friday’s bloodshed. The Local Coordination Committees said at least 14 people were killed near a hall where the conference was to be held.


Think of the bravery — the reckless, nearly mad bravery — of those people for getting anywhere near that hall.


One more excerpt, please:


Opposition figure Mashaal Tammo, addressing the conference by phone from Damascus, said Assad had lost his legitimacy to rule and called on him to step down.


In an emotional speech, he said the “the existence of the regime was no longer justified,” and called for a peaceful transition to a civil, pluralistic and democratic state.


These people are really not much different from you and me, in their desires and hopes. People will spend all their time — using their very last breath — to tell you it isn’t so. That these Arabs belong to a different species, really. You don’t have to believe them.


And, if you can — go discover for yourselves. Not Syria, just now. But the Middle East in general.


Ron Prosor was Israel’s ambassador to Britain for four years. Last month, on leaving, he published an article in the Telegraph. Here is part of what he said:


In Syria, Bashar al-Assad, the London-educated ophthalmologist with a blind spot for terror, is crushing the vision of unarmed protesters. Yet on the streets and campuses of Britain, Assad will never receive the level of vitriolic condemnation for slaughtering his citizens that Israel receives for defending ours.


You got that right, baby.


Frankly, I’m not really sure what “blind spot for terror” means. It seems to mean that Assad relishes terror, eyes wide open. I imagine I just have a blind spot when it comes to Ambassador Prosor’s wording.


Oh, hang on, I get it — must be some joke with “ophthalmologist.” Still . . .


As President Obama shuffles the Dalai Lama in and out of the White House, with no media permitted, I think back to Obama’s predecessor, glorious in so many ways. Here was a president who had the spine to appear with the Tibetan leader in public. In fact, he traveled to the Capitol Rotunda, to see the Dalai Lama receive the Congressional Gold Medal.


Want to see W. and the lama grinning together, enjoying life together? Check it out.


Beautiful.


I saw a headline yesterday: “Giuliani: GOP Should Stop Focusing on Gay Marriage.” That was a weird one. The GOP is focusing on gay marriage? I had no idea. And I follow things kind of closely, I think. Seems to me we’re pretty much budget-mad, as we well should be.


Lemme quote: “Saying that he believed marriage should be between a man and a woman, Giuliani nonetheless told CNN’s Candy Crowley that the ‘Republican Party would be well advised to get the heck out of people’s bedrooms and let these things get decided by states.’”


What in the world does gay marriage — the issue of whether marriage should be redefined — have to do with being the heck in people’s bedrooms? That is simply bizarre. When Teddy Kennedy was defending abortion, he would use that same language: that we shouldn’t snoop around people’s bedrooms. What in the world does that have to do with abortion?


Why are people — excuse me — such morons?


Every once in a while, I try to describe the mentality I grew up with, in good old Ann Arbortown. I know I have described it ad nauseam. Can you stand a little more nauseam?


Because President Obama and his cabinet have been illustrating beautifully the mentality I grew up with. People were always talking about the money others “needed,” or didn’t need. “No one needs that much money,” they would say. “He has far too much money, much more than he needs.”


The word “obscene” was always attached to wealth: “obscene wealth.” “He is obscenely wealthy.” You know how Orwell noted that “rabid” was always attached to anti-Communism (never anti-fascism)? Similar thing.


Anyway, Obama said, “I’m able to keep hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional income that I don’t need.” Think of the myriad and wonderful charitable uses to which that money could be put!


By the way, do you love that phrase “additional income”? Additional to what? The money O and his family “need”?


Also, our energy secretary, Steven Chu, talked about the banning of the light bulb as we know it: “We are taking away a choice that continues to let people waste their own money.”


Ladies and gentlemen, when people in power talk that way, be on your guard. And “take away” their power at the next opportunity.


I got a press release from the Philadelphia Orchestra, which is bankrupt. They are a microcosm of what has happened in Greece, Portugal, and elsewhere: Pension commitments and the like are killing the orchestra. The union has ruled the roost.


The orchestra’s fundraising slogan is “Listen with Your Heart.” To my ears, that is a guilt-mongering slogan. I would counter with, “Get off my back. Don’t pretend that I’m stingy. Why don’t you ‘Manage with Your Head’? Then get back to me, maybe.”


In a recent column, I said something about the expression “No soap.” That is an oldie, meaning, “No go,” or “No cigar,” or “No deal.”


A reader writes,


My mother used to tell of a family trip between Indiana and Florida in either the 1930s or the 1940s. They stopped at a motel to check it out for an overnight stay. My grandfather asked to look at a room and went into one with the owner. It was of quite dubious quality, and my grandfather said, “No soap.” The owner responded, “Ain’t got no towels either.”


Some colleagues have been providing memories of Dorothy McCartney, who worked at National Review her entire career, I believe. I’d like to contribute a little story.


I first knew of her because her name was in Firing Line’s closing credits: She was Bill’s — William F. Buckley Jr.’s — research assistant. So the credits would say, “RESEARCH: DOROTHY MCCARTNEY,” something like that.


When I first came to NR, I said to her, “You’re famous.” She sort of blushed and said, “No, I’m not.” I said, “Yes, you are, for the credits!” Grinning, she continued to protest. But then she confided the following: “Once, I was at a bank in Long Island, and handed over a document that gave my name. The teller said, ‘Are you the Dorothy McCartney?’”


Yes, she was. The.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 18, 2011, 06:41:54 PM
Posted on July 18, 2011
Wynn Slams Obama On Business: "Responsible For Fear In America"

Steve Wynn, CEO of Wynn Resorts, trashed President Obama on a company conference call today. Below are the most damning portions of the call:

I believe in Las Vegas. I think its best days are ahead of it. But I'm afraid to do anything in the current political environment in the United States. You watch television and see what's going on on this debt ceiling issue. And what I consider to be a total lack of leadership from the President and nothing's going to get fixed until the President himself steps up and wrangles both parties in Congress. But everybody is so political, so focused on holding their job for the next year that the discussion in Washington is nauseating.

And I'm saying it bluntly, that this administration is the greatest wet blanket to business, and progress and job creation in my lifetime. And I can prove it and I could spend the next 3 hours giving you examples of all of us in this market place that are frightened to death about all the new regulations, our healthcare costs escalate, regulations coming from left and right. A President that seems, that keeps using that word redistribution. Well, my customers and the companies that provide the vitality for the hospitality and restaurant industry, in the United States of America, they are frightened of this administration.And it makes you slow down and not invest your money. Everybody complains about how much money is on the side in America.

You bet and until we change the tempo and the conversation from Washington, it's not going to change. And those of us who have business opportunities and the capital to do it are going to sit in fear of the President. And a lot of people don't want to say that. They'll say, God, don't be attacking Obama. Well, this is Obama's deal and it's Obama that's responsible for this fear in America.

The guy keeps making speeches about redistribution and maybe we ought to do something to businesses that don't invest, their holding too much money. We haven't heard that kind of talk except from pure socialists. Everybody's afraid of the government and there's no need soft peddling it, it's the truth. It is the truth. And that's true of Democratic businessman and Republican businessman, and I am a Democratic businessman and I support Harry Reid. I support Democrats and Republicans. And I'm telling you that the business community in this company is frightened to death of the weird political philosophy of the President of the United States. And until he's gone, everybody's going to be sitting on their thumbs.


(full transcript available here)
   
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: headhuntersix on July 18, 2011, 07:03:54 PM
They'd rather talk about News Corp, Palin and whatever else. This is the only thing that matters right now..not even A-stan matters as much as this. Hell Barry doesn't care about the wars either. Can anybody explain to me why or how he got elected.
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 18, 2011, 07:10:09 PM
Very simple

1.  Guilt ridden white morons. 

2.  95 percent of blacks. 

3.  Dumber than dirt college students. 

4.  65 percent of Hispanics.

5.  Lbgt, eviro, progressive commies


Etc etc.
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 18, 2011, 07:21:01 PM
http://m.youtube.com/index?desktop_uri=%2F&gl=US#/watch?v=YkBvqcx6OBQ


Wynn nails Obama to the wall.
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 22, 2011, 06:21:03 AM
July 22, 2011
The Worst Steward of the Economy in American History
By Steve McCann




While the debt ceiling dance continues in Washington D.C. and the Republicans in the Senate are going wobbly, they need to understand they are dealing not only with an intransigent party in the White House but also someone that is the most incompetent president in modern history, and the worst steward of the American economy since the nation's founding.

The Obama sycophants often resort to the White House pre-packaged line that Obama inherited the worst economy since the Great Depression, as a means of deflecting responsibility onto George Bush.  Like so many of the emanations from this administration that too is a fabrication.  As side-by-side comparison of circumstances inherited by Reagan and Obama is as follows:

 
 Reagan
 Obama
 
Inflation
 13.5%   
 0.0%
 
Unemployment Rate
 7.5%   
 7.6%
 
GDP Growth (Previous Year):   
 -0.27%   
 0.0%
 
Prime Bank Interest Rate
 18.5%   
 3.25%
 

Among the factors that reflect the tale of the two presidencies is the price of gold.

Recently the price of gold reached $1,609.00 per ounce.  While this is an historic high in terms of raw dollars, it is not the high insofar as inflation-adjusted price.  That came on January 21, 1980 when gold reached $850.00 per ounce; however adjusted to 2011 that price is the equivalent of $2,328.00.

Gold prices often are a bellwether and commentary on the foibles and successes of those in power in the United States, as the dollar is the de facto global reserve currency and America has been the dominant economic and military power since World War II.

In 1980, when gold prices set the record, the United States was in the throes of a recession with annual inflation running at 13.5%, the unemployment rate was 7.5%;  the annual GDP growth was a minus 0.27%, and the bank prime interest rate was over 18.5%.  The flight to gold was overwhelming as no one had any confidence in the policies of Carter and the Democrats in Congress.

That was the landscape of the country when Ronald Reagan assumed office in January of 1981.

The job facing Reagan was the most daunting since the Great Depression -- and far worse than what Barack Obama inherited in 2009 -- as the combination of extreme inflation (the highest annual rate in the nation's modern history), unemployment (which peaked at 10.8% in 1982), and virtually no one able to pay the exorbitant bank interest rates were major obstacles that had to be overcome in order to revitalize the economy.  The price of gold reflected that dilemma.

However markets react not only to the actual circumstances at hand but to confidence in leaders and what is perceived as future positive or negative factors.  Because of Reagan's policy pronouncements and belief in the free markets combined with the passage of his economic growth agenda, by the end of his first 12 months in office the price of gold had declined to $377.50 per ounce (equivalent of $936.78 today).  This remarkable drop of nearly 60% from the previous all-time peak just 24 months before came about despite the fact that America was still in the throes of excessive (but declining) inflation and extremely high unemployment.

By August 1983 (28 months into President Reagan's first term) the price of gold was at $401.75 or $910.48 per ounce in 2011 dollars (down 61% from 1980 peak).  Inflation had been reduced to 3.2% (from 13.5%); the unemployment rate was at 9.2% (down from a high of 10.8% in November of 1982); annual GDP growth in 1983 was 4.52%, the highest in the previous four years.  In the final year of Reagan's first term GDP grew by an astounding 7.19% and the unemployment rate had been reduced to 7.6%).  Yet the average annual federal government budget deficit over those years was kept at 4.2% of GDP despite the overwhelming debacle facing the country in 1980-81.

The contrast between Ronald Reagan's first term and that of Barack Obama is stark and indicates a deliberate effort by the current president to destroy the American economy as he will have added over $5.5 trillion to the national debt in an effort to transform the United States into his vision of a socialist utopia.  By comparison Reagan added $1.35 trillion (inflation adjusted to 2011) over his first term while saving the American economy.

Yet many Republican Senators are willing to accede to political considerations in granting Obama his wishes regarding a massive increase in the debt ceiling and raising taxes coupled with vague promises of future spending cuts.  Instead of listening to the American people many are allowing themselves to be intimidated by the president, the Democrats in Congress, and a media who view the current debt ceiling debate as a sporting event while openly cheerleading for their team.  Rather than take the matches away from a pyromaniac, they are predisposed to hand him a flaming torch to complete the job.

Twenty-eight months into the term of Barack Obama the scene is considerably different.  Gold was priced at $849.00 per ounce on Inauguration Day (January 20, 2009); today it has nearly doubled (95%) to $1,609.00.

The other Obama failures: Unemployment was at 7.6%, today 9.2% (if calculated as in the early 80's the rate today would be over 10.5%).  Annual GDP growth will be between 1.5 and 1.75% in 2011.  All current estimates conclude that the final year of Obama's term will show a GDP growth of less than 2.2% and unemployment still around 8.8 to 9.0%.  But most devastating of all, the annual federal budget deficit has averaged nearly 10% of GDP (double the worst single year from 1947 to 2008).


Additionally, the financial crisis of 2008 had been mitigated by the actions of George W. Bush (TARP et al) prior to Obama assuming office and the recession was declared over by June of 2006, just 5 months after inauguration.  On the other hand the recession in play when Reagan became president was in its early stages and did not officially end until November 1982, 22 months after inauguration.

It has been debated whether Jimmy Carter or Barack Obama is the epitome of incompetence in modern U.S. history.  While Carter made myriad mistakes and was in over his head, he did not put the country in an untenable position regarding its future.  Obama has.  Post-Obama America has a questionable ability to financially overcome severe economic downturns; there is a very real possibility that the dollar will no longer be the world reserve currency -- a disaster for the American consumer.

When Carter left office, the Gross Federal Debt as a percent of GDP was 33% (he never recorded an annual deficit higher than 2.65% of GDP).  When George W. Bush left office the debt to GDP ratio was 69% (his highest annual deficit was 3.48% of GDP).  On the other hand, by the end of the Obama term the debt will be nearly 100% of GDP (the annual budget deficit in 2011 is projected to be 11% of GDP).

The United States as a nation is 222 years old, yet over one-third of the nation's debt will have been accumulated by Barack Obama in just four years.


Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2011/07/the_worst_steward_of_the_economy_in_american_history.html at July 22, 2011 - 08:18:51 AM CDT
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: dario73 on July 22, 2011, 06:58:22 AM
But, but NewsCorp...

Everything that idiot touches turns to crap.
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 23, 2011, 09:35:35 AM
July 23, 2011
Obama's Economic Brutality
By Jen Kuznicki




In a 2001 radio interview, then-Illinois State Senator Barack Obama lamented that our Constitution described a bunch of negative rights -- things government cannot do, as opposed to things government can do.  That the Constitution says what the federal government can't do to you, but doesn't say what the federal government or state government must do on your behalf.

We have come to find out that Obama governs in a way that's consistent with that lament.  Instead of the Constitution telling his government what it can't do,  his government is telling us what we cannot do anymore -- and provides the conditions to make us go along.

In his own words, we cannot drive SUVs, build coal plants, eat what we want, or be comfortable in our own homes.

There has never been an American president who denounced the American way of life like Barack Obama does.  During his campaign, he pointed to all of the above in our domestic policy as atrocities committed by Americans against the world.  We supposedly use too much of the world's resources, and it has to stop before we run out.  It can be shown that since day one, Obama has set into motion an authoritarian and punishing economic policy that amounts to economic assault and battery on the American people.

The American people are for the most part hardworking, resourceful, industrious, and innovative.  It is hard to beat us down and keep us down.  In order to be effective, then, Obama's domestic energy policy has to be far-reaching, all-encompassing, and inclined to put obstacles in the way of those who wish to produce.

Inflation is said to be stable, but since energy and food prices are not included in the equation, we feel the pain even though it's not being measured for a concrete example, as if it is officially not happening.  The administration argues that inflation was worse under Bush and whips out a chart that proves it.  Of course, unemployment combined with the rising costs of gas, electricity, and groceries creates a misery index, which is felt in our households and businesses.  In the private sector, the pain is being felt, but it is not just an unexplained bumpy ride -- it is being inflicted upon us.

Invisible taxation due to regulation costs American families more money than necessary.  Take for example our president's push toward a green economy.  Wind and solar are subsidized while oil and coal are manipulated into scarcity.  He and his party pushed hard for a global warming bill that promised to decrease consumption of oil and coal and natural gas.  But when gas prices reach their highest level ever recorded in America, he released the strategic oil reserves and spoke glowingly of drilling, proving that he believes that an increase in oil supply offers relief at the pump.  At the same time, his administration argued that we cannot get immediate relief from drilling, and so he continues to discount and avoid the practice, forcing Americans to pay more money for something he is causing to be scarce.

Electricity costs are rising, mainly because the Obama administration has been effectively decreasing the supply of coal by refusing to issue permits to coal-mining companies, while at the same time using taxpayer money to prop up solar and windmill use and their advocacies through awarding grants, as well as playing favorites with subsidized clean coal.  Obama has taken a cheap, abundant resource and made it hard to get.  He has used terribly flawed science to convince Americans that using coal, no matter what innovative American minds can invent to decrease its output of emissions, is no longer feasible.

His administration is looking for ways to punish food companies.  A commission made up of several agencies in the administration is targeting snack foods and cereals that do not comply with regulations they made up.  They are forcing companies like Kellogg's and others to change their recipes or give up their target market.  Such companies have to decide, and then finance the choice that was forced upon them.  All because a few people in an authoritarian administration decided on limits and arbitrary levels of ingredients acceptable to the administration.

Using corn for ethanol is not working.  It is minimizing farmland normally used for food, and it is not getting into the tanks of vehicles because there are not enough pumps installed for it (and there won't be any time soon).  Not to mention how hard it is for many Americans to purchase new vehicles during this "greatest recession since the depression."

What is striking is that when a crisis presents itself, whether pertaining to energy or other domestic issues, Obama decides on a course of political action, and he immediately resorts to violent rhetoric.  That's how it begins.

When presented with a disaster that killed eleven people and poured unfathomable amounts of crude into the ocean, not only was his response slow, but it focused solely on the environmental aspect.  It was violent, too -- Obama looked for "whose ass to kick," and his cabinet member gushed about keeping his "boot on the neck" of the company at fault.

When the subprime mortgage crisis came to a head, Obama decided to pursue AIG and others by saying that his administration was "the only thing standing between them and the pitchforks."  He actually had union members carrying signs and shouting and threatening people in their homes.

When talking to union members, he said of the Republicans, "They bring a knife; we bring a gun."

He told the Republicans during the debt talks that "the debt ceiling should not be used as a gun against the heads of Americans to retain breaks for corporate jet owners or oil and gas companies."

Interestingly, Obama was applauded as a dove when campaigning.  It was said by his supporters that his foreign policy would be employing what they thought Bush did not, that he would be the one to use diplomacy.  Members of Obama's sycophantic press said, "If George W. Bush was a cowboy, Obama is a group hug."  In the two and a half years since his presidency began, Obama has not exactly fulfilled that characterization, since we are involved very heavily in the Middle East militarily, but Obama's domestic policy is not dovish, either.  It can only be concluded that the president's "group" is not the American people, and that he is interested in punishing them through the economy.

It is not whether the president is presiding over a passed-down horrible economy, nor is it that he is unknowingly making it worse.  Economic brutality is being inflicted upon us by our own president.


Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2011/07/obamas_economic_brutality.html

 







________________________ __________________

Unmitigated fucking disaster.   
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Option D on July 23, 2011, 09:57:53 AM
http://newsok.com/a-boom-in-corporate-profits-a-bust-in-jobs-wages/article/3588240

Aren't corporate profits up? I guess you think it Obama's duty to Force these Companies to hire more Americans. You are a commie piece of shit i see....
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 23, 2011, 10:06:39 AM
http://newsok.com/a-boom-in-corporate-profits-a-bust-in-jobs-wages/article/3588240

Aren't corporate profits up? I guess you think it Obama's duty to Force these Companies to hire more Americans. You are a commie piece of shit i see....

They are making money overseas.  He is like a bubonic plague over the nation.  I have said so from day 1, businesses people everywhere say so, not the corrupt pieces of trash who get bailouts from him, but the average business guy HATES OBAMA


Funny too, I have said this about this horrible admn from Day 1, and even as things have gotten worse, and worse, and worse, and worse, Team Dildo still has their head of their ass. 
   
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Option D on July 23, 2011, 11:04:41 AM
They are making money overseas.  He is like a bubonic plague over the nation.  I have said so from day 1, businesses people everywhere say so, not the corrupt pieces of trash who get bailouts from him, but the average business guy HATES OBAMA


Funny too, I have said this about this horrible admn from Day 1, and even as things have gotten worse, and worse, and worse, and worse, Team Dildo still has their head of their ass. 
   

So domestically their profits arent up? Only over seas?
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Dos Equis on July 23, 2011, 11:18:18 AM
Wynn is absolutely right about Obama. 

In the few minutes I was able to stomach from Obama's press conference, he said corporations were making "record profits," as that's a bad thing.  Would only use the word "revenues" instead of taxes. 

This thread title is correct:  he's a disaster. 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 24, 2011, 07:00:34 AM
Obama's OMB ignores document subpoena; Upton/Stearns House panel says Monday morning or else
By: Mark Tapscott | Editorial Page Editor Follow Him @Mtapscott | 07/23/11 8:39 AM
President Obama's senior appointees at the U.S. Office of Management and Budget took another step this week toward a potentially epic confrontation with Congress by ignoring a document subpoena issued by a subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

The subpoena is for thousands of documents requested months ago by the committee's Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations concerning OMB's evaluation of a Department of Energy economic stimulus program loan guarantee worth $535 million for Solyndra, Inc., which makes solar energy panels.

The energy and commerce panel is chaired by Rep. Fred Upton, while Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-FL, is chairman of the subcommittee. Jacob Lew is director of OMB, while Steven Chu is Secretary of Energy.

Obama appointees at OMB have produced lots of documents in response to the subcommittee's original request in March, but many were so redacted of relevant information as to be useful. More important, they have simply refused to give the Upton/Stearns panel many other documents that could shed vital light on the loan guarantee decision-making process, including who drove it and why.

Yesterday, the Stearns subcommittee issued an ultimatum, telling OMB it has until Monday morning at 9 am to comply with the subpoena or face the consequences:

“Despite the subpoena's clear instructions and generous seven day deadline to produce the documents, OMB has yet to deliver a single page,” Stearns said. “I am mindful that OMB Director Lew and his colleagues are engaged in work on the important debt ceiling issue, but a congressional subpoena demands prompt and respectful compliance."

Stearns noted that OMB's refusal to provide the subpoenad documents contradicts Obama's promise that his administration would be open and transparent:

"The entire reason that we were forced to issue the subpoena was OMB’s recalcitrance. For an administration that parades around the banner of transparency, they have been anything but forthcoming. What is the Obama administration trying to hide as their actions suggest they do not want the facts of the Solyndra loan to come to light? The public and Congress have a right to know if billions of taxpayer dollars are being invested wisely.”

Solynydra was the first firm to receive a loan guarantee under Obama's $859 billion economic stimulus program in 2009. Obama has pushed billions of federal tax dollars to so-called "clean energy" firms like Solyndra, which makes proprietary solar energy panel equipment.

At least one major fund raiser for Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, Tulsa, Oklahoma, billionaire George Kaiser, is among Solyndra's venture capital backers and there have been multiple questions about the firm's future viability.

But just hours before the Stearns subcommittee issed its subpoena Brian Harrison, Solyndra's CEO, issued a statement defending the company's efforts since receiving the DOE loan guarantee:

“The fact is that Solyndra is growing rapidly. We are installing our products around the globe, we have created and supported thousands of American jobs, and we are on track to nearly double our revenue this year. Solyndra just completed a record quarter for shipments, with strong demand in the United States and major exports as well.  Last year, we shipped 65 megawatts of panel production and expect that to double again this year.

“We have seen a total net direct employment increase at Solyndra of 310 regular, full-time jobs since the DOE made its conditional loan guarantee commitment.  That loan guarantee allowed Solyndra to build our new factory, Fab 2, which created 3,000 construction jobs in the midst of one of the deepest construction downturns in California history. One hundred percent of our production is based here in the U.S., and Solyndra’s operations have led directly to 300 new supply chain jobs across 18 states."

For the committee's background memo explaining the sequence of events following its initial document request through issuance of the subpoena, go here.

 
http://washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/2011/07/obamas-omb-ignores-document-subpoena-issa-panel-says-monday-morni




No kidding. 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Option D on July 24, 2011, 08:20:03 PM
Wynn is absolutely right about Obama. 

In the few minutes I was able to stomach from Obama's press conference, he said corporations were making "record profits," as that's a bad thing.  Would only use the word "revenues" instead of taxes. 

This thread title is correct:  he's a disaster. 

Making record profits but jobs are still hella low..hmmmmm. The taxes for those companies are the lowest theyve been in 60 years.
And record profits are a bad thing at times.. Exxon mobile "oh theres no supply,.,,simple economics say we have to raise prices" but then demand goes down...AND THEY STILL MAKE RECORD PROFITS!..now you tell me whats wrong with that picture.... if anything
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Dos Equis on July 24, 2011, 10:12:57 PM
Making record profits but jobs are still hella low..hmmmmm. The taxes for those companies are the lowest theyve been in 60 years.
And record profits are a bad thing at times.. Exxon mobile "oh theres no supply,.,,simple economics say we have to raise prices" but then demand goes down...AND THEY STILL MAKE RECORD PROFITS!..now you tell me whats wrong with that picture.... if anything

They're also paying billions in taxes.  http://www.getbig.com/boards/index.php?topic=124722.100

They pay enough in taxes.  The solution to our economic problems is not to make individuals, small business, or big business give the government more money. 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 24, 2011, 10:47:13 PM
And how many corps have record profits? 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: whork25 on July 25, 2011, 12:25:50 AM
Wynn is absolutely right about Obama. 

In the few minutes I was able to stomach from Obama's press conference, he said corporations were making "record profits," as that's a bad thing.  Would only use the word "revenues" instead of taxes. 

This thread title is correct:  he's a disaster. 

If corporations are making record profits how can the economy be bad? and why does Wynn say companies are holding back on hiring?
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 25, 2011, 06:01:24 AM
White House stokes debt-ceiling crisis (No to new plan)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/post/white-house-stokes-debt-ceiling-crisis/2011/03/2 ^ | 7/25 | rubin



Posted on Monday, July 25, 2011 9:07:48


A Republican aide e-mails me: “The Speaker, Sen. Reid and Sen. McConnell all agreed on the general framework of a two-part plan. A short-term increase (with cuts greater than the increase), combined with a committee to find long-term savings before the rest of the increase would be considered. Sen. Reid took the bipartisan plan to the White House and the President said no.”


(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...



________________________ ________________________ _____________

Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Option D on July 25, 2011, 07:29:51 AM
And how many corps have record profits? 
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/24/business/economy/24econ.html

The nation’s workers may be struggling, but American companies just had their best quarter ever.

The New York Times
Related

Economix Blog: Visualizing Booming Profits (November 23, 2010)

American businesses earned profits at an annual rate of $1.659 trillion in the third quarter, according to a Commerce Department report released Tuesday. That is the highest figure recorded since the government began keeping track over 60 years ago, at least in nominal or noninflation-adjusted terms.

The government does not adjust the numbers for inflation, in part because these corporate profits can be affected by pricing changes from all over the world and because the government does not have a price index for individual companies. The next-highest annual corporate profits level on record was in the third quarter of 2006, when they were $1.655 trillion.

Corporate profits have been doing extremely well for a while. Since their cyclical low in the fourth quarter of 2008, profits have grown for seven consecutive quarters, at some of the fastest rates in history. As a share of gross domestic product, corporate profits also have been increasing, and they now represent 11.2 percent of total output. That is the highest share since the fourth quarter of 2006, when they accounted for 11.7 percent of output.

This breakneck pace can be partly attributed to strong productivity growth — which means companies have been able to make more with less — as well as the fact that some of the profits of American companies come from abroad. Economic conditions in the United States may still be sluggish, but many emerging markets like India and China are expanding rapidly.

Tuesday’s Commerce Department report also showed that the nation’s output grew at a slightly faster pace than originally estimated last quarter. Its growth rate, of 2.5 percent a year in inflation-adjusted terms, is higher than the initial estimate of 2 percent. The economy grew at a 1.7 percent annual rate in the second quarter.

Still, most economists say the current growth rate is far too slow to recover the considerable ground lost during the recession.

“The economy is not growing fast enough to reduce significantly the unemployment rate or to prevent a slide into deflation,” Paul Dales, a United States economist for Capital Economics, wrote in a note to clients. “This is unlikely to change in 2011 or 2012.”

The increase in output in the third quarter was driven primarily by stronger consumer spending. Wages and salaries also rose in the third quarter, which might help bolster holiday spending in the final months of 2010.

Private inventory investment, nonresidential fixed investment, exports and federal government also contributed to higher output. These sources of growth were partly offset by a rise in imports.
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Option D on July 25, 2011, 07:31:07 AM



Corporate Profits At All-Time High As Recovery Stumbles


NEW YORK -- Despite high unemployment and a largely languishing real estate market, U.S. businesses are more profitable than ever, according to federal figures released on Friday.

U.S. corporate profits hit an all-time high at the end of 2010, with financial firms showing some of the biggest gains, data from the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis show. Corporations reported an annualized $1.68 trillion in profit in the fourth quarter. The previous record, without being adjusted for inflation, was $1.65 trillion in the third quarter of 2006.

Many of the nation's preeminent companies have posted massive increases in profits this year. General Electric posted worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, while profits at JPMorgan Chase were up 47 percent to $4.8 billion.

Corporate profits steadily increased last year as companies continued holding onto record amounts of cash and other liquid assets while cutting costs, laying off workers and wringing more productivity -- defined as the amount of output that comes from an hour of work -- from remaining staff, even as the recession eased.

To put that in perspective, said Lynn Reaser, the chief economist at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego, it's important to note that companies were able to bring production back up to pre-recession levels without hiring any more workers.

"We have now recovered all of the output lost in the recession, but we are still down by 7.5 million workers," she said.

In addition to layoffs, some companies continued to cut wages and benefits last year. Sub-Zero, the freezer and refrigerator manufacturer, told workers last year that factories in Wisconsin would have to be shut down, with 500 employees losing their jobs, unless staff took a 20 percent pay cut, The New York Times reported.

Advertisement

Workers were expected to put in more hours without overtime pay, while staff facing fewer hours of work due to furloughs were expected to do as much as they would have in a full workday, according to NPR.

But, economists said, companies may have squeezed as much as they can out of workers, with a decline in profits for non-financial companies in the fourth quarter of last year suggesting that to improve production, companies will have to start hiring seriously again.

On the whole, Reaser said, corporations have significantly improved their balance sheets since the financial crisis. "It's helped pave the way for a significant gain for corporate capital spending, dividend payouts and corporate buybacks, as well as the significant rise in stock prices," she said.

But while the financial sector continued to recover from its 2008 meltdown -- with profits jumping some $51 billion in the fourth quarter, a gain of 51 percent over the previous quarter -- non-financial firms actually saw profits fall by roughly $10 billion, according to the BEA figures.

Part of the reason, said Reaser, was that although high productivity drove down labor costs, persistent unemployment and pinched consumers left companies unable to charge the higher prices needed to boost profits. More companies will start pushing more aggressively to improve profit margins this year, she said.

In order for those efforts to pay off, she said, many companies will have to start hiring -- and keep hiring.

Until the end of last year, companies were able to boost productivity by squeezing their remaining workers, who were eager to prove they were worth their paychecks. "But," said Paul Ashworth, an economist at Capital Economics, "you can't keep getting more out of workers quarter after quarter after quarter."

To ramp up production this year, Ashworth said, companies have already started hiring modestly. Federal figures show the economy added total of 192,000 jobs in February, the most in nearly a year. The unemployment rate fell to 8.9 percent last month, the lowest since April 2009.

Economic growth figures released on Friday also suggested firms were slowly stepping up production. The Commerce Department revised upwards its projections for gross domestic product growth in the fourth quarter of 2010, to 3.1 percent from 2.8 percent.

The new projection, BMO Capital Markets senior economist Sal Guatieri said, is "consistent with an economy growing fast enough to gradually reduce the unemployment rate." But, he said, most of the increase was in business inventories -- companies producing and stockpiling more -- rather than consumer confidence.

Despite positive signs, economists warned that economic growth could be hit by the twin shocks of high gas prices and the impact of events in Japan, which has hampered auto and electronic supply chains. "There are mild headwinds that will slow growth a little bit," said Nariman Behravesh, an economist at IHS Global Insight, an economic and financial analysis firm. "They're not going to derail the recovery, and we're guessing they'll be temporary."

U.S. consumers appear to be growing nervous, thanks to events in Japan, fears over nuclear power, and unrest in the Middle East and north Africa. That anxiety could take an economic toll, with consumer sentiment falling this month to its lowest level since November 2009, according to the Reuters/University of Michigan index.

"The sharp drop in consumer confidence and Japan-related supply chain bottlenecks will likely translate into real GDP growth of only around 2.4 percent in the first quarter, with a bounce back to the 3.5 percent to 4 percent range in the second quarter," Behravesh said, revising his quarterly GDP growth estimate down from 4.2 percent.
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Option D on July 25, 2011, 07:31:52 AM
A boom in corporate profits, a bust in jobs, wages
Posted: 9:14 am Mon, July 25, 2011   
By The Associated Press

Strong second-quarter earnings from McDonald’s, General Electric and Caterpillar on Friday are just the latest proof that booming profits have allowed Corporate America to leave the Great Recession far behind. But millions of ordinary Americans are stranded in a labor market that looks like it’s still in recession. Unemployment is stuck at 9.2 percent, two years ..
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 25, 2011, 07:32:52 AM
Again - thats pure left wing crap.    its utter nonsense for the economic imbecils.  


Are these the top 100, 500, 1000?  

"Corporations" run the gammut from the corner deli to GE.  



Most corporations are barely hanging on.   Are the top ones like GE, JPM, Goldman, and the ones bailed out by Typhoid Barry and Bush doing well?  Of course.  

But go talk to 9/10 small businesses run as a S Corp. and I guaranty they will tell you a far different story.  

Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Option D on July 25, 2011, 07:37:39 AM


But go talk to 9/10 small businesses run as a S Corp. and I guaranty they will tell you a far different story.
 



because Obama Taxed to hell right?
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 25, 2011, 07:39:37 AM
because Obama Taxed to hell right?


ObamaCare & Dodd Frank are like two massive storm clouds over the nation.   

No one is going to hire anyone until those two pieces of shit are repealed. 

Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Option D on July 25, 2011, 07:41:46 AM

ObamaCare & Dodd Frank are like two massive storm clouds over the nation.   

No one is going to hire anyone until those two pieces of shit are repealed. 



So Obamacare is the reason Small Business is hurting?
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 25, 2011, 07:43:38 AM
So Obamacare is the reason Small Business is hurting?



Its one of the main reasons right now why people wont hire anyone, even if they have a lot of cash on hand. 

Every business person I know now is just holding off until 2012 till hopefully Typhoid Barry is ousted from office. 

He is like a bubonic plague for the economy.   
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Option D on July 25, 2011, 07:45:31 AM


Its one of the main reasons right now why people wont hire anyone, even if they have a lot of cash on hand. 

Every business person I know now is just holding off until 2012 till hopefully Typhoid Barry is ousted from office. 

He is like a bubonic plague for the economy.   


Please Explain.. i just want to understand for myself..maybe some research based on your "theories"
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 25, 2011, 07:48:53 AM

Please Explain.. i just want to understand for myself..maybe some research based on your "theories"


ObamaCare is SKYROCKETING everyones' rates, just like I said they would.   Additionally, obamacare has so many WTF provisions that many businesses will not hire someone so long as all these mandates are in the air like a funnell cloud. 

A business in a uncertain economy, is not going to hire someone if they are forcex to provide healthcare at skyrocketing rates. 

Again - hope and change is a speech tailor made for idiots - not a policy.   
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: 240 is Back on July 25, 2011, 08:01:14 AM
They pay enough in taxes.  The solution to our economic problems is not to make individuals, small business, or big business give the government more money. 

Does GE pay enough in taxes, Beach Bum?
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 25, 2011, 08:02:56 AM
Does GE pay enough in taxes, Beach Bum?

uuuggghhh - you know who Jeffrey Immelt is correct? 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Kazan on July 25, 2011, 08:06:45 AM
Does GE pay enough in taxes, Beach Bum?
I know what your getting at, but who writes the tax codes? Apparently what they are doing is perfectly legal
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Dos Equis on July 25, 2011, 10:01:00 AM
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/24/business/economy/24econ.html

The nation’s workers may be struggling, but American companies just had their best quarter ever.

The New York Times
Related

Economix Blog: Visualizing Booming Profits (November 23, 2010)

American businesses earned profits at an annual rate of $1.659 trillion in the third quarter, according to a Commerce Department report released Tuesday. That is the highest figure recorded since the government began keeping track over 60 years ago, at least in nominal or noninflation-adjusted terms.

The government does not adjust the numbers for inflation, in part because these corporate profits can be affected by pricing changes from all over the world and because the government does not have a price index for individual companies. The next-highest annual corporate profits level on record was in the third quarter of 2006, when they were $1.655 trillion.

Corporate profits have been doing extremely well for a while. Since their cyclical low in the fourth quarter of 2008, profits have grown for seven consecutive quarters, at some of the fastest rates in history. As a share of gross domestic product, corporate profits also have been increasing, and they now represent 11.2 percent of total output. That is the highest share since the fourth quarter of 2006, when they accounted for 11.7 percent of output.

This breakneck pace can be partly attributed to strong productivity growth — which means companies have been able to make more with less — as well as the fact that some of the profits of American companies come from abroad. Economic conditions in the United States may still be sluggish, but many emerging markets like India and China are expanding rapidly.

Tuesday’s Commerce Department report also showed that the nation’s output grew at a slightly faster pace than originally estimated last quarter. Its growth rate, of 2.5 percent a year in inflation-adjusted terms, is higher than the initial estimate of 2 percent. The economy grew at a 1.7 percent annual rate in the second quarter.

Still, most economists say the current growth rate is far too slow to recover the considerable ground lost during the recession.

“The economy is not growing fast enough to reduce significantly the unemployment rate or to prevent a slide into deflation,” Paul Dales, a United States economist for Capital Economics, wrote in a note to clients. “This is unlikely to change in 2011 or 2012.”

The increase in output in the third quarter was driven primarily by stronger consumer spending. Wages and salaries also rose in the third quarter, which might help bolster holiday spending in the final months of 2010.

Private inventory investment, nonresidential fixed investment, exports and federal government also contributed to higher output. These sources of growth were partly offset by a rise in imports.

If there are "record" profits, then aren't there "record" taxes being paid too? 

And "record" profits are good for business, employees, and consumers. 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 25, 2011, 10:04:48 AM
No... because the tax rates are at record lows for people with wealth.

doesnt matter. 

If you look historically - the tax receipts as a percentage of GDP have always remained relatively the same, regardless of the tax code and how they slice it and dice it. 

However, the spending we are doing it at WW2 levels as a percentage of GDP. 

There is simply no way you can tax yourself out of this under any formula without collapsing the economy. 

Its the spending, not the taxes.   
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Dos Equis on July 25, 2011, 10:13:58 AM
No... because the tax rates are at record lows for people with wealth.

The issue is corporate/business tax, not individual taxpayers. 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Option D on July 25, 2011, 10:19:05 AM
If there are "record" profits, then aren't there "record" taxes being paid too? 

And "record" profits are good for business, employees, and consumers. 

hahaha...lol... NO.. No record Taxes... as the tax rates are hella low for those companies..LMAO...
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Dos Equis on July 25, 2011, 10:20:22 AM
hahaha...lol... NO.. No record Taxes... as the tax rates are hella low for those companies..LMAO...

Really?  So they are making "record" profits, but not paying taxes on those "record" profits?  Did you look at the link I posted showing the billions in business taxes being paid? 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 25, 2011, 10:25:04 AM
Corporate / Business taxes are at low points as well.


http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/31/are-taxes-in-the-u-s-high-or-low/


One would not know from the Republican document that corporate taxes are expected to raise just 1.3 percent of G.D.P. in revenue this year, about a third of what it was in the 1950s.

Yes, but the 50's were a completely different time. 

Japan, Germany, Russia, China, were all on the balls of their ass duye to the war.   We were the only game in town.

We now have a competitive global economy with everyone with productive capacity.     


The bullshit from the left about the 30's and 50's is utter nnosense and not applicable. 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 25, 2011, 10:34:54 AM
I didn't know that was a "left" thing.

I've seen lots of people on the right talk about the way things were in the 50s as well... They just don't like to talk about it when it comes to taxes.

I don't think taxes on people making less than a million a year should change, but let's be honest, if you're a corporation making "record profits" and you're a citizen making more than a million dollars a year, I don't think a couple of percentage points will hurt you in any major way.

Also, I don't appreciate how no one talks about the fact that since the corporate taxes have been so low, that's when all of the outsourcing and sending jobs overseas has been.

Why did we reward companies for sending jobs elsewhere when the primary purchaser of those goods is here in America?

I'm talking regarding taxes and tax rates.   You simply cant chase away business and manufacturing to pay for bloated govt and welfare bs soup to nuts.   Businesses will flee and not be pinatas for that bullshit and libs and their bullshit agenda. 

Its not only taxes either.   Its everything.   The govt is to blame to for this.  From my other thread.

________________________ ________________________ ______
 

The federal government bureaucracy has become so oppressive that it is amazing that anyone is still willing to hire workers in this day and age.

Hiring workers has become so complicated and so expensive that many small business owners want to avoid it at all cost.

For example, a small business owner identified as "007" recently left the following comment on one of my recent articles....

Speaking as a small employer, I would rather have a root canal than another employee. Let’s see. You first have to hire someone you trust without some labor lawyer suing you for some type of discrimination. Then you have OSHA to make sure your work place is safe. Then you have workmans compensation insurance, unemployment taxes, health insurance, liability insurance, now Obamacare. Oh be careful not to be deemed to have a “hostile work environment”. Then you have to negotiate the labor laws. The Department of Labor is constantly cranking out regulation.

Then you get the pleasure of paying payroll taxes both state and federal along with the required filing of a multitude of payroll forms. Miss filing or paying these taxes and you will be crushed with interest and penalties.

Of course, you are competing with businesses that can hire at a fraction of the cost of American Labor and with very little regulations. In this economy, no one in their right mind is hiring into this unstable and declining economy.

If business turns down all you have to worry about is laying off workers. Of course your unemployment insurance tax will go up 200% for years. Then you only have to then worry about a wrongful termination law suit.
The entire system is stacked against American workers.

If you are a blue collar worker, you should give up hope that things are going to get better.  The system has failed you.

You can stop waiting for the "good jobs" to come back.

They aren't coming back.

Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 25, 2011, 10:40:51 AM
I agree with the points you made in the other thread 3333. I think government is too big and oppressive as well, you know this.

I'm just saying that corporations are also to blame, they sent jobs overseas when they can be done here.

Their responsibility is to make $$$, not be an employment agency
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Dos Equis on July 25, 2011, 10:43:45 AM
Corporate / Business taxes are at low points as well.


http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/31/are-taxes-in-the-u-s-high-or-low/


One would not know from the Republican document that corporate taxes are expected to raise just 1.3 percent of G.D.P. in revenue this year, about a third of what it was in the 1950s.

This does not answer the question of whether or not actual business tax revenues have increased along with business profits. 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 25, 2011, 10:48:34 AM
I understand that, but they are definitely making money. We're talking about record profits right?

SOME!  


The vast majority of businesses,  the small plumbing outfit, the small roofing company, the small diner, the local book store, the local pizza guy, the local landscaper, the local pool guy, the local accountant, all typically sub chapter S Corps., and who are 3/4 of the economy are getting killed.  


Why do you think the UE keeps going up and up and up and the jobless claims worse and worse and worse?  

Stop focusing on GE, JPM, BOA, thats not the real story.  

The real story is main street and the absolute decimation obamanomics is causing to the real economy who cant rely on overseas revenue for income.  

This is why i fucking want to puke at the average leftist piece of trash hyping stories like this.  Its pure garbage not even remotely related to reality for 75% of corps and businesses.  

I actually feel bad for people like Mal who read this and think they are learning something.  If anything they are dumber after reading this than anything.  

  
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Option D on July 25, 2011, 10:53:05 AM
Really?  So they are making "record" profits, but not paying taxes on those "record" profits?  Did you look at the link I posted showing the billions in business taxes being paid? 

Dude taxes are lowest in 60 years.. what are you talking about..
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 25, 2011, 10:55:55 AM
That's valid... I do agree that the small business shouldn't be lumped in with the "Big Corporation".

They are two entirely different types of businesses. So we are in agreement there.

Drive around and look at all the vacancies in retail space, look at all the "For Lease" signs on small commercial and office space, the vacancies in strip malls, etc etc. 

The real economy is collapsing.  The GE, BOA, JPM, GS, AIG economy is something entirely else.   
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 25, 2011, 10:57:08 AM
Dude taxes are lowest in 60 years.. what are you talking about..

The govt is taking in record amount of money and an amount histrically close to its percentage per GDP.   

We are spending amounts beyond historical averages and closing to WW2 levels. 

Get a clue. 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Dos Equis on July 25, 2011, 10:57:50 AM
Dude taxes are lowest in 60 years.. what are you talking about..

Tax rates or tax revenues? 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Option D on July 25, 2011, 11:18:15 AM
The govt is taking in record amount of money and an amount histrically close to its percentage per GDP.   

We are spending amounts beyond historical averages and closing to WW2 levels. 

Get a clue. 
Woah woah cha cha...

Homeland security + both wars is what threw our spending out of wack... so .. you get a clue...
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 25, 2011, 11:20:54 AM
Woah woah cha cha...

Homeland security + both wars is what threw our spending out of wack... so .. you get a clue...

Oh right - stim bill, bailouts, 25% increase in domestic spending, new wars in lybia, expanded war in Afghhanistan, and the reckless pelosi/reid term from 2007 on had nothing to do with it either.   ::)  ::)  ::)
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Option D on July 25, 2011, 11:21:19 AM
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/07/06/261635/demint-revenue-record-lie/
you get a clue chump

As Government Revenues Reach A 60-Year-Low, DeMint Claims They’re At A ‘Record’ High
By Alex Seitz-Wald on Jul 6, 2011 at 4:35 pm
It’s an often-repeated talking point among Republicans as Washington debates taxes and spending: “We don’t have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem.” It’s recycled, like much of today’s Republican thinking, from President Reagan, but Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) stretched the argument to its breaking point on MSNBC this morning when he said that government revenues are currently at “record” highs:
DEMINT: Four of the last five years, we’ve had record levels of revenue. And next year we have projected the highest revenue levels in history. We don’t have a revenue problem.
Watch it:

The GOP talking point on spending vs. revenue fundamentally un-serious, as both are flip sides of the same balance sheet. But even so, DeMint is just wrong.
DeMint appears to be using nominal dollars to measure revenues, instead of revenue as a percentage of GDP, which is used by all official arbiters on revenue matters, including the Congressional Budget Office. And as a percentage of GDP, government revenue is nowhere near a “record” high. In 2010, it was at its lowest level in more than 60 years, according to data from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), at just at 14.9 percent.
Next year, revenues will still be at just 16.6 percent of GDP, several points below the average rates under every president since Franklin Roosevelt, including Reagan. The record high was 20.6 percent in 2000, which coincided with a balanced budget.
This makes sense — on top of lost revenue from the massive Bush tax cuts, the recession devastated economic output and thus the American tax base.
And DeMint seems to know this, choosing to qualify his statements about revenue with the odd time frame of five years to completely mislead viewers. He’s right that revenues in terms of dollars were at an all time high at one point in the last five years — 2007 — but he seems to intentionally ignore the fact that revenues fell of a cliff in 2009. In terms of actual dollars, in 2010, the government brought in $2.16 trillion dollars — down from $2.56 trillion in 2007
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Option D on July 25, 2011, 11:23:13 AM
Oh right - stim bill, bailouts, 25% increase in domestic spending, new wars in lybia, expanded war in Afghhanistan, and the reckless pelosi/reid term from 2007 on had nothing to do with it either.   ::)  ::)  ::)

LMAO.. Buck shot... Approach..

the deficit went fucked when the new tax laws were passed with Bush.. now please dispute that chump
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 25, 2011, 11:25:11 AM
And with a horrible economy - it doesnt matter what the rates are! The money aint there to collect with a GDP that is collapsing.  Govt GDP bullshit as per the crap like Stim Bill are pure nonsense.

You can jack the rate to 100% and it wont matter!  What part of this do you not understand?      
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 25, 2011, 11:26:21 AM
LMAO.. Buck shot... Approach..

the deficit went fucked when the new tax laws were passed with Bush.. now please dispute that chump

False.  It exploded in 2007 when Pelosi took over and Bush mailed it in. 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Option D on July 25, 2011, 11:47:58 AM
False.  It exploded in 2007 when Pelosi took over and Bush mailed it in. 

So youre saying it was all good untill 2007... When did pass his taxcuts.. 2002 right?
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 25, 2011, 11:51:14 AM
So youre saying it was all good untill 2007... When did pass his taxcuts.. 2002 right?

Yes.   

The "Bush tax cuts", the boogey man of the far left fruitcakes is a non issue.   The spending has exploded. 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 25, 2011, 11:53:08 AM
I don't think you can say that... both wars were under Bush, before 2007.



And?   The deficits were a fraction from 2000-2007 compared to where they are now.   
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 25, 2011, 11:54:33 AM
Obama: I'd Like 'to Bypass Congress and Change the Rules on My Own'
National Journal ^ | 7/25/11 | George E. Condon Jr.




President Obama let his frustration over the stalled debt talks seep into an address on Latino issues on Monday, confessing that he’d like to “bypass Congress and change the laws on my own.”

He told the National Council of La Raza, “Believe me, the idea of doing things on my own is very tempting. I promise you.”  

But he told the group meeting at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel that he has to work with Congress and will continue to fight for what he called a “balanced” plan that does not focus solely on spending cuts but that spreads the sacrifice to the wealthiest Americans as well.

La Raza—and activist Latinos elsewhere—are disappointed in the president for not keeping his promise to champion comprehensive immigration reform in his first year in office. They are particularly angry that his administration has been aggressive in deporting undocumented immigrants, but the president defended the record number of deportations, contending he has had no choice.

“Those are the laws on the books,” said Obama. “I swore an oath to uphold the laws on the books. That doesn’t mean I don’t know very well the real pain and heartbreak that deportations cause.”

He added that he shares the concerns of Latinos. “I understand them and I promise you we are responding to your concerns and working every day to make sure we are enforcing flawed laws in the most humane and best possible way.”

His ''I'd like to change'' comment followed a section in his speech that mentioned the limitations of Washington in stopping deportations. He then spoke of his frustrations in dealing with Congress. His ''bypass Congress'' comment drew applause and chants of "Yes, You Can," a 2008 campaign slogan.


________________________ _________________


Oh, poor Barry, after having his budget proposal in April shot down 97-0, he now complains like a bitch. 


Fuck him and everyone who voted for this.   
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 25, 2011, 12:00:01 PM
I'm not disagreeing with that, but you're saying that one is evil and one is MORE evil.

Shouldn't you be talking about doing what's NOT EVIL at all?

My beef with the Bush tax cuts is that is took many middle and low people off the tax rolls altogether to where many people pay nothing at all. 

Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 25, 2011, 12:01:13 PM
Blaming Republicans, Obama tries to rally Hispanic support [LA RAZA]
washingtontimes.com ^ | July 25, 2011 | Kara Rowland




In what amounted to a pep talk aimed at disenchanted Hispanic voters, President Obama on Monday blamed Republicans for his unsuccessful efforts to overhaul the nation’s immigration system, telling Hispanic activists that “the Democrats and your president are with you.”

“Feel free to keep the heat on me and the heat on Democrats,” Mr. Obama said in an address to the National Council of La Raza’s annual conference in Washington. But “the Democrats and your president are with you. … Don’t get confused about that. Remember who it is that we need to move in order to actually change the laws.”

The speech was Mr. Obama’s latest effort to court the crucial voting bloc ahead of next year’s election. Last month he paid a brief visit to Puerto Rico — the first trip to the country by a sitting president in decades — and hosted the first-ever White House Hispanic Policy Conference.


(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...


________________________ ________________________ _

Funny - when obama had both houses in the congress, I dont remember him pushing amnesty.  now he blames the GOP? 


LMFAO.   How can anyone possibly do anything but laugh at this clown?   
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 26, 2011, 07:06:03 AM
Report: 1 in 8 employer insurance plans getting the axe since Obamacare
Daily Caller ^ | 7/25/11 | C.J. Ciaramella




One in eight small businesses have had or expect to have their health insurance plans terminated since the passage of President Obama’s health care reform.

This figure comes from a National Federation of Independent Business report which surveyed small businesses one year after the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

The report, released today, found prevailing negative attitudes about the law’s impact among small business owners.

Among the most striking of NFIB’s findings was the number of employer health insurance plans that have been or will be eliminated since PPACA’s passage — 12 percent, or one in eight. Eliminating employer health care plans “is the first major consequence of PPACA that small-business owners likely feel,” the report said.

However, those plans are being replaced by new products. The number of small employers offering or not-offering employee health insurance is likely to change little over the next 12 months, according to the report.

Still, the NFIB said the amount of change in plans was out of the ordinary.

“We are not aware of any data suggesting we’ve had turnover anywhere near this level in the past,” said William J. Dennis, a senior research fellow at the National Federation for Independent Business.

The NFIB study also found 20 percent of small employers expect to significantly change their benefit packages the next time they renew their health insurance plans. Almost all of them expected to see diminished benefits, increased employee costs, or both.

However, the American Public Health Association disputed the study’s results. APHA Executive Director Georges Benjamin said the study was mostly opinion and it was far too early to be criticizing the law, especially since most of it hasn’t even been rolled out yet.

“Most of the major parts haven’t gone into effect and shouldn’t be causing these market changes,” he said. “We’ve seen a lot of people blaming the law for things they ought not be blaming it for.”

Benjamin also said there was hidden costs and savings not factored into many studies of health care costs.

“We’re hoping that when people do these studies they’ll include the costs of absenteeism due to sickness and reductions in worker’s compensation,” Benjamin said. “There are a lot of little pieces that they need to put into their equation.”

The NFIB poll also surveyed small businesses about their attitudes toward the PPACA.

The vast majority of small employers with some knowledge of the PPACA didn’t think it would reduce the rate of health care costs or administrative burdens. They did think it would increase taxes and add to the federal deficit.

Although those surveyed agreed that PPACA will result in more people having health insurance coverage, they didn’t think it will increase the general health of the American public.

NFIB is an advocacy group for small and independent businesses. The poll was conducted by Mason-Dixon Polling and Research.

For the purpose of the survey, a small employer was defined as a business employing 50 or fewer employees.


Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Option D on July 26, 2011, 08:17:08 AM
The Daily Caller is a news website based in Washington, D.C., United States with a focus on politics, original reporting, breaking news, and YouTube videos, founded by journalist and political pundit Tucker Carlson and Neil Patel, former adviser to former Vice President Dick Cheney. The Daily Caller launched on January 11, 2010. While the site claims to be neutral in regards to ideology, many observers have noted the Daily Caller's right-wing leanings, with some calling it "the conservative answer to the Huffington Post."[1]
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 26, 2011, 08:19:57 AM
The Daily Caller is a news website based in Washington, D.C., United States with a focus on politics, original reporting, breaking news, and YouTube videos, founded by journalist and political pundit Tucker Carlson and Neil Patel, former adviser to former Vice President Dick Cheney. The Daily Caller launched on January 11, 2010. While the site claims to be neutral in regards to ideology, many observers have noted the Daily Caller's right-wing leanings, with some calling it "the conservative answer to the Huffington Post."[1]

What does that have to do with the report itself showing what a piece of fucking shit ObamaCare is?   
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Option D on July 26, 2011, 08:22:25 AM
What does that have to do with the report itself showing what a piece of fucking shit ObamaCare is?   

POT AND KETTLE.. You do the same exact thing.. someone posts something and you say "blah blah media matters blah blah huffington post"
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 26, 2011, 08:31:23 AM
The NFIB study also found 20 percent of small employers expect to significantly change their benefit packages the next time they renew their health insurance plans. Almost all of them expected to see diminished benefits, increased employee costs, or both.


________________________ ________________________

So much for Obama's lies about getting a raise.  more bogus shit from the Bubonic Plague Obama.

You should be ashamed of yourself for still supporting this fraud.   

Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 26, 2011, 08:06:23 PM
Unbelievable: Obama White House Stubbornly Refusing to Release Any Written Debt Plan (Update: Video Added)
The Obama White House is so irresponsible, and so fearful of locking itself into anything at all, that it’s refusing to even put a debt plan on paper. Rory Cooper tweeted this from today’s WH press briefing:

Chuck Todd: “Release your plan” Jay Carney: “We’ve shown a lot of leg” Todd: “Why not just release it?” Carney: “You need it written down?”

Yes, Jay, the American people elected your boss in the hope that he might occasionally do his job. Show his work. Demonstrate a little competence once in a while. Is that too much to ask?

Apparently it is. As we blogged yesterday, Obama’s bizarre reticence to lead is as much a headache for his own party as it is for the GOP. Maybe more, since Reid et al just can’t come out and blast him the way they would a Republican president. So Congress sidelined him over the weekend, but as long as he’s the president he can’t really be sidelined: He has to sign something.

And agitate against whatever is heading for his desk before he signs it, of course.

Update: Here’s video of Carney getting grilled over his boss’ lack of a plan. The reporters’ collective groan reacting to Carney is priceless.


Update: So the WH won’t come up with a plan, but is threatening to veto the latest from Boehner. Obama owns this crisis from stem to stern.
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 27, 2011, 06:49:46 PM
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Obama to Announce New Fuel Standards (54.5 miles per gallon by 2025)
National Journal ^ | 07/27/2011 | Amy Harder
Posted on July 27, 2011 4:24:55 PM EDT by SeekAndFind

In what will represent the administration’s biggest move on energy policy this year, President Obama on Friday will announce that his administration has struck a deal with the nation’s biggest automakers to ramp up vehicle fuel-economy standards to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025, industry and congressional sources said. The higher standards could slash U.S. fossil-fuel emissions and oil consumption and drive major changes in U.S. auto manufacturing.

National Journal reported earlier Wednesday that industry and congressional sources said the administration was likely to make the announcement, and White House press secretary Jay Carney confirmed in his afternoon briefing that Obama would hold an event at the Washington Convention Center on Friday.

Environmentalists pushed the administration to raise the current vehicle standard of 35.5 miles per gallon to 62 mpg by 2025. Automakers, who said such a stringent standard would cripple them financially and essentially mandate production of only electric and hybrid vehicles, pushed for a standard in the range of 45 mpg.

Sources familiar with the talks say that the two sides have settled in principle on 54.5 mpg by 2025, a hike of 65 percent from today’s standards. One major reason automakers agreed to such a significant hike is because the White House said it would permit a reconsideration of the standards at a midpoint date.

(Excerpt) Read more at nationaljournal.com ...







Great - can't wait to see what go cart we will be forced in to. 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Fury on July 27, 2011, 07:22:56 PM
I believe Toyota told him to go pound sand.
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 28, 2011, 07:07:20 AM
Freaking awesome debate with Langone on CNBC

http://www.cnbc.com/id/43924372

Title: Re: Obama Admn: Cancer & Bubonic Plague over the nation.
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 29, 2011, 08:00:56 PM
What debt crisis means for Obama
By: Keith Koffler
July 29, 2011 04:32 AM EDT

Washington’s professional prognosticators, perennially gauging who is up and who is down, are trying to determine whether President Barack Obama or congressional Republicans will be blamed if they can’t raise the debt limit and the nation begins to default on its obligations.

Obama’s advisers are trying to present him as a reasonable man, offering a “balanced” approach to the problem, who has been stymied by unappeasable right-wing ideologues.

But it really doesn’t matter how this battle seesaws. Because the damage being done to Obama is more corrosive than whether he is assigned full or partial blame for this reckless scramble toward the edge of economic calamity.

What the debt ceiling imbroglio confirms for many Americans is that they are living in a world turned chaotic, a perilous place where things they thought they knew turn out to wrong and security they thought was their right is revealed as a mirage.

Not all the serious problems swirling about us are Obama’s fault, though some are. Others he has merely shown himself ill-equipped or incompetent to slay. But whether he is guilty or guilty by association, the Obama era is a time of instability and danger. And that’s bad politics for a president.

The debt ceiling scare is but the latest episode in this nightmare.

Americans now live in a world where unemployment is chronic; the economic recovery has stalled; the deficit is out of control; entitlement programs they counted on must be cut; home values are declining; banking giants have failed; the health system is about to be transformed; the country’s AAA rating is in jeopardy, and the threat of terrorism is ever-present.

The view internationally is not a bit more comforting.

Violent, drug-fueled anarchy rages across the border in Mexico; European allies stumble toward bankruptcy; Iran develops nuclear weapons largely unhindered; Kim Jong-Il attacks South Korea with impunity; the Arab world is in a state of upheaval; the Israeli-Palestinian conflict prevails intractably, while Israel’s enemies arm themselves with missiles and seek nuclear weapons; the North Atlantic Treaty Organization can’t even eradicate a nuisance like Muammar Qadhafi; China threatens to surpass us economically and challenge us militarily, and it’s not even clear after Obama’s “Afghan surge” if we’re winning against the Taliban.

The roster of crucial, even existential domestic and international concerns is unthinkably long and varied.

And the effect on the nation’s morale is clear. Ronald Reagan was reelected on the pitch that it was “morning in America.” Obama begins his reelection campaign as the country stares into a moonless night.

A poll released this week by the Pew Research Center shows this and suggests the debt ceiling crisis has made it worse.

Only 17 percent of Americans surveyed say they are satisfied with the way things are going in the country, down six points from June. It’s the lowest since the end of 2008, and the third lowest level recorded since Pew first asked the question 14 years ago.

Obama’s weekly job approval rating last week was just 43 percent, according to Gallup, tied for the lowest level of his presidency. Polls now show Obama running even with the Republican favorite, Mitt Romney, a man who exudes competence — if little else.

Obama’s propagandists tell us that the economy would have been worse without his interventions, that he’s tried to cut the deficit and he’s doing all he can to put people back to work — and besides, it’s all President George W. Bush’s fault.

But, perhaps because he’s never worked much in the private sector himself, Obama doesn’t seem to realize that Americans demand results, not excuses.

Obama trumpets his sanctions against Iran even as the mullahs continue unabated toward nuclear power status. He failed to weigh in promptly and decisively on the side of Iranian protestors.

The president’s response to the Arab Spring has been tentative and inconsistent. It seemed he had his finger to the wind as Hosni Mubarak teetered in Egypt. He insisted Qadhafi must go – and then didn’t succeed in removing him – while failing to require the exit of Syria’s Bashir Assad.

Obama’s advisers are now defending some hair-brained scheme to somehow mitigate the drug war in Mexico by introducing more guns into the conflict.

Obama made Arab-Israeli peace his priority, even appointing George Mitchell as special ambassador in charge of making it happen. Mitchell resigned in May, without a result.

Obama’s political advisers are keenly focused now on fundraising and trying to position their boss as a reasonable moderate, while keeping his liberal base in line.

They may succeed in these endeavors. But it won’t matter. Because steadying Obama politically won’t help when the world seems to have spun off its axis.

Keith Koffler, who covered the White House as a reporter for CongressDaily and Roll Call, is editor of the blog White House Dossier.


Www.politico.com

Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 30, 2011, 04:32:59 AM
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Obama Kills Another 500,000 Non-Union Jobs
Townhall.com ^ | July 30, 2011 | John Ransom
Posted on July 30, 2011 7:41:34 AM EDT by Kaslin

Obama just destroyed another 500,000 jobs for Americans- at least ones who aren’t unionized. .

Flanked by flunkies from the government-dependent auto makers, the world’s largest shareholder in the American auto industry, Brarack Obama, imposed increased fuel standards on companies making cars in the United States. By 2025 auto makers will have to meet fuel efficiency standards that brings “new cars to 54.5 miles a gallon by 2025, roughly double the current level, in a bid to reduce U.S. oil consumption,” says the Wall Street Journal.

According to the Journal effort by the administration to raise the current fuel standard just to “the 35.5 mpg target by 2016 will cost the industry more than $50 billion.” The administration didn’t provide the Journal with costs for the 2025 standard but expect it to cost a ton, jobs-wise and financially.

$50 billion is about 100,000 American jobs- that’s non-union jobs.

That, in short is where all the jobs have gone under the Obama administration.

Makes one wonder if the only reason why the president doesn’t ban cars altogether is because of the union jobs.

Non-union jobs just aren’t that big of a deal.

As the foreign auto makers point out the rules are written to favor the Detroit, union-controlled, domestic auto makers.

“Not all auto makers support Mr. Obama's plan,” says the Journal.

“German auto makers Daimler AG and Volkswagen AG both declined to send representatives to Mr. Obama's announcement. Representatives for both companies, whose sales in the U.S. are dominated by passenger cars, said the deal would put their companies at a disadvantage, by setting relatively modest requirements for large pickups like the kind that Detroit auto makers like GM, Ford and Chrysler have long produced.”

Coincidentally, the United Auto Workers have targeted German automaker Volkswagen AG’s Tennessee plant as “a focal point in union efforts to gain a foothold among foreign auto makers' U.S. manufacturing operations,’ reports the Journal in a separate story.

On Thursday I wrote about how the SEIU is facing racketing charges related to possibly using federal regulatory pressure against private companies in order to facilitate union organizing in non-union shops.

While thus far there have been no allegations regarding the UAW, there certainly is the consequent regulatory pressure.

As The Journal notes: “The union has run into particularly stiff opposition at foreign-owned plants in Tennessee and other Southern states, where cultural sentiment against unions runs deep and right-to-work laws allow workers to opt out of unions where they exist. Nissan workers in Tennessee rejected UAW representation by 2-1 ratios in 2001 and 1989.”

Ah, but it’s nothing a little regulatory pressure can’t get around.

Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 30, 2011, 10:34:40 AM
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Obama 50th Birthday Party Still A Go
ABC News ^ | July 29, 2011 | Mary Bruce
Posted on July 30, 2011 1:27:52 PM EDT by Clairity

The White House remains confident that a deal to raise the debt ceiling will be reached by next Tuesday, so much so, that the president is still scheduled to spend next Wednesday in Chicago, celebrating his 50th birthday at two DNC events.

(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.abcnews.com ...





Disgusting. 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 31, 2011, 06:20:17 AM
EmailComments (6)PrintFacebookDiggDelicio us
By Chad Lawhorn
July 31, 2011
ADVERTISEMENT

Call it a stimulus hangover.

In 2010, Lawrence’s real estate market started to show signs of life as tax credits for first-time homebuyers — part of the federal stimulus package — did boost sales.

But now as numbers for the first half of 2011 are released, it is clear that Lawrence’s real estate market is no longer stimulated.

“The stimulus created an artificial boost for awhile,” said Gary Nuzum, senior vice president of McGrew Real Estate. “We knew it would help us last year, but we also knew it was stealing buyers from us in future years. And it has. It is killing us right now. I never thought it would hurt us this much but it has.”

Home sales and construction

Homes sales for the first six months of 2011 are down nearly 25 percent compared with the first six months of 2010, according to numbers released by the Lawrence Board of Realtors.

Board president Bob Kocour, an agent with Stephens Real Estate, said the numbers look a little better when compared with 2009, when the tax credits were not in place. But still, this year’s totals are about 5 percent below totals from 2009, which most real estate professionals said was a historically bad year.

“I think we’re down about 50 percent from our peak,” Nuzum said of the number of homes being sold in the market. “Something has to happen in the economy to get people feeling comfortable with being homeowners again.”

The slowdown in home sales has had the predictable impact on home construction numbers. The city issued 59 single-family and duplex permits for the first half of 2011. That’s down from 75 permits in the same time period a year ago.

“That number is pretty discouraging,” said Bobbie Flory, president of the Lawrence Home Builders Association. “I can tell you that this downturn has lasted longer and has been deeper than most people in our industry anticipated.”

Kocour said July numbers do seem to be better than anticipated, and he said the market still has some good things going for it — namely interest rates. But Kocour said real estate agents are nervously watching the debt debate in Washington, D.C. There has been speculation that interest rates will rise either because the debt ceiling is not raised in a timely manner or because credit rating agencies downgrade U.S. debt.

“But hopefully by Tuesday, they’ll have something in place,” Kocour said. “They better, anyway.”

Economy’s effects

Local industry leaders are in agreement about what is needed to provide the market a sustainable boost: jobs.

“There are a lot of people still on the sidelines out there, and it is certainly because of the economy,” Kocour said. “Businesses that normally hire people aren’t doing that, and they aren’t moving people around right now either.”

Kocour said the trend in Lawrence does seem to be that work situations are causing more people to leave Lawrence than to move to the community.

On the building front, Flory said that national economists keep telling builders that there is good reason to believe the market will bounce back. In the meantime, the number of builders constructing homes in the city have dwindled to a “handful,” she said.

“Nationally, we are told that there is all this pent-up demand that is going to burst at any minute,” Flory said. “The reality is that there are still children growing older and leaving home who need a place to live. A lot of people are putting a lot into the pent-up demand theory.”

Here’s a look at some numbers from the first half of 2011:

Realtors have sold 551 homes, down from 742 a year ago. The category that is particularly taking a beating is sales of newly constructed homes. They are off almost 60 percent. A total of 34 newly constructed homes have been sold in the first half of 2011
The average selling price of homes in Lawrence is up 2.4 percent from a year ago. The average now stands at $182,058. The median price is $161,000. Real estate professionals said the higher prices are because there are far fewer homes being sold to first-time homebuyers, which tend to be lesser priced homes. Nuzum said many of the homes on the market are priced above $200,000. He estimated those homes are selling for at least 5 percent less than they were a year ago.
There are lots of houses on the market. In June, there were 1,030 homes on the market. That’s up from 891 a year ago.
Homes are taking longer to sell. The average days a home sits on the market is now 100. That’s up from 81 last year.
The number of apartments being built in the city is on the rise. The city has issued permits for 126 apartment units. That’s up from 83 during the same time period of 2010.
Commercial projects

There have been several large commercial projects started in Lawrence during the first half of the year. Here’s a list of the 10 largest projects thus far:

Bowersock north bank power plant: $11.3 million.
Comfort Inn & Suites, 150 N. Iowa: $3.3 million.
Wastewater treatment plant improvements, 1408 E. Eighth St.: $3.1 million.
Crossgate Casitas apartments, 2451 Crossgate Drive: $2.1 million.
Hy-Vee renovation, 3405 Clinton Parkway: $2 million.
Northwind Apartments, 200 N. Mich.: $1.3 million.
Single-family dwelling, 1716 Lake Alvamar Drive: $1.1 million.
PKV Dental Offices, 530 Folks Road: $1 million.
LMH information technology/business health remodel, 325 Maine: $867,834.
Plastikon Industries remodel, 3780 Greenway Circle: $800,000.
In total, the city has issued permits for $49.8 million worth of projects. That’s up from $47.6 million during the same period last year. That puts the city on pace for about $100 million worth of projects in 2011. Here’s a look at how that $100 million pace compares with the amount of projects started in past years:

2001: $152.2 million
2002: $141.5 million
2003: $150.5 million
2004: $117.7 million
2005: $131.2 million
2006: $171.4 million
2007: $104.4 million
2008: $146.4 million
2009: $75.3 million
2010: $101.8 million



http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2011/jul/31/boost-2010-stimulus-now-killing-housing-market






Fail x 1000
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 31, 2011, 06:30:49 AM
The Obama administration's proposed CAFE rules declare a war on cars

Shikha Dalmia | July 26, 2011


The thinking behind the Obama administration’s proposed new fuel efficiency standards seems to be: What won’t kill the auto industry will make it stronger. But these standards are the regulatory equivalent of a bunker buster that will, in fact, decimate the industry.

In an effort to bring its global warming initiative back from the dead, the administration has announced that it wants automakers to raise the Corporate Average Fuel Economy, or CAFE, of their fleets from the 34.2 miles per gallon that it mandated in 2009 (which the companies are still scrambling to meet) to 56.2 mpg by 2025. Not a single car—big or small, hybrid or non-hybrid—currently delivers this kind of mileage (with the exception of electrics). But CAFE backers are pooh-poohing industry claims that these standards are unattainable. “Virtually every major improvement in U.S. fuel economy and emissions over the last quarter of a century started as a stringent government standard that automakers ... initially insisted was impossible to meet,” harrumphed a recent Detroit Free Press editorial. “Then the same companies turned their engineers loose and met or exceeded the threshold.”

Did they?

Not really. Rather, they unleashed armies of lobbyists on Washington to poke holes in the CAFE regime. For example, companies that don’t meet CAFE standards face fines. But the fines are so low that many luxury brands prefer to pay up rather than comply. Likewise, companies get CAFE credits, the auto equivalent of indulgences, for flex-fuel vehicles built with gasoline as well as ethanol tanks. Fitting them with both doesn’t add much to manufacturing cost, which is why carmakers happily churn them out even though everyone knows that few drivers ever use ethanol.

But to the extent that carmakers have complied with CAFE, it is less through radical innovation and more by simply slashing vehicle weight. In the 15 years after CAFE standards were first introduced in 1974, vehicle weight diminished by 23 percent. But every 100-pound weight reduction results in a 4.7 to 5.6 percent increase in the fatality rate. A 2002 National Academy of Sciences study concluded that CAFE's downsizing effect contributed to between 1,300 and 2,600 deaths in a single representative year, and to 10 times that many serious injuries.

Even ignoring this loss of life, the era of improving fuel economy by slashing vehicle weight is drawing to a close. Indeed, Sean McAlinden, chief economist at the Center for Automotive Research, notes that it is technologically impossible to squeeze anything beyond 45 mpg in fuel economy from current vehicles. That’s why Europe’s fuel economy has plateaued at that level, despite $8 per gallon gas. The 56-mpg-mandate will require a total, top-to-bottom overhaul of cars. Every part of a vehicle from its transmission to its engine would have to be replaced. “Even a vehicle’s screws and fasteners would have to be secured with epoxy glue,” McAlinden maintains.

Unless automakers once again manage to write massive loopholes into the proposed CAFE regime, the upshot will be similar to the fiasco created by the light bulb mandate that Congress recently tried unsuccessfully to repeal. The mandate required light bulbs to consume 25-30 percent less energy by 2012. But this effectively outlawed cheap incandescent bulbs while artificially boosting more expensive and annoying fluorescents, triggering a consumer revolt.

Likewise, the Obama CAFE standards will drive out pickups and other large vehicles, American automakers’ biggest profit makers, and usher in hybrids—their biggest money losers. That’s because pickups that are CAFE-compliant will be have to be constructed from aluminum or some equally light material, something that will bump their cost upwards of $80,000 per vehicle while rendering them useless for towing.

Meanwhile, even the Environmental Protection Agency admits that the market share made up by hybrids and electric plug-ins will have to touch 49 percent if the industry is to come anywhere near compliance. Given that these vehicles now occupy only 3 percent of the market despite hefty subsidies, it is a foregone conclusion that expanding their presence will mean massively expanding subsidies to them.

Taxpayers are going to be on the hook for more than just hybrids, however. Indeed, average vehicle prices will shoot through the roof, pricing many car buyers out of the market, shrinking the industry and jeopardizing millions of jobs. But if Washington could not resist showering taxpayer dollars on General Motors and Chrysler to prevent job losses now, it is unimaginable that it will sit back when the entire industry confronts a carmageddon. Indeed, the $100 billion that taxpayers have spent on the current bailout will look like chump change compared to what’s to come. This is making even the UAW nervous, causing it to join ranks with automakers to oppose the standards.

The administration’s proposal in one fell swoop manages to screw over taxpayers, drivers, car buyers and autoworkers. The least it can do is give lawmakers a chance to thoroughly weigh the tradeoffs on the country’s behalf. But the president is trying to impose the new standards through regulatory fiat without Congressional approval. No administration—blue or red—has ever done this before. This is tantamount to declaring war on autos without a formal declaration from Congress.

Someone needs to rein this president in.

Shikha Dalmia is a senior analyst at Reason Foundation and a columnist at The Daily, where this column originally appeared.

Editor's Note: When this column was written, the UAW was against the CAFE standards. Now its president, Bob King, is for them.


http://reason.com/archives/2011/07/26/the-coming-autopocalypse

Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 31, 2011, 03:30:08 PM
Just read Biden is slated to collect 66k from the secret service for the cottage where they stay to protect him.  Its in the Washington Times. 

Unreal.   Truly unreal.
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 01, 2011, 03:50:46 AM
www.americanthinker.com





There comes a time and a point in history which indelibly define a President.  Oftentimes the event may not be of major import in the greater scheme of things but the management of it is of such prominence that the success or failure in the handling of the issue is permanently attached to the individual.  Such a moment has happened to Barack Obama.  His incompetence, inability to lead, prevarications, petulance and immaturity in the debt ceiling crisis have indelibly created an image of abject failure in the minds of a critical mass of people in the United States and around the globe.  He will never be able to overcome the portrait that has been etched in too many minds.

Barack Obama's only interest in the debt ceiling debate was to raise the borrowing limit sufficiently to get by the next election, and as a cudgel to denigrate the Republicans.  His concern was not for the American people and the impact of overwhelming national debt, nor an impending and inevitable credit downgrade.  Rather, he was determined that raising the debt ceiling would not become an issue during the presidential campaign.  Thus, spending cuts created out of whole cloth, combined with tax increases aimed at stoking the embers of class envy, were bandied about by his party in order to justify an increase in the debt ceiling of $2.4 Trillion.

The destruction wrought by the nearly $5.5 Trillion (more than a third of the total debt of a nation 222 years old) he will have added to the nation's balance sheet by the end of his term was immaterial, thus no detailed plan was forthcoming from the White House, and no lie or accusation aimed at the opposition was too absurd to tell.  The only matter of importance was his re-election; the long-term health of the country be damned.

With this lasted chapter of Obama cynicism he has gone a bridge too far; and that bridge has collapsed behind him.
Little does Barack Obama understand that he has forever branded himself as an incompetent and failure.  His narcissism and lifelong history of receiving public adulation will not allow him to comprehend the damage.  He does not understand that now few will listen to his speeches, no matter how well delivered; that few will believe what he is saying, as he has lied and obfuscated the facts so often.  Many world leaders have already arrived at the conclusion that Barack Obama is a leader that cannot be trusted, the citizens of the United States are beginning to  understand that he is a man without a core set of principles thus incapable of guiding the ship of state.

The media, increasingly realizing their culpability in the nation's current state of affairs, has begun to ask more penetrating questions and grudgingly question Obama's fitness for office.  Columnists once infatuated with his ability to deliver a speech and skin color have finally begun to admit their error.  The Left has become more open in their criticism, as they now understand that the hero upon whom they vested so much hope is a hollow shell.

The Obama Presidency is over.  He has abdicated all responsibility to the Congress, in particular the House of Representatives, which has little choice but to assume a role they are not structured to do: lead the country as best they can until November 2012.  The American people, suffering under the burden of high joblessness, eroding housing values, inflation and dramatically declining economic growth with no prospect of any immediate relief, are increasingly resigned to the fact that they must focus on surviving as best they can until the election.

Within the term of a president there comes a time and an issue or crisis that define his presidency.  Barack Obama has had his and failed.  The debt ceiling will be raised because the nation's obligations demand it.   This was never an issue of whether to raise the ceiling, but rather how and what brakes will be applied to the incessant growth of unsustainable spending, in order to sustain the nation's AAA rating and insure a future for succeeding generations.

Barack Obama, because at his core he is self-absorbed, dishonest and without coherence in his personal beliefs, was incapable of understanding the importance of this moment to lead in the debate over raising the debt limit and its impact on a nation facing financial and societal bankruptcy.   The die is now cast.  He has made permanent in the minds of a majority of American people the image of a man incapable of being President.  There is nothing he can do in the remaining 16 months before the election, particularly as the United States is clearly headed into another severe economic downturn, to change that perception.
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 01, 2011, 05:14:02 AM
GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt, The Head Of Obama’s Jobs Council, Is Moving Jobs To China At Blistering Pace
The Economic Collapse ^ | 07/31/2011 | Michael Snyder





Jeffrey Immelt, the head of Barack Obama's highly touted "Jobs Council", is moving even more GE infrastructure to China. GE makes more medical-imaging machines than anyone else in the world, and now GE has announced that it "is moving the headquarters of its 115-year-old X-ray business to Beijing". Apparently, this is all part of a "plan to invest about $2 billion across China" over the next few years. But moving core pieces of its business overseas is nothing new for GE. Under Immelt, GE has shipped tens of thousands of good jobs out of the United States. Perhaps GE should change its slogan to "Imagination At Work (In China)". If the very people that have been entrusted with solving the unemployment crisis are shipping jobs out of the country, what hope is there that things are going to turn around any time soon?

Earlier this month, Immelt made the following statement to a jobs summit at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce....

"There's no excuse today for lack of leadership. The truth is we all need to be part of the solution."

Apparently Immelt's idea of being part of the solution is to ship as many jobs overseas as he possibly can.

A recent article on the Huffington Post documented how GE has been sending tens of thousands of good jobs out of the country....

As the administration struggles to prod businesses to create jobs at home, GE has been busy sending them abroad. Since Immelt took over in 2001, GE has shed 34,000 jobs in the U.S., according to its most recent annual filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. But it's added 25,000 jobs overseas.

At the end of 2009, GE employed 36,000 more people abroad than it did in the U.S. In 2000, it was nearly the opposite.

GE is supposed to be creating the "jobs of tomorrow", but it seems that most of the "jobs of tomorrow" will not be located inside the United States.

The last GE factory in the U.S. that made light bulbs closed last September. The transition to the new CFL light bulbs was supposed to create a whole bunch of those "green jobs" that Barack Obama keeps talking about, but as an article in the Washington Post noted, that simply is not happening....

Rather than setting off a boom in the U.S. manufacture of replacement lights, the leading replacement lights are compact fluorescents, or CFLs, which are made almost entirely overseas, mostly in China.

But GE is far from alone in shipping jobs and economic infrastructure out of the United States. For example, big automakers such as Ford are being very aggressive in China. Ford is currently "building three factories in Chongqing as part of $1.6 billion investment that also includes another plant in Nanchang".

Today, China accounts for approximately one out of every four vehicles sold worldwide. The big automakers consider the future to be in China.

Just a few decades ago, China was an economic joke and the U.S. economy was absolutely unparalleled.

But disastrous trade policies have opened up the door for a mammoth transfer of jobs, factories and wealth from the United States to China.

China has become an absolute powerhouse and America is rapidly declining.

Beautiful new infrastructure is going up all over China even as U.S. infrastructure rots and decays right in front of our eyes.

You can see some amazing pictures of the stunning economic development that has been going on in China here, here, here and here.

America is being deindustrialized at lightning speed and very few of our politicians seem to care.

Back in 1979, there were 19.5 million manufacturing jobs in the United States.

Today, there are 11.6 million.

That represents a decline of 40 percent during a time period when our overall population experienced tremendous growth.

We used to have the greatest manufacturing cities on the entire globe. The rest of the world was in awe of us.

Today, most of those formerly great manufacturing cities are decaying, rotting hellholes.

The following is what one reporter from the UK saw during his visit to Detroit....

As you pass the city limits a blanket of gloom, neglect and cheapness descends. The buildings are shabbier, the paint is faded. The businesses, where they exist, are thrift shops and pawn shops or wretched groceries where the goods are old and tired. Finding somewhere to have breakfast, normally easy in any American city, involves a long hunt. ‘God bless Detroit’, says one billboard, just beside another offering the alternative solution: liquor.

You can see some really shocking images of the decline of Detroit right here.

Our politicians insisted that globalism would not result in a "giant sucking sound" as millions of jobs left America.

But that is exactly what has happened.

Sadly, most American families still don't understand what has happened. Most of them are still waiting for things to get back to "normal".

Millions of unemployed Americans are dealing with incredible amounts of stress right now as they wait for jobs to start opening up again. But the jobs that have been shipped overseas are not coming back. In a globalized economy, it doesn't make sense to hire American workers when you can legally pay workers slave labor wages on the other side of the globe.

Millions of good middle class jobs have been replaced by low paying service jobs. Today there are huge numbers of Americans that are cutting hair or flipping burgers because that is all they can get right now.

Many others are only able to survive because of the safety net. One reader named David recently left a comment in which he shared his story. David did everything that the system asked him to do, but the promised rewards never materialized. Now David is broke, unemployed and he feels deeply frustrated....

A year ago I had a job, we were struggling, but bills were getting paid, and somehow we were getting by. Then I made the mistake of getting sick, one day before my company insurance kicked in. An auto-immune illness almost killed me, if it weren’t for the amazing efforts of my physicians and an emergency spleenectomy, I would not be here.

My wife would have been a single mother,raising two young sons, one of which is autistic. Instead, I pulled through. The disease damaged my liver, leaving me with a chronic condition, and even after a year, it is hard to get up and go some days. My “employer” dumped me as soon as I left the hospital, and I haven’t worked since. It isn’t for lack of looking. There just isn’t anything.

Oh, I get my government cheese money. Here I am college educated, unable to find something that can pay the bills better than the money that we get from the government. It sickens me to be this dependent on the system like this. But the system de-incentivizes work, and makes living on the dole make a perverse economic sense.

I used to have dreams, but I have given up on them. My wife and I have no savings, we have no life raft and if it weren’t for the generosity of her parents and mine, things would have ground to a halt a long time ago.

I believed every thing adults told me. Work hard, I did. Get an education, I did. Find a nice girl and settle down, I did. Two cars, a dog, a cat and couple of kids, a nice townhouse…the american dream. Yep.

I love my country. My heart is broken, broken because I have been betrayed. I did what you asked, I played by the rules. I did what you said to do; I submitted, I conformed, I stopped dreaming. Now what?

I am willing to pay for my faults and transgressions; my failures are my own, I get that. My children should not have to suffer for my failures, they did not do anything wrong. My youngest boy is autistic, we hope he will be able to integrate into society, but the fact is we may have to take care of him for the rest of his life. How do I do this with nothing, and no opportunity in the foreseeable future?

Depression, stress…yep, I’ve got all that. I used to be hopeful and optimistic about the future. Now all I am is afraid.

As the United States continues to bleed good jobs, stories like the one you just read are going to become much more common.

So what are our politicians doing about all of this?

They tell us that we need even more "free trade"!

Barack Obama says that we need more free trade.

The Republicans say that we need more free trade.

In Washington D.C. our politicians do not agree on much, but one thing they do agree on is that we need to keep shipping jobs out of the country.

Until the American people wake up and start demanding an end to the globalization of the U.S. economy, the job losses are just going to continue to get worse.

The United States has lost a staggering 32 percent of its manufacturing jobs since the year 2000. If this trend continues, millions more Americans will soon be surviving on food stamps or living in tent cities.

The American people are deeply concerned about the economy, but they still have not connected the dots on these issues. The mainstream media and most of our politicians keep telling them that the globalization of the economy is a wonderful thing.

It is so sad that people just do not understand what is going on right in front of their eyes.

Whether you are a conservative or a liberal or a libertarian, you should be against the deindustrialization of America.

Allowing our industrial base to be raped is not a good thing.

Allowing big corporations and foreign governments to pay slave labor wages to workers on the other side of the globe making things that will be sold inside the United States is not a good thing.

Allowing the destruction of our industrial capacity to threaten our national security is not a good thing.

Allowing millions of precious jobs to leave the country is not a good thing.

The biggest corporations are making some extra profits by exploiting cheap labor on the other side of the globe. Corporate executives love to shower themselves with larger and larger bonuses.

But our current trade policies are not working for American workers.

We need "fair trade", not "free trade".

The United States is being taken advantage of, and the Democrats and the Republicans are both laying down like doormats and letting it happen.

If you want to know where all the good jobs went, it is not a big mystery.

They have been shipped out of the country and they are not coming back.

Unless fundamental changes are made, things are going to get worse and worse and worse for American workers.

So what is going to happen next?

It is up to you America.
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: whork25 on August 01, 2011, 05:55:15 AM
The big corp CEO's and politicians have sold us out...traitors
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: 240 is Back on August 01, 2011, 06:05:45 AM
I don't have a problem with any US president charging rent to the secret service.

I'm sure Bush 1 and 2 and Clinton provide housing to their security details as well - and it comes at a cost of a place they could be renting to someone else. 

So yeah, there are what, 4 former US presidents still living? If you're going to complain about $20 grand in rent for 4 men who led the free world, well...
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 01, 2011, 06:12:40 AM
I don't have a problem with any US president charging rent to the secret service.

I'm sure Bush 1 and 2 and Clinton provide housing to their security details as well - and it comes at a cost of a place they could be renting to someone else. 

So yeah, there are what, 4 former US presidents still living? If you're going to complain about $20 grand in rent for 4 men who led the free world, well...

 ::)  ::)  ::)

It never stops with you doesnt it? 

You just cant help yourself any more. 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Option D on August 01, 2011, 06:50:58 AM
::)  ::)  ::)

It never stops with you doesnt it? 

You just cant help yourself any more. 

Lol.. Pot Kettle
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 01, 2011, 06:51:23 AM
Eric Holder's Newest Witch Hunt
WWW.Townhall.com ^ | July 311, 2011 | Bob Beauprez



________________________ ________________________ ________


The Department of Justice is executing a "Witch Hunt" against banks. Through the DOJ's Civil Rights Division, Attorney General Eric Holder is forcing banks to "relax their mortgage underwriting standards and approve loans for minorities with poor credit as part of a new crackdown on alleged discrimination," according to a published report by Investor's Business Daily after reviewing court documents.

The DOJ has already extorted $20 million for weak and poor credit loans from banks that "settled out of court rather than battle the federal government and risk being branded racist." The DOJ admits another 60 banks are already under "investigation." Holder's demanding the banks sign "non-disclosure" settlement agreements barring them from talking while allowing the DOJ to operate behind a curtain of secrecy.

The settlements already extracted from banks force them to make "prime-rate mortgages to low income blacks and Hispanics" with credit problems, even if they are living on welfare. According to IBD, the DOJ has ordered banks to advertise that minorities cannot be turned down for a loan "because they receive public aid, such as unemployment benefits, welfare payments or food stamps." No job; no problem!


In other words, the DOJ is forcing banks to make loans to people that they know don't qualify for them and likely won't be able to afford to repay them, which is precisely the kind of failed public policy that precipitated the financial collapse and recession in 2008.


The DOJ ordered Midwest BankCentre to provide "special financing" in the predominantly black areas of St. Louis for fixed prime rate conventional home loan financing for borrowers "who would ordinarily not qualify for such rates for reasons including the lack of required credit quality, income or down payment."


Eric Holder and the head of his Civil Rights Division, Tom Perez were both protégés of Janet Reno who launched a similar attack on banks in the early years of the Clinton Administration. That led to an expansion of the Community Reinvestment Act, CRA, and an explosion of forced lending to low-income, poor credit risk borrowers and the sub-prime mortgage industry that collapsed in 2008. Under the weight of massive guarantees of poor quality and defaulted mortgages, the federal government was forced to seize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. To date about $150 billion has been required to bailout the two agencies to keep them solvent.

Like Reno, Holder and Perez are pushing their own social agenda, and ramifications to the financial sector and total economy are meaningless to them. They willingly pervert the law and leverage the full weight of the Justice Department to intimidate banks to accomplish their objectives.

Credit analysis and repayment ability of the borrower matter none to Holder and Perez. To them, if a minority is turned down for a loan, it must surely be evidence of racial discrimination. Perez has gone so far as to compare bankers to the Ku Klux Klan. The only difference between bankers and the KKK, he says, is that bankers discriminate "with a smile" and "fine print," but they are "every bit as destructive as the cross burned in a neighborhood."

Holder and Perez appointed another Janet Reno alumnus, Eric Halperin, as Special Counsel for Fair Lending. Previously, Halperin was a lobbyist for the leftist Center for Responsible Lending (CRL) where he pressed congress and the various agencies for continued relaxing of lending standards. Just how objective do you suppose this "special lending cop" is in applying the law?

CRL's website reveals their leftist perspective and agenda; "lenders have strong incentives to engage in unfair, deceptive practices and to aggressively market loans designed to fail." That's pure hooey, of course. Banks make a profit if loans are paid back. They sustain losses when loans fail. But, this phony theory of "disparate impact" or "red-lining" has been used by the left for decades to convince politicians and bureaucrats to force unsound, unsafe lending practices, the consequences of which have been manifested in the current economic mess.

The forced settlements have gone well beyond lending. The concessions that DOJ has imposed have even required banks to fund inner-city "community organizers." According to IBD, "lenders are being forced to bankroll Acorn clones that often exist just to shake them down for risky loans."

As DOJ strong arms banks to relax lending standards to satisfy the Obama Administration's racialist social agenda, other federal agencies are telling banks to do just the opposite. "Banks are damned if they do, damned if they don't," according to Ernest Istook, a Heritage Foundation fellow and former Member of Congress who is critical of DOJ for forcing "affirmative action lending."


The current economic crisis has stressed even the strongest of banks. Bank safety and soundness examiners from the Federal Reserve, the OCC, FDIC, OTS, and NCUA have put the fear of God into banks all across the nation demanding tightened credit standards. They have forced banks to increase capital, add to reserves for losses, mark down asset value of existing credit assets, and questioned virtually every loan the banks make. The CEO of one historically successful community bank told me a regulator demanded, "You will not make another commercial real estate loan." How that bank was supposed to meet the needs of the small businesses in the community while not making loans on commercial real estate was of no concern to the regulator.

The newspapers are full of reports that the government has seized and closed banks, removed management and boards of directors, placed banks on written agreements so tightly drafted that the government has essentially assumed management of the bank while the shareholders, directors and management are still stuck with full risk and liability.

Banks are selling, consolidating, and closing all across America, and going with them is the access to capital and importantly the personal relationship that historically has been vitally important to the success of our entrepreneurial free-market economy. Over 1400 bank offices have closed in the last two years, and many more are expected in 2011. In the wake are exasperated small businessmen wondering what to do next.

If you're confused by the mixed signals and heavy-handedness of government, how would you like to be a banker? Little wonder that banks are afraid to lend and many are almost in lock down. Politicians can talk all they want about getting capital and the economy moving again, but the uncertainty and mixed signals coming from Washington are big reasons why both lenders and borrowers are hiding out in their bunkers.

Thomas Lifson, writing in American Thinker about the DOJ's witch hunt, notes that bankers tend to be "a cowardly lot when confronted by the power of the State." Who can blame them when the government has the power to lock their doors and seize their assets?

Lipson goes on, "Nobody in a highly regulated business wants the government publicly charging racism. A comparatively small group within the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department has assumed the role of national bank regulators with the intent of favoring groups they support. It's a corruption of the legitimate role of government." Corruption may be an overly polite description.

Added to the bi-polar treatment from the DOJ and other regulators is the fact the very government that controls their every move is now a larger source of consumer credit that all of the private sector banks combined. Recently released Federal Reserve Bank data documents a remarkably rapid and substantial shift to the government as the new credit goliath.


As recently as 2006, the private banking sector provided $2 in outstanding home mortgages and consumer credit for every $1 of government financed loans. The data from the Fed, however indicates that government loans and guarantees now total $6.32 trillion, up from just $4.40 trillion at the end of 2006. For the same period, the private sector market share shrunk to $6.58 trillion from $8.48 trillion.

Curiously, the Fed doesn't count the half-trillion dollars worth of guaranteed student loans as part of the government's total. Historically, local banks originated and financed the Federal Family Education Loan program and the government insured the loans against any loss. But, in 2009 as part of the ObamaCare legislation, the private sector was completely eliminated and beginning in 2010 the government took total control of the entire program. When student loans are added, the government surpasses the entire private sector totals. Even without student loans, with the current trend the government is poised to eclipse the private lenders likely within the current quarter.

The almost overnight collapse of the market for mortgage backed securities as a result of the sub-prime lending debacle – largely precipitated by misguided federal policy forced on lenders – evaporated the private mortgage market, and left Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – that had been seized by the government – as the only game in town for home mortgages.

In the blink of an eye, the federal government went from the small player facilitator to the dominant force in the financial industry dwarfing the combined efforts of the entire private sector competitors. Additionally, the Top Dog in the credit market place is also the all-powerful regulator over the little dogs in the private sector wielding absolute and largely unaccountable authority over their every move. Through the Federal Reserve, that same government controls the price, the access, the circulation, and amount of the currency on which the rest of the market must be dependent. With a national debt of $14.5 trillion and growing, the largest supplier of loans in the world also has the world's greatest demand for credit sucking up massive amounts of available investment capital to finance the growing national debt before the rest of the market gets a chance.

In reality, the federal government during the last two years has essentially seized the banking industry. What the government doesn't do directly, it controls by regulation, intimidation, and by sheer force and power. Obama got in the car business, the health care business, the energy business, and he's got the government holding most of the cards in banking, too. That's the change; the hope is that he gets fired by the voters in 2012.

True-believing progressives like to flaunt their "transformed" definition of a Free-Market Economy: "The freedom of the government to compete with the private sector." They find a little humor in it, but it's far from funny. What has happened in barely two years has seriously altered the rules of the road, the natural order of things, even what it means to be American. Time will tell if these are permanent changes or just a significant deviation in our long-term course. The outcome rests with us: "We the people."



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



WTF! !  ! ! !


Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 01, 2011, 06:52:36 AM
Lol.. Pot Kettle

I'm not the one defending this horrid, failed, disastrous, decadent, subversive, destructive, and wretched Admn. 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Option D on August 01, 2011, 07:49:35 AM
I'm not the one defending this horrid, failed, disastrous, decadent, subversive, destructive, and wretched Admn. 

lol.. ok.. you just go ahead and "report" on every breath Obama takes
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 01, 2011, 07:53:11 AM
lol.. ok.. you just go ahead and "report" on every breath Obama takes

Yes I do, since nearly policy, every appointment, every program, etc has been and will be a disaster for the nation. 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Option D on August 01, 2011, 08:05:27 AM
Yes I do, since nearly policy, every appointment, every program, etc has been and will be a disaster for the nation. 

lol... or at times when he calls swat on grandmothers
or spends $2,000,000.00 a day on a trip to india


errrr
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 01, 2011, 08:09:12 AM
lol... or at times when he calls swat on grandmothers
or spends $2,000,000.00 a day on a trip to india


errrr

True - or charging 35k a head to attend his birthday party.  He is a disgrace and plague on the nation like s spreading cancer and bubonic disease.   
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 01, 2011, 03:13:10 PM
Obama administration sues to block Alabama immigration law
fox4kc ^ | 08/01/11 | Reuters




WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration on Monday sued to block enforcement of Alabama's new immigration law, widely considered to be the toughest measure in the United States to try to crack down on illegal immigrants.  

The law, known as H.B. 56, was signed by Republican Governor Robert Bentley in June and is due to take effect on September 1. Civil rights groups brought a separate lawsuit challenging the law about a month ago.


(Excerpt) Read more at fox4kc.com ...


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Disgusting.   
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 02, 2011, 04:44:31 AM
What debt crisis? President Obama heads off to be serenaded by Jennifer Hudson for lavish 50th birthday celebration

By Paul Bentley

Last updated at 10:47 PM on 1st August 2011



________________________ ________________________ ____
 
Party time! President Obama and wife Michelle are expected to be at the celebration on Wednesday
With hindsight, a low-key dinner with close family and friends would probably have been more appropriate.

But the small matter of a multi-trillion dollar debt crisis was not going to stop President Barack Obama pulling out all the stops for his birthday party.

There has been speculation for days as to whether the President was going to make it to his own fundraising 50th birthday party - a lavish affair at a $40,000 a night ballroom in Chicago, with Dreamgirls star Jennifer Hudson booked to sing for the birthday boy.


But with the announcement last night that a debt deal had been agreed, it finally appears as if the party is back on.

Helicopters could be heard over the Chicago lakefront as authorities performed security drills in preparation for the President's visit.

The celebrity-studded event, which will be held at the exclusive Aragon Ballroom on Wednesday - the day before President Obama's birthday - is scheduled to feature star singer Jennifer Hudson.

Also set to perform for the President are jazz musician Herbie Hancock and trendy punk rock band OK GO.


More...Middle classes to be hit by tax increase by the back door: Obama and Boehner face furious backlash from their own parties as last minute debt deal is slammed a 'fudge'What now for Obama? President looks weak after being held to ransom by Tea Party RepublicansArmed forces 'will not be ready to fight' after cuts which could reach almost $1trillion, chiefs warn


Tickets for the fundraising dinner cost an astonishing $35,800 a person. Additional contributions of $50 will gain entry to the concert with limited seating, while $1,000 donors receive 'premium' seats for President Obama's birthday and $10,000 tickets include 'preferred' seating along with the chance to take a photograph with Obama.

 
Happy birthday Mr President: Jennifer Hudson is set to perform at the 50th birthday dinner

While some might say the U.S. debt pool could do with the thousands, all proceeds will instead go to the campaign to re-elect the President in 2012 and to the Democratic National Committee fund.

There has been much discussion as to whether the party should go ahead at such a critical time in U.S. political history.

After days of heated discussion, the President faced bitter reaction to his last minute debt deal today with accusations that the agreement was a sly method to push through higher taxes to hit the middle classes at a later date.

 
Legendary: Herbie Hancock is also booked to perform for Obama and his wealthy donors

The Republican National Committee has criticised Obama, arguing that instead of planning a high-profile birthday dinner the President should be focussing on the huge problems his country is currently facing.


Location: The ornately decorated Aragon Ballroom, where the party is being held

Mr Obama has already cancelled a series of campaign fundraisers to stay in Washington for the tense negotiations that have angered the U.S. public, worried financial markets and raised fears of a first-ever U.S. debt default.

The fundraisers would have brought in millions of dollars for the re-election war chest, campaign officials said.

The President cancelled a planned trip to California and Seattle and put off a fundraiser in New York. His last campaign fundraiser was on June 30 in Pennsylvania.

He reported raising $86 million in the quarter ended on June 30, far eclipsing the money raised by any of the Republicans vying for their party's nomination to compete against him in the 2012 president election.

Despite the accusations of lavishness, Mr Obama insisted all he wanted for his birthday was 'a debt-ceiling deal.'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2021286/What-debt-crisis-President-Obama-serenaded-Jennifer-Hudson-50th-birthday.html#


________________________ _____________________

Truly disgusting. 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: heycomedy on August 02, 2011, 03:02:34 PM
I am starting this thread to list the daily examples of how the Obama Admn is killing the economy and destroying jobs.  

I'll start with the Stim Bill.  See below.




  

Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 02, 2011, 08:50:10 PM

Return to the Article   


August 1, 2011
Cloward-Piven Paradise Now?

By Jeannie DeAngelis
Combine class warfare, demonizing the rich, getting as many people onto the welfare rolls as possible, and pushing the economic system to collapse and you have a flawless formula for Cloward-Piven 2.0 -- and a vehicle that ensures Obama remains in power.

Cloward-Piven is a much talked-about strategy proposed in the mid-1960's by two Columbia University sociology professors named Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven.  The Cloward-Piven approach was sometimes referred to as the "crisis strategy," which they believed were a means to "end poverty."

The premise of the Cloward-Piven collective/anti-capitalist gospel decried "individual mobility and achievement," celebrated organized labor, fostered the principle that "if each finally found himself in the same relative economic relationship to his fellows ... all were infinitely better off."

The duo taught that if you flooded the welfare rolls and bankrupted the cities and ultimately the nation, it would foster economic collapse, which would lead to political turmoil so severe that socialism would be accepted as a fix to an out-of-control set of circumstances.

The idea was that if people were starving and the only way to eat was to accept government cheese, rather than starve, the masses would agree to what they would otherwise reject.  In essence, for the socialist-minded, the Cloward-Piven strategy is a simple formula that makes perfect sense; the radical husband-and-wife team had Saul Alinsky as their muse, and they went on to teach his social action principles to a cadre of socialist-leaning community organizers, one of whom was Barack Obama.

As the debt crisis continues to worsen, President Obama stands idly by an inferno with his arms crossed, shaking his head, and doing nothing other than kinking the fire hose and closing the spigot.  Spectator Obama is complaining that the structure of the American economy is engulfed in flames while accusing the Congress, which is trying desperately to douse the fire, of doing nothing about the problem.

Although speculative, if the Cloward-Piven strategy is the basis of the left's game plan, spearheaded by Alinsky devotee Barack Obama, it certainly explains the President's inaction and detached attitude.

The greatest nation in the history of the world is teetering on the brink of a catastrophic economic crisis. America was pushed to this point by a rapidly-expanding national debt and a stressed-out entitlement system; in the center of this crisis is the President, who insists on expanding it even further, all in the name "fairness" and "social justice."

As a default date nears and the President threatens seniors that there's a chance they may not receive their Social Security checks, it has been revealed that the federal government disperses a stunning 80 million checks a month, which means that about a third of the US adult population could be receiving some sort of entitlement. 

Since the 1960's when Cloward-Piven presented a socialistic guideline to usher in the type of evenhandedness Obama lauds, America's entitlement rolls have swelled from eight million to 80 million.  If the nation's ability to disperse handouts were ever disrupted, it's not hard to see how chaos would erupt should an angry army of millions demand what Cloward-Piven called "the right to income."

Couple the threat of dried-up funds for food stamps, Social Security, unemployment benefits and the like with the Obama administration's vigorous campaign to turn a tiny upper class of big earners into the enemy, and you have the Cloward-Piven recipe for anarchy and complete collapse.

If the worst happened, Saul Alinsky's biggest fan, whose poll numbers continue to plummet, could use mayhem in the streets to remain firmly ensconced in the White House.  Alinsky taught his students a basic principle that community organizer Barack Obama learned well: "Never let a good crisis go to waste." Fiscal disintegration coupled with lawlessness would deliver the type of Cloward-Piven/Saul Alinsky trifecta that progressives have worked toward and waited decades for.

Barack Obama has spent the last 1,000+ days defying reason and choosing policy directions that seem nonsensical to the rational mind: a failed stimulus package; ObamaCare; growing the deficit to astronomical proportions; and cynically portraying wealth as immoral. Now, when cuts are the only fix to a budgetary balloon about to burst, a seemingly illogical President digs in and demands additional phantom dollars to spend on a system that is collapsing under the weight of unmanageable debt. 

It's hard to figure out the method to the President's obvious madness, because based on Obama's approval rating, if the election were held today even Pee Wee Herman could replace Obama behind the Resolute Desk.  Maybe the "method" isn't "mad" in the least! 

Could it be that Barack Obama is purposely pressuring the system in a premeditated effort to foster a major crisis?   One that would demand extraordinary measures to control by a President who could then mete out basic sustenance to Americans who would agree to anything to regain some sense of normalcy.  And in the process successfully usher in the "socially just" system Barack Obama has dreamed of all his life.

While radical Alinsky/Cloward-Piven disciple Obama appears to be clueless and detached, it may be a ploy; he may actually be focused and engaged as he purposely pursues an Alinsky-inspired course of action to force the system to "live up" to its own rules.  Obama's ultimate goal of once-and-for-all discrediting the capitalist system and replacing America's foundational economic and social tenets with a broad-based socialist one headed by progressive Marxists like himself, is actually within reach.

As Obama pushes and prods the US economy and instigates social unrest, it could be that he believes a Cloward-Piven-style utopia resides just beyond the horizon -- a progressive panacea where an election-free, classless society, thankful for a simple crust of bread, looks to Barack Obama to keep the peace by remaining in power indefinitely. 

Therefore, unless all of America, regardless of class or political persuasion, pays attention to the potential for a bleak future that lies ahead and realizes the President's non-plan could be itself an actual calculated plan, the resulting consequences will affect everyone, as Barack Obama transforms a once great nation into Cloward and Piven's idea of paradise.

Author's content: www.jeannie-ology.com


Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2011/08/cloward-piven_paradise_now.html at August 02, 2011 - 10:48:00 PM CDT
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 03, 2011, 05:24:13 AM
EVEN HIS OWN COUSIN SAYS HE IS A DISASTER

________________________ ________________________ _________


WOLF: Liberals’ unmaking of Barack Obama
President enters predictable free-fall from godlike to Carteresque
By Dr. Milton R. Wolf

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/aug/2/liberals-unmaking-of-barack-obama

The Washington Times
7:05 p.m., Tuesday, August 2, 2011




Remember when liberals claimed Barack Obama was “probably the smartest guy ever to become president” and was “a sort of god”? Today they say “we are watching him turn into Jimmy Carter right before our eyes,” and the center point of his presidency is “a disaster.” So what changed exactly?

Is President Obama really a different man today than he was before he entered the Oval Office? The same Illinois legislator who voted “present” 129 times is now the debt-crisis-AWOL president who refused to present a specific plan of his own. The same presidential candidate who wanted to “spread the wealth” has unleashed redistributionist, collectivist policies on everything from health care and energy supply to runaway Keynesian spending and ever-increasing taxes. Should we be surprised?

The president may still win re-election in 2012, of course, but in recent weeks, his approval rating has crumbled, particularly among liberals, to an all-time low of 40 percent in a recent Gallup poll. Another poll shows that even among liberal Democrats, strong support for Mr. Obama’s record on jobs has plummeted 22 points, to a paltry 31 percent. The hope and change of 2008 have given way to the joblessness and foreclosures of Obamanomics.

The only thing worse than the abject failure of a liberal president, at least in the eyes of the liberal, is the undeniable failure of liberalism itself. To claim Mr. Obama has been a good president no longer even remotely passes the laugh test. Consider the results thus far of the Obama presidency:

Two million-private sector jobs have been lost.

Unemployment jumped from 7.8 to 9.2 percent with a simply terrible 2011 first-quarter economic growth rate of just 0.4 percent.

A record 1 in 7 Americans is on food stamps.

Gasoline prices more than doubled, from $1.83 to $3.74 per gallon.

National debt increased 35 percent, to $14.5 trillion, or $137,000 for each taxpayer.

National unfunded liabilities increased 47 percent, to $114.9 trillion, or a cool $1 million for each taxpayer (and this does not yet include Obamacare).

America is on the verge of losing its AAA credit rating.

What’s worse, and was as easily predictable, is the systematic dishonesty Team Obama unleashed to persuade Americans to tolerate its big-government, collectivist agenda. America is, after all, a center-right nation with nearly 3-to-1 self-described conservatives compared to liberals. How else besides trickery could Mr. Obama further an agenda so unpopular with voters? Witness the dishonesty:

The stimulus would keep unemployment below 8 percent.

Stimulus funds would go to “shovel-ready” jobs.

Obamacare would create 4 million new jobs - 400,000 almost immediately.

You could keep your own doctor.

The president’s mother was denied health insurance.

Obamanomics would mean a “net spending cut.”

So, as the liberal presidency of Mr. Obama becomes increasingly indefensible, the liberal is faced with an unthinkable dilemma: acknowledge the fundamental failure of his collectivist liberal philosophy, which tends toward socialism, or blame its failures on a single man whom, until just recently, the liberal deified.

The conflict between liberal collectivist ideology and its application was easily predictable by anyone who has studied big-government economic failures throughout history, from the collectivist all-stars including Mao’s China, Mussolini’s Italy, Hitler’s Germany or Stalin’s Soviet Union to today’s honorable mentions such as Castro’s Cuba or Chavez’s Venezuela. Enforcement of collectivism has always depended on government power, from Stalin’s iron-fisted gulags to Mr. Obama’s mere heavy-handed plan for punitive fines for failure to purchase your government-imposed health insurance. The degree of autocracy may vary, but still the collectivist road to economic ruin is universal.

Here’s what I wrote one year ago:

“As President Obama’s failures mount, there will be an awkward reversal of roles among liberals, and to a lesser degree, among conservatives, that we’re already beginning to see. It will be the liberals, rather than the conservatives, who will decry this man as personally incompetent. In the collapse of the social-welfare state, the last bastion for these scoundrels will be to sacrifice their own anointed deity as though it is his personal failures, rather than the inherent deep flaws of statism, that are to blame. Of course, one must ask how valuable an ideology can be if one man, even (or perhaps especially) a flawed man, can destroy it.

“Conservatives will then find themselves in the uncomfortable position of defending Barack Obama personally, or at least reminding the liberals of their earlier effusive praise, in order to redirect the blame where it primarily belongs - at the feet of the statist policies themselves. The liberals will be left to explain, of course, how valuable the liberal ideology itself really is if even a learned and godlike leader cannot manage it. Further, if Barack Obama turns out not to be the deity they once claimed, what does that say of the liberals’ perception (and honesty) when they eventually anoint another?”

This cycle of liberal, cannibalistic personal destruction is the predictable result of the Democrats’ cult-of-personality politics. Those purveyors of big-government rule are the mob that Ann Coulter described in her recent book “Demonic,” quoting Gustave Le Bon from a century ago, that “knows neither doubt nor uncertainty … it goes at once to extremes.” The absurdity of liberals’ deification and then condemnation of their own leaders is second only to their unwillingness to confront the failures of their collectivist philosophy.

In the end, Barack Obama’s failures as president are not because he couldn’t faithfully execute the liberal collectivist philosophy - he ushered in the Obamacare era, after all - his failures are instead because he bought into the failed philosophy in the first place.

Dr. Milton R. Wolf is a board-certified diagnostic radiologist and cousin of President Obama. He blogs at MiltonWolf.com.
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 03, 2011, 10:50:21 AM
Proposed road rules for farmers anger some
Billings Gazette ^ | July 25, 2011 | Tom Lutey





Tractors lumbering down country roads are as common as deer in rural Montana, but the federal government wants to place new driving regulations on farmers and ranchers.

“It’s a huge deal for us,” said John Youngberg of the Montana Farm Bureau. After years of allowing state governments to waive commercial driver’s license requirements for farmers hauling crops or driving farm equipment on public roads, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is poised to do away with the exceptions.

Regulators are suggesting that all wheat shipments be considered interstate, even when farmers making short hauls to local grain elevators aren’t crossing state lines. The change would make commercial driver’s licenses — and all the log books and medical requirements that go with them — a necessity for farmers. Some might not qualify.

(snip)

FMCSA argues that because grain will ultimately be shipped out of state, it should be regulated as an interstate product at every transportation step. Treated as a product destined to cross state lines, grain becomes federally regulated under the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution.


(Excerpt) Read more at billingsgazette.com ...


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------





Again - whoever voted for this disgusting admn needs to go into hiding for 50 years for the disaster they heaped on us. 

Title: Re: Obama Admn: Unmitigated F'ing Disaster
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 03, 2011, 03:37:29 PM
US borrowing tops 100% of GDP: Treasury
(AFP) – 1 hour ago 



WASHINGTON — US debt shot up $238 billion to reach 100 percent of gross domestic project after the government's debt ceiling was lifted, Treasury figures showed Wednesday.

Treasury borrowing jumped Tuesday, the data showed, immediately after President Barack Obama signed into law an increase in the debt ceiling as the country's spending commitments reached a breaking point and it threatened to default on its debt.

The new borrowing took total public debt to $14.58 trillion, over end-2010 GDP of $14.53 trillion, and putting it in a league with highly indebted countries like Italy and Belgium.

Public debt subject to the official debt limit -- a slightly tighter definition -- was $14.53 trillion as of the end of Tuesday, rising from the previous official cap of $14.29 trillion a day earlier.

Treasury had used extraordinary measures to hold under the $14.29 trillion cap since reaching it on May 16, while politicians battled over it and over addressing the country's bloating deficit.

The official limit was hiked $400 billion on Tuesday and will be increased in stages over the next 18 months.

The last time US debt topped the size of its annual economy was in 1947 just after World War II. By 1981 it had fallen to 32.5 percent.

Ratings agencies have warned the country to reduce its debt-to-GDP ratio quickly or facing losing its coveted AAA debt rating.

Moody's said Tuesday that the government needed to stabilize the ratio at 73 percent by 2015 "to ensure that the long-run fiscal trajectory remains compatible with a AAA rating."

Copyright © 2011 AFP. All rights reserved. More »
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Bubonic Plaque & Metastasing Fatal Cancer on the U.S.A.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 04, 2011, 05:18:43 AM
Report: Obama Administration Added $9.5 Billion in Red Tape in July
By Paul Bedard
Posted: August 3, 2011

http://www.usnews.com/news/washington-whispers/articles/2011/08/03/report-obama-administration-added-95-billion-in-red-tape-in-july




Many House and Senate conservatives are reviving their battle against federal regulations, claiming that the president hasn't stopped issuing job-killing rules during the debt ceiling fight. "While Washington and Americans have been focused on the debt ceiling, the Obama administration has continued to roll out more crushing red tape," said a spokesperson for Wyoming Republican Sen. John Barrasso, who's been championing the regulation fight.

 
[Check out U.S. News's new iPad app.]

At Tuesday's GOP Senate caucus lunch, the lawmakers said that they will renew their efforts, supported by business groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. In a memo Barasso handed out to the lawmakers, he claimed that the administration in July only has put in $9.5 billion in new regulatory costs by proposing 229 new rules and finalizing 379 rules. Among those he cited were EPA, healthcare reform, and financial regulatory reform rules.[Check out political cartoons about President Obama.]


His handout included a word map that highlighted terms like "fragile," "uncertain," and "teetering," all concerns of Americans about the economy.

Title: Re: Obama Admn: Bubonic Plaque & Metastasing Fatal Cancer on the U.S.A.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 04, 2011, 06:02:38 AM
Aetna latest out of Ind. individual health market
by Associated Press | Aug 3, 2011 5:15 PM




INDIANAPOLIS — The nation's third-largest health insurance company is the latest to leave the individual policy market in Indiana in another sign of diminishing competition to benefit consumers who purchase policies through a state insurance exchange under the federal health care overhaul.

Aetna Inc. informed the Indiana Department of Insurance in an April 29 letter that it intends to cancel all individual policies on Dec. 1. The letter was made public last week in a letter from Deputy Insurance Commissioner Robyn Crosson to the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services and posted on the state's federal health care overhaul website, www.in.gov/aca/.

Aetna spokesman Scot Roskelly said Wednesday the carrier currently has only 700 individual health insurance policies in Indiana, making up only a small fraction of the market, and will remain in other sectors, including small group coverage.

"The administrative costs of overseeing just 700 members are relatively high," Roskelly said.

However, Crosson, in her letter, said Aetna was leaving the Indiana individual market over a rule in the federal health care overhaul that insurers essentially must dedicate 80 percent of the premiums they collect to medical care. Anything less than 80 percent would be paid as rebates to policyholders the following year.

Crosson said Aetna and four other insurers — Pekin, American Community Mutual, Cigna, and Guardian Life — cited the 80 percent rule, known formally as the medical loss ratio, as their reasons for leaving the individual market in Indiana over the past year.

Indiana's health insurance market for individuals is dominated by Indianapolis-based Anthem with a 65 percent share, according to Crosson's letter and the state's Medicaid actuary, Milliman Inc. Anthem and four other companies control 90 percent of the market.

However, consumer advocates say the exodus of Aetna and other companies likely will result in fewer choices and higher costs for consumers under health insurance exchanges to be established in 2014 under the federal health care overhaul.  The exchanges will pool the resources of large groups of people to offer more affordable health insurance.

About 200,000 Indiana residents now have individual polices rather than employer-provided coverage. About 875,000 have no insurance at all, a number Milliman forecasts to fall by about half by 2019 while the number of individuals with policies swells to between 450,000 and 875,000.

"In Indiana and most other states, the anticipation is that most of the new coverage offered through the exchanges will be through individual policies," said public health insurance advocate David Roos of Covering Kids and Families of Indiana. "Aetna is not a small player."

The Insurance Department's health care director, Logan Harrison, said it's not clear how Aetna's departure from the individual market will affect an Indiana insurance exchange offering individual coverage. He stressed that the state has not decided yet whether it will create an exchange itself or leave it up to the federal government.

The Insurance Department has asked CMS for a waiver that would phase in the 80 percent rule, which took effect Jan. 1, over several years. It has proposed a medical-loss ratio of 65 percent this year, increasing gradually to 80 percent in 2015. It's not clear when CMS will decide whether to grant Indiana a waiver. Other states also have requested waivers.



Read more: http://moneywatch.bnet.com/saving-money/news/aetna-latest-out-of-ind-individual-health-market/6271506/#ixzz1U44TuL5E






Title: Re: Obama Admn: Bubonic Plaque & Metastasing Fatal Cancer on the U.S.A.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 04, 2011, 11:24:21 AM
Amtrak Blows $1 Bil In DHS Grants To Protect Against Terrorism
Judicial Watch ^ | 8/4/11 | staff






Despite getting more than $1 billion from the U.S. government to bolster security, the nation’s passenger train system—known as Amtrak—remains vulnerable to a terrorist attack because the money wasn’t spent efficiently to adequately protect the most vulnerable stations.

It’s the last thing Americans need to hear in the tumult of an epic budget crisis and record-high unemployment, that tax dollars were wasted by yet another incompetent government agency with a bloated budget. It’s an old, worn out story that gets repeated way too often.

In this case the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) failed to ensure that more than $1 billion in grants were appropriately spent to secure Amtrak’s 22,000 miles of passenger rail lines or its 500 stations sprinkled throughout 46 states. Nearly 30 million passengers use Amtrak annually and, to protect them from becoming victims of a terrorist attack, Homeland Security officials singled out high-risk stations in need of protection.

Then they doled out the tax dollars but never bothered to follow up that the projects got done, according to a DHS Inspector General investigation. DHS never required Amtrak to develop a corrective action plan to address its biggest vulnerabilities, approved lower risk projects and didn’t document roles and responsibilities for the grant award process. “As a result, some rail stations and the traveling public may be at a greater risk to a potential terrorist attack,” the IG wrote in a report that was recently made public with extensive redactions.

Investigators visited four high-risk stations and observed that Amtrak did not take actions to mitigate some of the “more critical vulnerabilities” that had been identified years ago. As an example, they said that at one unnamed station “terrorists could access….” The information was redacted for security reasons, no doubt. Other examples were completely blacked out in the report.

The bottom line is that, $1 billion taxpayer dollars later, the nation’s train system is quite vulnerable to a terrorist attack. In fact, in its report the DHS Inspector General warns that terrorists will continue to target trains (remember Madrid and Mumbai?), explaining that “passenger rail stations are especially attractive to terrorist targets because of the large number of people in a concentrated area.” Furthermore, a terrorist attack in these areas with high passenger and cargo volumes could lead to a significant loss of life and economic disruption.

Homeland Security officials took their spanking gracefully, essentially agreeing with the IG’s findings and promising to right the wrong. The agency concurred with all of the IG’s recommendations, which include ridiculously basic things like ensuring that “Amtrak uses grant funds to protect rail stations from terrorism.”

Title: Re: Obama Admn: Bubonic Plaque & Metastasing Fatal Cancer on the U.S.A.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 04, 2011, 11:31:55 AM
Obama to supporters: Don't get 'bogged down' on war, taxes
By Michael O'Brien - 08/04/11 09:38 AM ET
   



President Obama counseled supporters Wednesday evening "not to get too bogged down" in details when explaining his record to voters during the campaign.


The president, in a video conference with supporters Wednesday night from Chicago, encouraged his backers to focus on broad themes when it comes to his policies on taxes and war, instead of the specifics of individual policies.


"I think the key is not to get too bogged down in detail," the president said last night.


"If somebody asks about taxes, nobody is really interested in hearing what precise marginal tax rate change would you like to see in the tax code," Obama said. "What they want to know is that our campaign stands for a fair, just approach to the tax code that says everybody has to chip in, and that it’s not right if a hedge fund manager is being taxed at a lower rate than his or her secretary."


On Afghanistan and Iraq, Obama said: "If somebody asks about the war, whether it’s Iraq or Afghanistan — if it’s Iraq, you have a pretty simple answer, which is all our folks are going to be out of there by the end of the year. If it’s Afghanistan, you can talk about, look, we think it’s time for us to transition to Afghan lead and rebuild here at home. So, again, it’s a values issue: Where are we prioritizing our resources?"


Liberal groups have criticized the president for agreeing to a deal in December that extended all of the Bush tax rates through the end of next year. Obama broke a campaign promise in extending Bush-era rates on wealthier households, though he has since insisted he will not agree to extend them again.

Obama also disappointed some supporters with this week's debt-ceiling deal, which included no new revenues from higher taxes despite demands from the White House and Democrats for balanced deficit reduction that leaned on higher taxes and reduced spending.

On the two wars, Obama has come under pressure from liberal supporters who want to see a faster transition of U.S. forces out of Afghanistan.

Obama said his campaign, led by Jeremy Bird, his national field director, would take the lead in ensuring that volunteers have good talking points to take out on the campaign trail. The president said his administration would also lay out new initiatives that would help his grassroots volunteers sell his record.

The president, himself a past community organizer, also said it wasn't so bad for volunteers to tell questioners that they don't know the answer.

"They don’t expect you to know the ins and outs of every single policy," Obama said. "But they do expect that you’re going to treat them with courtesy and that you’re going to get back to them if you don’t know the answer to something."


Source:

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/175433-obama-tells-supporters-to-avoid-getting-bogged-down-on-issue-specifics



________________________ ________________________ __________

LMFAO! 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Bubonic Plaque & Metastasing Fatal Cancer on the U.S.A.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 04, 2011, 01:53:18 PM
Obama urges Geithner to stay as Treasury chief
Edited on Thu Aug-04-11 01:30 PM by Fearless
Source: Reuters



(Reuters) - President Barack Obama has asked Timothy Geithner to stay on as Treasury Secretary and a decision is expected soon, officials said on Thursday.

Geithner had indicated he might decide to leave once a decision to raise the U.S. debt limit was raised, which happened this week after a long and rancorous debate. He has headed Treasury since January 2009 and been involved in all the major economic decisions by the Obama administration.

{snip}

If Geithner did leave, the Obama administration would have to find a successor willing and able to withstand a confirmation process that would likely become another battle between Democrats and Republicans over the direction of the nation's economic policy.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/04/us-usa-geithn...
 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Bubonic Plaque & Metastasing Fatal Cancer on the U.S.A.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 04, 2011, 03:20:11 PM
Obama spreads false claim that Thomas Jefferson hosted first Ramadan iftar dinner at White House
www.jihadwatch.com





The State Department retails the PC myth in this article, "Thomas Jefferson's Iftar," July 29. Nor is this the first time this falsehood has gone around: the State announcement quotes Barack Obama saying last year: “Ramadan is a reminder that Islam has always been a part of America. The first Muslim ambassador to the United States, from Tunisia, was hosted by President Jefferson, who arranged a sunset dinner for his guest because it was Ramadan — making it the first known iftar at the White House, more than 200 years ago.”

Longtime Jihad Watch writer Hugh Fitzgerald busted this myth in his piece "Barack Obama, The New York Times, that Iftar Dinner, and the rewriting of history," which was first published here at Jihad Watch on August 26, 2010. Here it is again:

Barack Obama, The New York Times, that Iftar Dinner, and the rewriting of history
by Hugh Fitzgerald

"The first Muslim ambassador to the United States, from Tunisia, was hosted by President Jefferson, who arranged a sunset dinner for his guest because it was Ramadan --- making it the first known iftar at the White House, more than 200 years ago." -- Barack Obama, speaking on August 14, 2010, at the "Annual Iftar Dinner" at the White House

Really? Is that what happened? Was there a "first known iftar at the White House" given by none other than President Thomas Jefferson for the "first Muslim ambassador to the United States"? That's what Barack Obama and his dutiful speechwriters told the Muslims in attendance at the 2010 "Annual Iftar Dinner," knowing full well that the remarks would be published for all to see. Apparently Obama, and those who wrote this speech for him, and others who vetted it, find nothing wrong with attempting to convince Americans, as part of their policy of trying to win Muslim hearts and Muslim minds, that American history itself can be rewritten. A little insidious nunc pro tunc backdating, to rewrite American history. And that rewrite of American history has the goal of convincing Americans, in order to please Muslims, that the United States and Islam, that Americans and Muslims, go way back.

As Obama so unforgettably put it in his Cairo Speech (possibly the most inaccurate, the most cavalier about historical truth, of any speech by any President in American history):

As a student of history, I also know civilization's debt to Islam. It was Islam -- at places like Al-Azhar -- that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe's Renaissance and Enlightenment. It was innovation in Muslim communities -- (applause) -- it was innovation in Muslim communities that developed the order of algebra; our magnetic compass and tools of navigation; our mastery of pens and printing; our understanding of how disease spreads and how it can be healed. Islamic culture has given us majestic arches and soaring spires; timeless poetry and cherished music; elegant calligraphy and places of peaceful contemplation. And throughout history, Islam has demonstrated through words and deeds the possibilities of religious tolerance and racial equality. (Applause.)

I also know that Islam has always been a part of America's story. The first nation to recognize my country was Morocco. In signing the Treaty of Tripoli in 1796, our second President, John Adams, wrote, "The United States has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Muslims." And since our founding, American Muslims have enriched the United States. They have fought in our wars, they have served in our government, they have stood for civil rights, they have started businesses, they have taught at our universities, they've excelled in our sports arenas, they've won Nobel Prizes, built our tallest building, and lit the Olympic Torch. And when the first Muslim American was recently elected to Congress, he took the oath to defend our Constitution using the same Holy Koran that one of our Founding Fathers -- Thomas Jefferson -- kept in his personal library. (Applause.)


We could go through those two appalling paragraphs with such historians and keen students of history as Gibbon, John Quincy Adams, Tocqueville, Jacob Burckhardt, and Winston Churchill, but that is for another occasion. We could point out that the highly selective quotation - for example from John Adams, whose views on Islam are falsely implied by quoting such a statement as "the United States has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Muslims" which was mere pleasing rhetoric, and that phrase "in itself" left open the possibility of other reasons for enmity, including Muslim hostility. Not John Adams himself but his son John Quincy Adams (our most learned President), who was far more knowledgeable about Islam, was to write about that:

The precept of the koran is, perpetual war against all who deny, that Mahomet is the prophet of God. The vanquished may purchase their lives, by the payment of tribute; the victorious may be appeased by a false and delusive promise of peace; and the faithful follower of the prophet, may submit to the imperious necessities of defeat: but the command to propagate the Moslem creed by the sword is always obligatory, when it can be made effective. The commands of the prophet may be performed alike, by fraud, or by force.

But John Adams himself drew conclusions about Muslims and Islam that were far from favorable. John Adams' unfavorable view of Islam was obscured and turned on its head by Obama, in quoting that single phrase that was part of negotiations-cum-treaty designed to free American ships and seaman from the ever-present threat of attack by Muslim pirates in North Africa (known to history as the Barbary Pirates). John Adams' unfavorable view of Islam was shared by all those who, in the young Republic, had any dealings at all with Muslim envoys. Thomas Jefferson had a copy of the Qur'an in his library not because he was an admirer of that book, or the faith of Islam, but because he was both curious and cultivated. Muslim Congressman Keith Ellison used Jefferson's own copy of the Qur'an. Yet that copy, since it was translated into English by George Sale, has for most devout Muslims no validity whatsoever, for the Qur'an must be read and understood in Arabic. A Qur'an in a language other than Arabic cannot even be called the "Holy Qur'an," though apparently Obama, and his speechwriters, did not know this, in their fulsome description of Jefferson's copy of the Sale translation that was appropriated by Representative Ellison for his own crude and transparent political ploy. Obama wrongly refers to Sales' version as the "Holy Qur'an," and every Muslim at that dinner knew such a book could not possibly be called that. A small mistake, but then there are so many mistakes, and Obama and his speechwriters are so eager to please, and yet so ignorant withal, that these mistakes add up.

There is not a single American statesman or traveler or diplomat in the days of the early Republic who had a good word for Islam. Look high, look low, consult whatever you want in the National Archives or the Library of Congress, and you will not find any such testimony. And the very idea that someday Muslims, adherents of the fanatical faith of Islam, would be here and would dare to invoke the Freedom of Conscience that is guaranteed by our First Amendment, through both the Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses, would have struck them as impossible. For everyone knew then, as so many now apparently do not know, that Islam itself inculcates not freedom of conscience, but blind, unquestioning submission of the individual Muslim to Authority, that is, the Authority of the Qur'an, as glossed by the Sunnah, and the Authority of the Shari'a, the Holy Law of Islam to which all Muslim law codes are supposed to aspire and, ideally, to be modeled on, the Holy Law which embodies, in codified form, the texts and tenets and attitudes of Islam. This, too, Barack Obama and his speechwriters, and such people as John Brennan, Deputy Special Assistant For Homeland Security and Terrorism to the President, apparently do not know.

But let's return to that assertion about Jefferson's "Iftar Dinner," or rather, to that dinner that Barack Obama would have us all believe was the first "Iftar Dinner" at the White House way back in 1805. What actually happened was this.

The American navy, fed up with the constant depredations by Muslim corsairs, who were not so much pirates as Muslims who were encouraged to prey on Christian shipping, and who at times even recorded the areas of the Mediterranean where they planned to go in search of Christian prey, seized a ship that belonged to those who were ruled by the Bey of Tunis. And the Bey of Tunis wanted that ship back. He sent to Washington, for six months, a temporary envoy, one Sidi Soliman Mellimelli, who was not, pace Obama, "the first Muslim ambassador to the United States," but, rather, a temporary envoy.

Here, from the Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia, is a bit of the background to the story:

The crisis with Tunis erupted when the USS Constitution captured Tunisian vessels attempting to run the American blockade of Tripoli. The bey of Tunis threatened war and sent Mellimelli to the United States to negotiate full restitution for the captured vessels and to barter for tribute.
The backdrop to this state visit was the ongoing conflict between the United States and the Barbary states, autonomous provinces of the Ottoman Empire that rimmed the Mediterranean coast of North Africa. Soon after the Revolutionary War and the consequent loss of the British navy's protection, American merchant vessels had become prey for Barbary corsairs. Jefferson was outraged by the demands of ransom for civilians captured from American vessels and the Barbary states' expectation of annual tribute to be paid as insurance against future seizures. He took an uncharacteristically hawkish position against the prevailing thought that it was cheaper to pay tribute than maintain a navy to protect shipping from piracy.

Jefferson balked at paying tribute but accepted the expectation that the host government would cover all expenses for such an emissary. He arranged for Mellimelli and his 11 attendants to be housed at a Washington hotel, and rationalized that the sale of the four horses and other fine gifts sent by the bey of Tunis would cover costs. Mellimelli's request for "concubines" as a part of his accommodations was left to Secretary of State James Madison. Jefferson assured one senator that obtaining peace with the Barbary powers was important enough to "pass unnoticed the irregular conduct of their ministers."

Despite whispers regarding his conduct, Mellimelli received invitations to numerous dinners and balls, and according to one Washington hostess was "the lion of the season." At the president's New Year's Day levee the Tunisian envoy provided "its most brilliant and splendid spectacle," and added to his melodramatic image at a later dinner party hosted by the secretary of state. Upon learning that the Madisons were unhappy at being childless, Mellimelli flung his "magical" cloak around Dolley Madison and murmured an incantation that promised she would bear a male child. His conjuring, however, did not work.

Differences in culture and customs stirred interest on both sides. Mellimelli's generous use of scented rose oil was noted by many of those who met him, and guards had to be posted outside his lodgings to turn away the curious. For his part, the Tunisian was surprised at the social freedom women enjoyed in America and was especially intrigued by several delegations of Native Americans from the western territories then visiting Washington. Mellimelli inquired which prophet the Indians followed: Moses, Jesus Christ or Mohammed. When he was told none of them, that they worshiped "the Great Sprit" alone, he was reported to have pronounced them "vile hereticks."


So that's it. Sidi Soliman Mellimelli installed himself for six months at a Washington hotel, for which the American government apparently picked up the tab. And as to that request for "concubines," apparently Jefferson asked the Secretary of State, James Madison, to attend to the matter. It's amusing to note how little the behavior of Muslim and Arab rulers has changed. It is only we who do not see them, or allow ourselves to see them, as primitive and exotic creatures to be amused by or often contemptuous of, but not as creatures to whom we need accord any undo respect, for their sole claim on our attention is that some of them, through an accident of geology, have acquired a lot of money. And there are people in Washington who are happy, in their desire to do well themselves, to convince the American government that it must bend over backwards in treating of Arabs and Muslims. There is no need to do so, and it is easy to show why not. In fact, the description of Mellimelli's requests may put many in mind of how so many Muslim and Arab rulers, including "plucky little king" Hussein of Jordan, when they used to come to Washington, would have round-the-clock escort girls service them in their hotel rooms. But what was most maddening was that the bills were paid by the ever-compliant C.I.A. I presume the oil money has made that, in some cases, no longer necessary.

Sidi Soliman Mellimelli was quite an exotic specimen:

The curious were not to be disappointed by the appearance of the first Muslim envoy to the United States - a large figure with a full dark beard dressed in robes of richly embroidered fabrics and a turban of fine white muslin.
Over the next six months, this exotic representative from a distant and unfamiliar culture would add spice to the Washington social season but also test the diplomatic abilities of President Jefferson.


During the six solar months Mellimelli was here, the lunar month of Ramadan occurred. And as it happens, during that Ramadan observed by Mellimelli, but naturally unobserved, hardly noticed, by the Americans, President Jefferson invited Sidi Soliman Mellimelli for dinner at the White House. He probably during that six-month period had done it more than once. Mellimelli replied that he could not come at the appointed hour of three thirty in the afternoon (our ancestors rose much earlier, and ate much earlier, and went to bed much earlier, in the pre-Edison days of their existence). That time fell, for him, but not for Thomas Jefferson or anyone else in the United States of America, during the fasting period of the month of Ramadan. He replied that he could not come at the hour set, that is, at half-past three, but only after sundown.

Jefferson, a courteous man, simply moved the dinner forward by a few hours. He didn't change the menu, he didn't change anything else. And moving the dinner forward by a few hours hardly turns that dinner into a soi-disant "Iftar Dinner." Barack Obama's trying to do so, trying that is, to rewrite American history, with some nunc-pro-tunc backdating, in order to flatter or please his Muslim guests, is false. And, being false, is also disgusting. It is disgusting for an American President to misrepresent American history to Americans, including all the schoolchildren who are now being subject to all kinds of Islamic propaganda, cunningly woven into the newly-mandated textbooks, that so favorably misrepresent Islam, as here.

Now there is a kind of coda to this dismal tale, and it is provided by the New York Times, which likes to put on airs and think of itself as "the newspaper of record," whatever that means. The Times carried a front-page story on August 14, 2010, written by one Sheryl Gay Stolberg, and no doubt gone over by many vigilant editors. This story contains a predictably glowing account of Barack Obama's remarks at the "Annual Iftar Dinner." Here is the paragraph that caught my eye:

In hosting the iftar, Mr. Obama was following a White House tradition that, while sporadic, dates to Thomas Jefferson, who held a sunset dinner for the first Muslim ambassador to the United States. President George W. Bush hosted iftars annually.
Question for Sheryl Gay Stolberg, and for her editors at The New York Times: You report that there is a "White Hosue tradition that, while sporadic, dates to Thomas Jefferson." I claim that you are wrong. I claim that there is no White House Tradition at all about Iftar Dinners. I claim that Thomas Jefferson, in moving forward by a few hours a dinner that changed in no other respect, for Sidi Soliman Mellimelli, was not providing the first of the "Annual Iftar Dinners" that, the New York Times tells us, has since Jefferson's non-existent "Iftar Dinner," have been observed "sporadically."

When, then, was the next in this long, but "sporadic" series of iftar dinners? I can find no record of any, for roughly the next two hundred years, until we come to the fall of the year 2001, that is, just after the deadliest attack on American civilians ever recorded, an attack carried out by a novemdectet of Muslims acting according to their understanding of the very same texts -- Qur'an,Hadith, Sira -- that all Muslims read, an understanding that many have demonstrated since that they share, not least in the spontaneous celebrations that were immediately held in Cairo, and Riyadh, and Jeddah, and in Ramallah, and Gaza, and Damascus, and Baghdad, and all over the place, where Muslims felt that they had won a victory over those accursed kuffar, those ingrates, those Infidels. And it was President George Bush who decided that, to win Muslim "trust" or to end Muslim "mistrust" -- I forget which -- so that we could, non-Muslim and Muslim, collaborate on defeating those "violent extremists" who had "hijacked a great religion," started this sporadic ball unsporadically rolling. And he did it, by golly, he did. He hosted an Iftar Dinner with all the fixins. It was held just the month after the attacks prompted by Islamic texts and tenets and attitudes on the World Trade Center, on the Pentagon, on a plane's doomed pilots and passengers over a field in Pennsylvania.

And thus it is, that ever since 2001, we have had iftar dinner after iftar dinner. But it was not Jefferson or any other of our cultivated and learned Presidents, who started this "tradition" that has been observed only "sporadically" -- i.e., never -- until George Bush came along, unless we are to count as an "iftar dinner" what was merely seen, by Jefferson, as a dinner given at a time convenient for his not-too-honored guest.

Yes, and how splendidly Bush, and now Obama, have proven to Muslims that there are no hard feelings. Do you think the three trillion dollars spent in Iraq and now in Afghanistan (not counting the hundreds of billions that, over time, have gone to Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan, even the "Palestinian" territories), have done that? It has all been designed to improve the lot of Muslims on the unproven assumption that this will make them less attentive to the texts, the ideology, of their Total Belief-System, and hence more willing to grandly concede to us Infidels a territory of our own, a place in the sun of our own. Yes, George Bush, that profound student of history and of ideas, kept telling us, in those first few months after 9/11/2001, that as far as he was concerned, by gum, Islam was a religion of "peace and tolerance." And just to prove it, by golly, he'd put on an Iftar Dinner with all the fixins. And that's just what he did. And that's how the "tradition" that Sheryl Gay Stolberg, and her many vetting editors at the newspaper of comical record, The New York Times, began. It's all of nine years old, through the disastrous presidencies of Bush and now of Obama.

And stop rewriting history, in ways little and big, about the American "connection" to Islam - including that absurd attempt on the front page of The New York Times just yesterday, to run a story on Christians from the Middle East, fleeing Islam and Muslims for the United States (as they fled, too, to South America, or to Australia) and appropriating the history of Arabic-speaking Maronite and Orthodox immigrants in that story on "Little Syria" to make American readers think that "see, Arabs, Muslim Arabs, go a long way back in New York City, so let's not get so hot and bothered about a little mosque someone wants to build." Was there ever such deceit, day after day, than in the way The New York Times has become a willing collaborator with the O.I.C., and others who want nonstop Mister Feelgood stories about Islam in America?

I have a request for The New York Times. It's a most modest one. All I ask -- I never ask, or expect, very much -- is that the editors of The New York Times apologize for that paper's misapplication of the adjective "sporadic" in the front-page story by Sheryl Stolberg on the "Annual Iftar" dinner.

Put up, or shut up, dear newspaper of record. Tell us when that "tradition" of "Iftar Dinners" truly began. Cite those Presidents who held dinners that they considered to be "Iftar Dinners." Give us chapter, give us verse. And if, as I believe, that hollow and recent and transparently determined-to-win-Muslim-hearts-and-minds "tradition" began in 2001, then tell us. And since your story was on the front page, do what the lawyers do when they have to make legal announcements, and put your retraction, eat your humble pie, right on the front page.

A failure to do so will be further, and for some the final confirmation, of the sorry record of The New York Times in its coverage of Islam. Most readers with some sense of what Islam is all about, even those who lack detailed knowledge, are now ready to take any coverage of the matter in The New York Times with a grain - with a Pinch - of salt.

Clio, Muse of History, is a stern mistress. Subscribers to stories that live and die between editions may forget or forgive, but Mnemosyne does neither. If I were the "newspaper of record," I'd want to propitiate not the gods, but the most vigilant and meticulous of muses. If I were Pinch Sulzberger, I'd be mortally embarrassed, and determined to make amends. But then, I have standards.

Posted by Robert on August 4, 2011 11:53 AM | 27 Comments
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Title: Re: Obama Admn: Bubonic Plaque & Metastasing Fatal Cancer on the U.S.A.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 04, 2011, 04:04:27 PM
Dow Down 500: Should Obama Resign?
August 4, 2011 - 1:21 pm - by Roger L Simon   




  The worldwide market plunge since the signing of the U.S. debt agreement tells us one thing above all: Almost no one on the planet has confidence in the leadership of Barack Obama.

A CEO with such a disastrous first three years as our president has had probably would already have been called upon to resign or been pushed out by his company’s board of directors — more than likely for some time.

Obama has failed in virtually every direction, foreign and domestic. His policies indeed are almost non-existent. He is completely rudderless, unless you accept the view that he is following the prescription of Cloward-Piven and has set out to destroy American capitalism from within.

If that is so — and I don’t really accept it for a variety of reasons — he has failed even at that, because his reelection becomes less likely with every passing day. A Cloward-Piven strategy could not be successful in only four years. America is far too strong for that. In the case of Obama, his policies are leading to something quite the opposite — an epic disaster for the Democratic Party and (modern) liberalism in 2012.

Not that we wont have plenty of pain along the way. We may even be in a full-scale Depression or close to it. And coming back will be far from easy in a world where Iran is running OPEC and the EPA acts as if The Silent Spring is The Gospel According to Mark.

Nevertheless, Obama is ensuring his own failure. Should he resign? If you were a Democrat, you might want that, even with daffy Joe Biden waiting in the wings. Better yet, you would want Obama, in the grand tradition of LBJ, to decline a second term. No such luck. The man is evidently an (increasingly) bitter clinger, as he indicated at a Chicago fundraiser on Wednesday night:

It’s been a long, tough journey. But we have made some incredible strides together. Yes, we have. But the thing that we all ought to remember is that as much as good as we have done, precisely because the challenges were so daunting, precisely because we we were inheriting so many challenges, that we’re not even halfway there yet. When I said ‘change we can believe in’ I didn’t say ‘change we can believe in tomorrow.’ Not change we can believe in next week. We knew this was going to take time because we’ve got this big, messy, tough democracy.

It’s been a long, tough journey all right — something like having root canal work that never ends and without anesthesia. I don’t know what “incredible strides” Obama is referring to. Perhaps his heath care legislation whose contents are a greater mystery than the meat they used to serve in my freshman dormitory. Or maybe he’s referring to the assassination of Bin Laden, an act any American president — in fact, any reasonably patriotic American citizen — would have ratified in an instant for fear of impeachment if he did otherwise.




No wonder he is still clinging (that word again) to the preternaturally vague rhetoric of “change you can believe in.” Ironically, this masterstroke of doublespeak perfectly reflects Obama’s thinking. It can be anything. There is no there there. Yet he continues, even though at this point it’s almost comically absurd, to mouth this nonsensical slogan. What else can he do? Run on his record? Speak about actual change? Point to genuine plans?

As I finish writing this, the Dow Industrials have just closed down over 500 points. Meaningless money for rich people, some would think. Of course, it’s not. It’s every pension fund in America; it’s the fabric of our country, the ability for us to grow, feed ourselves and our children — especially our children.

A big part of me wishes that Barack Obama would just resign now, but I have no interest in giving even the slightest breath to “liberal” policies. They need to be extinguished, at the very least until society could even remotely afford them again. And that won’t be for a long time. A long, long time.

http://pajamasmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2011/08/04/should-obama-resign/?singlepage=true






YES!  RESIGN YOU COMMIE DIRTBAG!
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Bubonic Plaque & Metastasing Fatal Cancer on the U.S.A.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 04, 2011, 05:37:36 PM
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Dereliction of Duty (Oliver North)
Creators Syndicate ^ | August 5, 2011 | Oliver North
Posted on August 4, 2011 8:11:35 PM EDT by jazusamo

   
 

The potentates on the Potomac claim that President Barack Obama's signature on the "debt deal" solves the immediate problems created by Washington's spendthrift fiscal madness while "protecting America's future." Truth be told, it does neither. Here's why.

The arcane legislation cobbled together by House Republicans, Senate Democrats and the Obama White House doesn't increase our taxes, but it does raise the U.S. government's debt limit by a staggering $2 trillion in order to "preserve our AAA credit rating." The agreement says our government will somehow reduce spending by nearly $1 trillion over the next decade. It also creates a special 12-member Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction — composed of an equal number of Republicans and Democrats, six from each house of Congress — to propose ways to reduce our federal deficit by $1.5 trillion. This joint committee is to present its deficit reduction plan by Thanksgiving, and Congress must pass it by Christmas. Sound complicated? It is. And worse, the whole agreement is chock-full of dirty little secrets.

The "deal" identifies no automatic cuts in so-called entitlement spending — Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. But it does require reductions in national defense expenditures, of 6 percent next year and 7.5 percent in 2013. In round numbers, that's about $400 billion less that the U.S. will spend on defending itself over the next decade. Worse, the cuts will begin while we still are fighting 2.5 wars. And that's not all.

Though Republicans claim the legislation will "protect" our military — now closing on a decade at war — from "major cuts," that's a hollow promise. The new law mandates that funds for national security and "discretionary domestic programs," not entitlements, be automatically "sequestered" — meaning "not spent" — if Congress cannot agree on $1.2 trillion in deficit reductions by Christmas. On Thursday, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said this "trigger mechanism" would double cuts in defense and require across-the-board reductions in military spending. He termed this outcome "dangerous" and "completely unacceptable."

The defense secretary's comments echo those of U.S. Army Gen. Martin Dempsey's last week. During confirmation hearings to become the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Dempsey warned members of the Senate Armed Services Committee that it would be "extraordinarily difficult and very high-risk" to double the Obama administration's commitment to cut $400 billion from our military over the next decade. In a written response to committee questions, he said, "National security didn't cause the debt crisis nor will it solve it."

It's hard to imagine Panetta and Dempsey's hard truth's being welcomed in the West Wing, but it's refreshing to hear nonetheless. For months, administration officials and too many in Congress have been quoting outgoing Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen's claim that "the biggest threat we have to our national security is our debt."

Notably, this "threat assessment" justified major cuts in defense by the Obama administration in the fiscal 2011 budget. Ballistic missile defense, the F-22 fifth-generation fighter, the Marines' Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, the Army's Future Combat Systems, new C-17 cargo aircraft and the Navy's next-generation nuclear submarine all got the ax. It didn't matter what risk these cuts imposed; all that mattered was cutting.

Since then, the Iranians have accelerated their quest to acquire nuclear weapons. China's new assertiveness in the Pacific now alarms our allies in Tokyo, Seoul and Manila. Russia's oil and natural gas-fueled modernization of its nuclear arsenal and intercontinental ballistic missiles has expanded — even as Vladimir Putin describes us as "parasites."

For the record, the Obama administration's original fiscal 2012 request for our military — made in February by then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates — was for $553 billion. The Pentagon now is planning to fight 2.5 wars, replace worn-out equipment and retain the world's brightest, best-educated and most combat-experienced military force on less than $520 billion. Though Congress is now on recess and the president is playing golf, the new fiscal year starts in less than eight weeks — and there still is no defense budget.

When our elected officials finally get back to work in Washington, it would be nice if they would recall a few of their responsibilities. First, what we spend on defending ourselves should be based on the risks we face if we don't buy what we need. Second, "provide for the common defense" is an essential function of government. Third, the word "entitlement" does not appear in our Constitution. We the People regard failure to heed these admonitions as nothing less than dereliction of duty.


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Title: Re: Obama Admn: Bubonic Plaque & Metastasing Fatal Cancer on the U.S.A.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 05, 2011, 10:49:58 AM
The Obama Watch
The Disgrace of Obamanomics
By Peter Ferrara on 8.3.11 @ 6:10AM





Last Friday's report on economic growth for the second quarter of 2011 completes the burial of Obamanomics. The economy grew a paltry 1.3% for the quarter, with reported growth for the first quarter reduced from a meager 1.8% to a negligible 0.4%. The economy for the entire year so far has actually grown less than the weak growth we thought we had for the first quarter alone.

The growth for the fourth quarter of 2010 was also reduced to 2.3%, meaning that for the last nine months the economy has grown a minimal 1.5%, barely treading water as the weekend Wall Street Journal described it. For comparison purposes, economic growth during the first seven quarters of the Reagan recovery in the 1980s boomed at an average of 7.1%. Economic growth during the first seven quarters of the Obama non-recovery has now been reduced to an average of 2.6%, barely a third as much.

Historically, as the Journal also reiterated, "the deeper the recession, the more robust the recovery." So the idea that the recovery is so bad because the recession was so bad doesn't wash. Based on the historical pattern, we should be in the second year of a booming recovery by now. President Obama​ instead is mired in three and a half years of stagnation with worse to come.

Keynesian Economics, RIP

This catastrophic failure for America's working people has resulted from President Obama doggedly following exactly the opposite of Reaganomics in every detail. In particular, Obama came into office with his Rip Van Winkle​ attitude pretending not to notice that anything has happened since 1981, and returning to the failed Keynesian economics of the 1970s with a vengeance.

As the Journal explained it this weekend, President Obama "deployed the entire arsenal of neo-Keynesian policies to lift domestic demand," including "nearly a $1 trillion in stimulus, plus a battalion of temporary and targeted programs: cash for clunkers, cash for caulkers, tax credits for homebuyers, 99 weeks of jobless benefits, 'clean energy' grants, subsidies to states, and so much more."

Keynesian economics is the doctrine that economic growth and revival is caused by increased government spending and deficits. The increased spending and deficits are supposed to increase aggregate demand for goods and services, which supposedly causes producers to produce more. If you listen to President Obama carefully, he is always saying that economic growth and prosperity comes from increased government spending.

If the idea that increased government spending and deficits create prosperity doesn't seem to make sense, that's because it doesn't. Keynesian economics has never worked, not when it was born in the 1930s and not when it finally crashed and burned in the 1970s with double-digit inflation, roaring unemployment, and deep recession all at the same time. That is supposed to be impossible under Keynesian economics, because you can't have both too little aggregate demand (the supposed cause of recession and unemployment) and too much aggregate demand (the supposed cause of inflation) at the same time.

The central fallacy behind Keynesian economics is that the money for the increased government spending and deficits has to come from somewhere. If the government borrows a trillion dollars out of the private sector to spend a trillion back into the private sector, it hasn’t done anything to increase the economy on net. If it seizes a trillion dollars in taxes out of the private sector to finance the trillion of increased spending, the result is worse. The economy has not been expanded on net, and the increased taxes reduce the incentives for production, resulting in a net loss to the economy.

Keynesian economics survives not as a matter of logic, but because it provides cover for what the politicians want to do: increase spending and deficits to buy votes for their political machines. For a Chicago machine politician like Barack Obama​, that is catnip.

The Failure of President Obama

What drives economic growth and prosperity, however, is not government spending and deficits, but incentives for production. That was the insight behind Reaganomics, and the reason why it was so successful.

Lower tax rates increase the incentives for production by allowing producers to keep more of what they produce. Deregulation increases incentives for production by reducing the costs of production, increasing the resulting reward. Restrained, anti-inflation monetary policy expands the incentives for investment to increase production because investors know the value of their investment will not be depreciated by inflation and a declining dollar. Reduced government spending and deficits reduce the government drain on private-sector investment funds.

Moreover, these are not policies suited for a particular time and its policy challenges. These are timeless free-market economic policies enduring for all time. As I argue in my new book, America's Ticking Bankruptcy Bomb, if we would only restore these planks of Reaganomics, within a year the economy would take off on a new, generation-long economic boom. As the Journal again said this weekend, "The only way out of this mess is to return to the growth policies that nurtured the boom of the 1980s."

The disgrace of Obamanomics is that its rigid, unreconstructed Keynesian economics was discredited in both theory and practice over 30 years ago. The historic success of Reaganomics was a demonstrated fact for all the world to see (and subsequently imitate) over 20 years ago. But President Rip Van Winkle, playacting dumb, takes us back to the future of the 1970s, reflecting the devout prep-school Marxism of his youth.

He is not the only one. Witness the spectacle of the equally self-absorbed Ezra Klein​, who in his uninformed blog for the Washington Post just last month ridiculed the Republican Cut, Cap and Balance Plan for failing the test of Keynesian economics. He writes:

The only way to prevent massive layoffs, the only way to give the unemployed some help and the underpaid some relief, is for the federal government to spend. And yet we want to write into the Constitution a requirement that spending remain at 18 percent of the previous year's GDP? That is to say, a requirement that the federal government needs to make recessions worse rather than drawing on its unique capacity to make them better? Are we mad?

Klein is blissfully unaware that there is even any dispute over Keynesian economics, let alone that it was thoroughly discredited 30 years ago, and replaced by an historical success proven over 20 years ago. Indeed, he is so behind the curve in recognizing the economic policy debate that he indicates that anyone who doesn't genuflect to the 1930s wisdom of Keynesian economics must be "mad." That only raises, and answers, the question of whether Klein can helpfully comment on today's politics and public policy in America when he is not even following, let alone understanding, a central, decades-old, fundamental economic policy debate.

That is apparently not a problem for the Washington Post, which institutionally presents an open question of whether it is so behind the curve of what is happening in America today that it can even cover and report on current politics adequately for its readers. Certainly no one relying on that paper for political coverage in 2010 would have had any idea of the New Deal-sized political earthquake coming in November. That little item was first predicted in this space, by contrast, in 2009.

But arguably even worse: the New York Times, whose resident economics scholar, Paul Krugman​, argues that the only thing wrong with the Keynesianism of Obamanomics is that the spending stimulus wasn't several times bigger. He offers as his model the spending of World War II​. Federal spending in 1943 was 43.6% of GDP, with the federal deficit at 30.3% of GDP. In today's equivalent terms, that would mean a federal budget of $6.54 trillion, or over 70% higher than today, and a federal deficit of $4.55 trillion, almost 3 times higher than today.

Talk about mad. The runaway Keynesian spending spree we have already suffered has driven the nation to the edge of bankruptcy. Do we have to drive America over the bankruptcy cliff before Krugman acknowledges the proven failure of Keynesian economics? The answer is no, because his devotion to the doctrine is religious, not intellectual, and so it can't be falsified.

Professor Richard Rumelt of the UCLA Anderson School of Management timely reviews the economics of World War II spending and other policies in the weekend Journal. He explains that it wasn't Keynesian-increased consumption from all that World War II spending that ended the Depression, writing:

Government policy didn't stimulate personal consumption, as Keynesian policy makers aim to do today. During World War II, there was no investment in civilian infrastructure and the government placed severe restrictions on consumption.… Thrift restored personal balance sheets, ultimately setting the stage for the postwar boom.

Rumelt adds that contrary to Keynesian economics:

During the 1941-1945 war years, over 22% of disposable income was saved. This high savings rate was driven by fiat. Thanks to wartime rationing, Americans were only allowed to purchase small amounts of sugar, butter, meat, gasoline, tires, shoes, bicycles, processed foods and other goods. Plus, there was virtually no production of new cars, radios, home appliances, or housing. In fact, when inflation and increased working hours are taken into account, consumption per hour worked actually declined for the bulk of civilians during the war. Civilian living standards stayed at Depression-era levels.

Rumelt explains that it was actually after World War II, when government spending was reduced by nearly two-thirds as a percent of GDP, and the deficit was nearly wiped out, that the economy boomed. The foundation for that boom was not the Keynesian consumption spending of the World War II years, but the increased personal savings and debt repayment of those years. So Krugman completely misinterprets the government spending effects of the war years.

The more sophisticated (I would argue sophistic) defense of the tragic failure of Obamanomics states that recoveries that follow financial panics are supposedly slower. But that has not been the experience of the American economy. Over the last 70 years, recessions in America have previously lasted only 10 months on average, with the longest previously being 16 months. Moreover, again, the deeper the downturn, the stronger the recovery. Yet, we are three and a half years beyond the last recession's starting date, and there has been no effective recovery.

It was only the Great Depression itself, prolonged with Keynesian economics, where the human suffering dragged on for over a decade. Historically, recessions or downturns have often been accompanied by financial panics, a classic feature of the business cycle. The sophistry of this argument is just an attempt to devise a political excuse for the failure of President Obama and his outdated, benighted economic policies.

Letter to the Editor

StumbleUpon| Digg| Reddit| Twitter| Facebook

Peter Ferrara is Senior Fellow at the Carleson Center for Public Policy, Director of Entitlement and Budget Policy for the Heartland Institute, and General Counsel of the American Civil Rights Union. He served in the White House Office of Policy Development under President Reagan​, and as Associate Deputy Attorney General of the United States under the first President Bush. He is the author of America’s Ticking Bankruptcy Bomb, now available from HarperCollins. 

 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Bubonic Plaque & Metastasing Fatal Cancer on the U.S.A.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 05, 2011, 11:37:02 AM
Leftist Activists Convince Eric Holder’s DOJ to Set Violent Marxist Free
Filed under EthicsComments (48)





Attorney General Eric Holder has a peculiar tendency to set loose militant black panthers.  Everyone is already familiar with the dismissal of the voter intimidation case I brought as a Justice Department attorney.  There, the DOJ dropped claims against Malik Zulu Shabazz, national head of the New Black Panther Party, and Jerry Jackson, a Philadelphia panther and Democratic Party official.  But Jackson and Shabazz aren’t the only militants Holder has set loose.

Marilyn Buck was a Marxist terrorist who participated in conspiracies that led to the deaths of multiple police officers.  Buck helped the Black Liberation Army, a violent Marxist offshoot of the black panthers, acquire weapons and ammunition.  She participated in the robbery of an armored car where a guard was murdered.  If that wasn’t enough, Buck was also charged with the bombing of the U.S. Senate, Ft. McNair, the Washington Navy Yard Officer’s Club and a New York City federal building.  In many states, Buck’s behavior might have led to a midnight reservation in the electric chair.

Yet Holder’s DOJ unlocked Buck’s jail cell and set her free last summer. Justice concluded that Buck “expressed a dramatic change from her previous political philosophy.”  Releasing Buck reflects an alien attitude that has caused the Obama years to be characterized by an ideological disconnect with most Americans.

Post Continues on biggovernment.com


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Title: Re: Obama Admn: Bubonic Plaque & Metastasing Fatal Cancer on the U.S.A.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 05, 2011, 12:28:17 PM
China says debt financing unlikely 'to save' US, EU
France 24 ^ | Friday August 4, 2011




China said Friday that debt deals in the United States and in Europe would not be enough to save their economies and "concrete steps" must be taken to rebalance the global economy.

"The only way the Americans have come up with to improve economic growth has been to take on new loans to repay the old ones," a blistering commentary published on the official Xinhua news agency said.

"To eat May's grain in April, however, will never be a permanent solution to a problem," the report said.

China warned on Wednesday that Washington's efforts to raise the US limit on borrowing had failed to defuse America's "debt bomb" and signalled that Beijing would further diversify its holdings away from the dollar.


(Excerpt) Read more at iphone.france24.com ...


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Title: Re: Obama Admn: Bubonic Plaque & Metastasing Fatal Cancer on the U.S.A.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 06, 2011, 04:09:33 AM
‎"The United States of America has had a AAA credit rating since 1917. That rating survived WWI, the Great Depression, World War II, The Korean War, Vietnam, Jimmy Carter, 9-11, and those "unfunded" wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It couldn't survive less than one term of the current White House occupant's misguided policies." -- Michael J. Fell
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Bubonic Plaque & Metastasing Fatal Cancer on the U.S.A.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 06, 2011, 08:48:49 AM
America’s debt downgrade is a damning indictment of President Obama’s Big Government disaster
Telegraph UK ^ | August 6, 2011 | Niles Gardiner




The decision by credit agency Standard and Poor’s to downgrade America’s AAA credit rating for the first time in 70 years is a massive blow to the credibility of the Obama administration, and a damning indictment of its handling of the economy.  


No doubt the White House will pathetically try to blame the Bush Administration, Republicans in Congress, and of course its favourite target, the Tea Party, for the move by S&P.

But without a shadow of a doubt, responsibility for the country’s financial mess and staggering levels of debt lie with the current US president and his administration.

They have been in charge of running the economy for over 30 months, during which time the United States has witnessed an unprecedented increase in government spending and borrowing.

As the Congressional Budget Office revealed In January, the deficits generated under the Obama administration are the largest since the end of World War Two


(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.telegraph.co.uk ...


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Title: Re: Obama Admn: Bubonic Plaque & Metastasing Fatal Cancer on the U.S.A.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 06, 2011, 10:10:20 PM
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/small-businesswoman-rips-obama-and-calls-on-him-to-apologize-to-america


Bingo.    Screw you Obama supporters.   Rot in hell. 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Bubonic Plaque & Metastasing Fatal Cancer on the U.S.A.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 07, 2011, 05:25:55 AM
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Obama won’t escape blame for credit downgrade
Washington Examiner ^ | 8/6/11 | Philip Klein
Posted on August 7, 2011 6:29:38 AM EDT by markomalley

Standard and Poor’s explanation for why it downgraded U.S. debt is written in such a way that it can be seized upon by all ideological stripes. The statement cites the unwillingness of Republicans to raise taxes and of Democrats to agree to entitlement cuts. And the rating agency’s discourse about the political dysfunction will provide column fodder for Washington pundits who long for the days when both parties would work together to reach compromises. But make no mistake, when all the dust settles, it will be difficult for President Obama to escape blame for this.

Defenders of Obama will attempt to pin the blame on his predecessor, President Bush, and on intransigent Tea Party radicals in the current Congress. But that would leave out the part in between. For his first two years in office, Obama’s party controlled both chambers of Congress – for part of that period, he had a filibuster proof majority in the Senate. During that time period, he and his fellow Democrats could have passed his supposedly ideal, long-term, deficit-reduction package -- one that represented a “balanced approach” between spending cuts and tax increases. It also could have delayed the deficit reduction for several years, so it wouldn’t have affected the current weak economy or the “investments” he considers crucial. Forget about actually accomplishing serious deficit reduction -- he didn’t even attempt it.

When Obama came into office, he argued that we needed deficit spending to boost the economy, so he passed a $800 billion stimulus package. Then, in one of his first supposed pivots to the deficit, he convened a ‘fiscal responsibility summit’ in February 2009. But that actually turned out to be part of a different pivot altogether. It was during that summit that then White House Budget Director Peter Orszag declared, “health care reform is entitlement reform.”

And so, for the next 13 months, Obama spent all of his energies trying to get health care legislation across the finish line. The end product was a plan that, according to both the Congressional Budget Office and actuary for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, did not bend the health care cost curve down. Let’s even set aside the argument over the accounting gimmicks that were employed to obtain a CBO score that showed modest deficit reduction. The reality is this: the law used money raised through tax hikes and Medicare cuts that otherwise would have been available for deficit reduction, to instead expand Medicaid by 18 million beneficiaries and create a massive new health care entitlement.

Of course, there’s more. After health care passed last March, Obama punted on the debt for the rest of the year as he awaited a report from his fiscal commission. He then ignored its recommendations and released a budget so ludicrous that within two months, it failed 0 to 97 in the Senate and he himself rejected it. He instead delivered a speech about his deficit reduction vision, which didn’t have enough details for the CBO to score. And then he spent the last few months arguing that he was prepared to offer Republicans a “grand bargain,” but to this day he hasn’t released details of this supposedly awesome deal that Republicans refused, beyond calculated leaks to favored reporters.

But there’s another reason why Obama won’t escape blame for this. Obama was elected president at a time when Americans felt the nation was in decline, and his central job was restore their faith that our best days were ahead of us, as President Reagan did after the Carter era. Whether you think he was dealt a poor hand or not, the bottom line is that the sense of decline has only deepened during the Obama presidency, and the first-ever downgrade of U.S. credit, whatever its ultimate financial implications, is yet another symbol of that decline.

TOPICS: Editorial; Government; Politics/Elections; Click to Add Topic
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Www.free republic.com
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Bubonic Plaque & Metastasing Fatal Cancer on the U.S.A.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 08, 2011, 05:49:00 AM
Obama's War on The Self-Made Man
www.Townhall.com

 | August 8, 2011 | Lurita Doan





The idea of the self-made man, the rugged individualist, armed with nothing but a superior work ethic, character, and talent has vanished from Obama’s vision of winning the future. Clearly, the president does not understand that in his bid to bludgeon Republicans into agreeing to additional tax hikes, he was simultaneously signaling his contempt and hostility for the self-made man. Amidst the bloviated debt ceiling talks was a stark reminder of just how badly Team Obama has damaged the nation.


Once upon a time, the image of the rugged individual, a person armed with nothing but a powerful idea, hard work ethic and the determination to persevere, was revered in our country. The notion that success or failure is dependent upon the character, work ethic and industry of each citizen has served as the bedrock American political creed for our nation’s entire history.


No longer. America has been transformed. Last week, Obama reminded us that millions of Americans are now completely dependent upon various government subsidy programs, without which, he says, they could not survive.


48.5 million Americans are dependent upon the government for food stamps to feed themselves. Another 55 million Americans are dependent upon social security. 21 million receive disability assistance subsidies. Still another 50.7 million need the government to provide their healthcare, with 60 million Americans on Medicaid.


Over 5 million Americans need the government to provide direct financial support for housing. Another 19.5 million require tuition assistance from the government to be able to go to college, while yet another 700,000 needed assistance to buy a car through Obama’s Cash for Clunkers. According to Obama’s philosophy, even mundane tasks such as weatherproofing windows and doors was, apparently beyond the ability of Americans to accomplish without direct government assistance.


Obama talked incessantly about these millions of Americans, now grown dependent upon government checks, as a way to increase political pressure on Republicans and force them to agree to a bad deal on the debt ceiling.


Obama wanted to remind Republicans and Tea Party loyalists that millions of Americans were going to be adversely impacted if government checks were not issued on time.


Add up all the millions now grown dependent upon the expanding entitlement system and Americans are left with the sobering fact that nearly 50% of our entire population is now dependent upon the government for some kind of subsidy for their food, housing, education and healthcare.


Instead of the idea of the self-made man, Obama tries to motivate Americans with a disturbing notion that government handouts, which until recently carried a negative stigma, are their right, and that entitlements should be showered upon anyone with almost any need.


Instead of success being earned through hard work and playing by the rules, Obama seems to believe that the government should provide. So, it is not surprising that Obama has already concluded that there is nothing morally wrong with pandering to the 50% of the population now dependent upon Team Obama, while taking money and opportunity away from others.


How far we have fallen! Government dependency and “getting something for nothing” carried with it a sense of shame. Benjamin Franklin advised anyone coming to America to be industrious and prepared to work hard. Franklin’s notions of thrift, self-improvement and industry were an essential part of the early Founders’ Protestant work ethic upon which our nation was founded.


Alexis DeTocqueville recognized that the American work ethic was the cornerstone of our rapid economic rise and success. Americans, observed DeTocqueville, were a perpetually busy and hard working people--“the notion of labor is therefore presented to the mind on every side as the necessary, natural and honest condition of human existence.”


Early settlers and immigrants to the United Sates were once provided stern warnings that “if you wish a calm and cheerful life, better stay home--the good advice pray and work is nowhere more to the point than in the United States.”


In his excellent book, Who Are We?, Samuel Huntington quotes Cuban American Alex Alvarez who, as recently as 1999, warned new Cuban immigrants of what they would confront in America. “Welcome to the capitalist system. Each of you is responsible for the amount of money you have in your pocket. The Government is not responsible for whether you eat, or whether you are poor or rich. The government doesn’t guarantee you a job or a house.”


In a shockingly short period of time, Team Obama has almost destroyed the American creed of hard work, industry, talent, thrift and delayed gratification. As a result of Obama’s policies, nearly 50% of our citizens are now encouraged or seduced into finding some subsidy program that is funded through the forced generosity of others. If no such program exists, Team Obama has promised to create one.


Democrats, led by Obama, are not happy with Republicans these days and they view the Tea Party as a group of jihadists. But Obama’s real war is on the American Dream and the idea of the Self-made man.



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Title: Re: Obama Admn: Bubonic Plaque & Metastasing Fatal Cancer on the U.S.A.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 08, 2011, 09:36:23 AM
Bank Of America Implodes; Bankruptcy Contemplated
Zero Hedge ^ | 8/8/2011 | Zero Hedge




With Bank of America investors finally realizing it is game over for the company as a going concern, at this point there are just two options for Brian Moynihan:

- the spin off of CFC as a bad bank, backstopped by the Fed, or

- Chapter 11, which for a bank is essentially liquidation (and with CDS trading up 50 bps to 260 a bankruptcy seems increasingly inevitable).

It also means that another TARP is on the way. And once America realizes that another several trillion have to be put into its insolvent banking sector, it will get quite violent. The biggest irony: it is AIG which takes down the financial system for the second time after its lawsuit against BAC filed last night kills Bank of America.


(Excerpt) Read more at zerohedge.com ...


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Title: Re: Obama Admn: Flash Mob Admn - Thugging, Robbing, Mobbing, Looting, & Pillaging
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 08, 2011, 09:06:27 PM
GLOBAL VIEWAUGUST 9, 2011
Is Obama Smart?
A case study in stupid is as stupid does.
By BRET STEPHENS
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The aircraft was large, modern and considered among the world's safest. But that night it was flying straight into a huge thunderstorm. Turbulence was extreme, and airspeed indicators may not have been functioning properly. Worse, the pilots were incompetent. As the plane threatened to stall they panicked by pointing the nose up, losing speed when they ought to have done the opposite. It was all over in minutes.

Was this the fate of Flight 447, the Air France jet that plunged mysteriously into the Atlantic a couple of years ago? Could be. What I'm talking about here is the Obama presidency.

When it comes to piloting, Barack Obama seems to think he's the political equivalent of Charles Lindbergh, Chuck Yeager and—in a "Fly Me to the Moon" sort of way—Nat King Cole rolled into one. "I think I'm a better speech writer than my speech writers," he reportedly told an aide in 2008. "I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I'll tell you right now that I'm . . . a better political director than my political director."

On another occasion—at the 2004 Democratic convention—Mr. Obama explained to a Chicago Tribune reporter that "I'm LeBron, baby. I can play at this level. I got game."

Of course, it's tempting to be immodest when your admirers are so immodest about you. How many times have we heard it said that Mr. Obama is the smartest president ever? Even when he's criticized, his failures are usually chalked up to his supposed brilliance. Liberals say he's too cerebral for the Beltway rough-and-tumble; conservatives often seem to think his blunders, foreign and domestic, are all part of a cunning scheme to turn the U.S. into a combination of Finland, Cuba and Saudi Arabia.

I don't buy it. I just think the president isn't very bright.

Socrates taught that wisdom begins in the recognition of how little we know. Mr. Obama is perpetually intent on telling us how much he knows. Aristotle wrote that the type of intelligence most needed in politics is prudence, which in turn requires experience. Mr. Obama came to office with no experience. Plutarch warned that flattery "makes itself an obstacle and pestilence to great houses and great affairs." Today's White House, more so than any in memory, is stuffed with flatterers.

View Full Image

Associated Press
President Barack Obama

Much is made of the president's rhetorical gifts. This is the sort of thing that can be credited only by people who think that a command of English syntax is a mark of great intellectual distinction. Can anyone recall a memorable phrase from one of Mr. Obama's big speeches that didn't amount to cliché? As for the small speeches, such as the one we were kept waiting 50 minutes for yesterday, we get Triple-A bromides about America remaining a "Triple-A country." Which, when it comes to long-term sovereign debt, is precisely what we no longer are under Mr. Obama.

Then there is Mr. Obama as political tactician. He makes predictions that prove false. He makes promises he cannot honor. He raises expectations he cannot meet. He reneges on commitments made in private. He surrenders positions staked in public. He is absent from issues in which he has a duty to be involved. He is overbearing when he ought to be absent. At the height of the financial panic of 1907, Teddy Roosevelt, who had done much to bring the panic about by inveighing against big business, at least had the good sense to stick to his bear hunt and let J.P. Morgan sort things out. Not so this president, who puts a new twist on an old put-down: Every time he opens his mouth, he subtracts from the sum total of financial capital.

Then there's his habit of never trimming his sails, much less tacking to the prevailing wind. When Bill Clinton got hammered on health care, he reverted to centrist course and passed welfare reform. When it looked like the Iraq war was going to be lost, George Bush fired Don Rumsfeld and ordered the surge.

Mr. Obama, by contrast, appears to consider himself immune from error. Perhaps this explains why he has now doubled down on Heckuva Job Geithner. It also explains his insulting and politically inept habit of suggesting—whether the issue is health care, or Arab-Israeli peace, or change we can believe in at some point in God's good time—that the fault always lies in the failure of his audiences to listen attentively. It doesn't. In politics, a failure of communication is always the fault of the communicator.

Much of the media has spent the past decade obsessing about the malapropisms of George W. Bush, the ignorance of Sarah Palin, and perhaps soon the stupidity of Rick Perry. Nothing is so typical of middling minds than to harp on the intellectual deficiencies of the slightly less smart and considerably more successful.

But it takes actual smarts to understand that glibness and self-belief are not sufficient proof of genuine intelligence. Stupid is as stupid does, said the great philosopher Forrest Gump. The presidency of Barack Obama is a case study in stupid does.

Write to bstephens@wsj.com






Bloom mm
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Flash Mob Admn - Thugging, Robbing, Mobbing, Looting, & Pillaging
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 09, 2011, 05:15:00 AM
Obama unveils first efficiency standards for heavy-duty trucks
By Andrew Restuccia - 08/09/11 06:00 AM ET
   


President Obama will unveil the first-ever federal fuel efficiency standards Tuesday for a range of heavy-duty trucks, a move the White House is casting as a key part of its plan to cut foreign oil imports and slash harmful air pollution.

The planned announcement comes amid growing economic uncertainty and increasing jitters on Wall Street. Obama is expected to argue that the standards will result in major benefits to the ailing economy.


The standards mark the latest effort by the Obama administration to ratchet up vehicle fuel-economy rules. Late last month, Obama announced a plan to set an average standard of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025 for cars and light-duty trucks. The standard builds on rules finalized last year for model year 2012-2016 cars and light-duty trucks.

Obama will travel to Interstate Moving Services in Springfield, Va., Tuesday to unveil the efficiency standards. He’ll be joined by officials from truck manufacturers, industry groups and environmental groups who have signed off on the deal, according to a senior administration official.

Similar to how previous fuel-efficiency rules were made, the Obama administration worked closely with industry groups to develop the heavy-duty truck standards. Navistar, Volvo, Chrysler, Conway and others all support the standards, the official said.


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Democrats are expected to make energy policy a central component of their jobs agenda. Obama will travel to an advanced battery facility in Holland, Mich., later this week to tout the role of energy technology in “spurring economic growth, and creating high-quality domestic jobs in cutting edge industries across America,” according to the White House.

Senior administration officials touted the economic benefits of the standards Monday ahead of the announcement. While the necessary upgrades could cost as much as $2,220 for some trucks, the officials stressed that consumers will save many more thousands of dollars over the life of the vehicle.  

Overall, the standards, which affect model year 2014 to 2018 heavy-duty trucks, will save 530 million barrels of oil and result in “significant” public health benefits, one senior administration official said.

The rules impose different standards on three categories of vehicles, according to the senior administration official.

Big rigs and semi-trucks must achieve a 23 percent reduction in fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions by model year 2018.

Heavy-duty pickup trucks and vans must achieve a 10 to 15 percent reduction in fuel economy and a 12 to 17 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by model year 2018, depending on whether they run on gasoline or diesel fuel.

Delivery trucks, buses and garbage trucks must reduce their fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions by 9 percent by model year 2018.

Environmental and clean air groups have been eagerly anticipating the standards, which were set in motion last year after Obama signed a memo on the issue.

Natural Resources Defense Council vehicles analyst Luke Tonachel said heavy-duty trucks are a major source of unchecked air pollution.

Medium- and heavy-duty trucks make up about 4 percent of the total vehicles on the road in the United States, but they account for about 20 percent of oil used and 20 percent of the greenhouse gases emitted by the transportation sector.

“They’re really the energy hogs of American highways,” Tonachel said.

He praised the administration for its efforts to ratchet up vehicle fuel economy standards and argued that the new rules will offer major economic benefits.

“Collectively, this is the biggest single step the administration can take to cut our oil dependence and cut carbon pollution,” Tonachel said. “All of these standards provide businesses with the certainty they need to invest, and the investment leads to innovation, and that innovation leads to jobs.”

Source:

http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/677-e2-wire/175983-obama-unveils-first-ever-efficiency-standards-for-heavy-duty-trucks


________________________ _______________________


WHO THE FUCK VOTED FOR THIS?   
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Flash Mob Admn - Thugging, Robbing, Mobbing, Looting, & Pillaging
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 09, 2011, 09:02:04 AM
Xerox CEO, an Obama appointee, may send jobs to Indian firm
Xerox employees were told last week of a possible deal with Indian offshore firm HCL
Patrick Thibodeau
 May 23, 2011 (Computerworld)



WASHINGTON -- Xerox, whose CEO, Ursula Burns, is advising President Obama on exports, last week told its product engineering employees that it is in outsourcing talks with India-based IT services firm HCL Technologies.

Some of the affected Xerox employees may see their jobs transferred to HCL, said a Xerox spokesman, but how many will be affected is not known. Xerox has "hundreds of employees" working in product engineering groups in California, New York, Oregon, the Netherlands and the U.K., the spokesman said.

Burns was appointed last year as vice chairwoman of the President's Export Council, a panel of CEOs advising the Obama administration on how to increase exports, which would lead to an increase in domestic jobs. Boeing CEO and Chairman James McNerney is the council's chairman.

Burns is outspoken on the need to improve the pool of math and science graduates in U.S. schools. In a recent video interview on CNN, she warned that if graduation rates in these areas don't increase, "we become a server nation; our standard of living must decline."

Burns, in that interview, also argued that there is a dearth of workers who can fill skilled jobs, and when jobs aren't filled, the response from U.S. employers is, "We exported the work."

"The work has to be done, so we send the work to people in other places that can get it done. This is absolutely backwards," Burns said.

But a Xerox employee who would be affected by the action and who spoke to Computerworld on condition of anonymity said the outsourcing agreement is being done to cut costs.

Engineering "is the core of America, and to cut that is almost criminal," the employee said. "If you don't have an engineering base in this country, you don't produce anything."

The employee continued, "If you are giving Americans jobs, isn't that a good thing for Xerox?"

The affected Xerox employee said workers were called to a meeting last Wednesday and told about the possible HCL agreement. There were 200 to 250 employees at the meeting, and they were told that "we would all become HCL employees," this employee said.

An agreement is expected sometime next month.

Xerox spokesman Bill McKee said all that's been announced is that the company is "exploring a partnership with HCL." It hasn't announced layoffs, and it's too early to speculate on the impact on the workforce, he said.

The Xerox employee said there are few details about what will happen to the local workforce, but among the concerns is that some of the job offers will be for positions at out-of-state facilities. "It's obvious there is a huge reduction of labor."

McKee said the HCL partnership is being explored "to help us improve the efficiency and effectiveness of our global product engineering operation. We have great skills and talent in our organization, yet we don't have the scale necessary to be a leader in all areas," he said.

"It becomes increasingly clear that to win, we have to partner with other industry leaders," McKee said.

Among the topics being discussed by Xerox employees is a remark made by Vineet Nayar, CEO of HCL Technologies, in 2009, when he reportedly called most American college graduates "unemployable."

The only prior indicator that changes were ahead at Xerox was an internal webcast earlier this year describing a plan to cut some research and development engineering costs to one-third of current levels, the affected employee said. Asked about that, McKee said, "We have never said we would reduce R&D spend." The company has said "that we will be shifting our revenue mix to a higher percentage of services, a business that is targeted to grow between 6% and 8% by 2012. To support that, we have clearly indicated our R&D focus will also shift to a services-led, technology-driven business."

He added, "More than half of our revenue now comes from services. We will continue to shift R&D to support the direction the company is moving in."

Burns will have a "huge impact" on what happens to former Xerox employees, said Ron Hira, an associate professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology who has testified in Congress about the impact of outsourcing. Among the things Xerox will control is how many employees are retained and how many will be transferred to HCL.

"Xerox will also control whether HCL hires American workers or brings in guest workers on H-1B and L-1 visas," Hira said.

What typically happens in an outsourcing agreement is that some workers are laid off, generally those who are older and have higher salaries, Hira said.

If Xerox follows the practices of other outsourcing agreements, Hira said, "some Xerox workers will be kept on in a transitional phase, where they will be laid off some months in the future but they will be asked to train their HCL replacement. Sometimes this is sweetened with severance, but given the current job market, that sweetener won't be very generous."

HCL, according to Hira's research, largely relies on L-1 visas to transfer its overseas employees to the U.S. Last year, the company used 85 H-1B visas and 2,935 L-1s.

Hira believes that Burns will not favor investments that create jobs in America over countries with lower-cost labor.

"By overstocking his export council with so many CEOs, President Obama has set it up to fail," said Hira. "There's no way that Ms. Burns or any other CEO [on the council] will allow solutions that help American workers and the American economy but at the expense of profits and compensation for upper management."

Patrick Thibodeau covers SaaS and enterprise applications, outsourcing, government IT policies, data centers and IT workforce issues for Computerworld. Follow Patrick on Twitter at  @DCgov or subscribe to Patrick's RSS feed . His e-mail address is pthibodeau@computerworld.com.


http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/print/9216954/Xerox_CEO_an_Obama_appointee_may_send_jobs_to_Indian_firm?taxonomyName=Outsourcing&taxonomyId=72

Title: Re: Obama Admn: Flash Mob Admn - Thugging, Robbing, Mobbing, Looting, & Pillaging
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 09, 2011, 09:27:34 AM
U.S. Considers Funding Various Mexican Energy Projects
U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor ^ | Aug. 9, 2011 | Steve Peacock




U.S. Considers Funding Various Mexican Energy Projects By Steve Peacock, U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor

The U.S. Trade & Development Agency (USTDA) is weighing whether it should help finance a trio of energy projects in Mexico; however, prior to making those decisions, the agency will award consulting contracts to U.S. vendors to assess the viability of those respective endeavors.

The first initiative is titled the Zacatecas Wind Power Project Feasibility Study, whose stated objective is to:

enable the development of a 70 MW wind power generation project in the Municipality of Zacatecas. The Feasibility Study will allow the Grantee to assess available wind power resources, verify the power demand profile, evaluate the financial value of wind power in comparison to existing power supply arrangements, and draft legal documents and agreements.

A $501,000 USTDA-funded grant will be used to pay the selected contractor on behalf of the municipal government of Zacatecas. (Solicitation #2011-51023A).

Separately, USTDA is seeking a contractor to perform the Zacatecas Landfill Gas Pilot Project Feasibility Study, whose goal is to:

enable the development of a 3 MW landfill gas collection and power generation pilot project in the Municipality of Zacatecas. The Feasibility Study will allow the Grantee to assess recoverable landfill gas resources, conduct a preliminary conceptual design, and draft legal documents and agreements.

The municipal government of Zacatecas likewise will reap the benefits of a USTDA-funded grant, in this case via a $278,000 payment to a selected contractor. (Solicitation #2011-51022A).

The third Mexican project that USTDA unveiled is the Baja California Wind Power Project Feasibility Study, whose stated objective is to:

enable the supply of 100 MW of wind power to state government office buildings and facilities in the State of Baja California in Mexico. The Feasibility Study will allow the Grantee to assess available wind power resources, verify the power demand profile, evaluate the financial value of wind power in comparison to existing power supply arrangements, and draft legal documents and agreements.

The firm selected will be paid via a $374,000 USTDA grant on behalf of the state government of Baja California, Mexico, in conjunction with that government’s State Energy Commission. (Solicitation #2011-51021A).

Title: Re: Obama Admn: Flash Mob Admn - Thugging, Robbing, Mobbing, Looting, & Pillaging
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 09, 2011, 08:29:00 PM
EDITORS' PICKS

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Obama says he inherited economic problems
By Jeff Mason | Reuters – Mon, Aug 8, 2011
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U.S. President Barack Obama delivers a statement on the lowering of the U.S. credit …
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama said on Monday he inherited many of the country's problems with high debt and deficits when he entered the White House, sounding a theme likely to dominate his 2012 re-election campaign.
Speaking at a Democratic fundraiser, where families paid $15,000 to get a picture with him, Obama defended his economic record and noted that problems in Europe were affecting the United States.
"We do have a serious problem in terms of debt and deficit, and much of it I inherited," Obama said. The financial crisis, he said, made the problem worse.
Democrats and Republicans agreed to a deal to raise the debt ceiling and cut government spending last week, but credit rating agency Standard & Poor's downgraded the United States, contributing to a steep fall in stock markets on Monday.
Obama noted that the United States had seen 17 months of consecutive private-sector job growth, rising corporate profits and stabilized credit markets under his watch.
"What's absolutely true, even before these last couple days in the stock market, is that recovery wasn't happening fast enough," he said. "When you have problems in Europe and in Spain and in Italy and in Greece, those problems wash over into our shores," he said.
Some 140 people attended the fundraiser, which was held at a private home.
CLEAR CONTRAST
Obama, who is ramping up his fundraising after taking a hiatus while the debt-ceiling debate raged in Washington, said the deficit issue would provide a clear contrast for voters in the 2012 race for the White House.
"What we're going to have is 16 months in which we debate this vision for America, and it's going to be as fundamental a debate as 2008," he said.
"In some ways it may be even a more profound debate because the contrast is going to be clear and it's going to be sharp."
Obama is pressing for Congress to extend a payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance to help boost the economy, but he expressed skepticism that lawmakers would get a lot done.
"As president of the United States my job is to work with Congress to try to get as much done as possible," he said.

"Whether we're going to see any progress out of this Congress right now -- because so far we haven't seen much when it comes to innovative ideas that actually put people to work and grow the economy -- remains to be seen."

Under the debt-ceiling agreement, a "super committee" in Congress will find further ways to tackle the deficit in the coming months. Obama said on Friday he would outline his own recommendations for that committee.
At a separate event for potential campaign donors on Monday, Obama previewed what could make up those recommendations, saying revenues needed to be raised, the tax code would have to be reformed, and modest adjustments to the Medicare healthcare program would have to be enacted.
(Editing by Christopher Wilson)
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Flash Mob Admn - Thugging, Robbing, Mobbing, Looting, & Pillaging
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 09, 2011, 08:30:06 PM
Lmfao!    Still blaming bush and trying to convince the morons who paid 15k to take a picture of him that bush is responsible for his failed presidency.    Pure fucking comedy. 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Flash Mob Admn - Thugging, Robbing, Mobbing, Looting, & Pillaging
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 11, 2011, 07:08:30 AM
Sony Hosted Obama Fundraiser, Releasing Bin Laden Movie Before Election
5:23 PM, Aug 10, 2011 • By MICHAEL WARREN
 

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/studio-distributing-bin-laden-movie-hosted-obama-fundraiser_588177.html



       
     
    There may be an overtly political reason that moviegoers will be seeing the story of the Osama bin Laden raid just before they vote for president. Sony Pictures, the company distributing next year's film, hosted a fundraiser for Barack Obama on their studio's premises in California last April. So far, Sony is the only major studio to hold a political fundraiser this cycle. According to Deadline Hollywood, Sony will release the bin Laden movie, directed by Academy Award-winning director Kathryn Bigelow, on October 12, 2012--less than a month before the presidential election.



"The eyebrow does go up when you see the release date," says Douglas Urbanski, a Hollywood producer and conservative radio talk show host. Urbanski said he believes Bigelow's movie will be straightforward and apolitical, much like her 2009 war film The Hurt Locker (which won the Academy Award for Best Picture). But Sony's decision to release the bin Laden movie just weeks before the election, he says, is most likely "very, very deliberate."

Urbanski was a producer for The Contender, a 2000 political thriller with a plot that sympathized with a sex scandal-plagued Democrat and demonized a conservative Republican member of Congress. The movie was released on October 13, 2000. "It was without a doubt a deliberate attempt to influence the election," says Urbanski.

Sony Pictures could not immediately be reached for comment.




________________________ __________


DISGUSTING 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Flash Mob Admn - Thugging, Robbing, Mobbing, Looting, & Pillaging
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 11, 2011, 08:15:40 AM
Rep. Peter King Asks For Probe Into White House’s Role in Bin Laden Movie
Big Hollywood ^ | August 10, 2011 | Hollywoodland




BREAKING: Rep. Peter King Asks For Probe Into White House’s Role in Bin Laden Movie

Posted By Hollywoodland On August 10, 2011 @ 9:23 am In Featured Story, Military, Politics | 79 Comments

Politico:

House Homeland Security Chairman Peter King (R-N.Y.) on Wednesday demanded an investigation into a report that the White House is cooperating with a film on the mission to kill Osama bin Laden.

In a letter to the Defense Department and the CIA, King asked for a probe and classified briefing about any cooperation or consultation between the agencies and the film, set to be directed by Kathryn Bigelow, who made “The Hurt Locker” in 2008 which won six Oscars, including best picture and best director.


(Excerpt) Read more at bighollywood.breitbart.c om ...


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Title: Re: Obama Admn: Flash Mob Admn - Thugging, Robbing, Mobbing, Looting, & Pillaging
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 11, 2011, 09:55:48 AM
Carney: Fallen SEALS photo was controlled release
Washington Examiner ^ | 8/10/11 | Charlie Spiering




When the coffins of the fallen Navy SEALS came back to US soil, the Pentagon and the White House closed the event to the press.That's understandable. After all, the Bush administration made similar restrictions for such ceremonies, although Obama overturned the policy.The press complied as well, but when the White House released a photo yesterday of President Obama saluting the coffins at the ceremony, they raised their eyebrows.When Associated Press reporter Ben Feller asked about the photo today at the White House Press briefing, Carney answered:


(Excerpt) Read more at campaign2012.washingtone xaminer.com ...
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Flash Mob Admn - Thugging, Robbing, Mobbing, Looting, & Pillaging
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 11, 2011, 10:49:02 AM
“Jimmy Carter Is the best-case scenario.”
Pajamas Media ^ | August 10, 2011 | Stephen Green





The Carter comparisons to President Obama are coming fast and furious now, even coming from at least one Senate Democrat. Nobody who wanted to go on the record with his name, of course — but just wait. It won’t be too much longer now before somebody slips, whether on accident or on purpose.

For a while now, Glenn Reynolds has argued that “Jimmy Carter is the best-case scenario” for Obama — because it’s been pretty obvious for a while now. But it’s only this morning that I figured out the why.


Carter, for all his silly notions, learned on the job and came up with some decent policies — eventually.

Jimmuh was dealt an extremely weak hand on national defense, probably the weakest in the post-war era. The armed forces — especially the Army — were making the slow and painful transition to an all-volunteer force. Drugs were still a problem, and a sense of defeat still hung in the air after Vietnam. Public trust in the armed forces was at an all-time low. Carter couldn’t have engaged in any successful saber-rattling with the Soviets, even had he been inclined to. Instead, Carter made human rights the cornerstone of America’s foreign policy, setting the stage for Reagan’s “evil empire” speech. It was a weak policy, yes — but the best he could do given a weak hand. And when the invasion of Afghanistan made Soviet expansionism became too much to bear, Carter changed course. The defense buildup under Reagan really began under Carter.


Faced with inflation, Carter appointed inflation hawk Paul Volcker to head the Fed. Reagan kept him on for a second term. Faced with a weak economy, Carter undid New Deal transportation cartels. The man could and did learn on the job.

Was he perfect? Ha! Carter remained hostile to Israel under every circumstance, he never gained a clue on energy policy, and Iran’s newly-empowered mullahs embarrassed him (and all of us) on the world stage again and again.

Carter’s biggest failure wasn’t bad policy prescriptions. Some of his were terrible, but many he was willing and able to correct midcourse. Carter’s main failure was a failure of leadership. When we needed reassurance, he proved feckless. When we needed inspiration, he told us to lower our expectations. Carter could have been policy perfect from the beginning to the end of his administration — but he still would have lasted only one term.

Jimmy Carter could not lead this nation. He couldn’t lead the way out of a wet paper bag. He couldn’t lead a dog to kibble. Jimmy Carter is a bad leader.


Which brings us to President Barack Obama.

We’ve seen over the last two years that Obama isn’t much of a leader, either. His speeches have become boring and pedantic and hectoring. His foreign policy is irresolute where it isn’t plain laughable (and laughed at from Moscow to Beijing to Caracas). His signature domestic achievements — ObamaCare and the stimulus — don’t even have his own fingerprints anywhere near them. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid cobbled them together in the dead of night. All Obama did was wave his magic pen on the dotted line, and expect everything to turn out all right.

Barack Obama cannot lead this nation. He couldn’t lead the way out of a wet paper bag. He couldn’t lead a dog to kibble. Barack Obama is a bad leader.


And that’s where things really get bad.

Faced with the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression, faced with the weakest job market since WWII, faced with endless debt and out-of-control entitlements, Obama’s policy prescriptions haven’t changed one bit:

1. Soak the “millionaires and billionaires” making as little as $200,000.

2. Regulate the ever-loving life out of the economy.


3. Increase entitlements.

4. Spend, spend, spend.

The fact that these policies haven’t worked hasn’t deterred Obama. Just on Monday he took to the airwaves yet again to call for yet more taxes and yet more spending to fund the expanded welfare and regulatory state he refuses to trim.

Obama isn’t just a failed leader. Unlike Carter, the Smartest Man in the Room™ has proven unable or unwilling to learn on the job. Obama can’t recognize mistakes — even though the evidence is as plain as last month’s hideous jobs report. He will continue to demand that reality conform to his theories, no matter what damage he does to this country. He doesn’t doge, he doesn’t weave — he keeps pursuing failure in the face of failure.


Why? I don’t care why. Maybe it’s his ego. Maybe he really believed all those stoned-out-of-his-mind late-night Harvard bull sessions. Maybe he really is trying to drive this country into the ground, for whatever reason. Maybe, Barack Obama is just a dumbass.

What I do know is, the American people were sold a pig in a poke three years ago. What I don’t know is, if they’ll buy it again.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Flash Mob Admn - Thugging, Robbing, Mobbing, Looting, & Pillaging
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 11, 2011, 01:01:17 PM
Obama sees 'worst kind of partisanship' in DC
Associated Press ^ | August 11, 2011 | DARLENE SUPERVILLE




HOLLAND, Mich. (AP) -- President Barack Obama says that there is nothing wrong with America - but there is something wrong with American politics.

He says Washington has seen the worst kind of partisanship and the worst kind of gridlock in recent months, and that it's undermined public confidence and made things worse instead of better. The president said people are frustrated and he is, too.


(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...


________________________ ________________________ _________


TRANSLATION:  BARRY IS PISSED OFF HIS SPENDING SPREE AND LOOTING IS COMING TO AN END.   

 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Flash Mob Admn - Thugging, Robbing, Mobbing, Looting, & Pillaging
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 11, 2011, 02:18:15 PM
Obama: ‘Last thing we need’ is for Congress to return to DC
By Sam Youngman - 08/11/11 03:15 PM ET
   


Obama blasted Congress from the road on Thursday, saying things would be worse if lawmakers returned to Washington.

“There is nothing wrong with our country,” Obama said in a speech at a Holland, Mich. plant. “There is something wrong with our politics.”

Obama rolled out what sounded like a new campaign theme Thursday that makes Washington gridlock his foil and the obstacle to increased economic recovery.


Obama criticized and mocked Congress's months-long fight over a deal to raise the debt ceiling and reduce deficits, and said he would not heed suggestions to call Congress back to Washington during the August recess.

“The last thing we need is Congress spending more time arguing in D.C.,” Obama, grasping for an aggressive message amid economic turmoil, said to applause from the crowd.

“What I figure is they need to spend more time out here listening to you and hearing how fed up you are. That's why I'm here.”

In raking Congress over the coals, Obama, with his sleeves rolled up, tried to get in front of near universal disgust with Washington politics that has peaked since the debt ceiling agreement.

While Obama’s own poll numbers have faltered, Congress has hit all-time lows with the public.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

More news from The Hill:
♦ Obama not at point of no return
♦ Obama and the quicksand summer
♦ Romney expects 'real ugly' election fight with Obama
♦ House liberals back Pelosi, point finger at Obama



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A new poll by The Washington Post published Thursday showed that almost 75 percent of Americans “have little or no confidence in Washington to repair the economy.”

Eight of 10 respondents said that they are “dissatisfied with the way the political system is working, up dramatically from late 2009,” according to The Post poll.

A Gallup poll this week found just 24 percent of Americans said most members of Congress deserve reelection, the lowest total ever recorded by Gallup. 


The president, who made his appearance on the same day a crowd of Republicans hoping to replace him attended the Iowa State Fair and prepared for their Thursday night debate, is not immune from that disdain for Washington, however.

The Washington Post poll showed that only 33 percent of respondents are confident that Obama will make the right decisions on the economy.

In Michigan, Obama did not single out Republicans or Democrats, but blasted Congress for what he said had been “the worst part of partisanship, the worst part of gridlock.”

“There are some in Congress right now who would rather see their opponents lose than American win,” Obama said. “And that's got to stop.

“We're supposed to all be on the same team. Especially during tough times,” he said.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) quickly fired back at the president.

"President Obama likes to talk about being ‘the adult in the room’ – but there’s nothing ‘adult’ about political grandstanding," Boehner said in a statement.

As he did in the waning days of the debt fight, Obama urged the audience to write their members of Congress to urge them to “stop sending out press releases” and instead vote on legislation Obama said would immediately start creating jobs.

In discussing the recent decision by S&P to downgrade the United States' credit rating from AAA to AA, Obama said the trouble “could have been entirely avoided if there had been a willingness in Congress to compromise.”

“It was a self-inflicted wound,” Obama said.

The S&P downgrade added new uncertainties to the economy and has increased volatility on financial markets.

Earlier in the week, stocks plunged as Obama tried to reassure voters on the economy. The visuals were better Thursday, with the Dow Jones up more than 400 points as cable news carried the president’s remarks from Michigan.

The gridlock and the political circus that caused uncertainty and led to the credit rating downgrade are why people have turned against Washington, Obama said.

“That's why people are frustrated,” Obama said. “Maybe you hear it in my voice. It's why I'm frustrated. Because you deserve better.”

This story was last updated at 5:05 p.m.




Source:
http://thehill.com/homenews/news/176523-obama-blasts-gridlock-blames-congress-for-sap-downgrade



________________________ ____

LMAO - what a fucking baby.   

TRANSLATION:  I CANT GET MY WAY ANYMORE AND SPEND THE NATION INTO OBLIVION
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Flash Mob Admn - Thugging, Robbing, Mobbing, Looting, & Pillaging
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 11, 2011, 06:15:57 PM
To save money, the U.S. government will shut down hundreds of data centers across the country and consolidate their services into its remaining data centers.
The White House Office of Management and Budget recently announced that it would be shutting down 373 U.S. government data centers by 2012.

Over the last two years, the number of U.S. data centers has quadrupled, and yet they are running at only about 27 percent utilization, according to the Office of Management and Budget. The maintenance costs of these data centers, including backup power supplies, air conditioning, fire-suppression and special security devices, has been astronomical, causing them to consume 200 times more power than the typical office space. By more fully utilizing the remaining data centers, the White House hopes to maintain current service levels while drastically cutting costs.



The bulk of the U.S. government data center shutdowns will be on the East Coast, but a total of 30 states will have at least one data center plug pulled.  

So far the Administration has shut down 81 of these data centers already this year, and has a goal of shutting down another 195 during 2011, and 97 more by the end of 2012 for a total of 373. Beyond 2012, its overall goal will be to shut down 800 data centers by the end of 2015, which it claims will save taxpayers over $3 billion annually. The shutdowns are a part of the Obama Administration's attempts to cut government costs called the Campaign to Cut Waste.

The data centers range in size from a 195,000-square-foot Department of Homeland Security facility in Alabama that is bigger than three football fields, all the way down to four tiny 1,000-square-foot Department of Agriculture data centers all in the same zip code.

The 373 data centers to be shut down by the end of 2012 include 113 used by the U.S. Department of Defense, 44 used by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 36 used by the U.S. Justice Department, 25 used by the U.S. Department of the Interior, 24 used by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 22 used by the U.S. Department of Transportation, 22 used by the U.S. Department of Commerce, 19 used by the U.S. Department of Human and Health Services, 15 used by NASA, 12 used by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 10 used by the U.S. Department of Treasury, six used by the U.S. Department of State, six used by the  U.S. Veterans Administration, five used by the U.S. Department of Energy, five used by the U.S. General Services Administration, four used by the U.S. Academic Decathlon, and two each used by the U.S. Labor Department and the U.S. Small Businesses Administration.

R. Colin Johnson has been writing non-stop daily stories about next-generation electronics and related technologies for 20+ years. His unique perspective has prompted coverage of his articles by a diverse range of major media outlets—from the ultra-liberal National Public Radio to the ultra-conservative Rush Limbaugh Show.

 

 

 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Flash Mob Admn - Thugging, Robbing, Mobbing, Looting, & Pillaging
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 12, 2011, 04:41:07 AM
White House, EPA ignore SBA’s report that new coal regulations will kill jobs, economy
Daily Caler ^ | 8-12-2011 | Matthew Boyle
Posted on August 12, 2011 7:49:47 AM EDT by Mikey_1962

President Barack Obama is ignoring heated concerns from within his own administration that new Environmental Protection Agency coal industry regulations will be economically devastating.

The EPA is plowing forward with new Maximum Achievable Control Technology (MACT) mandates. The regulations would force coal energy plants to install giant scrubber-like materials inside smokestacks to capture and cleanse carbon particles before their atmospheric release.

The upgrade cost would fall on company employees and coal miners in the form of layoffs, as well as on businesses, which could expect to pay more for energy.

In a lengthy letter to EPA Director Lisa Jackson, Obama’s Small Business Administration advocacy office wrote the EPA “may have significantly understated” the economic “burden this rulemaking would impose on small entities.”

One Southern Indiana Chamber of Commerce vice president, Tonya Fischer, told The Daily Caller the entire state of Indiana would be “devastated” by these regulations. “We are definitely in opposition to [the MACT regulations] because it would be devastating for the state of Indiana.” She adds that local businesses, which are struggling with the tough economy already, would be forced to pick up the extra energy production costs Obama’s EPA is pushing. “We get 95 percent of our electricity from coal.”

“The cost to convert those facilities would be passed on to the small business owners, or basically shut them [the coal energy producing facilities] down altogether,” Fischer said. “It would become cost-prohibitive for them [local businesses] to continue paying their electricity bills.”

If the EPA regulations aren’t halted, Fischer expects unemployment numbers in Indiana to skyrocket. “This has got to affect tens of thousands of jobs in the area because, not only would you lose the employees from the coal facilities, the plants themselves would become more streamlined so you’d lose jobs there.

(Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com ...
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Flash Mob Admn - Thugging, Robbing, Mobbing, Looting, & Pillaging
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 13, 2011, 04:36:56 AM
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Proposed rule on farms called ‘absurd’
gazettevirginian.com ^ | August 12, 2011 | Sonny Riddle
Posted on August 12, 2011 9:27:45 AM EDT by ilovesarah2012

A new rule being proposed by the federal Department of Transportation would require farmers to get commercial drivers licenses.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, which is a part of DOT, wants to adopt standards that would reclassify all farm vehicles and implements as Commercial Motor Vehicles, officials said. Likewise, the proposal, if adopted, would require all farmers and everyone on the farm who operates any of the equipment to obtain a CDL, they added.

The proposed rule change would mean that anyone who drives a tractor or operates any piece of motorized farming equipment would be required to pass the same tests and complete the same detailed forms and logs required of semi-tractor trailer drivers.

Drivers would keep logs of information including hours worked and miles traveled. Vehicles would be required to display DOT numbers. A CDL in Virginia costs $64 for eight years, or $8 per year, not including the cost of an instructional class and the written test.

If the DOT reclassifies farm vehicles and implements as commercial vehicles, the federal government will have regulatory control over the nation’s farm workers, estimated at over 800,000, by requiring them to have commercial drivers licenses.

(Excerpt) Read more at gazettevirginian.com ...





The thugging never stops w this radical commie.
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Flash Mob Admn - Thugging, Robbing, Mobbing, Looting, & Pillaging
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 15, 2011, 05:40:08 AM
Obama's EPA Seeks 56.2 MPG By 2025; The Cost of Fuel Efficiency: $6714[/car]
MotorTrend ^ | September, 2011 issue of Motor Trend | Todd Lassa



How much will a 56.2-mpg Corporate Average Fuel Economy standard cost consumers? On average, $6714 per car (in 2008 dollars), says the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Michigan. "This model requires a 20 percent PEV (plug-in electric) market share to meet the standards-drastic by any measure," CAR says in its analysis.

The Obama administration is expected to formally propose in September the second strictest of four proposed standards to succeed the 2011-2016 ramp-up to 35.5 mpg. Thanks to the rather convoluted math that has plagued CAFE for decades, these numbers do not really mean every automaker's fleet must average 35.5 mpg in 2016 or 56.2 mpg in 2025. CAFE uses an S curve to determine the fuel-efficiency increases necessary across the automotive spectrum.


(Excerpt) Read more at motortrend.com ...


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Flash Mob Admn - Thugging, Robbing, Mobbing, Looting, & Pillaging
Post by: Option D on August 15, 2011, 10:09:18 AM
Obama's EPA Seeks 56.2 MPG By 2025; The Cost of Fuel Efficiency: $6714[/car]
MotorTrend ^ | September, 2011 issue of Motor Trend | Todd Lassa



How much will a 56.2-mpg Corporate Average Fuel Economy standard cost consumers? On average, $6714 per car (in 2008 dollars), says the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Michigan. "This model requires a 20 percent PEV (plug-in electric) market share to meet the standards-drastic by any measure," CAR says in its analysis.

The Obama administration is expected to formally propose in September the second strictest of four proposed standards to succeed the 2011-2016 ramp-up to 35.5 mpg. Thanks to the rather convoluted math that has plagued CAFE for decades, these numbers do not really mean every automaker's fleet must average 35.5 mpg in 2016 or 56.2 mpg in 2025. CAFE uses an S curve to determine the fuel-efficiency increases necessary across the automotive spectrum.


(Excerpt) Read more at motortrend.com ...


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


nice spin.. this was a funny piece of uninformed prop.. dumb as all out doors.. but funny as shit
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Flash Mob Admn - Thugging, Robbing, Mobbing, Looting, & Pillaging
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 15, 2011, 10:11:50 AM
Yeah - because you know more than Motor Trend.   ::)  ::)


Title: Re: Obama Admn: Flash Mob Admn - Thugging, Robbing, Mobbing, Looting, & Pillaging
Post by: Option D on August 15, 2011, 10:18:21 AM
Yeah because shopped pictures (lies) are always more persuading than the truth.. you=the total embodiment of fox news.. live with it.. embrace it guy

Title: Re: Obama Admn: Flash Mob Admn - Thugging, Robbing, Mobbing, Looting, & Pillaging
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 15, 2011, 10:22:13 AM
How much will a 56.2-mpg Corporate Average Fuel Economy standard cost consumers? On average, $6714 per car (in 2008 dollars), says the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Michigan. "This model requires a 20 percent PEV (plug-in electric) market share to meet the standards-drastic by any measure," CAR says in its analysis.  


_______________________

Option F - knows more.   got it.    ::)  ::)


Bro - just get over it - Obama is going to be seen as a one term mistake and token presidency.   He has screwed EVERYTHING up and has no one to blame but himself. 

He had a chance to be great, but has made daily decisions that have resulted him in being perhaps the worst POTUS this nation has ever had.   

Its ok.  When we get Bachmann or someone else as potus, you can scream all you want.   
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Flash Mob Admn - Thugging, Robbing, Mobbing, Looting, & Pillaging
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 15, 2011, 10:27:34 AM
Court Orders Obama Justice Department to Justify Some of Its Withholdings on Black Panther Scandal
ViewDiscussion.Previous Documents Contradict Sworn Testimony by Obama Official that Political Appointees Were Not Involved in Decision to Drop Voter Intimidation Lawsuit

Contact Information:
Press Office 202-646-5172, ext 305
Washington, DC -- August 11, 2011




Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that a federal court rejected a claim of the attorney work product doctrine by the Department of Justice (DOJ) for documents prepared after the government dismissed its case against the New Black Panther Party for Self Defense on May 15, 2009, and ordered the agency to provide better justification for withholding those documents related to the aftermath of its decision to drop its complaint against several members of the New Black Panther Party who were accused of engaging in voter intimidation during the 2008 presidential campaign. The ruling came in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice, No. 10-851(RBW)).

In his August 4, 2011, decision, U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton rejected the Obama Justice Department’s arguments that documents prepared after the government dismissed its case (against the New Black Panther Party on May 15, 2009) could be withheld under the “attorney work product privilege” exemption. Judge Walton explained:

Although an injunction remains in place in the New Black Panther Party case…the filing of the motion for voluntary dismissal largely marked the end of the litigation. As such, the documents prepared subsequent to that event were not prepared in contemplation of litigation and are thus outside the scope of the work-product privilege.


Because the case had essentially ended on May 15, 2009, Judge Walton found that “it is difficult to see how” the 24 documents created after May 15, 2009, “were prepared or obtained because of the prospect of litigation, which is the testing question the Court must answer in evaluating the DOJ’s work-product claim.” Although Judge Walton found that the DOJ improperly withheld the 24 documents under the attorney work product doctrine, Judge Walton concluded that the documents were properly withheld under the deliberative process privilege, an entirely discretionary claim of exemption.

Yet, Judge Walton also found that the DOJ failed to satisfy its burden of showing that the 24 documents may be withheld in their entirety. Under the deliberative process privilege, the DOJ may only withhold information that is “predecisional and deliberative.” Judge Walton explained:

As it stands now, the description of the DOJ’s segregation efforts is too general for the Court, and the plaintiff, to evaluate whether any factual material in these documents is ‘inextricably intertwined’ with the deliberative material and would thus permit the DOJ to withhold the documents in their entirety.


Therefore, Judge Walton provided the DOJ a second chance to satisfy its burden by submitting “a renewed motion for summary judgment accompanied by a declaration or other documentation that solely addresses the segregability issue.” If the DOJ fails to “provide adequate detail regarding why these documents cannot be segregated, the DOJ will be required to disclose the non-exempt portions to the plaintiff.”

DOJ’s renewed motion for summary judgment is due September 30, 2011. Judge Walton hopes to rule by February 3, 2012.

According to a Justice Department document previously produced to Judicial Watch, top political appointees at the DOJ were involved in the decision to dismiss its voting rights case against the New Black Panther Party, including Associate Attorney General Thomas Perrelli, the third highest ranking official at the Obama Justice Department. Attorney General Eric Holder also received “an update on a planned course of action in the NBPP” from Acting Assistant Attorney General Loretta King, dated May 12, 2009, just three days before the case was dismissed, according to a Vaughn index uncovered by Judicial Watch. A Vaughn index describes documents being withheld from disclosure under FOIA and the basis for the withholdings.

Previous documents uncovered by Judicial Watch, which include descriptions of internal DOJ email correspondence, directly contradict sworn testimony by Thomas Perez, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division, who testified before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights that no political leadership was involved in the decision.

“The Obama Justice Department is going to extraordinary lengths to make sure no more details emerge regarding the Black Panther scandal,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “We already know the Obama administration’s claim that political appointees were not involved in this decision is patently false. And now Justice Department officials continue to fight tooth and nail to stonewall the release of additional information. What else do they have to hide? This new court ruling means we may pry loose some additional information on this voter intimidation scandal.”

Bookmark/Search this post with:


http://www.judicialwatch.org/news/2011/aug/court-orders-obama-justice-department-justify-some-its-withholdings-black-panther-scan

Title: Re: Obama Admn: Flash Mob Admn - Thugging, Robbing, Mobbing, Looting, & Pillaging
Post by: blacken700 on August 15, 2011, 10:29:39 AM
How much will a 56.2-mpg Corporate Average Fuel Economy standard cost consumers? On average, $6714 per car (in 2008 dollars), says the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Michigan. "This model requires a 20 percent PEV (plug-in electric) market share to meet the standards-drastic by any measure," CAR says in its analysis.  


_______________________

Option F - knows more.   got it.    ::)  ::)


Bro - just get over it - Obama is going to be seen as a one term mistake and token presidency.   He has screwed EVERYTHING up and has no one to blame but himself. 

He had a chance to be great, but has made daily decisions that have resulted him in being perhaps the worst POTUS this nation has ever had.   

Its ok.  When we get Bachmann or someone else as potus, you can scream all you want.   


do you actually think bachmann is going to win the nomination,boy you really are not to smart  :D
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Flash Mob Admn - Thugging, Robbing, Mobbing, Looting, & Pillaging
Post by: blacken700 on August 15, 2011, 10:31:41 AM
Judicial Watch  :D :D :D :D :D :D why don't you just post something fron beck  ::)
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Flash Mob Admn - Thugging, Robbing, Mobbing, Looting, & Pillaging
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 15, 2011, 10:32:10 AM

do you actually think bachmann is going to win the nomination,boy you really are not to smart  :D


She is gaining a ton of momentum from the middle of the GOP who dont want RINO Romney or Perry, but also dont want RP.  

She is also picking up a lot of Palin fans as she looks like she is not running either.  
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Flash Mob Admn - Thugging, Robbing, Mobbing, Looting, & Pillaging
Post by: 240 is Back on August 15, 2011, 10:33:43 AM
She is gaining a ton of momentum from the middle of the GOP who dont want RINO Romney or Perry, but also dont want RP. 

She is also picking up a lot of Palin fans as she looks like she is not running either. 

I think you're allowed to address her by her first name.
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Flash Mob Admn - Thugging, Robbing, Mobbing, Looting, & Pillaging
Post by: blacken700 on August 15, 2011, 10:37:01 AM
She is gaining a ton of momentum from the middle of the GOP who dont want RINO Romney or Perry, but also dont want RP.  

She is also picking up a lot of Palin fans as she looks like she is not running either.  

wow thats great but the independents are not going to vote for that nut job and without the independents she is not going to win, it's that simple
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Flash Mob Admn - Thugging, Robbing, Mobbing, Looting, & Pillaging
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 15, 2011, 10:40:46 AM
wow thats great but the independents are not going to vote for that nut job and without the independents she is not going to win, it's that simple

LMAO. 

Obama is at 39% on gallup and sinking.   A can of ALPO will be able to beat obama next year, if the Demos let him run for office. 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Flash Mob Admn - Thugging, Robbing, Mobbing, Looting, & Pillaging
Post by: 240 is Back on August 15, 2011, 10:41:24 AM
wow thats great but the independents are not going to vote for that nut job and without the independents she is not going to win, it's that simple
\\33,

tell us why independents will be able to look past some of her statements - even though history shows us that even in the most ardent tea party environments, independent voters will vote against a candidate they deem to be a religious zealout?

Just because they hate obama so bad?
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Flash Mob Admn - Thugging, Robbing, Mobbing, Looting, & Pillaging
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 15, 2011, 10:44:04 AM
\\33,

tell us why independents will be able to look past some of her statements - even though history shows us that even in the most ardent tea party environments, independent voters will vote against a candidate they deem to be a religious zealout?

Just because they hate obama so bad?

Yes! 

You are clueless.   2012 is a referendum on obama and Bachmann is really upping her game. 

Again - all She has to do is get the McCain voters - plus 4% of disaffected of obama voters and he is gone.   
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Flash Mob Admn - Thugging, Robbing, Mobbing, Looting, & Pillaging
Post by: blacken700 on August 15, 2011, 10:45:45 AM
\\33,

tell us why independents will be able to look past some of her statements - even though history shows us that even in the most ardent tea party environments, independent voters will vote against a candidate they deem to be a religious zealout?

Just because they hate obama so bad?
Yes! 

You are clueless.   2012 is a referendum on obama and Bachmann is really upping her game. 

Again - all She has to do is get the McCain voters - plus 4% of disaffected of obama voters and he is gone.   

if that's the best the repubs can find then it's 4 more years of obama  ;D
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Flash Mob Admn - Thugging, Robbing, Mobbing, Looting, & Pillaging
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 15, 2011, 10:46:51 AM
No, its basic math - something the libs are obviously not fond of. 

Title: Re: Obama Admn: Flash Mob Admn - Thugging, Robbing, Mobbing, Looting, & Pillaging
Post by: blacken700 on August 15, 2011, 10:49:25 AM
No, its basic math - something the libs are obviously not fond of. 



the smart repubs don't want anything to do with bachmann, only the nuts like her
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Flash Mob Admn - Thugging, Robbing, Mobbing, Looting, & Pillaging
Post by: 240 is Back on August 15, 2011, 10:49:33 AM
Again - all She has to do is get the McCain voters - plus 4% of disaffected of obama voters and he is gone.  

YOU have said that Palin got all the 2008 votes.  We can safely assume bachmann will sit well with that same far-right voting block.

But what about the 18% of 2004 GOP voters that stayed home in 2008?  Why will they come back?  They HAD a moderate on the ticket (mccain) and they stayed home.  They had a social con on the ticket (palin) and they stayed home.

You think "I hate obama" emotion will get 1 in 5 Repub voters (who didn't bother voting against obama last time) to the polls this time?  Remember, these folks are so fcking lazy, they gave a shit in 2004 but not in 2008 ;)
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Flash Mob Admn - Thugging, Robbing, Mobbing, Looting, & Pillaging
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 15, 2011, 10:51:42 AM
YOU have said that Palin got all the 2008 votes.  We can safely assume bachmann will sit well with that same far-right voting block.

But what about the 18% of 2004 GOP voters that stayed home in 2008?  Why will they come back?  They HAD a moderate on the ticket (mccain) and they stayed home.  They had a social con on the ticket (palin) and they stayed home.

You think "I hate obama" emotion will get 1 in 5 Repub voters (who didn't bother voting against obama last time) to the polls this time?  Remember, these folks are so fcking lazy, they gave a shit in 2004 but not in 2008 ;)


Jesus you are dense.   


Bro - the same way you had no idea the mid terms would be such a mess for your beloved far left socialist dems, you have no idea what is coming next year.   

Obama is going to lose like carter if he is lucky, but more like mondale if he keeps up his bullshit. 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: Flash Mob Admn - Thugging, Robbing, Mobbing, Looting, & Pillaging
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 15, 2011, 01:46:34 PM
Obama to automakers: ‘You can’t just make money on SUVs and trucks’
By Andrew Restuccia - 08/15/11 02:37 PM ET
   



The country’s automakers should ditch their focus on SUVs and trucks in favor of smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles, President Obama said Monday.

“You can’t just make money on SUVs and trucks,” Obama said during a town hall forum in Cannon Falls, Minn. “There is a place for SUVs and trucks, but as gas prices keep on going up, you have got to understand the market. People are going to try to save money.”


Obama has positioned the revival and reshaping of the auto industry as a major part of his administration’s push to improve the economy and create jobs.

“When I came into office they were talking about the liquidation of GM and Chrysler, and a lot of folks said you can’t help them, and it’s a waste of the government’s money to try and help them,” Obama said Monday. “But what I said was, we can’t afford to lose up to a million jobs in this country, particularly in the Midwest.”

Obama was speaking at the start of a three-day bus tour of the Midwest. He will visit Decorah, Iowa, later in the day.

The president said his administration “turned around” the U.S. auto industry and is calling on automakers to change the way they do business.

“They are gaining market share for the first time in years, but what we said was, ‘If we are going to help you, then you have also got to change your ways,’ ” he said.

The White House unveiled first-ever fuel efficiency rules for heavy-duty trucks last week. The standards come after the administration ratcheted up fuel economy standards for cars and light-duty trucks.

The administration negotiated the standards in a series of high-stakes closed-door meetings with industry. In the end, the White House won the endorsement of major automakers and truck companies.

Obama has touted the new standards as “the single most important step we’ve ever taken as a nation to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.”

Later Monday, Obama touted the administration’s efforts to boost electric vehicles and advanced battery technology.

“That is the kind of approach that we have to take: Using the private sector, understanding that ultimately the private sector is going to be creating jobs, but also understanding that government can be an effective partner in that process, and nowhere is that more true than in rural America.”

http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/677-e2-wire/176917-obama-to-auto-industry-you-cant-just-make-money-on-suvs-and-trucks



________________________ ____


LMAO - I hope he keeps up ROLLING BLUNDER 


Its a gaffe a second with this jerkoff. 

Title: Re: Obama Admn: Flash Mob Admn - Thugging, Robbing, Mobbing, Looting, & Pillaging
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 15, 2011, 02:11:39 PM
Evergreen Solar Was Hoping to Hire 90 to 100 People for Its Manufacturing Plant. "Evergreen Solar, the Marlborough-based maker of solar panels, also is hoping to hire 90 to 100 people at a manufacturing plant in Devens, said Gary Pollard, vice president of human resources. The plant, which opened last summer, is expected to employ more than 800 when it reaches full capacity." [Boston Globe, 3/6/09]

http://www.whitehouse.gov/progressreports/Massachusetts

________________________ ________________________ ___________________






Evergreen Solar files for bankruptcy, plans asset sale
By Herald Staff
Monday, August 15, 2011 - Updated 7 minutes ago



E-mail   Print   (61) Comments   Text size   Share   Evergreen Solar Inc., the Marlboro clean-energy company that received millions in state subsidies to build an ill-fated Bay State factory, has filed for bankruptcy.

Evergreen, which closed its taxpayer-supported Devens factory in March and cut 800 jobs, has been trying to rework its debt for months. The company announced today it is seeking a reorganization in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware and also reached a deal with certain note holders to restructure its debt and sell off certain assets.

The company also said it will lay off another 65 jobs in the United States and Europe, mostly through the shutdown of its Midland, Mich., manufacturing facility. That would leave Evergreen with about 68 workers according to a headcount listed in the bankruptcy filing.

“Chapter 11 will provide Evergreen Solar with the ability to maximize returns for our stakeholders through the proposed sale process,” Evergreen CEO Michael El-Hillow said in a statement. “Importantly, we expect to continue our technology development without interruption during Chapter 11 and the sale process.”

Also in today’s Herald:


» Democratic Senate hopefuls undeterred by Elizabeth Warren



» Warren Buffett: Mega-rich don’t need to be protected like ‘spotted owls’


Evergreen secured a $58 million financial aid package from the Patrick administration to help build the $450 million Devens factory. The state has been trying to recoup about $4 million in cash from the company, the once-promising poster child of the governor’s clean-energy economic agenda.

The list of top creditors in today’s bankruptcy filing lists a $1.5 million debt to MassDevelopment.

-— bizsmart@bostonherald.com

http://www.bostonherald.com/business/technology/general/view.bg?articleid=1358998&pos=breaking










________________________ _______________

FUCKING FAIL 

Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 15, 2011, 02:19:37 PM
Solar Panel Maker Moves Work to China
By KEITH BRADSHER


BEIJING — Aided by at least $43 million in assistance from the government of Massachusetts and an innovative solar energy technology, Evergreen Solar emerged in the last three years as the third-largest maker of solar panels in the United States.

But now the company is closing its main American factory, laying off the 800 workers by the end of March and shifting production to a joint venture with a Chinese company in central China. Evergreen cited the much higher government support available in China.  

The factory closing in Devens, Mass., which Evergreen announced earlier this week, has set off political recriminations and finger-pointing in Massachusetts. And it comes just as President Hu Jintao of China is scheduled for a state visit next week to Washington, where the agenda is likely to include tensions between the United States and China over trade and energy policy.

The Obama administration has been investigating whether China has violated the free trade rules of the World Trade Organization with its extensive subsidies to the manufacturers of solar panels and other clean energy products.

While a few types of government subsidies are permitted under international trade agreements, they are not supposed to give special advantages to exports — something that China’s critics accuse it of doing. The Chinese government has strongly denied that any of its clean energy policies have violated W.T.O. rules.

Although solar energy still accounts for only a tiny fraction of American power production, declining prices and concerns about global warming give solar power a prominent place in United States plans for a clean energy future — even if critics say the federal government is still not doing enough to foster its adoption.

Beyond the issues of trade and jobs, solar power experts see broader implications. They say that after many years of relying on unstable governments in the Middle East for oil, the United States now looks likely to rely on China to tap energy from the sun.

Evergreen, in announcing its move to China, was unusually candid about its motives. Michael El-Hillow, the chief executive, said in a statement that his company had decided to close the Massachusetts factory in response to plunging prices for solar panels. World prices have fallen as much as two-thirds in the last three years — including a drop of 10 percent during last year’s fourth quarter alone.

Chinese manufacturers, Mr. El-Hillow said in the statement, have been able to push prices down sharply because they receive considerable help from the Chinese government and state-owned banks, and because manufacturing costs are generally lower in China.

“While the United States and other Western industrial economies are beneficiaries of rapidly declining installation costs of solar energy, we expect the United States will continue to be at a disadvantage from a manufacturing standpoint,” he said.

Even though Evergreen opened its Devens plant, with all new equipment, only in 2008, it began talks with Chinese companies in early 2009. In September 2010, the company opened its factory in Wuhan, China, and will now rely on that operation.

An Evergreen spokesman said Mr. El-Hillow was not available to comment for this article.

Other solar panel manufacturers are also struggling in the United States. Solyndra, a Silicon Valley business, received a visit from President Obama in May and a $535 million federal loan guarantee, only to say in November that it was shutting one of its two American plants and would delay expansion of the other.

First Solar, an American company, is one of the world’s largest solar power vendors. But most of its products are made overseas.

Chinese solar panel manufacturers accounted for slightly over half the world’s production last year. Their share of the American market has grown nearly sixfold in the last two years, to 23 percent in 2010 and is still rising fast, according to GTM Research, a renewable energy market analysis firm in Cambridge, Mass.

In addition to solar energy, China just passed the United States as the world’s largest builder and installer of wind turbines.

The closing of the Evergreen factory has prompted finger-pointing in Massachusetts.

Ian A. Bowles, the former energy and environment chief for Gov. Deval L. Patrick, a Democrat who pushed for the solar panel factory to be located in Massachusetts, said the federal government had not helped the American industry enough or done enough to challenge Chinese government subsidies for its industry. Evergreen has received no federal money.

“The federal government has brought a knife to a gun fight,” Mr. Bowles said. “Its support is completely out of proportion to the support displayed by China — and even to that in Europe.”

Stephanie Mueller, the Energy Department press secretary, said the department was committed to supporting renewable energy. “Through our Loan Program Office we have offered conditional commitments for loan guarantees to 16 clean energy projects totaling nearly $16.5 billion,” she said. “We have finalized and closed half of those loan guarantees, and the program has ramped up significantly over the last year to move projects through the process quickly and efficiently while protecting taxpayer interests.”

Evergreen did not try to go through the long, costly process of obtaining a federal loan because of what it described last summer as signals from the department that its technology was too far along and not in need of research and development assistance. The Energy Department has a policy of not commenting on companies that do not apply.

Evergreen was selling solar panels made in Devens for $3.39 a watt at the end of 2008 and planned to cut its costs to $2 a watt by the end of last year — a target it met. But Evergreen found that by the end of the fourth quarter, it could fetch only $1.90 a watt for its Devens-made solar panels. Chinese manufacturers were selling them for as little as $1.60 a watt after reducing their costs to as little as $1.35 or less per watt.

Evergreen’s joint-venture factory in Wuhan occupies a long, warehouselike concrete building in an industrial park located in an inauspicious neighborhood. A local employee said the municipal police had used the site for mass executions into the 1980s.

When a reporter was given a rare tour inside the building just before it began mass production in September, the operation appeared as modern as any in the world. Row after row of highly automated equipment stretched toward the two-story-high ceiling in an immaculate, brightly lighted white hall. Chinese technicians closely watched the computer screens monitoring each step in the production processes.

In a telephone interview in August, Mr. El-Hillow said that he was desperate to avoid layoffs at the Devens factory. But he said Chinese state-owned banks and municipal governments were offering unbeatable assistance to Chinese solar panel companies.

Factory labor is cheap in China, where monthly wages average less than $300. That compares to a statewide average of more than $5,400 a month for Massachusetts factory workers. But labor is a tiny share of the cost of running a high-tech solar panel factory, Mr. El-Hillow said. China’s real advantage lies in the ability of solar panel companies to form partnerships with local governments and then obtain loans at very low interest rates from state-owned banks.

Evergreen, with help from its partners — the Wuhan municipal government and the Hubei provincial government — borrowed two-thirds of the cost of its Wuhan factory from two Chinese banks, at an interest rate that under certain conditions could go as low as 4.8 percent, Mr. El-Hillow said in August. Best of all, no principal payments or interest payments will be due until the end of the loan in 2015.

By contrast, a $21 million grant from Massachusetts covered 5 percent of the cost of the Devens factory, and the company had to borrow the rest from banks, Mr. El-Hillow said.

Banks in the United States were reluctant to provide the rest of the money even at double-digit interest rates, partly because of the financial crisis. “Therein lies the hidden advantage of being in China,” Mr. El-Hillow said.

Devens, as the site of a former military base, is a designated enterprise zone eligible for state financial support.

State Senator Jamie Eldridge, a Democrat whose district includes Devens, said he was initially excited for Evergreen to come to his district, but even before the announced loss of 800 jobs, he had come to oppose such large corporate assistance.

“I think there’s been a lot of hurt feelings over these subsidies to companies, while a lot of communities around the former base have not seen development money,” he said.

Michael McCarthy, a spokesman for Evergreen, said the company had already met 80 percent of the grant’s job creation target by employing up to 800 factory workers since 2008 and should owe little money to the state. Evergreen also retains about 100 research and administrative jobs in Massachusetts.

The company also received about $22 million in tax credits, and it will discuss those with Massachusetts, he said.

Evergreen has had two unique problems that made its Devens factory vulnerable to Chinese competition. It specializes in an unusual kind of wafer, making it hard to share research and development costs with other companies. And it was hurt when Lehman Brothers went bankrupt in 2008; Evergreen lost one-seventh of its outstanding shares in a complex transaction involving convertible notes. But many other Western solar power companies are also running into trouble, as competition from China coincides with uncertainty about the prices at which Western regulators will let solar farms sell electricity to national grids.

According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, shares in solar companies fell an average of 26 percent last year. Evergreen’s stock, which traded above $100 in late 2007, closed Friday in New York at $3.03.


Tom Zeller Jr. in New York and Katie Zezima in Boston contributed reporting.


http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/15/business/energy-environment/15solar.html?_r=2&pagewanted=print



________________________ ________________________ _


AND YOU IDIOTS WANT TO GIVE THIS ANOTHER 4 YEARS?   

Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Princess L on August 15, 2011, 08:25:50 PM
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 15, 2011, 08:27:48 PM
Clip has gone viral all over the web. 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 16, 2011, 06:16:46 AM

Seattle's 'green jobs' program a bust
By VANESSA HO, SEATTLEPI.COM STAFF
Published 10:07 p.m., Monday, August 15, 2011





Last year, Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn announced the city had won a coveted $20 million federal grant to invest in weatherization. The unglamorous work of insulating crawl spaces and attics had emerged as a silver bullet in a bleak economy – able to create jobs and shrink carbon footprint – and the announcement came with great fanfare.

McGinn had joined Vice President Joe Biden in the White House to make it. It came on the eve of Earth Day. It had heady goals: creating 2,000 living-wage jobs in Seattle and retrofitting 2,000 homes in poorer neighborhoods.

But more than a year later, Seattle's numbers are lackluster. As of last week, only three homes had been retrofitted and just 14 new jobs have emerged from the program. Many of the jobs are administrative, and not the entry-level pathways once dreamed of for low-income workers. Some people wonder if the original goals are now achievable.

"The jobs haven't surfaced yet," said Michael Woo, director of Got Green, a Seattle community organizing group focused on the environment and social justice.

"It's been a very slow and tedious process. It's almost painful, the number of meetings people have gone to. Those are the people who got jobs. There's been no real investment for the broader public."

'Who's got the money'

The buildings that have gotten financing so far include the Washington Athletic Club and a handful of hospitals, a trend that concerns community advocates who worry the program isn't helping lower-income homeowners.

"Who's benefitting from this program right now – it doesn't square with what the aspiration was," said Howard Greenwich, the policy director of Puget Sound Sage, an economic-justice group. He urged the city to revisit its social-equity goals.

"I think what it boils down to is who's got the money."

Organizers and policy experts blame the economy, bureaucracy and bad timing for the program's mediocre results. Called Community Power Works, the program funds low-interest loans and incentives for buildings to do energy-efficient upgrades. They include hospitals, municipal buildings, big commercial structures and homes.

Half the funds are reserved for financing and engaging homeowners in Central and Southeast Seattle, a historically underserved area. Most of the jobs are expected to come from this sector.

But the timing of the award has led to hurdles in enticing homeowners to bite on retrofits. The city had applied for the grant at a time of eco-giddiness, when former Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels was out-greening all other politicians except for Al Gore. Retrofits glowed with promise to boost the economy, reduce consumer bills and lower greenhouse gas emissions.

"A triple win," is how Biden characterized it.

By the time Seattle won the award, homeowners were battered by unemployment and foreclosures. The long-term benefits of energy upgrades lacked the tangible punch of a new countertop. And the high number of unemployed construction workers edged out new weatherization installers for the paltry number of jobs.

"Really, we couldn't have rolled out this program at a worse time," said Greenwich, who had helped write the city's grant proposal.

"The outcomes are very disappointing. I think the city has worked really hard, but no one anticipated just how bad this recession was going to be, and the effect it was going to have on this program."

City feels 'cautiously optimistic'

As of last week, 337 homeowners had applied for the program. Fourteen had gotten a loan, or were in the process of getting one.

"Yes, we're not seeing as many completed retrofits as we wanted to," said Joshua Curtis, the city's manager for Community Power Works. "While everyone would like to see more upgrades, I think we're feeling cautiously optimistic."

He said the residential portion of program didn't launch until April. He said there was a normal summertime lull in work and that he expected things to pick up in the fall. He was confident that the city's marketing campaign and loan partner held promise.

Curtis said there were factors outside the city's control, such as the economy. And he attributed frustration among job-seekers to a "mismatch" in the timing of two federal grants.

Before the city got the $20 million, some local agencies, including Got Green, had received funds in a government push to train workers in weatherization. But the anticipation of landing career-path jobs evaporated as months went by with no work.

"People are frustrated and rightly so," Curtis said. "There's been sort of a lag time when people graduated from those programs."

They include Long Duong, 32, who got a certificate in sealing air leaks and insulating walls after he was laid off from a job handling bags at the airport. But he soon found that other men had more qualifications than him, and he took part-time gigs - installing light bulbs and canvassing doors – while waiting for work.

A year later, he's still looking.

"I haven't given up yet," said Duong, of South Seattle. "Weatherization is another opportunity for me."

Curtis said the money that financed the Washington Athletic Club and hospitals doesn't draw from funds reserved for single-family homeowners. He said the program's standards will ensure that people targeted by the program – low-income workers – will get good jobs. And he said the WAC project will create some new work in September.

"We're not where we want to be, but we have a path forward," he said.

City needs to 'step up its game'

But will the city hit its goals? Curtis was hopeful Seattle would make it by 2013, when the funding ends. Greenwich, of Puget Sound Sage, said the city needs to retrofit 100 to 200 homes a month to create 2,000 jobs. Woo, of Got Green, thinks the city needs to throw more money on incentives.

Greenwich said the energy retrofit market has turned out to be extremely complicated, with required hammering out of job standards, hiring practices, wages and how best to measure energy benefits.

"The city is really going to have to step up its game to get the 2,000 retrofits," Greenwich said.

"But if this would have been easy, it would have been done already."

Visit seattlepi.com's home page for more Seattle news. Contact Vanessa Ho at 206-448-8003 or vanessaho@seattlepi.com, and follow her on Twitter as @vanessaho.



Read more: http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Seattle-s-green-jobs-program-a-bust-2031902.php#ixzz1VCI9Lql6


________________________ ________________________ __



KENYANOMICS AT ITS FINEST


14 JOBS AT A COST OF 20 MILLION DOLLARS!   
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: The True Adonis on August 16, 2011, 06:19:16 AM

Why does the homeless man keep calling people and inanimate objects "B" and why can he not speak correctly?
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: The True Adonis on August 16, 2011, 06:19:58 AM
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: dario73 on August 16, 2011, 08:22:05 AM
This would make a great poster or flier.

(http://www.getbig.com/boards/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=346454.0;attach=423590;image)
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 16, 2011, 10:02:47 AM
Obama's Regulatory Agencies Usurp Congress' Authority
Townhall.com ^ | August 15, 2011 | Michael Uremovich





In the last session of Congress, members of both the Senate and House spoke loudly and clearly through their actions on various pieces of legislation, including the Employee ‘Forced’ Choice Act (EFCA). EFCA would have eliminated the secret ballot in union organizing elections and given to government arbitrators the authority to determine wages and other terms and conditions of employment. Even though this anti-worker, job-killing legislation was introduced, it was never called to a vote because it lacked the support of the American people.

Union bosses pushed and pulled in every direction to get this massive labor union bailout – which would have made organizing easier but at the expense of workplace democracy and jobs – but were unable to succeed even in a Congress controlled by Democrats with whom they were closely aligned.

Yet, Big Labor is undeterred. Despite a weakened economy that could slip into a double dip recession, 14 million Americans seeking work and credit rating agencies downgrading for the first time in modern history the nation’s rating, union bosses continue to seek “payback” for their political support of the Obama Administration, without regard for the consequences. President Obama’s regulatory agencies are more than willing accomplices.

Never before has a little-known agency in government named the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) attracted so much attention and disdain for its actions, heavily skewed in favor of increased power for labor bosses to the detriment of employers and their employees. The White House disingenuously tries to distance itself from the NLRB by repeatedly referring to it as an “independent” agency over which it has no control. But it is President Obama who put unabashed union partisans in charge of the agency. Obama appointed Lafe Solomon, the architect of the Boeing complaint, as the agency’s acting general counsel to take the place of a long-term agency employee who was already serving in that position. And Obama recess-appointed Craig Becker, a labor radical in favor of micro-units and quickie elections, after he failed to receive sufficient support in the Senate due to his extreme views.

Also, let’s not forget that Becker was an attorney on Obama’s transition team, so it is safe to say the President was very familiar with his views and background. Becker came directly from Big Labor as he was an associate general counsel for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO). Big Labor pushed for Becker’s appointment and the President was very willing to accommodate them despite opposition from members of his own party.

The NLRB is not the only agency focused on giving Big Labor its expected “payback.” Another obscure agency named the National Mediation Board (NMB) changed a 75-year precedent in the airline and railroad industries. Under the NMB’s new rule a union can win an election without getting the support of a majority of employees. So, in a unit of 1,000 employees, the union will win recognition if 100 workers vote and 51 favor the union.

This brings us to the current Congress which is not interested in rewarding union bosses at the expense of American workers and their employers. As a result, Big Labor continues to look for its “payback” from Obama’s regulatory agencies and with the tacit endorsement of President Obama and his administration.

Currently, there are three principal threats to the rights of employees and employers which are being undertaken by the NLRB and the Department of Labor (DoL). They will do for Big Labor what EFCA would have accomplished: dramatically increase the power of unions and make organizing easier.

The first threat is a rule that the NLRB announced it was considering in a case called Specialty Healthcare. The new rule would allow “micro-units” in unionized American workplaces, meaning collective bargaining units as small as two people who are doing the same job in the same location. It would be a dramatic and significant departure from long-standing Board law under which a collective bargaining unit can be all the employees or something smaller such as a plant, department or craft. It is inconsistent with a workers’ right to be in a unit with sufficient collective bargaining strength to negotiate with their employer. However, in certain circumstances it could be used by organized labor to get an easy foothold into a business through a tiny group which, though small, is critical to the employer’s operation. With such a unit, the union can extort concessions from the business which it would not otherwise have made and which it may not be able to afford. Micro-units threaten a proliferation of units and a balkanization of the workplace as different unions with dissimilar goals seek to represent the employees. This will result in less harmony and more work-stoppages as employees are drawn into conflicts in which they have no interest. And employers will experience ever-increasing labor relations costs curtailing business growth because they will have to negotiate and apply multiple collective bargaining agreements.

Next on the NLRB’s docket is “quickie” or “ambush” elections. In a recently announced proposed rule – once again undoing decades of precedent – the Board proposed shortening the period of time for union elections from a median of 38 days to as little as 10. Its unstated goal is to achieve for Big Labor what card check would have accomplished. It will limit, if not eliminate, an employer’s ability, protected by the National Labor Relations Act, to express its views on unionization and its employees’ right to hear those views and make an informed choice. The only story the employees will have an opportunity to hear is the union story. The proposed rule also includes other outrageous measures that will cause the entire election process to be tilted against employers. For example, the employer will now have to identify all pre-election issues and participate in an adversarial hearing just seven days after the union files it petition. This will decrease the number of elections – 92% in 2010 – that proceed in a far less adversarial process by agreement of the parties and increase employer, as well as agency costs. And another provision violates the privacy rights of employees. The employer will be required to provide union organizers with a list of all employees in its proposed unit. Under current law, the list need only include the employee’s last known address. Under the proposed rule it will include the employee’s home and cellular telephone numbers, as well as personal e-mail addresses.

Micro-units and quickie or ambush elections will enormously increase the power of unions to the detriment of legitimate employee and employer rights and interests, and our struggling economy will suffer. They threaten an increase in work stoppages, workplace disharmony and employer labor relations costs.

Lastly, the DoL is undertaking an effort which threatens to limit the availability of legal advice employers receive during a union organizing campaign. Such advice is very important in this complicated area of the law to avoid making inadvertent and unintentional mistakes. Attorneys and the employers who retain them for such advice will be required under the rule to disclose privileged information, which includes financial statements, client lists and other documentation. It is widely anticipated that many attorneys and some law firms will stop offering such advice if the proposed “gag” rule is implemented. As a consequence, many employers will be restrained from addressing their employees and having the free and open debate on the question of unionization that the law intended. The Department of Labor is led by Hilda Solis, a well-known defender of union bosses and supporter of EFCA.

The above efforts by unelected government bureaucrats on behalf of union bosses will accomplish for Big Labor by regulatory fiat much of what it wanted to achieve through EFCA. In short, the Executive Branch of government, which is charged with enforcing laws, is now writing new ones not supported by the American people. It is time for Congress to step forward and send a clear message to President Obama by passing legislation undoing the job-killing actions of these agencies and, if necessary, cutting off the flow of taxpayer dollars for these anti-worker initiatives.
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 16, 2011, 01:26:21 PM
Victor Davis Hanson: Obama’s Paradoxes - The Left’s greatest dream is becoming its worst nightmare.
NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE ^ | August 16, 2011 | Victor Davis Hanson




Obama's Paradoxes

The Left's greatest dream is becoming its worst nightmare.



Consider the myriad paradoxes of the Obama age. Unprecedented government borrowing is out of control, unsustainable, and finally causing financial markets to panic. Yet we are told that the necessary cutting ahead will further stall the stalled economy. We went from $9 trillion to $14 trillion in aggregate debt in order to jump-start a sluggish recovery, and failed — only to be warned that if we do not proceed to incur even more debt — from $14 trillion to $16 trillion — we will stall the stalled effort to restart the stalled economy. So more of what did not work most surely will work?

The Left insists that the real problem is not unmanageable debt, but near-record unemployment, as if the two were unrelated. Most Americans apparently once agreed, as Obama easily borrowed nearly $5 trillion in his first two and a half years in office, supposedly to stimulate employers into hiring workers. We are now told the U.S. must borrow more, and should worry less, not more, about paying the money back. The logic of the new Keynesians is that stimulus is never quite achieved because indebtedness is never quite large enough — an Achilles-and-the-tortoise paradox that only insolvency will finally dispel.

Rioting in London and flash mobbing in American cities have raised another paradox: Does contemporary looting and violence follow from physical deprivation or from a boredom, envy, and anger caused by too many subsidies and too little personal initiative and self-reliance? We know that the more we ensure that young people have generous unemployment insurance and government money for housing, food, and education, the more they are likely not to get up at 6 a.m. and take an extra class or look for a job. And yet the more we provide such bread-and-circuses dependencies, the more it becomes dangerous to question such life support. Ask the Emperor Justinian, who cut back on a bloated civil-service and entitlement bureau — and earned the Nika riots, which almost toppled his regime. So even as we suspect that the welfare state is unsustainable, we are told that it alone can prevent social unrest — which we suspect is currently brought about by the welfare state.

We worry about our youth, citing high unemployment among those under 25, a $16 trillion debt bequeathed to them, a bankrupt Social Security and Medicare system propped up by a shrinking and poor youth cohort working for an affluent and long-lived aging generation. But we also fret that young people are not quite suffering in Depression-era style, but instead are hooked on iPhones, iPads, iPods, DVDs, and video games. A new profile of the stay-at-home, electronics-laden, late-20-something-year-old suggests that millions are earning just enough for entertainment, car payments, and gas, subsidized by mom and dad with free rent, food, and laundry. Are today’s students saddled with the highest per capita student-loan debt in history, and at the same time more pampered and learning less than any previous generation?

We all receive impassioned fund-raising letters from our almae matres about cruel budget cuts that threaten brilliant research and inspired teaching. But we also know that universities have more drone administrators subsidized by exploited part-time teachers than ever, as the percentage of the college budget devoted to non-instruction is at an all-time high. So do we give money to save a pathological university as it is, or withhold it on the logic that only scarcity will force it to prune unnecessary spending that is not merely superfluous to learning but actually antithetical to it?

When Barack Obama won the election in 2008, he was quite right that the old system needed fixing. America’s debt, its poorly educated youth, its imbalances in trade, its counterproductive tax system, its out-of-control annual spending, its culture of entitlement and subsidies, all in perfect-storm fashion were starting to coalesce and weaken America from within and the perception of America abroad. The statesmanlike thing to do — in the manner of a once-naïve Harry Truman, who woke up to the threat of Soviet-inspired global Communism, or of a Bill Clinton, who finally addressed some of the contradictions of the welfare state and deficit spending — would have been to overhaul the tax system, recalibrate Social Security and Medicare, cut spending, lecture the citizenry on personal responsibility, and address the therapeutic curriculum in our failing schools. With a 70 percent approval rating and supermajorities in both houses of Congress, Obama could have done almost anything throughout 2009.

Instead, he chose the path of Jimmy Carter and the pre-1995 Bill Clinton — even more redistributive state programs, more stifling regulations, more petulant talk about “them,” more class warfare, more debt, and more failed big government.

As a genuine reactionary wedded to the dream of the 1960s, Obama not only rejected the idea of national renewal, but hastened by a decade or so our day of reckoning with the out-of-control welfare state. Was he naïve in thinking that the private sector could be hectored and harassed, and still create enough new wealth to fund his growing redistributive agenda? Or was he Machiavellian in seeing that only by massive new debt, government regulations, and spread-the-wealth programs would America be reduced to the status of just another indebted European-style socialist state — in itself a good and long-overdue thing?

Finally, one last paradox remains: The once-divine Obama will do more to discredit the Left than any other progressive in modern history — as its greatest dream becomes its worst nightmare.

— NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, the editor of Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome, and the author of The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern.


Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 17, 2011, 09:36:21 AM
Bankrupt Solar Company Stimulus Money Missing From Federal Records
By Tom Gantert | Aug. 17, 2011




When Evergreen Solar announced it was filing bankruptcy this week, the news sparked a flurry of stories pointing out how the “green” solar panel company had received money from the federal stimulus.

The Massachusetts-based company was held up as another example of wasted taxpayers’ dollars under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).

But Evergreen Solar may be a better example of just how complicated and difficult it can be to track the massive $821 billion federal stimulus.

Because despite the White House and Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick both citing Evergreen Solar as receiving stimulus money, the government’s website that tracks ARRA spending could find no evidence the solar panel company did indeed get that money.

Recovery.gov, the U.S. government’s official website related to Recovery Act spending, could find nothing showing that Evergreen Solar received any stimulus money.

“From our initial reviews, we can find no data in Recovery.gov indicating that Evergreen Solar received Recovery Act funds,” Recovery.gov spokesman Edward Pound said.

It would be tough to blame all the websites that cited Evergreen as a recipient of ARRA money.

The White House sent out an April 22, 2009, communication claiming the Recovery Act had success in creating jobs. The White House stated that because of the stimulus bill and new contracts, green energy companies were looking to hire. The White House then cited Evergreen Solar hoping to hire as many as 100 people.

The state of Massachusetts put out a press release citing Evergreen Solar’s involvement with a project funded by the stimulus.

Evergreen Solar put out its own press release in October 2010 that their panels were all compliant with the ARRA and could be used by projects funded by the stimulus.

Pound said that even if Evergreen Solar had received stimulus funds as a subcontractor, there should have been some record of it.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2764903/posts


Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: OzmO on August 17, 2011, 09:38:28 AM
This isn't really just ObaMA.  Its our whole fucking government, house, and all. 

This started with BUSH and then Obama stooged the presidency to a whole new level
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 17, 2011, 11:56:44 AM
Obama forfeits respect in Asia by letting Taiwan down – hard
The Christian Science Monitor ^ | August 17, 2011 | Julian Baum



Obama forfeits respect in Asia by letting Taiwan down – hard

Vice President Biden is expected to apprise China of the US decision to deny F-16 fighter jets to Taiwan. The dire implications of this should not be played down. It leaves Taiwan vulnerable and the US underpowered in Asia, as Washington looks to be walking away from democratic values

Andover, Mass.

Over the past three decades, Taiwan has been in many tight spots in mounting a credible defense against the People’s Republic of China. Yet none has been as uncomfortable as now.

The island republic is staring into a very near future when it can no longer defend its own airspace, and when deterrence across the Taiwan Strait morphs into military dominance by China.

The trends would be less worrying if the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 were taken more seriously in Washington. But the US role as guarantor of Taiwan’s ability to defend itself under the law is under steady assault, both from within the American bureaucracy and foreign policy community and from furious lobbying by Beijing.

RELATED PHOTO GALLERY: China's military muscle

For its part, Taipei has gone public in recent months as it became more doubtful that the Obama administration would accept their most urgent arms request, the purchase of new F-16 C/D jet fighters.

But its pleas are being ignored, despite the backing of the US Congress. Each house of Congress has sent letters to President Obama signed by nearly half of the elected representatives from both political parties. The letters urge him to follow through with the weapons sale.

The crisis has been long in coming. Taiwan has been trying to acquire the newer C/D version of the F-16 since 2006, along with upgrades to its older F-16 A/B models and more sophisticated radar


(Excerpt) Read more at csmonitor.com ...

Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 17, 2011, 12:50:01 PM
Politics
August 17, 2011
Obama Dismisses Farmer's Concerns About Regulations: 'Don't Always Believe What You Hear'

 
http://nation.foxnews.com/president-obama/2011/08/17/obama-dismisses-farmers-concerns-about-regulations-dont-always-believe-what-you-hear





During a town hall meeting at Wyffels Hybrids in Atkinson, Illinois, a farmer expressed concern to President Obama about forthcoming regulations. The man stated that people would rather be farming than "filling out forms and permits to do what we like to do." President Obama told the farmer "don't always believe what you hear" and blamed Washington for ginning up speculation. Obama added that, "Nobody is more interested in seeing our agricultural sector successful than I am, partly because I come from a farm state."





________________________ _________


This is the worst and most economically inept POTUS of all time.   

My God - could anyone possibly be worse than this?     
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 17, 2011, 06:36:26 PM
U.S. Government Investing $500M in Solar Power Projects—In India
Cybercast News Service ^ | 8/17/11 | Terence P. Jeffrey
Posted on August 17, 2011 8:14:05 PM EDT by Nachum

(CNSNews.com) - The U.S. Export-Import Bank, an independent agency of the federal government, says that it has $500 million in loans in the “pipeline” to fund new solar energy projects—in India.

The $500 million in new loans will come on top of $75 million in financing that the Export-Import Bank has already provided this year for solar power projects in India.

“In fiscal year 2011 to date, the Bank has approved financing totaling approximately $75 million for four solar projects in India,” the bank said in a July 18 press release. “The Bank also has about $500 million of India solar projects in the pipeline that will generate an estimated 315 MW of solar power.”

(Excerpt) Read more at cnsnews.com ...






Hope and change assholes! 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 17, 2011, 07:17:05 PM
Free Republic
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Obama to Israel: Apologize to Turkey, or else
Israel Today ^ | August 17, 2011 | Ryan Jones
Posted on August 17, 2011 10:13:25 AM EDT by Ooh-Ah

Israel's largest daily newspaper, Yediot Ahronot, reported on Wednesday that the Obama Administration is threatening Israel to either apologize to Turkey over its bloody interception of a Gaza aid flotilla last year, or risk strained ties with Washington.

Israeli diplomats in Washington told the newspaper that they had received a communique from US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton insisting that the rift between Israel and Turkey was harming American interests in the region, such as affecting regime change in neighboring Syria.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan demands that Israel publicly apologize for intercepting a May 2010 "humanitarian aid" flotilla that tried to break Israel's maritime blockade of the Gaza Strip. The flotilla had set sail from Turkey, and nine Turkish nationals were killed when they and others aboard the largest ship, the Mavi Marmara, attacked the Israeli boarding party.

Erdogan called the operation an act of piracy. And even though Washington and other Western powers agree with Israel that the Gaza blockade is legal and legitimate, the Obama Administration has decided that it is more politically expedient to simply have Israel meet Erdogan's unreasonable demands (as if that won't have any long-term negative consequences).

A year ago, Obama actually pressured Erdogan to either make up with Israel, or risk his ability to purchase American weapons. But, like other Middle East powers embroiled in conflict with Israel, Erdogan had learned that Western threats are fleeting and toothless. Obama never followed through on that ultimatum, and all Erdogan had to do was wait one year for Washington to decide to start pressuring Israel, instead.

What's worse, the Obama Administration's pressure on Israel - the party it agrees is in the right - has also reportedly come in the form of a threat.

According to the Israeli diplomats cited in the Yediot report, they were told that if Israel does not comply with Clinton's request to apologize to Turkey, the White House may suddenly find itself unable to continue building opposition to a unilateral Palestinian declaration of statehood at the UN next month.

"God forbid we apologize," declared Israeli Vice Prime Minister Moshe Ya'alon at a conference of Likud activists on Tuesday.

Demonstrating a firm understanding of Israel's regional antagonists, Ya'alon, a former IDF chief, noted that Erdogan "will never let go, even after we apologize."

Most Israeli leaders maintain that the flotilla raid was legal and that the deaths, while regrettable, cannot be blamed on Israel. The Israelis fear that meeting Erdogan's demands will negate that position, and play into the hands of those who claim Israel is conducting a cruel and inhumane siege against Gaza.

However, Israel is more easily pressured than its neighbors, and those same Israeli leaders are even more afraid of upsetting the White House. As such, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's cabinet has for weeks been debating not just if, but how to apologize to Turkey in a way that does the least harm to Israel.
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 17, 2011, 08:43:57 PM
Israel Says It Won’t Apologize to Turkey for Deadly Flotilla Raid
New York Times ^ | 8/17/11 | Isabel kershner
Posted on August 17, 2011 11:42:16 PM EDT by Nachum

JERUSALEM — Israel has decided not to apologize to Turkey for last year’s deadly raid on a Turkish protest flotilla bound for Gaza ahead of a United Nations report on the episode scheduled to be published early next week, according to a senior Israeli official.(snip) A diplomatic source, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the subject, said the American request for such an apology was reiterated on Tuesday in a phone call between Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...





Good.    Fuck obama.   
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 18, 2011, 06:10:56 AM
Federal Subsidies to Solar Up 626%, Subsidies to Wind Up 946%
CNSNews.com ^ | Wednesday, August 17, 2011 | Andrew Herzog and Michael W. Chapman




While President Barack Obama wants to end subsidies that go to oil and natural gas companies, a new Department of Energy report shows that federal subsidies to clean energy are way up, with solar seeing a subsidy increase of 626 percent between FY 2007 and 2010 and wind getting a 946 percent increase.

In April 2011, Obama repeated his call to end subsidies to oil and gas companies and said that “instead of subsidizing yesterday’s energy, we should invest in tomorrow’s,” adding that “clean energy can lead to new jobs and new businesses,” and “[a]n investment in clean energy today is an investment in a better tomorrow.”

The report by the Energy Department’s Energy Information Administration (EIA), released in late July, shows that direct federal financial interventions and subsidies in FY 2010 to clean energy equaled $14.67 billion – up from $5.1 billion in FY 2007.

Direct federal subsidies to the solar industry rose from $179 million (in 2007) to $1.13 billion (in 2010).  That represents an increase of  626 percent.


For the wind industry, it received $476 million in direct subsidies in 2007 and got $4.98 billion in 2010. That translates into an increase of 946 percent.

In the EIA report, it defines direct federal financial interventions and subsidies as “subsidies that are provided by the federal government, provide a financial benefit with an identifiable federal budget impact, and are specifically targeted at energy markets.”

These include direct cash outlays to producers and consumers; “tax expenditures that reduce the tax liability of firms or individuals who take specified actions that affect energy production”; research and development expenditures to increase or improve the “efficiency of various energy consumption, production, transformation, and end-use technologies”; loans and loan guarantees for certain energy technologies; and expenditures for electricity programs for consumers in certain geographic regions of the country.



________________________ ________________________ ______


Fucking brilliant.   
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 18, 2011, 06:15:25 AM
Exxon, U.S. Government Duel Over Huge Oil Find
By RUSSELL GOLD


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903596904576514762275032794.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTWhatsNewsCollection




Exxon Mobil Corp. is fighting with the U.S. government to keep control of one of its biggest oil discoveries ever, in a showdown where billions of dollars hang in the balance for both sides.

View Full Image

.The massive Gulf of Mexico discovery contains an estimated one billion barrels of recoverable oil, the company says. The Interior Department, which regulates offshore drilling, says Exxon's leases have expired and the company hasn't met the requirements for an extension. Exxon has sued to retain the leases.

The court battle is playing out at a time in which the Obama administration has made an issue of unused leases, which deprive the Treasury of valuable taxes. It also comes as regulators are being careful not to be seen as lax in their dealings with large energy companies in the wake of last year's BP PLC spill.

The stakes are high: Under federal law, the leases—and all the oil underneath—could revert to the government if Exxon doesn't win in court.

The loss of the leases would be an enormous black eye for Exxon. The company hadn't previously disclosed the size of the discovery in what is called the Julia field until it was mentioned in the suit Exxon filed against the Interior Department last week in federal court in Lake Charles, La.

The Texas behemoth faces the sobering prospect that it may have made the largest discovery ever in the Gulf of Mexico only to lose it. Tens of billions of dollars of oil could slip through its hands because it failed to follow federal rules for getting a lease extension while it moved forward with plans to get the oil out of the ground.

Exxon spokesman Patrick McGinn said the company expected to get the extension, which he said was traditionally granted as a matter of course. "You state your case and you got it. [This] was unexpected."

This high-stakes standoff is likely to spark a political, as well as legal, showdown between the federal government and the nation's largest oil company. It has also roped in Norway's Statoil ASA, which owns 50% of the Julia find. Statoil said it filed its own suit Monday in the same Louisiana federal court against the Interior Department to preserve the leases. Exxon is the field's operator and lease holder.

A spokeswoman for the Interior Department said, "Our priority remains the safe development of the nation's offshore energy resources, which is why we continue to approve extensions that meet regulatory standards."

The Interior Department, which oversees offshore oil development and collects royalties, has been trying to show that it has become a tougher, but still fair, regulator of the Gulf of Mexico's oil riches. Its reputation was battered during the massive Deepwater Horizon well blowout and oil spill last year, when BP sought—and the government approved—last-minute changes to the well design, which some investigators say contributed to a chaotic environment aboard the drilling rig. The government was roundly criticized for weak oversight of safety rules.

Now the department must decide whether to fight Exxon in court or settle and allow it to develop the oil. Turning the leases over to another company would mean further delays to the tax royalties that would go to government coffers. At current prices, potential royalties paid to the government over the lifetime of a one billion-barrel field would be about $10.95 billion.

The oil industry, led vocally by Exxon, has said that developing oil fields in the deepest reaches of the Gulf takes time to do safely. And by threatening to take away a massive discovery, the industry says that the government is sending the message that oil companies need to be in a rush to produce.

The possibility that Exxon could lose this oil will likely send shock waves through the industry. "This is unprecedented," said Amy Myers Jaffe, associate director of the Energy Program at Rice University in Houston. "The question is: Do our offshore rules allow for flexibility? You don't want to let companies sit on a discovery…We definitely don't want to send the industry a message that you need to be in a rush or we'll take the oil away from you."

Exxon's lawsuit said the government has granted "thousands" of extensions over time. It said the government's denial of its extension relied on legal interpretations that it "had never before applied and had never before articulated." Statoil asserted in its lawsuit that no request for an extension for a deep-water development "had ever previously been denied." The Interior Department couldn't comment on this.

The Exxon discovery is believed to be the largest in the Gulf of Mexico since BP found the Thunder Horse Field in 1999, and it could be larger. The find also cements the Gulf of Mexico as a rich exploration area with large amounts of undiscovered oil that may keep oil companies active for years to come.

"This is very deep water, very complex structures and difficult-to-produce oil," said Exxon's Mr. McGinn.

The dispute over Exxon's plans for the Julia field began in October 2008—about a month before its 10-year leases expired—when it applied for a five-year "suspension of production."

Such extensions are "fairly common," said Elmer P. Danenberger III, a former federal official who oversaw U.S. offshore-drilling rules until he retired in 2009.

"I can honestly say that people who manage that program are really strict, which they need to be or it will be abused. If you don't have a commercial discovery and a plan for moving ahead at the end of the lease term…that's it."

In February 2009, the government denied Exxon's request for an extension and after a brief appeal denied it again that April. Exxon said in a letter at the time that it was "committed" to producing the oil, but the government said it didn't present a specific plan. The government contended this didn't meet legal requirements and denied the application.

More appeals followed, but Exxon lost its final appeal in May. The final decision hinged on whether Exxon had a concrete "commitment" to produce the oil in December 2008, when its lease expired. The director of the Office of Hearings and Appeals at the Interior Department ruled that it didn't.

Exxon is known in the industry for moving slowly and studying all options exhaustively before committing billions of dollars. But even if it loses this court case, all might not be lost. The Julia field consists of five leases—or square blocks in the Gulf of Mexico—and only three are being disputed. The other two aren't set to expire until 2013.

—Deborah Solomon

and Angel Gonzalez contributed to this article.
Write to Russell Gold at russell.gold@wsj.com


________________________ ________________________ ___

WTF! ! !  !



Disgraceful and impeachable.   
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 18, 2011, 08:45:08 AM
August 18, 2011
Obama: The Affirmative Action President
By Matt Patterson




Years from now, historians may regard the 2008 election of Barack Obama as an inscrutable and disturbing phenomenon, a baffling breed of mass hysteria akin perhaps to the witch craze of the Middle Ages.  How, they will wonder, did a man so devoid of professional accomplishment beguile so many into thinking he could manage the world's largest economy, direct the world's most powerful military, execute the world's most consequential job?

Imagine a future historian examining Obama's pre-presidential life: ushered into and through the Ivy League despite unremarkable grades and test scores along the way; a cushy non-job as a "community organizer"; a brief career as a state legislator devoid of legislative achievement (and in fact nearly devoid of his attention, so often did he vote "present"); and finally an unaccomplished single term in United States Senate, the entirety of which was devoted to his presidential ambitions.  He left no academic legacy in academia, authored no signature legislation as legislator.

And then there is the matter of his troubling associations: the white-hating, America-loathing preacher who for decades served as Obama's "spiritual mentor"; a real-life, actual terrorist who served as Obama's colleague and political sponsor.  It is easy to imagine a future historian looking at it all and asking: how on Earth was such a man elected president?

Not content to wait for history, the incomparable Norman Podhoretz addressed the question recently in the Wall Street Journal:

To be sure, no white candidate who had close associations with an outspoken hater of America like Jeremiah Wright and an unrepentant terrorist like Bill Ayers would have lasted a single day. But because Mr. Obama was black, and therefore entitled in the eyes of liberaldom to have hung out with protesters against various American injustices, even if they were a bit extreme, he was given a pass.

Let that sink in: Obama was given a pass -- held to a lower standard -- because of the color of his skin.  Podhoretz continues:

And in any case, what did such ancient history matter when he was also articulate and elegant and (as he himself had said) "non-threatening," all of which gave him a fighting chance to become the first black president and thereby to lay the curse of racism to rest?

Podhoretz puts his finger, I think, on the animating pulse of the Obama phenomenon -- affirmative action.  Not in the legal sense, of course.  But certainly in the motivating sentiment behind all affirmative action laws and regulations, which are designed primarily to make white people, and especially white liberals, feel good about themselves. 

Unfortunately, minorities often suffer so that whites can pat themselves on the back.  Liberals routinely admit minorities to schools for which they are not qualified, yet take no responsibility for the inevitable poor performance and high drop-out rates which follow.  Liberals don't care if these minority students fail; liberals aren't around to witness the emotional devastation and deflated self esteem resulting from the racist policy that is affirmative action.  Yes, racist.  Holding someone to a separate standard merely because of the color of his skin -- that's affirmative action in a nutshell, and if that isn't racism, then nothing is.  And that is what America did to Obama.

True, Obama himself was never troubled by his lack of achievements, but why would he be?  As many have noted, Obama was told he was good enough for Columbia despite undistinguished grades at Occidental; he was told he was good enough for the US Senate despite a mediocre record in Illinois; he was told he was good enough to be president despite no record at all in the Senate.  All his life, every step of the way, Obama was told he was good enough for the next step, in spite of ample evidence to the contrary.  What could this breed if not the sort of empty  narcissism on display every time Obama speaks?

In 2008, many who agreed that he lacked executive qualifications nonetheless raved about Obama's oratory skills, intellect, and cool character.  Those people -- conservatives included -- ought now to be deeply embarrassed.  The man thinks and speaks in the hoariest of clichés, and that's when he has his teleprompter in front of him; when the prompter is absent he can barely think or speak at all.  Not one original idea has ever issued from his mouth -- it's all warmed-over Marxism of the kind that has failed over and over again for 100 years.

And what about his character?  Obama is constantly blaming anything and everything else for his troubles.  Bush did it; it was bad luck; I inherited this mess.  It is embarrassing to see a president so willing to advertise his own powerlessness, so comfortable with his own incompetence.  But really, what were we to expect?  The man has never been responsible for anything, so how do we expect him to act responsibly?

In short: our president is a small and small-minded man, with neither the temperament nor the intellect to handle his job.  When you understand that, and only when you understand that, will the current erosion of liberty and prosperity make sense.  It could not have gone otherwise with such a man in the Oval Office.

But hey, at least we got to feel good about ourselves for a little while.  And really, isn't that all that matters these days?

See also: The Era of Confronting Obama at Public Events

Mattpattersonline.com


Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2011/08/obama_the_affirmative_action_president.html at August 18, 2011 - 10:42:38 AM CDT
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 18, 2011, 11:05:32 AM
Never-Confirmed Medicare Director Announces New Obamacare Paperwork Requirement
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
By Fred Lucas


http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/new-obamacare-rule-would-require-insurer




Dr. Donald Berwick, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator. (AP Photo/Goodman Media International, Inc.)

(CNSNews.com) – A proposed federal health insurance regulation set to take effect next year requires insurers to provide consumers with explanatory summaries of their plans, but the insurance industry contends this could be costly to enrollees, and offer little benefit.

The new rule – part of the $1 trillion Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare – was announced Wednesday by Donald Berwick, President Obama's recess appointee to be director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Berwick has never been confirmed or subjected to a confirmation hearing by a Democrat-controlled Senate.

Specifically, the proposed regulations would ensure that consumers have access to two forms to help them understand and evaluate their health insurance choices.

One of the forms would be a four-page "easy to understand" summary of benefits and coverage made available to anyone purchasing or currently holding a health insurance policy. The other would include a "uniform glossary of terms" commonly used in health insurance coverage, such as "deductible" and "co-pay."

The proposed rule, drafted with the help of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, is open for public comment until Oct. 21. The regulations are set to take effect on March 23, 2012.

“This is all grounded in the idea that the more informed a patient is, the better decision he or she can make,” said Donald Berwick.

“Insurance can sometimes be the most difficult part for people to understand. Many time people will make decisions on coverage and not understand what it means for them until they get sick or until their care is denied or until they face high out-of-pocket costs.”

Under the proposed rule, the summary of benefits would include “coverage examples,” similar to the nutrition facts on packaged foods. They would illustrate what proportion of care expenses a health insurance policy would cover for three common benefit scenarios – having a baby, treating breast cancer, and managing diabetes.

“To be sure this information makes it into consumers hands, insurers will have to provide these documents before you purchase insurance,” Berwick said later during a conference call with reporters. “In fact, if there are any changes in coverage, your health insurance is going to have to provide notice of these changes at least 60 days before the changes take effect.”

But Robert Zirkelbach, press secretary for the industry group America’s Health Insurance Plans, argued that the proposed regulation could subject insurers and consumers to greater cost burden, with little benefit.

“The benefits of providing a new summary of coverage document must be balanced against the increased administrative burden and higher costs to consumers and employers,” Zirkelbach said in a statement.

“For example, since most large employers customize the benefit packages they provide to their employees, some health plans could be required to create tens of thousands of different versions of this new document – which would add administrative costs without meaningfully helping employees.”


________________________ ________________________


More red tape and bullshit and higher premiuims. 


And you pieces of garbage who voted for obama wonder why no one will hire anyone in this economy? 


LMAO! 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 18, 2011, 02:43:55 PM
DHS rules cancel deportations
328 Comments and 0 Reactions|ShareTweet|Email|Print|By Stephen Dinan
The Washington Times

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/aug/18/new-dhs-rules-cancel-deportations/print





The Homeland Security Department said Thursday it will halt deportation proceedings on a case-by-case basis against illegal immigrants who meet certain criteria such as attending school, having family in the military or are primarily responsible for other family members' care.

The move, announced in letters to Congress, won immediate praise from Hispanic activists and Democrats who had chided President Obama for months for the pace of deportations and had argued he had authority to exempt broad swaths of illegal immigrants from deportation.

"Today's announcement shows that this president is willing to put muscle behind his words and to use his power to intervene when the lives of good people are being ruined by bad laws," said Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez, Illinois Democrat.

In the letters to Congress, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said her department and the Justice Department will review all ongoing cases and see who meets the new criteria on a case-by-case basis.

"This case-by-case approach will enhance public safety," she said. "Immigration judges will be able to more swiftly adjudicate high priority cases, such as those involving convicted felons."

The new rules apply to those who have been apprehended and are in deportation proceedings, but have not been officially ordered out of the country by a judge. Miss Napolitano said a working group will try to come up with "guidance on how to provide for appropriate discretionary consideration" for "compelling cases" in those instances where someone has already been ordered deported.

It was unclear how many people might be affected by the new rules, though in fiscal year 2010 the government deported nearly 200,000 illegal immigrants who it said did not have criminal records.

The Obama administration has argued for months that it did not have authority to grant blanket absolution, and Miss Napolitano stressed that these cases will be treated individually, though the new guidance applies across the board.

In June, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency that handles interior immigration law enforcement, issued new guidance expanding authority to decline to prosecute illegal immigrants. The goal, ICE leaders said, was to focus on their priority of catching illegal immigrants who have also committed other crimes or are part of gangs.

The chief beneficiaries of the new guidance are likely to be illegal immigrant students who would have been eligible for legal status under the Dream Act, which stalled in Congress last year.

"Today is a victory not just for immigrants but for the American people as a whole because it makes no sense to deport Dream Act students and others who can make great contributions to America and pose no threat," Mr. Gutierrez said. "It is not in our national interest to send away young people who were raised in the U.S. and have been educated here and want only to contribute to this country's success. "

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat who earlier this year wrote asking Homeland Security to exempt illegal immigrant students from deportation, said the move will free up immigration courts to handle cases involving serious criminals.

Both men said, though, that they will continue to push for legislation that would grant a path to citizenship to illegal immigrants and expands new pathways for more immigrants to come legally in the future.

But groups pushing for a crackdown on illegal immigration said the administration's move abused the Constitution by usurping a power Congress should have.

"Supporters of comprehensive and targeted amnesties for illegal aliens have consistently failed to win approval by Congress or gain support from the American public," said Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform. "Having failed in the legislative process, the Obama administration has simply decided to usurp Congress's constitutional authority and implement an amnesty program for millions of illegal aliens."

© Copyright 2011 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.

Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: OzmO on August 18, 2011, 02:47:29 PM
Why don't we just accept the fact that our government, both fucking traitorous sides, wants to keep illegals in this country.
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 18, 2011, 02:51:50 PM
Why don't we just accept the fact that our government, both fucking traitorous sides, wants to keep illegals in this country.

We defeated GWB's attempt in 2005 to get amnesty.  But at least GWB tried to get congress to sign on for it.   

This communist thug Obama, on his way to vacation, is doing this all on his own outside the law. 


The law says to deport these people, his job is to enforce the law, not do what he wants.     
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 18, 2011, 02:54:27 PM
"Having failed in the legislative process, the Obama administration has simply decided to usurp Congress's constitutional authority and implement an amnesty program for millions of illegal aliens."
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: OzmO on August 18, 2011, 02:59:36 PM
"Having failed in the legislative process, the Obama administration has simply decided to usurp Congress's constitutional authority and implement an amnesty program for millions of illegal aliens."


Yep. Time to prepare for 2012 with desperate measures to garner votes. 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 18, 2011, 03:11:20 PM
Obama orders new plan to diversify federal workers
Associated Press ^ | August 18, 2011 | SUZANNE GAMBOA


http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/washington/7703223.html




President Barack Obama has signed an executive order directing the federal government to design a new strategy for hiring, promoting and keeping workers of diverse backgrounds. The three-page order released Thursday directs the head of the Office of Personnel Management, a deputy director at the Office of Management and Budget and two other agencies to develop the strategy within 90 days. Agencies then have 120 days to implement it. An Office of Personnel Management report says that in fiscal year 2010, the federal workforce was 66.2 percent white, 17.7 percent black, 8 percent Hispanic, 5.6 percent Asian/Pacific Islander, 1.8 percent Native American. It was 56.1 percent male.


(Excerpt) Read more at chron.com ...



________________________ _______________________


WTF! 


Obama needs to be impeached and imprisoned.   
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 18, 2011, 03:26:55 PM
U.S. farmers oppose EPA's proposed dust regulation
Reuters ^ | August 18, 2011 | Alina Selyukh


________________________ ________________________ _________


The Environmental Protection Agency is looking to tighten standards for the amount of harmful particles in the air, facing opposition from U.S. farming groups who call it an unrealistic attempt to regulate dust.

(snip)

In scientific terms, the EPA is looking to either keep the standards at 150 micrograms per cubic meter or revise it down to 65 to 85 micrograms per cubic meter.

Environmental groups say these tiny elements could be harmful if not deadly for people, causing cardiovascular or respiratory problems.

(snip)

But for Kluthe, who lives a quarter of a mile away from any community, the health aspects mean little weighed against the possibility of costly dust control measures he may have to take, such as watering gravel roads or tilled soil.

"They need to get real," he said, echoing the messages the National Pork Producers and the National Cattlemen's Beef Association have been sending to the EPA.

Lawmakers from both parties also have been complaining about the reach of EPA farming regulations. In a recent manifestation, Richard Lugar, a senior Republican Senator from Indiana, sent EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson a letter pleading for "common-sense" on dust regulations.

But technically, EPA can't use common sense if it clashes with science, as their assessments are required to be purely scientific and mindless of ramifications,said John Walke, clean air director at the National Resources Defense Council.

"The EPA doesn't care where the pollution is coming from, and our lungs don't care," he said.




(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...


________________________ ________________________ ______


It never fucking ends with this communist junta. 

Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 18, 2011, 03:45:48 PM
Obama Amnesty Begins: Halts Deportations for 300,000 Illegal Aliens; Offers ‘Work Permits’
Stand With Arizona ^ | August 18, 2011 | John Hill--Stand With Arizona




The Obama Administration today announced a virtual amnesty-by-decree for hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens, whose deportations will be “indefinitely delayed”. In addition, Obama finally announced a jobs program – but for ILLEGAL ALIENS, not citizens – as those 300,000 illegals will also become eligible for “work permits“.  

This action represents an administrative end-run around Congress, which twice rejected the ‘DREAM Act’ in 2010. As disgraceful as is this usurpation of Congressional authority, this announcement is even worse than is being reported.


(Excerpt) Read more at standwitharizona.com ...



________________________ ____________

Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 18, 2011, 04:01:54 PM
New DHS rules cancel deportations
WaPo ^ | 08-18-2011 | By Stephen Dinan



The Homeland Security Department said Thursday it will halt deportation proceedings on a case-by-case basis against illegal immigrants who meet certain criteria such as attending school, having family in the military or are primarily responsible for other family members’ care.

The move, announced in letters to Congress, comes after Hispanic activists and Democrats had urged President Obama to exempt broad swaths of illegal immigrants from deportation while Congress wrestles with the issue.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said her department and the Justice Department will review all ongoing cases and see who meets the new criteria on a case-by-case basis.

“This case-by-case approach will enhance public safety,” she said in the letter. “Immigration judges will be able to more swiftly adjudicate high priority cases, such as those involving convicted felons.”

The new rules apply to those who have been apprehended and are in deportation proceedings, but have not been officially ordered out of the country by a judge. Miss Napolitano said a working group will try to come up with “guidance on how to provide for appropriate discretionary consideration” for “compelling cases” in those instances where someone has already been ordered deported.


(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...

Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Fury on August 18, 2011, 04:13:29 PM
New DHS rules cancel deportations
WaPo ^ | 08-18-2011 | By Stephen Dinan



The Homeland Security Department said Thursday it will halt deportation proceedings on a case-by-case basis against illegal immigrants who meet certain criteria such as attending school, having family in the military or are primarily responsible for other family members’ care.

The move, announced in letters to Congress, comes after Hispanic activists and Democrats had urged President Obama to exempt broad swaths of illegal immigrants from deportation while Congress wrestles with the issue.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said her department and the Justice Department will review all ongoing cases and see who meets the new criteria on a case-by-case basis.

“This case-by-case approach will enhance public safety,” she said in the letter. “Immigration judges will be able to more swiftly adjudicate high priority cases, such as those involving convicted felons.”

The new rules apply to those who have been apprehended and are in deportation proceedings, but have not been officially ordered out of the country by a judge. Miss Napolitano said a working group will try to come up with “guidance on how to provide for appropriate discretionary consideration” for “compelling cases” in those instances where someone has already been ordered deported.


(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...



Not surprising. He knows he's going down in 2012 so I fully expect more moves like this. He intends to take this country down with him.

What a treasonous piece of shit.
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 18, 2011, 04:14:30 PM
He is fomenting a civil war.   

Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: The True Adonis on August 18, 2011, 04:55:04 PM
He is fomenting a civil war.   


Which side will you be on, North or South?
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 18, 2011, 05:54:59 PM
Obama Administration to Review All Deportation Cases, Apply DREAM Act-Style Criteria
FoxNews.com ^ | August 18, 2011 | Judson Berger
Posted on August 18, 2011 8:27:14 PM EDT by ColdOne

The Obama administration announced Thursday that it would launch a case-by-case review of illegal immigrants slated for deportation, in a move that could grant a reprieve to so-called DREAM Act beneficiaries and thousands of others.

The DREAM Act is a proposal in Congress to give illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as children a chance at legal status if they complete two years of college or military service. Though the bill has not passed, supporters and critics alike suggested Thursday's announcement could serve to unilaterally carry out its provisions.

A spokeswoman with the Federation for American Immigration Reform described the new policy as "blanket amnesty."

But Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said in a letter to Senate Democrats that it would "enhance public safety" by focusing deportation efforts on those "who pose a threat."

(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 18, 2011, 07:02:05 PM
Samantha Power, Obama's anti-genocide advisor, unveils new "Atrocities Prevention Board"
Chicago Sun Times ^ | 8/8/11 | Lynn Sweet
Posted on August 18, 2011 5:50:13 PM EDT by Thebaddog

WASHINGTON---The Obama White House issued new measures on Friday to prevent genocides and mass atrocities, creating an "Atrocities Prevention Board" in the wake of the failure of the "Never Again" vow taken following the German Holocaust to stop the murders of entire populations.

Obama's directive forming the board states: "Preventing mass atrocities and genocide is a core national security interest and a core moral responsibility of the United States of America." The directive creates an important new tool in this effort, establishing a standing interagency Atrocities Prevention Board with the authority to develop prevention strategies and to ensure that concerns are elevated for senior decision-making so that we are better able to work with our allies and partners to be responsive to early warning signs and prevent potential atrocities. The directive recognizes that preventing mass atrocities is a responsibility that all nations share and that other countries must also be enlisted to respond to particular crises. Therefore, the directive calls for a strategy for engaging key regional allies and partners so that they are prepared to accept greater responsibility for preventing and responding to crimes against humanity."

(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.suntimes.com ...
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 18, 2011, 07:38:16 PM
Government Will Stop Deporting Some Illegal Immigrants, Allow Them To Work
Mercury News ^ | August 18, 2011 | Matt O'Brien
Posted on August 18, 2011 10:28:02 PM EDT by lbryce

The government will stop deporting many students and other illegal immigrants who are not a public safety threat and permit them to work in the country legally, the Obama administration announced Thursday.

A new federal group will review the 300,000 backlogged deportation cases with an eye toward prosecuting criminals and other high-priority cases. But authorities will effectively close the cases of many upstanding high school and college students who were brought here illegally, military veterans, and adults with no criminal record and strong family ties to the United States.

"This case-by-case approach will enhance public safety," wrote Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano in a letter to members of Congress. "Immigration judges will be able to more swiftly adjudicate high-priority cases, such as those involving convicted felons."

Opponents criticized the move as "administrative amnesty" or "backdoor amnesty," while Democratic leaders cheered the change and some immigrant advocates said it was not enough.

The policy does not affect most of the more than 10 million people estimated to be living in the United States illegally; it only favors those who have already been placed in deportation proceedings. Napolitano said the policy change "will not provide categorical relief for any group," and said it did not alleviate the need for congressional immigration reform.

(Excerpt) Read more at mercurynews.com ...
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 18, 2011, 07:40:20 PM
Dems cheer Obama’s more lenient rules on illegal immigrants (the Hussein 'we've been waiting for')
The Hill ^ | 8/18/11 | MIke Lillis
Posted on August 18, 2011 10:35:12 PM EDT by Libloather

Dems cheer Obama’s more lenient rules on illegal immigrants
By MIke Lillis - 08/18/11 05:30 PM ET

Democrats in both chambers are cheering Thursday after the Obama administration unveiled more lenient rules surrounding the deportation of illegal immigrants.

The changes — announced by the Department of Homeland Security — will allow many illegal immigrants to remain in the country and apply for work permits.

Under the new rules, DHS officials will perform a case-by-case reviews of those in line for deportation, weeding out violent criminals and other high priority cases while closing the books on those considered no threat.

The changes could be particularly beneficial to people who would be eligible for the DREAM Act, an immigration proposal pushed by Democrats that has yet to pass Congress.

The DREAM Act would offer a pathway to permanent residency — and eventually citizenship — for certain illegal immigrants brought to the U.S. as children. The bill passed the House in December, but was killed by a GOP filibuster in the Senate.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) praised the DHS announcement, saying Obama "made the right decision in changing the way they handle deportations of DREAM Act students."

“These students are the future doctors, lawyers, teachers and, maybe, Senators, who will make America stronger," Durbin said in a statement.

To be eligible for the DREAM Act, a person would need to have been in the country for at least five years; earned a high school diploma, or its equivalent; and entered an institution of higher education or the military.

Supporters say the DREAM Act would empower motivated young people to contribute to the betterment of the entire country. Opponents argue the bill lends amnesty to people who broke the law the moment they crossed the border.

The DHS policy changes are sure to draw heavy fire from Republicans who will likely view them as a unilateral move by the administration to ignore Congress's wishes.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said the change “will help prioritize our limited enforcement resources to focus on serious felons, gang members and individuals who are a national security threat rather than college students and veterans who have risked their lives for our country.”

“This common sense approach,” Reid added, “will address an untenable situation where the deportations of foreign drug traffickers and violent criminals face long delays because our immigration courts are overwhelmed by low-priority cases of individuals with no criminal records.”

Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) sounded a similar note, hailing the move as “a victory not just for immigrants but for the American people as a whole.”

“Focusing scarce resources on deporting serious criminals, gang bangers, and drug dealers … is the right thing to do,” he said.

Since he took office, President Obama has been under fire from liberal Democrats and immigrant advocates for failing to back up campaign promises of enacting sweeping reform. Perhaps no one has been as critical as Gutierrez, who acknowledged a sudden change of heart Thursday.

“This is the Barack Obama I have been waiting for and that Latino and immigrant voters helped put in office to fight for sensible immigration policies,” he said in a statement.
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 19, 2011, 04:43:09 AM
Federal Government Sells Forclosed Homes To Cronies To Collect Rent For HUD
RealMoney ^ | 8-18-2011 | Roger Arnold

Posted on Friday, August 19, 2011 1:25:35 AM by ExxonPatrolUs

A Huge Housing Bargain -- but Not for You
Roger Arnold
08/18/11 - 05:49 PM EDT





This column by Roger Arnold originally appeared on RealMoney on Aug. 11. For a free trial to RealMoney, follow .

NEW YORK () -- The largest transfer of wealth from the public to private sector is about to begin. The federal government will be bulk-selling the massive portfolio of foreclosed homes now owned by HUD, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to private investors -- vulture funds.


These homes, which are now the property of the U.S. government, the U.S. taxpayer, U.S. citizens collectively, are going to be sold to private investor conglomerates at extraordinarily large discounts to real value.


You and I will not be allowed to participate. These investors will come from the private-equity and hedge-fund community, Goldman Sachs(GS) and its derivatives, as well as foreign sovereign wealth funds that can bring a billion dollars or more to each transaction.  


In the process, these investors will instantaneously become the largest improved real estate owners and landlords in the world. The U.S. taxpayer will get pennies on the dollar for these homes and then be allowed to rent them back at market rates.


On Wednesday, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the U.S. Treasury Department issued a Request for Information (RFI) concerning the disposition of the inventory of foreclosed homes owned by the federal government.


An RFI is ostensibly a way for the federal government to get input from the private sector on how to accomplish the goals laid out in the request. But that's really just a facade, as the RFI was structured by the investors to begin with.


In reality, the RFI is a way for the members of Congress to find out if they can get away with bulk-selling these homes to private companies without incurring the wrath of their constituents, taxpayers and former owners of the properties.


Assuming taxpayers don't push back, the next step will be to issue a Request for Proposals (RFP). The RFP will be the bid and plan for these homes by investors.


The way to keep taxpayers from pushing back is to structure the RFI so that the real intention, the bulk sales, is masked by feel-good goals, such as stabilizing neighborhoods and increasing the supply of rental properties.


As intended, the mass media are playing their part in classic style. Every major newspaper in the U.S. has run articles discussing the plan as a rental conversion, allowing readers to assume that Fannie, Freddie and HUD will be renting the properties directly to families who need housing. And although there is an allowance for these kinds of rentals, it is a minor political facade to the obvious true goal of bulk-sale privatization of these homes.


The investors in this program have been waiting for this opportunity since the portfolio of homes owned by HUD began to spike in 2007, when foreclosures surged first in the "Rust Belt," principally Ohio and Michigan.


Since then, of course, the systemic collapse of housing has engulfed all of the major urban coastal regions of the U.S., as well as Phoenix and Las Vegas, and caused the homes owned by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which are now under the direct control of the U.S. Treasury Department, to spike as well.


Even before this crisis occurred, HUD, i.e. the U.S. government, was the largest improved real estate owner in the world, because of its portfolio of foreclosed homes, which is classified as "real estate owned" (REO). The entire massive HUD REO Portfolio is quietly managed by a handful of private firms already, a group listed as Management and Marketing Contractors.


These M&M companies are principally owned by and employ former high-ranking government officials from the various germane agencies -- the Treasury, HUD, FHA and others. And they will provide the necessary access to the current government employees who are tasked with bringing this program to fruition. Once the privatization is complete, those government employees will move from their positions, and many will take up new employment at one of the M&Ms or the new vulture funds.


I am not currently aware of any way for retail investors to participate in this process.


It is probable, however, that once the privatization has occurred and the properties are generating rental income for the investors, the initial investors will cash out by forming real estate investment trusts (REITs), real estate operating companies (REOCs) or limited partnerships (LPs) that will be made available to retail investors.


Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 19, 2011, 04:52:52 AM

Obama Administration to Review All Deportation Cases, Apply DREAM Act-Style Criteria
By Judson Berger

Published August 19, 2011 | FoxNews.com




The Obama administration announced Thursday that it would launch a case-by-case review of illegal immigrants slated for deportation, in a move that could grant a reprieve to so-called DREAM Act beneficiaries and thousands of others.

The DREAM Act is a proposal in Congress to give illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as children a chance at legal status if they complete two years of college or military service. Though the bill has not passed, supporters and critics alike suggested Thursday's announcement could serve to unilaterally carry out its provisions.

A spokeswoman with the Federation for American Immigration Reform described the new policy as "blanket amnesty."

But Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said in a letter to Senate Democrats that it would "enhance public safety" by focusing deportation efforts on those "who pose a threat."

Under the plan, DHS and the Department of Justice will review all cases in removal proceedings as well as any new cases to make sure those who are deported meet the kind of criteria established in a June 17 agency memo.

The memo from Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director John Morton instructed staff to consider 19 factors when exercising "prosecutorial discretion" -- or the discretion an ICE attorney has in deciding whether and how to pursue an immigration case. The list includes factors similar to those in the DREAM Act, like whether someone arrived in the U.S. as a "young child," is pursuing an education or has served in the military.

Thursday's announcement goes beyond the memo by establishing a process to flag and exempt certain illegal immigrants from deportation. A team of attorneys and officials will be tasked with reviewing the more than 300,000 cases in the system.

An ICE memo obtained by FoxNews.com said the effort would not provide "categorical relief for any group," but would try to prevent "low-priority" cases -- like those not involving convicted criminals -- from clogging the system.

Cecilia Munoz, White House director of intergovernmental affairs, wrote on the White House blog that the review would "clear out low-priority cases on a case-by-case basis and make more room to deport people who have been convicted of crimes or pose a security risk" -- while ensuring the low-priority cases are kept "out of the deportation pipeline in the first place."

Describing groups of people similar to those targeted in the DREAM Act, she said the low-priority list would include "individuals such as young people who were brought to this country as small children, and who know no other home," as well as "individuals such as military veterans and the spouses of active-duty military personnel."

She said that with more than 10 million people in the country illegally, the strategy is meant to focus limited resources on those who pose the greatest risk.

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid praised the decision.

"This new DHS directive will help prioritize our limited enforcement resources to focus on serious felons, gang members and individuals who are a national security threat rather than college students and veterans who have risked their lives for our country," Reid said in a statement. "I am especially pleased about the impact these new policies will have on those who would benefit from the DREAM Act. ... We lose a lot by sending them back to countries they do not know."

Reid said Congress should still pass immigration reform legislation.

Napolitano also stressed in her letter that the new process "will not alleviate the need for passage of the DREAM Act or for larger reforms."

But FAIR described the announcement as a complete overhaul of immigration law without approval by Congress.

"Having failed in the legislative process, the Obama administration has simply decided to usurp Congress's constitutional authority and implement an amnesty program for millions of illegal aliens," FAIR President Dan Stein said. "This step by the White House amounts to a complete abrogation of the president's duty to enforce the laws of the land and a huge breach of the public trust. ... In essence, the administration has declared that U.S. immigration is now virtually unlimited to anyone willing to try to enter -- and only those who commit violent felonies after arrival are subject to enforcement."

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Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/08/18/obama-administration-to-review-all-deportation-cases/#ixzz1VTUtVn5b

Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 19, 2011, 05:19:13 AM
OUTSIDE THE BOXAUGUST 19, 2011.Change for the Worse
Just as he promised, Obama has fundamentally transformed America..Article Comments (14) more in Opinion ».Email Print Save ↓ More .
.smaller Larger  By PETE DU PONT




The Standard & Poor's downgrade of U.S. debt is the latest fruit of the Obama administration's big-government policies. Ask Americans how the country is doing, and the response is a vote of no confidence. In August 2009, 34% of likely voters said the country was headed in the right direction. A month ago that proportion had declined to 25%, and last week only 16% thought so. Rasmussen's mid-August poll found that 4% of adults rate the economy as good or excellent, and 66% think we are doing poorly.

Just before his election as president, Barack Obama declared that "we are five days from fundamentally transforming America." He has made good on that promise. Huge increases in federal spending—up 28% in just three years—were the beginning. Putting health care—17% of the American economy—under Washington's control was next. Government control of business is expanding too: 379 new government business rules were added in July alone, according to Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming. Federal government debt held by the public rose from $6 trillion (40% of GDP) in 2008 to $9 trillion (62%) in 2010, The Congressional Budget Office says it could reach 200% by 2037, if the economy doesn't collapse first.

Mr. Obama's original budget for fiscal 2012 would have more than doubled the debt held by the public, from 2010's $9 trillion to $19 trillion in 2021. Politico reports that by the 2013 inauguration, the government will have taken on addition debt to the tune of "$22,500 for every man, woman, and child in the nation" during Mr. Obama's tenure. Some 45 million Americans, or 1 in 7, receive food stamps, up from less than 30 million a few years ago. Finally, in the previous two years our annual economic growth after inflation has averaged only 1.3% annually, just about half our past 10-year average of 2.5%. In the first half of this year, it was running at an annual rate of 0.8%.

The White House says unemployment will decline to 8.25% this year, though it may well remain above 9%. Looking back at the past 50 years, no president has been re-elected when unemployment was higher than 7.2%.

One of the Obama administration's central (and most damaging) beliefs is that tax rates must be raised for what President Obama calls "millionaires and billionaires," which he defines to include individuals and small businesses making as little as $200,000. Interestingly, Christina Romer, who was chairman of Mr. Obama's Council of Economic Advisors, has done some research on the impact of tax increases, and concluded that increasing taxes by 1% of GDP for deficit-reduction purposes leads to a 3% reduction in GDP.

Raising taxes on affluent taxpayers is not just bad economics, it's unfair. The Tax Foundation has pointed out that in 2009 taxpayers earning over $200,000 paid half of all income taxes, even though they had earned just 25% of adjusted gross income. On the other hand, more that 58 million taxpayers, around 42% of tax filers, paid no income tax at all. Add in the money some of them receive in refundable child care tax credits, the Making Work Pay program and the Earned Income Tax Credit, and it is obvious that ratcheting up taxes on higher income taxpayers would just exacerbate this inequity.

Growing dissatisfaction, skyrocketing spending, a weak economy, and a real debate about tax hikes all suggest that the 2012 presidential election will be very different from the 2008 Obama victory. A recent Pew report finds that 41% of voters would like to see Obama re-elected, and 40% would prefer a Republican win in 2012. That one-point Obama lead was down from 11 points in May. The President's approval rating from January through June averaged 47%. Earlier this month, according to Gallup, it fell to 39%. Mr. Obama is unlikely to win re-election unless that number improves.

He faces three major challenge. The first is a rift with business leaders, who resent being scapegoated. They may work hard to raise campaign money for Mr. Obama's opponent.

The second is the increasing disappointment of independent voters, who are rightly unhappy with higher spending, higher taxes, ObamaCare, a lack of progress on trade, increased restrictions on the energy supply, and the near-commandeering of the auto and banking industries, all of which amount to an effort to Europeanize America, just as European welfare states are facing their own crisis

His latest challenge may well be from Texas Gov. Rick Perry's fresh presidential campaign speech: "The fact is, for nearly three years President Obama has been downgrading American jobs, he's been downgrading our standing in the world, he's been downgrading our financial stability, he's been downgrading our confidence and downgrading the hope for a better future for our children. That's a fact." Indeed it is, and it's a fact that bodes ill for the future of America.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903639404576515252974962700.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLETopOpinion

Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 19, 2011, 06:10:56 AM
August 19, 2011
The Anti-American President
By Boyd Richard Boyd



Obviously something is rotten on Pennsylvania Avenue; no intelligent American president would do the things Obama has done.  There has been talk of his inexperience,  incompetence, or just plain stupidity to explain his Bizarro-administration.  However, Obama is not incompetent; he is an intelligent anti-American president.  Obama is not a failure at his job -- his job is the failure of our country.

Liberty-minded folk have several reasons why we assume another person is incompetent rather than malicious.  One reason is our belief that a person is "innocent until proven guilty"; another is the natural presumption others are similar to ourselves.  Unfortunately, these ideas have been coupled with a pair of dangerously pragmatic moral equivalencies foisted upon us all: "Who am I to judge?" and "They couldn't possibly mean that."  As long as there is any possibility that Obama is just in over his head and doesn't mean what he says and does, many will excuse him on those grounds.

Every American must judge Obama and his ideas and understand he does mean what he says, and realize there is no excuse, save one -- Barack Obama is an anti-American in thought and deed.

Obama gets dreams from his socialist father.  His mother was a fellow traveler.  Obama lived in anti-American Indonesia as a child.  Later, granddad decided Obama needed a Communist mentor.  O got into Harvard on the recommendation of anti-Semitic Khalid al Mansour, an adviser to Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal.  In college O chose his friends carefully -- "the more politically active black students, foreign students, Chicanos, Marxist professors and structural feminists."  As a professor he taught Marxist Saul Alinsky tactics, and as a constitutional scholar he believed that there are fundamental flaws in the Constitution, such as restraint on governmental power.  As a community organizer and counsel he pushed sub-prime mortgages which helped buckle our economy.

He's a trench-mate with voter-fraudsters ACORN and quasi-commie SEIU.  He had house parties and sat on boards with an unrepentant, revolutionary communist, who probably ghostwrote one of O's autobiographies.  He attended the social-justice church of Jeremiah Wright, where he was preached at on collective salvation and black liberation.  Illinois state senator and communism-lover Alice Palmer, picked O as her chief of staff.   As a U.S. senator, he had the most leftist voting record.  His wife's only source of American pride came in her 40s as a result of O's own success.  He was endorsed by the Communist Party in 2004, and in 2008 Obama got CPUSA's endorsement again, basically running on the CPUSA platform.  (And yes, CPUSA have endorsed him again for 2012!)

And this was before the campaign and presidency.  Does his bio reflect incompetence or something more sinister?  Does his journey sound like one of an all-American or an anti-American?

In his own words, during the campaign:

Sept, 17 2007 to SEIU:

"[Y]our agenda's been my agenda[.]"

November 2007 to ACORN:

"I've been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career."

December 2007 addressing ACORN and other community organizations:

"[W]e're going to be calling all of you in to help us shape the agenda, We're going to be having meetings all across the country with community organizations so that you have input into the agenda for the next presidency of the United States of America."

January 5, 2008 to SEIU

"I've been working with the SEIU before I was elected to anything ... We are going to paint the nation purple with SEIU. SEIU, I'm glad you are with me. Let's together change the country. SEIU! SEIU!"

January 17, 2008

"f somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can, it's just that it will bankrupt them...under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket."

May 16, 2008 in Oregon:

"We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times ... and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK...That's not leadership. That's not going to happen."

June 3, 2008 in St Paul Minnesota

"This was the moment -- this was the time --when we came together to remake this great nation"

July 13, 2008 to La Raza:

"[W]e rise and fall together as one people...And together, we won't just win an election -- we will transform this nation."

October 12, 2008 to Joe the Plumber:

"I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody."

October 30, 2008 at the University of Mississippi, Columbia:

"We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America[.]"

How many Marxist groups will he share agendas with before it's apparent?  How many times will he say he wants to change, remake, or fundamentally transform America before we believe he wants to?

Almost everything Obama says and does is a scripted, controlled, and choreographed event.  The man causes relentless instability, yet it is all planned.  We know where his ideas come from: the George Soros-funded, Hillary Clinton-founded Center for American Progress and Joel Rogers' Apollo Alliance with help from its ex-Weather Underground co-founder, among others.

As president he's appointed the following foxes as hen house guards:

A former SEIU member who kind of agrees with Mao...as manufacturing czar.               
A former commissioner of Socialist International, eco-profiteer, and CAP board member...as global warming czar.
An ACORN defender and Obama's private attorney...as ethics and transparency czar.
A revolutionary communist...as green jobs czar.                               
A power-lusting control freak longing to delimit choices...as regulatory czar.
An anti-capitalist Chicken Little peddling junk science...as science czar.
A man who thinks terrorists represent the legitimate needs and grievances of ordinary people...as counter-terrorism czar.
An anti-Israel "poverty breeds terrorism" theorist...as U.S. ambassador to the U.N.
A woman who believes that Congress can abridge free speech and another who thinks the court of appeals is where policy is made...as Supreme Court justices.
An SEIU VP, activist for the Working Families Party, and political director for Bertha Lewis, the head of ACORN's New York chapter...as director of the office of public affairs to help push the president's agenda.
A man who gives guns to drug cartels while allowing them to smuggle drugs in, who refuses to protect our borders while litigating any state which tries to defend its own as and turns a blind eye to voter intimidation...as attorney general.
A woman worried about white right-wing extremists while she has Grandma groped at the airport...as homeland security chief.
A woman who proposes that the U.S. has the right to protect "Palestine" from Israel...as a foreign policy adviser.
SEIU president and Marxist Andy Stern and the AFL-CIO's Dick Trumka are/were two of the most frequent White House guests.  Obama directs NASA's chief to perform Muslim outreach.  The EPA will handle cap and trade after Congress said no.  The borders won't be secured until O gets amnesty for millions of potential voters with no allegiance to America.  O imposed a drilling ban for oil, then said the judge could fly a kite when the judge lifted the ban.  Brazil purchased some of those rigs, and Obama wants to be a big consumer of Brazil's oil.  His administration may have facilitated the murder of a border agent and is trying to suppress second-amendment rights, as a result.

His Tea Party mockery, the takeover of industries, the contortions of  Obamacare, the slow response to BP's oil spill, the tens of thousands of new regulations, the aggressive deficit spending, the Fed's printing sprees, bowing to and borrowing from anti-Americans -- all are part of the blueprint.  Even his petulance, arrogance, constant golfing, and "let them eat cake" attitude are part of the plan.  Obama understands how grating such behavior is to any American who doesn't worship strongmen.  His glaring at Netanyahu after throwing Israel under the bus, his browbeating the Supreme Court during the SOTU, and of course, his Mussolini-like poses with his chin touching the ceiling are all calculated to intimidate some into a cult of personality and alienate others.  And he has done so much more.

Obama has never stood for individualism, capitalism, or liberty.  Everything he does has the reek of statism, collectivism, and tyranny, but not because he is an incompetent bumbler -- though he may be in many areas, sans TOTUS -- it's because he is a statist and a collectivist and the citizens of our country naïvely gave the reins of power to a tyrant.

To paraphrase the Wizard of Oz, an honest Obama would say to us, "Oh, no, my fellow world citizens, I'm a very good anti-American president.  I'm just a very bad American president."

Boyd Richard Boyd blogs as the Cold Hearted Patriot at www.catwyp.com and is the author of America Vs. Anti-America.  E-mail: coldheartedpatriot@yahoo.com.  Twitter: @ColdHartPatriot.


Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2011/08/the_anti-american_president.html

 at August 19, 2011 - 08:09:07 AM CDT
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: 240 is Back on August 19, 2011, 06:34:40 AM
This isn't really just ObaMA.  Its our whole fucking government, house, and all. 

This started with BUSH and then Obama stooged the presidency to a whole new level

Wrong, liberal.

Things were awesome until Jan 20, 2009.  That's when everything changed. 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 19, 2011, 09:40:58 AM
Obama HHS caught campaigning for Democrats ("Blatant violation of the Hatch Act, among other laws")
Washington Examiner ^ | 8/18/2011 | Conn Carroll




New documents obtained by Judicial Watch through a Freedom of Information Act request show that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) spent over one million taxpayer dollars promoting Obamacare in coordination with the 2010 mid-term elections.

The documents include correspondence between HHS officials and representatives from The Ogilvy Group, the public relations firm hired to drive web traffic to an HHS site promoting Obamacare as "the Affordable Care Act."

On October 25, 2010, HHS New Media Communications Director Julia Eisman sent an email to Ogilvy Senior Vice President Imani Green, reading, "Given the high performance, we're wondering if we should we consider reallocating resources from the lesser performing words and put more $$ to ‘Obamacare’ - at least for the next 7 days." Seven days from October 25, 2010, was November 2nd, Election Day.

"There is nothing special about November 2nd other than the fact that it was Election Day," Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton told The Examiner. "What possible reason could the Obama HHS have for maximizing their propaganda dollars in the seven days before Election Day other than to elect Democrats? This seems to be a blatant violation of the Hatch Act, among other laws. Congress needs to get on the ball and investigate," he concluded.


Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 19, 2011, 10:50:45 AM
Obama to Improve Ethiopian Education Ministry Office Conditions
U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor ^ | Aug. 19, 2011 | Steve Peacock




The Ethiopian Ministry of Education headquarters is getting an upgrade, courtesy of U.S. taxpayers via the Obama Administration. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) today issued a presolicitation notice (#SOL-663-11-000007) alerting interested contractors about the refurbishment project, which seeks to improve office conditions for the Ministry's Planning and Resource Mobilization Directorate staff at Arat Killo.

Specifically, the initiative seeks to:

Create an open floor space plan for teams; increase the number of workstations; and new office spaces such as a meeting room, a kitchen, and an archive by office partitioning; supply modern office furniture and sanitary fixtures; refurbish the toilet facilities; and establish new data-tele connectivity.

USAID did not provide an estimated cost. A more detailed proposal will be issued at a later, unspecified date.


Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 19, 2011, 11:55:53 AM
Economist Jeffrey Sachs Hits Obama: "There's Never Been A Plan"
Real Clear Politics Video ^ | August 19,2011




Economist Jeffrey Sachs slammed President Obama on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Friday.

"We're almost three years into this administration, and there's never been a plan. And that's what everybody feels. And the president didn't lead. He waited. The quintessential image, sadly, of an administration that I supported and hoped for much better, is the president waiting by the phone to hear what Congress calls to tell him. It doesn't work in this country that way. It's not a matter that it's August. It's a matter that it's August 2011. So we've been drifting for a very long time. And we've been drifting down. And we had a short-term plan that failed. A short-term stimulus that was supposed to get the economy back on track, but it failed.

And now we have nothing behind it. And we have no agreements, and we have no leadership. And, frankly, I do think it's pretty odd the president's on vacation right now. Normally I wouldn't care about such things, but the world markets are in deep crisis. It's no joke. This isn't just an up-and-down little blip. This is a very serious situation."


(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...

Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: OzmO on August 19, 2011, 11:56:51 AM
Plan = bail bail bail...hope for the best.   Next, they will be giving everyone free grain.
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 19, 2011, 01:16:39 PM
What a frigging mess. 



Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 20, 2011, 04:10:55 AM
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Obama accuses Congress of holding back recovery
Reuters ^
Posted on August 20, 2011 6:58:40 AM EDT by Sub-Driver

Obama accuses Congress of holding back recovery Photo 6:04am EDT

By Laura MacInnis

VINEYARD HAVEN, Massachusetts (Reuters) - A vacationing President Barack Obama accused Congress on Saturday of holding back the U.S. economic recovery by blocking "common sense" measures he said would create jobs and help growth.

In remarks recorded on Wednesday on his campaign-style bus tour in Illinois and aired during his holiday in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, Obama said the stalled construction, trade and payroll tax bills could give a boost to the economy.

"The only thing preventing us from passing these bills is the refusal by some in Congress to put country ahead of party. That's the problem right now. That's what's holding this country back," the president said in his weekly radio address, which is also transmitted on the Internet.

(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...





Lmfao!    Fucking moron. 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Bindare_Dundat on August 20, 2011, 04:26:42 AM
(http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7HS-ZgPhrVU/TfenJVTIMOI/AAAAAAAAAh8/adbPIOpA0JU/s1600/ZZZZdidIdoTHAT.jpg)
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 20, 2011, 10:33:43 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/getting-ready-for-a-wave-of-coal-plant-shutdowns/2011/08/19/gIQAzkZ0PJ_blog.html#



Here it comes.     Wave after wave of treason , depression, job losses, inflation, etc



again whoever voted for this asshole I hope you suffer a long slow dying painful death for what you have done. 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 20, 2011, 06:24:14 PM
New EPA rule could lead to rolling blackouts in Texas, PUC chairwoman says
star telegram ^ | Aug. 19, 2011 | Jack Z. Smith
Posted on August 20, 2011 7:12:50 PM EDT by george76

The head of the Texas Public Utility Commission expressed concern Friday that a new federal air quality rule, set to take effect Jan. 1, will cause disruptions in electric service.

If implementation of the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule is not delayed, "I have no doubt in my mind that this rule will result in reliability issues and rolling outages in Texas," Donna Nelson said at the start of the commission's meeting.

...

The company says the industry's standard time frame for installing emission controls is several years, but the rule requires compliance in six months. So Luminant, a subsidiary of Energy Future Holdings, has said it may have to shut down some coal-fired power plants in East Texas.

"Curtailing plant and/or mine operations will be the only option" if the 1,323-page rule goes into effect as planned, Luminant said.

(Excerpt) Read more at star-telegram.com ...
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 20, 2011, 06:25:24 PM
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Exxon fighting regulatory “pirates” in Gulf of Mexico
Hot Air ^ | August 20,2011 | ED MORRISSEY   
Posted on August 20, 2011 2:23:47 PM EDT by Hojczyk

ExxonMobil, and its Norwegian partner Statoil made the biggest discovery of all — a field worth a billion barrels of oil — 7,000 feet below sea level in its “Julia” field in 2007.

Exxon tried to keep its discovery secret to keep marauders away. Sadly, the pirates in this instance are U.S. regulators — and their aim is to stop them.

That’s right: Instead of marvel at the continuing treasures of the New World, or hail the human ingenuity that made retrieval of so much oil possible, or simply quantify how this discovery will boost U.S. energy security, Interior Department bureaucrats moved instead to snatch Exxon’s permits and shut the whole thing down.

Employing an extreme technicality, these regulators claimed that Exxon’s request in 2008 for a short suspension of activity to upgrade and make safer its drilling operation amounted to an abandonment of three of its five permits, simply because Exxon hadn’t signed a contract with another partner, Chevron, by the time the suspension was completed. …

Exxon is now fighting the permit action in a federal court in Lake Charles, La., calling it “arbitrary,” “capricious” and “an abuse of law.” It’s also a textbook case of the anti-business climate fostered by the Obama administration which should be bending over backward to help Exxon create jobs and profits.

So let’s look at what the Obama administration is trying to accomplish, and what it’s costing you as a result.

Well, it’s going to cost us jobs in the Gulf, and not just there, either. As IBD points out, drilling requires a lot more support than just people working on the rig. The rigs have to be built, and then the heavy machinery has to be manufactured — “in places like Youngstown, Ohio,” at a steel plant

S

(Excerpt) Read more at hotair.com ...
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 20, 2011, 06:40:40 PM
Aug. 19, 2011 |(52) COMMENTS

Plugged In

Energy writer Thomas Content keeps you current as you adapt to changes in the world of energy, climate change and efforts to build a greener economy.


Utilities: Rule to curb air pollution will hike power rates (62)
LED merger: Cree pays $525 million to acquire Ruud Lighting (17)
CEO: Biofuels initiative 'plays into strong suit for Virent'
View All Blog Posts

Two state utilities said this week new federal pollution rules will lead to higher electricity costs come January.

Wisconsin Public Service Corp. of Green Bay said its residential customers can expect an increase of more than $4 a month next year, including about $2 linked to the new rules designed to limit air pollution from coal-fired power plants.

The utility said it would see higher costs of about $32.6 million in 2012 from the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule that was finalized recently by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. That will result in rates going up by 6.8% instead of 3.4%, the utility said.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last month finalized stronger regulations for Wisconsin and 26 other states aimed at curbing air pollution from long-distance sources.

Environmental groups praised the new rule because it would reduce acid rain and air pollution as well as help curb health effects from dirty air linked to coal plants. The EPA projected the rule will save up to 34,000 lives a year and prevent more than 400,000 asthma attacks as well as 19,000 admissions to hospitals.

Nationwide, the EPA estimated that utilities are projected to spend $800 million on the rule in 2014, in addition to $1.6 billion a year that's been spent to satisfy an earlier version of the regulations.

But the EPA estimates the nation will see $120 billion to $280 billion in annual health and welfare benefits beginning in 2014.

The new rule has been in development for several years but the first phase of compliance hits utilities in 2012. WPS said it won't have time to install pollution controls by next year at its plants, but will be able to comply by purchasing credits from other utilities that have cut emissions.

The utility also said it plans to operate its coal plants less next year than it otherwise would have, and will buy more power from the Midwest wholesale power market as a result, a move that it said is also a factor in higher costs for customers.

"This is the best option we have to meet power supply needs for 2012 and comply with the new EPA rule at this time," said Karen Kollmann, WPS director of fuels management in a statement.

On Thursday, Wisconsin Power & Light Co. of Madison said it would face an additional $9 million in costs linked to the air pollution rule. With the change, the utility is now seeking an increase in 2012 of $20 million, or 2%, utility finance manager Martin Seitz said in a filing with state regulators.

Todd Stuart, executive director of the Wisconsin Industrial Energy Group, criticized the increases, and he noted that large energy users like paper mills will see higher than average increases, compared with homeowners and small businesses. Paper mills served by WPS could see a 9% hike, he said.

"The EPA's new rules have directly resulted in a major new cost for struggling homeowners and manufacturers," Stuart said in a statement. "Members of Congress should be taking a very hard look at the significant compliance costs of EPA's new mandates."

"Industry always cries wolf whenever EPA tries to reduce air pollution," said Katie Nekola, lawyer with the conservation group Clean Wisconsin. "The fact is, the new rule will affect old, inefficient, unnecessary coal plants that should have been shut down long ago. The continued operation of those old units is costing ratepayers money, but you don't hear industry complaining about that."


http://www.jsonline.com/business/128109718.html


Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 20, 2011, 06:56:46 PM
Skip to comments.

A Politicized Justice Department Strikes Again
National Review ^ | August 17, 2011 | Hans A. von Spakovsky
Posted on August 20, 2011 9:48:54 PM EDT by rhema

The Department of Justice is now prosecuting a 79-year-old grandfather. The reason: Richard Retta walks alongside women on the sidewalk outside a Planned Parenthood abortion facility and offers women hope that they can carry their babies to term.

“They go in and they’re kind of sullen in what they’re doing, and I’m sure there’s a lot of sorrow there,” Retta says in a short video by Pro-Life Unity. “But when they change their mind, most of the times they’re smiling, they’re happy. And they’re willing to talk to us,” he says.

This is the first time, in over a decade of sidewalk counseling, that anyone has sued him for obstruction. (Last month, however, he was pepper-sprayed for his efforts by a woman walking into the clinic who apparently didn’t want him talking to her.)

Retta estimates that he and other volunteers have helped more than 1,300 women change their minds about abortion. But that kind of success seems to be too much for this administration. It is so committed to the agenda of abortion groups that it threatened to shut down the entire government during the budget debate earlier this year to preserve more than $300 million in federal funds for Planned Parenthood. It also has threatened to cut off Medicaid funds to states like Indiana that ban state grants to the organization.

Obama’s DOJ claims that Retta’s sidewalk counseling violates the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, enacted by Congress in 1994. In a July 2011 complaint, the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division says that Retta violated federal law because he “walks very closely beside patients” as they enter the clinic. It also claims that Retta follows them when they leave.

But FACE permits Retta to walk beside patients, coming or going, on a public sidewalk. And the First Amendment protects his right to speak to them. In fact, the FACE Act (18 U.S.C. § 248) forbids only physical obstruction, intimidation, or the use or threat of force. The FACE Act protects the activity that Retta engaged in: The statute specifically states that it does not “prohibit any expressive conduct (including peaceful picketing or other peaceful demonstration).”

DOJ’s allegation that Retta physically blocked patient access is dubious. On Jan. 8, 2011, he supposedly “physically obstructed a patient from entering the clinic” by standing in front of her. The DOJ complaint alleges that, as she then entered the building, Retta yelled, “Don’t go in there. Don’t let them kill your baby.”

Retta was not dressed in a black paramilitary uniform, he was not carrying a nightstick, and he was not yelling racial epithets or blocking the entrance to a polling place. Yet this is the same Justice Department that dismissed a voter-intimidation case against the New Black Panther party, whose members engaged in exactly that behavior. Somehow the behavior and speech of a 79-year-old sidewalk counselor violates federal law against intimidation, but the speech and behavior of the New Black Panthers in Philadelphia in 2008 was just fine, according to the skewed perspective of the liberals who inhabit the Civil Rights Division these days.

As a result, DOJ is demanding that Retta pay a $10,000 civil penalty for violating FACE and $15,000 in fines to his alleged victims. It also wants Retta — and everyone “acting in concert” with him — to be prohibited from standing within 20 feet of the Planned Parenthood gate.

Retta was shocked to learn that DOJ had brought charges against him. The department’s doubtful claim is also brought into question by Retta’s history. He doesn’t just counsel women on the sidewalks about the tragic consequences of abortion; he has also taught sidewalk-counseling classes for about a decade.

He prints a homemade, 22-page training manual that teaches volunteers how to conduct themselves. Item number two on his list of “don’ts”: “DO NOT block the woman’s path.”

Retta also instructs counselors to “[a]void being intimidating in any way.”

Nearly 350 women have kept their children because of conversations Retta personally had with them. He deserves thanks for saving hundreds of lives and making abortion rarer. Proponents of abortion claim that one of their goals is to reduce the number of abortions, yet Retta is being attacked by the Obama Justice Department because of his very success in persuading women to make life-giving choices.

The circumstances of this case cast great doubt on the legitimacy of the DOJ complaint, which describes Retta as “among the most vocal and aggressive anti-abortion protestors [sic] outside of the Clinic.” Of course, even “vocal and aggressive” speech is protected by the First Amendment — or so the Justice Department claimed when it dismissed the New Black Panther case. Retta’s real problem appears to be political: He offers women an authentic choice, in a one-option zone.

Thomas E. Perez, assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division, is unconcerned about the free-speech rights implicated here. Instead, he focuses on the questionable allegations of physical obstruction. “Individuals who seek to obtain or provide reproductive health services have the right to do so without encountering hazardous physical obstructions,” he said. An elderly man is apparently “hazardous” in the view of Perez, but two threatening, racist hate-mongers blocking a polling place are not.

The attorneys who filed this lawsuit — Aaron Zisser and Michelle Leung — were recently hired as career attorneys by the Obama administration. When Zisser worked for Human Rights First, he blogged from Guantanamo about his concern over America’s supposed denial of rights to terrorists. Leung has worked as co-counsel with the ACLU of Northern California and the ACLU of Texas. Her résumé describes her work, as an ACLU intern, in getting a school district to eliminate an “unconstitutional dog-sniffing policy that discriminated against African-American students.”

Zisser and Leung seem more interested in protecting terrorists than citizens, and apparently consider Americans’ freedom from being sniffed by dogs to be more important than their freedom of speech.

From the Planned Parenthood office where Retta counsels women, the White House is visible down the street. The Obama administration offers extensive federal support to abortion advocates and organizations, while using federal resources to target pro-lifers. It should come as no surprise that this politicized Justice Department is willing to abuse federal law to suppress anti-abortion views.

It forgets that compassionate sidewalk counselors, too, have rights — including the right to be free from government intimidation when engaging in free speech.

— Hans A. von Spakovsky is a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation (www.heritage.org) and the former counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights at the Justice Department.
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 21, 2011, 04:52:24 AM
http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/watercooler/2011/aug/20/picket-obama-08-energy-prices-will-skyrocket-under



I hope some great whites are circling martas  vineyard. 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 21, 2011, 06:10:53 AM
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/usda-spends-28-million-more-taxpayer-dol



(CNSNews.com) – The U.S. Department of Agriculture is paying $112 million in tax money to farmers and ranchers in 11 Western states to restore the habitat of the Sage Grouse, a bird that has not been listed as either threatened or endangered under the federal Endangered Species law because the government says there are too many of them.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced last week that the USDA would dedicate $21.8 million to pay eligible ranchers and farmers in the state of Wyoming to encourage conservation practices that preserve the numbers of Sage Grouse.

That will bring to $112 million the total amount that the USDA has distributed over the last two years to eligible farmers and ranchers in 11 states as part of its Sage Grouse Initiative.
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 21, 2011, 06:17:41 PM
President Obama's Deferral Proposal: Hamstringing American Companies, Reducing American Jobs (video)
Youtube ^ | May 11, 2009 | Cato Institute/Dan Mitchell
Posted on August 21, 2011 8:26:04 PM EDT by Nachum

President Obama's proposal to severely restrict "deferral" will cause a significant tax increase on American companies trying to earn market share in other nations. For all intents and purposes, the White House plan is protectionism, but the target is American companies rather than their foreign rivals. This Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation video explains why this misguided policy will reduce exports from America and reduce jobs in America. For more information: www.freedomandprosperity .org

(Excerpt) Read more at youtube.com ...


http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2767034/posts


Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 22, 2011, 05:06:00 AM
Attorney General of N.Y. Is Said to Face Pressure on Bank Foreclosure Deal
By GRETCHEN MORGENSON
Published: August 21, 2011


 
Eric T. Schneiderman, the attorney general of New York, has come under increasing pressure from the Obama administration to drop his opposition to a wide-ranging state settlement with banks over dubious foreclosure practices, according to people briefed on discussions about the deal.


Eric T. Schneiderman has objected to elements of the settlement for months.

In recent weeks, Shaun Donovan, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and high-level Justice Department officials have been waging an intensifying campaign to try to persuade the attorney general to support the settlement, said the people briefed on the talks.

Mr. Schneiderman and top prosecutors in some other states have objected to the proposed settlement with major banks, saying it would restrict their ability to investigate and prosecute wrongdoing in a variety of areas, including the bundling of loans in mortgage securities.

But Mr. Donovan and others in the administration have been contacting not only Mr. Schneiderman but his allies, including consumer groups and advocates for borrowers, seeking help to secure the attorney general’s participation in the deal, these people said. One recipient described the calls from Mr. Donovan, but asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation.

Not surprising, the large banks, which are eager to reach a settlement, have grown increasingly frustrated with Mr. Schneiderman. Bank officials recently discussed asking Mr. Donovan for help in changing the attorney general’s mind, according to a person briefed on those talks.

In an interview on Friday, Mr. Donovan defended his discussions with the attorney general, saying they were motivated by a desire to speed up help for troubled homeowners. But he said he had not spoken to bank officials or their representatives about trying to persuade Mr. Schneiderman to get on board with the deal.

“Eric and I agree on a tremendous amount here,” Mr. Donovan said. “The disagreement is around whether we should wait to settle and resolve the issues around the servicing practices for him — and potentially other A.G.’s and other federal agencies — to complete investigations on the securitization side. He might argue that he has more leverage that way, but our view is we have the immediate opportunity to help a huge number of borrowers to stay in their homes, to help their neighborhoods and the housing market.”

And Alisa Finelli, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department. said: “The Justice Department, along with our federal agency partners and state attorneys general, are committed to achieving a resolution that will hold servicers accountable for the harm they have done consumers and bring billions of dollars of relief to struggling homeowners — and bring relief swiftly because homeowners continue to suffer more each day that these issues are not resolved.”

Terms of the possible settlement under consideration center on foreclosure improprieties like so-called robo-signing and submitting apparently forged documents to the courts to speed up the process of removing troubled borrowers from homes. Negotiations on this deal have been led by Thomas J. Perrelli, associate attorney general of the United States, and Tom Miller, the attorney general of Iowa.

An initial term sheet outlining a possible settlement emerged in March, with institutions including Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo being asked to pay about $20 billion that would go toward loan modifications and possibly counseling for homeowners.

In exchange, the attorneys general participating in the deal would have agreed to sign broad releases preventing them from bringing further litigation on matters relating to the improper bank practices.

The banks balked at the $20 billion figure. And the talks seemed to stall over the summer, as Mr. Schneiderman and a few other attorneys general — Beau Biden of Delaware and Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, for example — questioned aspects of the deal.

Mr. Schneiderman began objecting a few months ago to the proposed releases barring future litigation, declining to participate as long as they were included.

“The attorney general remains concerned by any attempt at a global settlement that would shut down ongoing investigations of wrongdoing related to the mortgage crisis,” said Danny Kanner, the spokesman for Mr. Schneiderman. His office has opened several inquiries into mortgage practices during the credit boom.

Representatives for the four big banks declined to comment. Mr. Schneiderman has also come under criticism for objecting to a settlement proposed by Bank of New York Mellon and Bank of America that would cover 530 mortgage-backed securities containing Countrywide Financial loans that investors say were mischaracterized when they were sold.

The deal would require Bank of America to pay $8.5 billion to investors holding the securities; the unpaid principal amount of the mortgages remaining in the pools totals $174 billion. Lawyers representing 22 institutional investors, including the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, BlackRock and Pimco, contended that the deal was favorable.

This month, Mr. Schneiderman sued to block that deal, which had been negotiated by Bank of New York Mellon as trustee for the holders of the securities. The lawsuit contends that the deal could “compromise investors’ claims in exchange for a payment representing a fraction of the losses” experienced by investors and that it had been negotiated without the knowledge of all of the holders of the securities.

The lawsuit angered Bank of New York Mellon, and as Mr. Schneiderman was leaving the memorial service last week for Hugh Carey, the former New York governor who died Aug. 7, an attendee said Mr. Schneiderman became embroiled in a contentious conversation with Kathryn S. Wylde, a member of the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York who represents the public. Ms. Wylde, who has criticized Mr. Schneiderman for bringing the lawsuit, is also chief executive of the Partnership for New York City. The New York Fed has supported the proposed $8.5 billion settlement.

Other investors in the Countrywide mortgage pools who were not part of the settlement talks between Bank of New York Mellon and Bank of America have called the terms inadequate.

Characterizing her conversation with Mr. Schneiderman that day as “not unpleasant,” Ms. Wylde said in an interview on Thursday that she had told the attorney general “it is of concern to the industry that instead of trying to facilitate resolving these issues, you seem to be throwing a wrench into it. Wall Street is our Main Street — love ’em or hate ’em. They are important and we have to make sure we are doing everything we can to support them unless they are doing something indefensible.”

Mr. Schneiderman declined to comment on the encounter.

Mr. Schneiderman has opened an investigation into Wall Street’s mortgage machinery, especially examining whether loan documents were provided to the trusts as required under securitization contracts.

The New York attorney general’s office has hired Lynn E. Turner, former chief accountant of the Securities and Exchange Commission, as a consultant on the investigations, people briefed on the inquiries said.

Damon A. Silvers, associate general counsel for the A.F.L.-C.I.O., is also serving as a special counsel on a pro bono basis. Both men declined to comment.


http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/22/business/schneiderman-is-said-to-face-pressure-to-back-bank-deal.html?_r=1&hp=&adxnnl=1&pagewanted=all&adxnnlx=1314014404-QRiTZ8QYz5phJVbcBwyg0A



Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 22, 2011, 05:30:44 AM
The EPA’s giant green jobs-killer
By MICHAEL A. WALSH

Last Updated: 12:33 AM, August 22, 2011




Get ready for the sacrifice of tens of thousands more American jobs (at least) to feed the fantasy of “clean energy.” Even as the “green jobs” promise proves to be a lie, the Obama administration is getting set to force the shutdown of countless power plants across half the nation.


The Environmental Protection Agency’s new Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, announced last month, will affect coal-fired electric plants in at least 27 midwestern and eastern states. Set to take effect next year, the rule could shutter up to a fifth of the nation’s generating capacity.


With coal providing 45 percent of the nation’s energy, utility companies warn of an economic “train wreck” if the regulations -- based on Bush-era EPA proposals that the federal courts threw out in 2008 -- take effect. One Wisconsin utility says its costs would jump $32.6 million next year, while the head of the Texas Public Utility Commission says the rules could lead to rolling blackouts -- especially given the short time the utilities have to comply with Washington’s iron fist.


Steve Miller, president and CEO of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, warns of job losses totaling 1.4 million over the next eight years and a 23 percent jump in electric rates in states dependent on coal-fired plants.  

With unemployment still sky-high, new jobless claims routinely hitting 400,000 a week and consumer prices rising, is this really the time to hobble the nation’s reeling economy further?


Absolutely, says autocratic EPA chief Lisa Jackson -- who could possibly be against improving the air quality for up to 240 million Americans? “Just because wind and weather will carry air pollution away from its source at a local power plant doesn’t mean that pollution is no longer that plant’s responsibility.”


Fine -- but wouldn’t it be nice if the EPA could prove real health effects before forcing the shutdown of so many plants?


Environmental extremists cheer the new rules because closing “dirty” coal plants is part of their fantasy of “clean energy” and green jobs. But the reality is otherwise. Even backed by stimulus funds, “green” business after business has flopped or folded, costing taxpayers millions.


In Seattle, a plan called Retrofit Ramp-Up sucked up $20 million in federal grants to make houses more energy efficient. The result: so far, only three homes retrofitted and just 14 jobs “created.” California got $186 million for a similar program and has spent just over half of it -- with just 538 new full-time jobs to show for it.


Costco recently announced that it’s yanking out some 90 electric-car chargers at 64 of its stores, mostly in California -- because nobody uses them. The discount retailer also rejected the offer of a $2.3 million upgrade by the California Energy Commission. “Why should we have anybody spend money on a program that nobody’s thought through?” said one regional manager.


So let’s get this straight: At the same time it’s spending millions of taxpayer dollars in pursuit of a chimera, the Obama administration is attacking the wellsprings of US prosperity, throwing people out of work and raising consumer costs. This isn’t just insane; it’s malevolent.


Nobody’s in favor of dirtier air or water, of childhood asthma or killing puppies. But progressives often seem to think that there’s never any cost for their crackpot notions, that no amount of money can ever possibly be too much, even if we have to borrow or print it. If people are thrown out of work in the process, tough.


Worst of all is the increasingly arbitrary reach of the regulatory state. President Richard Nixon created the EPA by executive order in 1970, in a hasty response to an oil spill near Santa Barbara. “The 1970s absolutely must be the years when America pays its debt to the past by reclaiming the purity of its air, its waters and our living environment,” he said.


That was 41 years ago. The nation’s air and water have noticeably improved since then -- but they’ll never be clean enough to satisfy some. To people like Lisa Jackson, we need to keep on paying -- even if it kills us.



Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/the_epa_giant_green_jobs_killer_KdfsWk1XtxOu1souIABLFM#ixzz1VlBlzlFV



Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 22, 2011, 07:38:25 AM

Obama: Circling back to the iceberg
By Ralph R. Reiland
Monday, August 22, 2011
About the writer





Ralph R. Reiland is an associate professor of economics at Robert Morris University and a local restaurateur. He can be reached via via e-mail.


Only 26 percent of the public approve of President Barack Obama's handling of the economy in the latest Gallup poll, conducted Aug. 11-14, while a whopping 71 percent disapprove.

That's down from Obama's previous low point of 35 percent approval on this top issue.

The public's growing dissatisfaction shouldn't be surprising. Going back to 1890, reports the National Bureau of Economic Research, the only U.S. president with a worse record than Obama in job creation in his first two-and-a-half years in office, measured in terms of percentage change, was Herbert Hoover, presiding over the emergence of the Great Depression.

"Official unemployment is 9.1 percent," stated a New York Times editorial on Aug. 15, decrying the nation's jobs picture, "but it would be 16.1 percent, or 25.1 million people, if it included those who can only find part-time jobs and those who have given up looking for work."

"Keeping the economy going and making sure jobs are available is the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning," Obama said back in March. "It's the last thing I think about when I go to bed each night."

Now, nearly six months later, the White House reports that Obama is working on a new strategy for job creation that will be unveiled after he returns from vacation.

The task of coming up with a jobs plan that works shouldn't be all that terribly difficult. All Mr. Obama has to do is reverse what he's done and change what he thinks.

First, by the government's own numbers, small businesses have created 64 percent of the net new jobs in the U.S. economy over the past 15 years.

In fact, that understates the role of small business, since the vast majority of America's medium-sized and large businesses began as small businesses. The Heinz corporation began when 16-year-old Henry Heinz grated piles of horseradish at home, using his mother's recipe, and sold the bottled product door-to-door in Sharpsburg out of a wheelbarrow.

Yet since Obama took office, employment at federal regulatory agencies has jumped 13 percent while private-sector jobs shrank by 5.6 percent.

Second, 39 percent of small-business owners said in a Chamber of Commerce survey in July that ObamaCare was either their greatest or second-greatest obstacle to new hiring.

The president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, Dennis Lockhart, concurs, stating that "prominent" among the obstacles to hiring is the "lack of clarity about the cost implications" of ObamaCare.

"We've frequently heard strong comments," reported Lockhart, "to the effect of, 'My company won't hire a single additional worker until we know what health insurance costs are going to be.'"

Additionally, 84 percent of small business owners in the survey said the economy is on the wrong track, 79 percent view the current regulatory environment as unreasonable, and 79 percent believe Washington should get out of the way of small business, rather than offering a helping hand (14 percent).

In its first 26 months, reports The Heritage Foundation, the Obama administration imposed new regulatory rules that will cost the private sector $40 billion. In July alone, reports Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., federal regulators imposed a total of 379 new rules that will add some $9.5 billion in new costs.

Bottom line: What's required from Obama is a complete about-face, the shelving of his flawed economic philosophy and a reversal of his counterproductive policy prescriptions


Read more: Obama: Circling back to the iceberg - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/opinion/s_752463.html#ixzz1VliC0TPq


________________________ ________________________ ____


And like lemmings, the obama kneepad crew is still blind to what many have been saying from Day 1 on this horrible Admn.

BUSINESSES WILL NOT HIRE ANYONE UNTIL OBAMACARE IS REPEALED. 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 24, 2011, 08:11:58 AM
Source: Huffington Post



INDIANAPOLIS -- A new survey from a large benefits consultant says nearly one of every 10 mid-sized or big employers expects to stop offering health coverage to workers once federal insurance exchanges start in 2014.

Towers Watson says an additional 20 percent of the companies it surveyed last month are unsure about what they will do. The remaining 71 percent expect to continue offering benefits.

Exchanges were devised under the health care overhaul and aim to provide a marketplace for people to buy insurance that can be subsidized by the government based on income levels.

Benefits experts say retailers and companies that pay low wages are most likely to drop coverage for their workers. But they also caution that companies are far from making a final decision on this.

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/24/health-insuran...


________________________ _____________________

Wonder if Mal is still going to cheer Bama "giving health care to 30 million people" ? ? / 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 24, 2011, 12:27:21 PM
The Five Most Catastrophic Hidden Costs of the Obama Presidency
Pajamas Media ^ | August 24, 2011 | Kyle- Anne Shiver





Deep prices waiting to pounce



We well remember candidate Barack Obama’s ’08 throngs laying in breathless wait for the “Lightworker” to appear and speak as “sort of like God” from his teleprompter on high. Now, with nearly everything this president has touched lying in shambles, a shrunken Obama whines from town to town, transported in a taxpayer-purchased bus that resembles a big, fat hearse — the perfect symbol for the harbinger of economic death that Obama’s presidency has become.

It’s painfully apparent now that the American people were scammed in ’08 by Barack the Bamboozler in what will be known historically as the most audacious scheme of fraudulent branding the world has ever seen.

I would just love to see a crackerjack team of litigation attorneys put together a class action suit with a dollar amount on both the tangible and intangible “pain and suffering” costs of the Obama presidency. In fact, if I were a Republican strategist, I would commission a legal team to devise such a case and put it in a PowerPoint presentation for voters by next fall.

The all too apparent costs, of course, are those numbers economists lob forth every day, to a mouths-agape public:

The staggeringly high unemployment rate – 9.1%, not counting the Americans who have given up looking for work or who are underemployed.

The still-tumbling housing values, now worse than the Great Depression.
The inflation indicators, with uncounted sharp inflation in food and gasoline.
The debt and the deficit, now too big to even fathom without an advanced degree in mathematics.
The unfunded future liabilities –Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, public worker pensions, and the like.

When the S&P downgrade is thrown into this cliff-hanging mix, our fiscal situation goes from bad to worse.
But as all litigators worth their salt wind up telling every claims-award jury, the most catastrophic costs to victims are those which are less tangible and remain hidden from cursory view. We recognize this litigious category as “pain and suffering.”

So, on behalf of my fellow Americans, here is my list of the 5 most horrendous hidden costs of the Obama presidency:

5. President Obama’s pass-the-buck, blame-it-on-the-other-guy, it-was-just-bad-luck performance as a no-account “leader” sends a horrible message to our youth.

His is an example so bad that it will reverberate for a generation at incalculable cost.



Well, should we really have expected more from a guy who freely admitted to doing “blow” and smoking “weed,” who never released a single transcript from a single school he attended, who never wrote a law review article, who voted “present” over 130 times as a state legislator, and who thought listening to hate-whitey political speeches qualified as going to “church”? Probably not.




But these were the facts intentionally glossed over by fraudulent brander David Axelrod and his client, Barack Obama. These were the facts given short shrift by a mainstream media with tingles up their legs and pants-crease fetishes. These were the facts hidden from view by the hope, hype, hoopla, glitter, glamour, and celebrity poppycock.

When the president of the United States cannot accept responsibility for his own decisions (or lack thereof), then he sends a message to every young person in this country that “the dog ate my homework” is an acceptable excuse for doing nothing.

Yes, the president’s own blame game in his own heralded “new era of responsibility” has become so ubiquitous that Investor’s Business Daily is waiting for the expectable Obama excuse: “Bo Ate My Recovery.” From IBD’s list of already-worn-very-thin Obama excuses we remember the blame targets: 24/7 Bush did it – all of it; ATMs steal jobs; Republicans stole the cookies; businesses that “sit on piles of cash” and refuse to hire are the bad guys; “splintered” media not totally under Obama’s control confuses people. And, finally, last week, the fallback excuse of no-accounts throughout the ages: “a run of bad luck.”

The cost to this country for electing a man with the work ethic of character Maynard G. Krebs is truly incalculable, not only in terms of work undone and opportunities lost, but also in the message of non-accountability hammered home to a whole generation of American youth.

4. ObamaCare Lawsuits by more than half the states at a combined hidden cost of thousands of dollars per hour – per hour!


ObamaCare mandates are forcing states to sue to protect their own solvency. While most of the media attention, of course, is on the unconstitutionality of ObamaCare’s individual mandate, 27 states – more than half! – are actively entwined in a lawsuit to stop this debt-forcing law. As the Heritage Foundation documents, the future funding forced upon every state in its provisions for Medicaid will quite frankly push many states into either bankruptcy or a shutdown of basic services.

While ObamaCare will pay for all of the benefit expansion for the first three years of the law, and 90% of it after that, ObamaCare never pays for any of the state administrative costs for adding those 18 million Americans to their welfare rolls. That amounts to billions in unfunded federal mandates the states must absorb. That is why 33 Republican governors signed a letter to the White House and Congress making an emphatic appeal that ObamaCare’s Medicaid provisions be repealed.


Look carefully at the list of states. They are not all “Red” states. It’s not political; it’s fiscal. In fact, 11 of the 27 states suing over ObamaCare voted for the president in 2008: Florida, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maine, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, Colorado, Washington, and Nevada. Harry Reid’s own state – Nevada! — is on the list, having filed suit a mere two months after passage of ObamaCare.

The point here is that lawsuits are very, very expensive. And state taxpayers are footing the bill for all of this hidden cost of the Obama presidency. As the president glibly dismisses the Tea Party with ridicule and says they “ought to be thanking him,” the real costs mount at an alarming rate.



Obama thinks he is cute to mock those disputing the constitutionality of his big-bleeping-deal health-care law. Last week on his campaign bus tour, the president declared that it is fine for folks to call it “Obama cares.” “I do care,” he affirmed, though failing to mention that he “cares” with other people’s money. He concluded this folksy little chit-chat with his even-cuter punch line: “If the other side wants to be the folks who don’t care, that’s fine with me.” He comes off sounding like the dependent spouse berating the family breadwinner for stinginess when her credit card bills threaten the family with homelessness and starvation.

If Obama had had an ounce of responsible forethought he and his cabal of Democrat enablers would have thought through the health-care bill instead of marching on without a care in the world except their highfalutin, shallow claims to “care.” The cost is already in the billions and that’s before a single act of real “caring” comes to pass.





3. Obama’s federal regulations, growing like kudzu in uncontrolled, maniacal frenzy, form a stranglehold on American business.

Once again, we turn to Investor’s Business Daily for the heavy-lifting on Obama’s wretched big government stranglehold. From John Merline’s detailed IBD article last week, we learn that one of the very few “businesses” actually booming in Obamaland is the “Regulation” industry, which has seen its combined budgets grow by a whopping 16% since 2008. This meteoric rise in regulatory budgets coincided with a pitiful increase of only 5% in overall economic growth.

Employment at these regulatory government behemoths has grown a staggering 13%, while private-sector jobs shrank by 5.6%.

Merline puts this picture into pitch-perfect perspective for even economics-challenged citizens like me:


If the federal government’s regulatory operation were a business, it would be one of the 50 biggest in the country in terms of revenues, and the third largest in terms of employees, with more people working for it than McDonald’s, Ford, Disney and Boeing combined.

The obvious take-away from this profoundly disturbing reality is that while McDonald’s, Ford, Disney, and Boeing create real products/services for real people, and have the added advantage of self-sufficiency as opposed to being supported by taxpayers, the federal regulatory “do it like this” pencil-pushers actually cost us not only their bloated salaries and benefits but also cost the businesses they regulate billions more to ensure “compliance.” Every dollar spent by business to follow federal busybodies’ new rules is a dollar passed on to consumers.

In Obama’s America, big government is running its own protection racket aimed at consumers and taxpayers. They play; we pay.




2. The specter of uncertainty haunts every American in Obama’s Changeopoly Blitzkrieg.

Overwhelming uncertainty sits there quietly as the ever-present silent partner in big-ticket spending decisions, business start-up meetings, and hiring discussions. The S&P downgrade merely said aloud what all sentient Americans already knew quite well. The only change Obama brought to Washington was bigger government, higher deficits, and even less will to strive for a balanced budget.


My favorite brief summation of business uncertainty came from a new member of Congress, Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-NC), speaking to Treasury Secretary Geithner in June:

Overwhelmingly, the businesses back home and across the country continue to tell us that regulation, lack of access to capital, taxation, fear of taxation, and just the overwhelming uncertainties that our businesses face is keeping them from hiring. They just simply cannot. (Emphasis added.)

Due to uncertainty as to what cockamamie, economy-killing idea will strike the feds next, consumer confidence is in the tank – at its lowest since President Carter’s infamous “stagflation” years. These things don’t just happen and no, it isn’t the fault of “bad luck.”


The elephant in the room of all this despair and uncertainty is the president himself. Everywhere Obama goes with his whiny “me-myself-and-I” excuses tour, it becomes more and more obvious that the president himself is oblivious to real economics. The man is completely out of touch and out of his depth on the reality of American enterprise. Yet, it is in his own powerful hands that the entire behemoth federal government lies and from his own lips that agencies take their marching orders. This is a recipe for disaster and the people know it, which is why every homemaker, breadwinner, business owner, and entrepreneur has overwhelming uncertainty as his Obamaland unwelcome bedfellow.






The Great Demoralization of America under Obama.
If Barack Obama were a football coach, rather than president, his glaring lack of leadership skills would be contained to a single 100-yard field once a week. But a president who thinks highfalutin speechifying substitutes for genuine leadership has put a pall of demoralization over the citizenry, from coast to coast and in every hamlet in between. The agony of Obama’s defeated economic policies has become a palpable presence throughout the country.

While president and Mrs. Obama have partied hardy, running up exorbitant tabs for such public folderol as useless foreign travel, vacations to Martha’s Vineyard, Hawaii, and Spain, and celebrity fests at the White House, the American people have become more and more demoralized by the profligate spectacle. As the president goes from one golf course to another, making light of real Americans’ suffering under the yoke of his own policies, the people have become discouraged, resentful, and downright angry.

How much has this ubiquitous “downgrade” in the national psyche cost us in terms of recovery unrealized? How might the first couple’s putting their “own skin in the game” have helped the country to get back on our feet? Boy-oh-boy, would I love to see some zealous lawyers put a price tag on the Great Demoralization factor of this presidency. It might actually come close to the national debt number.

Oddly enough, Barack Obama presciently explained in his book, The Audacity of Hope, why he should not be elected – though no one in the mainstream media paid attention to it. Writing on the mess in D.C., Obama declared:


Moreover, most people who serve in Washington have been trained either as lawyers or as political operatives – professions that tend to place a premium on winning arguments rather than solving problems.

President Obama – the lawyer – has proven his own theory beyond all possible measure in his utter failure to solve a single problem and in his unwavering insistence upon shackling America’s genuine problem-solvers with overwhelming regulations and class-warfare demagoguery.

In President Obama’s very first meeting with then-minority Republican congressional leaders, efforts at real bipartisanship were met by Obama’s gleeful assertion, “I won.”

And Obama’s thrill of victory has become America’s agony of defeat. Can anyone anywhere put a dollar figure on this mountainous hidden cost? I would love to see someone try. In fact, I’m quite certain that you readers can think of vast uncounted costs I haven’t even thought of.

Now, what does our Community Organizer in Chief do to quell the roiling flood waters? He pouts and goes out to play golf at the Vineyard. Have we actually seen the moment when the real sea of debt began to stop its threatening rise? In a word, No. In two, hell no.


Obama lied; hope died.

You just can’t put a price tag on so many opportunities lost.

I’m closing this piece with the very best Obama-debt analysis I’ve seen to date. This video comes from the down-to-earth Political Math genius who explains astronomical numbers to math-challenged people like me. Don’t deny yourself the opportunity of seeing this National Debt Road Trip in full. It’s worth your gas – pun fully intended.

Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Kazan on August 24, 2011, 12:39:59 PM
(http://thepeoplescube.com/images/Identity_Theft_Obama_US.jpg)
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 25, 2011, 05:35:34 AM
Team Obama Regulates Goat Herders' Workplaces
by Audrey Hudson (more by this author)
Posted 08/24/2011 ET
Updated 08/24/2011 ET




The Obama administration is setting new workplace regulations to assist foreign workers who fill goat herding positions in the U.S. , including employee-paid cell phones and comfy beds.
 
These new special procedures issued by the Labor Department must be followed by employers who want to hire temporary agricultural foreign workers to perform sheep herding or goat herding activities.  It describes strict rules for sleeping quarters, lighting, food storage, bathing, laundry, cooking and new rules for the counters where food is prepared.
 
“A separate sleeping unit shall be provided for each person, except in a family arrangement,” says the rules signed by Jane Oates, assistant secretary for employment and training administration at the Labor Department.
 
“Such a unit shall include a comfortable bed, cot or bunk, with a clean mattress,” the rules state.
 
Diane Katz, a research fellow in regulatory policy at The Heritage Foundation, unearthed the policy in the "Federal Register," the massive daily journal of proposed regulations that Washington bureaucrats publish every day.

Under the Obama Administration, the nanny state has imposed 75 new major regulations with annual costs of $38 billion.  


“This captures what is wrong with government,” Katz said.  “I could not have made this up.”
 
With unemployment holding steady at 9% and government regulations adding more burden to small businesses, such as those run by ranching families, Katz said, bureaucrats aren’t helping.
 
“Instead of remedying the problem, the regulations make it that much harder,” Katz insisted.  “We may need a whole set of regulations just to define what a comfortable bed is.  I imagine it’s not straw."
 
The new lighting standards say that in areas where it is not feasible to provide electrical service such as tents or mobile trailers, lanterns must be provided.  “Kerosene wick lights meet the definition of lantern,” the regulations say.
 
“When workers or their families are permitted or required to cook in their individual unit, a space shall be provided with adequate lighting and ventilation.”
 
“Wall surfaces next to all food preparation and cooking areas shall be of nonabsorbent, easy-to-clean material.  Wall surfaces next to cooking areas shall be of fire-resistant material,” the regulations say.
 
“It makes you wonder,” Katz said, “how they ever did this before the government got involved?”
 
“Who knew we needed all of this federal help for herding goats?” Katz quipped.


www.humanevents.com

Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: dario73 on August 25, 2011, 08:16:25 AM
Carter has nothing on barry when it comes to incompetence.
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 25, 2011, 09:09:41 AM
4200 New Regulations in Obama Pipeline- so far
Townhall.com ^ | August 25, 2011 | Bob Beauprez




Way back in January President Obama ordered "a government-wide review of the rules already on the books to remove outdated regulations that stifle job creation and make our economy less competitive."   

From that statement alone, you might conclude that Obama already knew that finding needless, burdensome regulation in the 81,000 pages of the federal register would be easy pickings. 

More than seven months later, the Administration has announced the results of that exhaustive review.  By the White House's own undoubtedly inflated estimate, the net benefit will barely be worth one-tenth of one penny of every dollar of expense caused by compliance with federal regulation. 

Cass Sunstein, the Regulation Czar, says the regulation relief he announced yesterday will save business $10 billion over five years.  But, the latest analysis by the Small Business Administration (SBA) calculates that compliance with federal regulation costs a staggering $1.75 trillion annually - and, that is a 2008 pre-Obama Administration estimate. 


That does not include the 75 new major rules generated by Obama in just his first 26 months at an additional burden of $40 billion according to a study by the Heritage Foundation. 

Worse, still to come are the impending clean air rules from the EPA, new derivative rules, net neutrality rules, the new CAFE fuel mandates, and the avalanche of rules mandated by ObamaCare and the Dodd-Frank legislation. 

The government admits there are 4200 new rules or revisions already in the pipeline.

Sunstein's announcement is like finding a man drowning under Niagara Falls and "saving" him by removing a cup of water.  It is further evidence of the complete detachment from reality by this Administration, and an insult to the intelligence of working people and employers alike to pretend that this is the sum total of outdated, duplicitous, needless regulation that in Obama's own words, "stifles job creation." 


But, then should we have expected anything different from the Administration that the Wall Street Journal says has "turned a regulatory firehose" on American business? 


Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 25, 2011, 02:06:00 PM
Obama Executive Order Creates ‘Office of Diversity and Inclusion’
The Blaze ^ | August 25, 2011 | Buck Sexton




In yet another expansion of government through Executive Order, the Obama administration has created an Office of Diversity and Inclusion to boost minority participation in the federal work force.

Judicial Watch reported on this new government office Wednesday, and stated that the Obama administration’s goal is to:

“Eliminate demographic group imbalances in targeted occupations and improve workforce diversity. To attain this, special initiatives have been created targeting specific groups, including Hispanics, African Americans, American Indians, women and gays and lesbians.”

You can read the entire executive order here, but below is an excerpt that summarizes its mission:

“By this order, I am directing executive departments and agencies to develop and implement a more comprehensive, integrated, and strategic focus on diversity and inclusion as a key component of their human resources strategies.”


(Excerpt) Read more at theblaze.com ...

Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 25, 2011, 03:09:34 PM
DOD Report Highlights Administration Incoherence on China
Heritage.org ^ | 8/25/11 | Dean Cheng




Whether it is the delayed release of the 2011 Department of Defense (DOD) report on Chinese military and security developments or Vice President Joe Biden’s statements regarding Chinese human rights, it is becoming clear that the Obama Administration has an utterly incoherent view of the People’s Republic of China.

Biden apparently sees his statement (“Your policy has been one which I fully understand—I’m not second-guessing—of one child per family”) as actually arguing against the Chinese policy. Similarly, even as the Administration was signaling, just before the Vice President’s trip, that it was not going to sell Taiwan badly needed F-16 C/Ds to replace obsolete F-5s in the Taiwan inventory, the interagency process was concluding that the Chinese military is still focused on a Taiwan contingency and “is likely to steadily expand its military options for Taiwan, including those to deter, delay, or deny third party intervention.”


(Excerpt) Read more at blog.heritage.org ...

Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 26, 2011, 11:33:25 AM
August 26, 2011
Obama's Race-Based Spoils System
By Pat Buchanan





Chester Arthur was a most unlikely reformer.

A crucial cog in the political machine of the Empire State's Sen. Roscoe Conkling, he was named by President Grant to the powerful and lucrative post of collector of customs for the Port of New York.

 
Arthur was removed in 1878 by President Rutherford B. Hayes, who wanted to clean up the federal patronage system. But when James Garfield of Ohio was nominated to succeed Hayes, he sought to unite his party by picking the Stalwart Arthur as running mate.

Six months into the new administration, a deranged office-seeker shot Garfield. Arthur was president. And in a dramatic turnabout, he became the president forever associated with civil service reform, converting the U.S. government into a meritocracy where individuals were hired based upon examinations and advanced based upon merit.

In our time, however, Arthur's achievement has been undone, as a racial spoils system in federal hiring and promotions has been imposed by Democratic presidents, unresisted by Republicans who rarely exhibit the courage to stand up for their principles when the subject is race.

A week ago, an item buried in The Washington Post reported that Obama had "issued an executive order requiring government agencies to develop plans for improving federal workforce diversity."

Obama, wrote Isaac Arnsdorf, is targeting "a problem that has been on the administration's radar. Whites still hold more than 81 percent of senior pay-level positions."

Now, as white folks are two-thirds of the U.S. population, and perhaps three-fourths of those in the 45 to 65 age group who would normally be at senior federal positions, why is this "a problem"?

As no one has contended otherwise, we have to assume that the men and women who hold these top positions got there because of the longevity of their service and the superiority of their skills.

Why is the color of their skin a "problem" for Barack Obama?

As reported here previously, African-Americans are hardly underrepresented in the U.S. government.

Though only 12 percent to 13 percent of the U.S. population, blacks hold 18 percent of all federal jobs. African-Americans are 25 percent of the employees at Treasury and Veterans Affairs, 31 percent of State Department employees, 37 percent of the Department of Education, 38 percent of Housing and Urban Development. They are 42 percent of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., 55 percent of the Government Printing Office, 82 percent of the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency.

According to The Washington Post, blacks hold 44 percent of the jobs at Fannie Mae and 50 percent of the jobs at Freddie Mac.

The EEOC, where African-Americans are overrepresented by 300 percent, has been asked to oversee the new "government-wide initiative to promote diversity and inclusion in the federal workforce."

I'm not making this up.

Perhaps, while he is battling for a greater diversity of sacrifice and rewards up there on Martha's Vineyard, our president might reflect on another example of the overrepresentation of white males -- in the caskets coming home to Dover.

In the first five years of the Iraq war, Asian-Americans were 1 percent of our fallen heroes, Latinos 11 percent, African-Americans 10 percent. White Americans were 75 percent of the dead, and from photos of the fallen in newspapers since, the ratios appear to hold.

Does this overrepresentation of white men in the body bags and caskets coming home bother our commander in chief, who wants fewer white men at the top level of his executive branch?

"Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?" says the Lord in Matthew's Gospel.

Has Obama taken a close look at his hypocritical party on Capitol Hill? Though African-Americans are fully 25 percent of all Democratic voters, in a Senate Democratic Caucus of 53 members, there is not a single black man or black woman.

Well, regretfully, we are told, none was elected

But if liberals believe in affirmative action, why don't Democratic senators practice as well as preach it? Why don't they lead by example rather than by exhortation?

Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer have been around for decades. Why do they not agree to flip a coin, have one resign, and have Gov. Jerry Brown appoint Rep. Barbara Lee, head of the Black Caucus, to the U.S. Senate?

Why does not Barbara Mikulski, who has been there forever, not stand down and let Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley appoint Rep. Elijah Cummings of Baltimore to the Senate? Let Chuck Schumer go forth and do likewise, show us what a heroic liberal is, and let Gov. Andrew Cuomo name an African-American to replace him in the Senate.

Senate liberals applaud affirmative action programs that deny white students and white federal workers admissions and promotions they have earned by their labors. But when, ever, has one of these liberals voluntarily made the sacrifice that he demands be imposed upon others?

www.realclearpolitics.co m


________________________ _________________


Whoever still supports this admn needs at a minimum 24 hours of waterboarding and 300 lashes. 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 26, 2011, 11:40:51 AM
Answering Jonathan Alter’s ChallengePeter Wehner
08.26.2011 - 12:41 PM     



“Tell me again why Barack Obama has been such a bad president?” Jonathan Alter writes in his column.

Alter tells us he’s not talking here about Obama as a tactician and communicator, and he’s not interested in hearing ad hominem attacks or about people’s generalized “disappointment.” (Neither am I.) He wants to know on a substantive basis why Obama should be judged to have failed so far.


In Alter’s words, “Your mission, Jim [or anyone else for that matter], should you decide to accept it, is to be specific and rational, not vague and visceral.”

Consider the mission accepted.

In one sense, the answer to the Alter challenge is obvious: Obama has failed by his own standards. It’s the Obama administration, not the RNC, that said if his stimulus package was passed unemployment would not exceed 8 percent. It’s Obama who joked there weren’t as many “shovel-ready” jobs as he thought.

It’s Obama who promised to cut the deficit in half. It’s Obama who said if we passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the health care cost curve would go down rather than up. It’s Obama who promised us recovery and prosperity, hope and change. What we’ve gotten instead is the opposite.

What makes Alter’s challenge particularly delicious is during the Bush years he spoke out about the importance of a “reality-based” presidency (as opposed to a “faith-based” one). “They [Republicans] could end up winning in November by distorting the argument,” Alter said in 2006. “But on credibility and the facts, they’ve lost.”

With Alter’s devotion to credibility and facts in mind, let’s take an empirical, reality-based look at economic life in America during the Age of Obama:

* Under Obama’s stewardship, we have lost 2.2 million jobs (and 900,000 full-time jobs in the last four months alone). He is now on track to have the worst jobs record of any president in the modern era.

* The unemployment rate stands at 9.1 percent v. 7.8 percent the month Obama took office.

* July marked the 30th consecutive month in which the unemployment rate was above the 8 percent level, the highest since the Great Depression.

* Since May 2009 — roughly 14 weeks into the Obama administration — the unemployment rate has been above 10 percent during three months, above 9 percent during 22 months, and above 8 percent during two months.

* Chronic unemployment is worse than during the Great Depression.

* The youth employment rate is at the lowest level since records were first kept in 1948.

* The share of the eligible population holding a job has declined to the lowest level since the early 1980s.

* The housing crisis is worse than in the Great Depression. (Home values are worth roughly one-third less than they were five years ago.)

* The rate of economic growth under Obama has been only slightly higher than the 1930s, the decade of the Great Depression. From the first quarter of 2010 through the first quarter of 2011, we experienced five consecutive quarters of slowing growth. America’s GDP for the second quarter of this year was a sickly 1.0 percent; in the first quarter, it was 0.4 percent.

* Fiscal year 2011 will mark the third straight year with deficits in excess of $1 trillion. Prior to the Obama presidency, we had never experienced a deficit in excess of $1 trillion.

* During the Obama presidency, America has increased its debt by $4 trillion.

That is to say, Obama has achieved in two-and-a-half years what it took George W. Bush two full terms in office to achieve — and Obama, when he was running for president, slammed Bush’s record as being “unpatriotic.”

* America saw its credit rating downgraded for the first time in history under the Obama presidency.

* Consumer confidence has plunged to the lowest level since the Carter presidency.

*  The number of people in the U.S. who are in poverty is on track for a record increase on President Obama’s watch, with the ranks of working-age poor approaching 1960s levels that led to the national war on poverty.

* A record number of Americans now rely on the federal government’s food stamps program. More than 44.5 million Americans received Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, a 12 percent increase from one year ago.

There is more that can be said, but you get the point.

What makes this record doubly horrifying is rapid growth is the norm after particularly deep recessions — but under Obama, our recovery has been historically weak. President Obama (and Alter) can blame his predecessor, the Tea Party, the Arab Spring, the Japanese tsunami, events in Europe, ATM machines and even athlete’s foot for his predicament. It doesn’t really matter, as even Obama conceded during the early months of his presidency, when he declared, “One nice thing about the situation I find myself in is that I will be held accountable.”

Indeed. Obama “owns” the economy, as both his senior aide David Plouffe and the chair of the DNC, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, have said.

“If you lose a common ground of facts on which to move forward as a society, nobody can agree on anything, and you can’t pull together to solve problems,” Alter told Keith Olbermann during the Bush administration.

I agree. And it is on the common ground of facts that we can declare–in a calm, specific, reasonable, rational and empirical manner–Obama to be an utter failure.



http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/08/26/jonathan-alter-challenge

Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Deicide on August 26, 2011, 11:59:17 AM
(http://thepeoplescube.com/images/Identity_Theft_Obama_US.jpg)
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 26, 2011, 12:16:18 PM
The real crime is in the opportunity obama squandered in the last 4 years.   

He could have been a great POTUS by connecting with the average main street guy, but instead cast his lot with the banksters, mobsters, crony capilitists, and thugs.   
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 26, 2011, 12:28:08 PM
Eco-zealous feds target Gibson guitars, antique piano sellers; Updated: Gibson explains
Michelle Malkin ^ | 8/25/11 | Michelle Malkin




The real endangered species?

I’ve seen a lot of enviro-nitwittery over the years, but this takes the cake.

US Fish and Wildlife officials have raided the famous Gibson Guitars. And the instrument-maker isn’t alone. Antique piano dealers are also in the crosshairs. Why? Because rare, beautiful instruments made of ecologically incorrect materials must be sacrificed at the green altar. Talk about hitting a sour note.

Eric Felten at the WSJ reports:

Federal agents swooped in on Gibson Guitar Wednesday, raiding factories and offices in Memphis and Nashville, seizing several pallets of wood, electronic files and guitars. The Feds are keeping mum, but in a statement yesterday Gibson’s chairman and CEO, Henry Juszkiewicz, defended his company’s manufacturing policies, accusing the Justice Department of bullying the company. “The wood the government seized Wednesday is from a Forest Stewardship Council certified supplier,” he said, suggesting the Feds are using the aggressive enforcement of overly broad laws to make the company cry uncle.

It isn’t the first time that agents of the Fish and Wildlife Service have come knocking at the storied maker of such iconic instruments as the Les Paul electric guitar, the J-160E acoustic-electric John Lennon played, and essential jazz-boxes such as Charlie Christian’s ES-150. In 2009 the Feds seized several guitars and pallets of wood from a Gibson factory, and both sides have been wrangling over the goods in a case with the delightful name “United States of America v. Ebony Wood in Various Forms.”


(Excerpt) Read more at michellemalkin.com ...



________________________ ________________________ ________

Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Option D on August 26, 2011, 12:39:06 PM
Eco-zealous feds target Gibson guitars, antique piano sellers; Updated: Gibson explains
Michelle Malkin ^ | 8/25/11 | Michelle Malkin




The real endangered species?

I’ve seen a lot of enviro-nitwittery over the years, but this takes the cake.

US Fish and Wildlife officials have raided the famous Gibson Guitars. And the instrument-maker isn’t alone. Antique piano dealers are also in the crosshairs. Why? Because rare, beautiful instruments made of ecologically incorrect materials must be sacrificed at the green altar. Talk about hitting a sour note.

Eric Felten at the WSJ reports:

Federal agents swooped in on Gibson Guitar Wednesday, raiding factories and offices in Memphis and Nashville, seizing several pallets of wood, electronic files and guitars. The Feds are keeping mum, but in a statement yesterday Gibson’s chairman and CEO, Henry Juszkiewicz, defended his company’s manufacturing policies, accusing the Justice Department of bullying the company. “The wood the government seized Wednesday is from a Forest Stewardship Council certified supplier,” he said, suggesting the Feds are using the aggressive enforcement of overly broad laws to make the company cry uncle.

It isn’t the first time that agents of the Fish and Wildlife Service have come knocking at the storied maker of such iconic instruments as the Les Paul electric guitar, the J-160E acoustic-electric John Lennon played, and essential jazz-boxes such as Charlie Christian’s ES-150. In 2009 the Feds seized several guitars and pallets of wood from a Gibson factory, and both sides have been wrangling over the goods in a case with the delightful name “United States of America v. Ebony Wood in Various Forms.”


(Excerpt) Read more at michellemalkin.com ...



________________________ ________________________ ________




lol.. obamas name dosent appear anywhere in the article

why the picture.. hahaha fail again
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 26, 2011, 01:01:32 PM
Texas AG Sues EPA over Obama’s War on Energy
Townhall.com ^ | August 26, 2011 | John Ransom





In an attempt to push back the government overreach that has been killing jobs in the country since Obama’s red-tape machine arrived in DC, Texas has decided to sue the EPA over rules that threaten to shut down coal fired plants.  

Texas, under Governor Rick Perry and Attorney General Greg Abbott, has been at the forefront of the 10th Amendment movement seeking to reign in the federal government’s repeated attempts to micromanage, manhandle and mismanage almost every aspect of the citizens’ personal and professional lives.     


“The Texas Attorney General’s office ‘will pursue every available legal remedy’ to prevent the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from implementing the new Cross-State Air Pollution rule in the state, office spokeswoman Lauren Bean said,” according to the Fort Worth Star Telegram.

The new rules are designed as a regulatory end run around the states and Congress in order to implement policies that neither the states nor the Congress will approve. Even with a substantial liberal majority in Congress in 2010, Blue Dog Democrats and red-blooded Republicans managed to beat back attempts to impose similar policies under so-called cap-and-trade legislation.

But Obama rarely cares much for the approval of Congress. Once Congress stopped acting as a ways and means committee for him, the president started pursuing a policy of enacting legislation- or scuttling it- by regulatory action, nuisance lawsuits and prosecutorial discretion.

The EPA has re-written rules regarding emissions under the guise of health risks posed by fossil fuels. Power plants have gone from the regulatory requirement of using the “best available” emissions technology to being required to install the “most advanced” emissions technology.

Consequently many older coal fired plants will likely be shuttered because they won’t be able to afford the most advanced emissions technology. And for those power plants that already meet emissions standards, the EPA is using vague air quality rules to shut down the more advanced coal fired plants.     

Last month the Texas AG’s office announced that it would be suing the EPA over permitting rules rejected by the EPA that will prevent the construction of large industrial plants. The announcement was accompanied by blistering criticism of the EPA by Governor Rick Perry, who has since entered the presidential race.   

"The EPA’s overreach is as potentially devastating as it is unnecessary,” said Governor Rick Perry last month as reported by the Texas Tribune. “Texas has achieved greater improvements in air quality than the nation as a whole since 2000 through our use of incentives and innovation."


The Tribune also reported that Perry said that new standards by the EPA would also "likely result in significantly higher prices for energy and just about everything else, a frightening prospect during a time so many Americans are struggling to make ends meet."

The Texas Railroad Commission, which is responsible for coal mining operations in Texas, urged the attorney general to take action against the EPA.  They say that the EPA is targeting Texas and the implication is that the targeting is political.

“This rule is just another attempt by overzealous Obama appointees to stifle economic growth in Texas,” Commissioner Barry Smitherman said. “The EPA effectively shut Texas out of negotiations on this rule, and demonstrated that they have no interest in scientific evidence or facts. If this ill-considered rule is allowed to stand, it will damage the reliability of our electric grid, and thereby harm the citizens the EPA claims to be protecting.”

Texas has huge reserves of lignite coal, a softer, more moisture-rich coal, which puts out significantly less energy than anthracite or bituminous coal. Still, 40 percent of the coal used in Texas for electricity generation comes from Texas lignite, says the Railroad Commission.

Earlier this week, according to the Star Telegram, the commission sent a letter to the attorney general’s office urging the AG to sue the EPA over the rules.     

In addition to killing jobs in Texas, the new rules make it more likely that power brownouts and blackouts will happen during the hot summer months, according to the letter sent to the AG.     


“Yet again, another EPA rule targets Texas by putting jobs and energy reliability directly in the crosshairs because of radical environmental policies driven by unelected federal bureaucrats,” Railroad Commission Chairman Elizabeth Ames Jones said. “As the country's fifth largest coal producing state and the top job creating state, Americans rely on Texas energy and Texas jobs to fuel our economic recovery."

She added: "Don't mess with Texas.”

And now that Perry’s in, git used to hearin’ it.
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 26, 2011, 01:12:27 PM
Dem:Obama's Promise Stimulus Would Lower Unemployment "Stupidest Thing" Any Admin Has Ever Said
MRCTV (Media Research Center TV) ^ | 8/26/2011 | Joe S.



Posted on Friday, August 26, 2011 3:01:32 PM by blog.Eyeblast.tv

On August 24,2011, Rep. John Yarmuth (D-Kentucky) appeared on WFPL news and lambasted the Obama Administration over the stimulus package saying the promise it would lower the unemployment rate was probably the "stupidest thing" that any administration has ever said.

Yarmuth said:

“I think if you asked them now they will say that was the stupidest thing that basically any administration probably ever said because that’s not something they can necessarily control."


(Excerpt) Read more at mrctv.org ...

Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 26, 2011, 01:25:51 PM
Dave Jamieson
dave.jamieson@huffingtonpost.com
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/26/nlrb-rule-posters-workplace_n_937907.html



Rule Requiring Posters In Workplace Infuriates Business Groups
 
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is not happy about the labor board's new 'poster rule.'
First Posted: 8/26/11 12:07 PM ET Updated: 8/26/11 02:33 PM ET

WASHINGTON -- The federal labor board announced Thursday that it has finalized a rule requiring employers to post notices in the workplace informing workers of their rights under the National Labor Relations Act. The poster will be a modest 11 by 17 inches, similar to the Department of Labor notices already posted in workplaces across the country, and it will be provided free by the federal government.

Business groups and their allies are furious. They say that the rule is too onerous, and that it benefits labor unions.

The National Federation of Independent Business, a powerful small-business trade group known to support Republicans, quickly pounced on the "punitive new rule" as another assault by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on independent employers.

"Just when we thought we had seen it all from the NLRB, it has reached a new low in its zeal to punish small-business owners," Karen Harned, executive director of NFIB’s Small Business Legal Center, said in a statement.

The National Labor Relations Act is a 76-year-old law that outlines workers' rights to unionize and bargain collectively in most private-sector workplaces. The fact that the board would want Americans aware of these rights is apparently seen by some as catering to labor unions.

Randel K. Johnson, senior vice president for labor policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, told The New York Times that he questioned whether the NLRB even had the authority to mandate the postings.

"This is one more initiative among those we expect to be coming out over the next month that are essentially gifts to organized labor," he said.

The conservative-leaning Boston Herald penned an editorial Friday decrying the labor board as "out of control."

"House Republicans seem intent on trying to rein in the NLRB. This just gives them more ammunition," the board wrote.

Peter Schaumber, a former NLRB chairman appointed by George W. Bush, told Bloomberg that the new rule is "arbitrary" and "capricious."

"It shows just how activist they’re prepared to be," he said.

The poster hubbub may be just another sign that the NLRB can't do much of anything these days without infuriating the business community. A high-profile complaint filed by its general counsel against the Boeing Company earlier this year has rallied Republicans and business trade groups against the NLRB as well as the White House. New rules proposed by the board that would streamline the union election process have also angered the right. Some Republican leaders have gone so far as to threaten defunding the labor board.

As for the new posters, NLRB officials don't see the requirement as all that burdensome -- and in fact, they believe the posters are long overdue.

"We've been one of the few agencies that enforce workplace laws that haven’t had some kind of posting up," agency spokeswoman Nancy Cleeland notes.

The new poster requirements will go into effect Nov. 14.

Companies will be able to download the poster off the web or stop into any NLRB regional office to pick up free copies. Cleeland said the board tried to be as accommodating as possible, tweaking the rules after a public-comment period so that employers could use black-and-white posters if they don't have color printers. And if the companies don't carry 11 by 17 inch paper, the board carved out a solution.

"They can take two different 8-by-11 pieces of paper and tape them together," Cleeland said



________________________ ________ 

And like lemmings and dupes, the 95ers and obamabots keep marching off the cliff. 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 26, 2011, 01:49:56 PM
An Amazing Indictment of Obamanomics: Banks That Don’t Want Deposits
Cato Institute ^ | August 26, 2011 | Daniel Mitchell




An Amazing Indictment of Obamanomics: Banks That Don’t Want Deposits

Posted by Daniel J. Mitchell

I’ve commented on the failure of Obamanomics, with special focus on how both banks and corporations are sitting on money because the investment climate is so grim. Not exactly flattering to the White House.

Using Minneapolis Federal Reserve data, I’ve compared the current recovery with the expansion of the early 1980s. Once again, not good news for the Obama administration.

And I’ve shared a couple of cartoons — here and here — that use humor to show the impact of bad public policy.

But here’s a Bloomberg story that provides what may be the most damning evidence that the President’s big government agenda is a failure:

U.S. regulators have asked some banks to take more deposits from large investors even if it’s unprofitable, and lenders in return are seeking relief on insurance premiums and leverage ratios, according to six people with knowledge of the talks.

Deposits are flooding into the biggest U.S. banks as customers seek shelter from Europe’s debt crisis and falling stock prices. That forces lenders to raise capital for a growing balance sheet and saddles them with the higher deposit insurance payments. With short-term interest rates so low, it’s hard for financial firms to reinvest the new money profitably.

…At least one firm, Bank of New York Mellon Corp., tried to recoup some of the costs by charging depositors 13 basis points, or 0.13 percent, for holding unusually high balances.

Let’s think about what this article is really saying. Banks normally make money by attracting deposits and then lending that money to people and businesses that have productive uses for the funds.

Yet the economy is so weak that banks are leery of taking more money. The story is complicated by other factors, including capital flight from Europe, taxes (or premiums) imposed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and various regulatory issues. But even with these caveats, it’s still remarkable that banks want to turn down money — or charge people for making deposits. That’s sort of like McDonald’s turning away customers because the firm loses money by selling Big Macs and french fries. Or, better yet, like McDonald’s turning away free goods from suppliers because not enough people want to buy the final product.

Daniel J. Mitchell • August 26, 2011 @ 1:09 pm Filed under: Finance, Banking & Monetary Policy; General; Government and Politics; Tax and Budget Policy Tags: big government, government intervention, Governmnet Spending, obama, obamanomics, taxation

Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 26, 2011, 03:23:06 PM
Demonizing Big Business is Not Going to Bring Back Jobs
Townhall.com ^ | August 26, 2011 | Donald Lambro




WASHINGTON -- When a heckler at the Iowa State Fair told Mitt Romney that raising taxes on corporations was one way to solve America's fiscal and economic problems, the former governor shot back that "Corporations are people, my friend."

The heckler and his friends groaned in disbelief. They believed, as they had no doubt been taught in school, that corporations were part of the nation's evil power structure, beholden to no one, made up of faceless, amorphous rich executives who made big money at the expense of ordinary people.

Romney, whose career as a venture capital investor has helped build up companies such as Staples, with 80,000 employees now on its payroll, knows that the people who make corporations succeed are the millions of Americans up and down the chain of production and management. Big corporations are successful because of productive and innovative employees.

Romney returned to this heckler's question at a town hall meeting in Claremont, N.H., Wednesday, to further elaborate on his answer, which had been boiled down to a sound bite on the TV nightly news shows.

"Corporations -- they're made up of people. They're just groups of people that come together for work. When you say 'tax corporations' -- the steel and the vinyl and the concrete, these things don't pay taxes. Only people do ...

"I know there are people that don't like business. I like business."

So do the tens of millions of Americans who work for businesses large and small to pay the mortgage, put food on the table, give to charities and churches, educate their kids, and of course pay their taxes.

Romney is correct when he says corporations do not pay federal income taxes because they add their taxes to the prices of their products or services. Customers pay that tax.

President Reagan was so fond of reminding Americans of this economic fact of life that he suggested we should end the corporate tax -- taxing only individual incomes and thus make U.S. businesses more competitive at home and abroad.

But what really rankled Romney was the implicit suggestion by his questioner at the Iowa fair that somehow corporations were no longer contributing their fair share to the country's economic and fiscal well-being.

Consider a few fundamental statistics on businesses large and small:

-- U.S. multinational corporations employed more than 21 million Americans here at home in 2009.

-- Nearly 48 million Americans work for businesses with 500 or more employees.

-- Fifty-two percent of all American workers are employed in businesses with fewer than 500 people, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration.

Big corporations employ millions of Americans, but the majority of Americans work for small businesses. The goal of a prosperous and thriving economy is to build an economic climate, and tax policy, that encourages growth, business expansion and more jobs.

With a national unemployment rate that is stuck at more than 9 percent and into double-digits in a number of states, and a weak growth rate hovering around 1 percent, it's clear that President Obama's policies of the past three years have been an utter failure. Only 58.1 percent of our population is working. That's the lowest percentage since the early 1980s.

The way out of this recession is not to raise taxes on corporations and other businesses, but to reform our tax code to stimulate growth.

We have a corporate tax structure today that sets the top rate at 35 percent -- the second-highest corporate tax rate in the industrial world. It's triple Ireland's tax rate, and 10 points higher than in Austria, China or Denmark. Only Japan's is higher at 39.5 percent, though it plans to lower its rate this year.

It is no secret that few corporations pay the top rate because of a maze of tax breaks, loopholes and other ways to write off various expenses, losses and even offset foreign tax bills. They have been written into the tax code by Congress over many decades. But now the tax system is in need of a thorough cleansing to eliminate many of these tax breaks and significantly broaden the tax revenue base, while at the same time lowering the overall tax rates.

President Obama's bipartisan deficit commission proposed doing just this in a plan last December that would effectively bring in more revenue by plugging or shrinking tax loopholes, while lowering the top tax rates to 28 percent or less.

Unfortunately, Obama did not embrace his own commission's recommendations, preferring to demagogue against "millionaires and billionaires" and big corporations whom he claims are not paying their "fair share."

That may appeal to Obama's narrowing base of anti-business supporters and lead to heckling Republican presidential candidates, but it doesn't offer any pro-growth, pro-employment solutions to get the battered U.S. economy back on track.


Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 26, 2011, 04:49:28 PM
ExxonMobil Sues Obama Administration for Canceling Deepwater Well Worth ‘Billions of Barrels
Cybercast News Service ^ | 8/26/11 | Matt Cover




ExxonMobil, the world’s largest energy company, filed a lawsuit against the federal government for canceling an oil-drilling lease in the Gulf of Mexico that held “billions of barrels of oil,” according to the company. In the suit, filed Aug. 12 in federal court in Louisiana against Interior Department Secretary Ken Salazar and related parties, Exxon alleges that the Interior Department made an “arbitrary, capricious” decision in canceling the deepwater leases, arguing that the government’s action “deprives ExxonMobil of property without due process of law.” ExxonMobil lawsuit


(Excerpt) Read more at cnsnews.com ...

Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: tonymctones on August 27, 2011, 10:07:12 AM
I gotta admit, any lawsuit by Exxon-Mobile is pretty much bullshit.

This is a company that is making record profits and has huge tax exemptions... They need to shut the hell up.
what does their profit have to do with them being wronged?

they should not seek retribution for wrong doing b/c they make alot of money?
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 27, 2011, 10:18:12 AM
I have no problem exxon making profits.  They produce and deliver a product I need and use.   They make less per gallon than the govt charges in taxes. 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 27, 2011, 04:43:40 PM
When will the Obama administration sell GM?

By Editorial, Saturday, August 27, 4:23 PM

THIS IS an editorial page, not a stock tip sheet. Still, maybe the Obama administration should have paid attention when we urged it to start selling off the Treasury Department’s stake in General Motors. That was on April 25, when GM’s stock sold at about $30 per share. The administration didn’t sell then, and it’s still not selling — with GM down to about $23.

So much for all those reports that Treasury wanted to exit GM by summer’s end, just as it exited its much smaller stake in Chrysler this year amid much fanfare. The government continues to hold 500 million shares, about 26.2 percent of GM; its hesitation has cost the taxpayers $3.5 billion in paper losses since our editorial.

To be sure, market timing is a mug’s game. The goal of sinking $51.3 billion into a restructured GM was not to make a profit for the Treasury; it was to rescue a major part of the U.S. manufacturing base.

In fact, the likeliest outcome all along has been that the government — i.e., the taxpayers — would lose money. History will judge the GM rescue based on the totality of its results, which include not only the dollar cost to taxpayers but also the broader benefits of avoiding an industrial meltdown at the height of the 2009 recession.

However, the administration’s policy creates the appearance of playing politics with its GM stake. Hanging on to the stock, even as it drops, protects President Obama from the hit he will take when the government’s loss changes from hypothetical to real. But a buy-and-hold strategy isn’t without cost to the Treasury — i.e., the taxpayers. Like any other investor who keeps his money tied up in an underperforming asset, the Treasury forfeits the benefits it might reap by cutting its losses and redeploying its funds, perhaps to reduce the deficit. And, of course, it runs the risk that the stock will go down even more.

No one is saying the government should hold a fire sale. But it could announce a plan to sell its shares in GM at regular intervals over the coming months, regardless of price, so as to minimize market distortions. There will be losses. The benefits, though, would include reassuring the business community that this president really does have an exit strategy for federal ownership of industry — and relieving GM of the “Government Motors” stigma, which still hampers its efforts to woo car buyers and prospective executives.

As we said in April, selling GM creates financial risk for taxpayers and political risk for Mr. Obama no matter when the government does it. So Treasury might as well get on with the job. Maybe this time it’ll take our advice.



Www.Washingtonpost.com

Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 28, 2011, 04:27:09 AM
Report: Gibson Competitor is Dem Donor; Uses Same Wood, Experienced No Federal Raids
by John Nolte

Via Andrew Lawton at Landmark Report:

One of Gibson’s leading competitors is C.F. Martin & Company. The C.E.O., Chris Martin IV, is a long-time Democratic supporter, with $35,400 in contributions to Democratic candidates and the DNC over the past couple of elections (though, to be fair, he did donate a whopping $750 to Republican Congressmen in the 90s.) According to C.F. Martin’s catalog, several of their guitars contain “East Indian Rosewood.” In case you were wondering, that is the exact same wood in at least ten of Gibson’s guitars.
If true, it add another piece to an increasingly disturbing puzzle.

You can listen to Gibson CEO (and Republican supporter) Henry E. Juszkiewicz’s interview with Dana Loesch here.

You can listen to the collective music world’s outcry over this seemingly partisan witch hunt being conducted by The Man here.

Cowards all.
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 28, 2011, 04:28:05 AM
http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jjmnolte/2011/08/27/report-gibson-competitor-is-dem-donor-uses-same-wood-experienced-no-federal-raids

Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 28, 2011, 04:30:45 AM
Gibson Guitar CEO: We're Under Attack By Obama Administration
CEO says Obama Justice Dept. Wants Them to Close Their Doors. by  Jim Hoft 08/27/2011
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Henry Juszkiewicz, the CEO of Gibson Guitars, Inc. was on The Dana Loesch Show on Friday. Gibson is under attack by the the Obama Justice Department for accusations that the company broke American Indian laws.

Juszkiewiz said the government suggested that the company's use of unfinished wood from India is illegal, not because of U.S. law, but because of the Justice Department's interpretation of a law in India. The Holder Justice Department raided at least two Gibson manufacturing plants this week forcing hundreds of workers off their jobs. Juszkiewiz says the company lost a million dollars this week.

Finally, Henry Juszkiewicz told Dana, "The Obama Justice Department wants us to just shut our doors and go away." He says he will continue to fight for the Gibson company and its workers.

Juszkiewicz held a press conference yesterday in front of the Gibson headquarters.  The Obama Justice Department confiscated over $500,000 in materials back in 2009. Gibson is going to court on Monday to discuss a previous request for the government to return the property.

More... Gibson Guitar CEO: "We're Being Targeted."

Still More... Tom W. added this:

Gibson is the only guitar company targeted by the Obama DOJ under the Lacey Act. Tennessee is a right-to-work state. Fender, Taylor, Rickenbacker, Danelectro, Carvin, MusicMan, and ESP are in California; Spector is in New York; Martin is in Pennsylvania; Guild, Ovation, and Hamer are in Connecticut; Alvarez is in Missouri; B.C. Rich is in Kentucky; Heritage is in Michigan; Washburn is in Illinois. All are forced-union states.
Peavey is another guitar and electronics company, located in the right-to-work state of Mississippi. Since 2009, Peavey has been the target of multiple lawsuits filed by a competitor, MUSIC Group, which alleges that Peavy products fail to meet federal safety and emissions standards.

Jim Hoft is the proprietor of Gateway Pundit Blog from the heart of America-- St. Louis, Missouri.  He is also a guest-blogger for HUMAN EVENTS.com.

 http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=45796

Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: George Whorewell on August 28, 2011, 05:01:53 AM
Obama Executive Order Creates ‘Office of Diversity and Inclusion’
The Blaze ^ | August 25, 2011 | Buck Sexton




In yet another expansion of government through Executive Order, the Obama administration has created an Office of Diversity and Inclusion to boost minority participation in the federal work force.

Judicial Watch reported on this new government office Wednesday, and stated that the Obama administration’s goal is to:

“Eliminate demographic group imbalances in targeted occupations and improve workforce diversity. To attain this, special initiatives have been created targeting specific groups, including Hispanics, African Americans, American Indians, women and gays and lesbians.”

You can read the entire executive order here, but below is an excerpt that summarizes its mission:

“By this order, I am directing executive departments and agencies to develop and implement a more comprehensive, integrated, and strategic focus on diversity and inclusion as a key component of their human resources strategies.”


(Excerpt) Read more at theblaze.com ...



An office of diversity when the majority of government workers are black. Great plan for job creation.  ::)
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 28, 2011, 05:04:18 AM
An office of diversity when the majority of government workers are black. Great plan for job creation.  ::)

Bama is setting this up so that when layoffs happen eventually, only whites will be forced out.   Blacks will get special treatment in that regard.   
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 28, 2011, 05:39:26 AM
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Image by Getty Images via @daylife

There will be no significant recovery in the United States of America while Barack Obama is President.  The evidence is overwhelming:  everything Obama has tried to fuel a recovery (with his Democratic allies in Congress) has failed.  Statistics claiming jobs saved by the stimulus package were mostly fiction, and cost American taxpayers about $275,000 each.  Nearly 2-1/2 million fewer Americans have jobs than before the stimulus.

Barack Obama has been President for 30 months—2-1/2 years. He spent the first year obsessed with passing Obamacare, a program that doesn’t create jobs, but might destroy a lot of them.  He “bailed out” GM, but many believe that his interference didn’t save GM; it merely cost taxpayers an extra $15-20 billion, and stole from legitimate investors to buy off the UAW.  His broken campaign promises are too numerous to list.  At some point, his statute of limitations on blaming Bush runs out.  The latest joke is that the White House is that named the location of East Coast earthquake near DC “Bush’s Fault.”


Obama himself said, “…that after three years, if the economy wasn’t fixed he should be a one-term president.”

Clearly the economic malaise started on George W. Bush’s watch.  Its causes will be argued for decades, but most of them are traceable to irresponsible lending and excessive spending— both by government and the American people.  The trouble that started before 2008 is directly traceable to actions (or inactions) of Bush and GOP allies in Congress.  They spent America into the start of the current deficit during his eight years in the White House.

But that was then, and this is now. Since Obama took office the situation has gotten much, much worse. Obama has run up the deficit at more than twice the rate Bush did. During the first quarter of 2011, the US economy “barely grew” —at 0.4%—that was followed by second quarter’s “anemic growth” of 1%.  This was during the period when the Obama recovery was supposed to be well underway.  Employment data is unremittingly terrible:  new jobless claims are stuck at 400,000+/- each month, with job creation well below what it takes just to absorb new workforce entrants.  More Americans have been unemployed longer than ever in our history.  And looking ahead, the news is not good.

This is Obama’s failed American recovery, and in the near future, Obama’s impending double-dip recession (thanks in no small part to his three consecutive years with Trillion-dollar in deficits that have inflated the national deficit to soaring heights—$14+ Trillion.)  That legacy clearly belongs to President Barack Obama and with help from the Congress led by Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi during 2008-2010.   Thanks to them, our country hasn’t even had a budget since Obama took office.

The latest Obama Blame Finger pointing focuses on the “Tea Party” as “extremists” who have a problem with astronomical deficits as far as the eye can see.  (Pointing at Bush is getting a little old since he’s been out of office for 2-1/2 years).  Obama needs a new scapegoat.  The problem with the Tea Party is that it is like the child in the fairy tale, “The Emperors New Clothes.” The child is reviled for pointing out that the emperor is naked.  Thus, the Tea Party is not wrong, just unwelcome.

Now Obama also wants to point the Blame Finger at the GOP House for the downgrade in the US debt rating by Standard and Poor’s.  It seems that he believes that everyone else is to blame but him. That downgrade was predestined by the combination of irresponsible spending and Obama’s clueless attempts to throw money at a recovery to no avail.  Spending $1.50 for every dollar of revenue, running trillion dollar annual deficits is reason enough for a downgrade in the US debt rating.

Face it folks:  This is Obama’s failed recovery. And if (or when) it comes to pass, this “double-dip” recession (just around the corner) is his too.

Make no mistake, there IS plenty of blame to go around.  About 75% of Americans are fed up with both Obama and Congress.   The conservative and liberal factions of the House and Senate behaved badly in the recent debt ceiling negotiation.  President Obama wanted to stay above the fray so he provided no leadership. He didn’t even know how to bring the opposing viewpoints together.  He talked about bi-partisanship and consensus, but his actions disproved his words.

Until the president saw an impending disaster, he sat on the sidelines, afraid to do anything that might hinder his reelection campaign.  Then, when his intervention didn’t help, and arguably hurt the progress, he grew impatient, petulant and angry.

John Boehner, however, did an admirable job trying to build a compromise deal on the debt ceiling, and get his own Caucus to support such a plan.  Except, Obama was attacked by his liberal base for even considering the “grand bargain,” so he came in and dumped another “raise taxes more” demand on Boehner.  I’d have walked out too, which Boehner was right to do.

But at least they were arguing about the right thing: how much to cut spending and how.

The Tea Party’s desire for fiscal responsibility is right, but it doesn’t mean that tax revenue can’t be increased.  It can; how it’s done is what matters.  The tax code desperately needs to be restructured.  Simply digging in on old positions doesn’t help; it hurts.  The goal is to “get the country working again,” and grow our way out of this mess.

The one phrase of President Obama’s that I agree with is “Country First.”  But John Boehner was the one who tried his best to put “Country First.”  If Obama truly chooses that as his 2012 campaign slogan, it will reek of hypocrisy.

If the members of Congress would put 1) country first, 2) constituents wishes next, and 3) personal agendas last, they might be able to work together to find a way out of this mess.

What happens in the Super-Committee of Twelve will be both revealing and predictive.  Either America’s Congressional leaders will—or won’t—put “country first” and try to find common ground and reasonable compromises to lead America out of this mess.

Whatever happens, this failed recovery and impending recession belong to President Barack Obama.  His condescending explanations of why “we Americans” don’t get it, how “this will take a long time,” this recovery, and his “class warfare” about “millionaires and billionaires” versus the “common folk” are all wearing thin.

This kind of rhetoric won’t solve America’s problems.   It takes strong, informed, and experienced leadership to get through a mess like this one. We need a fixer, not a hypocritical speechmaker in the White House.  Barack Obama is not that man.  A wise man once told me, “The person who got you into a problem is seldom the one who will get you out of it.” That’s why there will be no recovery on Obama’s watch, but there could be a double-dip recession.

 

————————-



John Mariotti is an internationally known executive and an award-winning author. His book, The Complexity Crisis was named one of 2008’s Best Business Books.  In his recent novel, The Chinese Conspiracy, he merges an exciting fictional thriller with the factual reality of America’s risk from Cyber-Attacks. (www.thechinesecomspiracy .com) Mariotti does Keynote speeches, serves on corporate boards and is a consultant/advisor to companies.  He can be reached at www.mariotti.net


Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 29, 2011, 08:31:13 AM
HAS ANYONE WONDERED WHY THERE IS A CANCER DRUGS SHORTAGE?
various | 8-29-2011 | various



Locally the news has been covering the shortage of Cancer Drugs. Patients are haveing life saving surgeries and trestments prosponded or delayed due to this shortage. This situation led me to ask WHY? I have found that Doctors are fighting to get drugs for their patients. Nuclear Medicine (lukemia etc) is having shortages of Isotopes due to the destruction of the Nuclear Industry.

Have we missed the complicity of the Obama Admin in this silent genocide. When Gov policies result in a class of people dying it is in fact genocide. Big Pharma held meetings with the Administration and by all accounts received a deal on medications. ........................ ....... Obamacare Creates Windfall for Drug Companies

http://www.foodconsumer.org/newsite/Non-food/Government/obamacare_creates_windfall_for_drug_companies_0404100705.html
 

ObamaCare: A sweetheart deal for the drug companies

http://www.freedomworks.org/blog/mclemente/the-white-houses-deal-with-the-devil
 

Why Pharma Wants ObamaCare http://www.forbes.com/2009/08/19/pharmaceuticals-obamacare-reform-business-healthcare-washington.html

Cancer Drug Shortages Getting Worse, FDA Says Experts note patient safety at risk in some cases

Read More http://www.ivillage.com/cancer-drug-shortages-getting-worse-fda-says/4-a-376132#ixzz1WQZc1Kza

Price-gougers hike costs of vital drugs during shortage 'Gray market' suppliers offer medications at an average 650 percent mark-up, survey shows http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44167386/ns/health-health_care/t/price-gougers-hike-costs-vital-drugs-during-shortage/

ObamaCare’s ‘Sweetheart Deal’ for PhRMA http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/obamacares-sweetheart-deal-for-phrma/

******** If You Thought Obamacare Would Be A Big Subsidy To Pharmaceuticals, Just Watch What's About To Happen In China

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/if-you-though-obamacare-would-be-a-big-subsidy-to-pharmaceuticals-just-watch-whats-about-to-happen-in-china-2010-3#ixzz1WQcasGRi


Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 29, 2011, 09:59:48 AM
Justice Dept. Keeping Islamic Bank Settlement Secret (Holder Alert)
JWR ^ | August 29, 2011 | Steven Emerson



The most transparent administration in history? Why are the details about a tax fraud settlement case with an Islamic bank tied to terrorist groups being hidden from the public?


The Justice Department has agreed to end its investigation into an international financial network with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and a Saudi prince in a settlement in excess of $30 million, sources tell the Investigative Project on Terrorism.

But DOJ officials refuse to release a copy of the settlement or make any comment on it.

"Unfortunately, we're unable to provide anything in connection with this matter," DOJ spokesman Charles Miller wrote in response to a query Aug. 16. He did not contest the existence of the settlement with the Islamic Investment Company of the Gulf (IICG). Repeated attempts to obtain the settlement, or at least a clear explanation of why it cannot be released when most government settlements are a part of the public record, have been unsuccessful.

"We will have no further comment," Miller said.


Reports of a grand jury investigation into an IICG domestic affiliate called Overland Capital surfaced early in 2007. Though the grand jury was convened in Boston in September 2006, a terror-financing prosecutor from DOJ was leading the tax evasion probe into the bank, the Wall Street Journal reported. Overland Capital allegedly was controlled by the Dar al-Maal al-Islami Trust (DMI), an Islamic financial institution founded by Saudi Prince Mohamed al-Faisal and which had at least two influential Muslim Brotherhood figures on its board, the Journal reported.


(Excerpt) Read more at jewishworldreview.com ...
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 30, 2011, 09:37:05 AM
Ten Job-Destroying Regulations (The Obama Administration's Greatest Hits)
National Review ^ | 08/30/2011 | Andrew Stiles




When Congress returns from recess next week, the political conversation is going to be all about jobs. As President Obama prepares to outline his “very specific” jobs proposal in a speech, House Republicans are readying a plan of their own. A key element to the GOP jobs agenda will be identifying and eliminating federal regulations that are needlessly burdening business owners and in many cases preventing them from hiring new employees. To that end, House committee chairmen have put together a list of “the 10 most harmful job-destroying regulations,” and plan to take action over the coming weeks and months to repeal or forestall these restrictive measures.

The following ten federal regulations — some of them pending, some of them already in effect — are, according to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R., Va.), “reflective of the types of costly bureaucratic handcuffs that Washington has forced upon business people who want to create jobs.”


NLRB’s Boeing Complaint
In April, the National Labor Relations Board’s general counsel issued a complaint against the Boeing company challenging the airline manufacturer’s decision to open a new plant in South Carolina, a right-to-work state. The general counsel claims the move was an unlawful “retaliation” against the unionized workforce at Boeing’s existing plant in Washington State. Despite the fact that no union workers have lost their jobs as a result of the decision, the NLRB is seeking a “restoration order” against Boeing that would force a return to the status quo ante, giving unions the ability to bargain for a new plant in Washington. Meanwhile, Boeing has already invested some $2 billion in the South Carolina plant and created more than 2,000 jobs, all of which has been put at risk by the NLRB’s actions. Because Boeing will now have to spend millions defending itself in court, the ruling is likely to deter future investment and job creation across the country. Freshman Rep. Tim Scott (R., S.C.) has sponsored the Protecting Jobs from Government Interference Act, which would stop the complaint from proceeding. The House plans to vote on the bill shortly after they return in September.


MACT and CSAPR Utility Standards
The Obama administration has proposed new maximum-achievable-control-technology (MACT) standards and a cross-state air-pollution rule (CSAPR) for utility plants that will have a direct impact on utilities prices across the country. The new rules will affect more that 1,000 fossil-fuel-fired power plants, a number of which will likely be forced to shut down. As a result, Americans in many parts of the country could find themselves paying anywhere from 12 to 24 percent more for electricity. The House will vote next month on the Transparency in Regulatory Analysis of Impacts on the Nation (TRAIN) Act, sponsored by Rep. John Sullivan (R., Okla.), which would mandate a cumulative economic analysis for regulations proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and delay implementation of the new utility standards until the full impact of the administration’s regulatory agenda can be sufficiently analyzed.


Boiler MACT Rules
The EPA’s new “boiler MACT” rules would impose stricter emissions standards for some 200,000 commercial, institutional, and industrial boilers nationwide, and stand to dramatically impact the thousands of American businesses — from hospitals to factories to universities — that use them. EPA officials estimated the cost of the new rules at about $10 billion, though others predict the true cost will be almost double that figure. The U.S. Small Business Administration warned that the rules would cause “significant new regulatory costs” for businesses, institutions, and municipalities across the country, with the American forest and paper industry alone expected to see an additional burden of at least $5–7 billion in new capital and compliance costs. A U.S. Commerce Department analysis predicted job losses of up to 60,000 as a result of the stricter requirements — much greater than the EPA had initially claimed — while some estimates put the job loss figure at closer to 200,000. The EPA Regulatory Relief Act, sponsored by Rep. Morgan Griffith (R., Va.), would impose a stay on four related EPA regulations issued earlier this year and give the agency more time to issue new, less onerous rules. The House will vote on the bill in early October.


Cement MACT Requirements
The EPA’s “cement MACT” requirement and two related rules would set stringent new emissions standards affecting nearly 100 cement plants across the country, many of which would be cost-prohibitive or, in some cases, effectively impossible to meet. The resulting higher costs would almost certainly lead to layoffs and offshored jobs in an industry that is (literally) the foundation for nearly all domestic infrastructure projects. In fact, it’s already happening. Residents of Raglan, Ala., recently saw construction on a $350 million cement production facility suspended, putting 1,500 jobs on hold and the forthcoming additional jobs at the plant itself at risk. The House plans to vote in October on the Cement Sector Regulatory Relief Act, also sponsored by Represenative Sullivan, which would stay the imposition of these rules and give the EPA sufficient time to make revisions.


‘Coal Ash’ Regulations
The EPA has, for the first time ever, proposed national restrictions on coal ash, a byproduct of coal-burning power plants. Utility and power producers predict the cost of these rules will exceed $100 billion and force them to retire about one-fifth of the nation’s coal capacity, which could mean the loss of well over 100,000 jobs. The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, which conducts policy research for lawmakers, says that the new restrictions are likely to force many coal plants to shut down between now and 2017. Rep. David McKinley (R., W.Va.) has sponsored legislation that would create a minimum standard for coal ash and would allow states to impose further regulations of their own as they see fit. The House plans to take up McKinley’s bill in late October.


Grandfathered Health Plans
In theory, Obamacare exempts certain “grandfathered” insurance policies from some, but not all, of its regulatory mandates. In practice, the new restrictions will, by the administration’s own estimates, result in the loss of 49 to 80 percent of small-employer plans, 34 to 64 percent of large-employer plans, and 40 to 67 percent of individual plans, driving millions of Americans into government-subsidized coverage through the soon-to-be-created health-care “exchanges.” Employers who are unable to retain their grandfathered status will be subject to steep penalties and increasing costs, which will discourage new hiring. The Energy and Commerce, Ways and Means, and Education and Workforce committees are currently drafting legislation to roll back these restrictions, to be voted on later this year.


EPA Ozone Rule
His cap-and-trade legislation having failed to win the support of Congress, President Obama has sought to push ahead with his environmental agenda through the EPA and the creation of strict new ozone-pollution standards. Many Republicans view this as the single most harmful regulation proposed by the administration and estimate that the total cost of implementation will be at least $1 trillion over a decade and millions of jobs. The EPA is expected to propose a readjustment of the regulatory standard for ozone from its current level of 0.075 parts per million (ppm) down to somewhere in the range of 0.060 to 0.070 ppm. Despite the fact that the normal EPA procedure doesn’t call for a review of ozone standards until 2013, the agency is expected to introduce the new rule early this fall, at which point the House Energy and Commerce Committee will take swift action to forestall its implementation.


EPA Farm-Dust Regulations
The EPA is expected to issue revised standards for “coarse particulate matter” (i.e., dust) in the near future. While the agency’s scientific panel said that the science of measuring dust particles remains uncertain, it then concluded that it would be justified in either retaining the current regulatory standards or tightening them by half. Concerns over stricter rules abound in the agricultural community, as evidenced by the farmer in Atkinson, Ill., who raised the issue at one of President Obama’s town-hall events earlier this month. Farmers are well aware of the health risks associated with high levels of dust, but contend that mere “common sense,” as opposed to burdensome regulations, is sufficient to combat these risks. Stricter rules, for example, could force farmers to resort to unreasonable and expensive dust-control measures such as constantly watering down gravel and dirt roads. The House will vote later this year on the Farm Dust Regulation Prevention Act, sponsored by Rep. Kristi Noem (R., S.D.). The bill would establish a one-year prohibition against revising any national ambient-air-quality standard applicable to coarse particulate matter and limiting federal regulation of dust where it is already regulated under state and local laws.


EPA Greenhouse-Gas Requirements
As part of the Obama administration’s wildly ambitious goal to reduce America’s greenhouse-gas emissions by 28 percent by 2020, the EPA is expected to revise its greenhouse-gas new source performance standards (NSPS), which impact all new and existing oil, natural-gas, and coal-fired power plants, as well as oil refineries, across the nation. Furthermore, the EPA and the Department of Transportation have jointly conceived new regulations that would — for the first time ever — require stricter emissions and mileage standards for medium- and heavy-duty trucks. These new standards would affect everything from delivery vans to full-size pickups and buses. According to an analysis by Sen. John Barrasso (R., Wy.), the new rules would cost consumers an additional $1,000 per vehicle, at a total cost of more than $8 billion. As with the aforementioned ozone restrictions, chairman Fred Upton (R., Mich.) and the Energy and Commerce Committee are expected to take preventative action as soon as the new regulations are introduced.


NLRB ‘Ambush’ Elections Rule
Just as Obama has sought to impose his environmental agenda through the EPA, so he has attempted to appease Big Labor through executive fiat following the defeat in Congress of “card check” legislation. This summer, the NLRB proposed a series of new rules that would dramatically alter union-election procedures — for example, by allowing for “ambush” elections that would give employers as little as ten days to present their case to employees. If enacted, these new rules would result in increased labor costs and uncertainty for private-sector employers across the country. The House plans to consider legislation soon that would roll them back.

— Andrew Stiles is the Franklin Center’s 2011 Thomas L. Rhodes Journalism Fellow.

Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 30, 2011, 10:27:06 AM
Obama: 7 proposed regs would exceed $1 billion
By Associated Press


http://www.salon.com/wires/politics/08/30/D9PEGGGG0_us_obama_regulations/index.html





President Barack Obama says his administration is considering seven regulations that would cost the U.S. economy more than $1 billion a year. In a letter to House Speaker John Boehner, Obama says his administration is also trying to reduce the burden of government rules.

In the letter dated Tuesday, Obama lists four proposed Environmental Protection Agency rules and three Department of Transportation rules estimated to cost in excess of $1 billion. One proposed EPA regulation on air quality standards is estimated to cost the economy between $19 billion and $90 billion.

Obama said the proposals are not final and that his administration will "give careful consideration" to cost-savings. He said his administration has made changes that have saved more
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 30, 2011, 01:58:36 PM
Ten Job-Destroying Regulations (The Obama Administration's Greatest Hits)
National Review ^ | 08/30/2011 | Andrew Stiles




When Congress returns from recess next week, the political conversation is going to be all about jobs. As President Obama prepares to outline his “very specific” jobs proposal in a speech, House Republicans are readying a plan of their own. A key element to the GOP jobs agenda will be identifying and eliminating federal regulations that are needlessly burdening business owners and in many cases preventing them from hiring new employees. To that end, House committee chairmen have put together a list of “the 10 most harmful job-destroying regulations,” and plan to take action over the coming weeks and months to repeal or forestall these restrictive measures.

The following ten federal regulations — some of them pending, some of them already in effect — are, according to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R., Va.), “reflective of the types of costly bureaucratic handcuffs that Washington has forced upon business people who want to create jobs.”


NLRB’s Boeing Complaint
In April, the National Labor Relations Board’s general counsel issued a complaint against the Boeing company challenging the airline manufacturer’s decision to open a new plant in South Carolina, a right-to-work state. The general counsel claims the move was an unlawful “retaliation” against the unionized workforce at Boeing’s existing plant in Washington State. Despite the fact that no union workers have lost their jobs as a result of the decision, the NLRB is seeking a “restoration order” against Boeing that would force a return to the status quo ante, giving unions the ability to bargain for a new plant in Washington. Meanwhile, Boeing has already invested some $2 billion in the South Carolina plant and created more than 2,000 jobs, all of which has been put at risk by the NLRB’s actions. Because Boeing will now have to spend millions defending itself in court, the ruling is likely to deter future investment and job creation across the country. Freshman Rep. Tim Scott (R., S.C.) has sponsored the Protecting Jobs from Government Interference Act, which would stop the complaint from proceeding. The House plans to vote on the bill shortly after they return in September.


MACT and CSAPR Utility Standards
The Obama administration has proposed new maximum-achievable-control-technology (MACT) standards and a cross-state air-pollution rule (CSAPR) for utility plants that will have a direct impact on utilities prices across the country. The new rules will affect more that 1,000 fossil-fuel-fired power plants, a number of which will likely be forced to shut down. As a result, Americans in many parts of the country could find themselves paying anywhere from 12 to 24 percent more for electricity. The House will vote next month on the Transparency in Regulatory Analysis of Impacts on the Nation (TRAIN) Act, sponsored by Rep. John Sullivan (R., Okla.), which would mandate a cumulative economic analysis for regulations proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and delay implementation of the new utility standards until the full impact of the administration’s regulatory agenda can be sufficiently analyzed.


Boiler MACT Rules
The EPA’s new “boiler MACT” rules would impose stricter emissions standards for some 200,000 commercial, institutional, and industrial boilers nationwide, and stand to dramatically impact the thousands of American businesses — from hospitals to factories to universities — that use them. EPA officials estimated the cost of the new rules at about $10 billion, though others predict the true cost will be almost double that figure. The U.S. Small Business Administration warned that the rules would cause “significant new regulatory costs” for businesses, institutions, and municipalities across the country, with the American forest and paper industry alone expected to see an additional burden of at least $5–7 billion in new capital and compliance costs. A U.S. Commerce Department analysis predicted job losses of up to 60,000 as a result of the stricter requirements — much greater than the EPA had initially claimed — while some estimates put the job loss figure at closer to 200,000. The EPA Regulatory Relief Act, sponsored by Rep. Morgan Griffith (R., Va.), would impose a stay on four related EPA regulations issued earlier this year and give the agency more time to issue new, less onerous rules. The House will vote on the bill in early October.


Cement MACT Requirements
The EPA’s “cement MACT” requirement and two related rules would set stringent new emissions standards affecting nearly 100 cement plants across the country, many of which would be cost-prohibitive or, in some cases, effectively impossible to meet. The resulting higher costs would almost certainly lead to layoffs and offshored jobs in an industry that is (literally) the foundation for nearly all domestic infrastructure projects. In fact, it’s already happening. Residents of Raglan, Ala., recently saw construction on a $350 million cement production facility suspended, putting 1,500 jobs on hold and the forthcoming additional jobs at the plant itself at risk. The House plans to vote in October on the Cement Sector Regulatory Relief Act, also sponsored by Represenative Sullivan, which would stay the imposition of these rules and give the EPA sufficient time to make revisions.


‘Coal Ash’ Regulations
The EPA has, for the first time ever, proposed national restrictions on coal ash, a byproduct of coal-burning power plants. Utility and power producers predict the cost of these rules will exceed $100 billion and force them to retire about one-fifth of the nation’s coal capacity, which could mean the loss of well over 100,000 jobs. The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, which conducts policy research for lawmakers, says that the new restrictions are likely to force many coal plants to shut down between now and 2017. Rep. David McKinley (R., W.Va.) has sponsored legislation that would create a minimum standard for coal ash and would allow states to impose further regulations of their own as they see fit. The House plans to take up McKinley’s bill in late October.


Grandfathered Health Plans
In theory, Obamacare exempts certain “grandfathered” insurance policies from some, but not all, of its regulatory mandates. In practice, the new restrictions will, by the administration’s own estimates, result in the loss of 49 to 80 percent of small-employer plans, 34 to 64 percent of large-employer plans, and 40 to 67 percent of individual plans, driving millions of Americans into government-subsidized coverage through the soon-to-be-created health-care “exchanges.” Employers who are unable to retain their grandfathered status will be subject to steep penalties and increasing costs, which will discourage new hiring. The Energy and Commerce, Ways and Means, and Education and Workforce committees are currently drafting legislation to roll back these restrictions, to be voted on later this year.


EPA Ozone Rule
His cap-and-trade legislation having failed to win the support of Congress, President Obama has sought to push ahead with his environmental agenda through the EPA and the creation of strict new ozone-pollution standards. Many Republicans view this as the single most harmful regulation proposed by the administration and estimate that the total cost of implementation will be at least $1 trillion over a decade and millions of jobs. The EPA is expected to propose a readjustment of the regulatory standard for ozone from its current level of 0.075 parts per million (ppm) down to somewhere in the range of 0.060 to 0.070 ppm. Despite the fact that the normal EPA procedure doesn’t call for a review of ozone standards until 2013, the agency is expected to introduce the new rule early this fall, at which point the House Energy and Commerce Committee will take swift action to forestall its implementation.


EPA Farm-Dust Regulations
The EPA is expected to issue revised standards for “coarse particulate matter” (i.e., dust) in the near future. While the agency’s scientific panel said that the science of measuring dust particles remains uncertain, it then concluded that it would be justified in either retaining the current regulatory standards or tightening them by half. Concerns over stricter rules abound in the agricultural community, as evidenced by the farmer in Atkinson, Ill., who raised the issue at one of President Obama’s town-hall events earlier this month. Farmers are well aware of the health risks associated with high levels of dust, but contend that mere “common sense,” as opposed to burdensome regulations, is sufficient to combat these risks. Stricter rules, for example, could force farmers to resort to unreasonable and expensive dust-control measures such as constantly watering down gravel and dirt roads. The House will vote later this year on the Farm Dust Regulation Prevention Act, sponsored by Rep. Kristi Noem (R., S.D.). The bill would establish a one-year prohibition against revising any national ambient-air-quality standard applicable to coarse particulate matter and limiting federal regulation of dust where it is already regulated under state and local laws.


EPA Greenhouse-Gas Requirements
As part of the Obama administration’s wildly ambitious goal to reduce America’s greenhouse-gas emissions by 28 percent by 2020, the EPA is expected to revise its greenhouse-gas new source performance standards (NSPS), which impact all new and existing oil, natural-gas, and coal-fired power plants, as well as oil refineries, across the nation. Furthermore, the EPA and the Department of Transportation have jointly conceived new regulations that would — for the first time ever — require stricter emissions and mileage standards for medium- and heavy-duty trucks. These new standards would affect everything from delivery vans to full-size pickups and buses. According to an analysis by Sen. John Barrasso (R., Wy.), the new rules would cost consumers an additional $1,000 per vehicle, at a total cost of more than $8 billion. As with the aforementioned ozone restrictions, chairman Fred Upton (R., Mich.) and the Energy and Commerce Committee are expected to take preventative action as soon as the new regulations are introduced.


NLRB ‘Ambush’ Elections Rule
Just as Obama has sought to impose his environmental agenda through the EPA, so he has attempted to appease Big Labor through executive fiat following the defeat in Congress of “card check” legislation. This summer, the NLRB proposed a series of new rules that would dramatically alter union-election procedures — for example, by allowing for “ambush” elections that would give employers as little as ten days to present their case to employees. If enacted, these new rules would result in increased labor costs and uncertainty for private-sector employers across the country. The House plans to consider legislation soon that would roll them back.

— Andrew Stiles is the Franklin Center’s 2011 Thomas L. Rhodes Journalism Fellow.







BUMP FOR STRAW   
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 30, 2011, 02:12:13 PM
Obama’s HUD Violated ACORN Funding Ban
Big Government ^ | 8/30/11 | Tom Fitton



Time after time, we have found that this administration cares not one whit about following basic laws. What does it mean for Congress to pass and the president to sign a law banning a corrupt organization and its affiliates from receiving federal funds? Apparently the Obama administration could care less. As you will recall, the Obama Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) awarded a grant of $79,819 to ACORN spin-off Affordable Housing Centers of America (AHCOA), despite the fact that Barack Obama signed the ACORN funding ban in October 2009. (And despite the fact that the organization was nailed for misappropriating taxpayer funds!)


(Excerpt) Read more at biggovernment.com ...

Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 31, 2011, 05:33:47 AM
Justice's New War Against Lenders

The Obama administration repeats mistakes of the past by intimidating banks into lending to minority borrowers at below-market rates in the name of combatting discrimination.

By MARY KISSEL

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904199404576538283776006582.html




Talk about not learning from past mistakes: A government department is again intimidating banks into lending to minority borrowers at below-market rates, all in the name of combating "discrimination." Welcome to the next housing mess.

The 1990s may have brought us supercharged politicized lending, but Eric Holder's Department of Justice is taking the game to an entirely new level, and then some. The weapon is a "fair lending" unit created in early 2010, led by special counsel Eric Halperin and overseen by Civil Rights Division head Thomas Perez.

A sampling of Mr. Perez's thinking, from April 2010 congressional testimony: "The foreclosure crisis has touched virtually every community in this country, but it disproportionately touches communities of color, in particular African-Americans and Latinos." And: "[C]ross burnings are the most overt form of discrimination and bigotry. Lending discrimination is some of the most subtle. It's what I call discrimination with a smile."

Even for the Obama administration's antidiscrimination cops, this is a shocker: A political appointee who's supposed to neutrally enforce the law loosely equates bankers with Klu Klux Klan thugs. But let's move from what may be Mr. Perez's personal bias, and focus on the broader brush strokes of the Justice Department—which seem designed to paint bankers into a corner.

Lenders who discriminate on the basis of race and those who make decisions on the basis of credit scores are two entirely different animals. The former our society doesn't permit, for moral reasons; the latter we encourage because it's fundamental to capitalism. A lender will go bust if he can't distinguish between a risky loan and a good loan. Poor people aren't well-served by getting loans they can't afford.

Historically, fair-lending cases have fallen into roughly two categories: "price discrimination" cases, in which lenders are accused of charging minorities higher prices than other clients, and "red-lining" suits, in which they are accused of intentionally failing to serve minority communities. Sounds straightforward for those who seek to obey the law.

View Full Image

AFP/Getty Images
 
Assistant U.S. Attorney General Thomas Perez testifies before a Senate committee on civil rights, March 29.
.But not when Justice revives "disparate impact" theory: the idea that even if lenders don't actively discriminate, they can still be sued if the cumulative effect of their actions implies discrimination. The latter is usually "proved" through statistical analysis (and the old standard—discriminatory intent—is thrown out the window). The Bush administration largely declined to pursue these cases.

And for good reason. Consider two AIG subsidiaries that Justice alleged "failed to supervise or monitor brokers in setting broker fees" between 2003 and 2006, but that Justice didn't pursue aggressively until the Obama administration. The government claimed that, in aggregate, African-Americans were charged more than other ethnic groups. AIG settled in March 2010 while it was under federal ownership, and Mr. Perez gained a big legal stick in price-discrimination cases. Suddenly lenders may be held liable for other people's business practices, even if those business practices aren't individually discriminatory.

Justice is pushing the legal envelope on red-lining, too. In a July 1 letter to Cardinal Financial Corp., Justice contends that after the bank bought George Mason Mortgage in 2004, it "failed to serve predominantly black areas on an equal basis with predominantly white areas" by not opening branches in majority-black areas or engaging in "effective outreach activities." Justice wants the bank to add nine counties to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.-approved geographic area where Cardinal does business.

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 Editorial writer Mary Kissel on Japan's new Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda.
..Never mind that the FDIC in the past gave kudos to Cardinal for its lending practices. Justice is now accusing Cardinal of failing to open branches and achieve racial loan quotas in counties that its federal regulator never before contended should be the focus of its lending. We won't know the full facts of this complaint unless it goes to court. But what Justice is up to sounds like the same government-directed, quota-based lending push that brought us the last housing boom and bust.

Many companies are simply rolling over and paying once they realize the extent of the possible PR horror show. "Banker" is a bad word in today's political environment. Small and midsize banks depend heavily on their reputation and community ties, and they can't afford to be labelled racist. Many can't afford prolonged legal cases either, and the mere prospect of fighting the feds is intimidating. Mr. Perez knows all this.

Justice is employing some unusual tactics, too, including asking banks to sign confidentiality agreements in certain circumstances. Independent Community Bankers of America chief lobbyist Camden Fine complained in a letter to Mr. Holder Monday about this practice and its "troubling lack of transparency," adding that it's hard for banks to "assess and refine" their practices if they don't know Justice's legal arguments.

But Justice is on a roll. In less than two years, the government has settled with AIG ($6.1 million), PrimeLending ($2 million), Midwest BankCentre ($1.5 million) and Citizens Republic Bancorp ($3.5 million), to name a few. More cases are in the hopper, and bigger banks are now in Justice's sights.

All of this may boost the standing of Messrs. Perez and Halperin in the Obama administration. It's less good for the rest of us. These settlements include requirements that banks lend to minorities at below-market rates and, in effect, dish out cash to politically favored "community groups." It's a good bet that many of these loans will eventually go bad.

The Justice Department—or the bank, with the long arm of Justice hanging over it—chooses where that money goes. A Michigan judge even went so far as to call one proposed settlement "extortion." He might be onto something.

Ms. Kissel is a member of the Journal's editorial board.

Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 31, 2011, 02:20:52 PM
Study: Half of Hired Stimulus Workers Were Already Employed
Alana Goodman | @alanagoodman
08.31.2011 - 2:10 PM     


http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/08/31/jobama-jobs-plan-georgia-works




 This is yet another example of why it’s tough to calculate the actual job-stimulating benefits of the stimulus plan. The Recovery Act’s success is typically measured by looking at how many jobs have been created. But there’s also job “shifting,” which happens when a business uses stimulus funds to hire someone who was already employed at another company. And according to a new study from George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, that’s been the case with nearly half of the workers hired under the Recovery Act:

Hiring isn’t the same as net job creation. In our survey, just 42.1 percent of the workers hired at ARRA-receiving organizations after January 31, 2009, were unemployed at the time they were hired (Appendix C). More were hired directly from other organizations (47.3 percent of post-ARRA workers), while a handful came from school (6.5 percent) or from outside the labor force (4.1 percent)(Figure 2). Thus, there was an almost even split between “job creating” and “job switching.” This suggests just how hard it is for Keynesian job creation to work in a modern, expertise-based economy: even in a weak economy, organizations hired the employed about as often as the unemployed.


A substantial portion of the jobless population has been out of work for longer than six months, but this group is also the hardest to help. The problem isn’t necessarily a lack of jobs, but a lack of suitable education or skills. The Obama administration has proposed federally-funded job training programs, but these courses tend to be inadequate. In the eyes of many employers, training isn’t a substitute for a college degree or experience.

The latest proposal – which will likely be included in Obama’s upcoming jobs plan – is to create a program similar to the one in Georgia, which gives people eight weeks of paid, on-the-job training at an actual company:

Obama wants to help those who have been out of work for six months or more, which adds up to about 6 million Americans. Specifically the president is looking at a program such as Georgia Works – which gives unemployed Americans eight weeks of training at a local company while allowing them to still collect their unemployment benefits. And it’s no cost to the participating company.

There have been questions about the effectiveness of Georgia Works that Politico tackled recently. The program has also drawn opposition from unions, which are worried about it being exploited by companies looking for free labor – and they do have a point. When businesses are provided with an endless supply of temporary workers, wouldn’t that actually make them less likely to hire full-time employees? Beyond that, it does sound like a creative way to address the problem, and would least give on-the-job experience to the unemployed, which couldn’t hurt.




Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 31, 2011, 02:56:50 PM
Obama administration poised to become the world’s largest landlord
http://toddkinsey.com/blog/2011/08/31/obama-administration-poised-to-become-the-world%E2%80%99s-largest-landlord/ ^




Over the past three years the Obama administration has been secretly planning the largest redistribution of wealth in history. When President Obama took office, mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac held a staggering $6.1 trillion in subprime mortgages.

If you’ll remember just prior to the 2008 election, President Bush signed the $300 billion Toxic Asset Relief Program better known as TARP. Two of the largest beneficiaries of this were the mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The two companies received a combined $169 billion in taxpayer funds.

Upon taking office, the Obama administration gave instructions to the two paper tigers to begin buying up foreclosed homes. Then in May of 2010 the administration quietly gave Fannie Mae an additional $8.5 billion infusion of taxpayer money so they could continue buying up foreclosures. Again no one in the media put two-and-two together, but I predicted at the time, that the Obama administration was planning to turn these assets into government housing.


(Excerpt) Read more at toddkinsey.com ...
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 31, 2011, 07:15:34 PM
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Editorial: Obama Gives Free Rein To Union Thugs
IBD Editorials ^ | August 31, 2011 | Staff
Posted on August 31, 2011 8:48:33 PM EDT by Kaslin

Workers' Freedom: A departing Obama administration bureaucrat just made the forcible unionization of American workers a lot easier. When it comes to bullying, this president has a double standard.

To do something about kids in school getting shoved around, the White House sends the first lady onto the Ellen Show to bemoan the supposed "culture of bullying" in America.

But when it comes to those kids' hard-working fathers and mothers struggling for a paycheck amid 9.1% unemployment, President Obama is only too happy to see them bullied at the hands of labor thugs.

Wilma Liebman, who has worked as a lawyer for big labor- and union-coddling government agencies unceasingly since 1974, left behind quite a present for her benefactors Sunday as she ended her chairmanship of the National Labor Relations Board. Included in a series of pro-union decisions was the bureaucratic enactment of "Card Check" over the heads of Congress.

Card Check means that if union forces can get most employees within a workplace to sign a card requesting a unionization election, the opposite happens: A secret ballot of workers is actually prohibited, and the union automatically comes into being — even if most workers oppose being unionized.

The need for privacy in workers expressing their wishes on the exercise of their right to organize must itself be protected as a fundamental right. It is, without question, the only way to stop union intimidation and thuggery of millions of Americans.

(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 01, 2011, 07:09:55 AM
Obama's Close Ties To CEOs Whose Firms Dodge Taxes
First Posted: 9/1/11 09:19 AM ET   Updated: 9/1/11 09:32 AM ET

www.huffingtonpost.com




WASHINGTON -- As the nation struggles with a stagnant economy, President Barack Obama has preached overhauling the U.S. tax code to spur economic growth. But as he gears up for what looks to be a tough reelection campaign, the president has surrounded himself with the current loophole-riddled system's prime offenders: corporate executives whose companies have profited off of those loopholes while reaping millions for themselves.

Institute for Policy Studies, a liberal think tank, has named 25 major American corporations whose CEOs were paid more last year than their firm's total U.S. income tax bill in a new report. Of those business elites, 10 have substantive ties to Obama -- including some who have official economic policy advisory positions in his administration -- according to a HuffPost analysis of the report.

All told, these 10 CEOs with Obama connections brought in over $158 million for themselves last year. Their companies' federal tax bill, however, was a combined net benefit of $5.4 billion -- meaning the federal government actually owed these companies billions of dollars. Eight of the 10 firms not only did not pay taxes, they received large refunds. The 10 companies scored combined U.S. profits of $26.8 billion.

HuffPost's calculations are based on data compiled in the report by the IPS. The IPS figures, in turn, are drawn from documents the companies filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Obama has repeatedly spoken of improving the corporate tax code by closing special loopholes for politically connected companies and using that money to lower the official corporate tax rate. President Ronald Reagan embarked on a similar project in 1986, enabling the federal government to increase tax revenues even as it lowered the formal tax rates. Although corporate tax revenue is at postwar lows, Obama's plan is much less ambitious: He doesn't want to actually increase tax revenues at all. The benefits from closing loopholes would exclusively flow straight to other corporations.

But Obama has given several of the executives who benefit most from the current system have been given prominent economic advisory positions. The Obama administration declined do comment for this story.

Of Obama's corporate favorites, General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt and Honeywell CEO David Cote have served in the highest-profile public positions associated with the administration. Immelt has been pilloried with criticism ever since Obama named him head of his Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. GE required massive amounts of government aid when the subprime mortgage bets made by its financial wing, GE Capital, resulted in enormous losses during the financial crisis. While the company is headquartered in the U.S., a majority of its employees are abroad (GE is somewhat unique among major companies for disclosing this figure, a fact Immelt has touted in recent speeches), and it has a robust staff of former U.S. Treasury officials who deploy complicated accounting maneuvers to lower the company's tax bills. Immelt made $15.2 million last year, with GE's $3.3 billion tax benefit accounting for more than half of the 10 companies tax benefit.


Cote has received far less public scrutiny than Immelt, although he may have had greater influence over U.S. economic policy. Obama named Cote to a previous super-committee on economic policy, the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, known as the Simpson-Bowles panel. An Obama nominee, Cote was the second-ranking Republican on the Commission, behind former Sen. Alan Simpson. Once derided by liberals as an obsessively conservative approach to cutting the deficit, the Simpson-Bowles panel's recommendations have increasingly been used by congressional Democrats to fend off more radical proposals from Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and the Republican leadership. Cote scored $15.2 million in pay last year, while Honeywell secured a $471 million tax benefit. Honeywell told HuffPost that it complied with tax laws and that its executive pay standards are guided by executive performance. The company also said it is proud of Cote's government work.

Ford CEO Allan Mulally, Boeing CEO James McNerny Jr. and Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg all served on Obama's Export Council, which the president established in 2010 to help advance his goal of doubling the exports of American products to other countries by 2015. Seidenferd stepped down as Verizon CEO earlier this year, but is currently chairman of the company. Combined, the three executives secured $58.4 million last year, while their companies scored a combined $767 million federal tax benefit.

Ford notes that its tax bill this year is particularly low relative to its profits due in part to a law allowing companies who post hefty losses to qualify for tax breaks in future years. Ford lost $2.7 billion in 2009 and $6.5 billion in 2010. Mullaly was paid $17.9 million and $17.0 million in those years.

Obama has placed other executives on separate economic panels. eBay CEO John Donahoe served on the White House Council for Community Solutions, Qwest Communications CEO Edward Mueller chaired the President's National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee, Dow Chemical CEO Andrew Liveris is co-chair of Obama's Advanced Manufacturing Partnership and Motorola Solutions CEO Greg Brown was on the President's Management Advisory Board. These four CEOs hauled in a combined $57.2 million last year and received a total tax benefit of $714 million. Qwest was recently acquired by CenturyLink, which distanced itself from Mueller's pay, saying it was set by Qwest's board, not CenturyLink's.

Although Dow Chemical scored robust international profits for 2010, it was the only one of the 10 firms tied to Obama to post a loss on its U.S. operations during the year. Liveris recieved $17.7 million in total compensation.

Of the 10 CEOs, International Paper CEO John Faraci has the loosest tie to Obama. The president invited Faraci to travel with him to Brazil for the signing of a preliminary trade agreement, and Faraci spoke favorably of the deal during the trip.

"It's no surprise that the CEOs that IPS chose to look at are earning more than their corporations paid in taxes in 2010 given how many major corporations pay no taxes at all," said Bob McIntyre, Director of Citizens for Tax Justice, a separate think tank that works exclusively on improving U.S. tax policy. McIntyre is currently working on a separate report that he says has found "dozens" of top corporations who have paid no federal income taxes in recent years.

When asked to comment on the discrepancy between CEO pay and federal income tax bills, the companies emphasized that they complied with federal law on their taxes. Others said the report was unfair, because it does not count the other types of taxes companies pay -- state, local and payroll taxes. Several also noted that their tax bills appear larger if you count "deferred taxes" in the calculation. One of the most prominent ways to defer taxes, however, is to stash money in offshore tax havens like Panama that do not tax corporations. So long as that money remains abroad, companies never actually have to pay U.S. taxes on it. The hypothetical future taxes that firms would have to pay if they brought the money back is included in the "deferred tax" number that companies report in annual filings. Deferred taxes, in turn, are typically included in corporate calculations for their "effective tax rate."

The IPS report by contrast only looks at actual money companies expected to pay -- or receive -- from the federal government in income taxes for the year. State, local and payroll taxes do not directly effect the federal budget deficit. The formal federal income tax rate for large corporations is 35 percent.

"This report is just the latest piece of evidence -- you've seen a lot of press reports on some very big companies that show they actually pay very low taxes despite the officially high tax rates," Chuck Marr, Director of Federal Tax Policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, told HuffPost. "Think about the gut-wrenching cuts that are going to be made in education, in innovation and research. Those are just going to be worse if we don't address the corporate sector. So, if we're gonna put scientific research on the table, corporate taxes should be right there with it."

Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 01, 2011, 08:51:40 AM
Louis Woodhill, Contributor
Op/Ed|8/31/2011 @ 3:52PM |1,980 views
Obama A Bad Economic President? Consider It "Proved"


I have a B.S. in mechanical engineering. I am a software entrepreneur who is currently an investor and board member in three startup companies. I am on the Leadership Council of the Club for Growth. I was born in 1948. This chapter of my life is about trying to help people make their dreams come true. I started writing about economics because I hate the way that our dysfunctional economy is crushing the dreams of so many people. Young people are delaying getting married and having children because of unstable jobs and incomes. It doesn't have to be this way, and I want to contribute to solving the problem. I believe that prosperity is possible.

The author is a Forbes contributor. The opinions expressed are those of the writer.

 In a Bloomberg opinion piece published Aug. 25, Jonathan Alter asked for “proof” that Barack Obama has been a bad president, specifically with regard to his handling of the economy.  OK, Jonathan, here’s your proof.

Executives are judged by results.  In terms of the economic results produced during the first 2.5 years of his first term, Obama is the worst president of the past 60 years.  Given that Alter himself would likely agree that there have been some bad presidents during the past 60 years, this makes Obama a bad president.

Ten presidents have been elected since 1952: Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Bush 41, Clinton, Bush 43 and Obama.  Let’s look at how each of them stacked up against the following five important measures of economic performance:

1.The average real GDP growth rate during the first 10 calendar quarters of his first term
2.The percentage point change in the CPI inflation rate between the December prior to his inauguration and July of the third year of his first term
3.The percent change in the “Real Dow” (the Dow Jones Industrial Average divided by the price of gold in dollars per ounce) between the December prior to his inauguration and July of the third year of his first term
4.The percentage point change in the unemployment rate between the December prior to his inauguration and July of the third year of his first term
5.The percent change in total employment (BLS Household Survey) between the December prior to his inauguration and July of the third year of his first term
If we rank the ten presidents listed above in numeric order in each of these categories based upon the results they produced, and then calculate the average of their five individual scores, we get the following overall presidential rankings, from best (1) to worst (10):


1.Clinton
2.Johnson
3.Eisenhower
4.Kennedy
5.Carter
6.Reagan
7.Bush 41
8.Nixon
9.Bush 43
10.Obama

It may be surprising to see Jimmy Carter ranked ahead of Ronald Reagan.  Remember, however, that the comparison is only between the economic results achieved during their first 2.5 years in office.  As it happened, the economy went downhill fast during Carter’s final 1.5 years in office, while the last 18 months of Reagan’s first term was marked by rapid GDP growth and job creation.

Obviously, Alter wants Obama to be reelected.  Because Reagan won 49 states in November, 1984 despite his poor economic record through July, 1983, it is reasonable to believe that Obama could win in 2012 if he produced strong GDP and employment growth between now and the election.  However, it is very unlikely that he will accomplish this.

Obama’s fundamental problem is his flawed mental model of how the economy works.  His recent speeches suggest that he has not yet recognized his conceptual errors.  Rather, all of the indications are that he will attempt to “double down” on the policies that have kept our economy mired in the worst recession/recovery since the Great Depression.

First and foremost, Obama continues to believe that a weak, unstable, manipulated U.S. dollar is good for the economy.  Bush 43 believed the same thing, and waited in vain for a surge in exports to boost the economy, even as the dollar lost 69% of its value against gold.  Obama took up Bush’s vain vigil, and stood idly by while value of the dollar in terms of gold fell by another 53% (for a total of 85% since Jan. 20, 2001).

Obama remains firmly in the grip of the Keynesian Superstition, which is the belief that government deficits boost the economy.  He didn’t seem to notice that his $862 billion in “stimulus” vanished without a trace.  Also, the fact that annualized GDP growth slowed from 2.33% (4Q2010) to 0.36% (1Q2011) at the moment that his second round of “stimulus” (the 2.0 percentage point cut in payroll taxes and yet another extension of unemployment benefits) took effect seems to have made no impression on him.

It is this superstitious belief in Keynesianism that led White House Press Secretary Jay Carney to lecture a reporter from The Wall Street Journal that extending unemployment benefits would boost the economy.  It is also what prompted Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to claim that every dollar spent on food stamps adds $1.84 to GDP.

Obama is a Progressive, and Progressives believe that unelected, unaccountable “experts” (i.e., them) can make better economic decisions than “We the People”, expressing our preferences via free markets.  They also seem to believe that regulation upon regulation can be piled upon the private sector at no cost to jobs or economic growth.


http://www.forbes.com/sites/louiswoodhill/2011/08/31/obama-a-bad-economic-president-consider-it-proved/2

Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 01, 2011, 07:09:07 PM
Obama Jobs Plan: 'Innovative Infrastructure Ideas' And Sector-Specific Relief

Posted: 9/1/11 04:01 PM ET
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WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration has thus far remained coy regarding the content of the president's high-profile jobs speech, with White House Press Secretary Jay Carney going so far as to tell reporters during Thursday's press briefing that he won't "show any more leg on the details."

But buried within the Office of Management and Budget's midsession review of the current economic climate is a nugget that offers a bit more clarity about what to expect when the president addresses a joint session of Congress next Thursday.

"[T]he President will introduce after Labor Day a package of meaningful, new initiatives to promote economic growth and create jobs," the review reads. "These will build on the actions the President has been urging Congress to complete that will strengthen the economy and create jobs, but also include new measures that will accelerate job growth in the short term. These could include a mix of tax cuts to create jobs and provide economic security to the middle class, innovative infrastructure ideas to put people back to work, and some measures specifically targeted at the long-term unemployed and other specific sectors of the economy that are in particular need."

Such a description is still fairly broad in scope. But it does suggest that the president won't simply be falling back on his usual prescriptions for resolving the jobs crisis: free trade deals, an infrastructure bank and patent reform. Rather, it sets the bar a touch higher, pledging innovative approaches to infrastructure policy as well as sector-specific job creation ideas (think: construction).

In his briefing on Thursday, Carney heavily hinted that the president's plan would get the United States below 9 percent unemployment. And in a conference call outlining the review, OMB Director Jacob Lew added additional detail, including that the president will press Congress to pass existing legislation (which could mean anything, from free trade agreements to a long-term extension Federal Aviation Authorization bill).

"The plan will build on the actions the president has been pushing [in] the past," he said. "It will ask Congress to act on some things and propose some new things. There is going to be a mix of tax and infrastructure and other spending items. It is going to, in general, designed to be both effective and something we can work on in a bipartisan basis to get into law. There are going to be a lot of other economic ideas the president has in addition to the growth package, some of which will be foreshadowed next week. But I think, as the president's statements over the past weeks have made clear this is the principle focus of our economic team."

One thing we know for certain is that the president has pledged that whatever he proposes in the speech will be paid for. But that might simply mean that the White House will rack up bills in the short-term while planning to pay for them with specific cuts down the road.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/01/obama-jobs-plan-jobs-speech_n_945529.html




Morer of the same crap from this jerk! 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 02, 2011, 03:27:38 AM
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Morning Bell: Food Regulators Out of Control
The Heritage Foundation ^ | September 1, 2011 | Ericka Andersen
Posted on September 2, 2011 6:20:29 AM EDT by markomalley

First Lady Michelle Obama’s obsession with “childhood obesity” has bothered many since it began two years ago, especially those who think that White House nagging of parents should be reserved for more pressing issues. Now it is getting more serious, with food regulators starting to infringe on the free speech rights of advertisers.

In the latest upset, four federal agencies known as the Interagency Working Group (IWG) have delivered a plan to drastically censor food advertisers with products deemed to be “too high” in sodium, sugar, or fat that cater to any viewing audience between the ages of two and 11. These advertisers would lose key slots during some of America’s most popular shows, like American Idol, America’s Got Talent, and Glee—simply because the nanny state is “uncomfortable” with what they are selling.

The IWG, formed within the 2009 Omnibus Appropriations Act to study childhood obesity and offer possible solutions, has gone far beyond their descriptive reach. Now, perfectly reasonable companies may be penalized severely.

The regulators plan to get away with this by disguising their rules as “voluntary guidelines.” In reality, the guidelines are anything but optional, according to food manufacturers affected by them.

As Heritage’s Diane Katz explains:

The restrictions are voluntary in name only. Food manufacturers can hardly ignore “recommendations” from the very federal agencies that exercise regulatory authority over their every move. It is akin to a cop asking for ID or to search one’s vehicle: While the law treats such citizen cooperation as voluntary, most individuals would not view it as such, nor would the police look kindly on anyone who denies their requests.

It’s not just Twinkies and cookies that will be affected, either. Anything deemed to have a little too much sodium or fat will be tested under the new rules, including foods whose very production requires a high sodium content (like pickles) and those that are naturally high fat (like peanuts).

As Katz wrote, “Nutritional staples such as Cheerios, peanut butter, and yogurt are verboten under the proposed standards, which effectively constitute a government-regulated grocery list.”

The regulations hit traditional favorites where it hurts. In turn, the free market and consumer choice is manipulated to fit a misplaced government agenda that doesn’t solve the problem.

Even if the feds are well-intentioned, their action plan isn’t grounded in reliable research. The whole point of the regulations is to curb the growing epidemic of childhood obesity—but the Institute of Medicine found no link between advertisements and children’s food choices.

According to Katz, children have seen about 50 percent less food advertising in the last six years than before that time—yet obesity rates continue to climb. Former FDA Commissioner Dr. Mark McClellan attributes the obesity problem to “physical inactivity”—not caloric intake. In fact, McClellan noted that children’s calorie intake has remained about the same for the last 20 years.

Not only do regulations hinder the market and censor speech; they hurt the businesses behind the labels. Sara Lee CEO Christopher J. Fraleigh recently spoke on the overextended regulations, which will hurt his business in particular:

A turkey sandwich made with Sara Lee fat-free lean turkey meat, we would not be able to advertise that on venues, be it the Superbowl or anything that would have a significant child audience, because the product is a little bit too high in sodium…. Current regulation of advertising toward children is a perfect example of regulation that just goes way too far.

The Obama Administration’s food regulators think that if you give them an inch, they can take a mile. But when free speech is on the cutting board, they will certainly hear from the people, and the people will not stand for it.
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: dario73 on September 02, 2011, 07:44:09 AM
I saw this report this morning. Unbelievable. So basically, ALL parents are useless. No one can take responsibility for their own actions. The entire USA is full of drones who are controlled and influenced by corporations as to what they should eat and the citizens are impotent to think for themselves. Is this what politicians think of the American people?
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 05, 2011, 05:05:37 PM
Goldberg: Obamacare impacts Americans' access to drugs (Commiecare™ shortages begin)
Star-Telegram ^ | 9/03/11 | Robert Goldberg
Posted on September 5, 2011 6:22:12 PM EDT by Libloather

Goldberg: Obamacare impacts Americans' access to drugs
By Robert Goldberg
Special to the Star-Telegram
Posted Saturday, Sep. 03, 2011

Call it Obamacare's Final Destination Tour. People whose lives should be saved by new and existing cancer drugs are driving from hospital to hospital in search of medicines in short supply -- thanks in part to Obamacare's implementation.

Over the past two years, shortages have developed for more than 180 drugs, including cancer treatments. The shortfall is the result of stricter FDA regulation, government price controls on already discounted but complex drugs, and policies that discourage the use of new medications. Companies, facing lower prices, tighter regulation, and increasing government control over what drugs will be used when are exiting the US market and investing in product development in china and India where, sadly, it is easier and cheaper to produce next-generation medicines than in America.

Stockpiling will only add to people's suffering by replacing market reforms with government micromanagement. Government planners require months, if not years, to produce regulations, bids and supply estimates that are usually overgenerous to compensate for paltry prices. Government bungling was behind the failure of the smallpox and H1N1 vaccine program and responsible for billions of dollars in flu vaccines and antibiotics being dumped.

(Excerpt) Read more at star-telegram.com ...



Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 05, 2011, 05:16:33 PM
Obama’s anti-jobs agenda: Adminitration's slate of yet more regulations is beyond alarming
Washington Times ^ | 09/03/2011 | Wayne Crews
Posted on September 4, 2011 9:12:17 AM EDT by SeekAndFind

Though President Obama is nowhere to be seen on ground-level job-creation efforts apart from the golf course, he did issue an early 2011 executive order to streamline the federal regulatory process by a fraction of a percent in advance of his still-unannounced jobs agenda.

The president will present that jobs agenda to a joint congressional session, but meanwhile, his policies - such as tolerating the National Labor Relations Board’s dictating where a firm can build a plant - actively rip jobs away.

Sadly, the primary job-planning happening now in the private sector is planning to cancel job creation and to de-employ.

Mr. Obama’s slate of yet more regulations is beyond merely alarming in this tense environment. The FederalRegister already stands at more than 54,000 pages so far this year.

Among new incursions are the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Maximum Achievable Control Technology pollutant standards for fossil-fuel utilities, for cement plants and boilers like the ones factories and hospitals use. Other EPA standards await for ozone, for dust kicked up by farming and for power-plant coal ash.

Far from a jobs agenda, Mr. Obama advances an explicit anti-jobs program, one totaling hundreds of billions of dollars in costs and hundreds of thousands in jobs lost and jobs that can never appear. On top of an orgy of rule-making, our government, as deliberate public policy, prohibits access to safe and efficient extraction of fossil fuels on land and offshore.

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 05, 2011, 05:26:00 PM
Government Sues Trucking Company for Taking Keys Away From Alcoholic Driver
Fox News ^ | 9/2/11 | Stephen Clark
Posted on September 3, 2011 11:43:33 AM EDT by Impala64ssa

Citing a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Obama administration is suing a trucking company for taking the keys away from an Arkansas driver and eventually firing him after he admitted he was battling alcohol abuse.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a lawsuit this week arguing that Old Dominion Freight Line discriminated against Charles Grams by stripping him of his position and offering him a demotion even if he completed a substance abuse counseling program.

Instead, the EEOC argued, the North Carolina-based company, which has a service center in Arkansas, should have complied with the law, known as the ADA, while ensuring safety.

“The ADA mandates that persons with disabilities have an equal opportunity to achieve in the workplace,” said Katharine Kores, director of the EEOCs Memphis District Office, which covers Arkansas. “While the EEOC agrees that an employer’s concern regarding safety on our highways is a legitimate issue, an employer can both ensure safety and comply with the ADA.”

The EEOC says alcoholism is a recognized disability under the ADA and that the company violated the law with its policy that bans any driver who admits alcohol abuse from driving again.

The EEOC wants the company to reinstate Grams and another affected driver to their previous positions and provide them with back pay, compensatory and punitive damages and compensation for lost benefits. The EEOC is also seeking to block the company’s alcohol-related policy.

The company's policy bans any driver who self-reports alcohol abuse from driving again. Reassignment to a non-driving position is contingent upon the driver enrolling in a treatment program.

Joel McCarty, general counsel to Old Dominion, wouldn’t comment on the details of the pending litigation. But he told FoxNews.com, “We intend to vigorously defend our position.” snip “Our concern is safety,” he said.

(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...

Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 05, 2011, 05:55:08 PM
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Obama's New Policy to Crush Small Businesses
Townhall.com ^ | September 5, 2011 | Lurita Doan
Posted on September 5, 2011 6:46:10 PM EDT by Kaslin

President Obama and his team of economic advisors are continuing their crusade against entrepreneurs and small companies that are the traditional engine to economic growth.   The latest anti-business Obama policies appear in a just-released Executive Order 13495, a new rule to be enforced by the Department of Labor.  This particular regulation is aimed directly at small business owners and attacks small businesses' most valuable asset--their employees.

Executive Order 13495, which will be both complicated and costly to enforce, represents just another example of  Team Obama’s complete lack of understanding  of the concerns of small business owners.    After 15 years as a small business owner, and as the former Administrator of the U.S. General Services Administration, I've been to the circus a few times and seen all the strings connected the federal government and its indifference to the plight of small business owners. For small businesses, Executive Order 13495 is perhaps the most damaging action yet to come out of the Obama Administration.

First, in our country, a business has the freedom to hire the workers it thinks are best suited to ensure the company's success.  The new Team Obama contracting rule tramples over that basic, capitalist principle by requiring any company which wins a federal contract to hire the employees that the government identifies.

This means that the government has new and expanded powers to direct the hiring, firing and promotion of employees at private companies.

Second, government contracting is challenging and intensely competitive.  Profit margins are wire thin.  Companies need to have the freedom to hire those whom they best believe can provide the best value to the government at the lowest cost.  This new rule will make that kind of entrepreneurial freedom almost impossible as the federal government forces the company into employment and salary negotiations with persons of the government’s choice, with the government participating in the negotiation process.    

Third, this new rule shows that Team Obama has no understanding of the challenges facing small businesses. Small businesses create 3 out of every 4 jobs in the United States.  Small businesses are the source of much of the innovation in the United States. They are more agile because of their size and more willing to take risks. 

A small business' employees are its life's blood.   Successful small business leaders all understand the need to hire, retain and build a dedicated base of employees and provide them with whatever additional training is needed to give the business an edge and ability to compete.   But now, in this new regulation,  Obama seeks to undermine small business owners with a too-heavy, government hand that will give the government broad new powers to poach and strip a successful small business owner of its most valuable employees whenever it wishes. Raiding the employee rolls of small companies robs them of their most important asset.

Lastly, this rule shows a profound disrespect for the employee, and treats them as a kind of indentured servant or slave, chattel to be passed from one company to another without consideration of the employee's desires.

Obama's colossal ignorance of the challenges facing small businesses seems a clear sign that once again, the President just doesn’t get it.  Time and again, new, burdensome regulations are heaped upon small businesses and the nation’s job creators.  And yet, Obama seems simultaneously unaware of the damage he has done and continues to do, even as he issues platitudes and half-baked thoughts about the need to create jobs. 

Unless I miss my guess, Obama’s big Jobs Speech is likely to be "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."  The fact is, the president lacks even a basic understanding of how difficult it is to start a small business and see it grow.  This disturbing anti-business trend is quickly becoming the primary Obama legacy.

Small business owners understand that  creating jobs requires a system that encourages risk-taking because it makes it possible for risk takers to reap rewards. What government should do is provide regulatory relief for many of the arcane and obsolete requirements that hinder job creators.

Unfortunately, this latest executive order tells us that Obama is moving his Administration in the opposite direction and has decided to add to the regulatory thicket by making it hard for entrepreneurs and small business owners to succeed.

Creating jobs is fairly straightforward. Getting the White House to abandon union-generated ideas that stifle innovation, crush competitiveness, and condescend to small businesses—well, that's a lot harder.








Silence from team tampon to be expected. 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 06, 2011, 05:24:43 AM
7 Business Screw-Ups From America's Super CEO-And-Chief Barack Obama
Townhall.com ^ | September 6, 2011 | John Hawkins




I have developed the 7-11 challenge: I will quit making fun of, for example, Dennis Kucinich, if he can prove he can run a 7-11 properly for 8 hours. We'll even let him have an hour or so of preparation before we open up. Within 8 hours, the money will be gone, the store will be empty, and he'll be explaining how three 11-year olds came in and asked for the money and he gave it to them. -- Ann Coulter

One of the biggest problems with many of the politicians in D.C. is that they have come to believe that because they've had a little success in their lives, they're smarter than everyone else and can run people's businesses better than they can do it themselves.

In actuality, even if they were smarter than most other people, which isn't true just because their sycophantic aides tell them it is, experience usually trumps brilliance. In other words, a politician like Barack Obama who has never run a business, is making and breaking companies from Washington with bail-outs, laws, and regulations, despite the fact that he has very little idea of what the real world impact of his actions will be.

Meanwhile, people are wondering why corporations are hunkering down, hoarding cash, and refusing to hire people right now. The biggest reason for it is sitting in the Oval Office. At any moment, Obamacare may have some unknown complication, a government agency may implement some incredibly costly new regulation, the White House may go after them to help a connected Democrat donor, or Obama may impose a new tax in the name of "fairness."


Here are just a few examples that show you how little Barack Obama really knows about business.

General Motors: Democrats hail GM as a wonderful success story that shows how well the government and private industry can work hand-in-hand to save jobs! The cost of that "wonderful success story?" Roughly 13 billion dollars in taxpayer money and a 45 billion tax break. That's supposed to be a victory? Gee, what was it that King Pyrrhus of Epirus once said after a "victory" like that over the Romans? Oh, yes, "Another such victory and I come back to Epirus alone." But no worries, as long as we can keep borrowing more money from the Chinese for your children to pay the bills, Obama's fatcat corporate pals will never have to go it alone.


Solyndra: Those "green jobs" Obama talks about incessantly have really worked out well, haven't they? Just look at Solyndra. It received 535 million dollars of your money via stimulus loans and now? Solyndra just laid off 1100 workers and went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Hmmm, maybe there was a REASON that it had to get that huge loan from the government instead of investors beyond, "Capitalists are big meanies!"

Health Care Follies at AT&T, Verizon, Caterpillar, Deere, Valero Energy, AK Steel, 3M and McDonald's: When Obama tried -- and failed -- to sell health care reform to the public, he was promising everything to everybody. Among the many, many false promises that were made was that the bill would reduce health care costs and that people could keep their current health care if they wanted it. Unfortunately, although not surprisingly, Obama was either lying or had no idea what he was talking about because health care costs are going to explode under the law and numerous companies are considering dropping their coverage when the law comes into force.


On Thursday and Friday AT&T, Verizon, Caterpillar, Deere, Valero Energy, AK Steel and 3M announced publicly that a tax provision in the new health care law will make it far more expensive to provide prescription drug coverage to their retired employees.
McDonald's Corp. has warned federal regulators that it could drop its health insurance plan for nearly 30,000 hourly restaurant workers unless regulators waive a new requirement of the U.S. health overhaul.
Thirty percent of employers will definitely or probably stop offering health benefits to their employees once the main provisions of President Obama's federal health care law go into effect in 2014, a new survey finds. The research published in the McKinsey Quarterly found that the number rises to 50 percent among employers who are highly aware of the health care law.

Is Obama a Machiavellian schemer who's trying to create this result or an incompetent blockhead who has no idea what he's doing? Whichever the case may be, the end result is the same: An unkept promise and people who will be forced off healthcare plans that they were already happy with because of the government.

Johnson Controls, Inc.: Under Obama massive amounts of government money have flowed to well connected or politically correct green industries with little emphasis on results. For example, 300 million dollars of your money was given to Johnson Controls, Inc. as part of a stimulus grant so it could make high-tech batteries. So, how many "jobs, jobs, jobs" were created with all of those tax dollars? Only 150 so far, which comes out to a mere 2 million dollars per job created. Evergreen Solar, Inc.: Not only did Evergreen Solar receive stimulus cash, it received tax dollars from the state of Massachusetts. So how well was your money spent?


Last week, the Massachusetts-based Evergreen Solar filed for bankruptcy, after laying off 800 workers in March. Now, they are slated to dump another 65 workers by closing a plant in Michigan. This, after receiving an undisclosed amount of stimulus cash, in addition to $58 million in state aid.
Gibson Guitars: It was raided -- again -- for the terrible sin of supposedly buying illegally harvested wood from another country. Of course, Gibson has noted that the wood was received from a Forest Stewardship Council certified supplier and one has to wonder if that has more to do with the fact that Gibson's CEO contributes to Republicans while one of its biggest competitors, C.F. Martin & Company, has a CEO who contributes to Democrats. Incidentally, don't worry too much about Gibson Guitars because the DOJ has come up with a solution: They should fire their American workers and hire people in Madagascar to do the same work.


Boeing: Unions dramatically drive up costs, make it more difficult to fire political workers, are more likely to strike and have been responsible for decimating whole industries in the United States. Naturally, no company ever WANTS to work with a union if it doesn't have to do it. Unfortunately for Boeing, unions are too important to Barack Obama's re-election campaign; so he's stacked the National Labor Relations Board with union puppets who, for the first time in the history of the United States, refused to allow Boeing to open a plant in South Carolina because the plant would use non-union labor.

Deep into the recent recession, Boeing decided to invest more than $1 billion in a new factory in South Carolina. Surging global demand for our innovative, new 787 Dreamliner exceeded what we could build on one production line and we needed to open another.
...[T]he National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) believes it was a mistake and that our actions were unlawful. It claims we improperly transferred existing work, and that our decision reflected “animus” and constituted “retaliation” against union-represented employees in Washington state. Its remedy: Reverse course, Boeing, and build the assembly line where we tell you to build it.


This is the eternal dilemma of the American businessman: At any point some politician, bureaucratic toady, or left-wing judge may come up with some haywire interpretation of a law or regulation and throw sand in the gears. No amount of preparation can really fix the problem because our regulatory schemes have become such vast Byzantine tangles of red tape that everyone is essentially breaking some law or another during every waking moment of the day.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------




And yet - peiople like Mal, Straw, Andre, Blackass and the others sid in confusion why businesses wont hire. 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 06, 2011, 06:14:22 AM
Zero Jobs 101 — the Psychology of Alienating Employers

Posted By Victor Davis Hanson On September 2, 2011 @ 12:01 pm


There Is No There There

Zero jobs last month — a net change of zero job growth? It was just announced that last month’s unemployment is still above 9% — despite the nearly five trillion dollars in Keynesian pump-priming, the near zero interest rates, the expanded unemployment and food stamp support, and the government takeovers and subsidies of businesses. There is a scary sort of deer-in-the-headlights look about Obama and Biden that is quite disturbing, as if they are thinking, “This was not supposed to happened to us. Geithner, Goolsbee, Orszag, Romer, Summers assured us that all this borrowing would turn things around — but they are all gone or leaving, so now we are alone? What to do? Hmmm. More them/us class warfare rhetoric? Embrace more of the California/Illinois/New York blue-state model? More European Union emulation? A national high-speed rail jobs program? Bring back Van Jones and “millions of green jobs”? Borrow another $5 trillion? Maybe negative interest rates? Seventy-five million on food stamps? Four years of unemployment insurance? A new Department of Jobs? Call in Jimmy Carter for advice about 1979? $100 billion more in green subsidies to progressive caring companies? Take over Ford? Another speech from Buffett? Unleash the Congressional Black Caucus?”

Two Sorts of Depression

Job growth is as often driven by psychological impulses on the part of employers as actual facts on the ground, given the requirement of a business that it must plan for the unknown future better than do its rivals. While business people don’t read every economic report or follow every political psychodrama, they do watch for trends, know hourly the pulse of their businesses, and talk to colleagues and rivals to form general opinions about business climate and government attitudes and future policies. I’ve been speaking a lot lately to civic groups, a few firms, investors, large and small farmers and farm suppliers, and individual employers. And the following would fairly sum up their current state of mind.

The Great Sit-Down Strike

In the last 30 months, the Obama administration has created a psychological landscape that finally just seemed, whether fairly or not, too hostile to most employers to risk new hiring and buying. Each act, in and of itself, was irrelevant. Together they are proving catastrophic and doing the near impossible of turning a brief recovery into another recession.

Here is the lament I heard: the near $5 trillion in borrowing in just three years, the radical growth in the size of the federal government and its regulatory zeal, ObamaCare, the Boeing plant closure threat, the green jobs sweet-heart deals and Van Jones-like “Millions of Green Jobs” nonsense, the vast expansion in food stamps and unemployment pay-outs, the reversal of the Chrysler creditors, politically driven interference in the car industry, the failed efforts to get card check and cap and trade, the moratoria on new drilling in the Gulf, the general antipathy to new fossil fuel exploitation coupled with new finds of vast new reserves, the new financial regulations, an aggressive EPA oblivious to the effects of its advocacy on jobs, the threatened close-down of energy plants, the support for idling thousands of acres of irrigated farmland due to environmental regulations, the constant talk of higher taxes, the needlessly provocative rhetoric of “fat cat”, “millionaires and billionaires,” “corporate jet owners,” etc. juxtaposed, in hypocritical fashion, to Martha’s Vineyard, Costa del Sol, and Vail First Family getaways — all of these isolated strains finally are becoming a harrowing opera to business people.

Despite enormous opportunity for many cash-rich firms to take advantage of the down cycles (low interest, plentiful potential employees, discounted prices, etc.), they are taking a pass, almost as if to collectively sigh, “This bunch doesn’t like me much and I’m going to hunker down, hoard my cash, and sit out the next year and a half until they are gone.” And the administration’s efforts to counteract these symbols and impressions by courting a high-profile, hyper-capitalist Warren Buffett, or a GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt have proven even more ironic: the former calls for higher taxes that his firms seek to avoid, or targets his post-mortem wealth to (more efficient?) private foundations that rob the Treasury of billions in lost inheritance taxes, or knows higher taxes won’t much matter to his tens of billions in net worth; the latter’s firm paid no 2010 U.S. income taxes on many of its profits and outsourced jobs overseas. And when Obama is told by his base to “get tough,” “get angry,” and “double-down” on the EU-like statist policies and Chicago-organizing, get-in-their-face rhetoric that got him into this jobs stagnation mess, should we laugh or cry? Get furious and demand — what? Snarl and scream about the right to go “big” from $1.6 trillion to $2 trillion in annual borrowing?

Highly publicized visits to bankrupt subsidized green plants, blaming George Bush, new racially-driven invective from some congresspeople against the Tea Party, sermons about the sensitivities of illegal aliens, politically-correct tutorials about Islam — all that might rally the base or in isolation be understandable, but again fairly or not, such liberal rhetoric simply adds to the problem from yet another dimension: confirming perceptions that employers are about the last people in the world that this administration is worried about.

The Upper-Middle-Class Lament

I talked to a gentleman in the Central Valley the other day; he voiced a rarely heard lament. He was a private business person who thought he had saved enough for retirement but could not see any income anywhere: (1) his cash is getting almost no interest in a variety of savings accounts; (2) he can’t sell his house without a loss and can’t see any foreseeable increase in its equity; (3) his 401(K) is still down and never quite recovered from the post-2008 dive and is now simply too volatile for him to know what to do; (4) he assumes taxes will go up to pay for the subsidies of others for which he does not qualify for —yet; (5) he has no public pension and has less income than those who used to make far less but worked for the federal government, state, or city. I could only say that Obama would say, “Well, your’re better off than many in my base.”

Vandal Watch

Last week, I mentioned that my local community is struggling with council members calling each other names and alleging serial conflicts of interest, theft of the city’s manhole covers by public employees, and child pornography charges lodged against a policeman. This week? An epidemic of the theft of honorific bronze plaques from the walls of the city’s schools, civic centers, and public buildings — the sort of commemoration for good deeds that are the stuff of civilization. It reminds me of Procopius’s description of post-Roman Italy in the 6th-century AD, when lost Ostrogoth and Visigoth souls drifted amid the great cities of the Old Romans, cannibalizing the ancients’ marble, bronze, and lead clamps, and melting down monuments for lime. What scares me is that the gang bangers, who are prying these plaques off the walls and selling them, for pennies on their original dollars, for scrap, have no idea of the now dead who built and created these buildings and institutions, but so often in extremis will expect to use them. Did the man who built a school or the woman who founded a civic club ever expect that their commemorative citations would end up in a melt-down pile in the local wrecking yard?

Copper wire torn out from agricultural pumps? Manhole covers stolen by their very custodians? Commemorative plaques pried out? We are almost an entire generation of parasites that cannot create anything new and so feed on the capital and labor of the past. Sixth-century Rome to the core, or maybe Dark-Age Greece around 1000 BC where the illiterate and ignorant were wandering beneath the walls of Mycenae or Pylos looking for shelter that they could not build for themselves, and swearing superhuman “gods” must have erected such walls. Who knows, just as the most fertile period of Greek myth-making came out of the oral traditions of the Dark Ages as an impoverished and illiterate age tried to make sense of the monumental traces of a lost civilization, so too soon we may think our forgotten dam builders and water project architects of the last century were Apollo or the Cyclops, as we watch their legacies erode and crumble.

Book Watch

I will post a review of Dick Cheney’s memoir that I just finished this morning on the Hoover “Defining Ideas” website. I’m just finishing a book review of Eliot Cohen’s fascinating history of the French-British-American-Indian fighting down the northeastern seaboard in the late 18th-century. Tomorrow I leave for my annual visit to Hillsdale College to teach a military history intensive class for the next month during my vacation from the Hoover Institution, and look forward to the change of scenery. The End of the Sparta comes out at the end of the month; the first review from Publishers’ Weekly recently came out:

Leading classicist Hanson (The Father of Us All) focuses on the Theban defeat of the renowned Spartan army in 371 B.C.E. The hero of the tale is the Theban general Epaminondas, a devotee of Pythagoras and a warrior with unconventional attitudes about warfare, life, and death. His unexpected choices—not to mention the Spartan underestimation of the Theban “pigs”—allow the Thebans to fulfill the prophecies of Sparta’s downfall, many of which focus on the farmer Mêlon (meaning “apple”), whose journey from reluctant soldier to enthusiastic liberator gives the novel its emotional heart. Battle scenes are conveyed in exacting detail; a glossary of names and numerous line diagrams help readers differentiate characters and envisage the sites of central dramas. Told in a somewhat elevated style that simultaneously honors and updates the rhetorical heights of classic Greek histories, Hanson’s novel is both old-fashioned and lively. Given his notable body of work, it’s no wonder that his first fiction effort is rich in authentic detail and narrated with a confident authorial voice. His vigorous narrative not only offers insight into arms and armor, but also into the hearts of the men who bore them. (Oct.)


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Article printed from Works and Days: http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson

URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/job-killing-101/
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 06, 2011, 09:18:00 AM
Michael Brenner.Senior Fellow, the Center for Transatlantic Relations; Professor of International Affairs, University of Pittsburgh
Michael Brenner


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-brenner/the-great-betrayal_b_950161.html




 Barack Obama's betrayal will resonate in history long after he has become just another name on the over-priced celebrity speaker circuit. It is a betrayal of far more than the youthful idealists and loyal progressives who put him in the White House. Obama has unmoored the Democratic Party from its foundations -- philosophical and electoral. No longer is it an expression of the persons, programs and ideas that crystallized with the New Deal and which dominated the country's politics for sixty years. Its future is that of ad hoc assemblage of hustlers and special interests whose sole claim to govern will be that it is not the amalgamated Tea/Republican Party. Obama, by this Oedipus-like act of patricide, has also betrayed the country that voted for an enlightened leader with a social conscience -- a country in desperate need of the opposite to the fate he has laid on us.

Barack Obama was the active factor that has precipitated this tragedy. Who and what he is, therefore, is of the utmost importance. It deserves close scrutiny since his unbecoming traits of personality are not his alone, although he does represent their distilled essence -- and he alone managed to become President of the United States. There are more Obamas, or Obama look-alikes, in our future. What are the most salient ingredients in his private-public persona? Most striking is a behavior pattern that resembles closely the narcissistic syndrome -- even if he is not a clinical narcissist. A narcissist has no convictions other than a total dedication to his own gratification. That gives him the freedom to maneuver without inhibition or conscience with the revered self as the only reference point. All expressions of ideals, of opinions, of intentions are implicitly so qualified. A complementary narcissistic trait is an ease with blurring the line between virtual reality and actual reality. Narcissists believe everything they say -- at the moment they say it. Their declarations are sterile acts that have no pride of parentage nor can they expect honor from offspring. Witness Obama's momentarily rousing support of a labor movement that he has scorned for thirty months. This is the same President who has launched an all-out campaign against public school teachers whose unions serve as the whipping-boy for all that ails American education. Narcissists take as given that they never dissemble or lie -- because to do so is to acknowledge that reality has an intolerably constraining claim on them.

Of course, this last is a feature of contemporary American political culture in general. Facts are taken to be infinitely malleable, the very notion of truth is denied, speaking honestly is viewed as a lifestyle choice, and communication is more a matter of self affirmation than an attempt to convey knowledge, emotion or intention to somebody else. We have externalized navel gazing to a remarkable degree. One consequence is that public discourse is not anchored by common standards of honesty. It is a maelstrom of opinion, emotive outbursts, mythology and primal screams. Accountability, therefore, ceases to exist. There is accountability only where there are benchmarks of veracity, a reasonably rigorous monitoring of what is said and done, and a dedication on the part of some at least to ensuring that these requirements for a viable democracy are met. The abject failure of the media to perform these functions to any reasonable degree is a hallmark of our times. The think tank and academic worlds are little better.

This amorphous environment is narcissist friendly terrain. It is permissive of twists and turns, leaves no record of what was done yesterday or the day before -- much less a year ago, and focuses only on the evanescent existential moment. Case in point is the remarkably uncritical coverage that Obama has received from the supposedly responsible media -- especially those who claim to be upholders of the ideas and policies and interests that he has betrayed. This aspect of the Obama saga is overlooked because of the savage, mindless attacks on him by the crackpot right which now controls the Republican Party. Their excesses were the story, the only story. The instinct to protect Obama was so powerful that it stilled the voices of those who should have been both bolstering and cajoling him to remain true to his avowed commitments. To this day, the hesitation about calling out Obama is manifest -- witness the minimal reaction to his brazen reversal on clean air standards that is required by legal stipulation to promulgate. Pressuring Obama early on also would have been the line of political realism since opinion surveys have made clear that it was the Republicans who were out of step with prevailing attitudes on issue after issue. That remains true today despite the White House and the Democratic Congressional leadership jettisoning them wholesale. It cannot last for very long, of course, with the mass defections that have left American politics with only one narrative, the legitimizing of a Darwinian social philosophy, the ensconcing of moneyed interests on the throne of power, and the deference now shown the Tea Party outrages.

The vow by so many not to hold to account a President (the first person of color to occupy the White House) who engaged in one unseemly sellout after another emboldened Obama to go further and further down that road. Only now that the disaster has occurred are a few tentative, mild voices of serious criticism raised about the man, his methods and his politics. They have little practical meaning since the damage is done, the game is lost, the Democratic Party is denatured, and the great progressive wave of the 20th century that reconciled Americanism with the social ethics of the modern world reversed. Free of any mea culpas and lacking a sense of urgency, these mild chastisements fall into the ignoble category of "grandpa reassurances." When many years from now a grandchild asks over Thanksgiving dinner: "grandpa, where were you when they ruined my country?" he can dredge up something he wrote in the late summer of 2011 to show that he was indeed a responsible person on the side of the angels.

That is what public virtue amounts to in today's America in the wake of the great Obama betrayal.


________________________ ________________________ _______________________


Another liberal dupe wakes up to reality.   
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 06, 2011, 09:55:54 AM
AFL-CIO's Trumka, SEIU's Henry and UAW's King all got free ride to Detroit with Obama on AF1.
http://twitter.com/#!/carenbohan ^




Reuters correspondent Bohan confirms the Presidents of all 3 Unions flew free on AF1 on the taxpayer dime with Obama to his detroit speech.

He doesnt even hide his backers now.

I'm just disgusted that he gets to use our money this way.

Its obvious he has done a deal with unions and this jobs plan is going to be so pro-union its unbelievable.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 06, 2011, 10:54:38 AM
Gallup: Uninsured Have Increased Under Obama and Since Obamacare Was Enacted
Tuesday, September 06, 2011
By Terence P. Jeffrey

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/gallup-uninsured-have-increased-under-ob




President Barack Obama (AP Photo)

(CNSNews.com) - The percentage of American adults who lack health insurance coverage has not only increased during the presidency of Barack Obama, but it has continued to increase since Obama signed his signature piece of legislation last year mandating that by 2014 every American carry health insurance, according to a Gallup survey released today.

In 2008, when George W. Bush was president, according to Gallup, 14.9 percent of adult residents of the United States lacked health insurance coverage. That increased to 16.2 percent in 2009, the year that Obama was inaugurated, and to 16.4 percent in 2010, the year that Obama signed his law requiring that all Americans have health insurance.

In the first half of this year, according to data released by Gallup today, the percentage of adults in the United States lacking health insurance ticked up to 16.8 percent.

That conclusion is based on Gallup's interviews with 177,237 American adults from January through June of this year. The interviews were part of the ongoing Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index survey.

Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act on March 23, 2010. It mandates that all Americans must purchase government-approved health insurance plans by 2014. Under the legislation, families earning less than 400 percent of the poverty level will receive a federal subsidy to buy insurance.

The constitutionality of the mandate is being challenged in federal court by more than half of the states.

Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Deicide on September 06, 2011, 11:23:55 AM
Gallup: Uninsured Have Increased Under Obama and Since Obamacare Was Enacted
Tuesday, September 06, 2011
By Terence P. Jeffrey

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/gallup-uninsured-have-increased-under-ob




President Barack Obama (AP Photo)

(CNSNews.com) - The percentage of American adults who lack health insurance coverage has not only increased during the presidency of Barack Obama, but it has continued to increase since Obama signed his signature piece of legislation last year mandating that by 2014 every American carry health insurance, according to a Gallup survey released today.

In 2008, when George W. Bush was president, according to Gallup, 14.9 percent of adult residents of the United States lacked health insurance coverage. That increased to 16.2 percent in 2009, the year that Obama was inaugurated, and to 16.4 percent in 2010, the year that Obama signed his law requiring that all Americans have health insurance.

In the first half of this year, according to data released by Gallup today, the percentage of adults in the United States lacking health insurance ticked up to 16.8 percent.

That conclusion is based on Gallup's interviews with 177,237 American adults from January through June of this year. The interviews were part of the ongoing Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index survey.

Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act on March 23, 2010. It mandates that all Americans must purchase government-approved health insurance plans by 2014. Under the legislation, families earning less than 400 percent of the poverty level will receive a federal subsidy to buy insurance.

The constitutionality of the mandate is being challenged in federal court by more than half of the states.


Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 07, 2011, 02:58:39 PM
New SolarCity deal will double U.S. rooftop solar power (BASE HOUSING - Solyndra 3.0!)
http://money.cnn.com ^ | 09-07-2011 | By Steve Hargreaves



NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Residential solar power provider SolarCity and the U.S. government announced a deal Wednesday to put solar panels on military housing units, a move that could double the number of rooftop solar power installed in the United States.

The complex plan calls for SolarCity to receive a $344 million Department of Energy-backed loan from financiers U.S. Renewables Group and Bank of America.

SolarCity will then use the money to put up to 160,000 rooftop solar installations on top of privately run military housing complexes at 124 military bases across 34 states.

SolarCity will own and operating the solar panels, and the companies that own the housing unites will send a monthly check to SolarCity for the electricity.


(Excerpt) Read more at money.cnn.com ...


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


WTF!  We are broke damn it! 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 08, 2011, 07:56:32 AM
Leaked cables: Obama admin called Catholic Church source of spreading “homophobia” in Poland
LifeSite News ^ | News Print Article | Email Friend | Reprint Permissions Leaked cables: Obama admin called Catho | Kathleen Gilbert


Posted on Thursday, September 08, 2011 10:47:02 AM by Jeff Chandler

WASHINGTON, D.C., September 6, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - While surveying the landscape for inroads to push the homosexual agenda into Poland, American embassy officials under the Obama administration complained that the Catholic Church teaching is a major source of “homophobia” in the heavily Catholic country, according to private cables recently published by Wikileaks.

The cables from the American embassy in Warsaw, marked “sensitive but unclassified,” were part of a dump of over 250,000 official government documents last week by Wikileaks.

One cable from the American embassy in Warsaw dated August 2009 pointed to the Catholic Church as central in promoting “homophobia” in the former Soviet-controlled country.

“The Catholic Church plays a significant role in the formation and propagation of anti-gay attitudes in Polish society, especially in rural areas,” states the communiqué entitled “Gay rights in Poland: long road ahead.”


(Excerpt) Read more at lifesitenews.com ...
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 08, 2011, 10:33:34 AM
Source?
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 08, 2011, 01:08:14 PM
The Obama Presidency by the Numbers
wsj ^ | SEPTEMBER 8, 2011 | MICHAEL J. BOSKIN




When it comes to the economy, presidents, like quarterbacks, often get more credit or blame than they deserve. They inherit problems and policies that affect the economy well into their presidencies and beyond. Reagan inherited Carter's stagflation, George H.W. Bush twin financial crises (savings & loan and Third World debt), and their fixes certainly benefited the Clinton economy.....

Mr. Obama has enacted myriad policies at great expense to American taxpayers and amid political rancor. An interim evaluation is in order.

And there's plenty to evaluate: an $825 billion stimulus package; the Public-Private Investment Partnership to buy toxic assets from the banks; "cash for clunkers"; the home-buyers credit; record spending and budget deficits and exploding debt; the auto bailouts; five versions of foreclosure relief; numerous lifelines to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; financial regulation and health-care reform; energy subsidies, mandates and moratoria; and constant demands for higher tax rates on "the rich" and businesses.

...

That's quite a record, although not what Mr. Obama and his supporters had in mind when they pronounced this presidency historic.


(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 08, 2011, 02:03:29 PM
Comprehensive List of Tax Hikes in Obamacare
Americans for Tax Reform ^ | January 14, 2011 | Ryan Ellis




Next week, the U.S. House of Representatives will be voting on an historic repeal of the Obamacare law.  While there are many reasons to oppose this flawed government health insurance law, it is important to remember that Obamacare is also one of the largest tax increases in American history.  Below is a comprehensive list of the two dozen new or higher taxes that pay for Obamcare’s expansion of government spending and interference between doctors and patients.


Individual Mandate Excise Tax(Jan 2014): Starting in 2014, anyone not buying “qualifying” health insurance must pay an income surtax according to the higher of the following

 
 
 1 Adult
 2 Adults
 
 3+ Adults
 

2014
 1% AGI/$95
 
1% AGI/$190
 1% AGI/$285
 

 2015
 2% AGI/$325
 
 2% AGI/$650
 2% AGI/$975
 
 
2016 +
 
2.5% AGI/$695
 2.5% AGI/$1390
 
2.5% AGI/$2085
 

Exemptions for religious objectors, undocumented immigrants, prisoners, those earning less than the poverty line, members of Indian tribes, and hardship cases (determined by HHS)

Employer Mandate Tax(Jan 2014):  If an employer does not offer health coverage, and at least one employee qualifies for a health tax credit, the employer must pay an additional non-deductible tax of $2000 for all full-time employees.  This provision applies to all employers with 50 or more employees. If any employee actually receives coverage through the exchange, the penalty on the employer for that employee rises to $3000. If the employer requires a waiting period to enroll in coverage of 30-60 days, there is a $400 tax per employee ($600 if the period is 60 days or longer).


Combined score of individual and employer mandate tax penalty: $65 billion/10 years

Surtax on Investment Income ($123 billion/Jan. 2013):  This increase involves the creation of a new, 3.8 percent surtax on investment income earned in households making at least $250,000 ($200,000 single).  This would result in the following top tax rates on investment income

 
 Capital Gains

 Dividends
 Other*

 
2010-2012
 
15%
 15%
 
35%
 
2013+ (current law)

 23.8%
 43.4%

 43.4%
 

2013+ (Obama budget)
 23.8%
 
23.8%
 43.4%
 



 
*Other unearned income includes (for surtax purposes) gross income from interest, annuities, royalties, net rents, and passive income in partnerships and Subchapter-S corporations.  It does not include municipal bond interest or life insurance proceeds, since those do not add to gross income.  It does not include active trade or business income, fair market value sales of ownership in pass-through entities, or distributions from retirement plans.  The 3.8% surtax does not apply to non-resident aliens.

Excise Tax on Comprehensive Health Insurance Plans($32 bil/Jan 2018): Starting in 2018, new 40 percent excise tax on “Cadillac” health insurance plans ($10,200 single/$27,500 family). For early retirees and high-risk professions exists a higher threshold ($11,500 single/$29,450 family).  CPI +1 percentage point indexed.

Hike in Medicare Payroll Tax($86.8 bil/Jan 2013): Current law and changes:


 
 
 First $200,000


($250,000 Married)
Employer/Employee
 All Remaining Wages
Employer/Employee

 
Current Law
 
1.45%/1.45%
2.9% self-employed
 1.45%/1.45%


2.9% self-employed
 
Obamacare Tax Hike
 
 1.45%/1.45%
2.9% self-employed
 1.45%/2.35%


3.8% self-employed
 

Medicine Cabinet Tax($5 bil/Jan 2011): Americans no longer able to use health savings account (HSA), flexible spending account (FSA), or health reimbursement (HRA) pre-tax dollars to purchase non-prescription, over-the-counter medicines (except insulin)


HSA Withdrawal Tax Hike($1.4 bil/Jan 2011): Increases additional tax on non-medical early withdrawals from an HSA from 10 to 20 percent, disadvantaging them relative to IRAs and other tax-advantaged accounts, which remain at 10 percent.

Flexible Spending Account Cap – aka“Special Needs Kids Tax”($13 bil/Jan 2013): Imposes cap of $2500 (Indexed to inflation after 2013) on FSAs (now unlimited). . There is one group of FSA owners for whom this new cap will be particularly cruel and onerous: parents of special needs children.  There are thousands of families with special needs children in the United States, and many of them use FSAs to pay for special needs education.  Tuition rates at one leading school that teaches special needs children in Washington, D.C. (National Child Research Center) can easily exceed $14,000 per year. Under tax rules, FSA dollars can be used to pay for this type of special needs education.


Tax on Medical Device Manufacturers($20 bil/Jan 2013): Medical device manufacturers employ 360,000 people in 6000 plants across the country. This law imposes a new 2.3% excise tax.  Exemptions include items retailing for less than $100.

Raise "Haircut" for Medical Itemized Deduction from 7.5% to 10% of AGI($15.2 bil/Jan 2013): Currently, those facing high medical expenses are allowed a deduction for medical expenses to the extent that those expenses exceed 7.5 percent of adjusted gross income (AGI).  The new provision imposes a threshold of 10 percent of AGI; it is waived for 65+ taxpayers in 2013-2016 only.


Tax on Indoor Tanning Services($2.7 billion/July 1, 2010): New 10 percent excise tax on Americans using indoor tanning salons

Elimination of tax deduction for employer-provided retirement Rx drug coverage in coordination with Medicare Part D($4.5 bil/Jan 2013)

Blue Cross/Blue Shield Tax Hike($0.4 bil/Jan 2010): The special tax deduction in current law for Blue Cross/Blue Shield companies would only be allowed if 85 percent or more of premium revenues are spent on clinical services


Excise Tax on Charitable Hospitals(Min$/immediate): $50,000 per hospital if they fail to meet new "community health assessment needs," "financial assistance," and "billing and collection" rules set by HHS

Tax on Innovator Drug Companies($22.2 bil/Jan 2010): $2.3 billion annual tax on the industry imposed relative to share of sales made that year.

Tax on Health Insurers($60.1 bil/Jan 2014): Annual tax on the industry imposed relative to health insurance premiums collected that year. The stipulation phases in gradually until 2018, and is fully-imposed on firms with $50 million in profits.


$500,000 Annual Executive Compensation Limit for Health Insurance Executives($0.6 bil/Jan 2013)

Employer Reporting of Insurance on W-2(Min$/Jan 2011): Preamble to taxing health benefits on individual tax returns.

Corporate 1099-MISC Information Reporting($17.1 bil/Jan 2012): Requires businesses to send 1099-MISC information tax forms to corporations (currently limited to individuals), a huge compliance burden for small employers


“Black liquor” tax hike(Tax hike of $23.6 billion).  This is a tax increase on a type of bio-fuel.

Codification of the “economic substance doctrine”(Tax hike of $4.5 billion).  This provision allows the IRS to disallow completely-legal tax deductions and other legal tax-minimizing plans just because the IRS deems that the action lacks “substance” and is merely intended to reduce taxes owed.
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 08, 2011, 08:13:48 PM
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/584248/201109081840/The-Solar-Dole.htm


another BILLION down the Obama rat hole. 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 09, 2011, 08:59:31 PM
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Obama The Failure
Krieger Commentary ^
Posted on September 9, 2011 11:39:50 PM EDT by Odegaard88

Few things astound me more than those with the temerity to defend the indefensible with casuistic obfuscation. Recently, prominent media personage and Obama apologist Jonathan Alter challenged the world to explain why Barack Hussein Obama is a bad President. At the risk of deigning myself by explaining the self evident, I will respond to Alter’s challenge with the following indictment of Obama and extend an open invitation to debate this very topic on radio, television, or before a public audience.

I could never comprehend the irrational exuberance of Obamatrons or their predilection for ascribing infallible qualities to such a mediocrity the way fundamentalist fanatics attribute supernatural healing powers to fraudsters like Benny Hinn. The only plausible hypothesis that I can conjure is that credulous and knavish Americans lack the sagacity to distinguish between genuine statesmanship and the platitudes and puffery of a charismatic charlatan much as many Americans cannot differentiate between fine cuisine and the execrable garbage of McDonald’s.

The first thing that strikes one about Obama is his profound lack of intellect despite benefiting from a Harvard education thanks to affirmative action. I cannot recall a single instance where Obama has uttered a word that would send an ordinary man fleeing to a dictionary nor can I recall an instance where Obama has quoted a little-known historical fact or specialised knowledge from another discipline. On the contrary, Obama’s historical knowledge is atrocious. He once claimed that his maternal grandfather had liberated Auschwitz something that was impossible because the Soviets were the first to reach Auschwitz in the waning days of World War II.

Obama has also never shown the intellectual wherewithal or discipline to master a foreign language nor has he accomplished anything outside the fields of politicking and demagoguery unlike Dr. Ron Paul who is an accomplished physician. In contrast to Obama, statesmen like Thomas Jefferson produced actual inventions, such as improved ploughs, and demonstrated extensive knowledge of languages, philosophy, and science. Obama does not write his speeches and he is petrified to speak without his teleprompter. Obama’s degree from Harvard Law School is nothing but a gilded adornment designed to conceal the vacuous mind underneath. Those that might nevertheless take refuge in Obama’s academic pedigree might take comfort knowing that the great intellectual titan George W. Bush graduated from the inestimably prestigious Harvard Business School.

Yet the man’s lack of intellect is not nearly as disconcerting as his colossal policy blunders and inability to recognise, much less address, the monumental problems confronting the United States. For example, Obama’s response to the disastrous economy he inherited was to continue the same failed policies that produced the economic collapse. Obama supported the Wall Street bailout perhaps because the Wall Street banks were some of his largest financial backers, as the records at Open Secrets illustrate. Rather than allowing the big banks that peddled toxic mortgages or foolishly bought such mortgages to fail, the “solution” implemented by Obama in conjunction with the Federal Reserve was to recapitalise the banks with money produced out of thin air, resulting in a devalued US Dollar, inflation for US consumers, and the penalisation of saving. Perhaps worse, these actions encourage moral hazard because the Wall Street crooks will continue to engage in reckless behaviour knowing that they will again receive a bailout if they fail. Despite Obama’s claims of success, the toxic mortgage assets have not disappeared. Instead, they remain buried in the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet.

Similarly, the much-touted “Cash for Clunkers” programme peddled by Obama proved an enormous failure. The programme did increase temporary demand for cars, but this ephemeral increase only happened at the expense of future demand. Those that contemplated buying cars simply accelerated their purchases to take advantage of the temporary incentive, but demand for cars quickly plummeted once the handout disappeared. Moreover, the programme was dreadfully wasteful in that the government mandated the destruction of countless used cars. If Obama had a modicum of knowledge about economics, he might have known that the government’s policy to subsidise car sales diverted resources from more productive sectors of the economy. Destroying cars and creating new ones might have helped Obama fudge GDP numbers, but it did nothing to improve the economy or augment overall wealth, much as French economist Frederic Bastiat proved one hundred and fifty years ago with the “broken window fallacy”. Likewise, the tax credit for first time homebuyers proved a colossal fiasco for identical reasons.

One must also question the sanity of Obama’s military policy. Despite his strident rhetoric about ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the undeniable reality is that the United States military remains mired in these disastrous wars and continues to be a behemoth bureaucracy. Alter even has the audacity to cite the Libyan intervention as proof of Obama’s astuteness, yet anyone with a basic grasp of Libyan history knows that the current civil war in Libya is not a battle between despotism and democracy. Instead, the war is a tribal conflict between a brutal tyrant and a motley assortment of political Islamists allied with secular opportunists who are fighting Gaddafi so they can siphon Libya’s oil wealth into their own pockets once they replace him. Despite the rhetoric about ushering transformative change, the United States continues to spend incalculable sums of money on its military under Obama. If Obama had any knowledge of history, he might have learned that excessive military spending was one of the factors that precipitated the Soviet collapse along with an amorphous mass of bureaucrats that cannibalised the rest of the economy and taken corrective measures to reverse America’s inexorable descent into Soviet status.

Yet Obama’s innumerable failings do not stop here for Obama has also embarked upon an extravagant government entitlement that will hasten the fiscal collapse of the United States rather than help it realise the unquantifiable savings that Obama promised would allow Obamacare to pay for itself. Obama has also ignored the perilous predicament confronting Social Security and Medicare. Social Security presently runs a deficit and Medicare is in imminent danger of doing the same. Rather than proposing necessary changes such as reducing benefits, increasing the age at which recipients may collect benefits, or means testing, Obama prefers to delegate the politically unpalatable task to a commission whose recommendations he summarily ignores.

In light of the foregoing, it is abundantly clear that Obama is a demonstrable failure. Yet Obama skilfully works to conceal his ineptitude and the disastrous effects of his own shortcomings by falsifying statistics just as Stalin and Mao did with their numerous failed five-year plans. For instance, Alter cites the 9.1% unemployment figure and that the US economy no longer sheds 750,000 jobs per month as proof that Obama prevented a second Depression. However, Obama’s unemployment numbers fail to account for discouraged workers or those marginally attached to the workforce. If one were to employ this oft-ignored U-6 figure, one finds that the unemployment rate is a staggering 16.2%. Despite the stimulus and unprecedented intervention from Obama and the Federal Reserve, the US economy gained no net jobs in August. To place things in perspective, the US economy needs to add 150,000 monthly jobs merely to keep up with population growth. If the aforementioned does not attest to Obama’s mendacity, then one should recall that Obama’s own website boasted that it had saved or created 30 jobs in Arizona’s 15fth Congressional District, a miraculous accomplishment given that this congressional district does not exist. The website is replete with similar fabrications, yet at no time has Obama assumed responsibility for these farcical claims nor has he held his subordinates to account for their deceit.

Despite these failures, Obama has attacked imaginary problems such as lack of diversity in the federal workforce. Obama recently issued an Executive Order requiring Federal Agencies to implement programmes to increase diversity despite the overrepresentation of ethnic minorities in the federal workforce. Similarly, Obama has promised to tackle (pun intended) and “to throw his weight around” what is undoubtedly the most important affliction affecting the country, which is the lack of a Division I college football playoff. Obama frequently opines on frippery such as the Kanye West outburst or NCAA basketball playoffs, but seems unwilling to answer questions from citizens except those already vetted at Obama pep rallies. Obama even had the gall to interject himself into the dispute between Henry Gates and the Cambridge Police jumping to conclusions that ultimately proved erroneous. Clearly, it is lamentable that a lawyer and a former professor of Constitutional Law would exhibit such a cavalier attitude towards justice.

I could continue ad nauseam, but I have made my point that Obama is an idiot and a colossal failure. I challenge Jonathon Alter to accept my challenge to debate his ridiculous assertions, although it is doubtful that one so intoxicated with Obama will muster the courage to debate those with whom he disagrees or those sensible enough to emigrate from the United States to escape the tyranny of the US government
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 10, 2011, 05:29:02 AM
Barack Obama...on 9/11...(Obama's initial reaction to 9/11/01)
The Telegraph ^ | September 12th, 2008 | Toby Harnden
Posted on September 10, 2011 7:51:16 AM EDT by markomalley

"Even as I hope for some measure of peace and comfort to the bereaved families, I must also hope that we as a nation draw some measure of wisdom from this tragedy. Certain immediate lessons are clear, and we must act upon those lessons decisively. We need to step up security at our airports. We must reexamine the effectiveness of our intelligence networks. And we must be resolute in identifying the perpetrators of these heinous acts and dismantling their organizations of destruction.

"We must also engage, however, in the more difficult task of understanding the sources of such madness. The essence of this tragedy, it seems to me, derives from a fundamental absence of empathy on the part of the attackers: an inability to imagine, or connect with, the humanity and suffering of others. Such a failure of empathy, such numbness to the pain of a child or the desperation of a parent, is not innate; nor, history tells us, is it unique to a particular culture, religion, or ethnicity. It may find expression in a particular brand of violence, and may be channeled by particular demagogues or fanatics. Most often, though, it grows out of a climate of poverty and ignorance, helplessness and despair.

"We will have to make sure, despite our rage, that any U.S. military action takes into account the lives of innocent civilians abroad. We will have to be unwavering in opposing bigotry or discrimination directed against neighbors and friends of Middle Eastern descent. Finally, we will have to devote far more attention to the monumental task of raising the hopes and prospects of embittered children across the globe-children not just in the Middle East, but also in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe and within our own shores."

(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.telegraph.co.uk ...





What douchebag - even back in 2001.   
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 10, 2011, 08:05:52 AM
Townhall Columnists Bill Tatro
 

Bill Tatro  
Only Obama Would Build a Jobs Plan Built on Pink Slips
Email Bill Tatro | Columnist's Archive

  Sign-Up

While all eyes were riveted on Barack Obama’s jobs speech, there were two other speeches this week that had just as much significance. 

The first was delivered by John-Claude Trichet.  In his usual monthly update, he surprised some of his listeners by finally admitting what most people already knew. 

Trichet said the growth rate of the European Union was slowing dramatically, to the point that inflation was no longer a concern. (Some even felt he was hinting at future interest rate reductions.) 

That admission marked the crucial turning point in the so-called battle against inflation.  From Greece to Spain, Italy to Germany, all are reporting significant slowdowns.  Trichet gave assurances that everything was under control, and that he would inform everyone at a later time regarding the actions he would take. 

We have to wait, how disappointing.  Next, we heard from Ben Bernanke, who also stated that inflation was not in the forefront of his concern. 

He promised the Fed has the tools to help reverse the same lack of growth currently enveloping Europe. 

However, Ben still appeared dismayed due to his failing strategies.  I guess the moment wasn’t right for more information because similar to his most recent Jackson Hole speech, and much like Trichet’s lecture, Bernanke promised to enlighten us at the next Fed meeting on September 21st. 

A second disappointment. 

Finally, the time for the One came. 

The vacation was over, and Barack Hussein Obama took center stage. 

I won’t bore you with the details, they’ve been hashed enough. 

I will say the speech writers must have taken Oratory 101.  To say something over and over usually engrains the thought as a positive in the listeners mind. 

However, in this instance, saying “pass it now” over and over again became an irritant.  It kept me yelling at the television, “pass what, there are no details!”

Once again, I guess the details will come later.  Incidentally, I did learn one thing. 

As a business owner, I could conceivably fire an employee, hire someone else (who has been looking a job for at least six months) and receive a $4,000 credit. 

So, let me get this straight.  I go one-for-one (no increase in the number of people employed), and the government will subsidize the salary.  Sweet! 

That was really well thought out!

Maybe it’s good we don’t have more details.  Three major speeches in one week all culminating in one conclusion. 

http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/billtatro/2011/09/10/only_obama_would_build_a_jobs_plan_built_on_pink_slips


Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 10, 2011, 08:21:59 AM
Medical device tax could kill 11 percent of U.S. med-tech jobs, AdvaMed says
 MassDevice ^ | September 7, 2011 | Emily Greenhalgh




An excise tax on medical devices, set to go into effect in 2013, could mean a nearly 11 percent cut for the U.S. medical technology sector and add $2.67 billion to the industry's annual tax bill, according to a study funded by the Advanced Medical Technology Assn.

Medical device industry lobby AdvaMed says that the new 2.3 percent excise tax, slated to go into effect in 2013, will be "the last straw on the camel's back" for medical device companies trying to thrive in the struggling American economy.

The tax puts more than 43,000 U.S. jobs at risk by all but forcing medical device companies to move production offshore to avoid higher taxes, according to the study.

"The medical device industry is a leader in innovation and in well-paying jobs," lead author and Manhattan Institute senior fellow Diana Furchtgott-Roth said on a conference call. She argued that the government should make the US a more "job-friendly environment" instead of imposing taxes that could push companies outside its borders.


(Excerpt) Read more at massdevice.com ...
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 11, 2011, 05:59:33 PM
Being Obama: It’s all about him
The Weekly Standard ^ | September 5, 2011 Issue | Jonathan V. Last




Once upon a time we had a president who sulked that his relatively uneventful tenure denied him the chance to thrust his way into greatness. In the days after 9/11, the New York Times carried a quotation from a “close friend” about Bill Clinton’s misfortune: “He has said there has to be a defining moment in a presidency that really makes a great presidency. He didn’t have one.” Clinton, the Times reported, was “described by friends as a frustrated spectator, unable to guide the nation through a crisis that is far bigger than anything he confronted in his eight-year tenure.”

This tracked with earlier accounts from two of Clinton’s advisers. George Stephanopoulos wrote that Clinton “envied Lincoln his enemies, knowing that it takes a moral challenge to create a memorable presidency.” In his book about his White House years, Dick Morris related a conversation he had with Clinton about his place in history. “You can’t be first tier,” Morris explained gently to his boss, “unless unanticipated historical forces put you there.” “Like a war,” Clinton agreed glumly, before asking, a little more hopefully, “Okay, second tier?”

At the time, this sort of wistfulness seemed the height of vanity. Today, it’s almost charmingly quaint.

Earlier this year on March 11, a Friday, Japan was struck by a 9.0-magnitude earthquake. An hour later a 30-foot tidal wave swamped the northeast portion of the country, killing thousands and leaving devastation in its wake. Four hours after that, Japan declared itself in a state of nuclear emergency. Within days, at least three of the country’s nuclear reactors were in states of partial meltdown. While the crisis in Japan was accelerating, oil prices continued to hover around $100 per barrel, America’s domestic economic recovery continued to disintegrate, a revolution in Libya continued to blossom into a full-fledged civil conflict, and American troops continued to fight in Afghanistan.

On Saturday, March 12, President Obama played golf. On Monday, March 14, President Obama visited a middle school in Northern Virginia to kick off a week’s worth of activities centered around “Winning the Future” of education. Because it was a big day, he also kicked off a “Sunshine Week” celebration to trumpet reforms to the Freedom of Information Act. On Tuesday, March 15, President Obama sat down with ESPN to tape a segment about his NCAA March Madness picks.

As he surveyed the globe you could practically hear Obama thinking to himself, Chance the Gardener-style, I like to watch .  .  .

We’ve seen this President Obama all too often. It started with the stimulus. Instead of crafting his own bill, one which put government money into projects with both economic impact and practical benefit—like, say, defense procurement—he handed the job to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. The result was $787 billion for Democratic clients and “shovel-ready projects” that, Obama now says laughingly, were never really shovel-ready. He took the same approach with his health care reform act, arguing and arm-twisting from the sidelines without getting involved in the specifics of the legislation. After having a budget rejected by the Senate (97‑0) last March, he declined to put forward another plan. Oh, he talked a lot about what his plans might be. His collected mutterings on the subject prompted Congressional Budget Office director Douglas Elmendorf to quip, “We don’t estimate speeches.”

But it’s not just his executive approach to policy. When BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig blew up last summer, Obama spent a lot of time on peripheral activities. As the rig was leaking in May, he sat for an interview about basketball with Marv Albert, toured the country promoting the stimulus, and met with Duke’s basketball team. During a memorial service for the workers killed on the oil rig, he was on his way to a fundraiser in California. When he did finally get down to Louisiana, the very first thing Obama did after he walked off the plane—literally—was put his arm around Gov. Bobby Jindal and take him aside. He did not want to talk about the spill in the Gulf. Jindal explains what followed in his book, Leadership and Crisis:

I was expecting words of concern about the oil spill, worry about the pending ecological disaster, and words of confidence about how the federal government was here to help. Or perhaps he was going to vent about BP’s slow response. But no, the president was upset about something else. And he wanted to talk about, well, food stamps. Actually, he wanted to talk about a letter that my administration had sent to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack a day earlier.

The letter was rudimentary, bureaucratic, and ordinary. .  .  . We were simply asking the federal government to authorize food stamps for those who were now unemployed because of the oil spill. Governors regularly make these sorts of requests to the federal government when facing disaster.

But somehow, for some reason, President Obama had personalized this. And he was upset.

There was not a word about the oil spill. He was concerned about looking bad because of the letter. “Careful,” he said to me, “this is going to get bad for everyone.”

This summer it wasn’t a single oil rig that exploded but the entire nation’s economy, which is now rushing toward a double-dip recession. In the last month America’s long-term sovereign debt rating was downgraded, the Dow Jones shed nearly 10 percent of its value, unemployment stayed firmly over 9 percent, and the Fiserv/Case-Shiller Indexes pushed their projections for a housing recovery even further back, to the second quarter of 2012. All of which prompted President Obama to travel around the Midwest on a bus for three days. On the fourth day, he flew to Martha’s Vineyard for a well-deserved rest.

What makes President Obama’s executive passivity so interesting is that it seems to be a symptom not of policy uncertainty, but of personal narcissism. The president is free to delegate the tasks of the president because he’s already done the important job of simply showing up. It’s the same impulse that leads him to make all sorts of claims about the singularity of his tenure. For instance, at an August 15 town hall event in Minnesota, he boasted that after his administration took control of General Motors and Chrysler, the two companies posted profits for the “first time in decades,” even though both companies were profitable as recently as 2004. Similarly, he recently lectured reporters that,

What I have done—and this is unprecedented, by the way; no administration has done this before—is I’ve said to each agency, “Don’t just look at current regulations or don’t just look at future regulations, regulations that we’re proposing. Let’s go backwards and look at regulations that are already on the books and if they don’t make sense, let’s get rid of them.”

The Government Accounting Office sheepishly noted that “every president since President Carter has directed agencies to evaluate or reconsider existing regulations.” These little delusions give a window into Obama’s view of the relationship between his office and his self. Policy and initiative aren’t the point of his presidency. He is.

President Obama never tires of inserting himself into measurement of the world around him. Bestowing the Medal of Honor on Staff Sgt. Sal Giunta at the White House last November, President Obama felt it important to add his personal endorsement of the man: “Now, I’m going to go off-script here for a second and just say I really like this guy.” In a statement about the Nobel Peace Prize being awarded to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, Obama began by noting, “One year ago, I was humbled to receive the Nobel Peace Prize—an award that speaks to our highest aspirations, and that has been claimed by giants of history and courageous advocates who have sacrificed for freedom and justice.” On the Sunday after the 2010 midterm elections, Obama appeared on 60 Minutes to talk about his view of America going forward. “I think that I’ve learned that America is incredibly resilient,” he said, before continuing, “I think I’ve learned about myself that I’m pretty resilient too.” That’s right, America: You can knock Barack Obama down, but he’s going to get right back up and govern you, like it or not.

When people don’t appreciate how important the job of being Barack Obama is, our president can get a little testy. “As time passes, you start taking it for granted that a guy named Barack Hussein Obama is president of the United States,” he told a group of donors in March. “But we should never take it for granted. .  .  . I hope that all of you still feel that sense of excitement and that sense of possibility.” Last November he met with Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai, who began his remarks by thanking the president for setting the “tone right” for their talks. Obama huffed, “That was my goal. Every once in a while, I do things right.”

In his postelection press conference that month, Obama complained that one of the problems his party has is that Americans don’t get to see him doing the hard work of being president. For instance, he mentioned that he reads letters from ordinary Americans all the time:

Those letters that I read every night, some of them just break my heart. Some of them provide me encouragement and inspiration. But nobody is filming me reading those letters. And so it’s hard, I think, for people to get a sense of, well, how is he taking in all this information?

It was good of the president to let voters off the hook for not understanding how hard he works on their behalf. And he didn’t have to do that. Especially since, back in August 2009, the White House did film him sitting up late at night reading letters from Ordinary Americans. They even posted the video on the White House website and YouTube.

Maybe that’s why the president sometimes seems exasperated with the country he’s allowed to follow him. Just two days before the earthquake hit Japan, the New York Times carried an amazing little nugget: “Mr. Obama has told people that it would be so much easier to be the president of China,” the Times reported. “As one official put it, ‘No one is scrutinizing Hu Jintao’s words in [Cairo’s] Tahrir Square.’ ”

He’s right—Hu has a pretty sweet deal. Yet it’s not clear that Obama really would be happy as president of China. After all, China’s a big country with a lot of problems, too. And even Hu Jintao is expected to show some initiative. Tibetan monks don’t suppress themselves. But at least Hu probably has some awesome electronic gadgets at his disposal. Holograms, videophones, maybe even a Death Ray. Last spring Obama complained during a fundraiser, “The Oval Office, I always thought I was going to have really cool phones and stuff. .  .  . I’m like, c’mon guys, I’m the president of the United States. Where’s the fancy buttons and stuff and the big screen comes up? It doesn’t happen.”

But we should forgive Obama his mutterings. Petulance is merely a sister of narcissism—and it’s not as if we didn’t know what we were getting into with this president. In 2004 Ryan Lizza penned a profile of Obama for the Atlantic Monthly. Obama was running for Senate at the time, largely unopposed. Lizza sat with Obama one day while the candidate was making fundraising phone calls. As he talked to the donors, he started drawing a little sketch on the newspaper lying in front of him. Lizza reported:

I couldn’t help noticing, when we sat down to talk in the dilapidated storefront that houses his Springfield campaign headquarters, that the blue-pen drawing he’d doodled on his newspaper during fundraising calls was a portrait of himself.

Bill Clinton’s vanity was that he wished he could have been at the center of a world historical event. Barack Obama’s vanity is that he believes he is a world historical event. And the greatness of his being dwarfs any necessity to establish greatness through action. That’s why, despite his passivity as president, we’re likely to see a much more vigorous Obama in the coming months as he switches from governing to campaigning. However ambivalent he may be about leading the country, arguing for the indispensability of Barack Obama is the one project that has always commanded his full attention.



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Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 12, 2011, 07:59:17 AM
Ten Reasons Why Obama Should Be Ashamed
Townhall.com ^ | September 11, 2011 | Lurita Doan



President Obama has now auditioned, and won, the prized position as the Billy Mays Infomercial spokesperson replacement.  Obama's "Jobs" speech, and the repetition of the "buy now--pass this bill right away" refrain put the Sham-Wow and Ginsu knife commercials to shame.  America has serious problems.  Americans were hoping for a serious response.  Instead, Obama continued the "political circus" and invited Americans to a pity party, piled high with a plethora of platitudes and vague Wimpy-hamburger-like promises of gladly paying tomorrow if only congress passes an ill-defined jobs bill today. 


President Obama should be ashamed.  The nation expected more; the nation needed more from and he let us down.  And sadly, with 14 months more to Obama's term, this likely won't be the last disappointment.  However, there are 10 reasons why President Obama should be ashamed of himself.

1.  Breathtaking Hypocrisy and Outright Lies


2.  Misleading America's Young While Loading them with Crushing Financial Burdens

3.  Blame Game and Class Warfare Mongering

4.  Pandering to Union Interests at the Expense of Taxpayers


5.  Betraying Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Vision of Race Relations

6.  Betraying our Founding Father's Vision of this Nation

7.  Refusing to Benefit from OJT and Improving his Job Skills


8.  Setting Back Race Relations and Perceptions of Black Americans

9.  Crushing Small Businesses

10.  Making America Look Foolish on the World Stage


Breathtaking Hypocrisy and Outright Lies.  Time and again,Americans have seen Obama--the hypocrite--on display.  Whether it was the 2011 State of the Union Address where he called for an end to partisan bashing and blame gaming--then immediately began to point the finger of blame, or whether it was as recently as this week when he talked about the need for large corporations to pay their "fair share" of taxes.

Of course, "fair share" doesn't apply to FOO (Friends of Obama), so it's ok for him to have Jeff Immelt of GE sitting near the First Lady as a guest of the President.  GE, the epitome of crony capitalism, received billions in government subsidies and did not pay any taxes last year, thanks to an army of tax lawyer sharpies.   Yet there sat the GE’s Immelt, next to Michelle Obama as the President talked about the need to eliminate preferential treatment from politically connected corporations.  Shame on Obama.


Misleading America's Young While Loading them with Crushing Financial Burdens.   Obama likes to talk about Winning the Future (WTF), implying that he is laying the groundwork for a splendid future for America's young, "preparing our children for a world where the competition has never been tougher".   Yet, Obama ignores his own policies which have burdened the young with crushing debt, making it more difficult for them to compete. 

Indeed, as a result of Obama's growth in government spending, we must now borrow 40 cents of every dollar spent, creating a multigenerational debt that our children and grandchildren will inherit.  Currently, each child in America has over $47,000.00 that they must repay as a result of out-of-control government spending.  Of course, that amount grows greater each minute.  Shame on Obama.


Blame Game and Class Warfare Mongering.  President Obama deliberately fans the flames of partisan politics, pointing the finger of blame at his political opponents at every opportunity, even as he chastises Americans for inflammatory language.  Nor does he chastise his own team members, such as VP Biden, when calling political opponents, such as Tea Party members, with different policy positions,terrorists.

Obama never fails to mention "millionaires and billionaires" in each of his speeches, though many of the folks he refers to are families that earn $250,000 per year.  Obama knows that class warfare works--it worked in France in 1789; it worked in Russia in 1914; it worked in Cuba in 1953, and now he's hoping it'll work in the U.S. in 2011.  Shame on him.


Pandering to Union Interests at the Expense of Taxpayers.   Most of Obama's "Jobs" speech was a paean to organized labor.  The faux-jobs speech was filled with references to union pandering, from construction projects with mandatory Project Labor Agreements (PLA) agreements, to teacher's unions, to trade protectionism, to just having Richard Trumpka (AFL-CIO) sitting next to Michelle Obama during the address.


Betraying Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Vision of Race Relations.  Reverend King urged advancement based on "content of character" rather than "color of our skin", but Obama's advancement to the top job in the nation is clearly a function of skin color.  He is not qualified for the job.  Furthermore, the state of the U.S. dollar, the nation's economy and the unemployment numbers--after thirty months--stand as proof, and no amount of whitewashing from Dems can disguise Obama's colossal inadequacy.


Betraying our Founding Father's Vision of this Nation.  They never said it was going to be easy.  In 1787, Benjamin Franklin said that what men on this continent had fought for, died for and built was "a republic, if you can keep it."  But this charge requires all Americans to understand that the Founding Fathers were not promising anything other than the opportunity to pursue life, liberty and happiness--there are no guarantees.  Yet, at every opportunity Obama doubles down on his desire to make Americans more dependent upon government.  Certainly, adding another 52 weeks to the currently unsustainable 99 weeks of unemployment compensation was never in the Founding Father's vision of a self-supporting, self-sustaining nation.


Refusing to Benefit from OJT and Improving His Job Skills.  This is America, the land of upward mobility.  Okay, so Obama got a job for which he was unqualified and Americans suffered as Obama experimented with theoretical, academia-embraced, Keynesian economic experiments at taxpayer expense.  The problem is that Obama remains unqualified and has refused to learn from his mistakes.  Despite wasting $787 billion taxpayer dollars on "infrastructure" and "shovel ready" projects that were a sham, in his faux-Jobs speech, Obama is coughing up the same retreads as his proposed solution to our nation's problems.


Setting Back Race Relations and Perceptions of Black Americans.  Anyone, from Rush Limbaugh to Republicans in Congress who has an honest policy dispute with Obama is accused of racism.  Whether the Cambridge police department or the Tea Party, Obama and his team never confront honest criticism and divergent opinion, but resort to the tactics of bullies, throwing incendiaries such as claims of "racism" whenever Obama's policies are questioned.  It never seems to occur to Obama that he might just be wrong.


Taking refuge by claiming his critics are racists is shameful and denigrates the honest struggles of Americans that confronted and largely defeated racist attitudes in our nation’s history.  A more honest assessment of “racism” in America would admit that the charge of  "racism", in recent months, has been grossly misused, often by those within the Black community, who crank up the "racism" machine to attack any who oppose Obama's ideas.


Crushing Small Businesses. Obama has no understanding of the challenges facing small businesses.  Most of his team has never worked outside of government or academia.  Few, if any, have ever created a business.  Confiscatory taxes, excessive government regulations, confusing guidance, and class warfare mongering are crushing small businesses and making them unwilling to expand or create new jobs.

Making America Look Foolish on the World Stage.  Whether Obama likes it or not, America is the leader of the free world.  This position has been achieved through the sweat of countless millions of Americans, both present and past, and through the blood and sacrifice of generations of Americans in wars, fought to keep our freedom.  The world has been in awe of this "great experiment", as Alexis de Tocqueville described it over 200 years ago. But not our president who refuses to acknowledge America's exceptionalism.


Shame on Obama indeed.

Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 13, 2011, 05:29:22 AM
Health ‘reform’ has sent costs soaring
NY Post ^ | September 12, 2011 | Betsy McCaughey




The actuaries at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services now forecast health-care spending to reach 19.8 percent of GDP by 2020, up from 16.6 percent when President Obama took office. And half this spending (49 percent) will be by government.

The actuaries’ predictions suggest that, in the long run, the largest threat to the nation’s solvency isn’t Medicare; it’s the Obama health law’s vast expansion of Medicaid, which will cost more than Medicare once baby-boom demand peaks.

Simply put, the president’s “reform” is converting Medicaid from a temporary safety net to a permanent, taxpayer-paid health entitlement, replacing private insurance.

To frighten the nation into enacting the Affordable Care Act in 2009, the Obama administration falsely claimed that health-care costs were “spiraling.” In truth, the rise in health-care spending was at record lows in 2009 (4 percent) and 2010 (3.9 percent).


(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...


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Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: dario73 on September 13, 2011, 05:44:51 AM
To frighten the nation into enacting the Affordable Care Act in 2009, the Obama administration falsely claimed that health-care costs were “spiraling.” In truth, the rise in health-care spending was at record lows in 2009 (4 percent) and 2010 (3.9 percent).

To the left there is no difference between 4% and 19%. "Oh, health care cost is going to rise anyway" they said. It was not going to increase by this much. Obamacare has certainly made it worse and it will keep getting even worse in years to come if that garbage legislation is not struck down by the Supreme Court.


Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 15, 2011, 08:05:05 AM
More Lies: WH Emails Reveal Major Obamacare Accounting Fraud
Townhall ^ | 9/15/2011 | Guy Benson




Does the American public have the bandwidth to follow two Solyndra-style White House scandals at once?  As maddening as the Solyndra row has been -- and we'll have an update on that story later this morning -- this revelation is probably worse.  I reach that conclusion based on the relative scale and consequences of the dueling disgraces' politically-motivated dishonesty.  First, a little bit of background to prime the pump:  When Democrats entered their full-court press for Obamacare last winter, they made it clear that nothing would stand in their way.  Not hostile public opinion, not sound policy interests, not even a desire to know what was in their own bill.  Nothing.  One of their boldest plays was to manufacture a CBO score explictly designed to reach the ludicrous conclusion that theor new multi-trillion-dollar entitlement program would actually reduce the deficit.  In order to accomplish this feat, they used smoke and mirrors accounting gimmicks that went far beyond even many Beltway cynics' wildest imaginations. 

Rep. Paul Ryan exposed and debunked Democrats' most audacious tricks during the healthcare summit -- which of course did absolutely nothing to convince Democrats of the error of their ways.  During his illuminating dissection of the bill, Ryan mentioned a provision called the CLASS Act, a new federally funded long-term care program embedded within Obamacare.  Ryan quoted Sen. Max Baucus, a Democrat, as decrying the program as a Madoff-style "Ponzi scheme." Why?  Because the premiums supposedly collected to pay for the CLASS Act over Obamacare's first decade would be injected into that phony, contrived "deficit reducing" CBO formula -- while the program itself would likely collapse under its own weight almost immediately.  In other words, some critics suspected, Democrats were creating an entire program just to extract hypothetical dollars from its front-loaded revenue mechanism to "pay for" the larger bill -- with no real intention of implementing a sustainable long-term care program.  To outside observers like Ryan, it looked like a giant shell game.  As we now know, it looked that way to inside observers, too.  The AP has the hugely important exclusive:   


Even as leading Democrats offered assurances to the contrary, government experts repeatedly warned that a new long-term care insurance plan could go belly up, saddling taxpayers with another underfunded benefit program, according to emails disclosed by congressional investigators.  Part of President Barack Obama's health care law, the program is in limbo as a congressional debt panel searches for budget savings and behind the scenes, administration officials scramble to find a viable financing formula.
So the White House was telling the public everything was copacetic while internal government experts were frantically warning that the administration's ideological plans were profoundly unwise.  If this scenario feels strangely familiar, it should.  Here's the AP's background on the CLASS Act as well as an explanation of its fatal flaws:   


CLASS was intended as voluntary long-term care insurance plan, supported by premiums, not taxpayer dollars. Workers would pay an affordable sum of around $100 a month or less. In exchange, they would receive a modest daily cash benefit averaging no less than $50 if they become disabled later in life. Beneficiaries could use the money for services to help them stay at home, or to help with nursing home bills. The Health and Human Services Department is supposed to set the final premiums and benefit levels in the coming months.
But the program is on a collision course with powerful demographic and economic forces. How to pay the exorbitant cost of long-term care remains a major unmet need for an aging society. On the other hand, many economic experts believe the government has already promised seniors more than it can deliver, and now is not the time to launch another program likely to need a taxpayer bailout or new mandates.

In short, this was a preposterous boondoggle that was bound to fail (by design) from the get-go.  The dirty little secret, you see, was that Obama, Inc. didn't care if CLASS failed.  The whole point was to show theoretical on-paper "premiums" that added revenue to the black side of the CBO's overall Obamacare ledger.  Whether those premiums ever materialized, and whether the program went totally bust, was immaterial.  This was purely an accounting scheme contrived to make Obamacare appear less costly.  Some veteran government number-crunchers noticed the impossible math and tried to raise the alarm.  They were disregarded and frozen out of deliberations for their trouble:   


Emails show that the first warning about CLASS came in May 2009, from Richard Foster, head of long range economic forecasts for Medicare. "At first glance this proposal doesn't look workable," Foster wrote in an email to other HHS officials, some of whom were working with Congress to get CLASS into the health care law.  Foster said a rough outline of the program would have to enroll more than 230 million people — more than the U.S. workforce — to be financially feasible.  But work on CLASS continued, bolstered by a report for AARP that laid out scenarios for implementing the plan. The AARP study also raised financial concerns, although the seniors' lobby supports CLASS.  (My note: More incomprehensible treachery from AARP).
In July, Foster tried again. After reviewing the latest information from Kennedy's office, he wrote HHS officials: "Thirty-six years of (professional) experience lead me to believe that this program would collapse in short order and require significant federal subsidies to continue."  Too late. The Obama administration had decided to support CLASS. Documents and emails indicate that Foster was edged out of deliberations.

Foster was sent to the corner to sulk.  His math was too politically inconvenient, so he was banished to intellectual Siberia.  (Say, I thought it was only those anti-science, anti-critical thinking Republicans who did this sort of thing).  Foster wasn't the only insider who was extremely critical of the scheme:   


By that time, Marton, the HHS aging policy official, was also raising questions internally. Emails he sent other administration officials relayed studies that raised concerns about such issues as premiums and the role of employers, while also recommending fixes.  Publicly, the administration maintained it would all work out. A December 2009 presentation for senior officials stressed the end result would be a financially robust program.  In private, administration insiders were still spelling out concerns.
They knew it was a lie.  Their actuaries told them so.  The math was clear.  They didn't care.  If CLASS goosed the numbers for the broader bill -- thus helping secure the historic power grab they'd been salivating over forever -- these Statists were thrilled to adopt an "ends justifies the means" mentality.  And that, my friends, is how the White House and Democrats manipulated the CBO score, lied their asses off to the American public, and passed their unaffordable, unwanted healthcare monstrosity under deliberately false pretenses.  This. Crew. Must. Go.



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Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 15, 2011, 09:44:36 AM
White House Pressure for a Donor? [Talk about crony capitalism!]
The Daily Beast ^ | 15 Sep 2011 | Eli Lake




The Pentagon has worried for months that a project backed by a prominent Democratic donor might interfere with military GPS. Now Congress wants to know if the White House pressured a general to change his testimony.

The four-star Air Force general who oversees U.S. Space Command walked into a highly secured room on Capitol Hill a week ago to give a classified briefing to lawmakers and staff, and dropped a surprise. Pressed by members, Gen. William Shelton said the White House tried to pressure him to change his testimony to make it more favorable to a company tied to a large Democratic donor.

The episode—confirmed by The Daily Beast in interviews with administration officials and the chairman of a congressional oversight committee—is the latest in a string of incidents that have given Republicans sudden fodder for questions about whether the Obama administration is politically interfering in routine government matters that affect donors or fundraisers. Already, the FBI and a House committee are investigating a federal loan guarantee to a now failed solar firm called Solyndra that is tied to a large Obama fundraiser.


(Excerpt) Read more at thedailybeast.com ...


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Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 15, 2011, 09:45:59 AM
Great news: Green-jobs subsidies created 1 job for every $5.44 million spent
Hot Air ^ | 9/15/11 | Ed Morrissey




Today’s Washington Post acknowledges what everyone already knows, and what Spain learned the hard way as well — green-jobs subsidies are sinkholes. When Barack Obama loaded his 2009 Porkulus with nearly $40 billion in subsidies to the green-tech industry, he promised that it would produce an explosion of jobs in a new, green US economy, starting with 65,000 directly created from his largesse. With half of the money gone, how many jobs has Obama’s investment created?

A $38.6 billion loan guarantee program that the Obama administration promised would create or save 65,000 jobs has created just a few thousand jobs two years after it began, government records show.

The program — designed to jump-start the nation’s clean technology industry by giving energy companies access to low-cost, government-backed loans — has directly created 3,545 new, permanent jobs after giving out almost half the allocated amount, according to Energy Department tallies. …

Obama’s efforts to create green jobs are lagging behind expectations at a time of persistently high unemployment. Many economists say that because alternative-­energy projects are so expensive and slow to ramp up, they are not the most efficient way to stimulate the economy.


(Excerpt) Read more at hotair.com ...
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 15, 2011, 09:55:11 AM
Federal green energy loan guarantees could go to 15 more companies
Published: Thursday, September 15, 2011, 7:16 AM     Updated: Thursday, September 15, 2011, 7:17 AM
By The Associated Press The Associated Press




A House panel is investigating what went wrong with the company which had received a federal loan of nearly $528 million and recently filed for bankruptcy.

The Obama administration is moving to finalize as many as 15 loan guarantees for renewable energy companies before the stimulus program ends on Sept. 30, and Republicans are questioning whether that could lead to more failures like Solyndra Inc., a company that filed for bankruptcy and may leave taxpayers on the hook for a half-billion-dollar loan.

The loan guarantees essentially make it easier for the companies to get financing as the government guarantees repayment in the event of default. In Solyndra's case, the loan came from the government itself, but private banks often provide the financing.

A spokesman for the Energy Department said the department won't take any shortcuts during the approval process.

"We will only close the deals that are ready to close on Sept. 30," said spokesman Damien LaVera.

A congressional subcommittee is examining the loan guarantee program. It released documents Wednesday that appeared to show senior staff at the White House Office of Management and Budget chafing about having to conduct "rushed approvals" of a loan guarantee for Solyndra, a California manufacturer of solar panels. The company is also the subject of an FBI investigation.

Republican members of the committee said the emails raised questions about whether the loan was rushed to accommodate a groundbreaking ceremony in September 2009 that featured Vice President Joe Biden and Energy Secretary Steven Chu.

"We would prefer to have sufficient time to do our due diligence reviews and have the approval set the date for the announcement rather than the other way around," said one of the emails from an unidentified OMB aide to Biden's office.

In another email exchange obtained by the committee, an Energy Department official asked a staff member at OMB if "there is anything we can speed along on the OMB side." Again, neither official was identified.

"I would prefer that this announcement be postponed," the OMB official replied. "This is the first loan guarantee and we should have full review with all hands on deck to make sure we get it right."

White House spokesman Jay Carney said the emails don't suggest that the White House was pushing for the loan to be made.

"What the emails make clear is there was urgency to make a decision on a scheduling matter," Carney told reporters at the White House. "It is a big proposition to move the president or to put on an event and that sort of thing so people were simply looking for answers about whether or not people could move forward."

"It had nothing to — and there is no evidence to the contrary — nothing to do with anything besides the need to get an answer to make a scheduling decision," he said.

Solyndra once was the showcase for President Barack Obama's efforts to increase investment in renewable energy and to generate jobs. But the marketplace for its products changed dramatically over the past year. Chinese companies have flooded the market with inexpensive solar energy panels, and Europe's economy weakened demand from customers. The result has been an unprecedented drop in solar cell prices this year. Two other solar panel manufacturers also filed for bankruptcy in the past month.

Administration officials stressed that private investors thought so highly of Solyndra's prospects that they put more than $1 billion of their own money into the company.

But Republicans on the panel said there appeared to be a rush in approving financing for Solyndra, and they expressed concern that a similar rush may be taking place now with agreements that would have the federal government guaranteeing an additional $10 billion in loans if all the guarantees are approved before Sept. 30.

"In this time of record debt, I question whether the government is qualified to act as a venture capitalist, picking winner and loser in speculative ventures and shelling out billions of taxpayer dollars to keep them afloat," said GOP Rep. Fred Upton, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Jonathan Silver, executive director of the Energy Department's Loan Programs Office, said the loan guarantee program is needed to give U.S. companies the kind of low-cost financing that other nations are providing their renewable energy industries. For example, the China Development Bank is providing tens of billions of dollars in credit to that country's largest solar panel manufacturers.

"This isn't picking winners and losers," Silver said. "It is helping ensure that we have winners here at all."

SoloPower, a San Jose, Calif., thin film solar cell maker finalized its $197 million loan guarantee in August. The company plans to build its manufacturing hub in North Portland.


Democrats said failure to invest in the U.S. solar industry would amount to an economic death sentence that would allow other nations to dominate a growing business.

"If you live in reality, you know the world cannot continue its dependence on fossil fuels and that we are in danger of losing this industry to our competitors, especially China," said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif.

--The Associated Press



________________________ ________________________ ____


What a disgusting commie traitor and dirtbag we have as potus.  Only a complete shitbag would support this. 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The worst Presidency this nation has ever had to endure.
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 15, 2011, 10:05:47 AM
Obama jobs plan: Raise taxes on health care
Politico ^




Obama jobs plan: Raise taxes on health care

By: Matt DoBias September 15, 2011 09:02 AM EDT

The White House wants another shot at requiring some Americans to pay more for their employer-backed health coverage, despite a previously tepid response from the very same lawmakers needed to advance the proposal.

Nearly imperceptible to all but the most trained tax policy eyes, President Barack Obama’s blueprint to boost employment hinges partly on a provision that makes health plans taxable for individuals who make more than $200,000 and couples making more than $250,000.

“If your incomes are above those levels, and you benefit from employer-sponsored health insurance, you’re going to have to pay a modest amount of tax on the value of the health insurance,” explains Paul Van de Water, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

The tax provision was included as a way to defray the nearly $447 billion price tag for Obama’s template to get Americans back to work.

Under the White House’s calculations, the provision means that higher earners would pay about 7 percent more on the value of their health coverage. Put another way, it caps what the wealthy can deduct for the cost of their coverage, lowering the amount to 28 cents.

“This proposal is part of a balanced deficit reduction plan that includes closing corporate tax loopholes and asking the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share,” a senior White House official said, adding that shifting the deduction from 35 percent to 28 percent makes it “more in line with what middle class families receive today."


(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...


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Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 15, 2011, 11:04:13 AM

Report: Administration ignored high costs in healthcare bill
Published: 10:54 AM 09/15/2011 | Updated: 11:12 AM 09/15/2011
 By Amanda Carey - The Daily Caller
Bio | Archive | Email Amanda Carey  Follow Amanda Carey





In the thick of the debate over President Barack Obama’s health care reform bill, administration officials ignored warnings that one of its most controversial provisions was financially unsustainable and could leave taxpayers on the hook for billions of dollars.

According to a report released Thursday by a working group of congressional investigators, officials inside the Department of Health and Human Services ignored numerous red flags about the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports program (CLASS) — and in some cases the officials went to work figuring out how to hide them.

Now, those same officials are scrambling to come up with the financing of the long-term care insurance program — the brainchild of the late Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts — which Republicans on Capitol Hill are trying to repeal.

When the Congressional Budget Office scored the program, analysts said it would account for $70 billion in deficit reduction over ten years. However, that was because those enrolled in the program won’t be able to start receiving benefits until five years into that ten-year period.

The program’s architects assumed it would take in more money than it paid out. And the $70 billion in savings became a crucial selling point that helped secure the bill’s passage.

The congressional working group, however, found that since the program is voluntary it would likely see more unhealthy participants than healthy ones. That means more payouts and less revenue. In the long run, that imbalance puts the CLASS program on a path to financial disaster.

In May 2009, Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services chief actuary Rick Foster wrote an email about that exact sticking point, saying it could be a “terminal problem for this proposal” and “a classic ‘assessment spiral’ or ‘insurance death spiral’ would ensue.”

“The program is intended to be ‘actuarially sound,’ but at first glance this goal may be impossible,” Foster added.

In the summer of 2009, Foster and a legislative staffer exchanged emails. At that time, the actuary’s doubts about the program hadn’t changed.

“I’m sorry to report that I remain very doubtful that this proposal is sustainable at the specified premium and benefit amounts,” read one email, according to the report. “Thirty-six years of actuarial experience lead me to believe that this program would collapse in short order and require significant federal subsidies to continue.”

Ads by GoogleAnother email, dated September 10, 2009, suggests that a senior aide from Sen. Kennedy’s office tried to derail Foster from further discussions on the proposal. The email was sent from the Director of Policy Analysis in the Immediate Office of the Secretary of HHS to the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Planning an Evaluation (ASPE). It read that a Democratic staff member “got back to me, and decided she does not think she needs additional work on the actuarial side.”

But then in October 2009, a staffer from ASPE wrote an email saying the program “seems like a recipe for disaster to me…”

Later documents show that the program’s architects relied on flawed modeling and underestimated administrative costs, and that HHS officials decided to address the issues by writing in a fail safe that would give the Secretary authority to modify the program during implementation so it would be fiscally sound.

Yet as the report points out, neither HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius nor any other staffer made these concerns public in the debate leading up to the eventual passage of the bill.

“To advance the president’s healthcare agenda, it appears a deliberate effort was made by administrative officials to hide CLASS’s true cost from lawmakers and the public,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, who was a Republican member of the congressional working group. “The unsustainable CLASS program should be immediately repealed, and with a doubt, this troubling evidence warrants further inquiry.”

“This report is further confirmation that the Obama Administration willfully chose to ignore the fiscal insolvency of the CLASS program in order to achieve a political victory by pushing the president’s health care bill through Congress,” added GOP Sen. John Thune of South Dakota. “The CLASS Act is a ticking time bomb that will place taxpayers’ money at risk due to fatal flaws in the entitlement program’s design and structure.”

“The American people had a right to know the information revealed in our report before they were put on the hook to pay for this massive new entitlement program,” said Thune.

Follow Amanda on Twitter



Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/09/15/report-administration-ignored-high-costs-in-healthcare-bill/#ixzz1Y2sYXdbJ

Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 15, 2011, 11:43:24 AM
LightSquared: The next Obama pay-for-play morass?
Michelle Malkin ^ | 09-15-2011 |




When it rains, it pours. And there ain’t a big enough umbrella for all President Obama’s cronies and fixers to crowd under these days.

While the Solyndra BGB (big green boondoggle) continues to blow up on Capitol Hill, the White House faces another pay-for-play backlash — this time from his own left flank.

The liberal Daily Beast reports on a broadband project backed by a frequent Obama White House visitor and donor that has Pentagon officials concerned over potential military GPS interference. The Obama FCC took the lead in intervening on the donor, billionaire hedge fund manster Philip Falcone’s, behalf and granting his company called “LightSquared” one of those coveted Obama waivers from existing law. Then Obama officials reportedly pressured a general to alter his testimony about the company’s impact on military satellite transmissions.

In a nutshell:

The four-star Air Force general who oversees U.S. Space Command walked into a highly secured room on Capitol Hill a week ago to give a classified briefing to lawmakers and staff, and dropped a surprise. Pressed by members, Gen. William Shelton said the White House tried to pressure him to change his testimony to make it more favorable to a company tied to a large Democratic donor.

The episode—confirmed by The Daily Beast in interviews with administration officials and the chairman of a congressional oversight committee—is the latest in a string of incidents that have given Republicans sudden fodder for questions about whether the Obama administration is politically interfering in routine government matters that affect donors or fundraisers. Already, the FBI and a House committee are investigating a federal loan guarantee to a now failed solar firm called Solyndra that is tied to a large Obama fundraiser.

Now the Pentagon has been raising concerns about a new wireless project by a satellite broadband company in Virginia called LightSquared, whose majority owner is an investment fund run by Democratic donor Philip Falcone. Gen. Shelton was originally scheduled to testify Aug. 3 to a House committee that the project would interfere with the military’s sensitive Global Positioning Satellite capabilities, which control automated driving directions and missile targeting, among other things.

According to officials familiar with the situation, Shelton’s prepared testimony was leaked in advance to the company. And the White House asked the general to alter the testimony to add two points: that the general supported the White House policy to add more broadband for commercial use; and that the Pentagon would try to resolve the questions around LightSquared with testing in just 90 days. Shelton chafed at the intervention, which seemed to soften the Pentagon’s position and might be viewed as helping the company as it tries to get the project launched, the officials said.

Via Dan Isett, here’s a press release highlighting how Obama FCC chairman Julius Genachowski went to bat for LightSquared.

Genachowski is refusing to attend a House hearing today on how and why the FCC fast-tracked the matter. Most transparent administration ever:

Lawmakers such as Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) have questioned the process that led to what is seen as a fast-tracking of the FCC’s initial approval of LightSquared to operate as a commercial wireless venture, even amid complaints of dangerous GPS interference.

FCC spokeswoman Tammy Sun said on Thursday that the agency intends to send its head of engineering and technology, Julie Knapp, to testify. She said it was a technical hearing, and Knapp was the appropriate agency representative.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has been listed as a witness on the subcommittee’s Web site for days.

Sun said it was a mistake.

“We received an invitation from the subcommittee for the chairman or his designee to testify,” she said.

But subcommittee chairman Mike Turner (R-OH) had met with Genachowski and had made it clear that he wanted the agency head to attend the hearing, according to spokesman Thomas Crosson.

“The FCC told us late yesterday that he would not be attending” Crosson said in an e-mail. “We had expected him to attend, and it was made clear as such.”

Genachowski’s appearance has been anticipated as fresh questions emerge about the agency’s role in LightSquared’s waiver approval last January to use non-satellite phones on their proposed network. The power of those phones would crowd out GPS signals, according to defense, aviation and oceanic federal officials.

A few more tidbits about Falcone:

Last year, a popular financial blog named him one of the worst hedge-fund managers of 2010. And to many of his remaining investors’ great ire, roughly half of the money he has left is invested in a highly controversial, extremely risky private company—meaning he can’t easily sell, and investors can’t get their money back for the time being. The company, which Falcone has named LightSquared, is attempting to build a multi-billion-dollar satellite-based network to supply nationwide 4G wireless broadband service, in competition with AT&T and Verizon Wireless. “It is literally pie-in-the-sky stuff,” a former Harbinger investor says. “Cue the ‘Mission Impossible’ theme,” wrote a trade publication. Others have called it Falcone’s “riskiest trade ever” or “the bet of his life.”

Add in very public defections by employees, a lawsuit from a former partner, Howard Kagan, at Harbinger, and another bitter lawsuit, brought by Nacco, a small-appliance and industrial firm, which lost a takeover battle to Harbinger, and you can see why Falcone is losing his faith in Ganesh.

And that was all before federal authorities—the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department—started looking into a $113 million loan that Falcone took from his funds in the fall of 2009 to pay his taxes. His investors didn’t find out about it until the spring of 2010, and at that point they couldn’t get their money out of his funds.

According to Reuters, there are also ongoing investigations by the S.E.C. into possible short selling and market manipulation abuses by Harbinger. “He [Falcone] has a reputation for being stubborn, volatile, and aggressive, and now the word on the Street is that, well, maybe you can’t trust him, either,” says one hedge-fund investor. “He lives by his own set of rules,” says another. “Dangerous, hockey player, high-life guy.” A fund manager sums him up this way: “A roll-the-dice, put-everything-on-red kind of guy.”

Falcone may be caught in what an observer says is a “death spiral” for a hedge-fund manager, because as soon as investors can get their money, they will take it and run. Goldman Sachs reportedly plans to pull its $120 million from Falcone’s fund. “These businesses, all they are is client trust. The money can vanish overnight,” says a former Falcone investor. “Once you ding a guy’s reputation, and there’s the perception that he broke that trust, it is virtually impossible to get it back.”

Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 15, 2011, 12:02:02 PM
White House Pressure for a Donor?

The Pentagon has worried for months that a project backed by a prominent Democratic donor might interfere with military GPS. Now Congress wants to know if the White House pressured a general to change his testimony.

by Eli Lake  (/contributors/eli-lake.html) | September 15, 2011 12:24 AM EDT


The four-star Air Force general who oversees Air Force Space Command walked into a highly secured room on Capitol Hill a week ago to give a classified briefing to lawmakers and staff, and dropped a surprise. Pressed by members, Gen. William Shelton said the White House tried to pressure him to change his testimony to make it more favorable to a company tied to a large Democratic donor.


The episode —confirmed by The Daily Beast in interviews with administration officials and the chairman of a congressional oversight committee —is the latest in a string of incidents that have given Republicans sudden fodder for questions about whether the Obama administration is politically interfering in routine government matters that affect donors or fundraisers. Already, the FBI and a House committee are investigating a federal loan guarantee to a now failed solar firm called Solyndra

(/cheats/2011/09/01/obama-backed-solar-company-fails.html)  that is tied to a large Obama fundraiser.

Now the Pentagon has been raising concerns about a new wireless project by a satellite broadband company in Virginia called LightSquared, whose majority owner is an investment fund run by Democratic donor Philip Falcone (/newsweek/2008/03/04/who-are-the-world-s-richest.html) .

According to officials familiar with the situation, Shelton’s prepared testimony was leaked in advance to the company. And the White House asked the general to alter the testimony to add two points: that the general supported the White House policy to add more broadband for commercial use; and that the Pentagon would try to resolve the questions around LightSquared with testing in just 90 days. Shelton chafed at the intervention, which seemed to soften the Pentagon’s position and might be viewed as helping the company as it tries to get the project launched, officials said.

“There was an attempt to influence the text of the testimony and to engage LightSquared in the process in order to bias his testimony,” Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH) said in an interview. “The only people who were involved in the process in preparation for the hearing included the Department of Defense, the White House, and the Office Management and Budget.”

 Philip Falcone, CEO, CIO, and senior managing director of Harbinger Capital Partners speaks at the 16th annual Sohn Investment Conference in New York May 25, 2011., Jessica Rinaldi / FILE / Landov

Turner is chairman of the House Armed Services subcommittee that oversees Shelton’s space command and GPS issues; the panel explored the issues between LightSquared and the Pentagon at a hearing Thursday.

On Thursday, LightSquared CEO,Sanjiv Ahuja told The Daily Beast that his company was not trying to use politics to affect the regulatory process and the firm's goal was to expand broadband access across America.

"Any suggestion that we have run roughshod over the regulatory process is contradicted by reality: Our plans to begin implementing America's first privately funded, wholesale, affordable, coast-to-coast wireless broadband service have been delayed for a year and we have been forced to commit more than $100 million to find a solution that will allow consumers to benefit from both our service and GPS,” Ahuja said.

"For a company that allegedly is ‘wired’ inside the Beltway, we've been unable to even get the House Armed Services Committee to allow us to have one representative today’s hearing — a hearing in which we are the subject,” he said.

Shelton finally gave his testimony Thursday, and made clear the Pentagon's concern about LightSquared's project.

The general told Turner's committee that preliminary tests of a new LightSquared proposal to use only a portion of the band that it was licensed originally in 2004 would cause significant disruptions to GPS.

He said the GPS spectrum was supposed to originally be a “quiet neighborhood,” meaning that lower strength signals could exist near the GPS spectrum. Speaking of the LightSquared plan, he said, “If you put a rock band in the middle of that quiet neighborhood, that’s a different circumstance.”

The White House confirmed Wednesday that its Office of Management and Budget suggested changes to the general’s testimony but insisted such reviews are routine and not influenced by politics. And it said Shelton was permitted to give the testimony he wants, without any pressure.

OMB “reviews and clears all agency communications with Congress, including testimony, to ensure consistency in the administration’s policy positions,” said White House spokesman Eric Schultz. “When an agency is asked by a congressional committee to testify, OMB circulates the agency’s proposed [draft] testimony to other affected agencies and appropriate [executive office of the president] staff. If a reviewer has a comment to the proposed testimony, that suggestion is typically conveyed to the agency for their consideration. When divergent views emerge, they are often reconciled through discussions at the appropriate policy levels of OMB and the agencies.” The general’s office declined to comment.

LightSquared has previously acknowledged it met with officials from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy as it tried to shepherd the project, which is consistent with President Obama’s goal of trying to expand broadband wireless access nationwide. That office has a mandate to meet with members of private industry.

Melanie Sloan, who runs the nonpartisan ethics groups Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said the emerging allegations about possible White House involvement in LightSquared’s matter seemed to mirror earlier allegations in the Solyndra case (/cheats/2011/09/14/white-house-rushed-bad-solar-loan.html) .


“With this new set of facts, it starts to sound like a pattern of the White House improperly pressuring people at agencies involving decisions that affect companies tied to donors and fundraisers,” Sloan said. “It’s always a problem when the White House is pressuring anyone’s testimony. I don’t care if you are a four-star [general] or a GS-15 [career employee], you should be giving your true opinion and not an opinion the White House is seeking for political expediency."

Sloan recalled similar instances during the Bush administration, when officials were accused of trying to meddle with climate scientists’ testimony. “It doesn’t matter what party is in charge, money frequently trumps good policy in Washington,” she said.

Mr. Ahuja gave a little more than $30,000 to both the Democratic and Republican parties in the last two years. Mr. Falcone and his wife have gave more than $60,000 in 2009 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Mr. Falcone has also given a smattering of money to Republicans.

At issue is a conditional Federal Communications Commission waiver granted in January to LightSquared to build cheap terrestrial wireless capacity in a section of the wireless spectrum close to the GPS bandwidth. Harbinger Capital, the hedge fund belonging to Falcone, owns a majority stake in LightSquared.

"There was an attempt to influence the text of the testimony and to engage LightSquared in the process in order to bias his testimony,” said Rep. Mike Turner.

The FCC license has come under scrutiny because technical experts have warned that LightSquared’s proposal to build tens of thousands of ground stations for a wireless network could drown out the GPS signal. On Tuesday, the FCC issued a public notice stating that LightSquared may not move forward on establishing its wireless service until further testing proves the GPS would not be harmed.

Falcone says the FCC waiver was spurred by the demands of the wireless industry. “LightSquared wanted the waiver because some of its wholesale partners wanted the choice of being able to sell devices with either satellite only, terrestrial-only or combined satellite-terrestrial service,” he told The Daily Beast. “The waiver allows us to meet the specific needs of our customers — but it in no way affected the spectrum issue.”

Falcone added, “The GPS industry decided not to oppose us in the early 2000's because they thought we'd never be successful. It was only after they realized we were not just a concept, but a viable technology with a viable business model, that they decided to oppose us. Meanwhile, LightSquared invested billions of dollars — that is money that comes from private individuals all over the country — based on the promise the FCC gave us under a Republican administration six years ago. The point is that any suggestion that the waiver created LightSquared out of thin air is both specious and absurd.”

Turner said Shelton told his committee that LightSquared had obtained his earlier prepared testimony. But Jeffrey J. Carlisle, Executive Vice President for Regulatory Affairs and Public Policy for LightSquared said Thursday that the company never received Shelton’s testimony scheduled for August 3.

A U.S. government official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the White House specifically asked Shelton to include a paragraph in his testimony that stated the military would continue to test the proposed bandwidth for ways LightSquared could still use the spectrum space without interfering with GPS. The proposed language for Shelton’s testimony also stated that he hoped the necessary testing for LightSquared would be completed within 90 days.

The White House has said it did not try to influence the licensing process for LightSquared at the FCC. Chairman Julius Genachowski also has said the White House never lobbied him about LightSquared. Republicans are now questioning whether the administration has been rushing approval of the project over the objections of experts ranging from GPS companies like Garmin to the military’s own advisory committee on satellites.

“The FCC’s fast-tracking of LightSquared raises questions about whether the government is rushing this project at the expense of all kinds of other things, including national security and everyone who uses GPS, from agriculture to emergency medical technicians,” said Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA). “Without transparency, and with media coverage of political connections in this case, there’s no way to know whether the agency is trying to help friends in need or really looking out for the public’s interest.”

In April, Grassley asked Genachowski to hand over all records of communications, including emails between Falcone and the FCC, and LightSquared and the FCC. Genachowski declined to turn over those records.

The Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit investigative journalism organization, published emails this week (http://www.iwatchnews.org/2011/09/14/6458/emails-show-wireless-firms-communications-white-house-campaign-donations-were-made)  it had obtained showing meetings between White House technology advisers and LightSquared officials.

September 15, 2011 12:24am



http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/09/15/lightsquared-did-white-house-pressure-general-shelton-to-help-donor.html

 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 15, 2011, 12:12:21 PM
Solyndra Not Sole Firm to Hit Rock Bottom Despite Stimulus Funding
Fox News ^ | September 15, 2011




Solyndra, the solar panel company whose highly publicized failure and consequent investigation by federal authorities has flashed across headlines recently, isn't the only business to go belly up after benefiting from a piece of the $800 billion economic stimulus package passed in 2009.

At least four other companies have received stimulus funding only to later file for bankruptcy, and two of those were working on alternative energy.  ]

Evergreen Solar Inc., indirectly received $5.3 million through a state grant to open a $450 million facility in 2007 that employed roughly 800 people. The company, once a rock star in the solar industry, filed for bankruptcy protection last month, saying it couldn't compete with Chinese rivals without reorganizing. The company intends to focus on building up its manufacturing facility in China.

SpectraWatt, based in Hopewell Junction, N.Y., is also a solar cell company that was spun out of Intel in 2008. SpectraWatt was one of 13 companies to receive the money to help develop ways to improve solar cells without changing current manufacturing processes.

The company filed for bankruptcy last month, saying it could not compete with its Chinese competitors, which receive "considerable government and financial support."


(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...


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Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 15, 2011, 12:14:06 PM
Morning Examiner: Obama WH drowning in scandal
Washington Examiner ^ | September 15, 2011 | Conn Carroll




Drip. Drip. Drip. Whether it is Solyndra, Obamacare, or Fast and Furious, President Obama’s push for his “American Jobs Act” has been drowned out this week by the failure of his past policies.

Every night it seems there is a new angle on the Energy Department’s failed loan to the bankrupt solar panel manufacturer Solyndra. Not only was there a headline-grabbing hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Committee yesterday (at which Obama officials tried to blame Bush) , but the Treasury Department separately announced that their Inspector General (IG) would join the FBI and Energy Department IG in their investigation of the firm.

The Associated Press also came out with a new batch of emails showing career officials in the Health and Human Services Department had grave misgivings about a key source of early Obamacare funding, the CLASS Act. “At first glance this proposal doesn’t look workable,” Chief Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Actuary Richard Foster wrote. And CBS News reports that three more homicides have been tied to weapons connected with the Obama administration’s failed Fast and Furious gun-walking sting.

Obama has been reduced to telling adoring college audiences, “If you love me, you got to help me pass this bill.” Unfortunately for Obama, no Democrat in Congress loved him enough to introduce his jobs bill under its preferred title, “the American Jobs Act.” So yesterday Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, filed his own tax cut bill under that name. Nothing is going as planned for the president this week.


(Excerpt) Read more at campaign2012.washingtone xaminer.com ...
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 15, 2011, 12:22:53 PM
Obama: 'I'd like to work my way around Congress'
by Byron York Chief Political Correspondent
Follow on Twitter:@byronyork



President Barack Obama speaks at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute’s 34th Annual Awards Gala at the Washington Convention Center, Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2011 in Washington. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)Facing growing opposition to his economic proposals and dimming prospects that Congress will pass other parts of his agenda, President Obama told a Hispanic group in Washington Wednesday that when it comes to the issue of immigration, "I'd like to work my way around Congress."

"As I mentioned when I was at La Raza a few weeks back, I wish I had a magic wand and could make this all happen on my own," Obama told a meeting of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. "There are times where -- until Nancy Pelosi is speaker again -- I'd like to work my way around Congress."

As he continued, Obama conceded that "we've got laws on the books that have to be upheld."  But he quickly added there are different ways to uphold the laws on the books. "You know as well as anyone that…how we enforce those laws is also important," Obama said.  Last month, the administration made a major, unilateral change in immigration law enforcement when it announced that the government will not initiate deportation proceedings against illegal immigrants unless they have committed serious crimes.  To critics, Obama had indeed worked his way around Congress.  To the Hispanic Caucus, Obama said his new policy will "prioritize criminals who endanger our communities, not students trying to achieve the American dream."

The bigger problem, Obama said, is that sort of unilateral enforcement (or non-enforcement) only goes so far.  "We live in a democracy, and at the end of the day, I can't do this all by myself under our democratic system," he said.  "If we're going to do big things -- whether it’s passing this jobs bill, or the DREAM Act, or comprehensive immigration reform -- we're going to have to get Congress to act."

This is the second time in recent months that Obama has publicly mused about going around Congress to enact immigration reform.  In that speech to La Raza in July, he said that "some people want me to bypass Congress and change the laws on my own" -- a prospect Obama said he found "very tempting."  But the president quickly added, "that's not how our system works."


http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/obama-id-work-my-way-around-congress

Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 15, 2011, 01:10:44 PM
White House initially denies rep.'s request to attend Medal of Honor event
The Hill ^ | 9/15/11




The White House initially denied a request by Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) to attend a Medal of Honor ceremony for a fellow Marine Corps and Afghanistan war veteran, a congressional source said.

Hunter first learned last week about plans for President Obama to award former Marine Cpl. Dakota Meyer the Medal of Honor during a Thursday ceremony at the White House. Hunter formally requested to attend the ceremony earlier this week, but the White House said no, the congressional source said.


(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 15, 2011, 01:28:04 PM
House Dems tell Obama to settle AT&T/T-Mobile lawsuit
By Gautham Nagesh - 09/15/11 02:08 PM ET
   



Fifteen House Democrats led by Rep. Heath Shuler (D-N.C.) wrote to President Obama on Thursday urging his administration to swiftly settle the Justice Department's lawsuit to block AT&T's proposed acquisition of T-Mobile USA.

“By settling the proposed merger of AT&T and T-Mobile USA, we can put thousands of Americans back to work and promote economic development across the country," Shuler said.  


 "I urge the president to strongly consider the vast benefits this merger will have on job creation and the economy, and quickly resolve any concerns the administration may have with the proposal,” he said.


The Justice Department filed suit to block the deal at the end of last month, arguing the elimination of T-Mobile from the national wireless market would harm competition and raise prices for consumers. Both sides are expected in federal court next Wednesday to discuss the possibilities of a settlement.

DOJ could potentially withdraw its lawsuit if AT&T agrees to divestitures, pricing guarantees or some other conditions. Shuler urged the Obama administration to find an acceptable middle ground and approve the deal, a SITE study that claims the merger will create tens of thousands of new jobs.

"We recognize that the Department of Justice has intervened in the merger to ensure competitive markets and protect consumers," wrote lawmakers including Reps. Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.), Joe Baca (D-Calif.), John Barrow (D-Ga.) and Dan Boren (D-Okla.).


"Addressing these concerns through a settlement agreement that ensures robust competition while preserving the job creation, capital infrastructure investment and wireless broadband deployment benefits of the merger should be the Department’s goal."

The lawmakers also refer to AT&T's pledge to deploy next-generation wireless broadband to 98 percent of the country if the merger is approved, as opposed to the firm's current plan to deploy to 80 percent of the nation.

The revelation that the additional cost of building out the network would be $3.8 billion or roughly one-tenth of the cost of the T-Mobile transaction has been pinpointed by some critics as a primary reason to block the merger.

They argue AT&T's broadband pledge would be possible without the deal. AT&T has said it can't and won't build out the network absent the merger.

This story was updated at 3:19 p.m.


Source:
http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valley/technology/181825-house-dems-tell-obama-to-settle-atatt-mobile-lawsuit
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 15, 2011, 07:52:17 PM
Obama DOJ Takes Action… Moves in to Protect Teachers With Unacceptable English Skills
The Gateway Pundit ^ | 9/15/11 | Jim Hoft
Posted on September 15, 2011 10:51:56 PM EDT by Nachum

It’s an Obama World… The Obama Department of Justice moved in this week to protect teachers with unacceptable English skills. Judicial Watch reported:

Public school teachers with unacceptable English pronunciation and grammar are being protected by the Obama Administration, which has forced one state to eliminate a fluency monitoring program created to comply with a 2002 federal education law.

Singling out teachers who can’t speak proper English in American schools—funded by taxpayers, no less—discriminates against Hispanics and others who are not native English speakers, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ). As a result it violates the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the teachers must remain in their current position.

Unbelievable as this may seem, it’s a true story reported this week by Arizona’s largest newspaper. Ironically, the state launched the fluency monitoring program to comply with the bipartisan-backed No Child Left Behind Act, which requires states to create standardized tests that show public school students are reaching proficiency in core subjects like English, math and science.

(Excerpt) Read more at thegatewaypundit.com ...




WTF!!!!!
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Skip8282 on September 15, 2011, 07:54:36 PM
lol at new thread title.

You've got an evil streak 33.
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 15, 2011, 07:56:34 PM
I am still in a Slayer state of mind after yesterday.

Lmao.
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: 240 is Back on September 15, 2011, 07:57:51 PM
lol at new thread title.

You've got an evil streak 33.

i wonder which FR thread delivered that witticism.
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 15, 2011, 08:08:40 PM
Made it up on my own seeing obama at gz on 911 and being reminded of his unending attacks on this nation fiscally, morally, emotionally, etc.
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: 240 is Back on September 15, 2011, 08:20:50 PM
lol at 'emotionally' attacking us.


Bush probably let 911 happen and youre emotionally hurt by obama pissing away money and bowing to world leaders?

sheesh.
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 15, 2011, 08:24:56 PM
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/16/us/politics/suskinds-confidence-men-details-recession-dissension.html?_r=2&ref=politics


240 read this.   This s who is running this shit show.
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 16, 2011, 06:30:50 AM
General Reported He Was Pressured on Testimony About White House-Backed Project, Sources Say
By Justin Fishel

Published September 16, 2011

FoxNews.com

AP




Gen. William Shelton, head of the Air Force Space Command, told House members in a classified briefing earlier this month that he was pressured to change prepared congressional testimony in a way that would favor a large company funded by Philip Falcone, a major Democratic donor, congressional sources told Fox News.

Republicans have raised questions about whether project pursued by the company, LightSquared, is being unduly expedited by the Obama administration, which has pushed for national wireless network upgrades.

The Virginia-based satellite and broadband communications company has plans to build a nationwide, next-generation, 4G phone network that many, including Shelton, think would seriously hinder the effectiveness of high-precision GPS receiver systems, a product used most commonly by the United States military.

A source familiar with the technology told Fox News that the LightSquared spectrum would be 5 billion times stronger than the military's GPS system, rendering the military's system almost useless.

“Imagine trying to have a telephone conversation while your neighbors are hosting a rock concert,” the source told Fox News. “That’s the situation the military is facing.”

Shelton, in testimony Thursday before a House Armed Services subcommittee, refused to suggest that interference problems could be mitigated, as he allegedly was being pressured to say.

Military training that relies on precision GPS, such as dropping ordnance, potentially could cease to exist in the United States. Many farmers who also rely on the systems would also be affected. It's estimated this system is used by as many as 1 million people.

A House Armed Services Committee staff member confirmed to Fox News that when asked whether he was pressured to change public testimony he had prepared to for the hearing Thursday, Gen. Shelton said he was "being asked to say things he didn't agree with."

It's unclear who exactly pressured Shelton, but it's possible the culprits are in White House, Department of Defense or the Office of Management and Budget, which each approve military testimony prepared for Congress. The House staff member also told Fox News a copy of Shelton’s prepared testimony was leaked to LightSquared.

The Pentagon did not respond to Fox News' requests Thursday evening to comment for this story, though a spokeswoman for Shelton told the Washington Post that there was no improper influence on the general's testimony. The Post also reported that the White House denied trying to influence Shelton's testimony.

The company also defended its work.

“We understand that some in the telecom sector fear the challenges for their business model that LightSquared presents. It’s also ludicrous to suggest LightSquared’s success depends on political connections. This is a private company that has never taken one dollar in taxpayer money,” chief executive Sanjiv Ahuja said in a statement quoted by the Post.

At the House subcommittee hearing Thursday, which focused on strategic forces and sustaining GPS for national security, Republican Chairman Michael Turner lashed out at the Obama administration for its acceptance of LightSquared proposals. He took aim at FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, a longtime basketball buddy of President Obama, for not showing up at the hearing and for granting a waiver to LightSquared on Jan. 26.

"I trust Chairman Genachowski is doing something very important this morning if he couldn't be here to discuss the significant harm to national security that may result from the FCC's action,” Turner said.



http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/09/15/general-reportedly-said-was-pressured-to-change-testimony-on-white-house-backed

Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 16, 2011, 06:43:22 AM
Despite controversy, White House doubling down on clean energy loans
By Andrew Restuccia - 09/15/11 10:46 AM ET
 

 
The Energy Department (DOE) is not backing down in its efforts to support clean energy companies, despite Republicans pummeling the Obama administration for approving a $535 million loan guarantee to a now-bankrupt solar firm.

The department could approve as many as 15 renewable energy loan guarantees by the end of the month when a program launched under the stimulus law ends.



The approvals could open up the Obama administration to more criticism from Republicans, who have raised broad concerns about the administration’s investments in clean energy in the aftermath of California-based Solyndra's bankruptcy.

The 2009 stimulus law authorized an Energy Department program to offer loan guarantees to renewable energy, electric transmission and biofuels projects. The program expires at the end of the fiscal year, Sept. 30.

To date, the DOE has finalized 17 loan guarantees for a range of solar, wind and geothermal projects. The department has issued 15 conditional commitments that must be finalized by the end of September.

The department, for example, finalized an $852 million loan guarantee for a NextEra Energy solar project in California last month.

The administration has come under fire from Republicans in recent weeks after Solyndra, one of the first companies to receive a DOE loan guarantee, announced in late August that it would file for bankruptcy and lay off 1,100 workers.

The GOP argues that the administration missed a series of red flags that hinted at the company’s financial problems.

Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee released portions of emails Wednesday that they say show the White House tried to rush a final decision on Solyndra’s financing so that Vice President Biden could announce approval of the loan guarantee at the September 2009 groundbreaking for the company’s new factory.

“What the documents show is that the rush to push out stimulus dollars may have impacted the depth and quality of DOE and OMB’s review,” Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, said at a hearing Wednesday.

But the administration has pushed back on the allegations in recent days. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Wednesday that the emails were a “scheduling matter” and were not intended to put additional pressure on officials to finalize the loan.

Meanwhile, the Energy Department is arguing that the Solyndra debacle shows that the United States must double down on its investments in clean energy to compete with countries like China, which has invested billions in solar energy.

“When it comes to clean energy, we have a choice to make. We can compete in the global marketplace — creating American jobs and selling American products — or we can buy the technologies of tomorrow from abroad,” Jonathan Silver, the executive director of the Energy Department’s Loan Programs Office, told Stearns’ panel Wednesday.

Source:
http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/677-e2-wire/181733-administration-not-backing-down-on-renewable-loans





WTF!!!!!
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 16, 2011, 06:50:27 AM
LightSquared: Another Solyndra?
Pajamas Media ^ | 9/16/2011 | Richard Pollock





There’s a White House scandal involving favoritism towards a specific company high on President Obama’s political agenda — and it’s not Solyndra.

In this case, the company owner happens to be a big Democratic Party donor. And in the pursuit of giving preference to a specific company, the White House undercut a legendary four-star general and potentially undermined U.S. national security. Adding fuel to the explosive story: at one time President Obama was a personal investor, with $50,000 of his own money.

A report by Eli Lake at the Daily Beast charges that the White House pressured U.S. Air Force General William Shelton, commander of the U.S. Space Command, to change his testimony about the $14 billion LightSquared wireless internet project. The Space Command and Gen. Shelton warned that LightSquared could cripple the Pentagon’s Global Positioning System (GPS). Lake writes:

Shelton’s prepared testimony was leaked in advance to the company. And the White House asked the general to alter the testimony.

Other commercial industry figures agreed that the new wireless system could interfere with aviation safety, disrupt military and rescue operations, and interfere with high-tech farming equipment and consumer navigation devices.

For years within the telecom industry there have been persistent complaints that LightSquared majority owner Philip Falcone’s political connections with the White House and the Federal Communications Commission have led to political and regulatory favoritism for his company. Falcone is a hedge fund investor who made a fortune shorting subprime debt. He is worth $2.2 billion and has been close to the administration and to Democratic Party officials.

On Thursday, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski was slated to testify before the House Armed Services Committee about the political patronage in the granting of fast-track waivers for the company. But Genachowski stood up the committee — he refused to appear. Said Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH):

I consider the chairman’s failure to show up today to be an affront to the House Armed Services Committee.

Turner added he wanted to hear personally why the FCC agreed to a conditional waiver for LightSquared.

Both the Solyndra and LightSquared scandals are part of a larger, emerging narrative about the Obama administration’s decision to pick business winners and losers. Like the solar scandal, LightSquared is part of an Obama industrial policy to reshape America’s business landscape in the Democrats’ own political image. In this case, Obama’s dream was universal wireless broadband for all Americans.

In the Solyndra scandal, the White House pressured the U.S. Department of Energy to provide a half-billion dollar grant to a financially questionable solar energy company in pursuit of the president’s agenda for “green” technology.

In this LightSquared scandal, General William Shelton was asked by the Office of Management and Budget — an arm of the White House — to change his testimony. Even more damaging, OMB shared the general’s testimony with LightSquared.

LightSquared employs an army of eight high-powered lobbying firms, including one headed by former Democratic House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt. In 2011 alone, LightSquared spent $720,000 on lobbyists.

Quoting Rep. Turner, Lake reported:

“There was an attempt to influence the text of the testimony and to engage LightSquared in the process in order to bias his testimony,” Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH) said in an interview. “The only people who were involved in the process in preparation for the hearing included the Department of Defense, the White House, and the Office Management and Budget.”

iWatch, a project of the Center for Public Integrity, has conducted an exhaustive investigation of LightSquared and its high-level Obama connections. They found that in addition to the president, Donald Gips — Obama’s former personnel chief — had $500,000 invested in LightSquared. Gips raised half a million dollars as a “bundler” for the president’s 2008 campaign, and now has the politically coveted position of U.S. ambassador to South Africa.

iWatch also had harsh words for Obama’s head of the Federal Communications Commission, Julius Genachowski. Genachowski also was one of Obama’s biggest fundraisers, bundling $500,000 for Obama’s presidential run. Under his chairmanship, the FCC granted special rulings and waivers to allow LightSquared to operate.

Falcone and his company also made major contributions to the FCC while his case was pending before the commission. In September 2010, LightSquared CEO Sanjiv Ahuja made a $30,400 contribution to the Democratic Party, the maximum donation allowable by law. Falcone twice gave the maximum allowable.

iWatch traced LightSquared payments to contacts within the administration. On September 22 Ahuja met with James Kohlenberger, Obama’s chief of staff for the White House Office of Science and Technology. A day later Ahuja gave $30,400 to the Democratic National Committee. A week later, on September 30, Falcone and his wife reportedly each gave $30,400 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

“Hi Aneesh!” LightSquared representative Dave Kumar wrote to Aneesh Chopra, the president’s chief technology adviser on Sept. 23, 2010. “I touched base with my client Sanjiv Ahuja and he expressed an interest in meeting with you. … He is going to be in D.C. next week for a fundraising dinner with the president.” The email was one of 300 emails obtained by iWatch.

In two separate rulings, the FCC favorably approved LightSquared requests: on March 26, 2010, and on January 26, 2011. The rulings allowed the company to switch from a satellite company to a wireless system based on 400,000 towers. The tower system could interfere with many GPS signals.

GPS proponents have been dismayed by the quick FCC rulings. “The whole process has been highly unusual,” said Dale Leibach, a spokesman for the industry group Coalition to Save Our GPS . “The FCC typically doesn’t act quickly on matters before them, and they acted with great haste and lightning speed” on LightSquared.

Like solar energy, Obama has pressed for a bold agenda for universal broadband availability. In his 2010 State of the Union address, the president became a big cheerleader for the idea. The president demanded that broadband be given to 98% of the American people. In February 2010, Obama released a bill called the American Jobs Act which called for universal coverage. He told a group of college students: “This isn’t just about faster Internet or being able to find a friend on Facebook. It’s about connecting every corner of America to the digital age.”

The president wasn’t only intellectually involved. Investment manager George W. Haywood steered Obama toward putting some of his personal money into the wireless company. Obama bought into it with a $50,000 investment, according to his 2005 Senate financial disclosure form.

Haywood has remained close personal friends with the president. Haywood and his wife attended the first White House state diner and a Super Bowl party at the White House in 2009.

In February 20, 2001 Haywood and Genachowski together met at the White House. A White House spokesman said the two men watched the NBA All-Star Game with Obama in the White House residence quarters. “That was a poker game,” said Haywood. “It was poker, pizza, beer and the … game.”

Obama explained during the 2007 campaign how he invested in the wireless company. “After I got my ($1.9 million) book contract, I had money to invest,” he said, referring to his second book, The Audacity of Hope. He said he wanted “a more aggressive strategy than the normal mutual funds.”

“I thought about going to Warren Buffett and I decided it would be embarrassing with only $100,000 to invest to ask his advice,” Obama told reporters. Instead, Haywood recommended a UBS stockbroker, who bought more than $50,000 in stock in SkyTerra Communications, which would become LightSquared.

For quite some time Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) has been trying to get the FCC to disclose information about LightSquared’s investors and their relationship to the White House. His office says they have had no success. Grassley asked:

Are there ties between the investors and the administration that might lead to the perception that the administration is biased toward approval? … In the absence of transparency, the perception might be that the FCC is rushing the public’s business to help a friend in need, regardless of the consequences for the public and the economy.

Thirty-four senators, including eight Democrats, wrote Genachowski in May of this year asking the commission to rescind LightSquared’s waiver. “GPS is integral to the functioning of our economy, and is essential for public safety.” Until the company can prove that its wireless system does not affect GPS use, “we request the Commission rescind LightSquared’s waiver.”

On May 31, Genachowski said he would not permit LightSquared to go into commercial service, but he did not rescind the waiver.

On June 23, the House Appropriations Committee passed a resolution to halt FCC expenditures on the LightSquared project until there are assurances it won’t disrupt GPS signals.

The LightSquared case has been quietly simmering in the background for years within the telecom community. But now with possible tampering of a four-star general’s testimony, the episode should get a greater public airing.

If so, in addition to a sinking economy the other narrative that might emerge is that the Obama administration — which promised openness and integrity in governance — is an administration full of insider dealings, political favors, and deceit.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/lightsquared-another-solyndra/?singlepage=true

Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 16, 2011, 08:14:21 AM
Government Races to Close Billions in Renewable Energy Loan Guarantees
By Amy Harder

Updated: September 16, 2011 | 10:24 a.m.
September 15, 2011 | 7:21 p.m.
 


Liz Lynch“Taxpayers have over $500 million at risk as a result of Solyndra’s bankruptcy,” House Energy and Commerce ranking member Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said on Wednesday. “We need to understand what happened and how we can avoid future losses.”The Obama administration is in a race against the clock to close by month’s end more than a dozen renewable-energy loan guarantees totaling $9 billion. Of that, just over $3 billion would come from the federal government’s coffers.

It now has to do that amid an escalating political battle over a federally backed solar company spiraling into bankruptcy and facing an FBI probe. President Obama once praised the company, California-based Solyndra, as “the true engine of economic growth.”

At a House hearing Wednesday, there was bipartisan concern about risking more taxpayers’ dollars on renewable energy projects that ultimately fail. While Republicans’ rhetoric was more heated, Democrats agree it is a critical issue.

“Taxpayers have over $500 million at risk as a result of Solyndra’s bankruptcy,” House Energy and Commerce ranking member Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said on Wednesday. “We need to understand what happened and how we can avoid future losses.”

In 2009, Solyndra was the first company to receive a federal clean-energy loan guarantee as part of the stimulus package. The Fremont, Calif.-based maker of solar photovoltaic systems then received photo-op visits from Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and Energy Secretary Steven Chu, all touting the job-generating potential of solar and other renewable energy industries. But on Aug. 31, Solyndra shuttered operations, laying off its 1,100 workers while seeking Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

Under the Recovery Act that Obama signed into law in February 2009, the Energy Department’s loan guarantee office was given roughly $6 billion to help cover the financing of renewable energy companies applying for loans both with the Treasury Department’s Federal Financing Bank and private lenders, such as banks. Over the last couple years, Congress has peeled away about half of that for other purposes and left the department with just $2.4 billion for the renewable loan guarantee program.

That $2.4 billion allocated to the Energy Department pays for each renewable energy project’s “credit subsidy,” a fee worth usually around 10 percent of the loan that helps defray costs if the loan fails. The Energy Department doesn’t disclose the credit subsidy rate of loans the government guarantees, so it’s unclear how much of that $2.4 billion is left. But it’s enough to support at least $9 billion in loan guarantees if they fall through.

When the Recovery Act passed, the department was given a sunset date of Sept. 30, 2011. That date is fast approaching with 14 companies’ loans still listed as “conditional” on the department’s website. Between now and Sept. 30, the administration is trying to finalize those loans, whose amounts total $9 billion. If the loans don’t close, the companies won’t get any money.

All of that $9 billion won’t come out of the federal government’s pocketbook as some House Republicans have claimed, but $3.1 billion of it will. Of the 14 projects pending as “conditional commitments” on the Energy Department’s website, half of them are lending from the Treasury Department’s Federal Financing Bank and half of them are lending from private lenders, according to DOE spokesman Damien LaVera.

The loans conditionally committed to the companies borrowing from the government total $3.18 billion. The other half loaning from private lenders totals roughly $5.8 billion. Most of the companies are in the solar industry. Of the companies seeking to borrow from the Treasury Department, the biggest loan—worth $1.18 billion—would go to SunPower Corporation Systems to build a solar farm in California. Another hefty loan of $737 million would go to SolarReserve to build a solar farm in Nevada. Most of the money Treasury has available—if loans are closed by Sept. 30—is targeted to solar companies. Of the seven companies borrowing from the government, four of them are in the solar industry, two in biofuels, and one in the wind sector, according to DOE’s website.

Want to stay ahead of the curve? Sign up for National Journal's AM & PM Must Reads. News and analysis to ensure you don't miss a thing.

http://nationaljournal.com/energy/government-races-to-close-billions-in-renewable-energy-loan-guarantees-20110915

Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 16, 2011, 09:11:24 AM
LightSquared Scandal Explodes
National Legal & Policy Center ^ | September 16, 2011 | Peter Flaherty

http://nlpc.org/stories/2011/09/16/lightsquared-scandal-explodes





Allegations that we first made in February about White House political favors for a company called LightSquared are starting to get the attention they deserve.

LightSquared is owned by the Harbinger Capital hedge fund, headed by billionaire investor Phil Falcone. He visited the White House and made large donations to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Soon after, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) granted LightSquared a highly unusual waiver that allows the company to build out a national 4G wireless network on the cheap.

The deal has been criticized not only for its 'pay to play' appearance but also because the LightSquared network would interfere with the part of the wireless spectrum that is used by Global Positioning Systems (GPS).

On its iwatch news website, the Center for Public Integrity published a blockbuster special report on Wednesday confirming that LightSquared "pressed its case... at times citing its fundraising for Democratic causes and President Obama..." The report by Fred Schulte and John Aloysius Farrell is based on 300 emails obtained by the authors under the Freedom of Information Act. The emails contradict repeated denials by LightSquared and the White House that the campaign contributions were related to the FCC action.

Meanwhile, the White House is facing accusations that it tried to pressure an Air Force general to change his testimony on the GPS interference issue. According to the Washington Post :

GOP staffers of the House strategic forces subcommittee accused the White House of trying to influence the testimony of an Air Force general who was speaking about the project's potential to interfere with the Global Positioning System, the satellite network relied on by the military and private industry. The staffers said Gen. William Shelton revealed in an earlier closed meeting that the White House pressured him to include language in his testimony Thursday supporting LightSquared's venture.

The accusation that Shelton was pressured came at the same time the White House was attempting to explain its role in the awarding of $500-million loan guarantee to now-bankrupt Solyndra, in which billionaire Obama bundler George Kaiser was a major investor.

Media coverage and commentary has been extensive, typified by this observation by Chris Stirewalt writing on FoxNews.com :

First there was Fast and Furious, then there was Solyndra and now there is LightSquared -- three high-level scandals that involve allegations of cover-ups inside the Obama administration.

For a president who is already dragging an unpopular agenda and low marks on his handling of the economy along the campaign trail, this scandal troika is seriously bad news.

On February 2, NLPC first made the allegation that Falcone's campaign contributions helped grease the skids for the FCC action in a letter to House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Related:

Obama Invested in Company That Got Sweet Deal From FCC (Fox Business Network video)


Will FCC's Political Favor for LightSquared Result in GPS Interference ?

Did Harbinger Hedge Fund Buy Influence With White House?; Probe Asked of FCC Spectrum Giveaway


Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 16, 2011, 10:34:01 AM
Home Depot's Bernie Marcus Calls Dodd-Frank Regulations The "Bonnie & Clyde Bill"
http://townhall.com ^ | 9/15/2011 | Greg Hengler




The Dodd-Frank Act goes on for 2,319 pages. Like Nancy Pelosi's "pass it to find out what's in the O'care Bill" statement, Senator Dodd said, "No one will know until this is actually in place how it works. But we believe we've done something that has been needed for a long time. It took a crisis to bring us to the point where we could actually get this job done." The Wall Street Journal reported on July 14, 2010, just one week before Obama signed Dodd-Frank into law that it will "unleash the biggest wave of new federal financial rule-making in three generations." It will require "no fewer than 243 new formal rule-makings by 11 different federal agencies." Regulation, of course, is what failed last time. The Fed had their people in the banks watching every day as the banks turned into casinos, and now we have Congress abnegating its constitutional obligation with their punting to regulatory agencies.

Don't say the writing wasn't on the wall for Dodd-Frank. Don't say it wasn't there for Mr. Hopenchange either.


(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 16, 2011, 11:41:50 AM
Is LightSquared the New Solyndra? The Case of Air Force 4-Star and White House Pressure
Big Government ^ | September 16, 2011 | Michael Angley




Last week, Air Force General William Shelton, Commander of Air Force Space Command, told Congressional leaders in a closed-door session that the White House tried to pressure him to change his testimony to favor a company that turns out to be a major donor to the Democratic Party.

LightSquared, a Virginia-based broadband satellite company, has been vying for permission to operate in a frequency band in the vicinity of our nation’s GPS system.

In Gen Shelton’s presentation to Congress, he went prepared to warn of the dangers the LightSqaured project would pose to our GPS integrity. He said the White House attempted to pressure him into altering the substance of his testimony to indicate:


1. That the military would continue to test the proposed bandwidth for ways LightSquared could still use the spectrum space without interfering with GPS.
2. That he hoped the necessary testing for LightSquared would be completed within 90 days.


The general refused to make these changes.



(Excerpt) Read more at biggovernment.com ...
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 16, 2011, 06:33:17 PM
Restaurant chain partnering with White House anti-obesity campaign received ObamaCare Waiver
New Hampshire Watchdog ^ | 9/15/11 | Grant Bosse
Posted on September 16, 2011 9:29:48 PM EDT by jimbo123

Today, a top national restaurant chain partnered with First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move childhood anti-obesity campaign. Last year, that same company received a waiver exempting it from some of the most stringent mandates of ObamaCare.

Michelle Obama visited an Olive Garden restaurant in Hyattsville, Maryland today as Darden Restaurants announced that it would reduce the amount of calories and sodium in its menu by 20% over the next decade.

Darden Restaurants, which owns Olive Garden, Red Lobster, Longhorn Steakhouse, Capital Grille, Bahama Breeze, and Seasons 52, received a waiver from Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on October 26, 2010 allowing the company to avoid some of the insurance mandates of the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as ObamaCare. The law eventually outlaws “mini-med” plans to offer low benefit levels to low-wage employees. But companies can keep their mini-med plans if they can show that they couldn’t afford to comply with the law.

(Excerpt) Read more at newhampshire.watchdog.or g ...
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 16, 2011, 06:40:12 PM
Republican lawmakers say the White House may have tried to push through a company's proposed wireless network despite objections from the military that the project could disrupt vital satellite navigation systems.
Lawmakers this week raised fresh questions about the proposed network by Virginia-based Lightsquared, a firm backed by billionaire Philip Falcone, a prominent donor to Obama's Democratic party.
At a hearing Thursday of the House of Representatives strategic forces subcommittee, the Republican chairman, Michael Turner, said he would request that the House Oversight Committee investigate whether the company received special treatment from the White House or federal regulators.
The hearing came after a report in the Daily Beast website alleged the White House pressed the head of US Air Force space command, General William Shelton, to downplay his concerns and alter his testimony to lawmakers.
President Barack Obama's administration denies the allegations, and Lightsquared has rejected charges it is getting special favors.
Republican staff members of the committee alleged the Air Force general told lawmakers that Obama administration officials lobbied him to express support in his testimony for the Lightsquare proposal, the Washington Post reported Friday.
At Thursday's hearing, Shelton said the proposed wireless broadband network by Lightsquared would interfere with the Global Positioning System (GPS) relied on by the military and private industry.
Tests with Defense Department experts, civilian agencies and others "indicate the LightSquared terrestrial network operating in the originally proposed manner poses significant challenges for almost all GPS users," Shelton told the committee.

The general's spokeswoman insisted Friday that Shelton had not watered down his testimony due to alleged White House pressure. "General Shelton's testimony was his own supported by and focused purely on documented test results," Colonel Kathleen Cook told AFP.

The company originally planned to provide only satellite phones on its network, but the Federal Communications Commission issued a waiver to the firm in January allowing LightSquared to offer terrestrial-based wireless service to companies.

The Defense Department has raised concerns about interference with GPS users previously, and the FCC has promised not to allow the firm to begin operating until more testing is carried out to ensure there is no disruption to satellite navigation users.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/lawmakers-whouse-role-wireless-project-234306029.html




The head of the FCC declined to appear before the committee on Thursday, which the chairman, Turner, called an "affront" to the panel.
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 16, 2011, 06:48:49 PM
Flashback: Obama's Lunch Buddy's Company Given Obamacare Waiver (Olive Garden CEO)
Weekly Standard ^ | 7/12/11 | Daniel Halper
Posted on September 16, 2011 9:45:03 PM EDT by jimbo123

President Obama had lunch today with "four business leaders to discuss ideas to grow the economy and create jobs," according to the White House. The participants met to "discuss the importance of working with the private sector to promote job training efforts, including ways that companies have been partnering with higher educational institutions to develop curriculum and programs that ensure graduates will have the appropriate background and skills to succeed and get hired within the companies."

Curiously, one of the participants, businessman Clarence Otis, could have used today's affair to provide President Obama a "teachable moment" (a favorite phrase of the president himself). Otis might have explained to the president the negative effects of Obamacare, and why his business, Darden Restaurants, sought and received an Obamacare waiver.

(Excerpt) Read more at weeklystandard.com ...
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 17, 2011, 07:16:41 AM
Solyndra, the logical endpoint of Obamanomics
SEP 16, 2011 11:38 EDT
 
inShare
   
CRONY CAPITALISM | SOLYNDRA
The bankruptcy of solar-panel maker Solyndra neatly encapsulates the economic, political and intellectual bankruptcy of Barack Obama’s Big Idea. It was the president’s intention back in 2009 to begin centrally reorganizing the U.S. economy around the supposed climate-change crisis.

To what end? Well, Obama claimed his election would mark “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” But that was just the cover story. At its core, Obamanomics is about the top-down redistribution of wealth and income. Government spending on various “green” subsidies and programs, along with a cap-and-trade system to limit carbon emissions, would enrich key Democrat constituencies: lawyers, public sector unions, academia and non-profits.

Oh, and Wall Street, too. Who was the exclusive financial adviser to Solyndra when it was trying to secure the $535 million loan from Washington? Goldman Sachs. And had the cap-and-trade scheme been enacted, big banks stood ready to reap billions from the trading of carbon emission credits.

No wonder many Democratic strategists predicted their party’s 2008 landslide win would usher in a generation of political dominance. Obamanomics, essentially, would divert taxpayer dollars to the Green Lobby – and then into the campaign coffers of the Democratic Party. This is what crony capitalism is really all about: politicians enriching favored businesses, who then return the favor. Or maybe it’s the other way around, Who cares, really. It’s an endless, profitable loop for both.

And Obama almost pulled it off. The Great Recession conveniently allowed the president to start the spendathon under the guise of economic stimulus. (“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.” – White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, 2009). As it turns out, the $38.6 billion loan program for clean energy firms that Solyndra benefited from has created just 3,545 permanent new jobs after parceling out half its dough. That works out to around $5 million a job.

Unfortunately for the Obamacrats, the financial meltdown also undercut political support for cap-and-trade on Capitol Hill. Voters worried the scheme would slow growth and cost jobs. But without permanently and continually raising the price of carbon-based fuels, many green businesses can’t make the numbers work.

As Peter Lynch, a New York-based solar energy analyst, told ABC News:

It’s very difficult to perceive a company with a model that says, well, I can build something for six dollars and sell it for three dollars. Those numbers don’t generally work. You don’t want to lose three dollars for every unit you make.

Unless, of course, American taxpayers make up the difference — though in the case of Solyndra, even government’s thumb on the scale wasn’t enough to save it. And it often isn’t enough when an investment’s goals are a fat political reward rather than a financial one. Indeed, studies of similar government investment efforts around the world show they’re usually a bad deal for taxpayers. An analysis of Canada’s government-backed venture capital fund, for instance, found the recipient firms “underperform on a variety of criteria, including value-creation, as measured by the likelihood and size of IPOs and M&As, and innovation, as measured by patents.”

Even after getting the loan, Solyndra spent $187,000 on lobbying efforts, according to Bloomberg, including trying to get the White House to push government agencies to install its panels on the rooftops of federal buildings and  extend “buy American” rules that favor U.S. companies. Instead of revenue seeking, Solyndra was “rent seeking,” which means trying to make money by manipulating government .

And when the White House was trying to determine whether to sink another $67 million into Solyndra, its calculus was political not financial (via The Washington Post):

“The optics of a Solyndra default will be bad,” the Office of Management and Budget staff member wrote Jan. 31 in an e-mail to a co-worker. “If Solyndra defaults down the road, the optics will be arguably worse later than they would be today. . . . In addition, the timing will likely coincide with the 2012 campaign season heating up.”

That’s not how the private sector makes investment decision. But it’s routine for government where the stakeholders are politicians, bureaucrats, lobbyists and favored constituencies. The takers, not the makers. That’s whose side Obamanomics
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 18, 2011, 05:37:55 PM
Florida Officials: EPA is Putting State Through Water Torture
Sunshine State News ^ | August 9, 2011 | Kenric Ward
Posted on September 18, 2011 6:33:05 PM EDT by Brilliant

State and regional water officials poured criticism on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Tuesday, calling the EPA's proposed pollution standards heavy-handed, overly expensive and indefensibly "poor science."

Appearing at a congressional hearing conducted by U.S. Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Ocala, a cavalcade of water experts disputed the EPA's tactics and questioned its motives.

Paul Steinbrecher, president of the Florida Water Environment Association Utility Council, said the EPA's numeric nutrient criteria are "rooted in poor science."

"It was done to settle a lawsuit, not to meet an environmental need. Setting criteria for the entire state in an unrealistic time frame, they found there was no way to do a reasonable job in 12 months. So they resorted to shortcut statistical methods that are shoddy at best," Steinbrecher charged.

Richard J. Budell, director of the Office of Agricultural Water Policy at the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, said the EPA program would cripple the state with excessive costs and kill jobs.

While the EPA estimates implementation costs between $135 million and $236 million annually, the state agriculture department, working with the University of Florida Agricultural Resource Economics Department, estimated the implementation costs just for agricultural land uses at between $900 million and $1.6 billion annually and could result in the loss of more than 14,000 jobs.

"Preliminary estimates from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection peg the implementation costs for urban stormwater upgrades alone at nearly $2 billion annually," Budell said.

A study commissioned by a large coalition of Florida-based public and private entities estimated the total implementation costs at between $1 billion and $8.4 billion annually. The wide variability in this latter estimate is, in part, due to the uncertainty associated with not yet knowing the rule requirements, Budell asserted.

Saying his community is getting "whipsawed" by the EPA, David Richardson of Gainesville Regional Utilities suggested that the agency's initiative amounts to ill-conceived, one-size-fits-all rule-making.

"Our community already has an EPA-approved, site-specific numeric nutrient rule -- known as the Alachua Sink Nutrient Total Maximum Daily Load -- and Gainesville Regional Utilities is participating in a $26 million project, called the Paynes Prairie Sheetflow Restoration Project. to comply with that EPA-approved rule. No environmental benefit will result from overlaying new generalized nutrient criteria rules on waters already subject to this science-based, site-specific nutrient rule; only needless economic expenditures will result.

"In spite of our extensive comments and requests, the NNC rule adopted on Nov. 14, 2010, provides no meaningful solution. At a minimum, the rule requires that we spend $1 million demonstrating once more that our sophisticated wetlands restoration project comports with EPA’s new generalized mandates. We feel whipsawed," said Richardson, assistant general manager for GRU.

Before convening Tuesday's hearing at the University of Central Florida, Rep. Stearns, who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, said:

“Although the EPA originally accepted the standards set by Florida, under outside pressure the EPA decided to impose its own standards. Numerous studies in Florida indicate that the Washington-imposed standards will have a devastating impact on Florida’s job creation, economy and certain agencies."

Stearns, in turn, was criticized by environmentalists who were angered at being omitted from Tuesday's list of speakers.

“If Stearns wants to hear from his constituents, he should make room to hear from business owners and residents who have endured the public health threat posed by toxic algae outbreaks and fish kills at dozens of cold-water springs, at Sanibel Island, Naples, Daytona, and other tourist beaches, and along the St. Lucie, Indian, St. Johns and Caloosahatchee rivers,” said Earthjustice attorney David Guest.

A lawsuit by Earthjustice spawned the EPA's proposed numeric nutrient criteria.

But Steinbrecher said the new rules would "displace many very good site-specific nutrient standards in place now. TMDLs [total maximum daily loads] were developed to deal with nutrients, and nutrient-reduction obligations have been undertaken by a full range of entities."

By contrast, he said, EPA's "poorly derived numbers would replace properly derived nutrient numbers. EPA would move to a target with no better result."

By requiring new standards for nitrogen -- some below the part-per-million rates found in natural water bodies -- the EPA rules would cost Floridians an average of $700 more per year on their utility bills, Steinbrecher said.

In prepared testimony, Budell and Richardson offered state and local perspectives (excerpted text):

RICHARD BUDELL: Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services

"In the EPA’s own words, 'Florida has developed and implemented some of the most progressive nutrient management strategies in the nation.' Florida is one of the few states that has implemented a comprehensive framework of accountability that applies to both point and nonpoint sources and provides authority to enforce nutrient reductions.

"The EPA has also acknowledged that Florida has placed substantial emphasis on the monitoring and assessment of its waters and, as a result of this commitment, has collected significantly more water quality data than any other state. Greater than 30 percent of all water quality data in the EPA’s national water quality database comes from Florida. Florida was the first state in the nation to implement comprehensive urban stormwater management regulations. Florida’s treated wastewater reuse program is a model for the rest of the country.

"Our agricultural Best Management Practices program is firmly rooted in state law, is backed by sound science and is a critical component of Florida’s overall water resource management programs. These practices have been implemented on over 8 million acres of agricultural and commercial forest lands in Florida.

"By targeting its efforts and resources, Florida has made significant progress in nutrient reduction water resource restoration. Examples range from Tampa Bay, where sea grasses have returned to levels not seen since the 1950s and now cover 30,000 acres, to Lake Apopka, where phosphorous levels have been reduced by 56 percent and water clarity increased by 54 percent.

"Despite these glowing reviews and Florida’s demonstrated commitment to water resource protection and restoration, EPA, in response to litigation, determined in January of 2009 that Florida had not done enough and mandated the prompt promulgation of numeric-nutrient water quality criteria within one year. Before that year was up, EPA entered into a settlement agreement with the plaintiffs and agreed to deadlines for federal rule adoption that, for all practical purposes, usurped Florida’s ongoing efforts to develop its own standards.

"This takeover of Florida’s efforts was further aggravated by EPA’s rule-making process. Florida stakeholders were not accustomed to the manner in which EPA develops rules. Under state law, rule-making provides much more opportunity for input, discussion and dialogue. While the state convenes Technical Advisory Committee meetings and public workshops open to public dialogue and interaction, EPA holds public hearings where the public can make comments to silent, nodding representatives while a giant five-minute timer counts down. While Florida’s sunshine laws make all data and information available to the public throughout the rule-making process, EPA restricts the amount of information available to the public and doesn’t make all relevant analyses available for comment.

"Outside of the process concerns, the methods used by EPA to construct its rules are inconsistent with EPA’s own guidance documents and the advice of EPA’s Science Advisory Board. EPA compounded this situation by improperly applying the methods it did use. As a result, in many cases the rule would deem healthy waters as impaired.

"In the preamble to their rule, EPA admits that they were unable to find a cause-and-effect relationship between nutrient concentration and biological response for flowing waters like streams and rivers. In the absence of that cause-and-effect relationship, there can be no certainty that the money and human resources devoted to reduce nutrient content in a stream or river will result in any measurable improvement in the biological condition of that stream or river.

"Florida believes that it is very important to link numeric criteria with an assessment of the biological health of a water body before requiring the implementation of costly nutrient-reduction strategies. Without this linkage, implementation of the EPA criteria would have Florida citizens, businesses, wastewater and stormwater utilities and agricultural producers spending time and money attempting to reduce nutrient concentrations, in some cases to levels below natural background.

"From an agricultural perspective, I can tell you without question that virtually no sector of Florida agriculture can comply with the final EPA nutrient criteria without the implementation of costly edge-of-farm water detention and treatment. Construction of these facilities takes land out of production and requires ongoing operation and maintenance.

"None of these costs can be passed on by the producer. Few growers can afford to implement this kind of practice without the support of farm bill or state-derived cost-share program payments. Florida wastewater utilities believe that expensive reverse osmosis technologies will have to be employed in order for them to comply with the requirements of their point-source discharge permits. These technologies are not only costly to implement and maintain, but they require an enormous amount of energy to operate.

"Florida is pleased that the EPA has agreed to request that the National Research Council convene a panel to review all of the economic studies and render an opinion on the likely costs of implementation.

"In closing, Florida believes that Florida is best positioned to assess the health of its waters and establish associated water quality criteria for their protection and restoration. Florida has earned the right to exercise the authority envisioned by the Clean Water Act to develop its own water quality standards and implement them through an EPA-approved and predictable process governed by existing state law."

DAVID RICHARDSON, Gainesville Regional Utilities

"The recently adopted numeric-nutrient criteria rule is undermining our widely supported environmental restoration project -- the Paynes Prairie Sheetflow Restoration Project -- by introducing unnecessary regulatory burden, risk and uncertainty.

"The new regulatory requirements will cost our customers up to $120 million in compliance costs or, if we are lucky, a minimum of 1 million customer dollars to pursue highly uncertain regulatory relief. Unfortunately EPA’s nutrient criteria rule will provide no additional environmental benefit for this project.

"I’m sure you must be wondering, if this rule results in customer expenditures with no environmental benefit, why have we not worked with EPA during rule development to prevent this from happening. We have. We provided lengthy written comments and met personally with representatives from EPA’s Office of Science and Technology during rule development.

"The Paynes Prairie Sheetflow Restoration Project is a major environmental restoration project which will improve water quality, protect drinking water and restore 1,300 acres of natural wetlands within Paynes Prairie Preserve State Park. The $26 million project is a partnership among Gainesville Regional Utilities, city of Gainesville Public Works, FDEP, the St. Johns River Water Management District and the Florida Department of Transportation, and is broadly supported in the community.

"We must proceed with this project to comply with FDEP and EPA permit conditions. This project is incorporated in a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit that EPA approved and FDEP issued in 2010.

"Now, barely a year later, new regulations have been adopted that put this project in jeopardy. No site conditions have changed, no additional data suggest a different approach is needed, none of the underlying science that led to the development of this project has changed. The only change is that EPA has adopted a new set of generalized nutrient rules that do not acknowledge or allow for the wide range of naturally occurring nutrient levels, or allow solutions that are tailored to site-specific conditions.

"FDEP and EPA still support this project, but demonstrating that this project meets the newly adopted NNC regulation is costly and uncertain. We ask that this subcommittee please help us avoid spending customer money on activities that will not result in an environmental benefit."

Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 19, 2011, 06:32:58 AM
Every Single One: The Politicized Hiring of Eric Holder’s Appellate Section
Pajamas Media ^ | September 19, 2011 | Hans A. von Spakovsky




All seven new hires to the Justice Department's Criminal Section have far-left resumes — which were only released following a PJMedia lawsuit. (This is the eleventh of a series of articles about the Justice Department's hiring practices since President Obama took office.

Today represents the tenth installment of PJMedia’s expose into the heavily politicized hiring practices of the Civil Rights Division in the Obama Justice Department. The series has exposed the obvious liberal litmus test applied to the hiring of all new career attorneys since Eric Holder and liberal appointees such as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Thomas Perez took the reins.

It has also revealed a stunning degree of hypocrisy (even by liberal standards) by Department leaders, especially Holder himself. The attorney general, after all, trashed the Bush administration and came into office promising that neither political affiliation nor ideology would play any role in hiring at the supposedly “reinvigorated” Civil Rights Division.


If these articles have shown nothing else, they have demonstrated the hollowness of Holder’s rhetoric. He and his colleagues owe a sincere apology to those who were wrongfully criticized during the prior administration.

It is disappointing, but not altogether surprising, that it took a federal Freedom of Information Act lawsuit to pry the resumes of the new career attorney hires out of the hands of the self-styled “most transparent administration in history.” Holder and his ilk knew full well that the resumes would prove politically embarrassing and would reveal the extent of the political shenanigans going on in the Civil Rights Division. They were right. The effort to fill every last corner of the Division with left-wing partisans, militant activists, and other committed liberals has been unprecedented.

In contrast to its Bush predecessors, who filled the career ranks of the Division with attorneys from across the political spectrum, the Obama political leadership has firmly slammed the door on conservatives, sanctioning ideological discrimination.

Today’s final segment focuses on the Appellate Section. This Section handles the appeals for all sections in the Civil Rights Division, and its work thus touches on every statute within the Division’s jurisdiction. It also files amicus curiae briefs in courts throughout the country, setting forth the Division’s position on various legal and policy matters. In essence, when it comes to articulating official policy, the Division often speaks through its Appellate Section.

The Section is headed by Obama contributor Diana Flynn, who went by the name David Flynn until commencing a sex change process. Flynn is assisted by two of the most fiercely partisan individuals in the Division — Mark Gross and Jessica Silver — which is quite a feat in that hotbed of craziness. The Section is perhaps second only to the Voting Section in terms of its concentration of liberal political activists. In fact, during the Bush administration, the political leadership was confronted on numerous occasions with career attorneys refusing to sign briefs because they disagreed with the positions being advanced by the administration on an ideological (not legal) basis. I’m certain there are no longer any such reservations with Eric Holder now at the wheel.


Seven new career attorneys have been hired into the Appellate Section during the Obama administration. Just as is the case with each of the other nine sections covered in this PJMedia series — the Voting Section, the Office of Special Counsel for Immigration-Related Unfair Employment Practices, the Special Litigation Section, the Education Section, the Employment Litigation Section, the Coordination and Compliance and Section, the Housing and Civil Enforcement Section, the Disability Rights Section, and the Criminal Section — every single one of these Appellate Section lawyers easily passes the Civil Rights Division’s liberal litmus test. The resumes tell the story:


Thomas Chandler: Mr. Chandler joined the Section after an eight-year stint as the chief of the Disability Rights Office at the Federal Communications Commission, a barren wasteland in terms of conservatives or even apolitical individuals. This is his second tour of duty in the Section; he previously served for 12 years in the Section but, in a common theme among many of the Division’s career lawyers, opted to leave (along with the Democratic political appointees) as soon as the Bush administration came to power. On his resume, he proudly highlights the fact that he helped develop many of the Division’s most radical positions on Title VII (including its policies endorsing racial preferences in employment) during the Clinton administration.

Erin Flynn: Ms. Flynn was hired into the Section as part of Attorney General Holder’s Honors Program, and her militantly activist background must have made her one of Holder’s top candidates. As a law student at Penn, she was the project manager of the “Reproductive Rights Clinic, Judicial Bypass Project,” which “coordinates with the Philadelphia Public Defender’s Office to assist pregnant minors in accessing Pennsylvania’s judicial bypass system” to attain abortions without parental consent.

She also worked as a fellow at the Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia, where she “explored the admissibility of mental health evidence” to help plead insanity defense in juvenile proceedings.” Before that, she was a paralegal at the Legal Aid Society of New York.


Her activities are conspicuously redacted from her resume; no doubt the Justice Department felt that disclosing them would prove even more politically embarrassing to both Ms. Flynn and the attorney general.

Appellate Section attorneys have considerable latitude in drafting the policy-laden amicus briefs that the Division files in courts across the country, and it’s no surprise that Ms. Flynn has been tasked with authoring the most controversial (and radical) briefs during this administration. For example, she took the lead in the Division joining the ACLU in arguing that school assignment plans that rely on racial demographics to promote “diversity” are perfectly okay and do not demand strict scrutiny. (This position, incidentally, flatly repudiated Supreme Court precedent.) She also authored the amicus brief contending that a school district is liable for damages under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act even after it took disciplinary action against students for racially harassing other students. And she penned the Division’s legally dubious brief insisting that the state of Arizona’s proof of citizenship requirements for voting violate federal law. In short, when it comes time to take positions that have little or no support in law, Ms. Flynn is the go-to person.


Roscoe Jones: Mr. Jones arrived in the Section at the outset of the Obama administration after spending the previous two-and-a-half years as a senior counsel to Senator Patrick Leahy on the Senate Judiciary Committee, where he worked extensively on oversight of the Civil Rights Division. Thus, he is another perfect example of how the Holder Justice Department is burrowing former political appointees into career civil service positions. (As I previously wrote, the Division pulled a similar trick with Karen Stevens, the new head of its Policy and Strategy Section.) Prior to his political slot in Sen. Leahy’s office, Mr. Jones was a fellow at the Public Justice Center in Baltimore, focusing on “impact civil rights litigation” on behalf of organizations and individuals purportedly “denied justice due to discrimination or economic status.”

He also found time to serve as a voting rights commentator for NPR, no doubt providing the kind of fair and balanced presentation for which NPR is so well known (although Juan Williams might disagree).

Earlier in his career, he interned in a political slot at the White House Chief of Staff’s Office under President Clinton. Meanwhile, during law school, he co-founded the Center for the Study of Race and Law, which helps foster a grievance society, and served as editor-in-chief of the Virginia Journal of Social Policy and the Law.

cont... http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/every-single-one-the-politicized-hiring-of-eric-holders-appellate-section/
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 19, 2011, 12:33:27 PM
The UN Disaster is Obama's Fault

By Jonathan Tobin

 
NOTE: Picture is NOT Photoshop-ed
Obama and Abbas share photo-op with portrait of Arafat

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | For many liberal pundits, the blame for the circus that will unfold this week at the UN with the start of a debate over Palestinian statehood is to be assigned to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu whom they wrongly claim has obstructed peace talks. Others are inclined, with more justice, to put the onus for the problem on Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas whose pursuit of UN recognition of statehood without first making peace with Israel is seen as both futile and counter-productive to the end that he claims to seek.

But the lion's share of the blame ought to fall on President Obama. Though peace talks were stalled when he took office in January 2009, the deterioration of a relatively stable standoff into the volatile situation that exists today is due in no small measure to the blunders that the president's team has committed over the past 32 months. Though friends of Israel will rightly give Obama credit for sticking to his word and vetoing the Palestinian resolution — a stand that will be undertaken as much if not more in defense of U.S. interests than those of the Jewish state — the diplomatic disaster that is about to be played out is the fruit of his own misjudgments.

It was three years ago in the fall of 2008 when then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered Abbas a Palestinian state in almost all of the West Bank, Gaza and a share of Jerusalem. Though the Palestinians had spent much of the previous months dickering with the Israelis over the terms of a peace agreement, in the end Abbas refused to sign much in the same way his predecessor Yasir Arafat had also declined to make peace after he had received such offers in 2000 and 2001. By the end of that year with a new American president about to take office, it was clear that the state of Palestinian politics was such that no PA leader could afford to make peace with Israel, no matter what the terms or where its borders would be drawn. Even if they were inclined to make peace, with Gaza in the hands of Hamas, Fatah leaders like Abbas couldn't survive an accord.

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That should have signaled the new American president that prioritizing the Middle East peace process would do more harm than good. But Obama was convinced the problem had more to do with his predecessor's closeness with Israel than the realities of Palestinian politics. So instead of watching and waiting for the Palestinians to come to their senses, Obama plunged ahead with a new strategy that distanced the United States from Israel in a futile effort to entice its foes to come back to the negotiations that they had abandoned months earlier.

The result of this tactical switch was the opposite of what Obama intended. The president's decision to ask Israel to make unilateral concessions to bribe Abbas to talk as well as his inexplicable decision to pick fights with the newly elected Netanyahu over the status of Jerusalem only persuaded the Palestinians that they need only sit back and watch while America battered its Jewish ally. Rather than working on the Palestinians to take yes for an answer and accept a state that would recognize the legitimacy of the Jewish state next door and conclusively end the conflict, Obama's actions encouraged Abbas to believe that he did not have to make concessions. Every demand from Obama on Israel was taken up by the Palestinians and put forward as a non-negotiable condition for the resumption of talks. Yet even when the Israelis gave in on some points and accepted a settlement freeze, the Palestinians still refused to negotiate.

Previously the Palestinians understood that any progress toward their stated goal of a state must come through the aid of the United States. Yet ironically it was Obama's ham-handed efforts to signal that America was demanding such an outcome without forcing the Palestinians to compromise that convinced Abbas that he could only profit by abandoning the U.S.-sponsored peace process. Obama's determination to distance himself from Israel upset the precarious balance that made an accord at least a theoretical possibility. Though the Palestinians claim they are going to the UN because the peace process failed the truth is what they are doing is an effort to evade negotiations. Obama's weakening of Israel had the effect of undermining America's own diplomatic standing leaving the Palestinians thinking they could ignore Washington's interests. Their UN gambit is a crude maneuver aimed at clipping America's influence in the region.

The debate in the UN this fall is just one more chapter in the ongoing war against Israel. The Palestinians will not get a state from this show and it may well be that Abbas and the PA will lose more from the resulting tumult than anyone else including Netanyahu. But it must also be understood as a profound defeat for American diplomacy that was only made possible by the hubris of Barack Obama.

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JWR contributor Jonathan S. Tobin is executive editor of Commentary magazine, in whose blog "Contentions" this first appeared.



Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 19, 2011, 12:40:41 PM

September 19, 2011 Obama Proposes New Czar
By Lurita Doan
9/19/2011
www.townhall.com



 

As the Obama agenda proves increasingly impotent, Americans have witnessed Obama's czars crash and burn or run for cover over the past thirty months.  From Van Jones to Kevin Jennings  to Nancy-Ann DeParle to Todd Stern to Ron Bloom, Obama's style of management--bypassing the senate-confirmed agency heads--has failed to yield the results promised to the American people.  You would think Obama would give up on the failed idea of using a curious collection of White House czars to manage complex economic and regulatory issues. No way.

Instead, in the American Jobs Act, Obama is proposing a new group of czars as a part of his "jobs" act-- the American Infrastructure Financing Authority (AIFA) czars.  President Obama’s newest czars will be given the authority to manage over a trillion dollars of federal funding for roads, bridges, buildings, waterways, dams and other infrastructure.

Here we go again.  No doubt, Obama hopes that few legislators or American citizens will read the deadly details buried within the 199 pages of his proposed American Jobs Act that will establish this latest czar-ship, nor understand just how expensive AIFA is going to be. 

As with Obama’s other czars, the AIFA czar comes with infrastructure requirements of his own: staff, office space and technology needed to perform the job. Managing what is in reality a trillion dollar budget is going to require a huge new staff that will, essentially represent an entire new federal agency.  Of course, nowhere does President Obama tell us why a new czar is required to manage infrastructure projects.  More importantly, Obama does not explain why the vast federal bureaucracy now responsible for these activities must be bypassed and a new, redundant agency is built.   

Make no mistake: the AIFA Czar position is redundant.  All of the infrastructure projects and tasks identified to be performed by Obama’s new Czar are already the responsibilities of the Senate-confirmed heads of Department of Transportation, the U.S. General Services Administration and the Department of Energy.

Some of these tasks are:

•"oversee entering into and carry out contracts, leases, cooperative agreements or any other transactions as are necessary"
•to approve the acquisition, lease, pledge, exchange and disposal of real personal property
•to review all financial assistance packages to all eligible infrastructure projects"  which includes “any non-Federal transportation, water, or energy infrastructure project, or an aggregation of such infrastructure projects, as provided in this Act.
•the construction, alteration, or repair, including the facilitation of intermodal transit, of the following subsectors:
·         Highways or roads.

·         Bridges.

·         Mass transit.

·         Inland waterways.

·         Commercial ports.

·         Airports.

·         Air traffic control systems.

·         Passenger rail, including high-speed rail.

·         Freight rail systems.

·         Waterwaste treatment facilities.

·         Storm water management systems.

·         Dams.

·         Solid waste disposal facilities.

·         Drinking water treatment facilities.

·         Levees.

·         Open space management systems.

·         Pollution reduced energy generation.

·         Transmission and distribution.

·         Storage.

·         Energy efficiency enhancements for buildings, including public and commercial buildings.

What does Obama's decision to create a new agency entity with redundant responsibilities say about his confidence in his own Senate-confirmed appointees that currently lead DoT, DoI,DoE and GSA?  And just why is the President proposing to transfer all of the power and contractual authority held by the Secretaries of DoT, DoI, DoE, and the Administrator of GSA to a new White House Czar?

If the President is voting no-confidence in his Senate confirmed appointees, then they should go.  But the nation should not have to spend precious taxpayer dollars on yet another, flaky, Obama Administration scheme to create a new White House Czar that is simultaneously able avoid traditional  accountability to the American taxpayer, while at the same time seriously politicizing decisions under White House control at a scale never seen before.

We've seen how the president's czars respond to oversight from Congress. When Congress calls with questions and concerns, the White House staffer often hides behind the protection of Executive Privilege. And, the agency head, confirmed by the Senate, is held responsible. Agency heads and Cabinet officials must venture to the Hill and be accountable to Congress. Yet, the actual policy for that program has often been managed by one of the ubiquitous White House czars.

Obama has created yet another accountability challenge. In addition to their ability to hold positions on other Boards of both for-profit and non-profit corporations, AIFA not only has a Czar but also a 7-member Board of Directors, all with decision-making ability.  Often, when decision-making responsibility is divided among so many, accountability is reduced and the president can hide behind the skirts of a handpicked group of loyalists.  AIFA would essentially be a vastly more powerful NLRB complete with all of the known problems and dangers of a grasping group of unaccountable political cronies.

When problems arise, a finger-pointing frenzy often ensues and the American taxpayer is left holding the bag.   Of course, you have to admire Obama’s scheme,  as noted in section 346 (on page 116), that offers token reports and evaluation of the success/failure of the Czar and Committee’s spending decision some  four years after implementation.  In this way, the final report card will only be issued long after all Obama devotees are out of office.

And what about the dedicated, trained, career employees at DoT, DoI, DoE and GSA who have been performing the tasks of contracting, construction proposal and prospectus review and development, government legal review of contracts and leases and repairs and maintenance?

These career professionals possess some of the best technical minds in their respective areas of expertise.  The current system is mostly transparent.  And, it is only when the White House applies political pressure that these things go badly wrong (Solyndra anyone?).

Instead of respecting and utilizing the expertise of these career professionals, Obama has proposed a system wherein they become pawns to political posturing and every infrastructure decision has the potential to become politicized.

Just at a time when our nation should be talking about cutting costs, Obama has put in motion the wheel of a phantasmagorically, bloated, spending project, that increases, phenomenally, the size of government,  duplicates existing governmental functions, escapes honest accountability, all while subordinating all contracting, development, and infrastructure programs to a new White House Czar. 

Lurita Doan
Lurita Alexis Doan is an African American conservative commentator who writes about issues affecting the federal government.

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Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 19, 2011, 12:44:58 PM
Is it just me?

I hate the word "Czar"... (Really it's Tsar)

I can't stand us using a Monarchy title for anyone in a democracy.

Disgusts me. I know it shouldn't be a big deal and it's pretty nit picky,but really? Come on... Fuck that aristocratic non-sense in this country.

What he is doing is outsourcing his own responsibilities and duties under the U.S. Const.     
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 19, 2011, 12:49:44 PM
I agree on this point, but I'm speaking a little more general here.

I just hate using that word in our country. Just seems "wrong".

Granted he is not the first to use that phrase, but its wrong and looks like shit.   We don't need czars  - we need consolidation of agencies, streamlining of management, ending duplicative agencies, etc.   
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 20, 2011, 07:23:48 AM
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-20/-extravagant-spending-16-muffins-found-at-justice-conferences.html

http://www.justice.gov/oig/reports/plus/a1143.pdf



WTF!  $121 Million in 'conferences" at DOJ alone in the last two years along with $16 muffins and $8 dollar cup of coffee? 

Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 20, 2011, 09:21:27 AM
DOJ AUDIT: $16 muffins, cups of coffee for $8.25 (TTL $ went from 47.8 mil in 08 to 73.3 mil in 09)
pcu ^ | 09/20/2011 | doj



DOJ AUDIT: $16 muffins, cups of coffee for $8.25… (First column, 2nd story, link ) Related stories: Spent $121 million on conferences in two years..

Read the original here: DOJ AUDIT: $16 muffins, cups of coffee for $8.25…


(Excerpt) Read more at portcityunderground.com ...


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The REAL scandal is not the $16 muffins or $8.25 cups of coffee, it is that spending by DOJ under ERIC HOLDER for conferences went up by OVER 53% from what it was under Bush Administration.
Just as Barry uses AF1, the White House, and the US TREASURY as his personal piggy bank, it seems Holder has the same regard for taxpayers money over at the Dept of Justice.

Ol Barry claimed he was going to go through the budget line by line to identify waste and save money. Just as he and Holder claim to be clueless about Fast and Furious, it seems they are as clueless about the enormous waste of taxpayer $ on gov't employee junkets.


Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 20, 2011, 07:56:53 PM
Aerospace industry tells Obama to cool it on bashing corporate jets
The Hill ^
Posted on June 30, 2011 11:27:31 AM EDT by Sub-Driver

Aerospace industry tells Obama to cool it on bashing corporate jets By Keith Laing - 06/30/11 10:16 AM ET

President Obama went over the top in his criticism of tax breaks for corporate jet owners, a lobbying group said Thursday.

"We're disturbed by President Obama's remarks on business aviation," Aerospace Industries Association President Marion Blakey said in a statement.

"General aviation plays an important role in our economy and took a substantial hit in the recent recession," she continued. "We feel that disparaging comments from the president regarding business jet users are not conducive to promoting jobs, investment and economic growth."

Blakey said private planes play a big role in the American economy. She added that Obama himself recently visited a plant that produces business jets.

"It seems odd that he would undermine the aviation industry one day after visiting Alcoa's factory and praising the workers who make parts and materials that are critical to producing business jets."

During the opening remarks of his press conference Wednesday, which was focused on the negotiations to raise the debt ceiling, Obama cited the tax breaks for corporate jet owners as an example of the kind of tax measure Republicans were protecting. "The tax cuts I’m proposing we get rid of are tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires; tax breaks for oil companies and hedge fund managers and corporate jet owners," Obama said.

"It would be nice if we could keep every tax break there is, but we’ve got to make some tough choices here if we want to reduce our deficit.

"And if we choose to keep those tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, if we choose to keep a tax break for corporate jet owners, if we choose to keep tax breaks for oil and gas companies that are making hundreds of billions of dollars, then that means we’ve got to cut some kids off from getting a college scholarship," he continued. "That means we’ve got to stop funding certain grants for medical research. That means that food safety may be compromised. That means that Medicare has to bear a greater part of the burden. Those are the choices we have to make."

Obama mentioned corporate jets six times in his remarks.
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 20, 2011, 07:58:06 PM
USDA Secretary: We Must ‘Create Appropriate Transition’ for What Americans Eat
CNS News ^ | 9/20/11 | Penny Starr



U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told members of the National Restaurant Association on Monday that Americans need to “adjust” their tastes so that they like the kind of food the government believes they should eat—and “we have to make sure that what we do is create the appropriate transition.”

(Excerpt) Read more at cnsnews.com ...
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 22, 2011, 08:18:26 AM
Obama Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (He now wants government to develop drugs)
National Review ^ | 09/22/2011 | Scott Gottleib




Fresh off its successes in the green-energy patch, the Obama team is turning its investment skills to the life sciences. Last Friday, President Obama announced his intention to increase the federal government’s involvement in the business of biotechnology.

His plan is for a new federal center inside the National Institutes of Health (NIH) that would be focused on the development and commercialization of new drugs. The National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) would engage in early drug-development work, eventually handing off programs to private companies for completion. In return, the government would take a guaranteed royalty stream on drugs that eventually made it to market. The center would get its seed money by tapping other NIH programs. Longer term, the administration’s plan is to provide billions in dedicated federal funding to the new drug center.

Several legislators have already questioned whether NCATS is needed. Rep. Denny Rehberg (R., Mont.) — chairman of the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations subcommittee, which funds the NIH — has said NIH should not search for a director for NCATS until Congress has given its approval. Last week, the NIH began circulating an advertisement for the new director’s job anyway.

The NCATS idea reflects the belief of the president and NIH director Francis Collins that the for-profit drug industry has ignored promising areas of science because these opportunities appeared financially dubious. Collins has said that government can plow scientific fields that profit-driven companies ignore. He suggested during an interview on CNBC earlier this year that NIH drug developers would also get a break from regulators at the Food and Drug Administration. His reasoning seems to be that government regulators could place more trust in government drug developers.

The president’s move to get the federal government further into the business of developing new medicines is coming at a time when his regulatory agencies have been badly squeezing the American life-science sector. The longer and larger development programs mandated by skittish regulators have made the cost of developing drugs dramatically higher — with fewer new programs getting funded, and a smaller number of drugs reaching the market as a result.

These trends, in turn, have discouraged private investment. Companies in the U.S., Europe, and Canada raised slightly more than $25 billion in 2010. This is about the same amount of money that they raised five years ago, but more of the money this time came in the form of profitable companies’ entering large debt transactions in a low-interest-rate environment, not in the form of true venture capital to start new companies.

In other words, venture investors are concentrating money in fewer companies because developing and launching new drugs has gotten so expensive. The result is far fewer new biotech initiatives. Five years ago, biotechnology companies raised almost $5 billion in venture capital that went to early-stage ventures. Last year, new companies raised about half that amount.

The new Obama drug initiative is of a piece with the administration’s abiding faith in the virtue of government investment as a trump to private entrepreneurism. At the core of this religion is a faith that that the political allocation of capital leads to better, or at least more “equitable” outcomes.

The achievements of the NIH are monumental, but its domain is basic science. This involves the discovery of scientific principles that can lead to new avenues of practical research. NIH funding has led to the discovery of molecular signals that often became the targets for new drugs. But the NIH was never in the business of actively developing the drugs themselves. That was always the work of the private sector.

For one thing, NIH has never been very good at drug work. The government already spends $30 billion a year on life-science research through the NIH — more than $50 billion once money from other agencies is factored in. Yet by its own count, the NIH has helped to discover only 84 drugs over the past 60 years. By comparison, in recent years, the private sector has spent about $60 billion and launched more than 30 products annually.

The NIH has also been reluctant to submit to the same kind of FDA oversight that is routine for private drug companies. By some counts, as much as 40 percent of all drug-development costs are now consumed by the auditing of clinical-trial data. For example, if a drug is found to reduce the size of brain tumors, multiple doctors have to review the x-rays, without being told about the previous doctors’ conclusions, to ensure that the readings weren’t affected by bias. Several years ago, approval of an important cancer drug that the NIH helped to study was delayed by many months because the NIH didn’t think it needed to submit to this kind of regulatory requirement. The FDA forced the NIH to go back and redo its analysis.

If drug development becomes the domain of government researchers, it’s a sure bet that political lobbying will eventually trump scientific promise and commercial viability when it comes to investment decisions. This fact has been borne out by the shortcomings of the government’s BioShield program, which was established in 2004 to protect against biological weapons and other threats. The program has been plagued by political meddling and attempts by politicians to steer contracts for vaccines and antidotes to favored companies and constituents.

The president talks about the biotech sector as an “engine” for job growth, even while he increases regulations on the industry and hundreds of thousands of employees are laid off. In July alone, the U.S. pharmaceutical industry shed 13,493 jobs, more than any other sector in the economy, according to a Challenger, Gray & Christmas report.

The irony is that the carnage caused by the president’s own policies has formed the intellectual foundation of his call for a government takeover of drug development. The entire experience brings to mind the Reagan adage describing the liberal political economy: If it moves, tax it; if it continues to move, regulate it; and when it stops moving, subsidize it.

But federal subsidies are not a substitute — politically or in practical terms — for a vibrant private biotechnology industry. Neither is the work of the NIH. When pressed on these points, the president says his new drug center will complement the private sector. But to listen to him describe its activities is to understand the real intention. The president wants to make blockbuster medicines. Maybe the resulting revenue is how he plans to plug his mounting deficit.

— Scott Gottlieb is a practicing physician and resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He was deputy commissioner of the FDA from 2005 to 2007.



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Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: OzmO on September 22, 2011, 08:20:55 AM
Gee, do you think they will work hand in hand with the FDA?   ::)

Scam city.   Not pharm companies in the USA aren't already a scam.
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 22, 2011, 09:29:36 AM
Study: Obamacare will jack premiums up 55%-85%
Daily Mail ^ | 9/22/11 | Don Surber




So, Ohio, how do you like President Obama now that you have had 2 1/2 years of him in the Oval Office? The Buckeye State turned blue for him in 2008, as the majority of voters bought into his mantras of hope and change and yes we can. The centerpiece of his domestic policy is Obamacare and now a new study shows that 790,000 Ohioans will lose their private health insurance and premiums will rise 55%-85% when Obamacare takes full effect in 2014.


(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.dailymail.com ...


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Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 23, 2011, 12:02:04 PM
Is Obama sinking American business? (Let us count the ways...)
Hotair ^ | 09/23/2011 | Ed Morrissey




So says Investors Business Daily after yesterday’s steep market drop. In their lead editorial, IBD puts the onus for stagnation and the inexorable slide back into stagnation squarely at the feet of Barack Obama and his economic policies. In fact, they list seven areas in which Obama is not just passively inept but actively hostile to American business and capital:

• Failed Fed policy. For three years, we’ve kept interest rates at record lows, undergone two rounds of quantitative easing and created $2 trillion in new money. On Wednesday the Fed announced its next move: the $400 billion “Operation Twist” — modeled on a failed Fed bond-buying program from the ’60s to push down long-term interest rates. With so much Fed meddling, the markets can’t help but be confused.

• Growing federal debt. In the European Union, debt-to-GDP ratios have hit an economy-crippling 140%. Greece, Italy, Ireland, Portugal and Spain all verge on default. But we have nothing to be smug about. U.S. debt of $14.5 trillion already tops 100% of GDP, a level economists believe saps a nation’s economic vitality. At the rate we’re racking up deficits — $4 trillion in just three years — we’ll soon join the EU in perpetual economic stagnation.

• Unstimulating stimulus. Faced with the clear failure of his previous stimulus, which wasted $840 billion, the president’s new plan spends another $457 billion and imposes massive new taxes on the middle class, small businesses and entrepreneurs. Some 1.9 million new jobs will be created, the president reckons. In fact, jobs will be destroyed.

• Class warfare. The president relentlessly attacks “millionaires and billionaires,” aided by the mainstream media’s penchant for repeating his factually challenged assertions about who pays our taxes. In pushing the new “Buffett Rule” to raise taxes on the rich, the president absurdly claims that millionaires pay less in taxes than their secretaries.

But as blogger Noel Sheppard notes, IRS data disprove this canard: 99.6% of those earning above $1 million pay taxes at a higher tax rate than secretaries. And just over 200,000 wealthy taxpayers pay 20% of all federal income taxes. These are the very people who create new businesses and jobs.

• Anti-business bias. The president’s war on small business and entrepreneurs has devastated American job creation, once the envy of the world. A House committee estimates more than half the taxes under the new “stimulus” will be paid by small businesses.

Refusing to sign an already negotiated free-trade bill, proposing onerous new taxes and regulations, and pursuing a money-wasting and corrupt “green jobs” strategy are leaving a wake of economic destruction.

• Regulatory siege. Federal regulation costs America $1.8 trillion a year — or roughly 13% of all our output. Whether it’s the Environmental Protection Agency requiring power plants to shut down and others to be retrofitted with costly new equipment, or the National Labor Relations Board telling companies like Boeing where they can and cannot locate new facilities, or a moratorium on oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, or foot-dragging on the construction of a new pipeline from Canada that could boost U.S. energy security and lower prices, the government is a barrier to growth.

• ObamaCare. An estimated 4% of the U.S. chronically lacks health insurance — a serious, but manageable problem. Rather than address the real problem, the president and his allies in the Democrat-controlled Congress took over 17% of our economy. Now we’re stuck with a health care program that studies show will provide lower-quality care at a cost of as much as $1 trillion over the next decade.

I’d actually give Obama a pass on the first bullet point, and a share of the second. Obama didn’t appoint Ben Bernanke and doesn’t have any formal influence over the Fed’s actions. However, the Fed pursued the QE2 strategy and is now shifting to the “twist” in part because the Obama administration hasn’t offered any useful economic policies to propel growth. Bernanke can’t help by making money any cheaper — monetary policy is as loose as it can be short of a Weimar Republic approach. On debt, Obama has more culpability but has to share that with Congress, which actually writes and passes the budgets. We’ve been outspending our income for decades, and while the Democrats made the problem almost exponentially worse, Obama didn’t do that by himself.

The rest of this explains why Bernanke has to resort to gimmicky tricks to keep deflation at bay. Obama’s stimulus plan flopped so badly that apparently he feels the need for a do-over, and he’s attacking capital holders in deed and in rhetoric to pay for it. In what universe exactly does that promote investment and economic growth? (Answer: Harvard.) ObamaCare is part of a deliberate policy of regulatory adventurism intended on imposing the parts of the Obama agenda that don’t have a prayer in passing Congress, and all of this adds up to a deep hostility to private markets, capital, and economic freedom.

In short, when we most need a Hayek in the Oval Office, we have a hack instead.

IBD editorial cartoonist Michael Ramirez puts the issue in brilliant one-panel perspective:

Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 23, 2011, 12:39:51 PM
Obama Administration to Ban Asthma Inhalers Over Environmental Concerns
Weekly Standard ^




Obama Administration to Ban Asthma Inhalers Over Environmental Concerns 3:00 PM, Sep 23, 2011 • By MARK HEMINGWAY Single Page Print Larger Text Smaller Text Alerts

Remember how Obama recently waived new ozone regulations at the EPA because they were too costly? Well, it seems that the Obama administration is would rather make people with Asthma cough up money than let them make a surely inconsequential contribution to depleting the ozone layer:

Asthma patients who rely on over-the-counter inhalers will need to switch to prescription-only alternatives as part of the federal government's latest attempt to protect the Earth's atmosphere.

The Food and Drug Administration said Thursday patients who use the epinephrine inhalers to treat mild asthma will need to switch by Dec. 31 to other types that do not contain chlorofluorocarbons, an aerosol substance once found in a variety of spray products.

The action is part of an agreement signed by the U.S. and other nations to stop using substances that deplete the ozone layer, a region in the atmosphere that helps block harmful ultraviolet rays from the Sun.

But the switch to a greener inhaler will cost consumers more. Epinephrine inhalers are available via online retailers for around $20, whereas the alternatives, which contain the drug albuterol, range from $30 to $60.

The Atlantic's Megan McArdle, an asthma sufferer, noted a while back that when consumers are forced to deal with environmentally friendly products they're are almost always worse:

Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 23, 2011, 01:30:33 PM
Obama raising with Missouri stimulus beneficiary
Politico, ^ | 9/23/11 | Alexander Burns




President Barack Obama will raise money in early October with a Missouri businessman whose company benefited from a $107 million federal tax credit to develop a wind power facility in his state. Tom Carnahan, a scion of Missouri’s most prominent Democratic political family, is listed on Obama’s campaign website as a host of a $25,000-per-person fundraiser to be held in St. Louis on October 4. His energy development firm, Wind Capital Group, was helped by a sizable credit authorized in the stimulus, for an energy project in northwest Missouri.


(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...


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Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 23, 2011, 05:57:24 PM
Obamacare HHS rule would give government everybody’s health records
Washington Examiner ^ | 09/23/2011 | Tim Huelskamp
Posted on September 23, 2011 7:55:09 PM EDT by Scythian

In a proposed rule from Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the federal government is demanding insurance companies submit detailed health care information about their patients.

See Proposed Rule: Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act; Standards Related to Reinsurance, Risk Corridors and Risk Adjustment, Volume 76, page 41930. Proposed rule docket ID is HHS-OS-2011-0022 http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2011-07-15/pdf/2011-17609.pdf

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 23, 2011, 06:58:46 PM
Obama's Fuel Economy Rules A Job Killer, Auto Dealers Say
forbes.com ^ | 9/23/2011 | Jim Motavalli



Flying squads of auto dealers descended on Washington, D.C., this week. Amped up by a rabble-rousing talk by House Speaker John Boehner and clutching copies of a dealers’ association pamphlet entitled “A Flawed Fuel Economy Structure Produces a Flawed Result,” about 500 dealers lobbied their elected representatives to do what they could to overturn the 54.5 mpg Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standard for 2025 hammered out between automakers and the Obama administration.

(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 23, 2011, 07:50:14 PM
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2011/09/23/business-us-long-term-care-program_8696691.html


LMFAO!!!    what a friggin fiasco.   
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 23, 2011, 08:35:58 PM
Judge's blistering rebuke of two federal scientists stokes fires under Obama administration
Contra Costa Times ^ | 9/23/11 | Mike Taugher
Posted on September 23, 2011 9:34:55 PM EDT by SmithL

With a House Republican loading political ammunition in a national fight over government science, Interior Department officials said Friday they would stand by the work of two scientists whose integrity was attacked recently by a federal judge overseeing the Delta water wars.

U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger, in a lengthy and strongly worded assault Sept. 16, said the two scientists deliberately misled him when they urged him not to weaken new rules meant to help imperiled Delta smelt in wet years like this one.

He called one scientist, Jennifer Norris of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, a "zealot" who is unwilling to change her opinion even in the face of changing facts and said she and Fred Feyrer of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation had acted in bad faith.

He was critical because he said a fish and water issue originally presented as a lost opportunity came back in a new hearing as an extinction issue.

"The only inference that the court can draw is that it is an attempt to mislead and to deceive the court into accepting what is not only not the best available science, it's not science. There is speculation," according to a preliminary transcript of his comments.

The comments, made just weeks before Wanger is scheduled to retire from the bench to return to private law practice, have led to at least one call for congressional hearings and could provide ammunition to opponents of the Obama administration's environmental policies.

(Excerpt) Read more at contracostatimes.com ...
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 25, 2011, 05:02:07 AM
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/helenwhalencohen/2011/09/24/epa_to_shut_down_20_of_coal_plants_in_2012


He is trying to collapse the nation.   
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 26, 2011, 06:06:12 AM

Scary truth about Obamacare keeps seeping out
By: Examiner Editorial | 09/25/11 8:05 PM




.When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi famously said that she had to pass Obamacare through Congress so that we could find out what was in it, Americans were given a preview of what they are seeing now -- a profusion of legislative errors and broken promises related to President Obama's virtual government takeover of health care. Just this month, we have seen another tranche of bad Obamacare news.
Last week, Howard Dean, former governor of Vermont and chairman of the Democratic National Committee from 2005 to 2009, acknowledged that -- as Obamacare's critics have contended all along -- the bill will prompt many employers to drop their health plans. "Most small businesses are not going to be in the health insurance business anymore after this thing goes into effect," he said. Dean, of course, spun this as a cost reduction for business. But in fact it undercuts two key promises Obama made in order to pass his bill. First, if you like your health coverage, you probably won't be able to keep it. Second, millions of Americans will be dumped by their employers into subsidized insurance exchanges, which means that Obamacare will add significantly to the deficit.

Then again, thanks to a glaring but heretofore unnoticed flaw in the bill's language, Obamacare might not cost as much as expected because it won't serve those it was intended to help. Because supporters failed to read their bill before passing it, the letter of the law provides that low-income Americans in many states will not be eligible for the promised subsidies to purchase insurance. This simple technical mistake, reported this month by Investor's Business Daily, threatens to un-insure millions of those currently insured if they are dumped by employers into federally established insurance exchanges.

Also last week, we learned the true nature of another of Obamacare's empty promises. One of the key programs that made Obamacare appear deficit-neutral on paper -- the CLASS Act -- has now been exposed as nothing more than an accounting gimmick. On paper, this old-age care program brought in extra revenue in its early years by charging premiums without paying out benefits until the out years. It thus helped Obamacare's bottom line temporarily, but obliterated it in the long run. The fact that Obama's Department of Health and Human Services shelved the program indefinitely exposed the president's sleight of hand. Obamacare was designed to game the budget referees so that a massive, budget-busting bill could pass under the radar.

Obamacare, like most large-scale government schemes, has proven to be one man's dream and most Americans' nightmare. Obama has not yet paid the full political price for its passage, but Americans will pay even more dearly if the courts leave it in force.



Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/2011/09/scary-truth-about-obamacare-keeps-seeping-out#ixzz1Z3zk7Y6n

Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 26, 2011, 10:23:30 AM
EPA: Regulations would require 230,000 new employees, $21 billion
The Dailty Caller ^ | 9/26/11 | Matthew Boyle




The Environmental Protection Agency has said new greenhouse gas regulations, as proposed, may be “absurd” in application and “impossible to administer” by its self-imposed 2016 deadline. But the agency is still asking for taxpayers to shoulder the burden of up to 230,000 new bureaucrats — at a cost of $21 billion — to attempt to implement the rules.

The EPA aims to regulate greenhouse gas emissions through the Clean Air Act, even though the law doesn’t give the EPA explicit power to do so. The agency’s authority to move forward is being challenged in court by petitioners who argue that such a decision should be left for Congress to make.

The proposed regulations would set greenhouse gas emission thresholds above which businesses must file for an EPA permit and complete extra paperwork in order to continue operating. If the EPA wins its court battle and fully rolls out the greenhouse gas regulations, the number of businesses forced into this regulatory regime would grow tremendously — from approximately 14,000 now to as many as 6.1 million.


(Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com ...
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 26, 2011, 11:38:00 AM
Obama Proposes Adding ‘Unemployed’ to Protected Status
New York Times ^ | September 26, 2011 | ROBERT PEAR




President Obama has not been particularly successful in fostering the creation of jobs. But he thinks he has found a way to pry open doors in the workplace for many of the unemployed, especially those who have been out of work for a long time.

Mr. Obama’s jobs bill would prohibit employers from discriminating against job applicants because they are unemployed.

Under the proposal, it would be “an unlawful employment practice” if a business with 15 or more employees refused to hire a person “because of the individual’s status as unemployed.”

Unsuccessful job applicants could sue and recover damages for violations, just like when an employer discriminates on the basis of a person’s race, color, religion, sex or national origin.

White House officials see discrimination against the unemployed as a serious problem. In a radio interview last month, Mr. Obama said such discrimination made “absolutely no sense,” especially at a time when many people, through no fault of their own, had been laid off.

Mr. Obama’s proposal would also prohibit employment agencies and Web sites from carrying advertisements for job openings that exclude people who are unemployed. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has received reports of such advertisements but does not have data to show how common they are.

Republicans and some employers criticized the White House proposal. They said that discrimination was not common and that the proposed remedy could expose employers to a barrage of lawsuits.

“We do not see a need for it,” said Michael J. Eastman, executive director of labor law policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Already, Mr. Eastman said, the Civil Rights Act outlaws employment practices that have “a disparate impact on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin,”


(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...



________________________ _____________________


WTF!! !  ! ! !   
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 26, 2011, 02:01:28 PM
Obama's Regulatory Reform Plan: Denial
TalkingSides.com ^ | 09/26/11 | CaroleL




Stanford University Economist John B. Taylor and Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Diana Furchtgott-Roth recently told a congressional subcommittee that rolling back excessive government regulations and eliminating the threat of tax hikes would promote private-sector job growth more than another round of stimulus spending. But President Barack Obama, in the midst of his West Coast fundraising jaunt, said he makes no apologies for Wall Street regulation and environmental rules and doesn't buy the GOP charge they're costing jobs.


(Excerpt) Read more at talkingsides.com ...


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Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 27, 2011, 10:58:17 AM
Obama's Interior Chokehold on America (bureaucratic bottleneck in the Gulf cost economy $20B)
American Thinker ^ | 09/27/2011 | Jim Adams




How could a bureaucratic bottleneck in the Gulf of Mexico cost the U.S. economy nearly $20 billion and wipe out hundreds of thousands of jobs as far away as Ohio, Pennsylvania and California? Unfortunately, with this White House administration, anything is possible.

President Obama recently announced yet another jobs initiative -- knowing all the while that one very simple action on his part would indeed create new jobs, infuse federal and state budgets with billions of dollars, and make us less reliant on imports. But that didn't happen.

On Oct. 12, 2010, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said, "We're open for business," signaling that drilling for new oil in the Gulf of Mexico would resume. But, Mr. Salazar has an odd interpretation of the words "open for business."

Eleven months after the Secretary's announcement, drilling in the Gulf remains near a standstill. The government has used every stall tactic imaginable to delay permits and other administrative approvals that would help our economy and put hundreds of thousands back to work.

The Gulf Economic Survival Team (GEST) commissioned IHS Global Insight and IHS CERA Inc. to quantify the economic impacts of government's slow pace of permitting since lifting the moratorium. Their study revealed that the number of exploration plans and permit applications are on par with levels in 2009 through early 2010, clearly signaling the industry's intent to return to full operations. Industry also has invested billions of dollars in well containment technology to stop a Macondo-size spill if it ever became necessary. So safety can no longer be blamed for permitting delays.

That leaves Department of the Interior. The IHS study points to a backlog of project approvals. Despite their earnest efforts to process the growing stack of applications, regulators on the front line don't appear to understand the new regulations


(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...


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We are only one solyndra or tax hike away from prosperity according to MaoBama. 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 28, 2011, 04:21:35 AM
5 Major Ways The Obama Administration Is Killing American Jobs
Townhall.com ^ | September 28, 2011 | John Hawkins
Posted on September 28, 2011 7:15:05 AM EDT by Kaslin

Admittedly, the country was not in great shape when Barack Obama came into office. The United States had already gone into recession, the housing bubble had burst, and the global economy didn't look so hot either. Unfortunately, Barack Obama took a bad situation and made it much worse. Had Obama done nothing, chances are the country would be better off today and had he actually pursued a pro-growth policy of slashing regulations, cutting taxes, and tamping down the deficit, the economy would be immeasurably stronger than it is now. Instead, Barack Obama pumped job-killing, growth-draining rat poison directly into the veins of our nation's economy.

1) Obamacare: Obama pushed a massive new entitlement program past a Congress that didn't even read the bill. Many businesses don't fully understand how Obamacare will impact them when it goes into effect in 2014, but they do know their lives will be much more complicated, it will cost them a lot more money, and it will be considerably more difficult to provide health care for their employees. Obamacare is a major disincentive to hire new people.

2) Regulations: When the economy is reeling, that's when you need to cut back on regulations to spur growth, not gum up the works even further. According to the Heritage Foundation, "the Obama Administration imposed 75 new major regulations from January 2009 to mid-FY 2011, with annual costs of $38 billion. There were only six major deregulatory actions during that time, with reported savings of just $1.5 billion." In addition, the Obama Administration is proposing another seven new regulations that are projected to cost businesses somewhere between 35 and 100 billion dollars more. Every dollar that businesses have to spend trying to extricate themselves from government-generated red tape is another dollar that they can't spend on new workers who can make more of their products.

3) The EPA: The EPA has been waging a one bureaucracy war against American business and capitalism for a long while, but it’s stepping up its attacks to draconian levels under the Obama Administration. The EPA is pushing new greenhouse gas rules that could cost "7.3 million jobs and add $32.2 billion annually in new regulatory costs." Additionally, although environmentalists have claimed it's a "myth," the EPA is indeed planning to tighten its standards for how much dust can be in the air to a level lower than you'd find in "an average windy day in Dodge City." The EPA's new rules on boilers would wipe out 18% of the workforce in the pulp and paper mills. If you're a business owner in one of these industries and you see that the EPA is about to begin waging this sort of economic war against you, would you be creating any new jobs?

4) Spending: Even though Barack Obama promised to "cut the deficit in half by the end of his term," he's gone on the single biggest wasteful spending spree in recorded human history. Obama didn't start the bailouts, but he continued them, he pushed through a trillion dollar stimulus that did almost nothing for the economy, and he created a new entitlement program that, despite phony budget projections, everyone knows will add trillions to the debt. If Obama had actually gone in a different direction and lived up to his promise to cut the deficit, America's AAA rating would still be intact and we wouldn't have to worry about the possibility of America defaulting on its debts in as little as 4 (estimate from Tom Coburn) to 10 years (estimate from Mike Pence). America losing its AAA rating because of this level of spending was an almost unthinkable outcome before Barack Obama got into office. But now, businessmen have to consider the possibility of a government-caused default in less than a decade, an event that would create an economic climate in the United States that would likely be considerably worse than the Great Depression. Expanding in a situation like that is risky business and it's one more reason businesses aren't hiring.

5) Taxes: Obama has relentlessly demonized any American who's wealthy, productive, or owns a business. Then, Obama has gone on to scratch his head and wonder why those same people aren't creating jobs. Maybe he's never seen that old coffee-mug slogan, "The beatings will continue until morale improves." Setting aside pure politically-motivated class warfare, the reason Obama continues to regularly hurl his "two minutes of hate" at the most productive people in society is simple: It's a prelude to tax increases. The more you convince people that the Golden Goose is evil, the easier it is to get people to go along when you suggest slitting its stomach open. And the new taxes that are under discussion? They’re practically endless: killing the Bush tax cuts, a corporate jet tax, a value added tax, an increase in the capital gains tax, raising taxes on oil companies, a higher income tax on the "wealthy," the taxation of digital goods and services, healthcare taxes, raising the death tax, new corporate taxes, life insurance taxes, new energy taxes, taxes on allergy medicine, taxes on oxygen tanks, new real estate taxes, new tax rates for millionaires; on and on and on it goes. If you make enough money to actually hire someone to work for you in this country, it’s impossible to estimate how much of the money you've earned that you will be able to keep over the next few years. That uncertainty has caused job creators to hunker down, stockpile cash, and avoid hiring more people.
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 28, 2011, 10:20:20 AM
PhRMA president calls Obama policy ‘wrongheaded’
Curtailing patents will cripple R&D on pharmaceuticals, industry warns
12 Comments and 14 Reactions|ShareTweet|Email|Print|By Paige Winfield Cunningham
The Washington Times
Tuesday, September 27, 2011




BITTER PILL: John Castellani, president and CEO of PhRMA, cautions against cutting from 12 years to seven the length of a patent on a company’s new drug. (J.M. Eddins Jr./The Washington Times)Text Size:

The chief spokesman for pharmaceutical manufacturers says President Obama has stuck two thorns in the industry's side at a time marked by uncertainty as lawmakers contemplate cutting health care programs and battles over the new health care law wind their way through the courts.

When the president presented his deficit-cutting plan last week, he included measures that will drive up drug prices and squash investment in companies that develop drugs and medical devices, said John Castellani, president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA).

The industry is especially fuming over Mr. Obama's push to reduce the length of time a company can produce a drug exclusively by paring the patent protection time frame from 12 years down to seven.

"It's absolutely wrongheaded," Mr. Castellani said. "It drives the opposite effect that the president stated he wants to reach."

In an interview with editors and reporters of The Washington Times, Mr. Castellani criticized the administration for policies he thinks will hinder medical advancement, outlined recent negotiations with the Food and Drug Administration and touched on his hopes for the congressional supercommittee charged with reaching a deficit-reduction agreement this fall.

The next few years will be pivotal ones for the industry, as lawmakers seek to stabilize the chronically underfunded Medicare and Medicaid programs and more elements of the Affordable Care Act go into effect, he said.

"The decisions that are going to be made over the next 12 to 24 months are really going to drive the future of our industry," he said. "We just don't know what the future is."

A sector with powerful lobbying muscle, the pharmaceutical industry interacts with the federal government at nearly every turn, relying on the FDA to approve its products and in turn selling them to the one-third of Americans insured by Medicare and Medicaid.

That relationship is fraught with tension, as companies try to attract investors to develop and get new medicines approved and lawmakers attempt to keep health care costs down.

By opening the market to generic versions of drugs within seven years, instead of 12, the federal government could save an estimated $3.5 billion in federal health spending over 10 years.

But the pharmaceutical industry argues that companies need 12 years to recoup the costs of researching, developing and getting medicines approved by the FDA. Getting one new drug from the lab to patients costs between $1 billion and $1.3 billion and takes an average of 10 to 12 years, Mr. Castellani said.

"You can't go and say to a small, innovative biopharmaceutical company that is depending on venture-capital funding, 'Go out there and do everything you can to develop this next generation of medicines, and by the way, you won't have nearly the amount of time you'll get to recover the incredible cost,'" he said. "That's partly why you see the venture capital drying up."

The industry is also indignant that Mr. Obama looked its way to find the largest bundle of savings for his deficit-reduction plan. He wants to require drug companies to charge the government less for drugs supplied to low-income Medicare patients, as they currently must do for Medicaid patients.

Extending the drug rebate would save the federal government $135 billion over 10 years, according to the president. But Mr. Castellani said companies would just pass along the cost to private purchasers and have less money to spend in medical advances.

He did hand some credit to the president for pushing the FDA to modernize and expedite drug approvals. But when it comes to policy, he said, Mr. Obama doesn't understand the industry's "core" needs.

"I think this administration has a very difficult time understanding the horizontal fabric that's necessary to stay in our business," he said. "It is not just one thing that drives a business decision; there are whole sets of decisions that need to be made."

Mr. Castellani hopes the supercommittee will ignore Mr. Obama's rebate proposal as it searches for at least $1.5 trillion in cuts, tax increases or some combination in a deficit-reduction plan that is likely to include entitlement programs.

The industry is fresh off of negotiating a revamp of the Prescription Drug User Fee Act, which governs how much companies must pay to get new medicines approved. Under a deal reached last month, more of the fees will fund improving the FDA's ability to evaluate and approve drugs.

Industry leaders also are looking ahead to next year, when the Supreme Court is likely to hear challenges to the mandate in the health care law that requires individuals to purchase health insurance or pay a penalty.

If the mandate was overturned, and fewer Americans bought health care coverage than originally thought, pharmaceutical companies would encounter less demand on the insurance exchanges — the new marketplaces where many are expected to purchase insurance. The uncertainty is weighing on the industry, Mr. Castellani said.

"If the individual mandate is held to be unconstitutional, the exchanges don't work," he said. "If the exchanges don't work, the predicates for the economic models and the contributions we made, the changes in the insurance system don't, and the whole thing falls down."

© Copyright 2011 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.

Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 29, 2011, 08:58:24 AM
Hundreds of plants, animals in line for federal endangered species protection
ap ^ | September 29, 2011




The Obama administration is taking steps to extend new federal protections to a list of imperiled animals and plants that reads like a manifest for Noah's Ark - from the melodic golden-winged warbler and slow-moving gopher tortoise, to the slimy American eel and tiny Texas kangaroo rat.

...

With a Friday deadline to act on more than 700 pending cases, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service already has issued decisions advancing more than 500 species toward potential new protections under the Endangered Species Act...

Patrick Parenteau, an environmental lawprofessor at the University of Vermont. "They are moving through this large backlog at a fairly crisp clip now. This is the largest number of listing actions we've seen in a very long time, in decades."

Also among species that advanced for further consideration are 35 snails from Nevada's Great Basin, 82 crawfish from the Southeast, 99 Hawaiian plants and a motley cast of butterflies, birds, fish, beetles, frogs, lizards, mussels and more from every corner of the country.

Some have languished for decades on a "candidate list" of species the government says warrant protection but that it lacks the resources to help.

The flurry of recent action could help revive Obama's standing among wildlife advocates upset over the administration's support for taking gray wolves off the endangered list in the Northern Rockies and Upper Great Lakes, among other issues.


(Excerpt) Read more at ravallirepublic.com ...


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------




Dear God these people are insane. 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 04, 2011, 06:41:18 AM
Obama’s lawyers bid to regulate religious hiring
http://dailycaller.com ^ | 10/04/2011 | Neil Munro




Barack Obama’s Department of Justice will ask the Supreme Court to eliminate a long-standing legal precedent that protects religious organizations from government regulations.

The department “is going against what almost every court has decided … it has has taken an outlier position,” said Richard Garnett, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame and a senior fellow at the Center for the Study of Law & Religion at Emory University.

On Wednesday, lawyers will present their oral arguments to the Supreme Court in “Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.”

Cheryl Perich taught religion and a secular subject at the Michigan Hoasanna-Tabor school until she fell ill in 2004. When the school replaced her, she sued under the Americans with Disabilities Act. She lost the first round in 2004, but her lawyers persuaded the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati to rule in her favor last year.

The church had argued that her job was not covered by employment law because it was religious and so shielded from federal regulation under the traditional “ministerial exception.” That’s a long-standing term used in courtrooms to describe religious employees’ exemption from secular employment law.

The exemption is a legal spin-off from the Establishment Clause of the Constitution. That is part of the First Amendment, and was adopted in 1791 to shield religious institutions from government regulation, such as the creation of state-funded established churches similar to the Church of England.

The administration’s legal brief asks the court to eliminate this ministerial exemption, and to make all but a few core religious jobs subject to secular employment law.

If the administration’s claim is approved, government-appointed judges “could impose ministers on churches against their will,” said Luke Goodrich, a legal council at the Becket Fund, a religious-liberties group.


(Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com ...
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 05, 2011, 07:07:04 PM
(CNSNews.com) - Bantering with the audience at a fundraiser in St. Louis yesterday, President Barack Obama bragged about a new regulation, proposed by the Department of Health and Human Services, that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has denounced as an “unprecedented attack on religious liberty.”

"Darn right!" an audience member at the fundraiser shouted as Obama described the regulation.

“Darn tooting!” Obama said back.

The proposed regulation, designed to implement part of Obamacare, will require all private health plans in the United States to cover sterilizations and all FDA-approved contraceptives--including those that cause abortions—without charging any fees or co-pay. These regulations were drawn to implement a provision in Obama’s health-care law that calls for all health-care plans to cover “preventive services.”

Combined with Obamacare’s mandate that all individuals must buy health insurance, the “preventive services” regulation would require all American Catholics to buy health care plans that pay for sterilizations, contraceptives and abortions--all of which violate Catholic moral teaching.

A “religious exemption” in the regulation is so narrowly drawn that it does not include any lay Catholics, or any Catholic hospitals, charitable organizations, or colleges or universities. Thus, many major Catholic institutions in the United States would be forced to choose between dropping health insurance coverage for their employees and students or violating the moral teachings of their own church.

In comments on the regulation submitted to HHS last month, the Catholic bishops called for the regulation to be “rescinded in its entirety” and described the proposal as “government coercion of religious people.”

"Indeed, such nationwide government coercion of religious people and groups to sell, broker, or purchase 'services' to which they have a moral or religious objection represents an unprecedented attack on religious liberty," the bishops said.

At a Democratic National Committee fundraiser at the Renaissance Hotel in St. Louis last night, Obama touted the “preventive services” regulation to an appreciative audience.

“And, yes, we passed health care reform because no one in America should go bankrupt because somebody in their family gets sick,” said Obama, according to the official White House transcript of his remarks.

“Insurance companies can’t drop your coverage for no good reason,” said Obama. “They won’t be able to deny your coverage because of preexisting conditions.  Think about what that means for families all across America.  Think about what it means for women.” 

At that point, an audience member shouted: “Birth control.”

“Absolutely. You’re stealing my line,” said Obama.

“Breast cancer, cervical cancer, are no longer preexisting conditions,” Obama continued. “No longer can insurance companies discriminate against women just because you guys are the ones who have to give birth.”

At this point, a member of a laughing audience shouted out: “Darn right!”

“Darn tooting,” Obama answered back—to laughter. “They have to cover things like mammograms and contraception as preventive care, no more out-of-pocket costs.”

Last week, the Catholic bishops distributed an insert for placement in church bulletins all across the country. It called on Catholics to contact HHS to object to the regulation. On their website the bishops are now asking Catholic to write Congress to urge members to support legislation that would overturn the regulation.



http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/darn-tooting-obama-brags-about-hhs-reg-catholic-bishops-call-attack-liberty

Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 06, 2011, 11:24:49 AM
Obama’s premeditated murder of America
Canada Free Press ^ | October 6, 2011 | Judi McLeod




Why is no one stepping forward to halt the murder of America?

As surely as the Bolsheviks murdered the Romanov family at Ekateringburg on July 17, 1918, Barack Obama and his handlers are murdering America.

Why is no elected official stepping forward to halt the murder of America; the assassination of 300 million lifestyles, not even counting the untold millions of freedom lovers who depend on the USA worldwide?

It is now crystal clear that Obama is pushing America into the certainty of a socialist state.

Pretending it isn’t happening is not doing anything to stop the greatest nation ever paid for in blood and sacrifice from disappearing forever from a predator weary world.

It is patently clear that Obama is as much “your agent of change” as Raila Odinga, the despot he actively campaigned for one year before he ran for his own presidential election in 2008.


(Excerpt) Read more at canadafreepress.com ...
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Dos Equis on October 06, 2011, 11:32:49 AM
 >:(  I need to avoid this thread.   :-\

Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 06, 2011, 11:35:08 AM
>:(  I need to avoid this thread.   :-\





Why?   All the nasty shit MaoBama is doing go you a little pissed off? 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Dos Equis on October 06, 2011, 11:35:53 AM


Why?   All the nasty shit MaoBama is doing go you a little pissed off? 

Yes.
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 06, 2011, 12:49:20 PM
I've asked this question and never received an answer... maybe not in this thread.

Are either one of you worse off today than you were 10 years ago?

The buisness climate for everyone I know, my clients, their clients, their clinents clients - is the worse ever anyone can ever remember. 

Even many of the accounts I deal with say things are the worst of their lifetime and getting drastically worse.   

Obama has caused MASSIVE inflation in things that are generally fixed cost items and is collapsing the main street. 

Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 06, 2011, 12:53:13 PM
I've asked this question and never received an answer... maybe not in this thread.

Are either one of you worse off today than you were 10 years ago?

Watch this.  Should answer your question. 


Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 06, 2011, 01:03:46 PM
Maybe you personally - but for the overall country - people are drastically worse off.   The numbers are laid out for you in the clip I posted.   


Talk to any main street business person and ask them what is going on in the economy and if they are better off. 

And its where we are going!  Things are getting drastically worse on so many fronts.   
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 06, 2011, 01:12:12 PM
I'm asking about YOU guys personally.

I'm not asking about what we feel about the US at large.

I'm asking about you and Mark personally... Are you guys worse off today than 10 years ago? 5?

Some ways yes, some ways no.   Business climate is worst I can ever remember.   I have had more clients go out of business in the last two years than I can remember.   

There is simply no job creation and growth because people are not willing to risk capital for what is less and less return on investment due to a myriad of govt bullshit. 

Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 06, 2011, 01:15:26 PM

I still don't feel you are answering the question. You keep talking about business climate, but I'm talking about your business. Not the climate of business as a whole.

I feel you don't want to honestly answer the question... It's not a gotcha thing, it's a reality thing.


I did answer you - some ways some ways no. 

Business climate directly impacts on how things are for and and others.   It impacts on amount of time needed to get new clients, close deals, etc, all of which impacts on time, effort, etc to keep the same level of income, which is harder now.   
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 06, 2011, 01:21:43 PM
So what you're saying is you have to work a little more, but you have pretty much the same income as 10 years ago?


Way too simplistic as costs and inflation are killing everything. 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 06, 2011, 01:27:16 PM
So you're saying you're definitely worse off.

10 years - better off

5 - years - probably not as I made a killing from 2004 - 2008 and when Lehman went down - it killed NYC contruction industry.     
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 06, 2011, 02:49:27 PM
Cartwright named to advisory Defense Policy Board (Panetta also names Gorelick, Albright, Harman)
AP ^ | October 4, 2011




EXCERPT

Others Panetta is naming to the advisory board include former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, former deputy attorney general Jamie Gorelick and former Rep. Jane Harman. Panetta, Albright and Gorelick all served in the Bill Clinton administration.

The high-level board provides advice and opinions to the defense secretary on a range of policy issues.


(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...


________________________ ______________________




Mistress of Disaster ping!

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1462207/posts

Able Danger, 9-11 Report, Gorelick, and so much more...
various FR links & stories | 08-12-05 | the heavy equipment guy

Posted on Friday, August 12, 2005 2:19:36 PM by backhoe

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A52625-2004Sep26?language=printer

Gorelick has told friends that she would seriously consider an offer some day to serve as defense secretary ...

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2172976/posts

DAG Eric Holder was repeatedly told the “Wall” was blocking intel sharing
911FamiliesForAermica.or g ^ | January 27, 2009 | Tim Sumner

Three times during his tenure as Deputy Attorney General, Eric Holder was made fully aware that intelligence sharing with the Criminal Division was not taking place. As the officer in charge of day-to-day operations at the Department of Justice, his lack of due diligence ensured that the ‘Wall’ between the intelligence and criminal divisions of the FBI that Jamie Gorelick had built would remain in place for the foreseeable future. The ‘Wall’ stood as the Clinton administration and intelligence community saw the rising threat of al Qaeda, Ramzi Yousef was prosecuted for making the bomb used in the 1993 attack upon the World Trade Center and “Bojinka” plot to bomb American jetliners, and our embassies in Africa were attacked in 1998.

(snip)

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2090020/posts

Countrywide Made Home Loans to Gorelick, Mudd
The Wall Street Journal ^ | 9/25/08 | GLENN R. SIMPSON

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2046736/posts

Guess who’s been involved intimately with Fannie Mae (Anyone remember Jamie Gorelick?)
Rush Limbaugh .com ^ | 7/16/08 | The Maha

From the Maha -

Guess who’s been involved intimately with Fannie Mae? Does the name Jamie Gorelick ring a bell? This woman is everywhere, and Jamie Gorelick got a 26 million payout when she left the place. Jamie Gorelick got 26 million to leave, one of Clinton’s guys, Franklin Raines, Franklin Raines, he was kicked out after corrupting the place. He left shortly before he was taking it in the shorts, but he got out of there with no penalty whatsoever. What is it with these Clinton people? This is why we don’t get any tell-all books on the Clinton administration because they were all set up in these sweetheart deals — money, money, money, money — I still can’t get over this. Congress is not helping poor old Doug Gylfe, so now we have millions of Americans who are priced out of home ownership, which is how this all started. “Any rescue policy to stem forecloses could artificially prop up home prices and perpetuate the affordability crisis,” yet I’ll guaran-damn-tee you if government did nothing and home prices continue to fall then tomorrow the AP would write a story whining and moaning about the lack of asset value for people who still do own their houses. We just can’t win with these people.

(snip)

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2085666/posts

Mistress of Disaster: Jamie Gorelick
American Thinker ^ | September 19, 2008 | C. Edmund Wright

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2535774/posts

THEY’RE HERE (WTH??? Jamie Gorelick at the White House/BP meeting!!!)
politico ^ | 6/16/2010 |

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2526486/posts

Gorelick to Head BP Legal Team
Main Justice ^ | June 2, 2010 | Ryan J. Reilly











Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 06, 2011, 07:33:30 PM
Feds to design health insurance for the masses

By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR
Associated Press

Health Video

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WASHINGTON (AP) -- The federal government is taking on a crucial new role in the nation's health care, designing a basic benefits package for millions of privately insured Americans. A framework for the Obama administration was released Thursday.

The report by independent experts from the Institute of Medicine lays out guidelines for deciding what to include in the new "essential benefits package," how to keep it affordable for small businesses and taxpayers, and also scientifically up to date.

About 68 million Americans, many of them currently insured, ultimately would be affected by the new benefits package. That's bigger than the number of seniors enrolled in Medicare.

The advisers recommended that the package be built on mid-tier health plans currently offered by small employers, expanded to include certain services such as mental health, and squeezed into a real-world budget.

They did not spell out a list of services to cover, but they did recommend that the government require evidence of cost effectiveness.

"In this day and age, when we are talking about fiscal responsibility, it's a report that recognized that we have to take account of what we can afford while trying to make sure that people have adequate coverage," said panel member Elizabeth McGlynn, director of Kaiser Permanente's center for effectiveness and safety research.

Until now, designing benefits has been the job of insurers, employers and state officials. But the new health care law requires insurance companies to provide at least the federally approved package if they want to sell to small businesses, families and individuals through new state markets set to open in 2014.

Most existing workplace plans won't be required to adopt the federal model, but employers and consumer advocates alike predict it will become the nation's benchmark for health insurance over time.

With the nation divided over President Barack Obama's health care overhaul law, and Republicans condemning it as a government takeover, the administration reacted cautiously to the recommendations.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a statement that officials would hold "listening sessions" around the country before any final decisions are made, which could take months. The IOM panel recommended an extensive effort to engage the public.

"Before we put forward a proposal, it is critical that we hear from the American people," Sebelius said. The law extends coverage to about 30 million uninsured people.

Actually, work on the benefits package is already well under way within the HHS department. On the outside, a huge lobbying campaign to shape the final package is about to take off.

Employer groups - particularly those representing low-wage industries - want to keep benefits fairly basic. Since the government is going to be subsidizing coverage for millions of people, a generous plan will drive up costs for taxpayers, they argue. But consumer and patient advocacy groups that helped pass the overhaul law want to make sure their priorities are included.

The health care law requires that essential benefits include outpatient, hospital, emergency, maternal, newborn and children's care, prescription drugs, mental health and substance abuse treatment, rehabilitation, labs, prevention and wellness. But Congress gave the administration lots of leeway to determine the specifics.

In its 300-page report, the Institute of Medicine panel stressed that the package has to be affordable if Obama's overhaul is going to stand the test of time.

The panel used the analogy of a shopper at the supermarket. One option is to fill up your cart with all the groceries you want, and find out the cost at the register.

"The other option is to walk into the store with a firm idea of what you can spend and to fill the cart carefully, with only enough food to fit within your budget," the advisers said. "The committee recommends that (the administration) take the latter approach."

The first option compares to what the government now does with Medicare and Medicaid - it pays all the bills. But the advisers said Obama's plan should be on a budget.

The panel proposed a tough financial test. Few small employer plans currently offer comprehensive mental health coverage, for example. As such services are added, the total cost of the package should stay within a realistic budget target to be set by the administration. That would help keep premiums affordable.

"Without a budget, you could decide to live in a 10,000 square-foot house overlooking the ocean and drive a Jaguar," McGlynn said.

The panel's rough estimate put annual premiums for individual coverage under the plan at $5,500 to $7,000 in 2014, comparable to what employers pay now.

Interest groups will be poring over the recommendations.

"Moving forward, this is truly a lynchpin issue," said Neil Trautwein, vice president for benefits policy at the National Retail Federation. "I think there will be a tug-of-war on this proposal."

The Institute of Medicine is an independent organization advising the government on technical issues.

.

© 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.






We warned you morons! 
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 09, 2011, 01:23:08 PM
Hawker Beechcraft CEO takes on Obama administration
Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association ^ | October 9, 2011 | Alton K. Marsh


________________________ ________________________ __


Hawker Beechcraft Chairman and CEO Bill Boisture said targeting of the private aircraft industry both in terms of user fees and fiscal proposals appears to be intentional, and called fiscal policies such as user fees and depreciation schedules “irresponsible.”

The perceived attacks have damaged customer confidence, and contributed to some, perhaps the last 25 percent, of all employee layoffs and workforce reductions, Boisture said. “To have singled out our industry is irresponsible,” he said. “It must be intended,” he said in later comments.

In other remarks, Boisture said his staff decided long ago to treat the current recession as “the new normal,” and unfortunately that has proven true. “The only consistent thing we see is inconsistency,” he said. He added that, “…2012 looks like 2011, which looks like 2010.” What remains is a smaller, agile, efficient, and flexible company, he said. Nearly one million square feet of factory space has been closed, and 20,000 parts have been transferred to third-party manufacturers or to facilities in Mexico.

He said the new strategy to improve and retrofit existing products is seen in the Hawker 400XPR upgrades. “It is a very significant step in that direction,” he said. The company is testing the T-6 Texan as an attack aircraft that will be offered to the world’s air forces. Many of the countries planning to use the T-6 already have them in use as trainers. Another military push is the King Air, now offered for special missions and medical evacuation. Nearly a third of all special missions aircraft in use are built by Hawker Beechcraft.

The upgrades apply as well to the piston-engine models, the twin-engine Baron, and the Bonanza, which received newly designed interiors and cabin temperature control systems.

Hawker Beechcraft is continuing to expand and improve service centers, with a new one about to open in Wilmington, Del., and another just announced in Mexico.

Asked about a downgrade by Moody’s that indicates Hawker is not expected to return to profitability soon, Boisture said, “We are in good standing with our suppliers, customers, and our people. We have strong ownership. We are in good company [concerning the Moody’s rating]. About half the companies in Europe are on the same list.”

Hawker Executive Vice President Shawn Vick, who noted the King Air 250 is getting good reviews around the world for its short- and high-altitude runway capabilities, also took a swipe at the Obama administration. “Hopefully this nonsense ends soon and we can all get back to work,” he said.

Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 10, 2011, 06:57:13 AM
Aimless Obama walks alone
Last Updated: 3:45 AM, October 9, 2011




The reports are not good, disturbing even. I have heard basically the same story four times in the last 10 days, and the people doing the talking are in New York and Washington and are spread across the political spectrum.

The gist is this: President Obama has become a lone wolf, a stranger to his own government. He talks mostly, and sometimes only, to friend and adviser Valerie Jarrett and to David Axelrod, his political strategist.

Everybody else, including members of his Cabinet, have little face time with him except for brief meetings that serve as photo ops. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner both have complained, according to people who have talked to them, that they are shut out of important decisions.

The president’s workdays are said to end early, often at 4 p.m. He usually has dinner in the family residence with his wife and daughters, then retreats to a private office. One person said he takes a stack of briefing books. Others aren’t sure what he does.

If the reports are accurate, and I believe they are, they paint a picture of an isolated man trapped in a collapsing presidency. While there is no indication Obama is walking the halls of the White House late at night, talking to the portraits of former presidents, as Richard Nixon did during Watergate, the reports help explain his odd public remarks.

Obama conceded in one television interview recently that Americans are not “better off than they were four years ago” and said in another that the nation had “gotten a little soft.” Both smacked of a man who feels discouraged and alienated and sparked comparisons to Jimmy Carter, never a good sign.

Blaming the country is political heresy, of course, yet Obama is running out of scapegoats. His allies rarely make affirmative arguments on his behalf anymore, limiting themselves to making excuses for his failure. He and they attack Republicans, George W. Bush, European leaders and Chinese currency manipulation -- and that was just last week.

The blame game isn’t much of a defense for Solyndra and “Fast and Furious,” the emerging twin scandals that paint a picture of incompetence at best.

Obama himself is spending his public time pushing a $450 billion “jobs” bill -- really another stimulus in disguise -- that even Senate Democrats won’t support. He grimly flogged it repeatedly at his Thursday press conference, even though snowballs in hell have a better chance of survival.

If he cracked a single smile at the hour-plus event, I missed it. He seems happy only on the campaign trail, where the adoration of the crowd lifts his spirits.

When it comes to getting America back on track to economic growth, he is running on vapors. Yet he shows no inclination to adopt any ideas other than his own Big Government grab. His itch for higher taxes verges on a fetish.

Harvey Golub, former chairman of American Express, called the “jobs” bill an incoherent mess. Writing in The Wall Street Journal, he said that among other flaws, the bill includes an unheard of retroactive tax hike on the holders of municipal bonds.

“Many of us have suspected that economic illiterates were setting the economic policy of this administration,” Golub wrote, adding that the bill “reveals a depth of cluelessness that boggles the mind.”

The public increasingly shares the sentiment. A new Quinnipiac polls finds that 55 percent now disapprove of Obama’s job performance, with only 41 percent approving. A mere 29 percent say the economy will improve if the president gets four more years.

The election, unfortunately, is nearly 13 months away.

The way Obama’s behaving, by then we’ll all be talking to portraits of past presidents, asking why this one turned out to be such a flop.

They doth protest too much

Even as desperate Pander-crats, including the president, continue to baby-talk the Wall Street hooligans, some of whom have violently attacked police, Mayor Bloomberg gets the point and tone just right.

“What they’re trying to do is take the jobs away from people working in this city,” the mayor told radio man John Gambling Friday. “And some of the labor unions, the municipal unions that are participating, their salaries come from the taxes paid by the people they are trying to vilify.”

Sanity also comes from readers. Sheri Rosen said she works downtown, at 111 Broadway, and is sick of the filth and mayhem.

“We work very hard every day for not that much money,” she writes. “We don’t camp out at a park and act like animals by urinating and stealing milk from the coffee vendors that are also trying to make a living.”

She blasted Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Comptroller John Liu for supporting the demonstrators, saying, “True New Yorkers who work hard for their money won’t forget this on Election Day.”

Reader Harold Theurer sees another angle. Noting the passing of Steve Jobs, he wonders how many protesters carrying Apple products understand how those gadgets came to exist.

“What started out as two men in a garage with ideas and passion would have been nothing more than two guys in a garage with ideas and passion had it not been for an IPO on Dec. 12, 1980, when Apple went public at $22 per share,” he writes.

“Big Bad Wall Street raised $101 million for Mr. Jobs to expand his ideas, create jobs and change the landscape of technology. The next time any of the Wall Street occupiers makes an iTune purchase, it can be traced back to some Big Bad Banker’s belief in Mr. Jobs and his company.”

Class dismissed.

‘Apolitical’ Doublespeak

Future historians looking for the tenor of our era could do worse than rummage through New York Times editorials. They’ll find an archive of incredibly bad ideas and exhibits of the liberal mindset that claims only conservatives have politics.

Take a recent piece on ObamaCare. After noting that the Supreme Court is likely to decide the issue next year, the Times says, “The court must not let politics influence its decision.” Then it goes on to demand the court support the law, saying the individual mandate and “and all other provisions . . . are constitutional and should be upheld.”

No politics there!

Go to blazes, judge!

City Hall ought to get a restraining order against federal Judge Nicholas Garaufis. Not content with demanding a quota system for nonwhite firefighters, the Brooklyn jurist has turned a discrimination complaint into a four-year personal war against Mayor Bloomberg and the FDNY. He ruled last week that a special monitor must oversee all aspects of hiring, training and promotion “for at least 10 years.”

The city is appealing, but it should accept the ruling on one condition: Garaufis sheds his judicial robes to become fire commissioner. That way he’d have to live in the real world instead of looking down on it

Boys of winter

Buck up, Yankee fans. Next year begins on Feb. 19, when pitchers and catchers report to spring training.



Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/aimless_obama_walks_alone_OUgoMTkORRJioLl7B6ZYmN#ixzz1aO3DDv39


________________________ ______________

I'm getting the feeling this fool is not going to run.   I have said so many times. 
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: dario73 on October 10, 2011, 07:32:27 AM


I'm getting the feeling this fool is not going to run.   I have said so many times. 

If only the nation had such luck.
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 10, 2011, 02:05:41 PM
SPIN METER: Obama disconnects rhetoric, reality
By ERICA WERNER
he Associated Press

6:31 a.m. Monday, October 10, 2011




WASHINGTON — In President Barack Obama's sales pitch for his jobs bill, there are two versions of reality: The one in his speeches and the one actually unfolding in Washington.

When Obama accuses Republicans of standing in the way of his nearly $450 billion plan, he ignores the fact that his own party has struggled to unite behind the proposal.

When the president says Republicans haven't explained what they oppose in the plan, he skips over the fact that Republicans who control the House actually have done that in detail.

And when he calls on Congress to "pass this bill now," he slides past the point that Democrats control the Senate and were never prepared to move immediately, given other priorities. Senators are expected to vote Tuesday on opening debate on the bill, a month after the president unveiled it with a call for its immediate passage.

To be sure, Obama is not the only one engaging in rhetorical excesses. But he is the president, and as such, his constant remarks on the bill draw the most attention and scrutiny.

The disconnect between what Obama says about his jobs bill and what stands as the political reality flow from his broader aim: to rally the public behind his cause and get Congress to act, or, if not, to pin blame on Republicans.

He is waging a campaign, one in which nuance and context and competing responses don't always fit in if they don't help make the case.

For example, when Obama says his jobs plan is made up of ideas that have historically had bipartisan support, he stops the point there. Not mentioned is that Republicans have never embraced the tax increases that he is proposing to cover the cost of his plan.

Likewise, from city to city, Obama is demanding that Congress act (he means Republicans) while it has been clear for weeks that the GOP will not support all of his bill, to say the least. Individual elements of it may well pass, such as Obama's proposal to extend and expand a payroll tax cut. But Republicans strongly oppose the president's proposed new spending and his plan to raise taxes on millionaires to pay for the package.

The fight over the legislative proposal has become something much bigger: a critical test of the president's powers of persuading the public heading into the 2012 presidential campaign, and of Republicans' ability to deny him a win and reap victory for themselves.

"He knows it's not going to pass. He's betting that voters won't pick up on it, or even if they do they will blame Congress and he can run against the 'do-nothing Congress,'" said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a senior fellow at the University of Southern California's School of Policy, Planning and Development.

John Sides, political science professor at George Washington University, said Obama's approach on the jobs bill is "more about campaigning than governing."

"He's mostly just going around talking about this and drawing contrasts with what the Republicans want and what he wants and not really trying to work these legislative levers he might be able to use to get this passed," Sides said. "That just suggests to me that he is ready to use a failed jobs bill as a campaign message against the Republicans."

The president's opponents aren't exactly laying it all out, either.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., tried to force a vote on the bill last week, innocently claiming that the president was entitled to one. McConnell knew full well that the result would be failure for the legislation and an embarrassment for Obama.

House Speaker John Boehner, meanwhile, claimed that Obama has "given up on the country and decided to campaign full-time" instead of seeking common ground with the GOP. But Boehner neglected to mention that Obama's past attempts at compromise with Republicans often yielded scant results, as Obama himself pointed out.

The approach for Obama, who is seeking a second term in a dismal economy, is far different than the one he took when running for president. He criticized the GOP then, but talked about ending blue-state and red-state America, replacing it with one America, fixing the broken political system, and fundamentally changing Washington.

That ended up being change he could not bring about, and now analysts say Obama may have little choice but to campaign more narrowly by attacking opponents rather than trying to bring people together.

Obama's attempts at compromise with the GOP on the debt ceiling and budget won him little in the way of policy, instead engendering frustration from Democrats who saw him as caving to Republican demands.

The new, combative Obama isn't looking for compromise. He's looking for a win. And if he can't get the legislative victory he says he wants, he has made clear that he's more than willing to take a political win.

It is, he acknowledges, a result his campaign for his jobs bill is designed to achieve.

Talking up the bill in an appearance last month with African-American news websites, Obama said: "I need people to be out there promoting this and pushing this and making sure that everybody understands the details of what this would mean, so that one of two things happen: Either Congress gets it done, or if Congress doesn't get it done, people know exactly what's holding it up."

EDITOR'S NOTE _ An occasional look behind the rhetoric of public officials.

___

October 10, 2011 06:31 AM EDT

Copyright 2011, The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


Find this article at:
http://www.ajc.com/news/nation-world/spin-meter-obama-disconnects-1197664.html
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Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: whork on October 10, 2011, 03:57:27 PM
If only the nation had such luck.

He should step back and let RP take over but stay on as Foreign Secretary

He sucks at economy but is great at fighting Terrorists
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 11, 2011, 06:20:06 PM

Return to the Article

October 11, 2011
Economic Illiteracy, Thou Art Obama's Defense of Solyndra

By John Tamny
Dissembling about the capital destruction debacle that was his Administration's loan guarantee to bankrupt green-energy firm Solyndra, President Obama told ABC News last week that "if we want to compete with China, which is pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into this space...we've got to make sure that our guys here in the United States of America at least have a shot."

Of course if the president were better schooled in basic economics, he would well understand that "our guys" do have a shot to compete in this space thanks to U.S. capital markets being the deepest in the world. Thanks to angel financing, venture capital, PIPEs, convertible bonds, bonds themselves, and stock issuance, those with a good idea have myriad options when it comes to marrying their innovation with capital.

And there lies the obvious problem with Solyndra. Unable to raise needed operating funds in the private markets, it was forced to go to the federal government to get what our markets would not provide.

The implications for our economy are similarly obvious. Though $535 million is presently a laughable sum to a government that knows no limits, and which doles out a great deal more to support the waste that increasingly symbolizes Washington, there's an unseen quality to this.

Indeed, what's continuously forgotten by our federal minders is that they have no resources. For the Obama administration to guarantee a $500 million dollar loan is for it to ultimately extract $500 million from the private economy where it might have actually funded a real, economy enhancing concept. Unseen is what Microsofts, Intels and Facebooks (the latter's initial funding $500,000 - Facebook supposedly now worth $75 billion) will never see the light of day thanks to the political class's hubristic belief that it knows better than private markets disciplined by success and failure about where capital should be allocated.

As for President Obama's assertion that we need to fund these ideas to "compete", apparently he's oblivious to the basic truth that an idea is not wealth unless the distribution of that which entrepreneurs create is broad. Assuming the Chinese rush ahead of us in the green technology space, in order for its private companies or its government to achieve a return on investment they'll have to sell their innovations into the marketplace; final destination unknown.

In short, assuming the Chinese crack the alternative energy code on the way to market-changing advances for energy and environmental preservation, Americans will enjoy them as though they'd been conceived in Silicon Valley. And for those eager to make the laughable assertion that the Chinese will not sell us those advances, we'll simply purchase them from those they do sell to.

Of course if the opposite occurs, as in if this rush to alternative energy with the money of others proves the capital wasting joke that an already skeptical marketplace presumes, the American economy will be better off for Americans not wasting human, physical and financial capital on something of no economic value. The reality is that the Japanese are ahead of us with televisions, the Italians perhaps are with shoes and clothing, and the Brazilians harvest better coffee beans, but we enjoy all three thanks to our own comparative productivity in other areas.

Basically we let others make our televisions, suits and coffee, and this gives us time to create Google, Coca-Cola and Amazon. A more wealth enhancing trading relationship would be hard to find, but with our president laboring under the absurd notion that trade is war and the imports that reward our productivity hurt us, he's used and is using his power of taxation to force Americans to fund that which the markets don't presently want.

Importantly, there's a lesson here for many on the right in this country deluded by the economy-sapping notion of "energy independence." Just as we'll be the beneficiaries of any worthy Chinese advancements in green technology should they ever materialize, so will we be able to consume the world's oil irrespective of where it's discovered as though it bubbled up in West Texas. Oil is not wealth until it reaches the marketplace, U.S. interests are "size buyers" of the petroleum product, and with there existing no control over the final destination of any commodity, a world awash in oil means we'll purchase as much as we want for as long as we want at the global price.

At present there exists the fiction that oil is expensive when in fact oil is only expensive insofar as the dollar is cheap, so commentators who should know better argue for drilling anywhere and everywhere with an eye on "creating jobs." It should be stressed that this writer has no objection to drilling anywhere and everywhere, but with Texas's implosion (and the resulting collapse of banks bailed out by U.S. taxpayers) during the strong dollar ‘80s in mind, it should be said that we always eventually return to a strong dollar, the latter will quickly expose much of this excitement about oil deposits stateside as non-economic, so let's at least curb our enthusiasm.

Oil is no different than any other commodity desired by market actors, and we should view it much as we do increasingly worthless solar panels made in the U.S. If we want either, there's a market we can enter for both.

Though unaware when he uttered it last week, President Obama's illiterate defense of government subsidization of green energy explains exactly why the government shouldn't be subsidizing it. As he notes the Chinese are spending a lot more on alternative energies than we are, which means we can sit back and either see them fail, or better yet, see them succeed on the way to importing their innovations. Either way we win.

 

checkTextResizerCookie('article_body');
John Tamny is editor of RealClearMarkets and Forbes Opinions, a senior economic adviser to H.C. Wainwright Economics, and a senior economic adviser to Toreador Research and Trading (www.trtadvisors.com). He can be reached at jtamny@realclearmarkets.com.

Page Printed from: http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2011/10/11/economic_illiteracy_thou_art_obamas_defense_of_solyndra_99302-full.html at October 11, 2011 - 08:18:21 PM CDT
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: garebear on October 11, 2011, 06:30:15 PM
The buisness climate for everyone I know, my clients, their clients, their clinents clients - is the worse ever anyone can ever remember. 

Even many of the accounts I deal with say things are the worst of their lifetime and getting drastically worse.   

Obama has caused MASSIVE inflation in things that are generally fixed cost items and is collapsing the main street. 


No one asked about your imaginary friends.
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 11, 2011, 06:35:15 PM
No one asked about your imaginary friends.

Can you dispute the article I posted? 
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: garebear on October 11, 2011, 07:26:50 PM
That's like saying let's talk about that raindrop that fell in the Atlantic last Thursday.
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: whork25 on October 12, 2011, 05:51:29 AM
Maybe you personally - but for the overall country - people are drastically worse off.   The numbers are laid out for you in the clip I posted.   


Talk to any main street business person and ask them what is going on in the economy and if they are better off. 

And its where we are going!  Things are getting drastically worse on so many fronts.   

Thats a lie businesses and rich people are more loaded than ever
Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 12, 2011, 05:53:15 AM
Thats a lie businesses and rich people are more loaded than ever

You are so fucked up in the head its not funny. 

Title: Re: Obama Admn: The Second Wave of Attacks on the USA after 9/11
Post by: whork25 on October 12, 2011, 05:54:37 AM
You are so fucked up in the head its not funny. 



Probably but my statement is true
Income for big corp has never been higher, so what exactly are you talking about?
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 12, 2011, 05:56:22 AM
I'm talking about main street, mid sized corps, sub s, construction, 1099's, etc, not multinational conglomerates. 
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 12, 2011, 11:26:35 AM
DOJ: Feds Can Tell Church Who Its Ministers Will Be
Townhall ^ | 10/12/2011 | Terry Jeffrey




In yet another stunning attack on freedom of religion, President Barack Obama's Justice Department asked the Supreme Court last week to give the federal government the power to tell a church who its ministers will be.

The case involves a former teacher at Lutheran school, who along with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is pushing a claim that a Lutheran congregation should be forced to restore her ministry position.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State and American Atheists, Inc. have filed briefs siding with the Obama administration against the church.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints, the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations, and the American Center for Law and Justice are among those who have filed briefs supporting the Lutherans.

In 1999, the Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School in Redford, Mich., hired Cheryl Perich to be a lay teacher on a one-year contract in its kindergarten.

The next year, Perich became a "called" teacher at the school after she became a commissioned minister in the church.

"To receive a call, a candidate must be selected by a local church congregation," said a brief the church submitted to the Supreme Court that was prepared by lawyers at the Beckett Fund for Religious Liberty and Douglas Laycock of the University of Virginia Law School.

"At Hosanna-Tabor, the school board typically presents a choice of candidates to the congregation, and after prayerfully considering the candidates, the congregation extends a call via congregational vote," the brief said. "Once the call has been accepted, the candidate is installed in office via the public rite of 'commissioning,' and is recognized as a 'Minister of Religion, Commissioned' -- also known as a 'commissioned minister.'"

As a minister in the school, Perich taught religious classes, led students in prayer and performed other religious tasks. She was also expected to integrate the teaching of the Lutheran faith into all so-called "secular" classes, including math, science, social studies and art.

In 2004, Perich was diagnosed with narcolepsy and was unable to teach the fall semester. In January 2005, when she could not return, the school hired another teacher to take her place during the spring.

Later that month, according to a brief filed by the Justice Department's Office of the Solicitor General, Perich informed the school's principal, Stacey Hoeft, via email that she would be able to return to work the following month.

The principal informed her they had already hired a replacement teacher for the rest of the year.

The congregation then voted to ask Perich for a "peaceful release from her call."

"'Peaceful release' is a religious act by which a congregation and a called minister agree to release one another from the mutual obligations of the call," says the brief submitted by the church. "Peaceful releases are common, and they leave the called minister in good standing and eligible for a new call."

Perich declined to be peacefully released. In late February, she showed up at the school and met with Principal Hoeft.

"Later that day, Perich told Hoeft that if she were not reinstated, she would sue the church," said the church's brief. "Hoeft immediately asked Perich if that were what she really meant, because a lawsuit would clearly violate the church's conflict resolution policy applicable to called employees. Perich repeated the threat."

The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod explained this teaching in its own brief: "St. Paul teaches in his first letter to the Corinthians that Christians should generally resolve their disputes internally without going to the secular courts for relief." For this reason, the church has developed procedures for settling internal disputes.

A few weeks after the meeting between Perich and Hoeft, the Hosanna-Tabor congregation voted to "rescind Perich's call" because she had threatened to sue the church contrary to the church's teaching.

"The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a complaint against the church under the Americans With Disabilities Act, alleging a single count of retaliation," says the church's brief. "Perich intervened, alleging the same retaliation claim and adding a retaliation claim under state law. Neither complaint alleges disability discrimination. Both complaints request an order reinstating Perich to her former position as a commissioned minister, together with back pay, compensatory damages, punitive damages, and injunctive relief ordering new 'policies, practices, and programs' at the church."

The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod told the court in its brief that its views on the ministry and the settlement of disputes may not be "widely shared" or "widely understood." "But," the church said, "they have been the views of orthodox Lutherans for centuries."

Acting Deputy Solicitor General Leondra Kruger told the court, during oral arguments, that the federal government should be able to trump the church on these decisions.

"Their submission is that the hiring and firing decisions with respect to parochial school teachers and with respect to priests is categorically off limits," said Kruger. "And we think that that is a rule that is insufficiently attentive to the relative public and private interests at stake, interests that this court has repeatedly recognized are important in determining freedom of association claims."

Kruger contended this did not mean the government could order the Catholic Church to ordain female priests. But, even then, according to her argument, it would be a matter of the government weighing "the relative public and private interests at stake."

What is at stake is the First Amendment and the religious freedom of all Americans.

Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 12, 2011, 07:31:41 PM
State Dept Considering 5,662 'Diversity Visa' Applicants from Terror States
CNS News ^ | 10-11-11 | Elizabeth Harrington


As part of its 2012 Diversity Visa program, the U.S. State Department is considering 5,662 applicants from countries deemed ‘State Sponsors of Terrorism’ – Iran, Syria, Sudan and Cuba.

In 2011, the State Department awarded 2,427 Diversity Visas to people from Iran, Syria and Sudan -- 1,842 for Iran; 553 for Sudan; and 32 for Syria.

(Excerpt) Read more at cnsnews.com ...







I hope Obama moves these people into the WH right next to his daughters. 
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: whork25 on October 13, 2011, 12:54:53 AM
I'm talking about main street, mid sized corps, sub s, construction, 1099's, etc, not multinational conglomerates. 

And guess why they are suffering? Because the neocon agenda witch you support is destroying the middle class
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 13, 2011, 07:05:23 AM
Judicial Watch Releases Comprehensive Special Report on President Obama’s 45 Czars
Judicial Watch ^ | October 10, 2011





New Czars Exercise Unprecedented Control over Government Policies and Programs While Operating Under a “Veil of Secrecy”


Judicial Watch, the public interest organization that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, today released “ President Obama’s Czarspdf,” a special report on the President’s appointing of “policy advisors,” many of whom enjoy positions of power and authority in the administration and yet have not been subjected to vetting and confirmation by the U.S. Senate. Judicial Watch’s extensive investigation exhaustively documents these czar appointments and details the control these czars exercise over government operations.

From the report’s introduction:

“This Judicial Watch Special Report analyzes the proliferation of so-called ‘czars’ in the Obama administration. President Barack Obama has installed personal advisors in czar positions in the White House and has created new czar positions elsewhere in the Executive Branch. As of the date of this report, the number of czars that have been appointed by the President, or by others in his administration, appears to total 45. In addition, there are as many as 18 other unfilled or planned czar positions.

“Many of these ‘czars’ are unconfirmed by the Senate and are largely unaccountable to Congress. Further, their activities are often outside the reach of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), creating a veil of secrecy about their precise role in the administration.”


The new report is available at Judicial Watch’s websitepdf

•Czars appointees have seized unprecedented control over major aspects of government policy and programs. In some instances, unconfirmed czars have authority, in seeming violation of the U.S. Constitution, over certain Senate-confirmed officers.

•A number of the czars have been linked to scandals, thefts and kickbacks, flagrant and offensive statements, conflicts of interest, and radical leftist political ideologies and policies.
“Barack Obama’s unconstitutional use of czars to help run his administration is at odds with republican, limited, and accountable government. Obama has simply installed his radical leftist allies in various positions of power while thumbing his nose at Congress and the American people. As we document in this report, too many of these czars have proven to be corrupt or radicals (or sometimes both). No wonder the Obama administration fights tooth and nail to allow these czars to operate in secret. Nevertheless, Judicial Watch managed to develop this comprehensive list of czars as part of efforts to ensure government accountability.”

http://www.judicialwatch.org/news/2011/oct/judicial-watch-releases-comprehensive-special-report-president-obama-s-45-czars



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 13, 2011, 07:39:12 AM

Opinion: Obama's off-target class war
By: Joel Kotkin
October 12, 2011 09:30 PM EDT
 



For many conservatives, the notion of class warfare that President Barack Obama now evokes is both un-American and noxious — a crass attempt to cash in on envy among the masses. Yet the problem is not in class warfare itself — but in being clear what class you are targeting.

In this sense, Obama’s populism is little more than a faux version. He is not really going after the privileges of the super-rich — that would involve actions like removing the advantages of capital gains over earned income or limiting dodges to nonprofit foundations or family trusts. Rather than a war against plutocrats, Obama’s thrust is against the upper end of the middle class, whose income is most vulnerable to higher taxes.

The president is within his rights to use these class warfare tactics; it’s just too bad he is aiming at the wrong target. Exploiting class divisions, in fact, has long been a part of American politics — from the Jacksonian era through Abraham Lincoln, the New Deal and even Bill Clinton. Obama’s sudden tilt toward class warfare may thrill left-wing commentators such as The American Prospect’s Robert Kuttner. But it’s no real threat to the real ruling classes.

Though the president’s rhetoric focuses on “millionaires and billionaires,” his proposals do less harm to the ultrarich and their trustifarian offspring than to the large professional and entrepreneurial classes, whose members are earning more than $200,000 a year. More affluent than most Americans, these members of the upper middle class hardly constitute oligarchs. Ninety percent of the targeted class earns less than $1 million annually. Only a tiny sliver, or .01 percent, are billionaires.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s proposal to raise the target income level closer to $1 million is a concession to political common sense — but still avoids the big distinction between investor and income earner. Meanwhile, the administration’s rhetorical gambit of using Warren Buffett as the class warfare poster boy reveals its fundamental disingenuousness.

Many rich do avoid high taxes through dynastic trusts concocted largely to avoid the Internal Revenue Service. Others, like Buffett, put vast amounts into foundations — in his case, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, where it sits tax free. In addition, the patrician class, because its members tend to be more active investors, also pays less, largely because its capital gains earnings are taxed at a low 15 percent rate, less than half that paid by high-income professionals.

Obama’s biggest problem with class is that his policies have made a bad situation worse. During both the Clinton administration and most of the George W. Bush years, the rich prospered. But so, too, did middle- and working-class homeowners, professionals and construction workers.


Today, however, only the high-end housing market, roughly 1.5 percent of the market, is flourishing. The vast majority have seen their property values shrink — down 30 percent since 2006. Markets, like Manhattan , which is increasingly dominated by foreign investors, have surged — the average price of a New York condo or co-op has topped $1.4 million, a nifty 3 percent increase over last year.

But to a large degree, this reflects those who are the biggest beneficiaries of the largesses of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke: hedge fund managers, investment bankers, the corporate aristocracy and officials of “too big to fail” banks. For these financiers, the time since the economic collapse has been very fat years — at least until the European debt crisis.

The situation, however, has been far worse for small businesses — with serious consequences for job creation. The number of start-ups with employees — the traditional source of new jobs — has dropped 23 percent since 2008. Most entrepreneurs, according to the National Federation of Independent Business, expect the job market to weaken and unemployment to stay high for the foreseeable future.

“Corporate profits may be at a record high,” said Bill Dunkelberg, chief economist of the National Federation of Independent Business, “but businesses on Main Street are still scraping by.”

Obama’s phony class war also carries considerable political risk. As Mark Penn, the former Clinton adviser, and others have pointed out, the newest Obama tax strategy most penalizes the professionals who flocked to his cause in 2008 . These voters — concentrated largely in high-tax, high-cost blue states — are also particularly vulnerable to any reduction of write-offs for mortgage interest and state taxes.

Obama’s left turn also fails to address the America’s biggest problem: how to ignite broad economic growth.

It should now be clear to all but the most deluded that the administration’s bankrolling of massive solar projects and embrace of hopeless causes like high-speed rail have not reaped much of a bonanza. Indeed, in many places where the administration’s “green” agenda has been adopted most fervently, like California, unemployment rates now surpass even Michigan’s.

Obama’s misguided economic notions can be seen even when he looks to solve our critical jobs shortage. In addition to the “green jobs” fiasco, the president is looking to Silicon Valley and the information economy — which have lost jobs since 2006. Facebook, Apple, Google and the rest may be swell representatives of American ingenuity — but employ relatively few people in America, and mostly the best educated and thus least vulnerable.


In contrast, the administration displays relatively little support — and passion — for the many middle-income Americans who depend, directly or indirectly, on industries like oil and gas, warehousing, construction and, except for the bailed-out auto firms, manufacturing. In these sectors, only the fossil-fuel industry has done well — adding more than 500,000 generally well-paying jobs since 2006, despite the Environmental Protection Agency’s best efforts to slow its progress.

Workers in the energy field – in which salaries average more than $100,000 annually — reasonably fear their jobs could be threatened if Obama is reelected. This could damage his appeal in states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, where many working-class voters are now counting on new oil and gas finds to spur the growth of high-wage employment.

So how best to confront America’s growing class division? With serious economic growth beyond Wall Street. A flatter tax system with fewer exemptions, limiting trusts and foundations and ending the preference for capital gains would force the wealthy to re-engage the economy. They would have fewer ways to hide their money. Sweep aside both subsidies for oil and gas companies and the renewable industry, regulate sensibly and market forces can drive exploration and development.

Will Republicans support this approach? Many seem almost incapable of acknowledging the threat to democracy and our social order now posed by the growing concentrations of wealth that eerily recall the 1920s. Others prostitute themselves to fossil-fuel industries — the way the Democrats kowtow to rent-seeking green capitalists. Meanwhile, with Obama’s once strong support on Wall Street weakening, they seem all too eager to dance to big money’s tune to fill their own coffers.

It’s time to finally acknowledge that the whole “trickle down” from Wall Street approach has been discredited — and with it the current regime of class privilege. You don’t have to be a member of Occupy Wall Street to doubt that what’s good for the top investment bankers is necessarily good for the vast majority of the country.

Neither mindless budget-cutting nor politically motivated redistribution can solve the growing economic divide or create new wealth. Instead, we need a tax and policy regime that stops favoring financial insiders and instead focuses incentives on the grass-roots hard work and ingenuity that have long been America’s greatest economic asset.

Joel Kotkin is the author of “The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050.” He is a distinguished senior fellow in urban futures at Chapman University and an adjunct fellow at the Legatum Institute in London.
 
 
© 2011 POLITICO LLC
 
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 14, 2011, 07:09:29 PM
Rumors swirling in DC that Obama is already collecting Americans'private health records
The Daily Caller ^ | October 14, 2011 | Matthew Boyle
Posted on October 14, 2011 6:26:05 PM EDT by matthewreporter

The Obama administration adamantly denies it, but rumors are circulating in Washington that his Department of Health and Human Services is already collecting Americans’ private health information, or at least preparing itself to do so.

Rep. Denny Rehberg, the chairman of the House appropriations subcommittee on Labor, Health & Human Services and Education formalized the rumors by asking about them in a letter to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on Thursday.

“Specifically, I have been told that HHS has already procured a contractor to build a database and that this contractor has already taken steps to acquire personal health care data from a large claims database,” Rehberg wrote. “I would like to know if these reports are, in fact, true. If so, it would represent an egregious violation of the privacy rights that the American public rightfully demands.”

(Excerpt) Read more at thedc.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 17, 2011, 06:11:46 AM
Obama’s Big Green Mess
Daily Beast ^ | Oct 17, 2011 | Daniel Stone & Eleanor Clift





This summer, federal inspectors made a routine visit to 11 homes in St. Louis to see what taxpayers got for the $5 billion that President Obama spent to help Americans weatherize their homes to save energy.

What they found was quite a surprise. Some of the energy-efficient furnaces installed at taxpayer expense spewed carbon monoxide that could poison occupants. New water heaters lacked required pressure valves, putting them in jeopardy of exploding. And a handful of contractors—unfamiliar with the nuances of specialized weatherization work—had used air blowers in homes with asbestos, potentially dispersing the cancer-causing agent, according to several Energy Department inspector-general reports.

As it closes in on retrofitting 600,000 homes, the government’s weatherization program—a key element of President Obama’s green-energy initiative—has had its share of happy, energy-saving customers. But it has also been riddled with problems. In one review, Energy Department investigators found that 14 percent of weatherization projects surveyed, from Tennessee to West Virginia, failed to meet safety or quality standards. Many customers were poor or elderly, with few resources to pursue wayward contractors.

It turned out that as so much money was being spent so quickly, a lot of state and local governments, as well as contractors, simply weren’t ready for the job at hand. "You don’t have trained people to do those jobs in places like Arizona or Florida," says Earl Devaney, chairman of the Recovery Board and Obama’s handpicked watchdog to oversee stimulus spending. "It turned into a cottage industry." A senior Energy Department official agreed: "We were clearly not ready to take all this money, especially at the state level." green-first-report-co04

Washington’s scandal du jour has been Solyndra. The California solar company received a rushed half-billion-dollar clean-energy stimulus loan from the Obama administration, only to go bankrupt and potentially leave taxpayers on the hook—despite warnings from career officials that both Solyndra and the larger solar industry were facing financial pressures.


But it is far from the only blemish on the administration’s much-touted green agenda. In addition to weatherization problems, an internal Labor Department report disclosed this month that a multibillion-dollar program to retrain workers for green-energy jobs met only 10 percent of its goal of creating 80,000 jobs. A federal renewable-energy lab in Colorado that got nearly $300 million from another green-energy program began laying off 10 percent of its workforce last month.  


Overall, as the $787 billion economic stimulus—the primary engine for the green-energy agenda—came to an end Sept. 30, it is clear that the program created far fewer jobs than promised. So-called green-collar jobs are notoriously hard to tally, but numerous estimates by gleeful Republicans put the taxpayer cost of each green-energy job created by the stimulus at more than $1 million.

The White House acknowledges it hit bumps but insists the payoff will become clearer down the road. "Any time you take historic action you’re certainly going to learn lessons," says Heather Zichal, Obama’s chief energy and environment adviser. "These investments are not just about the jobs they are creating today but also support the long-term competitiveness and health of this important sector of our economy."


Some of the biggest immediate beneficiaries of the green revolution, ironically, may have been politicians themselves. Executives of the top 50 recipients of the government’s green-energy aid have donated more than $2 million to federal campaigns since Obama took office. Some of the biggest recipients of green stimulus money—including NRG Energy and Consolidated Edison—made six-figure donations to candidates and interest groups. The industry as a whole has ponied up more than $5 million from its executives and political action committees, a notable increase from a formerly quiet sector. Democrats have been the main beneficiaries of clean-energy money. But Republicans have tapped their allies in the fossil-fuel industries—Exxon Mobil and Koch Industries have been the biggest donors, and overwhelmingly to Republicans—for more than $20 million in donations since Obama took office.

The clean-energy agenda quickly took on the trappings of the money-for-access game endemic to Washington. Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, a chief backer of Obama’s agenda, hosted a roundtable in Washington in June 2009 with a dozen major clean-energy executives eager to build projects in his home state of Nevada. Within a year, at least eight executives from those companies donated to Reid’s reelection campaign. Reid’s office declined to comment.

Republicans put their own squeeze on the industry, pressing for federal largesse while publicly denouncing Obama’s program. House Speaker John Boehner, a leading critic on Solyndra, urged Obama to allocate clean-energy grants for a nuclear-enrichment project in Ohio, his home state, just three months after one of the company’s executives donated to Boehner’s reelection campaign. According to Maplight.org, a nonpartisan researcher of money’s influence on politics, Boehner has received nine major donations from nuclear-energy advocates. A spokesman for Boehner says there’s nothing improper about the speaker’s support of nuclear energy.

Obama’s sweeping goal is to generate 80 percent of America’s energy from clean sources by 2035. And there have been major victories. Since he took office, the U.S. has doubled its renewable-energy generation and has become the top researcher and producer of advanced batteries for hybrid and electric cars, long a holy grail of sustainable transport.

Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, told Newsweek that Obama’s deal with automakers to double fuel efficiency by 2025 was "the biggest accomplishment we could have asked for" in the administration’s first few years. "In 20 years, kids won’t know how to pump gas," says Rep. Ed Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts.

More recently, however, Obama’s environmental supporters have been whipsawed by reversals. The president softened several pollution regulations, most notably canceling an effort by his own EPA to toughen ozone standards. And the State Department prepared to approve a pipeline to carry crude from Canadian tar sands to Gulf of Mexico refineries, infuriating people who saw the project as a source of the very "dirty" fuel Obama had promised to reduce. By last month, in the wake of Solyndra, the green groups that had embraced Obama’s vision of a greener economy were suddenly enraged, in some cases sparking street protests and arrests outside the White House.

Internally, some have questioned Energy Secretary Steven Chu’s role in overseeing the efforts, noting that the Nobel laureate with the keen grasp of physics at times seems to lack political skills. On one occasion, Chu prepared a dense PowerPoint presentation to brief Obama on the complexities of last summer’s BP oil spill. After Chu narrated six slides, one senior adviser who attended the meeting recalled that Obama simply stood up and said, "Steve, I’m done."

The administration is trying to change the narrative on its green record. But the appetite for another round of federal aid is waning, especially as pressures grow on Congress to cut the U.S. deficit.

Even some Democratic defenders offer only cautious support. "I think we admit we’re not perfect," says Sen. Barbara Boxer, the California Democrat who chairs the environment committee. "There’s always a risk when you fund innovation, but if we abandoned going to the moon when a spacecraft exploded ... where would we be today?"



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



WTF!
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: dario73 on October 17, 2011, 07:10:50 AM
But it is far from the only blemish on the administration’s much-touted green agenda. In addition to weatherization problems, an internal Labor Department report disclosed this month that a multibillion-dollar program to retrain workers for green-energy jobs met only 10 percent of its goal of creating 80,000 jobs. A federal renewable-energy lab in Colorado that got nearly $300 million from another green-energy program began laying off 10 percent of its workforce last month.

LOL!!

Failure is the new standard at the oval office.  Pathetic.

More information will come out on the hundreds of loans given to failed or about to fail "green" companies.
Utter incompetence.
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 17, 2011, 07:13:14 AM
And not one Obama tampon can defend his record. 


All they can do is attack others.
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: dario73 on October 17, 2011, 07:25:19 AM
That is the left's only tactic. Divert attention from the fact by focusing on the messenger or attacking parties that have nothing to do with the issue at hand. And guess what? Liberals fall for it hook, line and sinker. But, somehow, they believe they are the intellectual elites. LOL!!! What a waste of human skin.
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 18, 2011, 12:39:23 PM
Issa: ‘NLRB is acting as a rogue agency’
Daily Caller ^ | 10/18/11 | Matthew Boyle




House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa snapped at National Labor Relations Board general counsel Lafe Solomon for openly defying his congressional subpoena.

Not complying with congressional subpoena is technically an illegal act, and Solomon could be charged with contempt of Congress if Issa, a leading Republican, chooses to proceed down that path.

“Your continued personal obstruction, lack of compliance with a validly issued congressional subpoena and false statements to the committee are unacceptable,” Issa said in a Monday letter to Solomon. “The NLRB is acting as a rogue agency that believes it does not have to fully answer to Congress.”


(Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com ...


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 19, 2011, 05:33:32 AM
The EduJobs III Bailout
Townhall.com ^ | October 19, 2011 | Michelle Malkin




One of my son's Suzuki violin teachers had a wise twist on an old saying: "If at first you don't succeed, try something else." The corollary? "When you do succeed, don't stop. Do it again." The White House could use some remedial Suzuki lessons in economics. They've got everything completely bass-ackward.

In February 2009, President Obama signed the trillion-dollar American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Nearly $115 billion was earmarked for education. The stimulator-in-chief's crack team of Ivy League economists predicted the law would hold the jobless rate under 8.5 percent.

The actual unemployment rate in October 2009 skyrocketed to a whopping 10.2 percent.

In August 2010, President Obama went back to the well. With deep-pocketed public employee unions by his side, he lobbied hard for the so-called "EduJobs" bill -- $26 billion more to bail out bankrupt states, school districts and public hospitals. Nearly half went to teachers, whose unions raked in an estimated $50 million in rank-and-file dues as a result. Obama's economists had promised the jobless rate would be down to 7.9 percent by then.

The actual unemployment rate in August 2010 was 9.6 percent.

Now, after the Senate rejected President Rerun's latest half-trillion-dollar stimulus proposal, Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid are pushing for a "mini" $30 billion union jobs package for teachers (with $5 billion to mollify police and firefighters unions). In addition to funding fantastical green school construction jobs (earmarked for unionized-only contractors in an industry that is 85 percent nonunion), the EduJobs III bill will purportedly "save" 400,000 education jobs at an average cost of nearly $80,000 per job. Those will be paid for with a 0.5 percent surtax on millionaires. The job-savings estimates come from the same economic wunderkinds who predicted the jobless rate today would be 7.1 percent.

The actual unemployment rate reported this month is 9.1 percent. While the White House decries layoffs, the inconvenient truth is that the EduJobs III union payoff is a drop in the bucket compared to the millions laid off in the private sector. According to official government statistics, the share of the eligible population now holding a job has sunk to 58.1 percent, the lowest since July 1983.

So, where did all the original EduJobs money go? One survey by the Center on Education Policy found that much of the cash went to bolster fringe benefits and administrative staff. The Fordham Institute's education analyst Chris Tessone noted: "There is no reason to expect anything but business as usual from another round of subsidies. ... More subsidies just protect the status quo at great expense to taxpayers."

While strapped, reckless-spending school districts bemoan the edge of the federal "funding cliff," another chunk of the EduJobs money went to states that didn't even need it -- and had kept their teacher payrolls full through responsible fiscal stewardship. As education journalist Chris Moody reported last summer, states including North Dakota, Tennessee, Arkansas and Alaska whose budgets are in the black received tens of millions in superfluous school subsidies. "Arkansas," Moody found, "has a fully funded teaching staff for the coming year, but the state will still receive up to $91 million for teaching jobs."

In Alaska, school districts had already made hiring decisions for teachers and apportioned the children in each class based upon those numbers. Nevertheless, to fulfill their teachers union-pandering mission, Obama showered the state with $24 million under the bill -- money that a state education bureaucrat acknowledged "probably would not go to adding new teachers."

Other states, such as Illinois and West Virginia, raked in hundreds of millions more in EduJobs dough even though they hadn't yet burned through 2009 education stimulus money. In fact, a total of 20 states and the District of Columbia have spent less than 5 percent of their allotments, according to Education Week magazine.

An Obama education official helpfully suggested that the unneeded money be spent on "on-campus therapists" instead.

Many other school districts failed to heed warnings against binging on full-time hiring sprees with temporary funding. Education Week reported this spring that the New Hanover County (N.C.) school district used $4.8 million in short-term EduJobs money to fund 88 teaching positions, in addition to more than 100 classroom slots funded with 2009 stimulus tax dollars. Obama and the Democrats blame meanie Republicans for the fiscal emergencies these districts now face.

But who devoured the Beltway candy instead of eating their peas? Washington rewards bloated school pensions, Taj Mahal construction outlays and chronic local education budget shortfalls by pouring more money down their sinkholes. Instead of incentivizing fixes, politicians -- dependent on teachers union campaign contributions and human shield photo-ops -- incentivize more failure.

The solution to this vicious cycle of profligacy? It's elementary: Try something else.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------




Obama is worse than the Sham Wow guy. 
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 19, 2011, 03:20:58 PM

Bogus deportation statistics released by Obama angers lawmakers
By Jim Kouri, Law Enforcement Examiner




Even President Obama admitted to Hispanic voters recently that his administration’s deportation numbers are ‘deceptive.’ 

President Barack Obama's Homeland Security Department officials released a report that claims Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported a record number of illegal immigrants in the last fiscal year, including an "unprecedented number of convicted illegals with criminal records." However, a closer look at the figures reveals the report is bogus, according to the lawmaker in-charge of immigration oversight.
 
In the 2011 fiscal year which ended last month, ICE officials claim they deported more than 396,000 illegal immigrants nationwide -- the largest number in the agency's history, ICE officials said in a statement released yesterday. Of these, nearly 55 percent or more than 216,000 of the people deported were convicted of felonies or misdemeanors -- an 89 percent increase since FY 2008 when George W. Bush was president.
Advertisement
 
 
"Smart and effective immigration enforcement relies on setting priorities for removal and executing on those priorities," said ICE Director John Morton in a press statement.

However, there are some who claim the figures released by Morton -- who was the recipient of a unanimous "vote of no confidence" by his own staff, the men and women who serve as ICE agents -- are purposely misleading or out-and-out bogus.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) issued a biting statement upon reading the ICE statistics.
 
“The Obama administration continues to inflate its deportation numbers.  The administration includes voluntary removals in its deportation statistics even though they impose no penalties on the offenders and make it easier for illegal immigrants to return to the U.S.," said Rep. Smith.
 
"In other words, the Obama administration is cooking the books to make it look like they are enforcing immigration laws, when in reality they are enacting amnesty through inaction," he stated.
 
Under the Obama administration, worksite enforcement has dropped 70%, making it easier for illegal immigrants to live and work in the U.S.  And DHS recently established a working group with the specific purpose of overruling or preventing orders of removal for illegal immigrants.
 
Even President Obama admitted to Hispanic voters recently that his administration’s deportation numbers are ‘deceptive.’
“It’s disappointing that the Obama administration continues to put illegal immigrants before the American people.  Fourteen million Americans are currently looking for work," Smith pointed out.

"Meanwhile, seven million illegal immigrants have jobs in the U.S.  We could free up millions of jobs for citizens and legal immigrants if we simply enforced our immigration laws.  The President’s policies just don’t add up.  It’s time to elect a President that puts the American people first by enforcing our immigration laws,”  Smith urged.

"All one needs to do is compare the press releases issued by ICE during the Obama years and the Bush years to see they are not focusing on enforcing the nation's immigration laws these days," a Border Patrol agent told the Law Enforcement Examiner.

"During the Bush administration, the majority of press releases highlighted the capture of illegal aliens working at companies across the nation. They even nabbed illegal aliens working at high-security facilities run by the U.S. government. Today, the majority of the press releases are issued with regard to child pornography, counterfeit designer clothing and accessories, and even drug arrests," said the Law Enforcement Examiner source who demanded anonymity.

.
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Continue reading on Examiner.com Bogus deportation statistics released by Obama angers lawmakers - National Law Enforcement | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/law-enforcement-in-national/bogus-deportation-statistics-released-by-obama-angers-lawmakers#ixzz1bGjMwNsA

Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 20, 2011, 12:48:30 PM
DOE Bet on EV Charging Technology Puts Taxpayers in Reverse
National Legal & Policy Center ^ | October 20, 2011 | Paul Chesser

Posted on Thursday, October 20, 2011 1:11:39 PM by jazusamo




On Friday NLPC reported that the Department of Energy may have made a bad bet on Ecotality, the car-charging company that is heavily dependent on $115 million in government grants to deploy stations for electric vehicles through its EV Project. It turns out that DOE may not only be gambling taxpayer funds on a shaky company, but may also have dumped a bunch of money into a technology with a questionable future.


Last week seven automotive companies – General Motors, Ford, BMW, Audi, Daimler, Porsche, and Volkswagen – announced they would adopt a single standard , established by the Society of Automotive Engineers, for fast charging the electric vehicles (a speedy re-boost is what every EV owner wants, right?) they produce in the future. Sound good?

Unfortunately this new zip-charging standard is not compatible with the one used for the current No. 1 electric vehicle on the U.S. market – Nissan’s Leaf – which is also the one used by fellow Japanese company Mitsubishi, which will soon bring its own EV to the U.S. The Chevy Volt, which uses a gas engine to additionally charge once its battery has been drained, has a smaller battery and is not conducive to a “fast” charge. So the technology would be for future, purely electric vehicles produced by the seven automakers.

That presents a problem, as the DOE has already poured millions of dollars of subsidies into the fast-charging units that work with the Japanese vehicles, which were conceived by the Tokyo Electric Power Company. As EV expert John Gartner of Pike Research explained, “Charging stations with more than one port could be upgraded to offer both cable types once the SAE standard is released, but who’s going to pay for the retrofits? Having two fast charging standards could slow the spread of fast charging.”

It remains to be seen whether DOE has wagered on the equivalent of VHS or Betamax, but in today’s world where government is funding everything “renewable,” it doesn’t matter. Almost certainly the answer to Gartner’s question is that taxpayers will cover the retrofits, just like they have mostly paid for the chargers to date , as well as the cost of development of the Volt, the retrofit of a Tennessee auto plant to build the Leaf , etc., etc.

Ecotality, which is deploying the Leaf-friendly fast chargers, doesn’t care whether the Japanese technology or the new SAE standard is ultimately adopted.

“The (EV) Project will be getting data back,” said Don Karner, president of Ecotality North America, to the New York Times . “So within the EV Project we are indifferent to what standard is being used and much more attuned to how fast-charging affects how people use their vehicles, where are the best places to put fast charging, how can we most effectively deploy a fast-charge infrastructure.”

Meanwhile taxpayers fund a project with millions of dollars that has suffered from glitches like locked display screens, dropped connectivity, and outright system crashes. These are chargers and systems that are being installed as a significant “investment” in EV infrastructure, with 14,000 stations to be set up in 18 cities across six states and the District of Columbia. Yet Ecotality doesn’t care if the blueprint ultimately has to be torn up and restarted – they will probably benefit financially from it anyway with future DOE grants.

Worse, Gartner of Pike Research believes the EV charging market is “about to get ugly.” He reports that because of increased competition, new technologies being introduced that support Toyota’s coming Prius Plug-in, and providers who bundle service contracts with equipment, that “the prices of chargers are about to go down rapidly – in some cases to zero.” Gartner also notes the slow rollout of electric vehicles informs his prediction, although he mistakenly chalks up that problem to “supply constraints” rather than weak demand, which NLPC’s Mark Modicahas debunked over and over again.

Buttressing Modica’s evidence of EV apathy is a global survey by Deloitte of 13,000 consumers from 17 countries. As reported by online technology Web site ZDNet, “no more than 4 percent of consumers are satisfied with what electric vehicle manufacturers have made available.” Among the expectations respondents said they would want in order to consider the purchase of an EV:

A range of at least 300 miles (current EVs have a maximum range of approximately 100 miles under ideal conditions, that is, without use of air conditioning, heaters, and temperate outside climate.

No more than a 30-minute recharging time.

Similar pricing to gas-powered vehicles.

Indeed, significant percentages of the purchasers of EVs have beenutilities,governments, and companies involved in the rollout like General Electric. Taxpayers also subsidize those transactions, and as if that wasn’t enough, the effect of a network of chargers and EVs on the electrical grid has a significant impact on the overall populace as well. The Tennessee Valley Authority, thelargest public power company in the country, explains:

It is important to note that costs associated with charging infrastructure are in direct correlation to hardware standards….

Utilities are constantly planning and implementing upgrades to their individual systems. Knowing what potential opportunities and challenges the electric vehicle market offers is critically important. Estimating who will purchase these vehicles as they become commercially available, in order to plan system upgrades, is, at the present, extremely difficult.

Learning about current circuit hardware is an effective way to get ready for future upgrades. Unfortunately, many power distributors are at a disadvantage because without detailed paper records, they do not know which assets are where and how long they have been in place….

Careful planning of the charging networks will help utilities encourage market development of electric transportation and lower the risk of unpredicted consequences.

And how do you think the costs associated with upgrades to the distribution network will be recovered? It will be another hidden tax on your electric bill.

Meanwhile DOE has rewarded Ecotality’s substandard track record (only 3,300 chargers installed so far in a project that required 14,000 deployed by 2012, plus the aforementioned technological problems) with another $26.4 million contract to test “advanced vehicles.” Nearly everything that is to be studied is related to EVs, so whether that is truly “advanced” is in the eyes of the beholders. As ZDNet reported:

Right now, there is a big disconnect between electric vehicle consumer expectations and the realities of the technology. Which brings us back full circle to that charging technology cooperation announcement from earlier this week. The automakers are smart to get together on research and development whenever they can, as it relates to alternative transportation technologies. Or electric vehicle adoption will be permanently stuck in neutral.

More realistically, as seen in how government has funded ever-changing technologies, “reverse” is the best result that taxpayers can ever hope for.

Paul Chesser is an associate fellow for the National Legal and Policy Center and is executive director of American Tradition Institute .


Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 21, 2011, 03:32:56 AM
Obama administration pulls references to Islam from terror training materials, official says
Yahoo ^ | 10/21/2011
Posted on October 21, 2011 6:26:27 AM EDT by South40

Deputy U.S. Attorney General James Cole confirmed on Wednesday that the Obama administration was pulling back all training materials used for the law enforcement and national security communities, in order to eliminate all references to Islam that some Muslim groups have claimed are offensive.

“I recently directed all components of the Department of Justice to re-evaluate their training efforts in a range of areas, from community outreach to national security,” Cole told a panel at the George Washington University law school.

The move comes after complaints from advocacy organizations including the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and others identified as Muslim Brotherhood front groups in the 2004 Holy Land Foundation terror fundraising trial.

(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 21, 2011, 03:40:12 AM
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/car-company-us-loan-builds-cars-finland/t/story?id=14770875


More money down the toilet. 
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 21, 2011, 03:43:01 AM
Car Company Gets US Loan, Builds Cars In Finland --$529,000,000
Abcnews ^ | 10.20.11
Posted on October 20, 2011 11:47:31 PM EDT by InvisibleChurch

ABC NEWS and iWATCH NEWS Today, 9:47 PM EDT With the approval of the Obama administration, an electric car company that received a $529 million federal government loan guarantee is assembling its first line of cars in Finland, saying it could not find a facility in the United States capable of doing the work. Vice President Joseph Biden heralded the Energy Department's $529 million loan to the start-up electric car company called Fisker as a bright new path to thousands of American manufacturing jobs. But two years after the loan was announced, the job has been outsourced to Finland.

(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 21, 2011, 04:08:33 AM
EPA to Implement New Coal-Killing Rules 13 Days Before FERC Hearing on Their Potential Effects
Big Government ^ | 10-21-11 | Dan Riehl
Posted on October 21, 2011 7:06:05 AM EDT by afraidfortherepublic

Some called it a gaffe when current Vice President Joe Biden was caught on video saying, “No Coal Plants Here in America,” during the 2008 campaign. Now, thanks to a bit of curious timing, the Obama administration may be a step closer to achieving that very thing, destroying up to 1.4 million jobs in the progress. The move will also lead to a significant increase in energy prices; however, it may be too late to do anything about all that by the time the information comes to light. And yet some think Wall Street, not Washington, is the problem.

Here’s the issue–one part of it, anyway. Connect the dots, beginning with this Federal Energy Regulatory Commission item.

FERC has scheduled a hearing next month to discuss the reliability of the power grid, particularly in regards to concerns stemming from new EPA regulations. Critics of the EPA have made reliability a central theme of their attack on new pollution regulations for power plants and pressed FERC to evaluate their concerns. The hearing is set for November 29.

That sounds good, until one realizes that the EPA intends to put some of said new regulations in effect, over the objections of many states, before their likely impact is discussed more broadly.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said on Tuesday it was committed to finalizing a standard on mercury emissions by November 16 after 25 states urged a court to force the agency to delay the rule. “EPA is committed to completing the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards — the first-ever national standards for mercury, arsenic and other toxic air pollution from power plants,” the EPA said in a release.

The issue may be best summed up in a letter from Senator Inhofe to the EPA. Add it up – fewer jobs, higher electric bills for the middle class and bigger government with more bad-for-business regulations. But it’s not even news, because everyone is focused on Wall Street. Wow! I wonder who thought that one up? Community organizers-in-chief work in mysterious ways, or so I’ve heard.

“Today in Congress there is bipartisan concern that the Obama EPA’s Utility MACT rule will result in a significant number of plant closures, increase electricity rates for every American, and, along with the transport rule, destroy nearly 1.4 million jobs,” Senator Inhofe said. “Now we have learned that EPA has failed to collaborate with FERC to consider how Utility MACT will affect electric reliability. In fact, FERC Commissioner Moeller went as far as to say that ‘the Commission has not acted or studied or provided assistance to any agency, including EPA.’
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 21, 2011, 12:56:32 PM
Obama stimulus cash goes to foreign workers ($7M to four Oregon firms who hired no US workers)
Washington Examiner ^ | October 21, 2011 | Conn Carroll





A Labor Department Inspector General report released this week found that $7,140,782 in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds went to four Oregon forestry services firms who hired no U.S. workers. From the report:


Only two Oregonians were listed on the employer recruitment reports, indicating that workers in Oregon were likely unaware these job opportunities were available. In fact, although 146 U.S. workers were contacted by the three employers regarding possible employment, none were hired. Instead, 254 foreign workers were brought into the country for these jobs.

The Labor OIG even interviewed local workers to find out why no Americans were hired. The OIG reports:


We spoke with two workers who reported that the employer used discouraging language, such as references to age and the ability to speak another language, which are not valid conditions of employment.

Reached for comment by The Oregonian, there was bipartisan anger at the what OIG found. "This is a timber area and we hadn't been cutting trees for years," Republican state Sen. Chris Telfer told the paper. "It really ticked off a lot of people here."

Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., who asked the OIG to investigate the program in September 2010, was also displeased: "The goal of the stimulus bill was to put Americans back to work, not foreign nationals. ... Oregonians have been logging for over a century, our workforce is one of the best in the world, and these contracts should have been awarded to companies that hire Oregon loggers."

This is not the first time President Obama's policies have killed Oregonian jobs. In July, the Obama administration rescinded a Bush administration plan to double logging in Western Oregon. “Communities throughout western Oregon are facing extreme economic dislocation that has been compounded by a lack of timber coming from the BLM forests--southwest Oregon has become a sacrifice zone for this Administration,” American Forest Resource Council Tom Partin said in a release.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 22, 2011, 04:38:27 AM
Energy Department Defends Loan to Company Building Electric Cars in Finland
foxnews.com/ ^ | Oct 21,2011 | FNS
Posted on October 21, 2011 1:23:35 PM EDT by NoLibZone

The Department of Energy is standing by a $529 million loan guarantee to a company building an electric car line in Finland.

A department official, in a lengthy response posted on a government blog Thursday night, confirmed that the company Fisker is assembling its Karma electric car at its "overseas facility."

The response comes after ABC News reported that the Obama administration gave the green light for the company to move the manufacturing to Finland two years after announcing the loan.

The ABC News report noted the political connections enjoyed by Fisker and another company, Tesla Motors, which together received about $1 billion in loans. Fisker reportedly is backed by a firm that counts ex-Vice President Al Gore among its partners. The article said just 40 of Fisker's Karma cars have been produced so far, and that Tesla is consistently losing money.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/10/21/energy-department-defends-loan-to-company-building-electric-cars-in-finland/#ixzz1bRCQmeLc

(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 22, 2011, 06:46:38 AM
No joke, our money going to Finland

"Outta' My Mind on a Saturday Moanin'"
Even a guy as bright (no pun intended) as Thomas Edison would be shocked (again no pun intended … and that really would be a Ben Franklin joke anyway) to find that his life-changing invention 132 years ago (yesterday), would be the hot potato, political line in the sand it is today. For him, it was just the first workable electric light bulb.
Tomorrow marks the 10th anniversary of another life-changing technology: the iPod's introduction. Oh, it's also mother-in-law day (insert joke here, if applicable).
On Tuesday, President Barack Obama will make his fourth visit to Jay Leno's "Tonight Show." (Insert several jokes here.)
Are you kidding me? Our president gave our hard-earned money to Henrik Fisker to build his politically correct $97,000 electric sports car? You know, the $529 million loan that Vice President Joe Biden claimed was a bright new path to thousands of American jobs. Two years later, only 500 jobs have been created — at a cost of about $1.1 million per job. But wait, it gets better, well actually, worse. Much worse.
Those 500 great American jobs are in Finland.
I'm not done.
ABC network chief investigative reporter Brian Ross tells me Mr. Fisker told him: "There was no contract manufacturer in the U.S. that could actually produce our vehicle. They don't exist here."
Apparently he's never heard of Detroit and didn't know we have a few available empty auto plants in "move-in" condition. He apparently didn't know we have a "few" well-trained, excellent autoworkers available, too.
And finally, as if he hadn't spread enough salt into our wounds, Mr. Fisker finished with: "We're not in the business of failing; we're in the business of winning. So we make the right decision for the business. That's why we went to Finland."

Why didn't he get the $529 million from Finland then? Maybe he and his cars should just stay there, after he pays us back.

Oh, that's my final reference to jokes.

And I don't feel much like laughing right now.

Paul W. Smith is host of The Paul W. Smith Show on WJR-AM (760) from 5:30-9 a.m. Monday-Friday. Write him at letters@detnews.com.

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Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 23, 2011, 06:22:15 AM
Obama stimulus cash goes to foreign workers ($7M to four Oregon firms who hired no US workers)
Washington Examiner ^ | October 21, 2011 | Conn Carroll
Posted on October 21, 2011 12:34:17 PM EDT by Qbert

A Labor Department Inspector General report released this week found that $7,140,782 in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds went to four Oregon forestry services firms who hired no U.S. workers. From the report:

Only two Oregonians were listed on the employer recruitment reports, indicating that workers in Oregon were likely unaware these job opportunities were available. In fact, although 146 U.S. workers were contacted by the three employers regarding possible employment, none were hired. Instead, 254 foreign workers were brought into the country for these jobs.
The Labor OIG even interviewed local workers to find out why no Americans were hired. The OIG reports:

We spoke with two workers who reported that the employer used discouraging language, such as references to age and the ability to speak another language, which are not valid conditions of employment.
Reached for comment by The Oregonian, there was bipartisan anger at the what OIG found. "This is a timber area and we hadn't been cutting trees for years," Republican state Sen. Chris Telfer told the paper. "It really ticked off a lot of people here."

Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., who asked the OIG to investigate the program in September 2010, was also displeased: "The goal of the stimulus bill was to put Americans back to work, not foreign nationals. ... Oregonians have been logging for over a century, our workforce is one of the best in the world, and these contracts should have been awarded to companies that hire Oregon loggers."

This is not the first time President Obama's policies have killed Oregonian jobs. In July, the Obama administration rescinded a Bush administration plan to double logging in Western Oregon. “Communities throughout western Oregon are facing extreme economic dislocation that has been compounded by a lack of timber coming from the BLM forests--southwest Oregon has become a sacrifice zone for this Administration,” American Forest Resource Council Tom Partin said in a release.
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 25, 2011, 10:32:04 AM
GAO: With China dialogues, WH violated law
by Joel Gehrke Commentary Staff Writer
Follow on Twitter:@jsgehrkejr

http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/gao-china-dialogues-wh-violated-law





It’s not every day that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports that the Executive Office of the President violated federal law, but that’s the conclusion the GAO released in a report this month, after reviewing bilateral talks with the Chinese government hosted by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP).

The White House Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) disputes GAO’s conclusion, arguing that the law does not constitutionally apply to the OSTP's diplomatic activities.

The disagreement stems from meetings this past May in which officials from the OSTP met with representatives of the Chinese government to discuss technology innovation and economic issues.

After reviewing the meetings at the behest of Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., the GAO "conclude[d] that OSTP’s use of appropriations to fund its participation in the Innovation Dialogue and the [economic issues] violated” a section of the Department of Defense appropriations bill that became law in April.

"The plain meaning of section 1340 is clear," wrote GAO general counsel Lynn Gibson, adding that OSTP "contravened the appropriations restriction." The GAO report provided the text of section 1340:

"None of the funds made available by this division may be used for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration or the Office of Science and Technology Policy to develop, design, plan, promulgate, implement, or execute a bilateral policy, program, order, or contract of any kind to participate, collaborate, or coordinate bilaterally in any way with China or any Chinese-owned company unless such activities are specifically authorized by a law enacted after the date of enactment of this division."

Assistant Attorney General Virginia Seitz responded with memorandum in which she argued that section 1340 "is unconstitutional as applied to certain activities undertaken pursuant to the President’s constitutional authority to conduct the foreign relations of the United States."

She also said "most, if not all, of the activities of the activities you have described to us fall within the President’s exclusive power to conduct diplomacy."

Rick Weiss, an OSTP senior analyst and director of Strategic Communications for OSTP, said that White House OLC opinions take precedence over those of the GAO.

"That’s not our understanding,” said Dan Scandling, a spokesman for Rep. Wolf. "GAO is saying they're in violation of the law. GAO is an independent body; [the Department of Justice] is not."

Weiss cited a 2005 memo by Joshua Bolten, then-Director of the Office of Budget and Management under President George W. Bush, as a bipartisan corroboration of his conclusion.

"[T]he GAO does not provide controlling legal interpretations for the Executive Branch," Bolten wrote. "Rather, responsibility for ensuring Executive Branch agencies' compliance with law rests with their respective General Counsels and, ultimately, with the Attorney General."

GAO's general counsel argued that, absent a judicial interpretation of the law's constitutionality, Acts of Congress are "entitled to a heavy presumption in favor of constitutionality."

In any case, the Attorney General's office approved the OSTP meeting with the Chinese government, section 1340 notwithstanding. But Seitz seems to have left open the question of whether the dialogues broke the law.

Four times in her memorandum, Seitz used the phrase "most, if not all" to defend OSTP's activities as protected under the president's constitutional authority.

That ambiguity seems to undermine the defense of OSTP. "OSTP does not deny that it engaged in activities prohibited by section 1340," Gibson wrote for the GAO.

"OSTP argues, instead, that section 1340, as applied to the events at issue here, is an unconstitutional infringement on the President’s constitutional prerogatives in foreign affairs," she said.

But Seitz does not say that "all" of "the events at issue" are protected by the "president's constitutional prerogatives," -- she says, emphatically, that "most, if not all," and thus leaves open the possibility that some of those activities did violate the law.

The phrase might amount to only a minor ambiguity, but she repeated the words -- which get to the heart of her argument -- throughout the memorandum.

When The Washington Examiner asked Weiss if Seitz intended the ambiguity, he declined to comment, referring the question instead to the Office of Legal Counsel.

The Washington Examiner has requested clarification from the Department of Justice as to what Seitz meant and whether OSTP did, in fact, break the law.


Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 25, 2011, 07:33:23 PM
BAGHDAD — Throughout the summer and autumn, as talks on a continued U.S. military presence in Iraq foundered, President Barack Obama and his point man on Iraq, Vice President Joe Biden, remained aloof from the process, not even phoning top Iraqi officials to help reach a deal, according to logs released by the U.S. Embassy here.

The omission is an unusual one, given the high priority that U.S. officials had given to achieving an agreement for some sort of residual U.S. presence in Iraq after the Dec. 31 pullout deadline set in a 2008 pact between the two countries. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and other senior Pentagon officials spoke often about the need for an agreement in a pivotal country in a volatile region and insisted talks were continuing up until Friday, when Obama announced that all U.S. troops would be coming home before the end of December.

A listing of direct conversations provided by the embassy — drawn, the embassy said, from the White House website — indicates that Obama had no direct contact with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki between Feb. 13, when he telephoned the prime minister, until Friday, when he called Maliki to tell him U.S. troops would be withdrawn by Dec. 31.

Also absent for nearly the entire year was Biden. According to the official listing, Biden telephoned Maliki on Dec. 21, the day Maliki formed a new government, and visited here Jan. 18, but had no direct contact after that date, according to the official listing.

U.S. Embassy officials, asked in July whether Biden was coming to help secure the deal, which military officers said needed to be concluded by July 31 for planning purposes, said the vice president was too busy trying to end the donnybrook in Congress over raising the national debt ceiling to visit Iraq.

On Tuesday, a White House spokesman, Tommy Vietor, denied that Obama and Biden had not talked to Maliki during the negotiations. But he did not respond to a request for the dates of conversations between the president and Maliki.

"The VP talked to senior Iraqi leaders multiple times during that period of time," Vietor wrote in an email. "The President also engaged with Iraqi leaders. Your story is totally wrong."

Iraqi government spokesman Tahseen al Shaikhli said he could not explain the lack of contact between Maliki and top-level Americans.

"You'll have to ask (Obama) why he didn't intervene before this, or call before this," he said.

Shaikhli said his government still hopes that an invitation that Obama extended for a meeting with Maliki in December might lead to an agreement between the two countries that would allow uniformed U.S. trainers to deploy to Iraq.

"Maybe when they sit together, they will solve most of the problems," he said, adding, "Or maybe they will complicate it more."

The issue of whether some U.S. troops might remain in Iraq after the Dec. 31 date, which was set by the so-called Status of Forces Agreement that the administration of President George W. Bush negotiated with the Iraqi government, had always been a complicated one — both for Iraqi officials and Obama, who promised as a presidential candidate in 2008 that he would bring U.S. troops home from Iraq.

Maliki announced on May 11 that he would consult politicians at every level before deciding whether to ask the United States to keep troops here, and he said he hoped to reach a decision by July 31, the date set by the U.S. military. Iraqi officials soon were saying that the country was hoping that at least 10,000 to 15,000 troops would stay behind.

Iraqi political leaders, with the exception of followers of the militant Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al Sadr and veteran politician Ahmed Chalabi, indicated that they would favor the continued presence of U.S. forces, but they were less certain about the U.S. demand to provide immunity from prosecution for troops serving here.

The top politicians, already gridlocked on other security issues, including who would serve as ministers of defense and the interior, were unable to agree at the initial sessions.

Panetta flew to Baghdad on July 11, his first trip since becoming defense secretary, but he didn't make any headway. "I'd like things to move a lot faster here, frankly," he told U.S. troops then. "Do you want us to stay, don't you want us to stay? Damn it, make a decision."

A major complication was the insistence by the Obama administration that the accord go before the Iraqi parliament, something that in the end Iraqi politicians decided was impossible. But whether that restriction was necessary is an open question. Many status-of-forces agreements are signed at the executive level only, particularly in countries without elected legislatures.

But the White House turned the issue over to the State Department's legal affairs office, reporters in Baghdad were told on Saturday. The lawyers gave a variety of options, but Obama chose the most stringent, approval by Iraq's legislature of a new agreement, citing as precedent that the Iraqi parliament had approved the 2008 agreement, reporters were told.

By mid-September, Iraqi government spokesmen had lowered their goal for a continued presence of U.S. military trainers to about 3,000. But they were also determined not to give in on the American demand for immunity for U.S. troops.

When the Iraqis announced that they'd reached a decision Oct. 4 to request trainers, the figure was "more than 5,000," according to Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, who told reporters Oct. 10 that Iraqi was seeking a "yes or no" response from the Americans. He said there would be no grant of immunity to Americans who stayed behind, however, something the Pentagon had previously said would be required if any troops were to remain.

Whether an earlier Obama intervention would have changed the course of the talks is unknowable.

Shaikhli, the Iraqi spokesman, said his government still is hoping for an agreement that would provide American forces with "legal protection" rather than "immunity," meaning that the U.S. would retain jurisdiction if a soldier committed a crime against another soldier, but that Iraqi law would hold sway if the soldier were accused of injuring an Iraqi civilian.

Shaikhli said, however, that he didn't think such an agreement should be put before the Iraqi parliament.

"We have to wait until the negotiation is finished," he said, "and we should not jump to a conclusion."

(Steven Thomma contributed to this report from Washington.)

MORE FROM MCCLATCHY


http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/10/25/128294/as-us-iraqi-troop-talks-faltered.html






FAIL!
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 26, 2011, 07:42:20 AM
Obama Admin Seeks Permission TO LIE In Response To FOI Requests - Even To The COURTS



" One of the President Obama's first promises after becoming President of the United States was a commitment to usher in a new era of unprecedented government transparency . http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Transparency... / Instead the Obama administration has exhibited what may be an unprecedented obsession with government secrecy including blocking numerous law suits by invoking the doctrine of "State Secrets." The administration has even come up with an interpretation of the Patriot Act which many in Congress who have seen it claim is overly broad and bestows more power on the Executive Branch than was intended by Congress when they passed it.



Unfortunately those in Congress who have seen this document are not permitted to divulge its content, and we, the public, cannot see it because the administration has chosen to classify it as a "State Secret." In other words, you might be doing something that the Obama Administration believes violates the Patriot Act, but you won't know it until they indict you for breaking a law you did not know existed (I might be breaking it just by penning and publishing this article).



Now the Obama/Holder Justice Department is attempting to re-write the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), empowering or even compelling government agencies to deny the very existence of records they know to exist if they believe they are legitimately exempted from disclosure. Of course they are most likely the sole arbiter of whether they are indeed exempt from disclosure. In effect the Obama/Holder Justice Department wants to be free to legally lie about the existence of records in response to FOIA requests. Apparently they want to avoid the embarrassment and inconvenience of being officially rebuked by the courts for doing exactly that (lying to a Federal judge), as occurred earlier this year http://www.mainjustice.com/files/2011/04/Cormac-Carney-... when, in a strongly worded opinion, U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney wrote that the "Government cannot, under any circumstance, affirmatively mislead the Court." The solution is simple: re-write the law so the government, in many circumstances, can affirmatively mislead the court.



Despite substantial opposition by such groups as the ACLU, The National Press Club, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, OpentheGovernment.org., Judicial Watch, et al to this radical re-write of the FOIA Law , this controversial effort by the Obama Administration to evade the very transparency it so passionately promised to deliver has been virtually ignored by the mainstream media which is supposed to the guardian of the people's right to know. Whether you are a Democrat or a Republican or neither, this move by the Obama administration should trouble you deeply. Is this change we can believe in???



Below are snippets of reports on this controversy, none of them from a mainstream media source. That was not my intent. I just could not find any. I learned about it just this morning in an e-mail from the National Law Journal:





"Under the new Department of Justice proposal, in replying to a request for information under the freedom-of-information law, if the information is allowed to be withheld under certain statutory exceptions, then federal officials "will respond to the request as if the excluded records did not exist"--even if that is not the case.


"No rule or law should allow, let alone require, the government to mislead the press or the public about anything," said Mark Hamrick , a broadcast journalist with the Associated Press who is the 2011 president of the National Press Club. "If enacted, it appears that this proposed rule would offend the precepts that informed the Freedom of Information Act, and it would tarnish the government's credibility.


"What's more, the change seems unnecessary," he said. "If agencies are exercising legally allowable exceptions to the law and withholding certain records, they can just continue to do as they do today: neither confirm nor deny the information's existence.""


http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/national-press-...





"The Justice Department has proposed the change as part of a large revision of FOIA rules for federal agencies. Specifically, the rule would direct government agencies who are denying a request under an established FOIA exemption to "respond to the request as if the excluded records did not exist," rather than citing the relevant exemption. The proposed rule has alarmed government transparency advocates across the political spectrum, who've called it "Orwellian" and say it will "twist" public access to government.




cont'


http://www.opednews.com/articles/Transparency-In-Govern...

 
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 27, 2011, 06:13:24 AM
Sitter in Chief Barack Obama and the infantilization of America..Article Comments (178) more in Opinion | Find New $LINKTEXTFIND$ ».Email Print Save ↓ More .
By JAMES TARANTO
www.wsj.com




Breaking from the great American journalistic tradition of speaking truth to power, the San Francisco Chronicle publishes this cutesy puff piece on the most powerful man in the world: "President Obama spent only a few hours in San Francisco on Tuesday, but he took just seconds to prove once again why he's the baby whisperer." It seems that when the president arrived at the airport, he "spotted 6-month-old Josie Knight, who was crying while being held by her mother, Gina Odom, 37, of Oakland."

Obama heroically took "the squalling infant into his arms" and repeated, "It's OK," until she calmed down. "Obama bounced gently and held her for about 10 seconds before flashing a smile and returning her to Odom."

But this isn't just a harmless human-interest story about a baby-kissing pol. It's a metaphor.

Here's ABC News, reporting on the speech the president gave in Fog City: "At a million-dollar San Francisco fundraiser today, President Obama warned his recession-battered supporters that if he loses the 2012 election it could herald a new, painful era of self-reliance in America."

Oh no! Horror of horrors! Obama is the only thing standing between us and having to rely on ourselves! And do you know what they call people who rely on themselves?

Adults.

 .Oddly, the White House website doesn't have the text of this speech, but here's a passage from ABC: "The one thing that we absolutely know for sure is that if we don't work even harder than we did in 2008, then we're going to have a government that tells the American people, 'you are on your own. If you get sick, you're on your own. If you can't afford college, you're on your own. If you don't like that some corporation is polluting your air or the air that your child breathes, then you're on your own.' That's not the America I believe in. It's not the America you believe in."

Obama explicitly rejects the American ethos of self-reliance. He sees dependence on government not as an evil, if sometimes a necessary one, but as a goal to be pursued. It reminded us of Peggy Noonan's observation last week that there's something not fully adult about the president himself: "Sorry to do archetypes, but a nation in trouble probably wants a fatherly, or motherly, figure at the top. What America has right now is a bright, lost older brother. It misses Dad."

Perhaps Obama is eager to infantilize Americans precisely because he is not a fatherly figure--a man of unquestioned wisdom and maturity. A strong father continues to command his children's respect even as they too reach adulthood. As Mark Twain observed, "When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years." The "bright, lost older brother," by contrast, can command the respect only of young children.

Fox News, meanwhile, reports on an effort to push nanny-statism even further: "Gov. Dan Malloy has declared Thursday 'Diaper Need Awareness Day' as part of a campaign by The Nutmeg State to pressure Washington into providing free diapers to low-income families." Rep. Rosa DeLauro, like Malloy a Connecticut Democrat, is pushing legislation that "would allow Uncle Sam to . . . provide funding for diapers and diaper supplies."

Maybe Obama should take it one step further and ask Congress to create a new cabinet-level Department of Infant Care to provide free diapers to all Americans. (Would that include the elderly? Depends.) It would certainly resonate with his 2008 campaign theme of "change."

Remedial Writing
It looks as though the Worst Writer in the English Language is making an attempt at self-improvement. Here are the first two sentences of his column today:

Who would have predicted it? Barack Obama has turned out to be so much more adept at implementing George W. Bush's foreign policy than Bush was, but he is less adept at implementing his own.
This leads very similarly to our Friday column: "Who'd have thought Barack Obama would end up killing more Arab tyrants and terrorists in just the past two years than George W. Bush did in three?" A lesser man would take offense at the imitation, but we are happy to be helping make him a better writer.

Along the way, he makes this observation about Obama: "True, he was naïve about how much his star power, or that of his secretary of state, would get others to swoon in behind us." And if this story in the Washington Times is any indication, he still is:

The State Department has bought more than $70,000 worth of books authored by President Obama, sending out copies as Christmas gratuities and stocking "key libraries" around the world with "Dreams From My Father" more than a decade after its release.
The U.S. Embassy in Egypt, for instance, spent $28,636 in August 2009 for copies of Mr. Obama's best-selling 1995 memoir. Six weeks earlier, the embassy had placed another order for the same book for more than $9,000, federal purchasing records show.
About the same time, halfway around the world, the U.S. Embassy in South Korea had the same idea and spent more than $6,000 for copies of "Dreams From My Father."
A caveat: No figure is given for North Korea. If it turns out that more copies went to Pyongyang than Seoul, then the administration's diplomacy may be smarter than the story would suggest.

As for Thomas Friedman, by the end of his column, unfortunately, he has reverted to form. We'll quote the last paragraph, but you might want to pop a Dramamine before reading it:

So, Mama, tell your children not to grow up to be secretary of state or a foreign policy president--not until others have done more nation-building abroad and we've done more nation-building at home.
But listen, Rome wasn't built in a day. With a few more years of determined practice, maybe Friedman will be able to write a column that is better than awful from beginning to end.

Just So You Know, I'm Ignoring You
President Obama appeared last night on "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno," and The Wall Street Journal has some highlights:

Mr. Obama compared the GOP nominating contest to the reality TV show "Survivor." "I'm going to wait until everybody is voted off the island," he said to applause. "Once they narrow it down to one or two, I'll start paying attention."
We suppose people who haven't been paying attention to Obama may believe that he hasn't been paying attention to the Republicans, but in fact he has. Here are some recent headlines:

■"Obama to Perry: 'Be a Little More Careful About What You Say' "--RealClearPolitics.com, Aug. 16
■"Obama Slams Perry, GOP Debates"--USA Today website, Sept. 26
■"In a Preview of 2012, Obama Mocks the GOP"--Time.com, Sept. 26
■"Obama Rebukes GOP Candidates for Not Speaking Up for Gay Soldier"--Washington Times, Oct. 2
■" 'Underdog' Obama on Attack Against GOP"--Washington Times, Oct. 3
■"Obama Campaign Steps Up Attacks on Mitt Romney"--Los Angeles Times, Oct. 12
■"Obama Attacks Perry on Flat Tax"--New York Times website, Oct. 25
It reminds us a bit of the New York Times's bizarre denial that it endorsed John McCain in the 2008 Republican primary. And speaking of the Times, our item yesterday on columnist David Brooks prompted a hilarious reply from reader Greg Schwinghammer--which we should warn you contains a movie spoiler:

"Primal Fear" was a silly thriller in which Edward Norton is arrested for a murder, and is a babbling mentally impaired child named Aaron. After talking with Richard Gere, his public defender, it appears he has a multiple personality disorder, and "Roy" is a terrible killer. Lots of repressed memory business and at trial Gere dramatically convinces "Roy" to come out and show himself which leads to the acquittal of "Aaron."
Then at the end "Roy" is talking to Richard Gere, laughing and saying "You were great. That was perfect. We pulled it off." Gere is upset and screaming for "Aaron" to come out, and says something like, "Aaron, I know you are in there. Come talk to me." Edward Norton is then perfectly evil as he looks at Gere and says, "C'mon, man, you're kidding me. You thought that was real. Hey man, there ain't no Aaron."
We'd say Schwinghammer nailed poor Brooks.

Shariahnoia

Writing on Commentary's website, Max Boot has a useful corrective to some of the distraught commentary you've probably been hearing of late about the rise of Shariah in North Africa in the wake of the Arab Spring:

Saying a country's legal system will be based on sharia law is about as descriptive as saying it will be based on the Ten Commandants [sic] or the teachings of Christ. Like Christianity, Judaism or any other religion, Islam is subject to countless interpretations. Sharia law has meant many different things in many different countries across the ages. Even Islamic fundamentalists are not all alike. Wahhabis rule in both Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, yet liquor is readily available in the latter but not the former.
Islamist parties do not necessarily take their inspiration from the Taliban, Hamas, or the Iranian mullahs. In fact, the failure of all three of those Islamist regimes–in Afghanistan, Gaza and Iran--to deliver economic or social progress has done much to discredit them in the Muslim world. That doesn't mean most Muslims are ready to embrace a strictly secular regime; but then even in Europe, Christian Democratic parties are common, and in the United States many political candidates claim to take their marching orders from the Almighty.
It's also worth noting that a regime can be "strictly secular" and also horrifically oppressive, as Justice Antonin Scalia noted earlier this month in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee:

I ask [law students], "Why do you think America is such a free country? What is it in our Constitution that makes us what we are?" And I guarantee you that the response I will get--and you will get this from almost any American . . . the answer would be: freedom of speech; freedom of the press; no unreasonable searches and seizures; no quartering of troops in homes . . . those marvelous provisions of the Bill of Rights.

But then I tell them, "If you think a bill of rights is what sets us apart, you're crazy." Every banana republic in the world has a bill of rights. Every president for life has a bill of rights. The bill of rights of the former evil empire, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was much better than ours. I mean it. Literally, it was much better. We guarantee freedom of speech and of the press. Big deal. They guaranteed freedom of speech, of the press, of street demonstrations and protests, and anyone who is caught trying to suppress criticism of the government will be called to account. Whoa, that is wonderful stuff!
Of course, it's just words on paper, what our Framers would have called a "parchment guarantee."
We are far from confident that the democratic experiment in the Arab world is going to work out well. But if you start telling us that Libya is sure to be worse off than it was under Moammar Gadhafi, merely because he was "secular," we will take you about as seriously as we took people who said the same about Iraq and Saddam Hussein.

Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 27, 2011, 05:22:04 PM
Must-See Video DHS Hearings: Big Sis Gives Secret Clearance to Muslim Brotherhood
Atlas Shrugs ^ | Oct 27, 2011 | Pam Geller et al
Posted on October 27, 2011 7:17:10 PM EDT by combat_boots

(Video)


Homeland Insecurity in the hot seat: Big Sis, Janet Napolitano, with the most most disturbing hairdo/color I have ever seen, admits that she has been given secret clearance to Muslim Brotherhood-tied operatives here in the US at the US Immigration and Enforcement hearings. This is jawdropping testimony. Looking like a character in a John Waters film, Janet Napolitano is either clueless, complicit or downright lying to cover for her Muslim Brotherhood appointments. Napolitano denies being aware of a Muslim Brotherhood-tied operative whom she swore in.

Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas does a spectacular job on pressing Napolitano's knowledge of the story that I posted yesterday concerning Mohamed Elibiary, the Homeland Security Adviser who allegedly leaked intel and shopped classified Info to media. I warned of Elibiary's appointment back in 2010. He asked if she was aware and she said she was not aware. Gohmert further pressed Napolitano of her knowledge of Elibiary's support of the Ayatollah Khomeini. Again she feigned concern and professed ignorance. This is the head of Homeland Security claiming ignorance of the most dangerous threat to the homeland, the global jihad and Islamic imperialism and expansion. All of her answers indicate that she is being led by her not inconsequential nose by those who seek "to eliminate and destroy Western civilization from within."

Gohmert asked her if it concerned her at all and ...... she didn't answer.

(Excerpt) Read more at atlasshrugs2000.typepad. com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 27, 2011, 05:24:48 PM
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Obama admin renews push for solar energy in West
Associated Press ^ | Oct. 27, 2011 | MATTHEW DALY
Posted on October 27, 2011 7:12:02 PM EDT by Free ThinkerNY

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Obama administration on Thursday identified 17 sites in six Western states as prime candidates for solar energy projects on public lands, continuing a push for solar power despite the high-profile bankruptcy of a solar panel maker that received a half-billion dollar federal loan.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said the latest "Solar Energy Zones" refine and improve on a draft released in December that identified two dozen areas in California, Nevada, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Arizona.

(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...

Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 02, 2011, 05:19:25 AM
Obama's Gets a Failing Grade on Education
American Thinker ^ | November 2, 2011 | Dan Joppich

Posted on Wednesday, November 02, 2011 7:30:38 AM by wintertime

This from a Huffington Post article - 2011 National Math, Reading Test Scores Show Sluggish Growth:

On the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress, administered every two years, average scores in fourth and eighth-grade math increased slightly, gaining one point each on a 500-point scale since 2009 and continuing a trend of minimal increases since 2003. Fourth-grade reading scores remained stagnant, staying the same since 2007, and eighth-grade reading scores increased by one point since 2009 on the 500-point scale.

"It is not an enormous increase substantively in terms of what students can do," said Jack Buckley, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, the U.S. Department of Education arm that administers the exams.

This year's math scores are the highest to date since 1990, when the test was first administered. But the scores remain dismal: Only 40 percent of fourth graders and 35 percent of eighth-grade students are performing at or above a level defined as "proficient." In reading, despite average scores reaching a similar peak, only 34 percent of students in both grades were rated "proficient."

While the writer is a master of the understatement the article is missing one little fact - The Obama administration has increased Department of Education spending by 40% annually since taking office. If you consider the result of the extra $30 billion in annual spending is a .000667 times average increase in yearly testing scores from 2009-2011, I would say it's more likely a huge failure than a minimal increase.


(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...

Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 02, 2011, 03:22:42 PM
Debt Increased $203 Billion in Oct.--$650 for Every Man, Woman and Child in America
By Terence P. Jeffrey
November 2, 2011
Subscribe to Terence P. Jeffrey's posts




President Barack Obama speaking on Oct. 12, 2011. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
(CNSNews.com) - The federal government’s debt increased by $203,368,715,583.63 in the month of October, according to the U.S. Treasury.

That equals about $650 per person for each of the 312,542,760 people the Census Bureau now estimates live in the United States.

At the end of September, the total national debt stood at $14,790,340,328,557.15, according to the Bureau of the Public Debt. By the end of October, it had risen to $14,993,709,044,140.78.

The debt increased far more this October than it did last October. Between the last day of September 2010 and the last day of October, the debt rose from $13,561,623,030,891.79 to 13,668,825,497,341.36—for an increase of $107,202,466, 449.57.

October is the first month of the federal fiscal year. If the debt were to increase by an average of $203 billion for the remaining 11 months of the year, the national debt would increase by $2.436 trillion for the year.

Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 02, 2011, 03:30:43 PM
Subcommittee authorizes Homeland Security subpoena (re: illegals identified but not deported)
Yahoo ^ | 11/2/11 | Henry C. Jackson - AP




WASHINGTON (AP) — A House subcommittee on Wednesday authorized a subpoena against the Homeland Security Department for information about illegal immigrants who have been identified but not deported.

The authorization cleared the House Judiciary subcommittee on immigration policy and enforcement by a 7-4, party line vote. Democrats voted against the measure, saying it was premature to issue a subpoena because Homeland Security, which oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement, is cooperating with the committee.

House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, says the subpoena authorization is necessary because the Obama administration hasn't responded quickly enough to his request, which was made in August. He had set a Monday deadline that the department failed to meet.

"The administration is obviously not acting in good faith," Smith said. "They're on the verge of obstructing the legitimate work of Congress."

Nelson Peacock, an assistant secretary for Homeland Security, said in a letter to Smith Wednesday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is working expeditiously to turn over the information the committee has requested but that it will take significant analysis.

"As we have explained, ICE does not track the circumstances of cases where no action is taken," Peacock wrote. But he said the agency is committed to satisfying the committee's request and is working through its records to get as specific a response as possible.


(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...

Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 03, 2011, 03:06:50 AM
(IG: )Trying to Spend Billions in Stimulus Funds Like 'Putting A Lawn Hose on a Fire Hydrant,'...
Cybercast News Service ^ | Nov 2, 2011 | Penny Starr
Posted on November 3, 2011 4:58:21 AM EDT by markomalley

Inspector Generals with the Departments of Energy and Labor told a House panel on Wednesday that reports compiled at Congress’ request show that billions of dollars in stimulus funding given to the agencies to create green jobs have failed to achieve that goal.

DOE Inspector General Gregory Friedman told the House Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs, Stimulus Oversight and Government Spending that his agency received $35.2 billion from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2009.

Friedman’s office found that as of Oct. 22, 2011 about 45 percent of the agency’s stimulus funds had not been spent – mostly by state and local recipients of stimulus funds.

The reasons, Friedman said, are that few “shovel ready” jobs actually existed and that the infrastructure and personnel were not in place at the state and local level to put funding and programs in place.

He compared it to “putting a lawn hose on a fire hydrant.”

(Excerpt) Read more at cnsnews.com ...





Fail. 
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 03, 2011, 03:09:02 AM
US DOE Inspector General Testifies: "Energy stimulus program plagued by problems"
Watts Up With That ^ | 1102-2011 | Don Penim
Posted on November 3, 2011 2:09:20 AM EDT by Robert A. Cook, PE

U.S. Department of Energy official testifies to committee:

Energy stimulus program plagued by problems

The Department of Energy’s inspector general said Wednesday that the 2009 stimulus program for green energy was so at odds with the realities on the ground that it was akin to “attaching a lawn mower to a fire hydrant.”

Inspector General Gregory Friedman, testifying to the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s panel on stimulus oversight, outlined a range of problems, from a flood of $35 billion in stimulus money that overwhelmed the department’s $27 billion annual budget to weatherization programs of such shoddy quality that more than half of those audited failed inspection because of substandard workmanship.

Elliot Lewis, assistant inspector general for the Labor Department, told the panel that problems also plagued training programs for green jobs that were allocated nearly $500 million. Of the roughly 125,000 workers eligible for training, only 40 percent received it and only 8,035 participants landed jobs.






Fail. 
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 04, 2011, 08:23:05 PM
Obama Adminstration Opposes Prayer Plaque at WWII Memorial - It Would "Dilute Message"
humanevents.com ^ | 11/04/2011 | Todd Starnes
Posted on November 4, 2011 8:04:38 PM EDT by massmike

Republican lawmakers and conservative activists are expressing outrage after the Obama administration announced its objection to adding President Franklin Roosevelt’s D-Day prayer to the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. The objection was noted during a congressional hearing on Rep. Bill Johnson’s (R-OH) bill – the “World War II Memorial Prayer Act of 2011.”

"It is unconscionable that the Obama administration would stand in the way of honoring our nation’s distinguished World War II veterans,” Johnson said. “President Roosevelt’s prayer gave solace, comfort and strength to our nation and our brave warriors as we fought against tyranny and oppression.”

Roosevelt asked the nation to join him in prayer as U.S. and allied troops launched the invasion that led to the defeat of Nazi Germany. He asked God to give the allied troops courage and faith, saying, “With thy blessing we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy.”

But Robert Abbey, the director of the Bureau of Land Management, said any plaque or inscription of the prayer would “dilute” the memorial’s central message and therefore “should not be altered.”

(Excerpt) Read more at humanevents.com ...








Everyone voting for this animal needs to be shoved off a skyscraper. 
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: 240 is Back on November 06, 2011, 11:33:55 AM
Everyone voting for this animal needs to be shoved off a skyscraper. 

that made me laugh.

Perhaps you and your kin should choose a VP that isn't a ticket-killer this time.

Mccain/Romney woudl have defeated obama.  Try to keep a moron off the VP slot this time, thanks.
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 06, 2011, 05:28:44 PM
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Congressman: Science 'czar' giving China U.S. technology
WND ^ | November 05, 2011 | By Bob Unruh
Posted on November 6, 2011 2:11:07 AM EST by Never A Dull Moment

A congressman says he's alarmed that President Obama's science "czar," John Holdren, apparently has been collaborating with the Chinese even though Congress specifically prohibited that activity in a bill signed into law by his boss, Obama.

The accusations from U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf. R-Va., came this week in a hearing of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations.

The committee was listening to testimony about China's espionage in the United States and "the violation of the law by the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy."

Wolf noted he opposed the idea that the U.S. should work with China in any way regarding that nation's space program.

"The Chinese space program is being led by the People's Liberation Army, and to state the obvious, the PLA is not our friend as evidenced by their recent military posture and aggressive espionage against U.S. agencies and firms," Wolf said.

His concern was raised because NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden had scheduled a trip to China to talk about cooperation between NASA and the Chinese army, and Holdren made multiple trips to China for weeks of meetings.

Holdren's viewpoints have been far afield from traditional American perspectives, with his suggestion that America should surrender to a "planetary regime" and his petitioning for a deliberate reduction in the stocks of U.S. weapons-grade plutonium.

"I was … concerned to learn that Dr. John Holdren, head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), had spent 21 days in China on three separate trips in one year – more than any other country. Very little information about these cooperative agreements with China were being provided to Congress and the American people," Wolf said.

(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 06, 2011, 06:10:18 PM
Editor’s Note – In this PC world, led in America by the current leftist government where people like Eric Holder, who’s law firm defended terrorists pro bono, its more important to send a known terrorist back to London that we captured in Pakistan. The same place that would not allow Geert Wilders to visit now lauds the release of Binyam Mohammed, the Jose Padilla cohort. has the west lost its mind? The administration that won’t prosecute New Black Panther members who intimidate voters at polling places, and wanted to give terrorists the same rights American citizens have in court. To whom is this administration beholding?

A Terrorist Released

The Obama administration let Binyam Mohamed go.

National Review Online

By Andrew C. McCarthy

Binyam Mohamed is back in the news. You may remember him as the al-Qaeda operative who was slated to help would-be “dirty bomber” Jose Padilla conduct a second wave of post-9/11 attacks, targeting American cities. You also may not remember him. After all, the Obama administration quietly released him without charges.


Binyam Mohamed
Well, there’s a new chapter in this sordid tale. Mohamed is living large — taxpayer-funded large — in Great Britain. For that, we can thank the Lawyer Left’s stubborn insistence that enemy war criminals are really run-of-the-mill defendants. Actually, make that run-of-the-mill plaintiffs.

Unlike Padilla, who actually got into the United States, only to be apprehended in Chicago, Mohamed was captured in Karachi and turned over to the CIA. (Marc Thiessen provides more details about the case here.) Mohamed was interrogated by American and British intelligence.

The U.S. Defense Department wanted to try Mohamed by military commission. Alas, Britain’s Labour government was deathly afraid of the potential for a trial to expose its complicity in “enhanced interrogation” tactics, which an international propaganda campaign had equated with “torture” — and how about a round of applause for Sen. John McCain and Attorney General Eric Holder for sharpening that arrow in every defense lawyer’s quiver? Like virtually all captured terrorists now do, Mohamed claimed to have been tortured with Saddam-style cruelty. And as is virtually always the case, to call the allegation overblown is not to do it justice. Based on disclosures in various court cases, it is now clear that Mohamed was subjected to stress — essentially, sleep deprivation. Compared to actual torture, that is trivial.

Yet, goaded by its base (the leftist and pro-Islamist contingents that now make up the Occupy London crowd), the Blair-Brown government pleaded with the Obama administration to transfer Mohamed from Gitmo to England. The fact that Mohamed, when he was captured in the midst of plotting to kill thousands of people, had been trying to board a flight to London with a fake British passport was apparently of no import. That he is an Ethiopian national who had no legal right to be repatriated to England did not matter. The same British government that slammed the door on Geert Wilders, an anti-Islamist Dutch parliamentarian, rolled out the welcome mat for the jihadist. President Obama acquiesced, and Mohamed was released — free and clear.

Yes, free and clear. The Obama administration said barely a word about Mohamed’s transfer. Odd, since this was early 2009, right when the administration was gearing up its campaign to give enemy combatants civilian trials, and Mr. Holder was here, there, and everywhere, assuring every ear that there was no terrorism case the justice system could not handle. In fact, the officials involved in the decision to release Mohamed understood full well that he would be neither detained nor prosecuted by British authorities. He was to be freed.

To grasp just how outrageous that is, a comparison is in order. After being held for years as an enemy combatant, Mohamed’s accomplice, Jose Padilla, was finally convicted in civilian court. The charges involved terrorism, but not the “9/11 second wave” plot that had led to his capture (about a month after Mohamed’s). This was not because the second-wave conspiracy was fiction. It was because the plot could not be prosecuted under civilian due-process standards. To prove it, prosecutors would undoubtedly have had to cut deals with witnesses who knew its details — al-Qaeda bigwigs such as Khalid Sheikh Mohamed. As if that prospect were not unacceptable enough, such deals require the government to disclose the intelligence debriefings of these witnesses — something that is intolerable in wartime.

That is one of the principal reasons the Bush administration adopted, and Congress later endorsed, a military-justice system for detaining and prosecuting enemy war criminals. The military system makes possible prosecutions that would be impractical under civilian rules: It provides additional protections against unnecessary disclosure of intelligence, and it eases evidentiary standards so that information from witnesses can often be presented by hearsay, rather than by calling the witnesses themselves.

Regrettably, the Bush administration flinched from a Supreme Court challenge to its treatment of Padilla as a military detainee — even though the Fourth Circuit had upheld Padilla’s detention in 2005 (no thanks to an amicus brief filed on Padilla’s behalf by some lawyer named Eric Holder). As it happens, Padilla had been an ambitious enough terrorist that his hands were in multiple schemes, including one in Florida to recruit jihadists to commit mayhem overseas. Had that not been the case, the decision to treat Padilla as a mere criminal defendant would have resulted in his outright release. And because, unlike Mohamed, Padilla is an American citizen, we would have had no recourse against his living in our midst.

Echoing Mohamed, Padilla claimed to have been tortured. But the courts ruled that this was irrelevant: Even if his allegations were true, the abuse was a matter separate from the question of whether he had committed terrorism crimes — at least as long as the government did not attempt to use evidence derived from the alleged abuse to prove his guilt. A federal court in New York City drew the same conclusion in a prosecution against one of the 1998 embassy bombers, who also claimed he had been tortured. Padilla’s indictment thus stood. In fact, the most notable aspect of his case is that a federal appeals court found the 17-year sentence imposed by the trial judge to be woefully inadequate. The jail term has been remanded to the lower court for re-sentencing.

Now, let’s contrast this with the treatment of Binyam Mohamed. Because he is not an American citizen, there would have been no tenable legal objection to trying him for war crimes by military commission. (The Military Commissions Act directs that only alien enemy combatants may be subjected to such military tribunals.) And even if, in slavish deference to its political base’s aversion to commissions, the Obama administration remained hell-bent on resisting a military war-crimes trial, Mohamed could still have been detained indefinitely. Indeed, our military is still holding at Gitmo scores of enemy combatants who are less serious offenders than Mohamed — in the sense that, however threatening they may be, they did not plan to carry out mass-murder plots on American soil. In sum, the Obama administration could have declined to transfer Mohamed — certainly in the absence of a commitment that the Brits were willing and able to keep him under lock and key. If the president had done that, Mohamed would still be detained at Gitmo today.

But instead, Mohamed has hit the jihad jackpot in Albion — or is it al-Bion? I’ve previously noted that British authorities not only released him but also sustained him on public welfare. Now, we learn, that’s not the half of it.

The British government has actually given this al-Qaeda celebrity a cool £1 million payment. Mohamed, you’ll be shocked, shocked to learn, showed his gratitude for being extracted from Gitmo through the intercession of Her Majesty’s government by . . . suing the Brits for being complicit in his “torture.” The £1 million payment is the settlement the government decided it was best to have British taxpayers fork over. Thus, the Daily Mail reports, Mohamed was recently able to plunk down £250,000 for a lovely three-bedroom, two-bathroom terrace house in Norbury, South London — conveniently located near the Croydon Mosque and Islamic Centre.

That makes him one of 16 terror suspects who have scored huge financial payouts by simply claiming to have been mistreated by security and intelligence officials. Why does the British government settle rather than fight these claims by jihadists whose goal is to destroy the very system on which they are feasting? Because the Lawyer Left that makes up the transnational progressive vanguard insisted that enemy-combatant terrorists should be seen as civil litigants, and the Brits went along.

Under prevailing justice-system rules, the jihadist gets to sue and, if the British government tries to contest the case, the jihadist is entitled to discovery of all the intelligence about him in British government files. With this lawfare gun at its head, the government’s choice is to tell al-Qaeda what the West knows (and how we know it) or pay pricey settlements. Justice Secretary Ken Clarke explained that Mohamed got £1 million because, if the government hadn’t settled, the case might have cost British taxpayers £50 million.

One unnamed British government official told the Daily Mail, “The danger is that we have become a cashpoint for terrorists.” Gee, you think?

— Andrew C. McCarthy, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, is the author, most recently, of The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America.

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Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 07, 2011, 09:22:20 AM
Obama -- 1, Sick People - 0

http://www.forbes.com/sites/thesba/2011/11/07/obama-1-sick-people-0



The effects of The Patients Protection and Affordable Health Care Act have begun and Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield confirmed recently that they will eliminate most Small Group Health Plans in New York effective April 1, 2012. In addition, they will be slashing incentives for brokers to sell those products.

Hmmmmm.. What have we here:

1 .Major State in the US economically and business wise.

2. Major Private Health Insurance Carriers killing the good programs and leaving the costly and/or bad ones.

3. Brokers and Consultants now cannot make a living to help business owners with choice

4. Another Government Law mandating pricing controls like in the PPAHCA which says the premium taken in can only be used for a small percentage of cost with the lions share going to claims. This limits profits and increases risk of loss.

Is it clear to you all yet that the Patients Protection and Affordable Health Care Act is BAD and will create havoc amongst Small Businesses owners and their employees at a time where it is disastrous?

Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 09, 2011, 02:30:41 PM
How much damage has Barack Obama done? Far more than the media is telling us; that's for sure
Coach is Right ^ | 11/9/2011 | Kevin "Coach" Collins





United States Census and other publicly available records tell us we may be in worse shape now than most people would believe. Consider these shocking statistics.

The Census Bureau reports that in 84% of our largest metropolitan areas the percentage of “very poor” people increased during 2010.

The Census Bureau, reported the percentage of “very poor” rose 84% of America’s 360 largest metropolitan areas during 2010.

The 2.6 million people who fell into poverty in 2010 was the largest recorded increase since records were first kept in 1959.

Even the number of “poor” has risen from 11.3% in 2000 to 15.1%

During 2010 the poverty rate for children hit 22%.

In at least 314 American counties at least 30% of children live with daily food insecurity.

School lunch programs are an indispensable part of the daily food intake for more than 20 million children.

Over 45 million Americans live off food stamps.

Since the Democrats took control of Congress in 2007 the number of people on food stamps has jumped 74%.

Current projections say that approximately 50% of all American children will on food stamps at some point before he or she reaches 18.


(Excerpt) Read more at coachisright.com ...

Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 11, 2011, 01:16:56 PM
Obama Administration Denies Waiver for Indiana's Popular Medicaid Reform
Forbes ^ | 11-11-11 | Avik Roy




In 2007, under Gov. Mitch Daniels (R.), Indiana enacted the Healthy Indiana Plan, an expansion of Medicaid that used consumer-driven health plans to encourage low-income beneficiaries to take a more active role in their own care. Today, Health Indiana is arguably the most innovative and successful reform of Medicaid in the history of the program. Today, we learn that the Obama Administration has rejected the state’s request to extend its federal waiver, which means that over 45,000 Indianans who get their insurance through the program are out of luck.

Medicaid, of course, is the nation’s government-run health insurance program for the poor. In theory, it’s jointly run by the federal government and the states, but in reality, any time a state wants to make the tiniest changes in its Medicaid program, it has to go hat-in-hand to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services with a formal request for a waiver, and these waivers are usually denied.


(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...



________________________ __________________


Only Obama , piss and shit be upon him, could be this stupid. 
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 11, 2011, 01:26:12 PM
Ten Reasons to Reject State Obamacare Exchange
Capitol Confidential ^ | 11/11/2011 | Jack McHugh




In addition to the lawsuit against Obamacare filed by Michigan and 25 other states, a separate case has been filed by The Goldwater Institute Center for Constitutional Law. Diane Cohen, a senior attorney at the Goldwater Institute, recently told legislators at an American Legislative Exchange Council meeting, "Saying 'no' to a state exchange is absolutely critical to the success of our lawsuit and those pending elsewhere around the country."

The Goldwater Institute has just published “Ten Reasons Why Arizona Must Reject Exchanges.” These apply just as much to Michigan and to the proposed state exchange that Michigan politicians are calling a “MIHealth Marketplace.” The Institute's arguments strengthen the case for postponing action at least until the U.S. Supreme Court rules on the law next June, and if necessary, until presidential election voters pronounce their verdict next November.

Here are the 10 reasons the Goldwater Institute cites in a "policy memo" (the citations are omitted):

"1. The federal government controls exchanges. 'An Exchange may not establish rules that conflict with or prevent the application of regulations promulgated by the Secretary [of Health and Human Services (HHS)].' Further, the Secretary and the General Accounting Office will have continuing oversight over exchanges.

"2. The federal government controls the doctors and other providers that are allowed to participate in an exchange-offered plan. The Act mandates that only providers who 'implement[] such mechanisms to improve health care quality as the Secretary may by regulation require' may participate in a 'qualified plan' offered on the exchange.

"3. The federal government controls health insurance plans and benefits. The Act prescribes the minimum essential benefits that must be included in a plan and gives authority to the HHS Secretary to prescribe more. HHS is also required to establish the criteria for the certification of health plans as 'qualified.' As a result, only HHS-approved plans may be sold in the exchange.

"4. While federal mandates remain, federal funds cease at the end of 2014. Both PPACA and the proposed regulations prohibit federal funds for state exchanges after January 1, 2015. No federal grants will be awarded after January 1, 2015. States must ensure that the exchanges are self-sustaining by January 1, 2015, and must find other sources of funding, through 'assessments and user fees,' 'provider taxes,' 'State revenues,' or other sources.

"5. [States] will surrender [their] 10th amendment sovereignty by establishing an exchange. The HHS proposed regulations themselves acknowledge that a state’s submission to an exchange has an adverse impact on federalism principles. In compliance with Presidential Executive Order 13132, which requires agencies to assess whether their rules will affect federalism, HHS reported that the proposed exchange regulations have 'Federalism implications due to the direct effects on the distribution of power and responsibilities among the State and Federal governments.' However, HHS determined that the federalism implications are 'substantially mitigated' because PPACA 'does not require States to certify an Exchange.' Therefore, when a state chooses to establish an exchange, it voluntarily surrenders its sovereignty.

"6. The state must enforce the individual mandate and penalty. State exchanges are responsible for determining whether an individual is exempt from the individual mandate and for granting certification for those who are exempt. The exchange must also 'support and complement rulemaking conducted by the Secretary of the Treasury' with respect to the law.

"7. The state must turn over names of individuals who do not comply with the individual mandate. Obamacare requires the exchange to give to the U.S. Treasury the names and taxpayer identification numbers of individuals who have changed employers and ceased coverage under a qualified health plan during a plan year. The same would be true for an individual unsuccessfully seeking an exemption from the mandate via the exchange or otherwise subjecting himself to the exchange, but then choosing not to purchase insurance.

"8. The state must report citizen information to the federal government. Exchanges must record and report to HHS on a monthly basis all individuals who terminate their enrollment in insurance obtained through the exchange.

"9. So-called state 'flexibility' is belied by the law. Despite a provision in the Act titled 'State Flexibility in Operation and Enforcement of Exchanges and Related Requirements,' the law in fact confers no flexibility to the states, only more authority to the HHS Secretary over the state exchanges. For example, the Act provides that states can establish exchanges, but only as 'prescribe[d]' by the HHS Secretary. The Act also allows states to adopt exchange laws and regulations, but only those that 'the Secretary determines implements the standards within the State.' ...

"10. States are only as flexible as federal law permits them to be. Yes, states can choose whether the exchange will be run by a state agency or a non-profit established by the state, but both are subject to federal approval, regulation, and perpetual oversight. ... States also have so-called 'flexibility' to decide whether to open exchanges to all insurers, or to limit the number and participation to only those plans that meet unspecified 'exchange criteria.' But all this 'flexibility' essentially allows is the creation of a state and federally-controlled market where the state determines which insurers participate and which plans and coverage are available. ..."
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 11, 2011, 07:42:35 PM
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U.S. may sell precision-guided bombs to UAE-source
Reuters ^ | Nov 11, 2011
Posted on November 11, 2011 10:22:20 PM EST by sukhoi-30mki

U.S. may sell precision-guided bombs to UAE-source

1:32am EST

WASHINGTON, Nov 12 (Reuters) - The U.S. government may soon announce plans for a large sale of precision-guided bombs to the United Arab Emirates, a source familiar with the arms sales plans said late on Thursday, as tensions mounted with Iran over its nuclear program.

The Pentagon is considering a significant sale of Joint Direct Attack Munitions made by Boeing Co , adding to other recent arms deals with the UAE. These include the sale of 500 Hellfire air-to-surface missiles about which U.S. lawmakers were notified in September.

The sale of Boeing-built "bunker-buster" bombs and other munitions to UAE, a key Gulf ally, is part of an ongoing U.S. effort to build a regional coalition to counter Iran.

No comment was immediately available from the Pentagon's press office or the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, which oversees foreign arms sales.

Boeing has sold thousands of JDAM bombs to the United States and its allies in recent months as they have replenished their arsenal of the popular precision-guided bombs.

Boeing spokesman Garrett Kasper said the company was unable to discuss the proposed contract since it would involve a foreign military sale, something that would be discussed at a government-to-government level.

The proposed sale, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, would expand the existing capabilities of UAE's air force to target buildings such as the bunkers and tunnels where Iran is believed to be developing nuclear or other weapons. The newspaper said Washington was eyeing the sale of 4,900 of the so-called smart bombs.

(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 12, 2011, 08:56:43 PM
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President Obama to CEOs: ‘We’ve Been a Bit Lazy’
ABC News ^
Posted on November 12, 2011 8:33:18 PM EST by Sub-Driver

President Obama to CEOs: ‘We’ve Been a Bit Lazy’

For the second time in as many months, President Obama has taken the nation that elected him president to task for its own lackadaisical economic performance on the global stage.

Obama told a group of CEOs today that the United States has gotten “lazy” and that America lost its hunger in promoting itself in a global marketplace.

“We’ve been a little bit lazy over the last couple of decades. We’ve kind of taken for granted — ‘Well, people would want to come here’ — and we aren’t out there hungry, selling America and trying to attract new businesses into America,” he told the CEOs who are gathered on the sidelines of the annual Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meetings, which the United States is hosting this year in Hawaii.

“I think it’s important to remember that the United States is still the largest recipient of foreign investment in the world and there are a lot of things that make foreign investors see the U.S. as a great opportunity — our stability, our openness, our innovative free market culture,” he said.

Last September, in an interview with an Orlando, Fla., TV station, Obama made similar remarks, saying, “This a great, great country that had gotten a little soft and we didn’t have that same competitive edge that we needed over the last couple of decades. … We need to get back on track.”

(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...







What a fucking moron.   
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 14, 2011, 07:15:09 PM
EPA admitted — then erased — risk of blackouts associated with new utility rule
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POSTED AT 6:05 PM ON NOVEMBER 14, 2011 BY TINA KORBE   
PRINTER-FRIENDLY

The Environmental Protection Agency has long maintained that a new proposed utility rule to reduce mercury and other emissions won’t affect the reliability of the nation’s power grid — but Congressional and industry investigators have found that an early draft of the rule that circulated within the administration included a section that acknowledged the rule might negatively impact reliability, the WSJ reports.

It’s obvious to those who’ve examined the rule at any length that it’s designed to close coal-fired power plants, and, given the prevalence of such plants, it’s easy to infer that a rule to eliminate them would risk blackouts — but supporters of the rule brand anybody who opposes it an abettor of pollution and an accomplice of the industry.

As the WSJ explains, this newly discovered admission by the EPA itself that blackouts are a possible consequence of the rule gives the lie to that characterization:

In a “What are the energy impacts?” section, the EPA concedes that it “is aware that concerns have been expressed by some, even in advance of this proposed rule, that this regulation may detrimentally impact the reliability of the electric grid.” The agency admits that what it calls “sources integral to reliable operation” may be forced to shut down—those would be the coal-fired plants the EPA is targeting—and that these retirements “could result in localized reliability problems.” The EPA insists that it knows how to balance “both clean air and electric reliability,” but all along in public it has denied that reliability is in any way at risk. …

But here’s the kicker: This reliability section was gone when the EPA released its utility rule proposal in May 2011. Why did it vanish? Where did it go?

This matters because the draft report contradicts EPA leaders who have publicly portrayed anyone worried about reliability as an industry shill. More importantly, as a technical and legal matter, issues that are excluded from the Federal Register mean that the public is denied the opportunity to meaningfully comment on them.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson clearly doesn’t want anyone to comment on the reliability issue — not even the EPA. Not only did the agency scrub the reliability section from the proposed rule, but it has also given the White House regulatory office insufficient time to examine the rule, which the EPA plans to finalize by mid-September. The EPA has also repeatedly ignored letters from Sens. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) that ask whether the new regulation will jeopardize grid dependability.

Undaunted, Inhofe and Murkowski have tried yet again, sending a letter to Jackson to ask why the EPA eliminated the reliability section from the rule and also to request the EPA not impair electric reliability and affordability. All bets are against a reply from Jackson.

This rule is one of the most expensive ever proposed by the EPA: According to some estimates, it will cost $184 billion and up to 1.4 million jobs. Coal might be “dirty,” but, at present, the U.S. relies on it heavily. Eliminating it will increase energy costs at a time when the nation just can’t afford it. At least 25 state attorneys general have begged the EPA to delay this rule by at least a year. The EPA would do neither itself nor the energy industry any harm by heeding that request.

Incidentally, this story also underscores the need to ensure congressional oversight of regulations. The REINS Act is the best bill on the table to do just that.

Tags: Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, utility rule
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 15, 2011, 01:54:57 PM
DOJ: Lying on Match.com needs to be a crime
cnet ^ | 14 Nov 2011 | Declan McCullagh




The U.S. Department of Justice is defending computer hacking laws that make it a crime to use a fake name on Facebook or lie about your weight in an online dating profile at a site like Match.com.

In a statement obtained by CNET that's scheduled to be delivered tomorrow, the Justice Department argues that it must be able to prosecute violations of Web sites' often-ignored, always-unintelligible "terms of service" policies.

The law must allow "prosecutions based upon a violation of terms of service or similar contractual agreement with an employer or provider," Richard Downing, the Justice Department's deputy computer crime chief, will tell the U.S. Congress tomorrow.

Scaling back that law "would make it difficult or impossible to deter and address serious insider threats through prosecution," and jeopardize prosecutions involving identity theft, misuse of government databases, and privacy invasions, according to Downing.

The law in question, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, has been used by the Justice Department to prosecute a woman, Lori Drew, who used a fake MySpace account to verbally attack a 13-year old girl who then committed suicide. Because MySpace's terms of service prohibit impersonation, Drew was convicted of violating the CFAA. Her conviction was later thrown out.

What makes this possible is a section of the CFAA that was never intended to be used that way: a general-purpose prohibition on any computer-based act that "exceeds authorized access." To the Justice Department, this means that a Web site's terms of service define what's "authorized" or not, and ignoring them can turn you into a felon.

On the other hand, because millions of Americans likely violate terms of service


(Excerpt) Read more at news.cnet.com ...






Meanwhile no one is held responsible for the financial crimes at wall street or F&F! 



F U every pofs who voted for this nad plans on doing so again.   
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 16, 2011, 04:14:41 AM
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Holder Wants to Prosecute You for Lying on Facebook
Fox News ^ | 11/15/2011 | Declan McCullagh
Posted on November 16, 2011 5:27:04 AM EST by autumnraine

The U.S. Department of Justice is defending computer hacking laws that make it a crime to use a fake name on Facebook or lie about your weight in an online dating profile at a site like Match.com. In a statement obtained by CNET that's scheduled to be delivered tomorrow, the Justice Department argues that it must be able to prosecute violations of Web sites' often-ignored, always-unintelligible "terms of service" policies. The law must allow "prosecutions based upon a violation of terms of service or similar contractual agreement with an employer or provider," Richard Downing, the Justice Department's deputy computer crime chief, will tell the U.S. Congress tomorrow. Scaling back that law "would make it difficult or impossible to deter and address serious insider threats through prosecution," and jeopardize prosecutions involving identity theft, misuse of government databases, and privacy invasions, according to Downing.

(Excerpt) Read more at nation.foxnews.com ...

Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 16, 2011, 07:55:49 PM
U.S. Department of Justice Seeks Law Against Lying Online (No more Facebook Pseudonyms?)
PC World ^ | 11/16/2011 | By Jared Newman
Posted on November 16, 2011 5:57:32 PM EST by SeekAndFind

Using a pseudonym on Facebook or fibbing about your age on a dating site could be illegal if the U.S. Department of Justice has its way.

The DOJ is going to Congress today to argue that Web sites' terms of service policies should be enforceable by law, according to CNet. For that purpose, the department seeks an expansion of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, a 25-year-old law that mainly deals with hacking, password trafficking, and threatening to damage a computer.

By outlawing terms of service violations, the department would have an easier time prosecuting cyberbullies such as Lori Drew, a 49-year-old woman who involved in a case where a 13-year-old girl committed suicide after interacting with a fake MySpace profile that Drew was involved with. Prosecutors got a conviction against Drew in 2008 for violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, but the case was thrown out by a U.S. District Court judge.

"It basically leaves it up to a website owner to determine what is a crime," U.S. District Judge George Wu said of his verdict in 2009. "And therefore it criminalizes what would be a breach of contract."

That's exactly what the Department of Justice is trying to do now, through Congress

Is the Solution Too Broad?

The department's heart is in the right place, of course, but as groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation pointed out in an August 2011 letter to the Judiciary Committee, outlawing terms of service violations is an overly broad way to solve the problem. In addition to snaring cyberbullies, it would also criminalize harmless fibs such as using a fake name on Facebook to protect privacy. It would also force people to digest needlessly long terms of service policies for online services,

(Excerpt) Read more at pcworld.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 16, 2011, 08:03:39 PM
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Gas mileage boost means pricier cars - EPA
cnn money ^ | 11/16/2011 | Chris Isidore
Posted on November 16, 2011 7:44:46 PM EST by tobyhill

New federal gas mileage rules proposed Wednesday will add thousands of dollars to the cost of new cars. But in the long run, regulators say, drivers will spend less on gas, outweighing the additional cost at the dealership.

The rules aim for an average gas mileage of 54.5 miles per gallon by the 2025 model year. That target had previously been disclosed by the EPA this summer.

Wednesday it released its cost estimates attributable to the new rules.

The price for 2016 though 2025 model year vehicles will increase by about $1,946 per vehicle. Other rules set to take effect in the intervening years would add about $1,000 on top of that. Those cost estimates are in today's dollars.

(Excerpt) Read more at money.cnn.com ...





Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 17, 2011, 09:18:59 AM
Obama To Aussie Students: Our Kids are Behind
by Keith Koffler on November 17, 2011, 9:28 am


http://www.whitehousedossier.com/2011/11/17/obama-tells-aussie-students-kids




There’s an unwritten rule in politics that politicians must not criticize the president when they are overseas. How about adding America’s school kids to the list of untouchables?

Speaking at a high school in Australia, President Obama told a group of Aussie students that their counterparts in his country had “fallen behind” when it comes to math and science, saying he wants to reform the public school system.

Obama also asserted that poor children don’t get “support they need when they’re very young’’ and are “already behind’’’ when they enter grammar school, according to a press pool report.

Obama might have thought twice before casting America’s public school kids in a negative light to foreign students. Especially since he can exclude his own children from the system by paying for them to attend private school.

One might feel uncomfortable saying many types of unpleasant things about our country to people overseas. But then, one would have to be an American exceptionalist.



________________________ ________________________ ____________



LMFAO!!!!    He is the one piece of shit who cancelled the voucher plan in DC!!!! 


F Obama and every rat who voted for him.   
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Dos Equis on November 17, 2011, 10:01:36 AM
He just can't help himself. 
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 17, 2011, 10:03:06 AM
He just can't help himself. 



He hates this country and everyone in it!   Why is that so hard to understand? 


And by the way - I hope every Obamabot drowns in a pool of water snakes and alligators.     
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 17, 2011, 11:42:56 AM
http://www.detnews.com/article/20111116/AUTO01/111160442/1148/Price+tag+of+2025ís+fuel+efficiency+standards++$157+billion





Is Obama out of his fucking mind!!!!

Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 17, 2011, 11:48:22 AM

Obama’s new fuel standards to add $2,000 to car prices
Published: 11:38 PM 11/16/2011 | Updated: 1:39 PM 11/17/2011
 By C.J. Ciaramella
Archive | Email C.J. Ciaramella  Get C.J. Ciaramella Feed




A visitor inspects a vehicle displayed at a Toyota Motor Corp. showroom in Tokyo Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2011. (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara)


The Obama administration’s new proposal to double the fuel efficiency of cars by 2025 may cost up to $157 billion and add $2,000 to the price of passenger automobiles, according to two federal agencies.

In the proposed rule posted on their websites, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency predict the administration’s new Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards would add an average of $2,000 to the price of each new passenger vehicle sold by 2025.

The NHTSA attributes the increased consumer costs to the price of developing new fuel-saving technology. However, the highway agency predicts the costs of the new standards would be offset by benefits of $419 billion to $515 billion.

President Obama said the rule, negotiated by the administration and a number of automakers in July, was a successful effort to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil.

The proposed rule would go into effect in 2017 and requires annual fuel-economy increases of five percent for cars. Ultimately, the rule would require automakers to reach an average of 55.4 miles per gallon for passenger cars by 2025. The current CAFE standard for 2011 is 30.2 mpg.

Light trucks like pickups and sport utility vehicles would only be required to raise fuel economy by 3.5 percent the first five years the rule would be in effect. After that, trucks would also be required to increase fuel economy by five percent a year.

Semi-trucks from model years 2014-2018 would have to achieve an approximate 20 percent reduction in fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, saving up to four gallons of fuel for every 100 miles traveled.

The White House says the fuel standards will save 12 billion barrels of oil, reduce oil consumption by 2.2 million barrels a day — about one-fourth of the oil the country imports — and save consumers more than $8,000 a vehicle in fuel costs by 2025.

However, the rules have worried several automobile trade groups, including the National Automobile Dealers Association and Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers.

“The proposed regulations present aggressive targets, and the administration must consider that technology break-throughs will be required and consumers will need to buy our most energy-efficient technologies in very large numbers to meet the goals,” Mitch Bainwol, chief executive officer of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, said in a statement to Bloomberg.

Republicans, too, have panned the proposed standards.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has launched an investigation into how the standards were crafted. California Republican Rep. Darrell Issa, who chairs the oversight committee, has questioned whether the rules were rushed and could jeopardize safety by reducing the weight of cars.

“Beyond jobs that would be lost as a result of this rule, there are concerns that these new regulations were crafted in a manner inconsistent with laws and basic standards of transparency that had the effect of hiding special interest agendas,” Issa said in a statement Wednesday. “The Oversight Committee will continue to conduct its investigation into the process that developed these standards and will continue to press the administration for answers on the impact this rule will have on jobs and vehicle safety.”

In July, when the rules were first drafted, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s spokesman wrote on Cantor’s blog that such rules “further tie the hands of job creators and add yet another hurdle to getting the economy up and running.”

“The result of these regulations means increased costs for businesses and families, and fewer jobs for workers,” the spokesman wrote. “Rather than placing additional burdens on working families and small businesses, Washington should be focused on removing barriers to growth and fostering an environment for job creation.”



Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/11/16/obamas-new-fuel-standards-to-add-2000-to-car-prices-cost-157b-agencies-say/#ixzz1dzgFmYyl

Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 17, 2011, 01:12:25 PM
"The Entire System Has Been Utterly Destroyed By The MF Global Collapse" - Obama Cronyism
Zero Hedge ^ | 11/17/2011 | Ann Barnhardt through Tyler Durden





Dear Clients, Industry Colleagues and Friends of Barnhardt Capital Management,

It is with regret and unflinching moral certainty that I announce that Barnhardt Capital Management has ceased operations. After six years of operating as an independent introducing brokerage, and eight years of employment as a broker before that, I found myself, this morning, for the first time since I was 20 years old, watching the futures and options markets open not as a participant, but as a mere spectator.

The reason for my decision to pull the plug was excruciatingly simple: I could no longer tell my clients that their monies and positions were safe in the futures and options markets – because they are not. And this goes not just for my clients, but for every futures and options account in the United States. The entire system has been utterly destroyed by the MF Global collapse. Given this sad reality, I could not in good conscience take one more step as a commodity broker, soliciting trades that I knew were unsafe or holding funds that I knew to be in jeopardy.

The futures markets are very highly-leveraged and thus require an exceptionally firm base upon which to function. That base was the sacrosanct segregation of customer funds from clearing firm capital, with additional emergency financial backing provided by the exchanges themselves. Up until a few weeks ago, that base existed, and had worked flawlessly. Firms came and went, with some imploding in spectacular fashion. Whenever a firm failure happened, the customer funds were intact and the exchanges would step in to backstop everything and keep customers 100% liquid – even as their clearing firm collapsed and was quickly replaced by another firm within the system.

Everything changed just a few short weeks ago. A firm, led by a crony of the Obama regime, stole all of the non-margined cash held by customers of his firm. Let’s not sugar-coat this or make this crime seem “complex” and “abstract” by drowning ourselves in six-dollar words and uber-technical jargon. Jon Corzine STOLE the customer cash at MF Global. Knowing Jon Corzine, and knowing the abject lawlessness and contempt for humanity of the Marxist Obama regime and its cronies, this is not really a surprise. What was a surprise was the reaction of the exchanges and regulators. Their reaction has been to take a bad situation and make it orders of magnitude worse. Specifically, they froze customers out of their accounts WHILE THE MARKETS CONTINUED TO TRADE, refusing to even allow them to liquidate. This is unfathomable. The risk exposure precedent that has been set is completely intolerable and has destroyed the entire industry paradigm. No informed person can continue to engage these markets, and no moral person can continue to broker or facilitate customer engagement in what is now a massive game of Russian Roulette.

I have learned over the last week that MF Global is almost certainly the mere tip of the iceberg. There is massive industry-wide exposure to European sovereign junk debt. While other firms may not be as heavily leveraged as Corzine had MFG leveraged, and it is now thought that MFG’s leverage may have been in excess of 100:1, they are still suicidally leveraged and will likely stand massive, unmeetable collateral calls in the coming days and weeks as Europe inevitably collapses. I now suspect that the reason the Chicago Mercantile Exchange did not immediately step in to backstop the MFG implosion was because they knew and know that if they backstopped MFG, they would then be expected to backstop all of the other firms in the system when the failures began to cascade – and there simply isn’t that much money in the entire system. In short, the problem is a SYSTEMIC problem, not merely isolated to one firm.

Perhaps the most ominous dynamic that I have yet heard of in regards to this mess is that of the risk of potential CLAWBACK actions. For those who do not know, “clawback” is the process by which a bankruptcy trustee is legally permitted to re-seize assets that left a bankrupt entity in the time period immediately preceding the entity’s collapse. So, using the MF Global customers as an example, any funds that were withdrawn from MFG accounts in the run-up to the collapse, either because of suspicions the customer may have had about MFG from, say, watching the company’s bond yields rise sharply, or from purely organic day-to-day withdrawls, the bankruptcy trustee COULD initiate action to “clawback” those funds. As a hedge broker, this makes my blood run cold. Generally, as the markets move in favor of a hedge position and equity builds in a client’s account, that excess equity is sent back to the customer who then uses that equity to offset cash market transactions OR to pay down a revolving line of credit. Even the possibility that a customer could be penalized and additionally raped AGAIN via a clawback action after already having their customer funds stolen is simply villainous. While there has been no open indication of clawback actions being initiated by the MF Global trustee, I have been told that it is a possibility.

And so, to the very unpleasant crux of the matter. The futures and options markets are no longer viable. It is my recommendation that ALL customers withdraw from all of the markets as soon as possible so that they have the best chance of protecting themselves and their equity. The system is no longer functioning with integrity and is suicidally risk-laden. The rule of law is non-existent, instead replaced with godless, criminal political cronyism.

Remember, derivatives contracts are NOT NECESSARY in the commodities markets. The cash commodity itself is the underlying reality and is not dependent on the futures or options markets. Many people seem to have gotten that backwards over the past decades. From Abel the animal husbandman up until the year 1964, there were no cattle futures contracts at all, and no options contracts until 1984, and yet the cash cattle markets got along just fine.

Finally, I will not, under any circumstance, consider reforming and re-opening Barnhardt Capital Management, or any other iteration of a brokerage business, until Barack Obama has been removed from office AND the government of the United States has been sufficiently reformed and repopulated so as to engender my total and complete confidence in the government, its adherence to and enforcement of the rule of law, and in its competent and just regulatory oversight of any commodities markets that may reform. So long as the government remains criminal, it would serve no purpose whatsoever to attempt to rebuild the futures industry or my firm, because in a lawless environment, the same thievery and fraud would simply happen again, and the criminals would go unpunished, sheltered by the criminal oligarchy.

To my clients, who literally TO THE MAN agreed with my assessment of the situation, and were relieved to be exiting the markets, and many whom I now suspect stayed in the markets as long as they did only out of personal loyalty to me, I can only say thank you for the honor and pleasure of serving you over these last years, with some of my clients having been with me for over twelve years. I will continue to blog at Barnhardt.biz, which will be subtly re-skinned soon, and will continue my cattle marketing consultation business. I will still be here in the office, answering my phones, with the same phone numbers. Alas, my retirement came a few years earlier than I had anticipated, but there was no possible way to continue given the inevitability of the collapse of the global financial markets, the overthrow of our government, and the resulting collapse in the rule of law.

As for me, I can only echo the words of David:

“This is the Lord’s doing; and it is wonderful in our eyes.”

With Best Regards- Ann Barnhardt


Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 17, 2011, 03:38:00 PM
Treasury Admits What Everybody Already Knew: Taxpayer Losses On GM Bailout Are Going to be Massive

Shikha Dalmia | November 17, 2011




Am I allowed to say, I told you so?

The Treasury Department yesterday revised its loss estimate for the Government Motors bailout from $14.33 billion to $23.6 billion, thanks to the company’s sinking stock price. GM’s Sept. 30 closing price, on which the new estimate is based, was $20.18, about $13 less than its December IPO price and $35 less than what is needed for taxpayers to break even.

The $23.6 billion represents a 25 percent loss on the feds $60 billion direct “investment” in GM. But that’s not all that taxpayers are on the hook for. As I explained previously, Uncle Sam’s special GM bankruptcy package allowed the company to write off $45 billion in previous losses going forward. This could work out to as much as $15 billion in tax savings that GM wouldn’t have had had it gone through a normal bankruptcy. Why? Because after bankruptcy, the tax liabilities of companies increase since they have no more losses to write off.

This means that the total hit to taxpayers, who still own about a quarter of the company, could add up to $38.6 billion. That’s even more that the $34 billion on the outside I had predicted in May.

Although GM will never, ever make taxpayers whole, taxpayer losses could be mitigated if GM’s stock price rises before the Treasury sells its remaining equity, something it was supposed to do by year-end but has postponed under the circumstances. But right now at least the prospects of a serious upward move in GM’s stock don’t look too good for reasons at least partly beyond GM’s control.

GM actually has been doing quite well in North America and China with profit margins of 10 percent, among the best in the industry. How long that will last is an open question. That’s because GM’s new competitors are not Toyota and Honda that share its cost structure but Hyndai and Kia that have a far leaner one. These companies concentrate on the small car market and don’t offer a full product line so GM and Ford’s most profitable vehicles—those evil, gas-guzzling, greenhouse-gas emitting SUV’s and pickup trucks—are somewhat insulated from the downward price pressure. But the greens and Obama administration want GM to reorient its product mix away from big cars and toward money-losing hybrids and electrics, something that could well put GM back in a hole.

But that’s part of the administration’s long-term strategy for ruining GM. The company’s big weak spot right now is Europe for two reasons: One, thanks to political pressure and labor resistance, it hasn’t been able to address its bloated cost structure there. Two, Europe’s economy is imploding, weakening car sales.

All of this shows why forcing taxpayers to wager their hard-earned dollars on a risky venture was exactly the wrong thing to do. But the Ostrich-in-Chief Barack Obama, who had assured taxpayers that their GM "investment" would cost them "not a dime," is drawing the opposite lesson, obviously. He has been trumpeting the success of the bailout—repeatedly. He was in Michigan recently claiming that the “investment had paid off.” What’s more, he declared, that now that GM is back, it is just a matter of time before Detroit is too:

“[D]espite all the work that lies ahead, this is a city where a great American industry is coming back to life and the industries of tomorrow are taking root, and a city where people are dreaming up ways to prove all the skeptics wrong and write the next proud chapter in the Motor City's history."

But the “next, proud chapter in Motor City’s history” actually is likely to be bankruptcy. That’s because Detroit is facing a $209 million budget deficit and is going to be completely out of operating cash by April.

Here is a very helpful piece by Detroit Free Press’ editorial page editor, Stephen Henderson, explaining in gory but accurate detail just what a mess the city is in. Perhaps President Obama can glance at it before he returns here and spins some more fairytales?

http://reason.com/blog/2011/11/17/treasury-admits-what-everybody-already-k

Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 18, 2011, 08:44:15 AM
November 18, 2011 10:54am
0 Comments

 Obama USDA delays shale drilling, up to 200k jobs

by Joel Gehrke Commentary Staff Writer



President Obama's United States Department of Agriculture has delayed shale gas drilling in Ohio for up to six months by cancelling a mineral lease auction for Wayne National Forest (WNF). The move was taken in deference to environmentalists, on the pretext of studying the effects of hydraulic fracturing.

“Conditions have changed since the 2006 Forest Plan was developed," announced WNF Supervisor Anne Carey on Tuesday. "The technology used in the Utica & Marcellus Shale formations need to be studied to see if potential effects to the surface are significantly different than those identified in the Forest Plan." The study will take up to six months to complete. The WNF study reportedly "will focus solely on how it could affect forest land," the significance of hydraulic fracturing to united proponents of the delay, "and not how it could affect groundwater."

Speaking of the WNF gas drilling, one environmentalist group spokesman suggested that moving forward with drilling "could turn the Ohio Valley into Ozone Alley,"  even though Wayne National Forest already has nearly 1300 oil and gas wells in operation.

The Ohio Oil and Gas Energy Education Program (OOGEEP) recently estimated that drilling in the Utica shale, which is affected by the suspension of the mineral lease auctions, would produce up 204,500 jobs by 2015.

"The President’s plan is to simply say ‘no’ to new energy production," House Natural Resources Committee chairman Doc Hastings, R-Wash, said to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar during a hearing pertaining to hydraulic fracturing. "It’s a plan that is sending American jobs overseas, forfeiting new revenue, and denying access to American energy that would lessen our dependence on hostile Middle Eastern oil."

Salazar denied that suggestion, noting the sales of mineral leases over the last two years, but he also affirmed environmentalist concerns. "The increasing use of hydraulic fracturing has raised a number of concerns about the potential impacts on water quality and availability, particularly with respect to the chemical composition of fracturing fluids and the methods used."



http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/obama-usda-delays-shale-drilling-200k-jobs



Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 18, 2011, 10:08:43 AM
Obama DOJ May Sue Los Angeles Suburb On CAIR’s Behalf For Denying Mosque Expansion
PatDollard.com ^ | 11/18/11 | Pat Dollard




The Justice Department is launching an inquiry into the decision of a Los Angeles suburb to deny a local mosque’s planned expansion.

Federal officials are looking into whether or not Lomita, California city council members violated the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act when they rejected the construction plans almost two years ago, according to the Daily Breeze, a local newspaper.

City Attorney Christ Hogin told the newspaper that the investigation started in July.

The city council denied that religion played a role in their decision, which they said was influenced by concerns over traffic and parking.


(Excerpt) Read more at patdollard.com ...

Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 20, 2011, 08:04:12 PM
http://p.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/nov/20/curl-obamas-growing-disdain-for-american-worker



F Obama! 
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 21, 2011, 02:19:31 PM
Obama Admin informs Beechcraft of aircraft loss in favor of Brazilian firm with ties to Iran
Washington Examiner ^ | Nov 21, 2011 | Jeff Head




The Obama Administration has notified Hawker Beechcraft Corp. that its Beechcraft AT-6 has been excluded from competition to build a light attack aircraft, a contract worth nearly $1 billion, the company said.

The company had hoped to its AT-6, an armed version of its T-6 trainer, would be chosen for the Light Air Support Counter Insurgency aircraft for the Afghanistan National Army Corps. The chosen aircraft also would be used as a light attack armed reconnaissance aircraft for the U.S. Air Force.

The piston planes are designed for counterinsurgency, close air support, armed overwatch and homeland security, The Wichita Eagle reported (http://bit.ly/ud7FDM).

Hawker Beechcraft officials said in a news release that they were "confounded and troubled" by the Air Force's decision. The company said it is asking the Air Force for an explanation and will explore all options.

The decision appears to favor the Super Tucano built by Brazil's Embraer for the initial contract to supply 35 with the potential for 55 aircraft worth up to $950?million, which does not include foreign sales, the Eagle reported.

Brazil's Embraer aircraft company build's milit ary aircraft for Iran.

The Beechcraft T-6 production line employs a total of 1400 people in 20 states.
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 21, 2011, 08:36:11 PM
Immunity from Justice: Attorney General Holder frees drug suspect and prosecutes lawman
The Washington Times ^ | November 21, 2011 | The Editors
Posted on November 21, 2011 11:39:21 PM EST by 2ndDivisionVet

Lady Justice has tossed aside her blindfold and tipped her scale. A border-crossing drug smuggler walks free while the officer who arrested him has been jailed. In the age of Obama, the law has been turned upside down.

U.S. Border Patrol Agent Jesus E. Diaz Jr. is set to spend the next two years behind bars after being sentenced last month for what the Justice Department called deprivation of an illegal-immigrant suspect’s constitutional right to freedom from the use of unreasonable force. The unnamed Mexican suspect, who was 15 at the time of his arrest in 2008, received immunity from drug-smuggling and illegal-entry charges for his testimony against the American Border Patrol agent who intercepted him near Eagle Pass, Texas.

Mr. Diaz was nailed for purportedly lifting the teenager’s handcuffed hands over his head and putting his knee in the boy’s back. His attorneys argued at trial that the suspect bore no evidence of injury and the only marks were caused by the shoulder straps of a backpack laden with marijuana found at the arrest site. The Mexican Consulate in Texas interviewed the suspect following the arrest. Based on his account, the Mexican government urged that the agent be prosecuted. U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.’s Justice Department did just that.

Outraged lawmakers sent a letter to President Obama on Thursday signed by 37 members of Congress and calling the prosecution of Mr. Diaz “unfair and excessively disproportionate.” The group, led by Rep. Duncan Hunter, California Republican, wrote, “We certainly do not condone the use of excessive or unreasonable force; however, the facts in this case do not indicate the drug smuggler was harmed during the arrest or that excessive force was used.”

Lawmakers argued that Mr. Diaz previously had been found blameless....

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 22, 2011, 07:11:47 AM

New Hampshire Union Leader: Obama Is A 'Glib, Clueless Disaster Of A President'
Zeke Miller | Nov. 22, 2011, 8:42 AM | 1,849 | 25




 
New Hampshire's largest newspaper welcomes President Barack Obama back to the Granite State with a scathing front page editorial today, calling him a "glib, clueless disaster of a President."

Written by Union Leader publisher Joseph McQuaid, the editorial says it is an honor for the state to host the President, but proceeds to pummel Obama.

"Listen to President Obama today and he will lay blame on everyone but himself. His only plan will be to spend more money that we don't have.

Four years ago, primary voters here tried to tell the nation that this wet-behind-the-ears socialist wannabe was the wrong man. (They picked Hillary Clinton in the primary.)"

New Hampshire is technically a swing state — though with its four electoral votes, it isn't big enough to attract all that much attention beyond the Republican primary.

Obama is visiting the state to push an extension of the payroll tax — and upstage the Republican candidates in the state.

New Hampshire front-runner Mitt Romney is launching an aggressive campaign to "bracket" Obama's visit with a new ad and several press events.

Read the full editorial here >

Please follow Politics on Twitter and Facebook.
Follow Zeke Miller on Twitter.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/new-hampshire-union-leader-obama-is-a-glib-clueless-disaster-of-a-president-2011-11#ixzz1eRnKCjhU

Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 22, 2011, 11:41:27 AM
Panel Rejects Many Obama (affirmative action) Prospects for Judgeships
New York Times ^ | November 22, 2011 | CHARLIE SAVAGE

Posted on Tuesday, November 22, 2011 2:39:48 PM by reaganaut1

The American Bar Association has secretly declared a significant number of President Obama’s potential judicial nominees “not qualified,” slowing White House efforts to fill vacant judgeships — and nearly all of the prospects given poor ratings were women or members of an ethnic minority group, according to interviews.

The White House has chosen not to nominate any person the bar association deemed unqualified, so the pattern of negative ratings has not been made public. But the association’s judicial vetting committee has opposed 14 of the roughly 185 potential nominees the administration asked it to evaluate, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The number of Obama prospects deemed “not qualified” already exceeds the total number opposed by the group during the eight-year administrations of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush; the rejection rate is more than three and a half times higher than under either of the previous two presidencies, documents and interviews show.

That outcome has added a new twist to a long-running friction in the politics of judicial nominations. During recent Republican administrations, conservatives have made political hay of accusing the A.B.A. of bias against conservative potential judges. In 2001, President Bush stopped sending the group names of prospects before he selected them, so the panel instead rated them after their nomination. In 2009, Mr. Obama restored the panel’s role in the pre-nomination selection process, which dates to the Eisenhower administration.

In discussions with bar panel leaders, administration officials have expressed growing frustrations with the ratings over the past year and a half, people familiar with those conversations said. In particular, they are said to have questioned whether the panelists — many of whom are litigators — place too much value on courtroom experience


(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------




kagan anybody????
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 22, 2011, 12:54:22 PM
Victor Davis Hanson: Obama’s Economic Quackery
NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE ^ | November 22, 2011 | Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on Tuesday, November 22, 2011 3:50:28 PM by neverdem

Obama's Economic Quackery
Obama has learned how to turn a natural recovery into a serial slowdown.



Sometimes the wrong medicine can make a struggling patient far sicker than he would have been had he been allowed to recover naturally. Western medicine began with the premise that the physician either must know how to cure the patient or simply leave him alone — but above all not make him worse through harmful treatment.

As 2011 ends, we have discovered how to turn a natural recovery from a near-record recession into a serial slowdown. Almost every haphazard, ad hoc attempt by Barack Obama to jumpstart the economy has only further stalled it. The president has never articulated a diagnosis of why the economy was stalled, never outlined a coherent treatment plan, and so cannot offer a prognosis. If we have a sick budget, a Byzantine tax code, bankrupting entitlements and long-term debt burden, and a costly imported-oil bill, one would never know all that from the president, who has never offered any sort of plan for addressing these crises.

Borrowing over $4 trillion terrified investors and business owners — especially given campaign promises that Obama would not be so “unpatriotic” as to match in three years the debt that Bush had piled up in eight. After all, no one could accuse the Bush administration of having left the economy moribund by slashing government, running balanced or surplus budgets, reducing the national debt, and in tight-fisted fashion denying federal bailouts to reckless banks and Wall Street firms. Apparently, Barack Obama saw the Bush administration’s economic transgressions not as warnings, but as a green light to borrow and spend even more on a predetermined redistributive agenda (“Never let a crisis go to waste”) — as if once a Republican administration had trespassed, conservatives could hardly throw stones at even greater sinners.

Government’s “shovel-ready” projects proved chimaeras — as if anyone could ever believe that tenured bureaucrats could spend such vast borrowed sums as efficiently as millions of private individuals responsible for their own success or failure. The irony is that drilling for more American gas and oil would, in fact, both be shovel-ready job stimulus and cost the government almost nothing; however, this was unacceptable given the opposition of the green insiders and the likelihood that corporations would profit.

Extending food stamps and unemployment benefits to record levels might in theory have sounded humane, but it eroded incentives, depressed the dependent recipients, and created no new jobs. Such gargantuan new expenditures were about as effective in combatting unemployment as prescribing a third round of antibiotics for a resistant strain of infection. A theme in many of Obama’s vast new spending schemes is that we are all supposed to believe publicly that the new largesse is the right thing to do, even if we privately shrug that it inevitably ensures quite the opposite result, given unchanging human nature.

Blaming sluggish growth on everything from ATM machines, tsunamis, and the Europeans to private-jet owners and the top 1 percent of taxpayers only reminded the general public how little those in charge knew what was going on, and reminded the particular targets why they were smart to hoard cash, not buy, and not hire — in fear of new taxes, new regulations, new costs like Obamacare, and a new antagonism from an accusatory commander-in-chief himself. Blaming the patient — uncompetitive, soft, lazy — is the worst thing a doctor can do.

If one were trying to dream up a way for the Energy Department to ensure fewer jobs, less energy, and higher costs, it would be hard to match the record of Secretary Chu. We have spent billions subsidizing inefficient solar- and wind-power companies with political connections; the results have been little or no new energy, but lots more federal debt. Thanks to Obama, the “alternative energy” industry is now discredited, as “millions of green jobs” have been downgraded to the status of “stimulus” and “investments.” Apparently, when crony capitalists and insider con men put the word “green” in front of their schemes, we are supposed to suspend moral judgment, as if they purchased medieval indulgences exempting them from scrutiny

Stopping offshore oil exploration, curbing drilling in Alaska and the continental United States, and postponing a proposed oil pipeline from Canada are the sorts of luxuries that cash-laden, energy-rich postmodern societies can enjoy. But for now, unfortunately, we remain a nation of 150 million drivers, $15 trillion in debt, with an annual imported-oil tab of well over half a trillion dollars.

So far, no one in this administration can explain to the public how and why “Cash for Clunkers,” Obamacare, buying into GM, threatening Boeing, the second stimulus, or new regulations on business were supposed to create more jobs or economic growth. The common denominator in all these failed efforts is the assumption that a technocrat with an Ivy League certificate knows far more about business than those who conduct it. Usually the more suspect the doctor, the more framed degrees on the waiting-room wall.

In a psychological sense, it certainly confused the public to demonize Wall Street and the top income earners, while engaging in crony-capitalist insider deals with them — not to mention hosting these demonized fat cats in hopes of snaring their contributions. Was Obama a fiery populist, a Bill Clinton starstruck corporate wannabe, or a complete cynic who assured a select few donors and supporters on Wall Street that all his fiery bombast did not apply to a Jeffrey Immelt, Warren Buffett, George Soros, or Bill Gates? When millions of small contractors and professionals were lumped in with hyper-rich insiders such as Jon Corzine and Hank Paulson as the suspect “millionaires and billionaires” who were not paying “their fair share,” are we surprised that many in the private sector are sitting this recovery out?

Dr. Obama faults his patients for losing their old industriousness and competiveness — as if we were deliberately failing to make enough money for our more enlightened doctor to redistribute to more deserving others. And he thinks that such lackadaisicalness is at the heart of the present slowdown. But if that is true, our collective sloth may well have come about because Obama’s own policies encourage just those traits that apparently so bother him. After three years, we can fairly summarize that Obama has been anti-empirical: He came in with an agenda to redistribute income, expand government, raise taxes, emphasize class divisions, and deflate the American profile abroad — and he quickly turned petulant when all that worsened an economy that was never to be his main interest but was necessary to fund his fantasies.

“Do no harm” is the first commandment for any good physician. In contrast, daily poisoning the ill patient with a medicine chest of toxic pills is the work of a quack.

— NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author most recently of the just-released The End of Sparta, a novel about ancient freedom.


Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 22, 2011, 08:40:12 PM
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Justice Department sues Utah over state immigration law
cnn.com ^ | Nov. 22, 2011 | Terry Frieden
Posted on November 22, 2011 7:46:08 PM EST by Free ThinkerNY

Washington (CNN) -- Utah has become the fourth state sued by the Justice Department for passing an immigration law that federal officials claim is unconstitutional because it pre-empts federal enforcement of immigration.

The complaint filed in Salt Lake City is much like the ones filed in Arizona, Alabama and South Carolina.

The government said it will soon seek an injunction to prevent Utah from enforcing some provisions of its law.

"The federal government is the chief enforcer of immigration laws, and while we appreciate cooperation from states, which remains important, it is clearly unconstitutional for a state to set its own immigration policy," said Attorney General Eric Holder in a release. "A patchwork of immigration laws is not the answer."

(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 23, 2011, 07:18:38 AM

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204443404577054141769215880.html




The good news is that growing economies can afford a great deal of government, if not quite as much as the Europeans and the U.S. have promised themselves.

The bad news is that "policy error" are the saddest words in the language. These words, starting in the 1960s, came to dominate serious post mortems on the Great Depression of the 1930s, which blighted so many lives.

Which brings us to President Obama. Has a president ever arrived freer to choose his own course, to devise his own response to the economic crisis that greeted him in office? Candidate Obama landed with no explicit ideological commitments (at least that he cared to share). He was an icon of something else altogether, and his followers were ready to follow wherever he led.

Alas, a few days before his all-but-certain election, he glibly telegraphed what would prove the seminal mistake of his administration, telling Time magazine's Joe Klein that, right after fixing the financial crisis, "a new energy economy . . . That's going to be my No. 1 priority when I get into office."

The financial crisis would not be fixed, but Mr. Obama decided our sagging economy would just have to endure fights over the big ideas he was so determined to implement anyway, including health care, re-empowering labor, redressing income inequality, etc.


.Let us suggest a counterintuitive historical parallel. Jimmy Carter also came to the presidency as a "progressive" Democrat, amid a failing economy. He also had considerable freedom to define his own agenda, riding a wave of Watergate revulsion rather than an ideological mandate.

But Mr. Carter had served aboard Navy submarines. He ran a peanut plantation. He served one term as Georgia governor—real jobs that produce real effects. Mr. Carter saw himself in some realistic relation to the world.

The world is big. A president, even the president's "progressive" commitments, are small in comparison.

It was no part of Mr. Carter's progressive heritage to dismantle the regulatory state that the original progressives had erected. But he did so—in airlines, trucking, railroads and (partially) energy—and made a virtue of it.

It was no part of his progressive heritage to prioritize a strong dollar, but he did so—appointing and supporting Paul Volcker because inflation-fighting had to be done.

The Carter presidency was a mixed bag, but he had the requisite adult judgment for the job. He did not abandon his "progressive" values, but he could see the obvious—that the times called for backing and filling in the "progressive" project, not charging ahead, onward and upward oblivious to realities.

He never got credit from the political calendar, but the Reagan economy was truly built on a Carter-Reagan foundation. Lost amid the shouting, the continuities of American life are often impressively large. Check out Mr. Carter's speech to the 1980 Democratic convention, in which he boasted unembarrassedly and at length about "slashing regulations" and "restoring free enterprise" to failing regulated industries.

You perhaps see where we're going. Mr. Obama's career has been one in which the main effect has been the impression he leaves on audiences—the main effect has been himself. Familiarity with his country—or any other country—would be helpful at this point, if only to counterweight his mesmerization with the arc of his personal story.

Even at this late date, he could tell his aides: "I see the bill coming due for a generation of excesses and the last thing we need is more excesses. I want growth. I want only proposals that encourage growth."

Our economy has great internal resiliency, even with Europe imploding, even with households weighed down by underwater mortgages. Population continues to grow. Families form and need homes. Cars wear out and need replacing. Domestic energy development is booming. Manufacturing is enjoying a renaissance. Boeing just announced its biggest plane sale ever. McDonald's is doing great.

Yet his greatest miscalculation is still to come. His aides are sizing up a re-election campaign that gives up on growth, that resorts to score-settling and resentment.

His enemy will be the banks, which he bailed out. His enemy will be Wall Street—though the GOP rejoinder will be too easy: Tim Geithner.

His enemy will be big business—the same big business whose adaptation to a chaotic global policy environment recently has been nothing short of revelatory.

This is triply sad because Mr. Obama, just this week, was handed a heaven-sent opportunity, a gift beyond his deserts. That gift was GOPer Pat Toomey's tax-reform plan, floated as part of the super-committee deliberations.

Sen. Toomey's plan concedes a big revenue hike on "the rich" in return for reforming the tax code based on pro-growth principles that both parties and Mr. Obama have endorsed. Mr. Obama, if he had the political creativity he credits himself with, would now pick it up and run with it, instantly redeeming the super-committee "failure" with an act of presidential leadership.

The suspicion becomes nigh irresistible, however, that Mr. Obama is lacking in the leadership department as the country stumbles towards its ultimate financial crisis. But give him credit for one world-historical achievement: He makes Carter look good.
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 27, 2011, 05:38:09 PM
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A123 Systems lays off 125 workers at Michigan battery plants (Green jobs)
Annarbor.com ^ | 11-27-2011 | Nathan Bomey
Posted on November 27, 2011 8:14:28 PM EST by Darren McCarty

Battery maker A123 Systems, which has been celebrated as one of Michigan's biggest alternative energy successes, laid off 125 workers at its Livonia and Romulus battery plants this week, according to a report by the Observer & Eccentric.

It was not immediately clear whether there were additional cuts at the company's research-and-development center Ann Arbor's Research Park, where the company has about 35 workers.

A123 spokesman Dan Borgasano told the Observer & Eccentric that the company expects "to be calling these people back in six months or less" and attributed the move to a reduced battery order from California electric vehicle startup Fisker Automotive.

A123 was one of Michigan's biggest winners of federal economic stimulus funding and also won major battery tax credits from the state government. In 2009, A123 received a $249 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy and more than $125 million in tax credits from the Michigan Economic Development Corp.

(Excerpt) Read more at annarbor.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 29, 2011, 05:06:15 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/states-face-bleak-economic-forecast-report-says/2011/11/28/gIQAZ1t26N_story.html



Great job Obama!   Collapse state budgets with obamacare. 
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 29, 2011, 10:11:44 PM
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/study-under-obamacare-employers-will-likely-engage-targeted-dumping-employees_610739.html



Wow!   Hope n fng Change!!!
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 30, 2011, 05:33:55 AM
Investor Leon Cooperman Sends Monster, Scathing Letter To Obama
Lisa Du | Nov. 29, 2011, 6:50 PM | 11,000 | 102



 Omega Advisors Founder Leon Cooperman sent a scathing letter to President Obama yesterday, [via @andrewrsorkin] and its contents are just short of being outright brutal.

In the three page letter, Cooperman outlines his grievances with Obama's administration, calling his policy decisions "profligate and largely ineffectual" and calling Obama out for using a political rhetoric that promotes the ideas of class warfare.

Cooperman came from very humble roots (his dad was a plumber in the South Bronx) but is now worth around $1.8 billion after rising through the ranks at Goldman Sachs in the 1980s and 1990s and starting Omega Advisors, a hedge fund sponsor.

The letter has clear and eloquent prose, but that only adds a sharper edge to the biting statements made by Cooperman. We picked out the best parts...

Cooperman's biggest gripe with Obama is his policitizing of class division, which he feels exacerbates the problems facing Amercia.

I can justifiably hold you accountable for is your and your minions' role in setting the tenor of the rancorous debate now roiling us that smacks of what so many have characterized as "class warfare". Whether this reflects your principled belief that the eternal divide between the haves and have-nots is at the root of all the evils that afflict our society or just a cynical, populist appeal to his base by a president struggling in the polls is of little importance. What does matter is that the divisive, polarizing tone of your rhetoric is cleaving a widening gulf, at this point as much visceral as philosophical, between the downtrodden and those best positioned to help them.

He supports the policy debates and possible reforms going on in Capitol Hill, and says he doesn't mind being taxed more to help get. Cooperman has also signed Warren Buffett's giving pledge. Yet..

But what I do find objectionable is the highly politicized idiom in which this debate is being conducted. Now, I am not naive. I understand that in today's America, this is how the business of governing typically gets done - a situation that, given the gravity of our problems, is as deplorable as it is seemingly ineluctable. But as President first and foremost and leader of your party second, you should endeavor to rise above the partisan fray and raise the level of discourse to one that is both more civil and more conciliatory, that seeks collaboration over confrontation.

And Cooperman keeps going back to Obama's use of class division as a political strategy...

To frame the debate as one of rich-and-entitled versus poor-and-dispossessed is to both miss the point and further inflame an already incendiary environment. It is also a naked, political pander to some of the basest human emotions - a strategy, as history teaches, that never ends well for anyone but totalitarians and anarchists.

He ends the letter by using an anecdote from Obama's past, saying Obama is now supporting the groups that he used to fight against in Chicago.

Rather than assume that the wealthy are a monolithic, selfish and unfeeling lot who must be subjugated by the force of the state, set a tone that encourages people of good will to meet in the middle. When you were a community organizer in Chicago, you learned the art of waging a guerilla campaign against a far superior force. But you've graduated from that milieu and now help to set the agenda for that superior force. You might do well at this point to eschew the polarizing vernacular of political militancy and become the transcendent leader you were elected to be.

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Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/leon-cooperman-letter-to-obama-2011-11#ixzz1fC9lTl8h





bingo.   F U C K   O B A M A                         
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 30, 2011, 05:39:41 AM
Omega Advisors, Inc.
I Wall Street Plaza • 88 Pine Street • 31 st Floor
New York, New York 10005 Tel: 212-495-5210 | Fax: 212-495-5236

Leon G. Cooperman, C.F.A. Chairman & Chief Executive Officer



OPEN LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

November 28, 2011


President Barack Obama The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear Mr. President,


It is with a great sense of disappointment that I write this. Like many others, I hoped that your election would bring a salutary change of direction to the country, despite what more than a few feared was an overly aggressive social agenda. And I cannot credibly blame you for the economic mess that you inherited, even if the policy response on your watch has been profligate and largely ineffectual. (You did not, after all, invent TARP.) I understand that when surrounded by cries of "the end of the world as we know it is nigh", even the strongest of minds may have a tendency to shoot first and aim later in a well-intended effort to stave off the predicted apocalypse.

But what I can justifiably hold you accountable for is your and your minions' role in setting the tenor of the rancorous debate now roiling us that smacks of what so many have characterized as "class warfare". Whether this reflects your principled belief that the eternal divide between the haves and have-nots is at the root of all the evils that afflict our society or just a cynical, populist appeal to his base by a president struggling in the polls is of little importance. What does matter is that the divisive, polarizing tone of your rhetoric is cleaving a widening gulf, at this point as much visceral as philosophical, between the downtrodden and those best positioned to help them. It is a gulf that is at once counterproductive and freighted with dangerous historical precedents. And it is an approach to governing that owes more to desperate demagoguery than your Administration should feel comfortable with.

Just to be clear, while I have been richly rewarded by a life of hard work (and a great deal of luck), I was not to-the-manor-born. My father was a plumber who practiced his trade in the South Bronx after he and my mother emigrated from Poland. I was the first member of my family to earn a college degree. I benefited from both a good public education system (P.S. 75, Morris High School and Hunter College, all in the Bronx) and my parents' constant prodding. When I joined Goldman Sachs following graduation from Columbia University's business school, I had no money in the bank, a negative net worth, a National Defense Education Act student loan to repay, and a six-month-old child (not to mention his mother, my wife of now 47 years) to support. I had a successful, near-25-year run at Goldman, which I left 20 years ago to start a private investment firm. As a result of my good fortune, I have been able to give away to those less blessed far more than I have spent on myself and my family over a lifetime, and last year I subscribed to Warren Buffet's Giving Pledge to ensure that my money, properly stewarded, continues to do some good after I'm gone.

My story is anything but unique. I know many people who are similarly situated, by both humble family history and hard-won accomplishment, whose greatest joy in life is to use their resources to sustain their communities. Some have achieved a level of wealth where philanthropy is no longer a by-product of their work but its primary impetus. This is as it should be. We feel privileged to be in a position to give back, and we do. My parents would have expected nothing less of me.

I am not, by training or disposition, a policy wonk, polemicist or pamphleteer. I confess admiration for those who, with greater clarity of expression and command of the relevant statistical details, make these same points with more eloquence and authoritativeness than I can hope to muster. For recent examples, I would point you to "Hunting the Rich" (Leaders, The Economist, September 24, 2011), "The Divider vs. the Thinker" (Peggy Noonan, The Wall Street Journal, October 29, 2011), "Wall Street Occupiers Misdirect Anger" (Christine Todd Whitman, Bloomberg, October 31, 2011), and "Beyond Occupy" (Bill Keller, The New York Times, October 31, 2011) - all, if you haven't read them, making estimable work of the subject.
But as a taxpaying businessman with a weekly payroll to meet and more than a passing familiarity with the ways of both Wall Street and Washington, I do feel justified in asking you: is the tone of the current debate really constructive?

People of differing political persuasions can (and do) reasonably argue about whether, and how high, tax rates should be hiked for upper-income earners; whether the Bush-era tax cuts should be extended or permitted to expire, and for whom; whether various deductions and exclusions under the federal tax code that benefit principally the wealthy and multinational corporations should be curtailed or eliminated; whether unemployment benefits and the payroll tax cut should be extended; whether the burdens of paying for the nation's bloated entitlement programs are being fairly spread around, and whether those programs themselves should be reconfigured in light of current and projected budgetary constraints; whether financial institutions deemed "too big to fail" should be serially bailed out or broken up first, like an earlier era's trusts, because they pose a systemic risk and their size benefits no one but their owners; whether the solution to what ails us as a nation is an amalgam of more regulation, wealth redistribution, and a greater concentration of power in a central government that has proven no more (I'm being charitable here) adept than the private sector in reining in the excesses that brought us to this pass - the list goes on and on, and the dialectic is admirably American. Even though, as a high-income taxpayer, I might be considered one of its targets, I find this reassessment of so many entrenched economic premises healthy and long overdue. Anyone who could survey today's challenging fiscal landscape, with an un- and underemployment rate of nearly 20 percent and roughly 40 percent of the country on public assistance, and not acknowledge an imperative for change is either heartless, brainless, or running for office on a very parochial agenda. And if I end up paying more taxes as a result, so be it. The alternatives are all worse.

But what I do find objectionable is the highly politicized idiom in which this debate is being conducted. Now, I am not naive. I understand that in today's America, this is how the business of governing typically gets done - a situation that, given the gravity of our problems, is as deplorable as it is seemingly ineluctable. But as President first and foremost and leader of your party second, you should endeavor to rise above the partisan fray and raise the level of discourse to one that is both more civil and more conciliatory, that seeks collaboration over confrontation. That is what "leading by example" means to most people.

Capitalism is not the source of our problems, as an economy or as a society, and capitalists are not the scourge that they are too often made out to be. As a group, we employ many millions of taxpaying people, pay their salaries, provide them with healthcare coverage, start new companies, found new industries, create new products, fill store shelves at Christmas, and keep the wheels of commerce and progress (and indeed of government, by generating the income whose taxation funds it) moving. To frame the debate as one of rich-and-entitled versus poor-and-dispossessed is to both miss the point and further inflame an already incendiary environment. It is also a naked, political pander to some of the basest human emotions - a strategy, as history teaches, that never ends well for anyone but totalitarians and anarchists.

With due respect, Mr. President, it's time for you to throttle-down the partisan rhetoric and appeal to people's better instincts, not their worst. Rather than assume that the wealthy are a monolithic, selfish and unfeeling lot who must be subjugated by the force of the state, set a tone that encourages people of good will to meet in the middle. When you were a community organizer in Chicago, you learned the art of
waging a guerilla campaign against a far superior force. But you've graduated from that milieu and now help to set the agenda for that superior force. You might do well at this point to eschew the polarizing vernacular of political militancy and become the transcendent leader you were elected to be. You are likely to be far more effective, and history is likely to treat you far more kindly for it.
Sincerely,

Leon G. Cooperman Chairman and Chief Executive Officer




http://www.thestreet.com/tsc/common/images/pdf/Omega%20Advisor1.pdf

Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 30, 2011, 05:55:06 AM
F Obama!!!!   He is going to gridlock our entire midtown.   FNG douchebag.   

[ Invalid YouTube link ]

Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: 240 is Back on November 30, 2011, 05:59:31 AM
trump is so sad.   He used to be able to command huge audiences when speaking about his cause.

now he's back to being a hair joke, screaming on his youtube channel.
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 30, 2011, 06:05:14 AM
trump is so sad.   He used to be able to command huge audiences when speaking about his cause.

now he's back to being a hair joke, screaming on his youtube channel.


Obama is going to entirely gridlock the city today for another fundraiser and everyone is pissed off.

He is beyond disgusting as are those who pklan on voting for him.  They need to be shit on daily.   
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 30, 2011, 06:41:36 AM
Anything but govern for Bam
By MICHAEL GOODWIN


Last Updated: 3:29 AM, November 30, 2011

Posted: 3:23 AM, November 30, 2011

The words cut like a knife. “What the hell are we paying you for?” Gov. Chris Christie asked of President Obama.

The New Jersey Republican has a gift for getting to the heart of things, and his broadside against the president over the debt bomb is Exhibit A. His assertion, framed as a question, makes the case against Obama better than anything heard from the actual candidates.

Christie’s decision not to run remains a disappointment, but he is a valuable player who can help sharpen the fuzzy aim of Mitt Romney, the man he supports. Christie’s consistent theme is that Obama has defaulted on the responsibility to provide presidential leadership during a national crisis.

On Monday, the GOP heavyweight called Obama “a bystander in the Oval Office” for ducking the congressional committee charged with finding $1.2 trillion in deficit reductions over 10 years.

“I was angry this weekend, listening to the spin coming out of the administration about the failure of the super committee, and that the president knew it was doomed for failure, so he didn’t get involved,” Christie said. “Well, then, what the hell are we paying you for? ‘It’s doomed for failure so I’m not getting involved?’ Well, what have you been doing, exactly?”

The questions are rhetorical in that we know what the president has been doing and why. He plays golf and campaigns. Governing is beneath him.

He doesn’t talk much to members of Congress or his own Cabinet. They’re beneath him.

His connection to the public consists of speeches before large crowds, and he ducks behind the curtain and into the security bubble as soon as he finishes. The people are beneath him.

Warped by a sense of entitlement and self-aggrandizement, Obama refuses to take responsibility for finding practical solutions to problems. He prefers the glory of transformation rather than the roll-the-sleeves-up work of reform.

When he can’t get his way, he appoints a czar and ignores Congress. Democracy is beneath him.

He could have brokered a deficit deal, but doing so would have demolished his campaign slogan that Republicans are to blame for everything. Any deal would give him ownership of the results, and end the fiction that politics are beneath him.

In fact, he’s all politics, all the time. His idea of bipartisanship is that everybody agrees with him.

He’s so bad at the job that the frequent comparisons to Jimmy Carter are unfair to Carter. The former peanut farmer was a terrible president, but he was at least sincere in his starchy disdain for the country.

Obama professes to really, really like America. He just wants to change everything about it.

And when the country says no thanks, he goes off script and the smears come out. We’re “soft” and “lazy” and “bitter” and “cling” to God and guns.

Much ink has been spilled trying to figure out what went wrong after such a brilliant, history-making campaign got him to the White House. Obama smashed the Clinton machine and dispatched John McCain without breaking a sweat. Mount Rushmore was waiting.

But his first day in office marked the peak, and it’s been all downhill since. Deadenders, after blaming George W. Bush, Senate Republicans and the Tea Party, were forced to turn on their own, especially the economic advisers who are gone, Larry Summers and Peter Orszag. They were the problems.

But there are no hiding places in the Oval Office and, after three years, it’s clear who the problem is.

The campaign of 2008 looked brilliant because campaigns showcase Obama’s one real talent — blaming someone else for blocking the way to Utopia.

On that basis, he got the job. But now we know the terrible truth: Actually being president is beneath him, too.



Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/anything_but_govern_for_bam_jNXbQt7gkOMjQ7EZcOUbtK#ixzz1fCRwdtn2

Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 30, 2011, 08:18:50 AM
0bama 101 [VDH]
National Review ^ | 11/30/2011 | Victor Davis Hanson




In the last three years, the president has taught us a great deal about America, the world, and himself.


Before Obama, many Americans still believed in massive deficit spending, whether as an article of fairness, a means to economic growth, or just a lazy fallback position to justify an out-of-control federal government. But after the failure of a nearly $800 billion “stimulus” program — intended to keep unemployment under 8 percent — no one believes any more that an already indebted government will foster economic growth by taking on another $4 trillion in debt. In other words, “stimulus” is mostly a dead concept. The president — much as he advised a barnstorming President Bush in 2005 to cease pushing Social Security reform on a reluctant population — should give it up and junk the new $500 billion program euphemistically designated as a “jobs bill.” The U.S. government is already borrowing every three days what all of America spent on Black Friday.


Obama has also taught us that prominent government intervention into the private sector often makes things worse, and invites crony-capitalist corruption. Nearly three years into this administration, it is striking how seldom Barack Obama brags about Cash for Clunkers, the Chrysler and GM bailouts, or Solyndra. He either is quiet about them or sort of shrugs, as if to say, “Stuff happens.” Even creative bookkeeping cannot mask the fact that the auto-company bailouts (begun, to be sure, by the Bush administration, but made worse under Obama) will prove a huge drain on the Treasury. No one even attempts any more to convince us that we will like Obamacare once we read the legislation, or that it will save us costs in the long run, or that it will cheer up businesses so that they will invest and hire. All that was dreamland, 2009, and this is reality, 2011, when we hear only “It could have been worse.”


Obama has also taught us that a president’s name, his father’s religion, his ethnic background, loud denunciations of his predecessor, discomforting efforts to apologize, bow, and contextualize past American actions — none of that does anything to lead to greater peace in the world or security for the United States. And by the same token, George Bush’s drawl, Texas identification, and Christianity did not magically turn allies into neutrals and neutrals into enemies.


Israel, Britain, and Eastern Europe are not closer allies now than they were in 2008. Iran is still Iran — and may be even a more dangerous adversary after the failed Obama outreach. Putin’s Russia, despite “reset” (a word we no longer much hear), is still Putin’s Russia. China still despises the U.S., and feels in 2011 that it is in a far better position to act on its contempt than it was in 2009. North Korea never got the “hope and change” message. Europe is collapsing, reminding the world where the United States is headed if it does not change course. Outreach didn’t seem to do much for the Castro brothers, Hugo Chávez, or Daniel Ortega. We are helping Mexico to sue our own states, but that does not seem to persuade its leaders to keep their citizens home. Muslim Pakistan went from a duplicitous ally to a veritable enemy. The more we bragged about Turkey, the more we could feel it holds us in contempt. We hope that the Libyan rebels and the Cairo protesters are headed toward democracy, but we privately admit that they seem to have no more interest in establishing it than we have in promoting it. In other words, Professor Obama reminds future presidents that the world will transcend their rhetoric, their pretensions, and their heritage. Other nations always calibrate their relations with the United States either by their own perceived self-interest, or by centuries-old American values and power, or both.


Barack Obama has taught us a great deal about dealing with radical Islam, an ideology not predicated on what presidents do or say. There will be no shutting down of Guantanamo as promised, and no end to either renditions or preventive detentions and tribunals. Khalid Sheik Mohammed will never be tried, as promised, in a New York courtroom not far from the scene of his mass murdering. The so-called Ground Zero mosque — once so dear to sanctimonious members of the Obama administration — will never be built; either liberal New Yorkers will quietly prevent it, or the architects of the scheme will be exposed as financial as well as cultural con artists. Obama will never again give an interview to Al-Arabiya expanding on how his own heritage will ameliorate relations with Arabs. The Cairo speech will go down in history not as a landmark creative effort to win over Muslims, but, to the extent it is remembered, as one of the most ahistorical constructs in presidential history. The Obama legacy in the War on Terror is as Predator-in-Chief — boldly increasing targeted assassinations tenfold from the Bush era, on the theory that we more or less kill the right suspected terrorists; few civil libertarians care much, apparently because one of their own is doing it.


We have learned from Obama that the messianic presidency is a myth. Obama’s attempt to recreate Camelot has only reminded us that JFK’s presidency — tax cuts, Cold War saber-rattling, Vietnam intervention — was never Camelot. We shall see no more Latinate presidential sloganeering (“Vero Possumus”), no more rainbow posters. Gone are the faux-Greek columns, the speeches about seas receding and the planet cooling — now sources of embarrassment rather than nostalgia. Chancellor Merkel won’t want another Victory Column address from someone who ducked out on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Obama himself will not lecture crowds any longer about the dangers of their fainting when he speaks; Michelle will cease all the nonsense about “deign[ing] to enter the messy thing called politics” and finally acquiring pride in the U.S. when it nominated her husband. Even Chris Matthews’s leg has stopped tingling. There will be no more Newsweek comparisons of Obama to a god. Even the Nobel Prize committee will soon grasp that it tarnished its brand by equating fleeting celebrity with lasting achievement.


“Green” will never be quite the same after Obama. When Solyndra and its affiliated scandals are at last fully brought into the light of day, we will see the logical reification of Climategate I & II, Al Gore’s hucksterism, and Van Jones’s lunacy. How ironic that the more Obama tried to stop drilling in the West, offshore, and in Alaska, as well as stopping the Canadian pipeline, the more the American private sector kept finding oil and gas despite rather than because of the U.S. government. How further ironic that the one area that Obama felt was unnecessary for, or indeed antithetical to, America’s economic recovery — vast new gas and oil finds — will soon turn out to be America’s greatest boon in the last 20 years. While Obama and Energy Secretary Chu still insist on subsidizing money-losing wind and solar concerns, we are in the midst of a revolution that, within 20 years, will reduce or even end the trade deficit, help pay off the national debt, create millions of new jobs, and turn the Western Hemisphere into the new Persian Gulf. The American petroleum revolution can be delayed by Obama, but it cannot be stopped.


One lesson, however, has not fully sunk in and awaits final elucidation in the 2012 election: that of the Chicago style of Barack Obama’s politicking. In 2008 few of the true believers accepted that, in his first political race, in 1996, Barack Obama sued successfully to remove his opponents from the ballot. Or that in his race for the U.S. Senate eight years later, sealed divorced records for both his primary- and general-election opponents were mysteriously leaked by unnamed Chicagoans, leading to the implosions of both candidates’ campaigns. Or that Obama was the first presidential candidate in the history of public campaign financing to reject it, or that he was also the largest recipient of cash from Wall Street in general, and from BP and Goldman Sachs in particular. Or that Obama was the first presidential candidate in recent memory not to disclose either undergraduate records or even partial medical. Or that remarks like “typical white person,” the clingers speech, and the spread-the-wealth quip would soon prove to be characteristic rather than anomalous.


Few American presidents have dashed so many popular, deeply embedded illusions as has Barack Obama. And for that, we owe him a strange sort of thanks.


Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 30, 2011, 09:36:33 AM
Need for Brazil Debt Kills US Defense Company
Townhall.com ^ | November 30, 2011 | Political Calcululations




How dependent has the United States government under President Barack Obama become upon borrowing money from foreign sources to support its spending?

Would you believe the answer is: "enough to exclude a long-time U.S. manufacturer from consideration for a defense contract in favor of a foreign-based manufacturer, despite the U.S. manufacturer having invested considerable time and profits earned from their other products to develop a product that specifically satisfies the government's needs?"

AINonline's Chris Pocock reports:

The U.S. Air Force has apparently chosen the Embraer Super Tucano to meet the Light Air Support (LAS) requirement. Hawker Beechcraft's AT-6 was the other contender. No official announcement has yet been made, but Hawker Beechcraft said it received a letter from the USAF that excluded the AT-6 from the hotly contested competition. The company is protesting the decision to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO).


The LAS competition was designed to produce an alternative to jet combat aircraft for counter-insurgency operations. The Air Force planned to buy 15 aircraft for a training school at Eglin AFB, Fla., but had not confirmed plans to equip any of its own squadrons.

However, the U.S. was expected to supply or sell LAS aircraft to various countries, starting with 20 for Afghanistan. It was this potential that led Hawker Beechcraft and partners to spend “more than $100 million to meet the Air Force's specific requirements,” the company said.

Last month, Hawker Beechcraft completed weapons drop tests with the AT-6, a modification of the successful T-6 primary trainer on which all U.S. military pilots graduate.

Meanwhile, Embraer teamed with Sierra Nevada Corp to offer the EMB-314 Super Tucano, and said it would assemble the aircraft in a new facility at Jacksonville, Fla.

Manufacturing.net carries the Associated Press' article, which describes the size of the contract, as well as the Hawker Beechcraft's investment in its AT-6 program (emphasis ours):

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) -- The Air Force has notified Hawker Beechcraft Corp. that its Beechcraft AT-6 has been excluded from competition to build a light attack aircraft, a contract worth nearly $1 billion, the company said.


The company had hoped to its AT-6, an armed version of its T-6 trainer, would be chosen for the Light AirSupport Counter Insurgency aircraft for the Afghanistan National Army Corps. The chosen aircraft also would be used as a light attack armed reconnaissance aircraft for the U.S. Air Force.

The piston planes are designed for counterinsurgency, close air support, armed overwatch and homeland security, The Wichita Eagle reported (http://bit.ly/ud7FDM).

Hawker Beechcraft officials said in a news release that they were "confounded and troubled" by the Air Force's decision. The company said it is asking the Air Force for an explanation and will explore all options.

Hawker Beechcraft said it had been working with the Air Force for two years and had invested more than $100 million to meet the Air Force's requirements for the plane. It noted that the Beechcraft AT-6 had been found capable of meeting the requirements in a demonstration program led by the Air National Guard.

It's all the more remarkable because the U.S. company has been laying off its workers given the current economic climate.


By contrast, Hawker Beechcraft's competition for the defense contract, Brazil's Embraer, is under investigation by the SEC into possible corrupt practices. The Wall Street Journal's Paulo Winterstein reports:

Brazil's Embraer SA, the world's No. 4 aircraft maker, said Friday that an investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission into possible corrupt practices shouldn't hurt the company's chances of selling planes to the U.S. military.

The company said Thursday that it was subpoenaed by the SEC, but Chief Executive Frederico Curado said Friday the investigation in itself shouldn't affect its ongoing bid to sell Super Tucano aircraft to the U.S. Air Force. Mr. Curado said he expects the government to announce a decision within "weeks" on a contract reportedly valued at $1.5 billion.

"This is a new process for us but as far as we understand it, the investigation won't have an impact," he said in a conference call with journalists. "Restrictions in dealings with the U.S. government would come only after a conviction."

Embraer said that the SEC and U.S. Justice Department are investigating possible breaches of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibits company officials from making payments to government officers to get or keep business. The company declined to give details beyond saying that the investigation is related to Embraer business dealings in three countries.

So how does the United States' federal government's need to borrow large amounts of money from foreign sources perhaps come into play in stacking the deck against of a mid-size U.S. manufacturer against the fourth-largest maker of aircraft in the world for a U.S. defense contract?


As the fifth largest major foreign holder of U.S. debt, one whose share of that debt has been growing consistently for several years, the Obama administration may well have made a strategic decision to favor Brazil's Embraer company as a reward for Brazil's growing ranking among all foreign holders of U.S. government-issued debt.

With a good portion of Embraer's Super Tucano aircraft being manufactured outside the United States, the move will increase the U.S.' trade deficit in goods and services with Brazil, which in turn, will be balanced by the U.S. government's "export" of U.S. Treasury securities to Brazil.

The move is strategic because developing Brazil as a major holder of U.S. government-issued debt would offset China's outsize influence over the United States given its status as the largest foreign holder of U.S. Treasury securities. Since China has previously flexed its muscles with respect to its interests through the markets for U.S. Treasuries, the Obama administration is likely seeking to reduce its potential influence.

That influence is substantial. Through the end of September 2011, the U.S. Treasury reports that China holds $1.15 trillion in U.S. government-issued securities directly, and another $109 billion indirectly through Hong Kong. Meanwhile, a very large portion of the United Kingdom's reported U.S. government debt holdings of $421.6 billion are actually controlled by Chinese interests. The figure currently recorded for the U.K. is largely a consequence of the nation's position as a major international banking center, which will be revised in several months time to reflect actual holdings by nation.

The bottom line is that if a comparatively small U.S. manufacturer of airplanes with a major investment in its future to develop an aircraft that can do what the U.S. government wants and can demonstrate that's the case needs to be pushed aside in favor of a foreign manufacturer with considerable ethical issues regarding its business practices, and if doing so will help it borrow more money to spend, then that's what the Obama administration will do.





________________________ ___________


Awesome fucking job obamabots!!!!   
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 30, 2011, 02:45:49 PM
Obama’s Labor Department Looks To Take The ‘Family’ Out of Family Farms
Red State ^ | 11/29/2011 | Labor Union Report Staff




Let’s establish this right out of the gate so as not to confuse issues: It is wrong when corporations use child labor. Forgetting the law for a moment, whether it is here in the U.S. or overseas, children are children, and corporations should not exploit children. Got it? With that said, this is not about corporations, this is about families and farms. More specifically, family farms and the overreach of the federal government.

For centuries, even before there was Willie Nelson and FarmAid, farming throughout the world (including here in the United States) has largely been a family affair. That is, parents and their children (when not in school) work from dawn until dusk to put food on the family table, and the tables of others.

Recognizing this, when child labor laws were developed in the last century, there was an exemption built in for family farms. Now, however, the concept of the family farm may be getting gutted if the Obama Labor Department has its way.

Under a proposed “dramatic updating” of the nation’s child labor regulations, the Department of Labor is considering eliminating many of the tasks that children and young adults do on their family’s farm.

Although the DOL’s website specifically states, “The proposed regulations would not apply to children working on farms owned by their parents,” the regulations would (presumably) apply to farms owned by grandparents and other, non-parental family members.

Moreover, as the Milwaukee’s Journal-Sentinel notes, many family farms are legally structured, which could remove it from the parental farm exemption:

Under the proposed rules, according to the Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation, someone under 18 would not be allowed to do many chores for a neighbor or even their own family’s farm if it’s set up as a corporation or a business partnership.

Today, many family farms are legally structured as corporations or partnerships.

Under the DOL’s proposal [emphasis added], the following tasks would be outlawed :

Strengthening current child labor prohibitions regarding agricultural work with animals in timber operations, manure pits, storage bins and pesticide handling. Prohibiting hired farm workers under the age of 16 from employment in the cultivation, harvesting and curing of tobacco. Prohibiting youth in both agricultural and nonagricultural employment from using electronic devices, including communication devices, while operating power-driven equipment.

Prohibiting hired farm workers under the age of 16 from operating almost all power-driven equipment. A similar prohibition has existed as part of the nonagricultural child labor provisions for more than 50 years. A limited exemption would permit some student-learners to operate certain farm implements and tractors (when equipped with proper rollover protection structures and seat belts) under specified conditions.

Preventing children under 18 years of age from being employed in the storing, marketing and transporting of farm-product raw materials. Prohibited places of employment would include country grain elevators, grain bins, silos, feed lots, stockyards, livestock exchanges and livestock auctions.

While many might view this as merely a simple example of bureaucratic overreach, diminishing a family’s ability to actually tend to their farm as a family could put many of them out of business since they could be forced to hire workers to fulfill the chores that their children are doing.

Of course, for those farms that can afford to hire employees and stay in business, this could be what the Department of Labor is counting on—especially in states like Hilda Solis’ home state of California, where farm workers can be unionized.

There are, according to the Department of Labor’s website, a couple of days left for the public to comment:

On October 31, 2011, the Department published a notice to extend the comment period to December 1, 2011, because of requests received to extend the period for filing public comments and the Department’s desire to obtain as much information about its proposals as possible. Interested parties are invited to submit written comments on the proposed rule at www.regulations.gov.

Note: Neither Willie Nelson, nor FarmAid returned a request for a statement.

“I bring reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as ABC, hold up truth to your eyes.” Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776






It never ends with this pofs.    One and done!!!!
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 30, 2011, 05:47:53 PM
Surgeon Says Obamacare Will Nix Brain Operations for Elderly
Life News ^ | 11/30/11 | Warner Todd Huston/Steven Ertelt
Posted on November 30, 2011 7:23:15 PM EST by wagglebee

Are you an elderly American? Well get ready to be determined a non-essential medical expenditure if Obamacare has any say in the matter — which it will if its allowed to become fully implemented.

A caller to the nationally syndicated Mark Levin talk radio show last week gave us an appalling sneak peak at the death panels that are about to be unleashed on the country once Obamacare is fully implemented (God forbid).

The caller said that he was a neurosurgeon and told talker Levin that the advance briefing that he got from government representatives informed him that anyone over 70 years of age would be denied lifesaving (and expensive) brain operations because they were too old to bother with.

The caller said that instead of healthcare, older patients with aneurysms or strokes would get “comfort care” — care that would just “comfort” them while they die — instead of care that would cure them of their ills.

Sounds like death panels to me!

So, do you want a government perfunctory deciding if you are worth saving? As the caller said, with the nation aging rapidly and with so many of use living vital lives into our nineties, is this what we want, government officials that will decide you aren’t worth the effort once you hit your seventies?

Doug Ross has the full transcript of the call. Read it. It’s quite frightening:

Jeff [The surgeon]:  I heard you talk earlier about the government not knowing how to make pencils and you talked about brain surgeons. And I happen to be a brain surgeon, so I found your topic quite interesting.

I just returned from Washington, DC, where we were reading over what the Obama health care plan would be for advanced neurosurgery for patients over 70, which we all found quite disturbing. As our population gets older, the majority of our patients are getting over 70. They’ll require stroke therapy, aneurysm therapy, and basically what the document stated is that if you’re over 70 and you come into an emergency room… if you’re on government-supported health care, you’ll get “comfort care”.

ML: Wait a minute… what’s the source for this?

Jeff: This is Obama’s new health care plan for advanced neurosurgical care.

ML: And who issued this? HHS?

Jeff: Yes. And basically they don’t call them patients, they call them units. And instead of, they call it “ethics panels” or “ethics committees”, would get together and meet and decide where the money would go for hospitals, and basically for patients over 70 years of age, that advanced neurosurgical care was not generally indicated.

ML: So it’s generally going to be denied?

Jeff: Yes, absolutely… If someone comes in at 70 years of age with a bleed in their brain, I can promise you I’m not going to get a bunch of administrators together on an ethics panel at 2 in the morning to decide that I’m OK to do surgery.

ML: Is this published somewhere where the general public could get a hold of it?

Jeff: Not yet.

ML: So this was just discussed with your community of neurosurgeons?

Jeff: Yes, the AANS [Ed: the American Association of Neurological Surgeons] and the Congress of Neurosurgeons, because everybody knows that cuts are coming in Medicare and medical reimbursement. And we’re the most expensive out of all the fields in medicine. And we’re the smallest field. But at two, three, four in the morning, we’re the ones in the operating room. And we have to wait for an ethics panel to convene, which are not made of physicians — they’re made of administrators. To decide whether a patient should receive our care.

ML: So Sarah Palin was right. We’re going to have these “death panels”, aren’t we?

Jeff: Oh, absolutely. I’m German by heritage, and I’ve read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, and — basically, they don’t call them patients, they call them units. And if you’re a unit above a certain age, you get comfort care instead of advanced neurosurgical intervention.

ML: You went to a seminar in Washington, DC?

Jeff: Yes. Where a few of my former partners, two of them, have gone to work… one for the Veteran’s Administration and one for the Congress of Neurosurgeons out of DC.

ML: And this information is based, you’re certain, on representations and information provided by HHS and other government officials?

Jeff: Yep.

ML: And when will the rest of us become aware of it? After the [presidential] election?

Jeff: Probably. I mean, there’s so many things that the government keeps under control that are used — things called H.U.D. devices — humanitarian use devices that we’re allowed to use now because they haven’t undergone full FDA approval. And they’re used in surgery because people know it’s the right thing to do. But the government can step in at any time, like they did two months ago with a device, and say, ‘this device hasn’t met what we want’ and there’s no exact criteria, and can therefore take it away from us.

ML: And the people telling you what to do — they don’t know how to make a pencil, do they?

Jeff: Exactly. That’s what I’m saying. You know, we always joke around — ‘it’s not brain surgery’ — but I did nine years after medical school, I’ve been in training ten years, and now I have people who don’t know a thing about what I’m doing telling me when I can and can’t operate.

LifeNews.com Note: Warner Todd Huston is an editorial columnist whose work is featured on numerous web sites. He has also written for several history magazines, and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture.”

Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: 240 is Back on November 30, 2011, 06:53:10 PM
Most Getbiggers Agree 333386 Hates Obama With All His Heart
Political Board News ^ | 11/30/11 | Ann Coulter/Chris Matthews
Posted on November 30, 2011 7:23:15 PM EST by 240 is back
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 02, 2011, 11:32:07 AM
Online soap opera cleans up with stimulus broadband cash
Nearly $1M in federal funds for ‘Diary of a Single Mom’
93 Comments and 2 Reactions|ShareTweet|Email|Print|By Jim McElhatton
-
The Washington Times



You may not have seen the show "Diary of a Single Mom" co-starring Billy Dee Williams, but your tax dollars helped pay for it.

Through the federal economic stimulus program, a company owned by actor-director Robert Townsend was paid more than $230,000 to produce and direct the Web-based show, records show. Other production costs on the show paid to different vendors total more than $700,000.

The money came through an award by the Department of Commerce to One Economy Corp. for more than $28 million last year to help boost broadband Internet service in underserved areas across the country.

One Economy is using more than $1.5 million of that money to create programming such as "Diary of a Single Mom," which the group says will help provide an incentive for people to connect to the Internet.

But taxpayer watchdogs say the government doesn't belong in show business.

"The point of broadband was to create access and create the infrastructure for communities that do not have access," said Ryan Alexander, president of the nonpartisan Taxpayers for Common Sense. "Creating content wouldn't be what people in Congress thought of when voting on this."

Even if the show is well-liked and delivers a good message, she said, the question is whether it could have happened without stimulus money. "Certainly, Robert Townsend is successful," Ms. Alexander said. "Not that successful people shouldn't be working; they should be. But they have access to capital."

Phone calls to the agent for Mr. Townsend's company, Townsend Entertainment Corp., which is based in Beverly Hills, Calif., were not returned this week. According to the federal grant reports, his company was paid for his services as producer and director.

In August 2009, about eight months before the One Economy grant was awarded, Mr. Townsend wrote about both the broadband program and his work producing the show.

"The Obama administration believes in the Internet's power to restore the economy," he wrote. "In fact, more than $7 billion of stimulus funds [have] been allocated to help bring broadband to low-income and 'underserved' populations. But the truth of the matter is, without relevant, engaging content, Internet access won't deliver to its full potential."

Mr. Townsend went on to say that the need for relevant online content became apparent when he teamed up with One Economy. Together, he wrote, they were producing a series called "Diary of a Single Mom."

150,000 new subscribers

The president of One Economy, David Saunier, said Thursday that the group spends most of the money from the $28.5 million grant on wiring people to the Internet and on educating them on broadband access. In grant documents, One Economy says overall the money will help train 235,000 people and result in 150,000 new subscribers in unserved and underserved communities.

Mr. Saunier said a portion of the grant, which he estimated at between $1.5 million and $2 million, helps produce the sort of programming not available in mainstream media. He said a Pew Research Center study showed that many people who don't use the Internet also don't find online content relevant to their lives.

"It's about maximizing the incentives to go online," he said.

Mr. Saunier said programming also helps tell important stories about topics such as single mothers struggling to get by, and giving a "good and real look at the ramifications of teen pregnancy."

The show appears on the website pic.tv, which is produced by One Economy. The site includes information for viewers on topics such as health care, tax help and employment. In 2009, it was voted Best Indie Soap by the Indie Soap Awards.

Mr. Saunier also said the Commerce Department closely scrutinized the group's plans. The grant was awarded in 2010 to the group through the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA).

"We went through a long due-diligence process with them," he said.

Increase access and adoption

Asked how producing shows squares with the goals of the federal stimulus, Moira Vahey, a spokeswoman for the Commerce Department's NTIA, said the broadband program "was created by the Recovery Act to increase broadband access and adoption."

"As responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars, we are constantly working with each of our grantees to ensure their project expenses are reasonable, necessary and allowable under the grant," Ms. Vahey said. "Additionally, NTIA's oversight includes making sure that the money being spent is delivering on the goals laid out by the program."

Tom Schatz, president of the Citizens Against Government Waste, said so many billions of dollars have been poured into broadband by the government that "now they're in the production business."

He also questioned whether a Web-based show will drive people to the Internet, saying the suggestion reminds him of the now-deceased Sen. Robert C. Byrd, West Virginia Democrat, who angered taxpayer watchdogs by earmarking federal money for pet projects his home state.

"It's the same argument Sen. Byrd used when building all those roads in West Virginia," Mr. Schatz said. "If we build the roads, then people will come."

Pete Sepp, vice president of the National Taxpayers Union, said the question of trying to increase interest and connectivity to broadband has been an issue in Washington for years.

"It comes down to the basic question of whether the public or private sector has a better grasp, not only to develop broadband, but to deliver content that would appeal to people," he said. "In most cases, the private sector wins.

"The quality of the programming may no doubt be outstanding, but the question is whether this will be a catalyst that allows privately funded ventures to take over, or will it be an ongoing repository of tax dollars?" he said.

Mr. Saunier said it's still early to tell how much impact shows such as "Diary of a Single Mom" have on the overall goals of the broadband program.

"The programming is still ongoing, and we're just getting started in the evaluations," he said.

According to grant reports, One Economy so far has invoiced the government $18.9 million of the $28.5 million awarded under the grant, with 142.47 jobs created. The jobs include field supervisors, sales representatives and program managers, as well as numerous production-related positions, such as producers, cast members, casting director and an executive assistant to Mr. Townsend.

Officials at One Economy said the grant wasn't primarily about creating jobs. Instead, they said, the primary purpose was to increase broadband access and adoption, as well as to increase the number of people interacting with content "local and relevant to their lives."

The group said it has spent around $825,000 in the last quarter from the grant on salaries and fringe benefits for the jobs they have created through the stimulus.

© Copyright 2011 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.

Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 02, 2011, 08:27:12 PM
OBAMA OFF TO HAWAII FOR 17-DAY VACAY... (Drudge Headline)
Drudge Report ^ | Fri Dec 2, 2011 17:52:09 ET | Drudge
Posted on December 2, 2011 7:13:21 PM EST by Las Vegas Ron

THE WHITE HOUSE TRAVEL OFFICE

Trip of the President

to

Honolulu, Hawaii

December 17th, 2011 to January 2nd, 2012

Trip Overview

On Saturday, December 17th, 2011, the President will travel to Honolulu, Hawaii. He will return to Washington, DC on Monday, January 2nd, 2012. ...

...no public events are scheduled during the trip. ...








Lazy thug. 
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 03, 2011, 06:23:12 AM
A small taste: NH samples Obamacare
EDITORIAL

Published Dec 1, 2011 at 3:00 am (Updated Dec 1, 2011)     ShareThis

http://unionleader.com/article/20111201/OPINION01/712019961/-1/opinion



 
 

Remember when President Obama said that if his health care “reform” law passed, you’d still get to keep your doctor? Medicare Advantage participants in the Granite State are finding out what a lie that was.

Medicare Advantage is a subset of Medicare in which the federal government pays private insurers a set monthly rate to provide coverage that is approved and regulated by Medicare. The private insurers can charge different rates and offer a wider variety of services than are offered in traditional Medicare. Though Medicare Advantage costs more in its startup phase, the idea is to save money in the long run by providing incentives for insurers to reduce costs. But because the plan is market-based, the Obama administration wants to kill it. Obamacare eventually defunds it.

New Hampshire has a high percentage of Medicare Advantage enrollees. Last month, 7,600 of them received notices that their coverage was being cancelled. Obamacare and another federal law passed in 2008, the Medicare Improvement for Patients and Providers Act, are killing Medicare Advantage to steer senior citizens back into regular Medicare, which offers fewer choices and is more heavily controlled from Washington.

As a result, thousands of Granite State seniors are being forced to switch doctors because they have to switch coverage.

This is just a taste of what is to come if Obamacare takes effect in full force. Its regulations will so skew the private insurance market that millions will lose the coverage they have and be forced into plans preferred by bureaucrats in Washington. They will lose access to their doctors, too. It would make a lot more sense to reform the health insurance market by working to give people more control over their own care, not less.



Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 03, 2011, 06:36:32 AM
Choking on Obamacare
By George F. Will, Published: December 2
LOS ANGELES




In 1941, Carl Karcher was a 24-year-old truck driver for a bakery. Impressed by the large numbers of buns he was delivering, he scrounged up $326 to buy a hot dog cart across from a Goodyear plant. And the war came.

So did millions of defense industry workers and their cars. And, soon, Southern California’s contribution to American cuisine — fast food. Including, eventually, hundreds of Carl’s Jr. restaurants. Karcher died in 2008, but his legacy, CKE Restaurants, survives. It would thrive, says CEO Andy Puzder, but for government’s comprehensive campaign against job creation.

CKE, with more than 3,200 restaurants (Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s), has created 70,000 jobs, 21,000 directly and 49,000 with franchisees. The growth of those numbers will be inhibited by — among many government measures — Obamacare.

When CKE’s health-care advisers, citing Obamacare’s complexities, opacities and uncertainties, said that it would add between $7.3 million and $35.1 million to the company’s $12 million health-care costs in 2010, Puzder said: I need a number I can plan with. They guessed $18 million — twice what CKE spent last year building new restaurants. Obamacare must mean fewer restaurants.

And therefore fewer jobs. Each restaurant creates, on average, 25 jobs — and as much as 3.5 times that number of jobs in the community. (CKE spends about $1 billion a year on food and paper products, $175 million on advertising, $33 million on maintenance, etc.)

Puzder laughs about the liberal theory that businesses are not investing because they want to “punish Obama.” Rising health-care costs are, he says, just one uncertainty inhibiting expansion. Others are government policies raising fuel costs, which infect everything from air conditioning to the cost (including deliveries) of supplies, and the threat that the National Labor Relations Board will use regulations to impose something like “card check” in place of secret-ballot unionization elections.

CKE has about 720 California restaurants, in which 84 percent of the managers are minorities and 67 percent are women. CKE has, however, all but stopped building restaurants in this state because approvals and permits for establishing them can take up to two years, compared to as little as six weeks in Texas, and the cost to build one is $100,000 more than in Texas, where CKE is planning to open 300 new restaurants this decade.

CKE restaurants have 95 percent employee turnover in a year — not bad in this industry — and the health-care benefits under CKE’s current “mini-med” plans are capped in a way that makes them illegal under Obamacare. So CKE will have to convert many full-time employees to part-timers to limit the growth of its burdens under Obamacare.

In an economic climate of increasing uncertainties, Puzder says, one certainty is that many businesses now marginally profitable will disappear when Obamacare causes that margin to disappear. A second certainty is that “employers everywhere will be looking to reduce labor content in their business models as Obamacare makes employees unambiguously more expensive.”

According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, by 2008 the cost of federal regulations had reached $1.75 trillion. That was 14 percent of national income unavailable for job-creating investments. And that was more than 11,000 regulations ago.

Seventy years ago, the local health department complained that Karcher’s hot dog cart had no restroom facilities. He got help from a nearby gas station. A state agency made him pay $15 for workers’ compensation insurance. Another agency said that he owed more than the $326 cost of the cart in back sales taxes. For $100, a lawyer successfully argued that Karcher did not because his customers ate their hot dogs off the premises.

Time was, American businesses could surmount such regulatory officiousness. But government’s metabolic urge to boss people around has grown exponentially and today CKE’s California restaurants are governed by 57 categories of regulations. One compels employees and even managers to take breaks during the busiest hours, lest one of California’s 200,000 lawyers comes trolling for business at the expense of business.

Barack Obama has written that during his very brief sojourn in the private sector he felt like “a spy behind enemy lines.” Puzder knows what it feels like when gargantuan government is composed of multitudes of regulators who regard business as the enemy. And 22.9 million Americans who are unemployed, underemployed or too discouraged to look for employment know what it feels like to be collateral damage in the regulatory state’s war on business.

georgewill@washpost.com



________________________ ________________________ ___________



And meanwhile - the Ghetto Looter in Chief and his fat thug of a wife are going on a 17 day lavish vacation in Hawaii.   Fuck you pieces of garbage who support obama.   
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: 240 is Back on December 03, 2011, 07:54:35 AM
As of August...

How does the number of vacation days the president has spent compare to his predecessors? CBS Radio's Mark Knoller has kept track of presidential vacations for years and supplied the data.
 
So far, President Obama has taken 61 vacation days after 31 months in office. At this point in their presidencies, George W. Bush had spent 180 days at his ranch where his staff often joined him for meetings. And Ronald Reagan had taken 112 vacation days at his ranch. Among recent presidents, Bill Clinton took the least time off — 28 days.
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 03, 2011, 07:57:53 AM
As of August...

How does the number of vacation days the president has spent compare to his predecessors? CBS Radio's Mark Knoller has kept track of presidential vacations for years and supplied the data.
 
So far, President Obama has taken 61 vacation days after 31 months in office. At this point in their presidencies, George W. Bush had spent 180 days at his ranch where his staff often joined him for meetings. And Ronald Reagan had taken 112 vacation days at his ranch. Among recent presidents, Bill Clinton took the least time off — 28 days.



And?   What is your point?  The fucking financial system is on the brink of collapse and you still defend this thug?


Incredible.     
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: 240 is Back on December 03, 2011, 08:01:20 AM
the sky is always falling, homie.  and the president is always on-call.

now, when they ignore critical memos that can save 3000 lives 'while on vacation' - I do'nt like that.

But a president working on the road is no prob for me.
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 03, 2011, 08:03:59 AM
the sky is always falling, homie.  and the president is always on-call.

now, when they ignore critical memos that can save 3000 lives 'while on vacation' - I do'nt like that.

But a president working on the road is no prob for me.


 ::)  ::)

Fuck off.  Blame bush all you want - your messiah is gone next year.   
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 03, 2011, 08:56:56 AM
Obama's Job-Killing Global-Warming Agenda Continues Under the Radar
Human Events ^ | 12/02/2011 | Sen. James Inhofe




With little attention and fanfare, the United Nations kicked off its latest global-warming conference – this time in Durban, South Africa. Their mission:  to extend the Kyoto Protocol.  But as Bloomberg reports, Japan, Russia and Canada will not renew their commitments, and, of course, the United States will never sign on without commitments from China and India.  The Kyoto process is essentially dead– and even President Obama is acknowledging it, much to the chagrin of his left-wing environmental base.

The troubling question therefore is why is President Obama still determined to implement extremely expensive, job-killing domestic global-warming regulations through his Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), especially as we struggle with a weak economy?  Even Lisa Jackson, the head of the Obama EPA has admitted that the United States acting alone would have no impact on the climate.  Now with the complete collapse of the Kyoto process, there is no question that Obama’s global-warming regulations would be all pain for no climate gain.

Regulation Trickery

Over the past decade, we succeeded in defeating the global-warming cap-and-trade agenda in Congress, which would have destroyed hundreds of thousands of jobs and caused electricity prices to “skyrocket.”  President Obama understands that the American people have caught on to the economic damage that his agenda would cause, so he is trying to implement it under the radar.  Therefore, our mission now must be to stop him from achieving through regulation what he could not achieve through legislation.

Look no farther than Capitol Hill for evidence of the Democrats’ new plan to keep quiet on global warming.  When Sen. Boxer was asked if she would attend the climate conference in Durban she said, “It hasn't been brought to my attention," and she wouldn’t be making the trip because, “I'm too busy here.” Sen. Boxer isn’t alone. Congressman Henry Waxman also told Greenwire, “I don't know, I haven't thought about it."  But perhaps Sen. Lieberman put it best when he explained that the international climate talks are “basically happening through the administration now.”

'Extreme Weather'

With the Durban conference receiving little attention, you likely haven’t heard much about the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) latest global-warming report either.  That’s because after the Climategate scandal, when hundreds of e-mails displaying the manipulation of data by climate scientists were released, and over 100 errors in the science came to light, the IPCC has been thoroughly discredited.  Their latest report is a typical attempt to scare the public into action, but they clearly understand that global warming no longer sells.  According to Time magazine, it seems that their goal is to “retire” the phrase “global warming” and replace it with “extreme weather.”  Remember when Al Gore and the alarmist movement sought to use the image of Hurricane Katrina as the future of global warming?  Well, a closer look at the report reveals that the IPCC actually has very low confidence that increased hurricanes are or will be a result of global warming.

Climategate 2.0

If the first Climategate scandal, and the errors in the IPCC science, were not enough to display the IPCC’s political agenda, another batch of Climategate e-mails, now known as Climategate 2.0, has surfaced just before the Durban conference.  But as Joe Romm of “Climate Progress” said about the timing of their release, “It’s so refreshing that anybody thinks those climate talks actually matter.”

Why should Americans be concerned about this crisis of confidence in the IPCC?  Because EPA Administrator Jackson has admitted that EPA never engaged in an independent analysis of the science underpinning their forthcoming global-warming regulations, but instead relied primarily on the discredited IPCC.  Now, a recent report by the EPA Inspector General has found that EPA cut corners on what is called an “endangerment finding,” which is the basis for these regulations.  So not only will these rules be all pain for no gain, their foundation is the flawed science of the IPCC, implemented through a flawed scientific process at the EPA.

Now that the Kyoto process has completely collapsed, the IPCC has made itself utterly irrelevant, and the global-warming hoax has been thoroughly exposed, many have left the issue for dead.  The American people may no longer be worried about the global-warming hoax, but they should be very worried about what the Obama EPA’s global-warming regulations will do to their jobs and their pocketbooks.

President Obama has already abandoned the possibility of an international treaty.  Now it’s time for him to halt his job-killing global-warming agenda.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr. Inhofe, a Republican, is ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 04, 2011, 07:30:30 AM
http://www.businessinsider.com/obama-is-about-to-double-down-on-class-warfare-and-echo-a-republican-president-at-the-same-time-2011-12


Oh great - more divise bullshit from this asshole.
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 04, 2011, 07:46:59 PM
Obama's DoJ Strong Arms, Sues Business to Impose Sharia: Company Forced to Pay $50,000
Atlas Shrugs blog ^ | Thursday, December 01, 2011 | Pamela Geller
Posted on December 4, 2011 10:51:36 PM EST by FreeKeys

Obama's Department of Justice has is on a tear. Holder has sued, yet again, another company for lack of sharia compliance. Few companies to afford to go up against the US Department of Justice. It's a form of blackmail, extortion, that companies are forced to pay. The sharia protection racket.

America, snap out of it. Pass this on to your email lists. Get the word out. Four more years of this federally imposed surpemacism and this country will be ir recognizable.

Imperial Security to pay EEOC $50K to settle religious discrimination lawsuit Business Insurance.com

PHILADELPHIA—Imperial Security Inc. has agreed to pay $50,000 to settle a federal religious discrimination lawsuit involving a Muslim employee's religious head covering, the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said Monday.

The EEOC said Julie Holloway-Russell had worn a khimar—a cloth that covers her hair, ears and neck, as required by her religious beliefs—when she interviewed for a job as a security guard at the Philadelphia-based firm in November 2009. However, she was told to remove the khimar when she reported to her first work assignment. After she refused to do so, she was terminated, said EEOC regional attorney Debra Lawrence.

Why did they hire her in the first place?
The EEOC said in its statement that in addition to the $50,000 settlement, the three-year consent decree resolving the lawsuit prohibits Imperial Security from further discriminating based on religion or engaging in unlawful retaliation.
A company spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment.Charges filed with the EEOC by Muslims outweigh those filed by individuals of other identified religious groups.

Yes, because Islamic supremacists are using our courts to impose the sharia. Of course they file more lawsuits than any other group. Muslims are the first immigrant group that has ever come to this country with a ready-made model of society and government they believe to be superior to what we have here and they mean to impose it.
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 05, 2011, 03:30:48 PM
Report: Obama, UN to tax US for Green Climate Fund
by Joel Gehrke Commentary Staff Writer


http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/report-un-tax-americans-green-climate-fund/237466



President Obama's team of negotiators at the United Nations Climate Change Conference may agree to a tax on foreign currency transactions, designed to pay for a "Green Climate Fund," that would fall disproportionately on American travellers and businesses, according to a group attending the conference that is skeptical of the UN position on global warming.

Negotiators at the conference are considering "a new tax on every foreign currency transaction in the world," according to the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT). "Every time you travel abroad, you'll have to pay a climate tax," explains CFACT, the group that released the "Climategate" emails. "More importantly, every time we import goods, every time we export our fine products (think jobs) we will do so with a climate tax skimming off the top."

European countries would evade much of the tax burden, however, because "transactions within the Eurozone won't have to pay this new tax."

CFACT suggests that Obama is open to implementing this tax and similar policies in the absence of a full climate treaty, which would require congressional approval.  "We have learned that while many have discounted this conference, knowing that a full climate treaty is difficult to achieve especially with a U.S. Senate that will not vote to ratify," CFACT says. "Obama and his fellow climate travelers are working around the Senate and planning to stick America with the bill."














Anyone voting for this NWO thug again needs a shove off the empire state building.   
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 06, 2011, 04:06:11 AM
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Federal rewrite of labor laws causing a flap down on the farm (Feds, Feds, Feds, Feds..Feds, Feds..)
Washington Times ^ | December 5, 2011 | Andrea Billups
Posted on December 6, 2011 3:25:15 AM EST by Cincinatus' Wife

LANSING, Mich. — Sparking outrage across the country’s rural heartland, the Obama administration is proposing rules to curb the ability of children on farms to engage in “corn sex” for pay.

Farmers call it corn detasseling, a time-honored but physically demanding chore designed to promote cross-pollination in the field. For decades it has been a way for teens to earn extra spending money — and forge some good-natured field hand camaraderie — for a few weeks each summer.

The Obama administration is considering revisions to federal agricultural work rules that effectively would bar teens younger than 16 from engaging in a number of traditional chores for pay — including detasseling.

Opponents of the rules across the Farm Belt argue that they are in part an attack on a way of life, one foreign to Beltway bureaucrats and one that should be encouraged in an era of rising childhood obesity rates and increasingly sedentary lifestyles.

“We need more young farmers in Oklahoma, not less. We need more young people who know where their food comes from, not less,” Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin and state Agriculture Secretary Jim Reese said in a Nov. 30 letter to Labor Secretary Hilda L. Solis.

“Any policy that would hinder the opportunities of young Americans to experience life in our agricultural communities is misguided indeed.”

The American Farm Bureau is heading a coalition of more than 70 agriculture organizations that have petitioned the Labor Department in Washington to reconsider what would be the first major rewrite of farm labor standards since the 1970s.

......“At first I thought it was a joke,” Iowa corn farmer Henry Hemminghaus recently said....“It would eliminate 40 [percent] to 70 percent of my workforce. It would probably eliminate about 1,200 out of the 2,000 kids I hire.”

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 06, 2011, 07:28:18 PM
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DHS drafts 'environmental justice strategy'
Washington Examiner ^ | 12/6/11 | Joel Gehrke




President Obama's Department of Homeland Security (DHS) outlined an "environmental justice strategy" that would review how a variety of DHS activities, from interaction with local governments to granting regulatory permits, affect poor and minority populations. DHS defines environmental justice as "the commitment of the Federal Government . . . to avoid placing disproportionately high and adverse effects on the human health and environment of minority populations and low-income populations." Efforts to implement environmental justice will influence "our own operations, financial assistance to state and local governments, and [DHS'] regulatory permitting activities," DHS explained in the draft strategy.

(Excerpt) Read more at campaign2012.washingtone xaminer.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 06, 2011, 08:29:39 PM
Justice Department Warns Alabama Law Enforcers On Immigration
MSNBC ^ | December 06, 2011 | Pete Williams and Kari Huus
Posted on December 6, 2011 11:15:31 PM EST by Steelfish

Justice Department Warns Alabama Law Enforcers On Immigration

By Pete Williams and Kari Huus

The Justice Department has sent a letter to dozens of local law enforcement agencies in Alabama that receive federal money, warning them that they risk losing that funding if they're not careful in how they enforce the state's tough new immigration law.

The Obama administration has already sued the state, claiming that the law is unconstitutional. Now it's keeping the pressure on by addressing how the law is carried out.

The law, HB56 passed by the Alabama Legislature in June, attempts to combat illegal immigration by establishing harsh penalties for employers who hire undocumented workers, requiring public schools to report children and parents who are not legal residents, and forbidding illegal migrants from having any transactions with the government. The law creates new immigration crimes, and puts local police in the position of enforcing immigration.

Federal justice officials were in Birmingham last week to investigate the civil rights impacts of HB56, which is designed to make it extremely uncomfortable, if not impossible, for illegal immigrants to live in the state. Among the officials was Thomas Perez, assistant attorney general of Justice Department’s civil rights division.

(Excerpt) Read more at usnews.msnbc.msn.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 07, 2011, 10:38:00 AM
Obama and the Hezbollah Terrorist

In Jan. 2007, Ali Musa Daqduq helped kill five Americans in Iraq. He may soon be released into Iranian custody.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204903804577082383203542526.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop


By DAVID B. RIVKIN, JR. And CHARLES D. STIMSON





Call it the triumph of ideology over national interest and honor. Having dithered for nearly three years, the Obama administration has only a few weeks to bring to justice a Hezbollah terrorist who slaughtered five U.S. soldiers in Iraq in 2007. Unfortunately, it appears more likely that Ali Musa Daqduq will instead be transferred to Iran, to a hero's welcome.

In the early evening of Jan. 20, 2007, in the city of Karbala, south of Baghdad, five black SUVs approached the location of a regular meeting between U.S. and Iraqi military officers. Inside the vehicles, which mimicked U.S. transports (to avoid heightened scrutiny), were a dozen individuals dressed in U.S. military uniforms and bearing U.S. weapons. Their drivers spoke English.

Upon reaching their target, the occupants opened fire on the Americans. One U.S. soldier was killed on the spot. Four others were kidnapped, tortured and executed.

The mastermind of this brutal attack? Ali Musa Daqduq, a Lebanese national and Hezbollah commander. U.S. forces captured him in March 2007, and, in interrogation, he allegedly provided a wealth of information on Iran's role in fomenting, training and arming Iraqi insurgents of all stripes.

With U.S. troops set to exit Iraq at the end of December, all detainees in American custody there have been transferred to the Iraqis except for Daqduq. He is set to be turned over in a matter of weeks. Based on past experience with released detainees who were in Iranian employ, U.S. officials know that Daqduq will promptly re-emerge in Iran, shaking hands with dignitaries and leading parades, before rejoining his Hezbollah colleagues.

Enlarge Image

CloseMultinational Forces Iraq
 
Multinational Forces Iraq provided the photo of Ali Musa Daqduq during the briefing in July 2007.
.This outcome would be an insult to the American servicemen who have lost many comrades to insurgents such as Daqduq, who consistently failed to comply with the laws of war. Indeed, the Iraq war is the first conflict in modern history where the U.S.—having complied with the laws of war by promptly prosecuting American troops believed to have violated those laws—did not bring to justice a single one of the hundreds of captured enemy combatants who have killed Iraqi civilians, American soldiers and contractors. Impunity for war criminals debases the laws of war, violates our international legal obligations, and is inconsistent with American values.

We have already failed to stop Iran's nuclear-weapons program. We have also failed to punish Tehran for facilitating the deaths of American soldiers, or for plotting to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington. Allowing Daqduq to slip through U.S. hands would further reinforce the impression of American impotence. That will have serious repercussions, measured in diplomatic defeats and lost lives.

There is an obvious solution: Transfer Daqduq from Iraq to Guantanamo Bay to be tried by a military commission there. But this is where the Obama administration's rigid ideology comes into play—beginning with flawed, self-defeating legalistic arguments.

A successful prosecution of Daqduq would be relatively easy. He killed American soldiers and, as an unprivileged belligerent, has no combatant immunity. Yet the administration purports to be troubled by our lack of an extradition treaty with Iraq. It also points out that the Iraqis have refused to accord the U.S. legal custody of Daqduq, although the U.S. has him in physical custody. The Iraqis, of course, are being pressured by the Iranians not to accommodate this legal-custody request.

Yet we don't need an extradition treaty with Iraq to transfer Daqduq, a Lebanese citizen captured by American forces in a war zone. Since his capture occurred when the U.S. and other coalition members were the occupying power in Iraq, there is ample basis in existing international law for the American exercise of legal jurisdiction over him.


A more serious obstacle is the administration's policy of eschewing military tribunals. Earlier this year, the administration considered bringing Daqduq into the U.S. to face trial in a civilian court. In response, six Republican senators wrote President Obama, warning against trying Daqduq in federal court, and urging the president to refer him to a military commission.

The administration briefly flirted with the idea of a military commission, perhaps in Charleston, S.C. or at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. That idea seems to have been dropped after a Nov. 8 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing where Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham told Attorney General Eric Holder that if the administration were to bring Daqduq to the U.S. for a civilian or military trial, "all hell would break loose."

The administration believes that bringing anyone new, even high-value detainees, to Guantanamo is inconsistent with the goal of eventually closing the facility. This proposition is absurd, and not only because that facility remains vital and relevant to this day. It raises the question of whether administration's detention policy is actually shaped by a crass political calculus of not antagonizing its liberal base in advance of what promises to be a difficult 2012 election.

The administration should press the Maliki government in Baghdad harder to allow the U.S. to maintain custody of Daqduq following the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. If the Iraqis still refuse, the administration should unilaterally transfer Daqduq to Guantanamo to face justice.

While the Maliki government may protest publicly, it will rejoice privately, since Daqduq's rendition would demonstrate Washington's resolve in the face of Tehran's pressure. Allowing him to go unpunished is both inexcusable and dangerous.

Mr. Rivkin served in the Justice Department during the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations. Mr. Stimson, senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, was a deputy assistant secretary for detainee affairs at the Defense Department.

Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 07, 2011, 11:53:22 AM
Lawmakers Blast Administration For Calling Fort Hood Massacre 'Workplace Violence'

Published December 07, 2011 | FoxNews.com




Sen. Susan Collins on Wednesday blasted the Defense Department for classifying the Fort Hood massacre as workplace violence and suggested political correctness is being placed above the security of the nation's Armed Forces at home.

During a joint session of the Senate and House Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday, the Maine Republican referenced a letter from the Defense Department depicting the Fort Hood shootings as workplace violence. She criticized the Obama administration for failing to identify the threat as radical Islam.

Thirteen people were killed and dozens more wounded at Fort Hood in 2009, and the number of alleged plots targeting the military has grown significantly since then. Lawmakers said there have been 33 plots against the U.S. military since Sept. 11, 2001, and 70 percent of those threats have been since mid-2009.  Major Nidal Hasan, a former Army psychiatrist, who is being held for the attacks, allegedly was inspired by radical U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Yemen in late September. The two men exchanged as many as 20 emails, according to U.S. officials, and Awlaki declared Hasan a hero.

The chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Connecticut independent Sen. Joe Lieberman, said the military has become a "direct target of violent Islamist extremism" within the United States.

"The stark reality is that the American service member is increasingly in the terrorists' scope and not just overseas in a traditional war setting," Lieberman told Fox News before the start of Wednesday's hearing.

In June, two men allegedly plotted to attack a Seattle, Wash., military installation using guns and grenades. In July, Army Pvt. Naser Abdo was accused of planning a second attack on Fort Hood. And in November, New York police arrested Jose Pimentel, who alleged sought to kill service members returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Both Pimentel and Abdo also allegedly drew inspiration from al-Awlaki and the online jihadist magazine Inspire, which includes a spread on how to "Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom."

Rep. Peter King of New York, the Republican chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said military service members are "symbols of America's power, symbols of America's might."

"And if they (military personnel) can be killed, then that is a great propaganda victory for al Qaeda," King told Fox News.

King said there is also evidence that extremists have joined the services.

"There is a serious threat within the military from people who have enlisted who are radical jihadists," King said. "The Defense Department is very concerned about them. They feel they're a threat to the military both for what they can do within the military itself and also because of the weapons skills they acquire while they're in the military."

The witnesses testifying before the joint session include Paul N. Stockton, assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense; Jim Stuteville, U.S. Army senior adviser for counterintelligence operations and liaison to the FBI; Lt. Col. Reid L. Sawyer, director of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, and Darius Long, whose son, Army Pvt. William Andrew Long, was shot and killed at an Arkansas military recruitment center in 2009.

A second private was also injured in the Arkansas attack. Both victims had just finished basic training and had not been deployed. They were outside the Arkansas recruitment center when the shooter opened fire from a passing truck. The shooter, Carlos Bledsoe, pleaded guilty to the crime earlier this year.

In a letter to the court, Bledsoe said he carried out the attack on behalf of al Qaeda in Yemen -- the group that was behind the last two major plots targeting the U.S. airline industry.

"My faith in government is diminished. It invents euphemisms ... Little Rock is a drive by and Fort Hood is just workplace violence. The truth is denied," Long testified.

King said the web is the driver of the new digital jihad.

"It enables people -- rather than having to travel to Afghanistan to learn about jihad or to be trained, they can do it right over the Internet," he said. "And this is a growing role."

And while Awlaki and his colleague Samir Khan, who was behind the magazine Inspire, were killed in a CIA-led operation in September, King warned against overconfidence that al Qaeda in Yemen was done.

"This is a definite short-term victory for us. There's no doubt they are going to regroup, that there will be others who will be providing Internet data, inspiration to jihadists in this country, instructions on how to make bombs," he said.

While King was heavily criticized, in some quarters, for launching his hearings 10 months ago on homegrown terrorism, the congressman said the joint session shows the threat is legitimate, and recognized as such by other members of Congress.

"To me it's a validation of what I've been trying to do all year," King emphasized. "There's a definite threat from Islamic radicalization in various parts of our society, including within the military, and we can't allow political correctness to keep us from exposing this threat for what it is."


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fox News chief intelligence correspondent Catherine Herridge contributed to this report.

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http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/12/06/military-growing-terrorist-target-lawmakers-warn/



Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/12/06/military-growing-terrorist-target-lawmakers-warn/print#ixzz1fsdjMMAF



















Disgusting.    Fuck Obama and every deranged commie supporting him.   
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 08, 2011, 03:46:01 PM
House Committee Threatens to Hold Janet Napolitano in Contempt
U.S. News & World Report ^ | December 8, 2011 | Mallie Jane Kim




Texas Republican Rep. Lamar Smith is threatening to hold Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano in contempt of Congress if officials don't provide subpoenaed information by tomorrow.

According to Smith, DHS hasn't sufficiently answered the House Judiciary Committee's November subpoena asking for the names and identifying information of the estimated 300,000 people who were flagged by the immigration-status checking program Secure Communities but were released and not placed in deportation proceedings.  

[Read: DHS Task Force Puts 'Secure Communities' at Risk.]

And if the department doesn't fork over the requested information by Friday, Smith plans to hold a vote in the committee, which he chairs, to consider whether to begin proceedings to hold the department's head in contempt. Such a motion would need to be approved by the full House of Representatives.

Smith and other Republicans on the committee want to comb through the requested data to analyze why those individuals were arrested and released, and to see if any illegal immigrants released have committed additional crimes.


(Excerpt) Read more at usnews.com ...



________________________ ______________________



i already hold Obama and everyone who voted for him in criminal contempt.   
Title: Re: Obama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 09, 2011, 07:26:04 AM
Op/Ed|12/08/2011 @ 5:14PM |91,935 views
Obama Channels Hugo Chavez, Shows Why He Can't Lead On The Economy

http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterferrara/2011/12/08/obama-channels-hugo-chavez-shows-why-he-cant-lead-on-the-economy/2




On Tuesday, President Obama went to Osawatomie High School in Kansas to deliver an address framing the economic issues for the 2012 election.  He was following in the footsteps of turn of the century “progressive” Teddy Roosevelt, who spoke at that same site 100 years ago to rail against big corporations and the privileged, while calling for “fair play” for ordinary Americans.

But the speech only showed why Obama can’t lead America on the economy.  Instead of leading us forward into the modern economics of the 21st century, he keeps reaching back into the economics and politics of old – the failed Keynesian economics of Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s, the disastrous stagflation of Jimmy Carter in the 1970s, and the supposed promise of progressivism 100 years ago, before the demonstrated failures of Marxism worldwide in the 20th century.

He drew a picture of America as a struggling third world nation, saying at stake today “is whether this will be a country where working people can earn enough to raise a family, build a modest savings, own a home, and secure a retirement.”  He explained America before his coming as “Those at the very top grew wealthier from their incomes and investments than ever before.  But everyone else struggled with costs that were growing and paychecks that weren’t.”

This sounds more like Indonesia, or Venezuela, or Nicaragua.  But it is not America “long before the recession hit.”

He explained the roots of the problem as,

“Over the last few decades, huge advances in technology have allowed businesses to do more with less, and made it easier for them to set up shop and hire workers anywhere in the world….Steel mills that needed 1,000 employees are now able to do the same work with 100, so that layoffs were too often permanent, not just a temporary part of the business cycle….If you were a bank teller or a phone operator or a travel agent, you saw many in your profession replaced by ATMs or the Internet.

This Luddite analysis fundamentally misconceives the role of technology in a modern economy.  Such advancing technology increases worker productivity, and hence wages and standards of living.  Technological progress over the decades is why the average American worker in 2000 enjoyed 7 times the standard of living of the average American worker in 1900.

He identifies the solution in the speech as increased government spending as the foundation for rising prosperity.  He says,

“Today, manufacturers and other companies are setting up shop in places with the best infrastructure to ship their products, move their workers, and communicate with the rest of the world.  That’s why the over one million construction workers who lost their jobs when the housing market collapsed shouldn’t be sitting at home with nothing to do.  They should be rebuilding our roads and bridges; laying down faster railroads and broadband; modernizing our schools – all the things other countries are doing to attract good jobs and businesses to their shores.

 

Before Barack Obama as President, the rest of the world looked to America as the example for the economic model that works to achieve prosperity.  But today Obama tells America “It doesn’t work.  It’s never worked.  It didn’t work when it was tried in the decade before the Great Depression.  It’s not what led to the incredible postwar boom of the 50s and 60s.  And it didn’t work when we tried it during the last decade.”

Instead he tells us to look at the basic infrastructure spending of other countries as the model that works.  But American economic growth is not suffering because of a lack of basic infrastructure like a third world country.  It is suffering because Obama is so doggedly pursuing the opposite of every policy that would free the economy to produce and boom.  Under such Obamanomics, soon enough America will be suffering from the lack of a reliable energy grid like a third world country.

And of course, essential to that essential infrastructure spending, Obama tutors us, is to increase tax rates on the nation’s investors and job creators.  He said in Kansas on Tuesday,

“But we don’t have unlimited resources.  And so we have to set priorities.  If we want a strong middle class, then our tax code must reflect our values.  We have to make choices….Do we want to make the investments we need in things like education, and research, and high-tech manufacturing?  Or do we want to keep in place the tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans in our country?  Because we can’t afford to do both.  That’s not politics.  That’s just math.”

So there you have the Obama formula for an economic growth.  After the greatest runaway spending spree in American history during the Obama Administration, the answer is for government to increase spending even more, financed by increasing tax rates even more on the very investors and job creators that produce the jobs for the middle class and working people in America’s economic system.  That is a perfect prescription for another recession, not the long, long overdue recovery America is still waiting for under Obamanomics.

Obama tells us, “It is wrong that in the United States of America, a teacher or a nurse or a construction worker who earns $50,000 should pay a higher tax rate than somebody pulling in $50 million.”  That would be wrong if it was true.  But it is not.

What Obama is peddling to America on tax policy is only the ugliest example of his well-established rhetorical style of calculated deception.  It is based on what he thinks the average voter does not know and will not know, and can be manipulated to believe to Obama’s political advantage.  For the picture he is painting of the rich getting away without paying their fair share while working people bear most of the tax burden is the opposite of reality.

Even before Obama was elected, under those “failed policies of the past,” the top 1% of income earners in 2007 paid 40% of federal income taxes, while the CBO just reported that they earned that year 17% of the income.  Moreover, that 40% of federal income taxes paid by the top 1% was more than paid by the bottom 95% combined, according to official IRS data.  While the top 1% paid 40% of federal income taxes, the bottom 40% paid no federal income taxes as a group on net.  Today 47% pay no federal income taxes.

Yet, Obama has already enacted under current law further tax increases on the nation’s job creators, investors and small businesses going into effect in 2013, when the tax increases of Obamacare become effective and the Bush tax cuts expire.  Consequently, that year the top two income tax rates would rise by close to 20%, the capital gains tax would soar by nearly 60%, the tax on dividends would nearly triple, and the Medicare payroll tax would rocket up by 62% for these disfavored taxpayers.  This alone would take us well beyond the Clinton tax rates, despite Obama’s outdated talking point that he is still repeating from 2008.

This is in addition to America suffering with virtually the highest corporate tax rate in the industrialized world at nearly 40% on average, counting state corporate rates.  As I have previously noted, even China imposes only a 25% rate, with the rate in the EU even less on average.  Our Canadian neighbors next year, now booming while America lags under Obama, will enjoy a 15% rate next year.

Yet, Obama barnstorms America calling for still more tax increases on American business, large and small, and the job creators and investors on which jobs and prosperity for working people depend. The galloping regulatory burdens he is now imposing effectively involve still further tax increases stifling production.  It all adds up to a brew for another recession in 2013, unless the American people force a change in course in 2012.

Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: chadstallion on December 09, 2011, 07:56:50 AM
and, you'll have four more years to rant about him.... ;)
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 10, 2011, 04:54:50 AM
Top nuke regulators tell White House of ‘grave concerns’ with NRC chairman (Jaczko = 'damage')
The Hill ^ | 12/09/11 | Andrew Restuccia and Ben Geman
Posted on December 10, 2011 7:59:12 AM EST by Libloather

Top nuke regulators tell White House of ‘grave concerns’ with NRC chairman
By Andrew Restuccia and Ben Geman - 12/09/11 07:58 PM ET

Members of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission have told the White House that NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko is causing “serious damage” to the agency that could harm the body’s ability to protect health and safety.

An Oct. 13 letter from Jaczko’s four NRC colleagues to White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley is a powerful, unified rebuke of the agency’s leader by his fellow commissioners, who cite “grave concerns” about his conduct and allege it’s increasingly “erratic.”

“We believe that his actions and behavior are causing serious damage to this institution and are creating a chilled work environment at the NRC,” states the letter to Daley from NRC commissioners Kristine L. Svinicki, George Apostolakis, William D. Magwood, IV, and William C. Ostendorff.

“We are concerned that this will adversely affect the NRC’s central mission to protect the health, safety and security of the American people,” the letter adds.

Svinicki and Ostendorff are Republicans, the other three NRC commissioners, including Jaczko, are Democrats.

The four NRC members laid out their concerns to Jaczko directly in an Oct. 13 memo that mirrors the complaints in their letter to Daley. The memo tells Jaczko of the letter to Daley and acknowledges it is an “extraordinary step,” while adding that Jaczko has left them without “viable alternatives.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on the letter to Daley Friday evening.

The NRC is the independent agency that regulates the country’s 104 nuclear power reactors.

The letter comes at a time when the NRC is grappling with issues including safety upgrades in the wake of the disaster at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi plant and weighing industry applications to build the first new U.S. reactors in decades.

The four commissioners say Jaczko, a former aide to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), has “intimidated and bullied” senior staff; ordered staff to withhold information meant for NRC members; and tried to “intimidate” an independent NRC committee from reviewing aspects of the NRC’s analysis of the accident at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi plant.

The letter also alleges that Jaczko has “ignored the will” of the majority of the commission and treated his fellow commissioners with such “intemperance and disrespect” that the commission no longer functions as effectively as it should.

The letter was released Friday by House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), who has scheduled a Dec. 14 hearing on NRC leadership.

Jaczko defended his leadership on the commission in a Dec. 7 letter to Daley released Friday by the NRC.

He acknowledged that there are often major policy disagreements on the commission, adding that he believes the commission “has taken an approach that is not as protective of public health and safety as I believe is necessary.” But he said he respects their right to disagree.

“I follow the law, I respect the policy duly established by the Commission even if I disagree with it, and I faithfully executive Commission policy as I oversee the staff of the agency,” he said.

Jaczko argued that the commissioners have a “lack of understanding” of their statutory responsibilities. They are responsible for “policymaking, rulemaking and adjudications,” while the chairman is in charge of “all other functions.”

The commissioners are raising concerns about management decisions that are in the chairman’s purview, Jaczko said in the letter.

“I seek to consult with my colleagues on a great number of the decisions I make whether they are policy or management related,” he said. “I do not always agree with their suggestions and advice, however, and that has led to a circular claim that if I exercise my statutory authority I am somehow abusing them.”

Jaczko apologized to Daley for “any distractions” the disagreements on the commission may have caused and said he takes “responsibility for improving the level of our dialogue.”

The letter comes amid simmering tensions on the commission.

NRC Inspector General Hubert Bell released a report in June that alleged Jaczko “controls information” provided to the other NRC commissioners by designating issues as administrative matters, which he has control over, rather than policy matters.

“Because he acts as the gatekeeper to determine what is a policy matter versus what is an administrative matter and controls information available to the other commissioners, they are uncertain as to whether they are adequately informed of policy matters that should be brought to their attention,” the report, which was requested by House Republicans, says.

The report also raised questions about Jaczko’s handling of the decision to stop work on a multi-part evaluation of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in light of the Obama administration’s decision to abandon the long-delayed project.

Additionally, the commission has disagreed in recent months over how to deal with the recommendations of a task force assigned to reevaluate the country’s nuclear safety regulations in light of the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan.

The report called on the commission to make sweeping improvements to NRC’s “existing patchwork of regulatory requirements and other safety initiatives.”

Jaczko called on the commission to quickly evaluate the report and implement the necessary recommendations. But the commissioners initially resisted Jaczko’s call for swift action. Ultimately, they agreed to move forward quickly on the recommendations identified by staff as the highest priority.

All five NRC members are slated to testify at the House hearing next week, according to Issa’s office.

Issa, in a letter to Daley Friday, asks the White House to designate a witness for the hearing.

“The White House has now been aware of the Commissioners concerns for nearly two months, and the public deserves to understand what actions have been taken and whether the President still believes that Chairman Jaczko is capable of leading the NRC,” Issa writes.

Meanwhile, a panel of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will examine the post-Fukushima task force’s recommendations at a hearing Thursday.

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the committee’s top Republican, said in a statement Friday evening that he’s taking the NRC commissioners concerns very seriously, and commends their “courage” for coming forward.

But amid the newly revealed attacks on Jaczko, Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), a senior Democrat and longtime critic of nuclear power, issued a report Friday that blames the other four NRC commissioners for stymieing NRC efforts to boost safety after the Fukushima disaster.

Markey accuses Jaczko’s four NRC colleagues of attempting a “coup.”

“The actions of these four Commissioners since the Fukushima nuclear disaster has caused a regulatory meltdown that has left America’s nuclear fleet and the general public at risk,” Markey said in a statement.

“Instead of doing what they have been sworn to do, these four Commissioners have attempted a coup on the Chairman and have abdicated their responsibility to the American public to assure the safety of America’s nuclear industry. I call on these four Commissioners to stop the obstruction, do their jobs and quickly move to fully implement the lessons learned from the Fukushima disaster,” he said.
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 11, 2011, 05:06:18 PM
US to leave Mexican border crossing to rangers (proposal to open an unmanned port of entry)
Associated Press ^ | 12/11/2011 | CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN
Posted on December 11, 2011 3:51:59 PM EST by Just4Him

BIG BEND NATIONAL PARK, Texas (AP) -- The bloody drug war in Mexico shows no sign of relenting. Neither do calls for tighter border security amid rising fears of spillover violence.

This hardly seems a time the U.S. would be willing to allow people to cross the border legally from Mexico without a customs officer in sight. But in this rugged, remote West Texas terrain where wading across the shallow Rio Grande undetected is all too easy, federal authorities are touting a proposal to open an unmanned port of entry as a security upgrade.

By the spring, kiosks could open up in Big Bend National Park allowing people from the tiny Mexican town of Boquillas del Carmen to scan their identity documents and talk to a customs officer in another location, at least 100 miles away.

(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 11, 2011, 05:26:41 PM
http://www.c-span.org/Events/Senator-Mark-Kirk-R-IL/10737426166-1/


Thugbama is trying to collapse SS.    Senator Kirk shows exactly what this lying snake is doing.  ROT IN Kenya every Obama supporter. 
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 11, 2011, 05:37:17 PM
http://news.investors.com/Article.aspx?id=594342&p=1


Thugbama canceling the one shovel ready project available. 
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 12, 2011, 05:39:55 AM
35 reasons why no decent human being should vote to reelect President Obama


http://danfromsquirrelhill.wordpress.com/2011/12/11/35-reasons-why-no-decent-human-being-should-vote-to-reelect-president-obama




In April 2009, antiwar activists who helped elect Obama accused him of using the same “off the books” funding as his predecessor George W. Bush when Obama requested an additional $83.4 billion from Congress for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – a provision which Obama had voted against when he was a Senator.

In May 2010, it was reported that the Obama administration had selected KBR, a former subsidiary of Halliburton, for a no-bid contract worth as much as $568 million through 2011 for military support services in Iraq, just hours after the Justice Department had said it would pursue a lawsuit accusing the Houston-based company of taking kickbacks from two subcontractors on Iraq-related work.

While running for President, Obama had promised that he would not have any lobbyists working in his administration. However, by February 2010, he had more than 40 lobbyists working in his administration.

In 2011, after Boeing had hired 1,000 new employees to work at its new factory in South Carolina, the Obama administration ordered Boeing to shut down the factory, because the factory was non-union.

Obama fired the CEO of General Motors, and had the government take 60.8% ownership of the company.

During the Chrysler bankruptcy, Obama violated the Fifth Amendment and more than 150 years of bankruptcy law by illegally treating secured creditors worse than unsecured creditors.

The Obama administration pressured Ford Motor Company to stop airing a TV ad that criticized Obama’s bailouts of General Motors and Chrysler.

In May 2009, the Obama administration dismissed charges that had been filed by the Bush administration against members of the New Black Panther Party who had been videotaped intimidating voters and brandishing a police-style baton at a Philadelphia polling station during the November 2008 election. In August 2009, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights demanded that the Justice Department explain why it dismissed the charges.  In July 2010, J. Christian Adams, a former lawyer for the Justice Department, testified before the Commission on Civil Rights that the case was dropped because the Justice Department did not want to protect the civil rights of white people.

In Operation Fast and Furious, the Obama administration ordered gun storeowners to illegally sell thousands of guns to criminals.

In June 2009, Obama fired Inspector General Gerald Walpin, after Walpin accused Sacramento mayor Kevin Johnson, an Obama supporter, of misuse of AmeriCorps funding to pay for school-board political activities. In a letter to Congress, the White House said that Walpin was fired because he was “confused, disoriented, unable to answer questions and exhibited other behavior that led the Board to question his capacity to serve.” A bipartisan group of 145 current and former public officials, attorneys, and legal scholars signed a letter that was sent to the White House, which defended Walpin, said the criticisms of him were not true, and said that his firing was politically motivated. The letter can be read here. Fox News host Glenn Beck gave Walpin an on-air state certified senility test, which Walpin passed with a perfect score, meaning that he was not senile.

In February 2009, U.S. Senator Robert Byrd (D-West Virginia) expressed concern that Obama’s dozens of czars might violate the U.S. Constitution, because they were not approved by the U.S. Senate. U.S. Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin) expressed a similar concern in September 2009.

The ACLU accused Obama of violating the U.S. Constitution by having a U.S. citizen killed without judicial process. U.S. Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) said that Obama’s actions might be an impeachable offense.

Although Obama stated, “I have always believed that the Second Amendment protects the right of individuals to bear arms,” the National Rifle Association gave Obama a rating of ‘F’ based on his voting record.

In March 2007, Obama said of his health care plan, “I don’t think we’re going to be able to eliminate employer coverage immediately. There’s going to be, potentially, some transition process…”

In September 2010, some insurance companies announced that in response to Obama’s health care plan, they would end the issuance of new child-only policies.

In October 2010, Obama gave McDonald’s and 29 other organizations an exemption from some of the requirements of his health care plan.  Over time, more than 1,300 organizations were granted waivers.

In November 2010, 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East announced that it would drop health insurance for the children of more than 30,000 low-wage home attendants. Mitra Behroozi, executive director of benefit and pension funds for 1199SEIU stated, “… new federal health-care reform legislation requires plans with dependent coverage to expand that coverage up to age 26… meeting this new requirement would be financially impossible.”

In May 2008, Obama campaign spokesperson Ben LaBolt said that Obama would end DEA raids on medical marijuana in states where it’s legal. However, in February 2010, DEA agents raided a medical marijuana grower in Highlands Ranch in Colorado, a state where medical marijuana is legal. Also in February 2010, DEA agents raided a medical marijuana dispensary in Culver City in California, a state where medical marijuana is legal. Furthermore, in July 2010, the DEA raided at least four medical marijuana growers in San Diego, California. Also in July 2010, the DEA raided a medical marijuana facility in Covelo, California. Then in September 2010, the DEA conducted raids on at least five medical marijuana dispensaries in Las Vegas,  in Nevada, a state where medical marijuana is legal.

In September 2010, it was reported that Obama planned to offer Saudi Arabia the biggest arms deal in the history of the U.S.

In September 2009, Obama’s green czar Van Jones resigned after it was reported that he was a self described “communist” and had blamed George W. Bush for the September 11 attacks.

The Obama administration gave $535 million to Solyndra, claiming that it would create 4,000 new jobs. However, instead of creating those 4,000 new jobs, the company went bankrupt. It was later revealed that the company’s shareholders and executives had made substantial donations to Obama’s campaign, and that the company had also spent a large sum of money on lobbying.

Obama nominated Timothy Geithner, a repeat tax cheater, to head the government agency that enforces the tax laws.

On September 12, 2008, Obama promised, “I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.” However, less than three months into his Presidency, he broke that promise when he raised the cigarette tax. Studies show that poor people are more likely to smoke than rich people.

Although Obama had campaigned against George W. Bush’s “tax cuts for the rich,” as President, Obama actually signed a two year extension of them.

Although Obama said that he wanted to simplify the tax code, his proposals would actually add thousands of pages to the tax code.

In December 2010, Transparency International reported that corruption was increasing faster in the U.S. than anywhere else except Cuba, Dominica, and Burkina Faso.

In June 2010, the New York Times reported that Obama administration officials had held hundreds of meetings with lobbyists at coffee houses near the White House, in order to avoid the disclosure requirements for White House visitors, and that these meetings “reveal a disconnect between the Obama administration’s public rhetoric — with Mr. Obama himself frequently thrashing big industries’ ‘battalions’ of lobbyists as enemies of reform — and the administration’s continuing, private dealings with them.”

In July 2009, White House reporter Helen Thomas criticized the Obama administration for its lack of transparency.

Although Obama had promised to wait five days before signing all non-emergency bills, he broke that promise at least 10 times during his first three months in office.

While Senator, Obama had voted for the $700 TARP bank bailout bill, which included corporate welfare for AIG.  As President, Obama signed a stimulus bill that protected AIG bonuses. Prior to signing this bill, Obama had said, “when I’m president, I will go line by line to make sure that we are not spending money unwisely.” However, after reading “line by line” and signing the stimulus bill that protected the AIG bonuses, Obama pretended to be shocked and outraged at the bonuses, and said, “Under these circumstances, it’s hard to understand how derivative traders at A.I.G. warranted any bonuses at all, much less $165 million in extra pay… How do they justify this outrage to the taxpayers who are keeping the company afloat?” and also said that he would “pursue every single legal avenue to block these bonuses.”

Although Obama had promised that the website recovery.gov would list all stimulus spending in detail, a 400 page report issued by the Government Accountability Office stated that only 25% of the projects listed on the website provided clear and complete information regarding their cost, schedule, purpose, location and status.

While living in Chicago and Washington D.C., Obama expressed his true opinion of America’s public education system by sending his own children to private schools.

Regarding school vouchers, in February 2008, Obama said, “If there was any argument for vouchers it was, all right, let’s see if this experiment works, and then if it does, whatever my preconceptions, my attitude is you do what works for the kids.” However, in March 2009, Obama signed legislation which brought an end to a successful voucher program for nearly 2,000 students in Washington D.C. Although the Washington D.C. public school district spends nearly $13,500 per student, and the vouchers for private schools were only $7,500 per student, a federal study of the voucher program concluded that the voucher program was a significant success at providing students with a better education than that of the city’s public schools.

On September 22, 2008, Obama said, “I am not a Democrat who believes that we can or should defend every government program just because it’s there… We will fire government managers who aren’t getting results, we will cut funding for programs that are wasting your money and we will use technology and lessons from the private sector to improve efficiency across every level of government… The only way we can do all this without leaving our children with an even larger debt is if Washington starts taking responsibility for every dime that it spends.” However, Citizens Against Government Waste gave Obama a 2007 rating of only 10%, and a lifetime rating of only 18%.

In September 2009, it was reported that Kevin Jennings, Obama’s Assistant Deputy Secretary for the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools, had written about  Jennings’ own past frequent illegal drug use in his 2007 autobiography.

Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 12, 2011, 08:10:11 AM
Obama Caught Pulling Fast One On '60 Mins'




PRESIDENT OBAMA: We ended up asking the wealthiest Americans to do a little bit more in terms of taxes. Going back to rates that would still be lower than they were under Ronald Reagan, our deficit problems would be solved.

============================

 

 

Doing the math: President Obama's plan to tax the rich will hardly make a dent in the deficit
 
According to the Congressional Budget Office, over the next 10 years the Obama budget will produce a deficit of $10.900 billion, or 5.3% of GDP on average.
 
According to the left's own calculations and as reported by the New York Times, Obama's plan to raise taxes on the rich will generate $700 billion in additional revenue over the next decade, or just a pathetic 0.3% of GDP.
 
In other words, the plan to raise taxes on the rich will only cover one out of fifteen dollars of deficit spending. Where is President Obama going to get the other fourteen out of fifteen?



http://nation.foxnews.com/president-obama/2011/12/12/obama-caught-pulling-fast-one-60-mins

Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 12, 2011, 09:09:01 AM

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/dec/12/obama-slash-national-guard-force-us-mexico-border/print




Blaming budget cuts, the Obama administration early next year will cut the number of National Guard troops patrolling the U.S.-Mexico border by at least half, according to a congressman who was briefed on the plan.

The National Guard said an announcement will be made by the White House "in the near future," but Rep. Duncan Hunter, a California Republican who has learned of the plans, said slashing the deployment in half is the minimum number, and he said it will mean reshuffling the remaining troops along the nearly 2,000-mile border.

In California, that will mean going from 264 Guard troops down to just 14, he said.

Mr. Hunter said the pending cuts are another reason Congress and President Obama should revisit the automatic defense spending reductions that kicked in with the failure last month of the deficit super-committee to reach a broader spending deal.

"What's apparent now is that a decision not to continue their deployment, even though it might be in the national interest to do so, would be based entirely on budget constraints on the Defense Department," Mr. Hunter said.

Mr. Obama deployed 1,200 guard troops to the border in June 2010 in an effort to bolster the U.S. Border Patrol and try to prevent the growing drug violence in Mexico from spilling into the U.S.

He charged the National Guard with aiding in intelligence-gathering and other backup duties, though troops have not been actually enforcing immigration laws.

The troops were scheduled to be drawn down this June, but Mr. Obama extended their deployment, saying there was still work to be done.

The troops were meant to be a bridge to beef up support staffing while the Border Patrol hired more agents under a bill Congress passed early in his term.

In 2006 President George W. Bush sent 6,000 National Guard troops to the border. Republican 2012 presidential hopefuls have routinely slammed the Obama administration for not doing enough to secure the borders.

© Copyright 2011 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.



________________________ ________________________ ___________



WTF!   
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 12, 2011, 01:11:09 PM
60 Minutes of one deluded president
By Jennifer Rubin


http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/post/60-minutes-of-one-deluded-president/2011/12/11/gIQAE1MWpO_blog.html



President Obama’s appearance last night on “60 Minutes” confirms how severely out of touch he is with political reality. He has become entirely predictable, and his insincerity is unrestrained.

There is the phony familiarity, a strained attempt to bond with working-class voters he’s lost. We therefore have an epidemic of missing “g’s”: He tells Steve Kroft: “Look, the — everybody’s at — concerned about inequality. Those folks in there, who were listenin’ to the speech, those are teachers and small-business people, and probably some small-town bankers, who are in there thinking to themselves, ‘How is it that I, we’re workin’ so hard,’ and meanwhile, they know that corporate profits are at a record level, that a lot of folks are doin’ very well. What’s happened to the bargain? What’s happened to the American deal that says, you know, we are focused on building a strong middle class?” I am ready to bet the farm he didn’t talk that way at Harvard.

We passed self-aggrandizement a year or so ago and now have a fabulist in chief. “You know, we did all the right things to prevent a Great Depression and to get the economy growing again and to get job creation going again.” (Everything was right. No mistakes. No misspent money or missed opportunities.) Really, were we heading toward 25 percent unemployment when he arrived? Was it he or President George W. Bush (and the hated TARP) that stabilized the financial sector? Oh no, he’s the heroic figure in this tale, and he’s got his list to prove it:

Not only saving this country from a Great Depression. Not only saving the auto industry. But putting in place a system in which we’re gonna start lowering health care costs and you’re never gonna go bankrupt because you get sick or somebody in your family gets sick. Makin’ sure that we have reformed the financial system, so we never again have taxpayer-funded bailouts and the system is more stable and secure.
This is daft. Health-care costs are going up, and there is no sign Obamacare can or will bend the cost curve down. President Bush, for better or worse, undertook the auto bailout process. Dodd-Frank is going to make sure we never, ever have to rescue another company from failing? This is fiction, fantasy, actually.

More non-facts: “Steve, the math is the math. You can’t lower rates and raise revenue, unless you’re getting revenue from someplace else. Now, either it’s comin’ from middle class families or poor families or it’s comin’ from folks like you and me that can afford to pay a little more.” Sen. Pat Toomey’s plan did get more revenue by closing loopholes and limiting deductions, the revenue from which was greater than that lost by lowering rates. Is he confused? Misinformed? Or just makin’ stuff up?

The refusal to accept responsibility is quite startling:

Kroft: You’re being judged now on your performance.
Obama: No, no, no. I’m being judged against the ideal. And, you know, Joe Biden has a good expression. He says — “Don’t judge me against the Almighty, judge me against the alternative.”
I don’t recall a president who has ever been more desperate to shift blame and evade his own record.

There is the assertion that his opponents act out of bad faith: “Steve, here’s the thing. As long as unemployment rate is too high and people are feeling under the gun, day in, day out, ’cause their bills are goin’ up, and their wages and incomes aren’t. Or they’re out of a job. They’re gonna feel unsatisfied. I mean, there’s no secret to this. If I can’t get Republicans to move, partly because they’ve made a political, strategic decision that says, ‘Anything Obama’s for, we’re against, ‘cause that’s our best chance of winning an election.’ But, keep in mind, I’m talking about Republican members of Congress. I’m not talking about Republicans around the country.”

But didn’t the GOP plead with him to work on tax and entitlement reform? Did he ever get behind his own bipartisan Simpson-Bowles debt commission? Did he lift a finger to lead the supercommittee? It’s 24/7 excuses and accusations now from him.

Apparent also is the nonstop deception (or self-deception) about well-known political facts. He claims “there’s not a general perception that the stimulus didn’t work.” Umm. Do they hide the polls and newspapers from him over there at the White House? ’Cause if he would be readin’ instead of makin’ excuses and tryin’ to snow us, he might be better off. Just sayin’.

His task, of course, is to convince Americans that he’s done so well on the economy that he deserves a second term. So he tells us, “ I didn’t overpromise. And I didn’t underestimate how tough this was gonna be. I always believed that this was a long-term project. That reversing a culture here in Washington, dominated by special interests, it was gonna take more than a year. It was gonna take more than two years. It was gonna take more than one term. Probably takes more than one president.” That might seem strange to those who remember him telling us unemployment wouldn’t get over 8 percent if the stimulus passed. It would be odd if you looked at his own fanciful figures on projected growth and all those “created and saved jobs.” It almost makes you forget the “recovery summer.”

Candidly, it’s a little freaky to have a president operating so far afield from reality. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie last week joked that, like the base runner tagging second, a pol only has to be “in the neighborhood” of truth. Obama isn’t even in sight of it.

Certainly a minimally skilled opponent, you are thinking, should be able to point this out to voters in the 2012 election. Well, it’s safe to say that only by picking an untrustworthy, extreme and/or inept nominee could the Republicans blow the 2012 election. And they just might do it.

Come to think of it, the only other pol who comes to mind who so blatantly invents facts, restyles history, assumes opponents operate in bad faith, blames others and throws around red-hot rhetoric with abandon is Newt Gingrich. Perhaps Republicans will instead pick a nominee who can present a choice and not merely an echo of our failed president.

Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 13, 2011, 07:20:45 AM
Obama's War on Truth and Decency
Townhall.com ^ | December 13, 2011 | Robert Knight





Three incidents in recent days tell us all we need to know about the Obama Administration’s "values."

On Dec. 1, the story broke that Bethesda, Maryland-based Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, where wounded veterans convalesce, apparently had banned visitors from bringing in Bibles or other religious items.

Walter Reed Chief of Staff C.W. Callahan issued a memo in September which said: "No religious items (i.e. Bibles, reading material, and/or artifacts) are allowed to be given away or used during a visit."


Rep. Steve King, Iowa Republican, savaged the Obama Administration on the floor of the House, saying, "The President of the United States should address this and should excoriate the people who brought about this policy and the individual who brought it about should be dismissed from the United States Military."

Yes, telling wounded soldiers and their families that their First Amendment freedoms have been suspended should be a firing offense.

Rep. King, who serves on the House Subcommittee on the Constitution, conveyed the gravity:

"The idea that these soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines that have fought to defend our Constitution, and that includes our First Amendment rights to religious liberty –would be denied that religious liberty when they are lying in a hospital bed recovering from wounds incurred while defending that liberty is the most bitter and offensive type of an irony that I can think of."


The policy was rescinded, but that it happened at all is a reminder of the culture that  Mr. Obama has fostered in the armed forces and executive agencies, where extreme environmentalism, moral relativism, and sexual immorality have replaced traditional American values.  We shouldn’t really be surprised when a bureaucrat tries to bar Bibles in a U.S. military stateside hospital while other bureaucrats make sure that terrorists in Guantanamo Bay get copies of the Koran.

You almost have to feel sorry for poor Callahan, who is part of the new metrosexual military that values "diversity" more than combat readiness, so long as it doesn’t include Christianity.


Recall Army Gen. George Casey’s comment after a Muslim extremist slaughtered 13 people at Fort Hood in Texas in November 2009: "Our diversity, not only in our Army, but in our country, is a strength. And as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse."

Announcing an end to the rule, Walter Reed public affairs officer Sandy Dean said that a new policy "will be written to articulate our initial intention which was to respect religious and cultural practices of our patients." Say what?


Dean went on to insist that the policy was "in no way meant to prohibit family members from providing religious items to their loved ones at all."

But that’s exactly what it said. Time for Groucho’s defense when caught in the act: "Are you going to believe me or your lying eyes?"

Here’s more from the hapless Dean: "We appreciate Congressman King bringing this to our attention. We don’t want our instructions to be ambiguous."


Ambiguity is not the problem. It’s the Obama Administration’s hostility to religion, except for Islam.

From the prevarications that helped sell Obamacare, to the lies surrounding Fast and Furious, to the periodic emissions of horse pucky about Obama’s “evolving” view of marriage while he’s sabotaging the Defense of Marriage Act, it’s getting so bad that Obama Administration spokespeople really should consider donning Groucho noses, glasses and mustaches. That would help disguise them, at least, and pave their way to enter the Witness Protection Program.


The second news item was Hillary Clinton’s speech in Geneva on Dec. 6 announcing that American taxpayers will be paying for homosexual activism around the world through a $3 million Global Equality Fund. That’s right. In a time when the United States is facing massive debt, plus a rising China and militant Islam, we’re going to use foreign aid money to promote “gay rights” to the world. Speaking to a crowd of diplomats, many of whom do not equate race or ethnicity with volitional sexual behavior that has moral implications, Clinton urged everyone to come around to her point of view, while saying, "I come here before you with respect, understanding, and humility." (Now do what I tell you.)

Once upon a time, foreign aid was allocated as an incentive for other nations to support the interests and security of the United States.  Countries did not get the money if they  worked with our enemies.  But now, under leftwing Democrats, foreign aid is a tool to force a radical agenda on the rest of the world, regardless of America’s interests.  I’m waiting for protest marches and cries of "cultural imperialism" from the Occupy This Squalid Dump crowd, but I think I might be waiting forever.


The third item is the Food and Drug Administration's evil idea to allow the Plan B "morning after pill" to be sold over the counter to anyone – regardless of age. After the story hit the fan, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sibelius issued a directive on Dec. 7 to stop it. Plan B, which can act as an abortifacient, will continue to be sold over the counter without a prescription to anyone at least 17 years old.  But 10-year-olds won’t be able to slip it onto the counter next to their gummy bears.

Is it really necessary to explain why children should not be allowed to buy a powerful drug? Should it be necessary to explain why wounded soldiers who risked their lives be allowed to receive Bibles from their families, or why many Americans don’t want their country exporting the values of Sodom and Gomorrah instead of Valley Forge?


In Obama’s America, yes.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 14, 2011, 08:35:46 AM
Obama Campaign Collecting GOP Emails
White House Dossier ^ | DECEMBER 14, 2011 | KEITH KOFFLER

Posted on Wednesday, December 14, 2011 11:34:56 AM by RobinMasters

The Obama presidential campaign is launching an effort to collect Republican email addresses by inviting its supporters to submit information about their Republican associates to the Obama 2012 website.

The effort could help the Obama campaign build a database that would enable it to target Republican voters during the general election campaign. But, more perniciously, it could also become part of an Democratic effort to influence Republican primary voters to select a candidate Democrats think Obama could most easily defeat.

The Democratic National Committee last month released a video that seemed designed to damage Mitt Romney, the GOP candidate feared most by the Obama campaign.


(Excerpt) Read more at whitehousedossier.com ...


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 14, 2011, 02:51:14 PM
Obama Wants to Spam Your Email, But is it Legal?
Townhall.com ^ | December 14, 2011 | Katie Pavlich




Barack Obama wants to have some "fun" at the expense of republicans by asking lefties to give their email addresses to his re-election campaign. Why? So Obama campaign workers can spam your inbox with lefty propaganda.

The Obama presidential campaign is launching an effort to collect Republican email addresses by inviting its supporters to submit information about their Republican associates to the Obama 2012 website.



The effort could help the Obama campaign build a database that would enable it to target Republican voters during the general election campaign. But, more perniciously, it could also become part of an Democratic effort to influence Republican primary voters to select a candidate Democrats think Obama could most easily defeat.

The Obama information collection effort is cast under the mischievous guise of asking Obama supporters to “have a little fun at the expense of a Republican in your life” by signing them up to get an email from the Obama campaign ribbing them for having “inspired” the Obama supporter to donate.

From Obama's site:




It is a violation of federal law, the Can Spam Law, for a business to spam your email box if you did not give them your email address. It is illegal for them to send you a single email unless you personally signed up for it. Lefty "friends" can hand over your email address, but it is illegal for the Obama campaign to spam your inbox without your permission.

Do you use email in your business? The CAN-SPAM Act, a law that sets the rules for commercial email, establishes requirements for commercial messages, gives recipients the right to have you stop emailing them, and spells out tough penalties for violations.



Despite its name, the CAN-SPAM Act doesn’t apply just to bulk email. It covers all commercial messages, which the law defines as “any electronic mail message the primary purpose of which is the commercial advertisement or promotion of a commercial product or service,” including email that promotes content on commercial websites. The law makes no exception for business-to-business email. That means all email – for example, a message to former customers announcing a new product line – must comply with the law.

Each separate email in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act is subject to penalties of up to $16,000, so non-compliance can be costly. But following the law isn’t complicated. Here’s a rundown of CAN-SPAM’s main requirements:



1. Don’t use false or misleading header information. Your “From,” “To,” “Reply-To,” and routing information – including the originating domain name and email address – must be accurate and identify the person or business who initiated the message


2. Don’t use deceptive subject lines. The subject line must accurately reflect the content of the message.

3. Identify the message as an ad. The law gives you a lot of leeway in how to do this, but you must disclose clearly and conspicuously that your message is an advertisement.

4. Tell recipients where you’re located. Your message must include your valid physical postal address. This can be your current street address, a post office box you’ve registered with the U.S. Postal Service, or a private mailbox you’ve registered with a commercial mail receiving agency established under Postal Service regulations.


5. Tell recipients how to opt out of receiving future email from you. Your message must include a clear and conspicuous explanation of how the recipient can opt out of getting email from you in the future. Craft the notice in a way that’s easy for an ordinary person to recognize, read, and understand. Creative use of type size, color, and location can improve clarity. Give a return email address or another easy Internet-based way to allow people to communicate their choice to you. You may create a menu to allow a recipient to opt out of certain types of messages, but you must include the option to stop all commercial messages from you. Make sure your spam filter doesn’t block these opt-out requests.

6. Honor opt-out requests promptly. Any opt-out mechanism you offer must be able to process opt-out requests for at least 30 days after you send your message. You must honor a recipient’s opt-out request within 10 business days. You can’t charge a fee, require the recipient to give you any personally identifying information beyond an email address, or make the recipient take any step other than sending a reply email or visiting a single page on an Internet website as a condition for honoring an opt-out request. Once people have told you they don’t want to receive more messages from you, you can’t sell or transfer their email addresses, even in the form of a mailing list. The only exception is that you may transfer the addresses to a company you’ve hired to help you comply with the CAN-SPAM Act.


7. Monitor what others are doing on your behalf. The law makes clear that even if you hire another company to handle your email marketing, you can’t contract away your legal responsibility to comply with the law. Both the company whose product is promoted in the message and the company that actually sends the message may be held legally responsible.

Should we take bets on how the Justice Department will weasel their way around this one in the name of Obama's re-election? After all, Obama thinks he is above the law, this is just one more example.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Spammer in Chief 
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 14, 2011, 06:26:08 PM
Outrage! Author of 'stimulus' linked to companies it helped Author of 'stimulus' linked
wnd ^ | 12/14/11 | Aaron Klein
Posted on December 14, 2011 9:33:08 PM EST by Nachum

An adviser to Barack Obama who played a key role in developing the energy provisions of the so-called stimulus bill has served on the boards of several companies that recently received government funds, including hundreds of millions in "stimulus" money.

TJ Glauthier served on Obama's 2008 White House Transition Team. He is widely credited with helping to craft the energy provisions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, also known as the "stimulus."

In addition to serving on the boards of major energy companies, Glauthier previously held two presidential appointments during the Clinton administration.

He was the Energy Department's deputy secretary and chief operating officer, the second-highest ranking official.

(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 14, 2011, 06:48:58 PM
'You can't even go home!' Feds go bonkers on border agent ...
wnd ^ | 12/14/11 | Bob Unruh
Posted on December 14, 2011 9:38:06 PM EST by Nachum

The wife of former U.S. Border Patrol agent Jesus Diaz, who was jailed over his treatment of a drug smuggler, says she's outraged that the government has told her husband he won't be allowed to return home to be with her or associate with any other law enforcement-linked member of his family while on probation.

"I have to ask what does the DOJ want me to do? I can't retire, I'm too young. Divorcing him is not an option as he would still have to come around for the children. What is Chito going to do about his brother, not see him for the next five years? He carries a gun," Diana Diaz, said in a statement released today through the Law Enforcement Officers Advocates Council, which has become an advocate for the officer in issues outside the courtroom.

(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 15, 2011, 07:45:46 AM
Commander in Creep Got a friend who backs Obama? They have a list of people like you.


.Article Comments (190) more in Opinion | Find New $LINKTEXTFIND$ ».
 

By JAMES TARANTO




Somewhere along the line, somebody signed us up for the Barack Obama campaign emails. Normally we don't care for spam, political or otherwise, but these are so odd that we've kept them coming out of curiosity. Some of them have a stalker-like quality, plaintive yet vaguely menacing in their persistence, such as the one we noted in September titled "James, can we meet for dinner?"

If you don't like it, you can always unsubscribe. But now the campaign is turning the creepiness up a notch. The Obama re-election effort has "asked supporters to make a campaign donation 'inspired' by somebody else," reports Joel Gehrke of the Washington Examiner.

 
Associated Press
 
He's a little weird.
.This one doesn't seem to be going to everybody on the list; we have yet to receive it--though our latest missive from BarackObama.com is somewhat similar in concept: "Have you been thinking about who you'd bring to the next Dinner with Barack?" it asks. "Tell us who you would bring if you won--and why." But the campaign isn't going to contact your plus-one; the Web form asks only for the name.

By contrast, the form for the "inspire" solicitation asks for an email address for your donation muse so that the campaign can "send them [sic] a message letting them know they inspired you to donate." The Obama campaign is deliberately sending spam to people who never signed up for it. You can also give a donation "in memory of" someone, and the site still asks for an email address. You can take the politician out of Chicago, but you can't take Chicago out of the politician.

It gets worse. Blogress "Bookworm" reports having received this variant of the "inspired" email:

Everyone's got that special conservative in their life.
Maybe it's your dad, who forwards you every chain email about the President's birth certificate, or your neighbor, who just put up a Mitt Romney sign.
Dealing with these folks can be . . . frustrating.
This holiday season, we're giving you a chance to have a little bit of fun at their expense. Let a Republican in your life know they inspired you to make a donation to the Obama campaign--chip in $3 or more today.
When you give to the campaign, simply enter your Republican friend's email address and they'll get a note letting them know that they motivated you to donate--which will surely make their day.
Sure enough, BarackObama.com has a special Web form for donors who wish to have "fun at the expense of a Republican." Let's say you're a Republican and your 20-something daughter is an Obamabot. (Have you had a DNA test?) She makes a $10 donation to the president's campaign, which sends her an email tweaking you--and your name and email address are now on a list of dissenters against the most powerful man in the world.

Probably this is just what the campaign presents it to be--a juvenile prank that is harmless beyond the nuisance of receiving campaign spam. Then again, remember AttackWatch.com? The Obama campaign has a history of clumsy appeals with vaguely totalitarian overtones.

Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 15, 2011, 08:09:50 AM
Terrorist attack survivors outraged by White House guest
The Washington Times ^ | 12/14/11 | Ashish Kumar Sen




Survivors of a 1996 terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 U.S. servicemen are offended that an Iraqi official with ties to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was welcomed to the White House this week.

“Outrage at the visit to the White House really doesn’t describe what I feel,” said William M. Schooley, who survived the June 25, 1996, bombing of the Khobar Towers.

“I watched outstanding airmen die that night and witnessed horrific carnage. The survivors of Khobar Towers have been swept under the rug and now have received the greatest insult,” he added.

The Washington Times first reported Tuesday that Hadi Farhan al-Amiri, who serves as Iraq’s transportation minister, was part of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s delegation to the White House on Monday.

The FBI linked Iran’s Revolutionary Guard to the terrorist attack on the Khobar Towers. No Iranians were named in the indictment, and the Saudi Hezbollah was blamed for the blast.


(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 15, 2011, 08:10:43 AM
Ex-Iran Guard commander visits White House with Iraq leader
Washington Times ^




A former commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, which the FBI says played a role in a 1996 terrorist attack that killed 19 U.S. servicemen, accompanied Iraq’s prime minister to the White House on Monday, attending an event at which President Obama trumpeted the end of the Iraq War.

Hadi Farhan al-Amiri, transportation minister in Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government, was part of the delegation that visited the White House to discuss Iraq’s future and Iran’s influence there, among other topics.

-excerpt -

Louis J. Freeh, who served as FBI director in the Clinton administration and the early months of the George W. Bush administration, said it was shocking that Mr. al-Maliki would include Mr. al-Amiri in his visit to Washington.


(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 15, 2011, 08:41:00 AM
Our Marxist Wizard of Oz
By Peter Ferrara on 12.14.11 @ 6:09AM



Obama's not in Kansas anymore.

His mother was an unabashed hippie from 1960s central casting. His father was an openly avowed Communist from Kenya. While his father wasn't around much, his devoutly progressive grandparents arranged for him to be mentored during his adolescent years by a dues paying member of the U.S. Communist Party, Frank Marshall Davis.

When he went to college, he was attracted to the Marxist professors and student activists, according to his own published memoirs. When he graduated, he moved to Chicago and became an instructor for the left-wing extremist organization ACORN in the social manipulation methods of radical Marxist agitator Saul Alinsky. He attended for close to two decades the Trinity United Church of Christ, which practiced neo-Marxist Black Liberation Theology. That church was headed during those years by the openly socialist Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who declared that the 9/11 terrorist attack on America was "America's chickens coming home to roost." He also famously preached from his pulpit, "Not God bless America, God damn America…."

He launched his political career in the living room of the home of Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, co-founders and former leaders of the openly Communist domestic terrorist organization, the Weather Underground. That organization conducted several bombings in America and engaged in other violence that resulted in several injuries and even deaths.

All of this is documented in the public record. This is the man the Democrat party took off the streets of Chicago, then pursuing a career as a Marxist street agitator, and launched into the White House, favoring him over Hillary Clinton because she was too moderate for the party. They did that because he best reflects the heart and soul of today's radical-left, Che Guevara Democratic Party. It is in this context that we should understand and analyze Obama's Hugo Chavez speech given last week at Osawatomie High School in Kansas.

Obama's Hugo Chavez Coming Out

In that speech, he drew a picture of America as a struggling third world nation, saying at stake today "is whether this will be a country where working people can earn enough to raise a family, build a modest savings, own a home, and secure a retirement." In fact, he said, "there are millions of working families in this country who are now forced to take their children to food banks for a decent meal."

This sounds more like Indonesia, or Venezuela, or Nicaragua. But it is not America "long before the recession hit."

He explained the roots of the problem as:

Over the last few decades, huge advances in technology have allowed businesses to do more with less, and made it easier for them to set up shop and hire workers anywhere in the world…. Steel mills that needed 1,000 employees are now able to do the same work with 100, so that layoffs were too often permanent, not just a temporary part of the business cycle…. If you were a bank teller or a phone operator or a travel agent, you saw many in your profession replaced by ATMs or the Internet.

This Luddite analysis fundamentally misconceives the role of technology in a modern economy. Such advancing technology increases worker productivity, and, therefore, wages and standard of living. Technological progress over the decades is why the average American worker in 2000 enjoyed 7 times the standard of living of the average American worker in 1900.

He then tries to pin the blame for his failures on others, saying, "Now, in the midst of this debate, there are some who seem to be suffering from a kind of collective amnesia. After all that's happened, after the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, they want to return to the same practices that got us into this mess."

The policies that got us into this mess included primarily the so-called "affordable housing policies" Obama himself and other Democrats long advocated, with the government forcing the banks by overregulation to drop their traditional lending standards to provide loans and mortgages to low and moderate income applicants who could not qualify under those traditional standards. (See the full documentation and discussion in Paul Sperry's The Great American Bank Robbery: The Unauthorized Report About What Really Caused the Financial Crisis and Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner's, Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon.

The other major factor was the Fed's loose monetary policy starting under Bush in the 2000s, which funded the housing bubble. Both policies were departures from the fundamental planks of Reaganomics. As I discuss in detail in my own book, America's Ticking Bankruptcy Bomb, the four planks of Reaganomics had been effectively abandoned by 2008, and that was the cause of the financial crisis, which ended the 25-year economic boom from 1982 to 2007 that Reaganomics had created.

Obama tries to continue his historical revisionism, saying, "Remember that in those years, in 2001 and 2003, Congress passed two of the most expensive tax cuts in history, and what did they get us? The slowest job growth in half a century. Massive deficits that have made it much harder to pay for the investments that built this country."

Here is what really happened. Those Bush tax cuts quickly ended the 2001 recession, despite the contractionary economic impacts of 9/11, and the economy continued to grow for another 73 months. After the rate cuts were all fully implemented in 2003, the economy created 7.8 million new jobs and the unemployment rate fell from over 6% to 4.4%. Real economic growth over the next 3 years doubled from the average for the prior 3 years, to 3.5%.

In response to the rate cuts, business investment spending, which had declined for 9 straight quarters, reversed and increased 6.7% per quarter. That is where the jobs came from. Manufacturing output soared to its highest level in 20 years. The stock market revived, creating almost $7 trillion in new shareholder wealth. From 2003 to 2007, the S&P 500 almost doubled. Capital gains tax revenues had doubled by 2005, despite Bush's 25% cut in the capital gains rate.

The deficit in the last budget adopted by Republican Congressional majorities was $161 billion for fiscal 2007. Today that deficit is nearly 10 times as much. Total federal revenues under Bush soared by nearly 30%, from $1.991 trillion in 2001 to $2.568 trillion in 2007. The day the Democrat Congressional majorities took office, January 3, 2007, the unemployment rate was 4.6%. George Bush's economic policies, "the failed policies of the past" in Obama's rhetoric, had set a record of 52 straight months of job creation.

What has continued to fail us now is that Obama's own policies, the exact opposite of Reaganomics in every detail, have failed to produce any timely real recovery from the last recession. Before this last recession, since the Great Depression recessions in America have lasted an average of 10 months, with the longest previously at 16 months. But here we are today 48 months after the last recession started and there is still no real recovery. Instead, we have record poverty, and record extended unemployment.

They can't say that is because the recession was so bad, because the historical record in America is that the deeper the recession the stronger the recovery. Based on the historical record, we should be ending the second year of a booming economy right now. The failure to achieve that is the responsibility of Barack Obama.

Obama himself was counting on precisely this history making him look like a hero. That is why he so confidently told the Today Show on Feb. 2, 2009, "a year from now I think people are gonna see that we're starting to make some progress…if I don't have this done in three years, then this is going to be a one-term proposition."

Before Barack Obama as President, the rest of the world looked to America as the example for the economic model that works to achieve prosperity. But today Obama tells America "It doesn't work. It's never worked. It didn't work when it was tried in the decade before the Great Depression. It's not what led to the incredible postwar boom of the 50s and 60s. And it didn't work when we tried it during the last decade."

But it's President Obama, who fundamentally doesn't understand his own country, that doesn't work.

Obama's Tax and Spending Fantasies

In his Kansas speech, Obama offered as his solution increased government spending as the foundation for rising prosperity. He says:

Today, manufacturers and other companies are setting up shop in places with the best infrastructure to ship their products, move their workers, and communicate with the rest of the world. That's why the over one million construction workers who lost their jobs when the housing market collapsed shouldn't be sitting at home with nothing to do. They should be rebuilding our roads and bridges; laying down faster railroads and broadband; modernizing our schools -- all the things other countries are doing to attract good jobs and businesses to their shores.

Instead of the American capitalist model maximized by Reaganomics, Obama tells us to look at the basic infrastructure spending of other countries as the model that works. But American economic growth is not suffering because of a lack of basic infrastructure like a third world country. It is suffering because Obama is so doggedly pursuing the opposite of every policy that would free the economy to produce and boom. Under such Obamanomics, soon enough America will be suffering from the lack of a reliable energy grid like a third world country.

Obama whines that Bush's massive deficits (if his deficits were massive what are Obama's?), supposedly caused by his tax cuts (not--revenue again rose during the Bush years), "have made it much harder to pay for the investments that built this country and provided the basic security that helped millions of Americans reach and stay in the middle class -- things like education and infrastructure; science and technology; Medicare and Social Security."

But spending on all of those items soared during the Bush years, and they have rocketed up all the faster under Obama. To no avail, because government spending is not the foundation of increased economic growth and prosperity. Increased production, spurred by ever stronger incentives, is.

Of course, essential to all of President Obama's essential spending is to increase tax rates on the rich, otherwise known in English as the nation's investors and job creators. As President Obama tutored us in Kansas last week:

But we don't have unlimited resources. And so we have to set priorities. If we want a strong middle class, then our tax code must reflect our values. We have to make choices…. Do we want to make the investments we need in things like education, and research, and high-tech manufacturing? Or do we want to keep in place the tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans in our country? Because we can't afford to do both. That's not politics. That's just math.

So there you have the Obama formula for economic growth and prosperity. After the greatest runaway spending spree in American history during the Obama Administration, the answer is for government to increase spending even more, financed by increasing tax rates even more on the very investors and job creators that produce the jobs for the middle class and working people in America's economic system. That is a perfect prescription for another recession, not the long, long overdue recovery America is still waiting for under Obamanomics. Obama tells us, "It is wrong that in the United States of America, a teacher or a nurse or a construction worker who earns $50,000 should pay a higher tax rate than somebody pulling in $50 million." That would be wrong if it were true. But it is not.

What Obama is peddling to America on tax policy is only the ugliest example of his well-established rhetorical style of calculated deception. It is based on what he thinks the average voter does not know and will not know, and can be manipulated to believe to Obama's political advantage. For the picture he is painting of the rich getting away without paying their fair share while working people bear most of the tax burden is the opposite of reality.

Even before Obama was elected, under those "failed policies of the past," the top 1% of income earners in 2007 paid 40% of federal income taxes (up from 17.6% when Reagan entered office), while the CBO just reported that they earned 17% of the income in 2007. Moreover, that 40% of federal income taxes paid by the top 1% was more than paid by the bottom 95% combined, according to official IRS data. While the top 1% paid 40% of federal income taxes, the bottom 40% paid no federal income taxes as a group on net. Today 47% pay no federal income taxes.

Yet, Obama has already enacted under current law further tax increases on the nation's job creators, investors and small businesses going into effect in 2013, when the tax increases of Obamacare become effective and the Bush tax cuts expire. Consequently, that year the top two income tax rates would rise by close to 20%, the capital gains tax would soar by nearly 60%, the tax on dividends would nearly triple, and the Medicare payroll tax would rocket up by 62% for these disfavored taxpayers. This alone would take us well beyond the Clinton tax rates, despite Obama's outdated talking point that he is still repeating from 2008.

This is in addition to America suffering with virtually the highest corporate tax rate in the industrialized world at nearly 40% on average, counting state corporate rates. As I have previously noted, even Communist China imposes only a 25% rate, with the rate in the EU even less on average. Our Canadian neighbors, enjoying a booming economy since Obama was elected in America, will enjoy a 15% rate next year, down from 16.5% this year.

Yet Obama barnstorms America calling for still more tax increases on American business, large and small, and the job creators and investors on which jobs and prosperity for working people depend. The galloping regulatory burdens he is now imposing effectively involve still further tax increases stifling production. It all adds up to a brew for another recession in 2013, unless the American people force a change in course in 2012.

Letter to the Editor

 
About the Author
Peter Ferrara is Senior Fellow at the Carleson Center for Public Policy, Director of Entitlement and Budget Policy for the Heartland Institute, and General Counsel of the American Civil Rights Union. He served in the White House Office of Policy Development under President Reagan, and as Associate Deputy Attorney General of the United States under the first President Bush. He is the author of America’s Ticking Bankruptcy Bomb, now available from HarperCollins.


Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 15, 2011, 10:06:42 AM
Wyden-Ryan Medicare Proposal Has White House 'Concerned'
 
First Posted: 12/15/11 12:46 PM ET Updated: 12/15/11 12:52 PM ET

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/15/wyden-ryan-medicare_n_1151274.html





WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration expressed concern Thursday over the bipartisan Medicare reform proposal that has been hammered out between Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), saying it believes the plan could weaken the program.

"We are concerned that Wyden-Ryan, like Congressman Ryan’s earlier proposal, would undermine, rather than strengthen, Medicare," said White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer. "The Wyden-Ryan scheme could, over time, cause the traditional Medicare program to “wither on the vine” because it would raise premiums, forcing many seniors to leave traditional Medicare and join private plans. And it would shift costs from the government to seniors. At the end of the day, this plan would end Medicare as we know it for millions of seniors. Wyden-Ryan is the wrong way to reform Medicare."

The statement makes valid policy points that other health care reform groups were expressing the day after the Wyden-Ryan model was laid out. That said, what the duo is attempting to do -- turn Medicare into a premium support system that also preserves the current model -- resembles some of the very reforms that President Obama instituted into the health care system at large (albiet without a public option-like choice for consumers, which traditional Medicare would be under Wyden-Ryan).

It is also clear, however, that the new bipartisan model has the potential to cause major political headaches for both parties -- particularly Democrats.

Ryan's original plan, which turned Medicare into a voucher system, was widely unpopular and served as an anchor around the neck of virtually every Republican. And while GOP lawmakers still have to explain the votes they cast for it, they can now make the argument that the party's point person on the issue has moved on to friendlier turf.

For Democrats, Wyden's work with Ryan is giving Republicans cover on an issue that seemed destined to hurt their congressional reelection chances. Not only that, it aids former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, both presidential candidates who have proposed hybrid approaches to Medicare reform similar to what Wyden and Ryan are introducing.

“For starters, this is bad policy and a complete political loser," said a senior Democratic Congressional aide. "On top of the terrible politics, they even admit that it dismantles Medicare but achieves no budgetary savings while doing so -- the worst of all worlds. Thanks for nothing.”













And tyou people wonder why I hate this communist wrecking ball as much as I do?    Wyden is on the left and Ryan on the rgiht and they agree on this and this ghetto traitor and looting grifter evil beast cant even get on board after gutting 500 billion for obamacare?


i'm not kidding - anyone voting for this traitor and evil beast in 2012 should be dumped in pre-chummed shark tank.     
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 15, 2011, 11:47:05 AM
W.H. tackles wage protects for health care workers
Politico44 ^ | 12/15/11 | BYRON TAU




President Obama issued a directive today granting home health care workers the same protections of minimum wage and overtime that other workers get.

Noting that home health care workers were classified in the same category as babysitters and therefore exempt from most labor rules, the president noted that many of these employees required government assistance just to make ends meet.

"This means that many homecare workers are forced to rely


(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...









WTF is wrong with this asshole?  This is the most economically incompetent and illiterate bufoon I have ever witnessed.   
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 15, 2011, 11:48:17 AM
Justice Department: Arizona Sheriff Arpaio violated federal law
The Washington Times ^ | December 15, 2011 | Jerry Seper




The Justice Department, following an often hostile three-year investigation, said Thursday the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office (MCSO) in Phoenix under the leadership of Sheriff Joseph M. Arpaio violated federal law and the Constitution in its handling of persons arrested and inmates held in its jail system.

Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez, who heads the department’s Civil Rights Division, said investigators concluded there was reasonable cause to believe that sheriff’s deputies engaged in a pattern or practice of unconstitutional conduct and violations of federal law that jeopardized the agency’s commitment to fair and effective law enforcement.

The not-unexpected decision said investigators found discriminatory policing practices including unlawful stops, detentions and arrests of Latinos; unlawful retaliation against persons exercising their First Amendment right to criticize the agency’s policies or practices, including its discriminatory treatment of Latinos; and discriminatory jail practices against Latino inmates with limited English proficiency by punishing them and denying them critical services.


(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 15, 2011, 01:00:15 PM
Department of Justice Releases Investigative Findings on the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office
Department of Justice ^ | December 15, 2011 | Office of Public Affairs




WASHINGTON – Following a comprehensive investigation, the Justice Department today announced its findings in the ongoing civil rights investigation of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO). The Justice Department found reasonable cause to believe that MCSO, under the leadership of Sheriff Joseph M. Arpaio, has engaged in a pattern or practice of misconduct that violates the Constitution and federal law. The investigation, opened in June 2008, was conducted under the provisions of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Title VI implementing regulations.

The department found reasonable cause to believe that a pattern or practice of unconstitutional conduct and/or violations of federal law occurred in several areas, including:

•Discriminatory policing practices including unlawful stops, detentions and arrests of Latinos; •Unlawful retaliation against individuals exercising their First Amendment right to criticize MCSO’s policies or practices, including but not limited to practices relating to its discriminatory treatment of Latinos; and •Discriminatory jail practices against Latino inmates with limited English proficiency by punishing them and denying them critical services.

The Justice Department found a number of long-standing and entrenched systemic deficiencies that caused or contributed to these patterns of unlawful conduct, including:



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 15, 2011, 03:21:51 PM
Obama's Justice Department joins Britain's 'Climategate' leaker manhunt
Washington Examiner ^ | 12/15/11 7:57 AM | Christopher C. Horner




OpEd Contributor



I have seen apparent proof that the United States Department of Justice (DOJ), Criminal Division, is working with United Kingdom police to pursue the leaker of the 2009 and 2011 “Climategate” emails.

I have learned that last week DOJ sent a search-and-seizure letter to the host of three climate-change "skeptic" blogs. Last night, UK police raided a blogger’s home and removed computers and equipment.

The leaked records derailed “cap-and-trade” legislation in the U.S. and, internationally, as well as talks for a successor to the Kyoto Protocol. The emails and computer code were produced with taxpayer funds and held on taxpayer-owned computers both in the US and the UK, and all were subject to the UK Freedom of Information Act, the U.S. Freedom of Information Act and state FOIA laws.


They also were being unlawfully withheld in both the UK (by the University of East Anglia) and the U.S. (Department of Commerce’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), including stonewalling me for two years, and three other requesters for longer).

The hunt involving U.S. and UK law enforcement agencies is now escalating. On Wednesday night UK time, six detectives with the UK police (Norfolk Police Department) raided the home of at least one blogger, removing his equipment to look for clues to the identity of leaker “FOIA 2011.”

On December 9, DOJ sent a preservation letter under 18 U.S.C 2703(f) to the publication platform (website host) Wordpress. This authority authorizes the government to request an Internet Service Provider (ISP) to preserve all records of a specific account for 90 days while the feds work on a warrant.

Norfolk PD affirmed to the subject of at least one of their raids that this international law enforcement hunt is for the leaker, meaning not for those whose acts the leaker exposed by making public emails containing admissions in their own words.


(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 15, 2011, 07:30:38 PM
Obama Policies Seem Calculated To Kill Jobs (Seem Calculated?
IBD Editorials ^ | December 15, 2011 | LAWRENCE KUDLOW
Posted on December 15, 2011 8:23:07 PM EST by Kaslin

The payroll-tax-cut debate is not really about the payroll tax, which is a very weak-kneed economic stimulant and a lackluster job creator because of its temporary nature. Without permanent incentives at lower tax rates, these rebates don't do anything for growth and jobs.

Instead, the key to understanding the payroll-tax debate is to grasp President Barack Obama's leftist vision of taxing successful earners (the millionaire surtax) and his obsession with clean energy at the expense of fossil fuels.

These are ideological positions. They support the Obama vision of class warfare and his attachment to radical environmentalism.

And the key to understanding this state of affairs is the disposition of the TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline, which Republicans cleverly threw into the payroll-tax debate as the only real job creator.

By siding with the radical greenies and standing against the Keystone pipeline, Obama has turned his back on the most traditional voting bloc in the Democratic Party: blue-collar, hard-hat workers.

Manufacturing workers. Construction workers. Truckers. Pipefitters. Plumbers. The Keystone opposition coming out of the White House is completely alienating all these people, the folks who work with their hands. And it's these workers who have been decimated in the recession far more than any other group in the economy.

David Barnett, head of the United Association of Plumbers and Pipefitters, told me on CNBC that unemployment is currently running at 20% to 25% in this blue-collar sector.

He has repeatedly lobbied the White House to allow the Keystone pipeline to go through, and he notes high environmental standards in the work his men do.

And yet even now, three years after the initial Keystone reviews began, the issue is still unresolved.

(Excerpt) Read more at news.investors.com ...
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 18, 2011, 07:31:55 PM
Obama's Justice Department joins Britain's 'Climategate' leaker manhunt
Washington Examiner ^ | 12/15/11 7:57 AM | Christopher C. Horner
Posted on December 15, 2011 6:22:00 PM EST by Ernest_at_the_Beach

OpEd Contributor

I have seen apparent proof that the United States Department of Justice (DOJ), Criminal Division, is working with United Kingdom police to pursue the leaker of the 2009 and 2011 “Climategate” emails. 

I have learned that last week DOJ sent a search-and-seizure letter to the host of three climate-change "skeptic" blogs. Last night, UK police raided a blogger’s home and removed computers and equipment.

The leaked records derailed “cap-and-trade” legislation in the U.S. and, internationally, as well as talks for a successor to the Kyoto Protocol. The emails and computer code were produced with taxpayer funds and held on taxpayer-owned computers both in the US and the UK, and all were subject to the UK Freedom of Information Act, the U.S. Freedom of Information Act and state FOIA laws.

They also were being unlawfully withheld in both the UK (by the University of East Anglia) and the U.S. (Department of Commerce’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), including stonewalling me for two years, and three other requesters for longer).

The hunt involving U.S. and UK law enforcement agencies is now escalating. On Wednesday night UK time, six detectives with the UK police (Norfolk Police Department) raided the home of at least one blogger, removing his equipment to look for clues to the identity of leaker “FOIA 2011.”

On December 9, DOJ sent a preservation letter under 18 U.S.C 2703(f) to the publication platform (website host) Wordpress. This authority authorizes the government to request an Internet Service Provider (ISP) to preserve all records of a specific account for 90 days while the feds work on a warrant.

Norfolk PD affirmed to the subject of at least one of their raids that this international law enforcement hunt is for the leaker, meaning not for those whose acts the leaker exposed by making public emails containing admissions in their own words.

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 19, 2011, 06:47:43 PM
Hezbollah Terrorist Handed Over to Iraqis by U.S. May Face Only Minor Criminal Charge
CNS News ^ | 12/19/11 | Patrick Goodenough
Posted on December 19, 2011 6:46:32 PM EST by Nachum

(CNSNews.com) – One day after the United States handed over to the Iraqi authorities a Lebanese Hezbollah terrorist accused of killing at least five American soldiers, Iraqi officials were quoted as saying the prisoner will face criminal charges – for illegal entry.

Iraqi officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Associated Press Saturday that Ali Musa Daqduq would be prosecuted for entering the country with an illegal passport, an offense carrying a prison term of just over five years.

(Excerpt) Read more at cnsnews.com ...
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 20, 2011, 07:41:58 AM
Obama's Freeloader Economy
American Thinker ^ | December 20, 2011 | Christopher Chantrill




If you want to understand the deep political philosophy underneath the Obama administration's random-walk economic policy, it is this: freeloading.

When you really try to cudgel your brain in a good-faith effort to understand liberals, and try to understand the talk about "inequality" and "exploitation," that's the answer. Springtime for freeloaders. Summer, autumn, winter, all year round for freeloaders. It's the new thing for getting ahead in the predator class.

What, after all, is the NRLB-union gang tackle on Boeing -- the idea that opening a union-free plant in South Carolina is an unfair labor practice? How come, all of a sudden after Boeing agrees to build the Boeing 737-MAX in union-rich Renton, Washington, everything is suddenly copacetic? It's pretty obvious. Keep those union jobs in Washington State or else.

What about the raid on Gibson Guitar? What about the half-billion-dollar sinkhole called Solyndra? What about the forests of wind turbines, each a cozy subsidy nest for some well-fledged crony capitalist? Freeloaders all, and they all vote for Democrats.

You wouldn't want people to go running around doing things without permission. They might figure out that they don't need to pay a powerful patron to play in Washington. They might decide to earn an honest living and forget all about rent-seeking and freeloading.

I've been reading the excellent new Steven Pinker title, The Better Angels of Our Nature. It's all about the decline of violence in humans over the millennia. Back in the good old days of hunter-gatherers, violence was epidemic. You'd send the young men for a dawn raid on the neighboring village, and they'd kill everyone. Of course they would, because any survivors could start a war of vengeance. Anyway, when land was wealth, the chaps in the other village were competing for a fixed resource ...


(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 10, 2012, 12:09:53 PM
Obama picks immigration reform advocate to lead domestic policy
By Amie Parnes and Erik Wasson - 01/10/12 01:27 PM ET
   



President Obama has picked a strong advocate of immigration reform to head the Domestic Policy Council.

The White House announced Tuesday that Cecilia Muñoz, a former senior vice president of the National Council of La Raza, would replace Melody Barnes at the top of the council. White House press secretary Jay Carney announced the appointment during his press briefing.


Muñoz is now serving as the White House's director of intergovernmental affairs and is in charge of outreach to state and local governments.

"The president has asked, she has accepted," Carney said.

Muñoz is an immigration expert who worked for the National Council of La Raza, the largest Latino civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States, until she joined the administration in 2009. The group works to improve opportunities for Hispanic Americans and advocates legislation that would provide a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants. 

Carney called Muñoz "the best person for the job."

In her new role, Muñoz will become the president’s senior adviser on domestic affairs that fall outside the strict purview of the National Economic Council, which is headed by Gene Sperling.

“Over the past three years, Cecilia has been a trusted advisor who has demonstrated sound judgment day in and day out,” President Obama said. “Cecilia has done an extraordinary job working on behalf of middle class families, and I’m confident she’ll bring the same unwavering dedication to her new position.”

A senior administration official credited Munoz's work on immigration and disaster relief and said she has successfully brought the voices of local and state officials into the White House through her work at IGA.


"She's the perfect fit for this job," the official told The Hill. "This is someone who is very much ready for the position."

On immigration, she has been the president's "key person" on the issue "working to fix the system that's broken" the official said, adding that she brings 20 years of immigration policy with her to the post.

While her new post will continue to give Hispanics a "strong voice," administration officials said she wasn't given the position to pander to that community. "She's immensely qualified for this position. She's someone who is very much respected by her colleagues."

At the same time, "she's not afraid to make her viewpoints known," the official said.


Barnes left her position at the end of last month and is looking for work in the private sector. On Monday the White House announced that Chief of Staff Bill Daley will soon step down and be replaced by Office of Management and Budget Director Jack Lew.   


Carney said there is no word yet on who will replace Lew as Budget director. In the briefing he offered praise for congressional liaison Rob Nabors, a man insiders think has the best shot at the job.


This story was updated at 2:27 p.m.


Source:
http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/domestic-taxes/203355-munoz-to-head-domestic-policy-council-
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 10, 2012, 12:13:51 PM
Admin. extends Salvadoran deportation freeze
 Comments (3)  By BYRON TAU and JOSH GERSTEIN | 1/10/12 11:12 AM EST The Obama administration has extended temporary protected status to El Salvadoran nationals through late 2013, shielding them from deportation and forcible return to their home country.

The Department of Homeland Security cites ongoing disruptions from a series of earthquakes in 2001, concluding that "El Salvador remains unable, temporarily, to handle adequately the return of its nationals."

The Obama administration's deportation policies have come under scrutiny, just as the president has geared up for his reelection campaign. Despite his support for comprehensive immigration reform and a path to citizenship, deportations have soared to new highs under the Obama administration— and the president's approval ratings among Latino voters have flatlined.

Hugo Martinez, El Salvador's Foreign Minister, was in Washington this week to discuss the policy and meet with Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano. The protected status designation current applies to 215,000 Salvadorans living in the U.S. illegally and otherwise subject to deportation, and remittances from ex-patriate Salvadorans in the United States help keep that country's economy afloat.


http://www.politico.com/politico44/2012/01/admin-extends-salvadoran-deportation-freeze-110304.html







We need to split this nation in half.    The free people on one side, the communists on the other.   
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 10, 2012, 06:35:16 PM
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Admin. extends Salvadoran deportation freeze
Politico ^ | 1/10/12 | BYRON TAU and JOSH GERSTEIN
Posted on January 10, 2012 6:49:30 PM EST by ColdOne

The Obama administration has extended temporary protected status to El Salvadoran nationals through late 2013, shielding them from deportation and forcible return to their home country.

The Department of Homeland Security cites ongoing disruptions from a series of earthquakes in 2001, concluding that "El Salvador remains unable, temporarily, to handle adequately the return of its nationals."

The Obama administration's deportation policies have come under scrutiny, just as the president has geared up for his reelection campaign. Despite his support for comprehensive immigration reform and a path to citizenship, deportations have soared to new highs under the Obama administration— and the president's approval ratings among Latino voters have flatlined.

(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 11, 2012, 05:44:05 AM
NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE          www.nationalreview.com           PRINT

Obama’s Postmodern Vision

By Victor Davis Hanson


January 11, 2012 4:00 A.M. There has been for months a popular parlor game of tallying instances in which President Obama seems to have either ignored or simply bypassed federal law. But what started out as a way of exposing occasional hypocrisy is now getting a little scary.

Most recently, President Obama made several recess appointments — a tactic that as a senator he once criticized — even though Congress was not in recess. In December, the president signed a $1 billion omnibus spending bill, but notified Congress that he might not abide by some of the very provisions he had just signed into law. During the Libya war, Obama felt that bombing Qaddafi’s forces did not really constitute military operations, and therefore he had no need to notify Congress under the War Powers Act.

It is clear that Arizona is not trying to circumvent federal immigration law, but rather is desperately trying to find some way to enforce it, given that the Obama administration has selectively chosen not to do so. In response, the federal government is suing the state of Arizona, even as it assures illegal aliens that they will not be arrested if they have not committed a crime — as if Obama can by himself decide that illegally entering and residing in the United States is not a federal crime in the first place.

President Obama argued that it was constitutional to force citizens to purchase federalized health care, and that all Americans would be subject to his new health-care law — except some 2,000 businesses and organizations that were given politically driven waivers. Obama decided to reverse the legal order of creditors in the bailout of a bankrupt Chrysler Corporation in favor of more politically suitable constituencies. The administration does not like the Defense of Marriage Act, and therefore announced that it won’t enforce it. When a federal judge struck down an Obama- administration ban on new leases for gas and oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, Obama for a time ignored the injunction. When a BP oil leak in the Gulf outraged America, the president met with company executives and announced that they had agreed to set up a $20 billion “fund” to pay for imminent damage claims — as if our chief executive now meets with culpable private businesses to assess what he thinks they should pony up to avoid federal retaliation.

Every administration, of course, has constitutional disputes with Congress, the courts, and the public over the exact limits of its power. But in the case of the Obama administration there is a new sort of lawlessness unseen in recent governments. Is that predictable or surprising, given Obama’s own constant references to himself as a former constitutional scholar and community organizer?

Both as a state legislator and as a U.S. senator, Obama blasted as unconstitutional or abuses of presidential power almost all of the Bush-Cheney anti-terrorism protocols — Guantanamo, renditions, military tribunals, preventive detention, the Patriot Act — which as president he later embraced or expanded. Apparently, Obama’s own status as an out-of-power senator or an in-power president, and the degree to which such issues were or were not politically useful to his larger agenda, alone determined whether something like renditions or military tribunals was lawful.

Other than the normal explanations of abject hypocrisy and political expediency, why has the Obama administration shown such a disdain for the integrity of the law? In a word, Obama is a postmodernist. That is a trendy word for someone who leaves academia believing that there are not really absolute facts, but merely competing ideas and discourses. In this view, particular ideologies unfortunately gain credibility as establishment icons only from the relative advantage that arises from race, class, and gender biases.

In postmodern jurisprudence, “critical legal theory” postulates that law and politics are inseparable. Those with power call their self-serving rules “the law.” But “laws” are not sacrosanct. Instead, they are mere embedded reflections of wealthy, white, and male privilege — dressed up in some bogus timeless concept of “justice.”

A few critical and progressive minds among the legal technocracy have the ability to spot these fictions. And thus a Barack Obama or an Eric Holder has a duty on our behalf to use his training to make the necessary corrections, even if the rest of us don’t quite fathom what is going on. Federal voting-rights laws, for example, do not mean ensuring that no one intimidates voters. Hardly. They are instead fluid and relative, properly focusing only on those who are not now intimidating voters but whose ancestors might have, while exempting those who now are but whose ancestors might have been intimidated.

Whether Congress is, or is not, in recess, or whether wealthy bondholders should be paid back before working-class union pensioners, or whether some company should or should not be allowed to drill in the Gulf — these and others are moral and political, but not necessarily legal, issues. To the degree that he can, on any given challenge Obama assesses the politics of favoring his constituency of the “poor” and “middle class,” and then uses the necessary legal gymnastics post facto to offer the veneer of lawfulness.

If someone is breaking a federal “law” by entering Arizona illegally from Mexico, there must be a way to make the enforcer of that “law” the real suspect — given that a Sheriff Joe Arpaio is by allegiance of the privileged 1 percent and those whom he arrests most surely are not. Consumers are deemed to need federal help more than do lenders; accordingly, Congress “really” is now in recess. In other words, we are witnessing with this administration the ancient idea of the supposedly exalted ends justifying the somewhat ambiguous means — albeit dressed up in trendy Ivy League legalese and progressive moralizing.

Our postmodern president is not content with just picking and choosing which laws he will follow in advancing his social agenda. The war against the myth of disinterested Western jurisprudence extends also to free-market economics, as we see with the monotonous demonization of the so-called 1 percent and those who make over $200,000 per year. Sometime after January 2009, we learned that the “wealthy” did not gain their riches by a wide variety of what we once thought were legitimate means — luck, inheritance, work, health, intelligence, expertise, experience, education, or an overriding desire for money and status, coupled with an avoidance of classical sins like sloth, crime, and drunkenness.

Rather, we were taught that there was something else going on, something innately unfair in the manner in which we are arbitrarily compensated. In some sense, we are back to the old notion of a labor theory of value (e.g., an hour of working at Starbucks is inherently no less valuable to our society in terms of how much the worker should be paid than an hour crafting a deal at Goldman Sachs). The role, then, of government is not to ensure an equality of opportunity — which is impossible, given inherent and unending race, class, and gender exploitations — but to strive for an equality of result.

That utopian task demands that the best and the brightest in government redistribute capital, or rather use the state to make right what the private sector has distorted. (Of course, no one dares to suggest that Obama himself is cynically interested mostly in power and the delights thereof — and so as a postmodernist he simply constructs these egalitarian stage-sets as a means to enjoy the privileges of the technocratic class that he surrounds himself with.)

Tally up Obama’s early and recent unrehearsed and unguarded quips about wealth — “Spread the wealth”; his regrets that the Supreme Court has not addressed “redistributive change”; his concern that some have not realized that they already have made “enough” money; his warnings that now is not the time for “profit.” That serial message bookends the president’s slurs about millionaires and billionaires, corporate-jet owners, fat-cats, profit-driven doctors, and Vegas and Super Bowl junketeers.

All this unscripted editorializing reflects a recurring theme: Those with superior intelligence and higher moral authority must correct for warped private-sector compensation and human greed. And they can do that by deciding roughly how much each of us deserves to end up with.

In concrete terms, this pop socialism leads Obama to wish to enact more regulations, higher taxes on fewer taxpayers, and more on entitlements. Larger government can absorb health care and also many private-sector companies, as more federal and state workers likewise can even out the playing field. Near-zero interest rates, and renegotiating mortgage or student loans, along with higher deficits, more national debt, and expansionary monetary policy are likewise means to correct the inherent imbalances of the system and counter the greed of a few among us.

It does not matter that much whether, in the attempt to do all that, the better-off must be demonized with crude sloganeering. It does not matter that the poor must be caricatured as Steinbeck’s Joads, starving and poorly clothed, lacking iPhones, $200 sneakers, and big-screen TVs. It does not matter that 20th-century phenomena like National Socialism, Communism, and the European Union — and any other crackpot effort of a self-anointed elite to redistribute wealth and expand the state under the banner either of nationalism, or the global proletariat, or enlightened world citizens — have led only to poverty and chaos, at least for those outside the small exempt managerial class that implements, profits from, and often survives the ensuing disaster.

What makes Barack Obama a different president is not his racial heritage, his liberal outlook, or his mellifluous cadences, but rather the banal idea that the United States is fundamentally in need of this sort of radical change, and that only a select few like himself have the insight and skills necessary to both implement and preside over it. We simply have not seen that redistributive ideology in a president since Jimmy Carter, and then only in part. So far the biggest edge for Obama is his inability to push more of his agenda through first a friendly and now a not-so-friendly Congress — as if to say, “How could I be a redistributionist when they did not let me redistribute as planned?”

The fulfillment of that old vision of mandated equality of result is what the 2012 election is about — nothing more, nothing less.

— NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author most recently of the just-released The End of Sparta, a novel about ancient freedom.

 
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 11, 2012, 03:10:26 PM
Obama Administration Reportedly Plans to Create Internet ID for All Americans
http://www.foxnews.com/ ^



President Obama is putting plans in motion to give the Commerce Department authority to create an Internet ID for all Americans, a White House official told CNET.com.

White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard Schmidt told the website it is "the absolute perfect spot in the U.S. government" to centralize efforts toward creating an "identity ecosystem" for the Internet.

The National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace is currently being drafted by the Obama administration and will be released by the president in a few months.

"We are not talking about a national ID card. We are not talking about a government-controlled system. What we are talking about is enhancing online security and privacy, and reducing and perhaps even eliminating the need to memorize a dozen passwords, through creation and use of more trusted digital identities," Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said at an event Friday at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, according to CNET.com.

Locke added that the Commerce Department will be setting up a national program office to work on this project.

The move has raised eyebrows about privacy issues.

"The government cannot create that identity infrastructure," Jim Dempsey of the Center for Democracy and Technology told the website. "If I tried to, I wouldn't be trusted."

Schmidt stresses that anonymity will remain on the Internet, saying there's no chance that "a centralized database will emerge."


(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...











FU Every Obama voter! 
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 11, 2012, 03:44:51 PM
Presented By
Homeland Security Is Monitoring The Drudge Report, The New York Times

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2012/01/homeland-security-monitoring-drudge-report-new-york-times/47300




It's unclear exactly why, but the Department of Homeland has been operating a "Social Networking/Media Capability" program to monitor the top blogs, forums and social networks online for at least the past 18 months. Based on a privacy compliance review from last November recently obtained by Reuters, the purpose of the project is to "collect information used in providing situational awareness and establishing a common operating picture." Whatever that means. Either way, the list of sites reported by Reuters reveals in a Wednesday afternoon exclusive is pretty intriguing:

Social Networks
Facebook
Twitter
Myspace
Blogs
The Drudge Report
The Huffington Post
The New York Times's Lede blog
Wired's Threat Level
Wired's Danger Room
ABC News' investigative blog The Blotter
"blogs that cover bird flu … news and activity along U.S. borders … drug trafficking and cybercrime"
Multimedia
Hulu
YouTube
Flickr


In conclusion, the Department of Homeland Security is just like you. We've seen no reports of The Atlantic Wire being on the list. But if we are, hello Department of Homeland Security employees -- thanks for reading!

Want to add to this story? Let us know in comments or send an email to the author at aestes@theatlantic.com. You can share ideas for stories on the Open Wire.
Adam Clark Estes

Sources
Homeland Security watches Twitter, social media, Mark Hosenball, Reuters
Topics: Huffington Post, New York Times, Department of Homeland Security, Drudge Report
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Shockwave on January 11, 2012, 05:19:52 PM
Obama Administration Reportedly Plans to Create Internet ID for All Americans
http://www.foxnews.com/ ^



President Obama is putting plans in motion to give the Commerce Department authority to create an Internet ID for all Americans, a White House official told CNET.com.

White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard Schmidt told the website it is "the absolute perfect spot in the U.S. government" to centralize efforts toward creating an "identity ecosystem" for the Internet.

The National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace is currently being drafted by the Obama administration and will be released by the president in a few months.

"We are not talking about a national ID card. We are not talking about a government-controlled system. What we are talking about is enhancing online security and privacy, and reducing and perhaps even eliminating the need to memorize a dozen passwords, through creation and use of more trusted digital identities," Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said at an event Friday at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, according to CNET.com.

Locke added that the Commerce Department will be setting up a national program office to work on this project.

The move has raised eyebrows about privacy issues.

"The government cannot create that identity infrastructure," Jim Dempsey of the Center for Democracy and Technology told the website. "If I tried to, I wouldn't be trusted."

Schmidt stresses that anonymity will remain on the Internet, saying there's no chance that "a centralized database will emerge."


(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...











FU Every Obama voter! 
Fuck this.

Dude is trying to ID everyone so they can watch what everyone does.
This better not happen.

Its becoming clearer and clearer what the endgame is, and theyre pushing it hard.
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Shockwave on January 11, 2012, 05:22:02 PM
Obama Administration Reportedly Plans to Create Internet ID for All Americans
http://www.foxnews.com/ ^



President Obama is putting plans in motion to give the Commerce Department authority to create an Internet ID for all Americans, a White House official told CNET.com.

White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard Schmidt told the website it is "the absolute perfect spot in the U.S. government" to centralize efforts toward creating an "identity ecosystem" for the Internet.

The National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace is currently being drafted by the Obama administration and will be released by the president in a few months.

"We are not talking about a national ID card. We are not talking about a government-controlled system. What we are talking about is enhancing online security and privacy, and reducing and perhaps even eliminating the need to memorize a dozen passwords, through creation and use of more trusted digital identities," Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said at an event Friday at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, according to CNET.com.

Locke added that the Commerce Department will be setting up a national program office to work on this project.

The move has raised eyebrows about privacy issues.

"The government cannot create that identity infrastructure," Jim Dempsey of the Center for Democracy and Technology told the website. "If I tried to, I wouldn't be trusted."

Schmidt stresses that anonymity will remain on the Internet, saying there's no chance that "a centralized database will emerge."


(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...











FU Every Obama voter! 
This needs its own thread.

People need to start waking the eff up, the whole shape of America has changed in the last 5 months, there is no such thing as privacy or anonymity anymore. We are being tagged, ID'd, and watched, right in front of our eyes.

Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 11, 2012, 06:57:20 PM
Gunwalker, Military Secrets, Dream Act
Final Implementation of Obama Dictatorship in Progress on all levels

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 By Sher Zieve  Sunday, January 8, 2012
I have warned and written about this particular subject for over three years—since before Obama was elected—aka “coronated.“  It is only now that many others finally seem to be getting the message.  However, this is not something to be criticized.  It is to be applauded, as it means they are finally and inexorably awakening to the truth.  They are to be applauded and not insulted.  I noticed this morning that—after a few of the latest Obama assaults on the US Constitution and liberties of We-the-People—some in the media (not the Obama media of course) appear to at last to have come to the realization that Obama is and has been a dictator. 


 
Even some members of our feckless and Obama-accommodating Congress are at last saying that Obama is acting in an “extra-Constitutional” (aka “illegal”; “unconstitutional”) and “dictatorial” manner. 

Even though it seems to have taken an inordinate amount of time for even these to ultimately admit that we are in a police-state crisis, I applaud them for having the insight—albeit VERY delayed—to admit the destructive force that is working daily to eliminate the United States of America.  We need all of the help we can muster. 

Obama’s latest shredding of the US Constitution and replacing the USA’s 3-Branch Equal-Powers Federal Government system with his own dictatorship include, but are hardly limited to, the following:

Removing local police presence from communities and replacing them with a federally-paid (that’s US taxpayer-paid) Obama-controlled National Police force.  It is starting—in earnest—in Detroit
Obama is stepping up his issuance of illegal Executive Orders, INCLUDING the Dream Act that was voted down by Congress and opposed by a majority of the American people.  Nevertheless, in June 2011, Obama issued an Executive fiat to ‘create’ it.  Congress did nothing and still does nothing today
Obama is now making “recess appointments” of unacceptable candidates when there is no Congressional recess.  The applicable paragraph in Article I, Section 5 of the now-badly hemorrhaging US Constitution reads:
“Neither House, during the Session of Congress, shall, without the Consent of the other, adjourn for more than three days, nor to any other Place than that in which the two Houses shall be sitting.” 
Neither the House nor the Senate had adjourned.  In order to get what he wanted (and now everything he wants toward his explicit mission of the total destruction of the United States of America) Obama continues to patently and illegally further shreds what was left of our US Constitution—now obviously not his.
The Obama/Holder “Operation Gunwalker: Fast & Furious” was and is directly attributable to Dictator-in-Chief Obama.  Since shortly after the C-span2 video was published in 2009, in my columns I have referred to Deputy Attorney General Ogden’s statement on said video that he was “directed” by “the president” to “take action” against the drug cartels.  This action began as “Operation Gunrunner” and its name was changed to the infamous one we know today.  However, the operation was never planned to fight against the drug cartels.  Instead, it was developed as a means to fight WITH the cartels against the US citizenry.  The operation was affected (and don’t forget “directed“) by Obama and his Attorney General Eric Holder to do one thing:  Remove legally-owned guns from US citizen under the Obama-manipulated premise that guns were being illegally sold to the drug cartels by Americans.

Note:  The only problem with this was/is that the Seller was the Obama government and the Buyer was/is the Sinaloa drug cartel leadership.  The Obama syndicate openly chose the “winner” in the Mexican drug wars (which have spread to and are now being fought in the USA) to be the Sinaloa Drug Cartel over the Los Zetas cartel.  Therefore, thousands of guns have been supplied by Obama, Holder, the ATF etc. to the Sinaloa gang.  All of the murders and mayhem created by Obama and his syndicate have been enacted as a false excuse/reason to remove guns from US citizens so that they would be enslaved more easily or exterminated without being able to fight back against their oppressors.  This is what ALL totalitarian plots have affected in world history and this is the reason Stalin and Mao were able to murder tens of millions of humans.  This—and the lies believed when the truth was too ‘scary’ and painful for the German people to accept—was the reason Hitler was able to round up Jews, place them in train cattle cars and take them to their executions…with little more than whimpers.
Obama announces plan to share military secrets with Russia.  This is another item that used to be called and prosecuted as Treason.  I wonder whatever happened to that concept
Today, too many still refuse to believe what’s happening in our country.  Instead, they choose to believe the lies that are being perpetrated by a now wholly antagonistic-to-the-people government—even though its actions belie its words.  Too many people still choose to believe the lofty although-proven-to-be-lies rhetoric that drips steadily and daily from the mouth of Dictator Obama and they ignore what he’s actually doing to destroy them.

The plain truth—no matter how uncomfortable or painful it may be—is that we have already lost our country to a band of thugs who have looted our treasury (that which all taxpayers used to own), burned our US Constitution and is in the process of decimating the rest of the USA at and on every level.  And the biggest problem is that some of us have allowed—even welcomed—it to happen.  The country that my ancestors fought and died to build has been annihilated.  The only question remaining is:  Are there real humans left who crave liberty, freedom and God enough who want to fight for and rebuild it?  Are there?


http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/print-friendly/43765


Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 11, 2012, 07:27:55 PM
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Look who Obama’s new czar is tied to… Cecilia Munoz previously worked with infamous list
http://kleinonline.wnd.com ^ | 1 10 2012 | Aaron Klein
Posted on January 11, 2012 9:04:24 AM EST by tutstar

Prior to her appointment yesterday as the next director of President Obama’s Domestic Policy Council, longtime immigration reform advocate Cecilia Muñoz served on the board of George Soros’ Open Society Institute.

Muñoz also chaired the board of directors of the Center for Community Change, or CCC, a Soros-funded community organizing initiative whose board boasts activists from ACORN, MoveOn.org as well as other notorious radical groups.

Muñoz is currently serving as the head of the White House office of intergovernmental affairs. She most recently worked for the National Council of la Raza, an open-borders group that lobbies for mass immigration and amnesty for illegal aliens.

The official White House statement announcing her new appointment yesterday noted Muñoz’s previous work for both the CCC and Soros’ Institute.

“Ms. Muñoz is the former Chair of the Board of Center for Community Change, and served on the U.S. Programs Board of the Open Society Institute,” the statement read.

(Excerpt) Read more at kleinonline.wnd.com ...

Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 11, 2012, 07:47:00 PM
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Obama Plays La Raza Card In Key Appointment
IBD Editorials ^ | January 11, 2012 | Editorial Staff
Posted on January 11, 2012 7:44:12 PM EST by Kaslin

Campaign 2012: By choosing to head his policy council with an open-borders advocate and former leader of the Hispanic activist group favoring amnesty, the president has signaled a divide-and-conquer re-election campaign .

In another move aimed at aiding his re-election, President Obama on Tuesday announced that Cecilia Munoz, a former senior vice president of the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), would replace Melody Barnes as head of his Domestic Policy Council.

Hispanics are a key part of the coalition Obama and a key part of his re-election strategy will no doubt be to portray Republicans and others who advocate border security and stronger immigration enforcement as racists. Munoz's appointment is a part of that strategy.

It's a strategy that includes suing states like Arizona over laws that in fact mirror federal law but which the feds refuse to enforce. Also part of the strategy is the Justice Department's targeting of Maricopa County, Ariz., Sheriff Joe Arpaio, accusing him of violating federal law and the Constitution in his department's handling of Hispanics.

Coming soon after the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case of Arizona's immigration and border enforcement law, SB1070, it smacked of retaliation.

The NCLR, whose name translates as "the race," is a tax-exempt nonprofit that describes itself as "the largest national Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States." It most recently led in vocal opposition against Arizona SB 1070, a law attacked by Attorney General Eric Holder as a discriminatory incarnation of profiling that usurped federal authority over immigration policy.

(Excerpt) Read more at news.investors.com ...
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 12, 2012, 02:26:56 PM
Book Depicts Cranky Obama On Baghdad Visit

Politics Buzz The then-candidate “didn't want to take pictures with any more soldiers.


http://www.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeedpolitics/book-depicts-cranky-obama-on-baghdad-visit




 
President Obama at a recent Pentagon briefing.

(Getty Images / SAUL LOEB)


.Michael Hastings' new book, The Operators, jabs at what could be a vulnerable spot for the Obama Administration, the president's relationship with the troops.

The book describes a visit to Baghdad:

After the talk, out of earshot from the soldiers and diplomats, he starts to complain. He starts to act very un-Obamalike, according to a U.S. embassy official
who helped organize the trip in Baghdad.

He’s asked to go out to take a few more pictures with soldiers and embassy staffers. He’s asked to sign copies of his book. “He didn’t want to take pictures with any more soldiers; he was complaining about it,” a State Department official tells me. “Look, I was excited to meet him. I wanted to like him. Let’s just say the scales fell from my eyes after I did. These are people over here who’ve been fighting the war, or working every day for the war effort, and he didn’t want to take fucking pictures with them?"












F U - THUGBAMA AND EVERY PIECE OF SHIT VOTING FOR YOU!   
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 13, 2012, 09:49:45 AM
Tax dollars backing some "risky" energy projects
By Sharyl Attkisson .Add Comment Have Your Say




(CBS News)  WASHINGTON - Solar panel maker Solyndra received a $528 million Energy Department loan in 2009 - and  went bankrupt last year. The government's risky investment strategy didn't stop there, as a CBS News investigation has uncovered a pattern of cases of the government pouring your tax dollars into clean energy.


Take Beacon Power -- a green energy storage company. We were surprised to learn exactly what the Energy Department knew before committing $43 million of your tax dollars.


Documents obtained by CBS News show Standard and Poor's had confidentially given the project a dismal outlook of "CCC-plus."


Read the documents


Asked whether he'd put his personal money into Beacon, economist Peter Morici replied, "Not on purpose."


"It's, it is a junk bond," Morici said. "But it's not even a good junk bond. It's well below investment grade."


Was the Energy Department investing tax dollars in something that's not even a good junk bond? Morici says yes.


"This level of bond has about a 70 percent chance of failing in the long term," he said.


In fact, Beacon did go bankrupt two months ago and it's unclear whether taxpayers will get all their money back. And the feds made other loans when public documents indicate they should have known they could be throwing good money after bad.


It's been four months since the FBI raided bankrupt Solyndra. It received a half-billion in tax dollars and became a political lightning rod, with Republicans claiming it was a politically motivated investment.


CBS News counted 12 clean energy companies that are having trouble after collectively being approved for more than $6.5 billion in federal assistance. Five have filed for bankruptcy: The junk bond-rated Beacon, Evergreen Solar, SpectraWatt, AES' subsidiary Eastern Energy and Solyndra.


Others are also struggling with potential problems. Nevada Geothermal -- a home state project personally endorsed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid --  warns of multiple potential defaults in new SEC filings reviewed by CBS News. It was already having trouble paying the bills when it received $98.5 million in Energy Department loan guarantees.


SunPower landed a deal linked to a $1.2 billion loan guarantee last fall, after a French oil company took it over. On its last financial statement, SunPower owed more than it was worth. On its last financial statement, SunPower owed more than it was worth. SunPower's role is to design, build and initially operate and maintain the California Valley Solar Ranch Project that's the subject of the loan guarantee.


First Solar was the biggest S&P 500 loser in 2011 and its CEO was cut loose - even as taxpayers were forced to back a whopping $3 billion in company loans.


Nobody from the Energy Department would agree to an interview. Last November at a hearing on Solyndra, Energy Secretary Steven Chu strongly defended the government's attempts to bolster America's clean energy prospects. "In the coming decades, the clean energy sector is expected to grow by hundreds of billions of dollars," Chu said. "We are in a fierce global race to capture this market."


Economist Morici says even somebody as smart as Secretary Chu -- an award-winning scientist -- shouldn't be playing "venture capitalist" with tax dollars. "Tasking a Nobel Prize mathematician to make investments for the U.S. government is like asking the manager of the New York Yankees to be general in charge of America's troops in Afghanistan," Morici said. "It's that absurd."


Does the government believe that this kind of economic support to these companies is a success story? Watch the video above for Charlie Rose's discussion with Sharyl Attkisson about her investigation.


http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505263_162-57358484/tax-dollars-backing-some-risky-energy-projects

Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 13, 2012, 10:36:48 AM
Pro forma confusion at White House
← return to Inside Politics

By Stephen Dinan
January 13, 2012, 11:27AM

http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/inside-politics/2012/jan/13/pro-forma-confusion-white-house




The White House seemed confused over which chamber it is dealing with when it comes to the controversial recess appointments President Obama made last week.

Twice on Thursday — in a Twitter message and again in the daily press briefing — officials pointed to the House being out of session.

"I believe on the House majority leader’s website today it said the House was not in recess — I mean, not in session," said Jay Carney, the press secretary.

The only problem with that is that the House is irrelevant to recess appointments. The only question that matters is whether the Senate is in session.

And on that, there are several key tests, with strong constitutional arguments on both sides of the controversy.

Here are the White House's best arguments in favor of Mr. Obama's recess appointments:

— The Senate is meeting every three days in "pro forma" sessions under a specific order that no business be conducted. And with most senators back home, the White House says they cannot properly be consulted, thus they cannot fulfill their advise and consent role on nominations — triggering the president's appointment powers outlined in the Constitution.

"If the Senate can avoid a 'Recess of the Senate' under the clause by having a single member 'gavel in' before an empty chamber, then the Senate can preclude the president from making recess appointments even when, as a practical matter, it is unavailable to fulfill its constitutional role in the appointment process for a significant period of time," the Justice Department said in a new legal brief written after Mr. Obama's appointments, and released Thursday.

— The White House also argues that the president has the power to determine when the Senate is in session and when it is not.

Here are the arguments that could cut both ways:

— Senators may not introduce legislation during pro forma sessions, unless there is unanimous consent by all senators to do so.

— During pro forma sessions, the Senate can receive messages from the president, though they are not printed in the Congressional Record until the full chamber reconvenes, which sends mixed signals about how open the Senate is for business.

And here are the best arguments against the president's interpretation:

— The courts generally have left each branch to determine its own rules, which cuts against the Justice Department's argument that Mr. Obama can determine when the Senate is in session and when it is not. And the Senate has considered pro forma sessions to be "in session" for purposes of blocking recess appointments. In fact, Democrats used the same three-day pro forma meetings to block  Republican President George W. Bush from making recess appointments in 2007 and 2008. Mr. Obama was in the Senate at the time.

— While bills cannot pass during pro forma sessions unless there is unanimous consent, but that happened twice last year — on both a Federal Aviation Administration bill and again in December on the two-month payroll tax cut. Both times Mr. Obama signed the legislation into law, signaling that a pro forma session doesn't rule out any action, it just constrains it under normal circumstances.

— If the Senate goes out of session for more than 30 days during a Congress, all unconfirmed nominations are automatically returned to the White House under Senate rules. That happened earlier in Mr. Obama's term, but did not happen now, signaling that the Senate considers itself still in continuous session.

It's worth noting that the 2010 law that set up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said the director only gets invested with powers once he is confirmed by the Senate. That is striking language that is also likely to prompt a court challenge once Richard Cordray, the man Mr. Obama installed last week, makes his first decision.

Asked about that on Thursday, Mr. Carney didn't answer directly, instead pointing to the House being out of session.















LMFAO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 16, 2012, 07:01:16 PM
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New space-arms control initiative draws concern
Washington Times ^ | 1/16/12 | Bill Gertz




The Obama administration is launching a new space arms-control initiative that critics say will lead to restrictions on U.S. military activities in space, a key U.S. strategic war-fighting advantage. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is expected to announce the initiative as early as Tuesday. The plan will be built on work contained in a European Union draft code of conduct for space that the Pentagon and State Department have criticized as too restrictive. “The United States has decided to enter into formal consultations and negotiations with the European Union

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Shockwave on January 17, 2012, 10:19:50 AM
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New space-arms control initiative draws concern
Washington Times ^ | 1/16/12 | Bill Gertz

The Obama administration is launching a new space arms-control initiative that critics say will lead to restrictions on U.S. military activities in space, a key U.S. strategic war-fighting advantage. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is expected to announce the initiative as early as Tuesday. The plan will be built on work contained in a European Union draft code of conduct for space that the Pentagon and State Department have criticized as too restrictive. “The United States has decided to enter into formal consultations and negotiations with the European Union

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...

So we base our rules on the EU now huh?
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 17, 2012, 10:22:39 AM
Bill Gertz is a well respected reporter and author of many books.   

He is not some crack pot. 
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 17, 2012, 11:36:56 AM
Obama: I'm going to Disney World
Chicago Tribune ^ | 1/17/12 | Mark K. Matthews, Jason Garcia and Sara K. Clarke




WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama will visit Walt Disney World during a planned trip to Orlando on Thursday, according to a White House aide. There, he will "unveil a strategy that will significantly help boost tourism and travel," the aide added. Details on that strategy were not disclosed. But it would be hard for Obama to pick a locale that's better known than Disney for a tourism announcement. The resort giant in Orlando has four theme parks that collectively draw more than 45 million visitors a year. It doesn't appear, however, that he'll get much love from local politicians. Aides to U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson said the Florida Democrat was unlikely to attend because the office "got word too late" of the visit and had meetings planned in other parts of the state. And Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer is scheduled to be in Washington that day for a meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors. While the details of the announcement are still unknown, there's one topic at the top of the political wish list for Central Florida's tourism industry: Visa reform. The tourism industry has been pushing Congress and Obama to make it easier for visitors from emerging nations such as Brazil, India and China to come to the U.S. as tourists. In Brazil, where citizens have a reputation for loving Orlando's theme parks, there are four consulate offices to conduct the required in-person interviews for people who want a visa to visit the U.S. That means families could have to travel several hundred miles before they are even approved to travel to the U.S. But a recent Congressional appropriations bill gave the Secretary of State the authority to develop a pilot program to use videoconferencing to conduct remote visa interviews for leisure and business visitors.


(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------





lol   Micky Mouse POTUS at it again.   
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 17, 2012, 01:54:26 PM
The fight against user fees: Obama to tax every private aircraft flight $100
AOPA ^ | 1/17/12 | Brown




The general aviation community has fought user fees many times before—and won. Now, AOPA and a united front of aviation groups are girding for a new and familiar fight.

A proposal for a $100-per-flight user fee resurfaced Jan. 13 in a response to a petition on the White House’s “We the People” website. The aviation community is watching to see if the proposal laid out in the Office of Management and Budget’s response makes it into the president’s budget, expected to be released in February—and preparing for the possibility that it does.

The proposal is a reiteration of one that has appeared in a previous budget and a deficit-reduction proposal from the Obama administration. Congress rejected both proposals. With support among members of Congress, across a range of aviation groups, and from members, AOPA is working to make sure this proposal meets a similar end.

If the proposal makes it into the upcoming budget, opponents of user fees in Congress will have a chance to stop it. Opposition to the fees has been strong in Congress in recent years. A bipartisan group in Congress urged the president not to include the proposal in last year’s budget; more recently, a large group of members of Congress urged the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction to reject the $100-per-flight fee. AOPA works to educate lawmakers about the benefits of general aviation and the dangers of introducing a new system of user fees.


(Excerpt) Read more at aopa.org ...


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 18, 2012, 06:27:00 PM
Obama plan seen ending U.S. military edge in space
Special to WorldTribune.com
By Bill Gertz, Times247.com
The Obama administration is launching a new space arms-control initiative that critics say will lead to restrictions on U.S. military activities in space, a key U.S. strategic war-fighting advantage.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is expected to announce the initiative as early as Tuesday. The plan will be built on work contained in a European Union draft code of conduct for space that the Pentagon and State Department have criticized as too restrictive.

“The United States has decided to enter into formal consultations and negotiations with the European Union and other spacefaring nations to develop an International Code of Conduct,” said an administration official familiar with the announcement.

The U.S. government has rejected space-arms talks promoted by Russia and China at the United Nations as a covert attempt to limit U.S. military space operations, but the administration official called the EU draft code an improvement.

“We believe the European Union’s draft Code of Conduct is a solid foundation for future negotiations on reaching a consensus international code,” the administration official said, noting that signing a code is not imminent and that negotiations are expected to continue throughout this year and possibly into next year.
The comments contradict those of Ellen Tauscher, undersecretary of state for international security and arms control, who told reporters last week that the U.S. had rejected a draft EU code of conduct as “too restrictive.”
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Shockwave on January 18, 2012, 06:40:20 PM
Obama plan seen ending U.S. military edge in space
Special to WorldTribune.com
By Bill Gertz, Times247.com
The Obama administration is launching a new space arms-control initiative that critics say will lead to restrictions on U.S. military activities in space, a key U.S. strategic war-fighting advantage.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is expected to announce the initiative as early as Tuesday. The plan will be built on work contained in a European Union draft code of conduct for space that the Pentagon and State Department have criticized as too restrictive.

“The United States has decided to enter into formal consultations and negotiations with the European Union and other spacefaring nations to develop an International Code of Conduct,” said an administration official familiar with the announcement.

The U.S. government has rejected space-arms talks promoted by Russia and China at the United Nations as a covert attempt to limit U.S. military space operations, but the administration official called the EU draft code an improvement.

“We believe the European Union’s draft Code of Conduct is a solid foundation for future negotiations on reaching a consensus international code,” the administration official said, noting that signing a code is not imminent and that negotiations are expected to continue throughout this year and possibly into next year.
The comments contradict those of Ellen Tauscher, undersecretary of state for international security and arms control, who told reporters last week that the U.S. had rejected a draft EU code of conduct as “too restrictive.”
Lol.
Yeah, we'll agree to the international space law the EU drafts, and we'll be the only superpower that abides by it, you watch.
Im calling it right now.
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 19, 2012, 07:54:19 PM
Details of Obama’s Letter to Iran Released: Obama Says “US Will Not Take Hostile Action Against
The Gateway Pundit ^ | 1/19/12 | Jim Hoft
Posted on January 19, 2012 6:26:57 PM EST by Nachum

Iranian regime supporters carried pictures of Barack Obama and shouted “Death to America” at the funeral procession of assassinated nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan last week.

The Iranian regime released details of Barack Obama’s letter to the Islamic state. Obama told the regime that the US will not take hostile against against Iran. Iranian Mehr News reported:

A number of Iranian officials have released the details of the letter that U.S. President Barack Obama recently sent to Tehran. The New York Times, citing U.S. government officials, wrote on January 12 that the Obama administration had sent a message to Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei warning that closing the Strait of Hormuz is a “red line” that would provoke a response by the United States.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Ramin Mehmanparast said on January 15 that U.S. officials had sent a message on the Strait of Hormuz to the Islamic Republic through three officials, noting, “Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, delivered a letter to Mohammad Khazaii, the Islamic Republic of Iran’s ambassador (to the UN). The Swiss ambassador to Tehran (Livia Leu Agosti) also conveyed the message, and Jalal Talabani, the Iraqi president, conveyed the message to officials of the Islamic Republic of Iran as well.”

Obama has called for negotiations

(Excerpt) Read more at thegatewaypundit.com ...
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 19, 2012, 08:07:43 PM
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Obama Will Give Missile Tech To Russia Despite Law
The Western Center for Journalism ^ | January 19, 2012 | Craig Covello
Posted on January 19, 2012 11:14:06 PM EST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks

It appears that Barack Obama has again ignored the rule of law by signing a defense appropriations bill that prohibits him sharing vital United States leading-edge strategic US missile technology with Russia, yet he has told both houses of Congress that he plans to share the US missile technology anyway. Why is this important? Because it goes light-years beyond partisan politics and into an area where our national defense will be put at unreasonable risk. It is believed that the Russians will pass this technology onto China, Iran and North Korea.

I find it bitterly ironic that this president pushes an agenda of excessive government regulation and oversight under the guise of consumer safety. Virtually everything in our homes, offices and automobiles is regulated to some extent by federal bureaucracy. Yet at the same time, he’s subjecting tens of millions of American lives to unreasonable risk by unilaterally giving away our deepest US missile technology to nations hostile to American interests.

So here’s the bottom line. There are those of us who would vote for a Republican candidate because we do not believe in the agenda of this administration. Then there are those of us who would vote again for Barack Obama under the belief that he will take care of us financially by redistributing wealth so that everyone can be more or less equal regardless of skills, talent or work ethic. There’s just one problem. If you take away the United States military’s ability to protect this great nation from a nuclear missile launched from North Korea or even someday Iran, then the concept of federal cradle-to-grave protection and enablement probably loses most of its meaning, doesn’t it?

If you’re concerned, then you might want to watch this video produced by Dick Morris. I think Dick sums it up best when he says that this president

“has defined the opinion of both houses of Congress, both political parties, in pursuit of some phantom agenda of getting the Russians to like us a little bit more…. I think we will beat this guy in November, but we may not have a country by then.”

Admittedly, that last statement was designed to be dramatic in order to get our attention, but it underscores what I’ve been writing about for the last three years. We have a President of the United States who believes he’s more of a king than a servant of the people. And letting one man, regardless of who he is, make decisions and dictate unilaterally to the other 300 million of us is not only unsettling and frustrating, it’s extremely dangerous. The framers of the Constitution knew that all too well. Unfortunately, too many Americans have little understanding of the timeless principles that founded this country.

And if you don’t understand the value of what you have, history has shown that you are sure to lose it.

OBAMA GIVES DEFENSE SECRETS TO OUR ENEMIES! DICK MORRIS TV: LUNCH ALERT!

TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Foreign Affairs; Government; News/Current Events; Click to Add Topic
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 20, 2012, 12:21:39 PM
Obama Pushes Hard to Protect Big Banks from Fraud Prosecutions ... But We Can Stop Him
Submitted by George Washington on 01/20/2012 12:07 -0500





Countrywide Florida Foreclosures Housing Prices Obama Administration recovery South Carolina


As we've noted for years, the entire strategy of Washington towards the economy is to cover up the fraud which caused the financial crisis ... even though prosecuting fraud and re-establishing the rule of law is the only way to get out of this depression.

One major front in Washington's cover-up effort has been to settle fraud cases with the big banks for pennies on the dollar. This is a backdoor bailout for the banks, encourages them to commit more fraud, and fails to plug the basic holes in the economy which are preventing a recovery.

Why are we bringing this up now?

Because Obama is making a giant push to pressure the states attorneys general to settle all of their mortgage-related fraud claims against the banks for pennies on the dollar.

Yves Smith - who has an ear to the ground on this - warns that a settlement which hurts consumers and the economy will happen very quickly if people don't raise a ruckus.

Smith is asking people to call their state attorney general (not their elected reps) to oppose the settlement:

Here are some of the reasons to oppose a settlement:

 

1. There have been virtually no investigations, and the Administration has engaged in cover-ups rather than trying to get to the bottom of the mortgage mess

 

2. The big argument made in favor of the deal, that it will help borrowers, is patently false. Remember, Countrywide entered into a deal with attorney generals just like this, where they agreed to do mods in return for a settlement on abuses. Guess what? They didn’t do the mods. To add insult to injury, they actually abused homeowners who should have gotten mods. Nevada AG is suing Countrywide now over its failure to comply with the terms of its settlement. And even if some mods miraculously did get done, the settlement is designed to have banks hit a dollar amount. That means they will focus on the biggest loans, which means any relief will go to a comparatively small number of people in (originally) big ticket houses.

 

3. The Administration has only one chance to get this right. Now you might argue that Team Obama has no intention of getting the mortgage mess right, but the tectonic plates suddenly seem to be moving in elite circles. The Fed realizes that housing is a BIG problem and has even started making noise about it. Yet Obama is moving forward with a plan cooked up in late 2010 that is completely out of whack with the urgency and severity of the problem. Note that this settlement will NOT stop private actions, such as borrowers fighting foreclosures. And we will continue to banks refuse to take losses and drag out foreclosures to maximize fees. That will lead to continued pressure on housing prices in many markets as buyers stay on the sidelines, fearful of buying before a large shadow inventory clears.

 

Leaving the AGs free to investigate and increase the pressure that is already building up in the system is the best chance we have to deal with widespread fraud.

 

The attorneys general really need your support. It helps them to hear that their constituents appreciate them standing up to the banks and the Obama administration.

 

PLEASE call them TODAY. Here is a list of phone numbers. If you can’t get through, send an e-mail.

 

Please also sign this petition from Campaign for America’s Future (it has some talking points if you need them for the AG calls). Note you can opt out of being put on their mailing list (I know that has been a sore point with some past petitions). I know it is futile to ping Obama, but they will collect the number of people who sign, and that will in turn bolster the dissident AGs.

 

Please call today. Unlike Congresscritters, who get a lot of constituent mail and phone calls, AGs get much less in the way of messages from state citizens, so your calls will make a difference.

Smith tells me that it is especially important for residents of California,  Virgina,  Texas, Florida and South Carolina to call their attorneys general and tell them that they need to stand firm in the face of pressure from Obama.

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http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/obama-pushes-hard-protect-big-banks-fraud-prosecutions-we-can-stop-him

Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 20, 2012, 12:40:21 PM
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/one-mexican-state-bordering-us-was-deadlier-all-afghanistan-last-year


Nice.   Under the Fast n Furious POTUS, the border is worse than ever.   

Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 20, 2012, 01:43:30 PM
71% of Obama’s 2012 Bundlers Have Visited the White House, 19% Received Jobs
Verum Serum ^ | 1/20/12 | John




The Center for Public Integrity released a new report on Obama’s 2012 bundlers yesterday:

Dozens of Obama’s elite donors — many of them wealthy business figures — have been appointed to advisory panels and commissions that can play a role in setting government policy. Others have been invited to a range of exclusive White House briefings, holiday parties and splashy social events.

And some have snagged lucrative government contracts that benefit their business interests or investment portfolios, a Center for Public Integrity investigation has found.

Here’s the breakdown:

At least 68 of 350 Obama bundlers for the 2012 election or their spouses have served in the administration, ranging from seats on advisory boards that tackle critical national issues such as economic growth, to ceremonial posts such as serving on the board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.


(Excerpt) Read more at verumserum.com ...


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Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 22, 2012, 06:02:14 AM
How odd that President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton couldn't make a final decision on the proposed Keystone XL pipeline by the Feb. 21 deadline set by congressional Republicans. TransCanada, which would use private investment to build the $7 billion project, filed its application for environmental approval in 2008. The State Department conducted exhaustive studies and approved the application in 2010 and again last year, apparently clearing the way for a pipeline to move oil from Canada's rich tar sand region of Alberta to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast. So now Obama decides against issuing a permit for the project because of "the arbitrary nature of a deadline that prevented the State Department from gathering the information necessary to approve the project and protect the American people." He previewed this disingenuous ruling last November when he cited environmental concerns in delaying final approval until after the 2012 election. That came shortly after environmentalists encircled the White House with a human chain to protest the pipeline. Obama clearly has his eye on the big prize: millions of campaign dollars and thousands of campaign volunteers from the environmental movement for the coming campaign.
Obama is angering another key part of his electoral supporters, the labor unions that desperately want the estimated 20,000 jobs the pipeline would create. But Big Labor is not as monolithic as most people think. For every construction worker, pipefitter and welder who would benefit from Keystone XL, there are many more unionists who are siding with Big Green so they can stay in the good graces of the White House and get the goodies that will be dispensed in a second Obama term. Never mind the benefits to the country that would accrue from the ancillary jobs created by the project and from the oil that would come from our steadfast friends to the north.

While Obama dithers on Keystone, America's chief energy competitors are making hay on the international energy market. Canadian officials have made it clear they will build a pipeline that will either go south to supply the United States or west to supply China. Officials in Beijing are probably cheering for Obama's supposed concern for the environment. The Chinese are also rapidly consolidating their status as Brazil's preferred partner in developing the South American company's rich offshore oil resources. And China's government-controlled energy industry is investing substantial sums in Canadian and U.S. exploration and drilling firms. It never hurts to own a substantial piece of your competitor's key industry.

Then there is Cuba, which just this week saw the arrival off its northern coast of the Chinese-built Scarabeo 9 drilling rig. The Spanish energy giant Repsol will use the Scarabeo 9 to drill wells located about 70 miles off the Florida Keys in the Gulf of Mexico in waters claimed by Cuba. Repsol is working in a partnership with Norway's Statoil and a unit of India's Oil and Natural Gas Corp. The Scarabeo 9 will also be used by Malaysia's Petronas, which has entered into a partnership with Russia's Gazprom Neft to drill at least one Gulf well in the Cuban waters. Quite a contrast to the Obama policy of putting virtually all U.S. offshore waters off-limits for energy production.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/editorials/2012/01/obama-plays-energy-politics-while-china-and-cuba-drill-wells/2119211#disqus_thread


Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 22, 2012, 08:10:00 PM
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Destroying America by Denying Access to Energy
Right Side News ^ | 1/22/2012 | Alan Caruba
Posted on January 22, 2012 10:07:36 AM EST by IbJensen

It is the crime of the century that America, home to some of the world’s greatest reserves of coal, natural gas and oil, is being deliberately destroyed by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of the Interior as they do everything in their power to restrict access and drive energy producers out of business.

It is common sense that a nation that cannot produce sufficient electricity to turn on its lights and power its manufacturing sector will be destroyed if current Obama administration regulations and actions continue. Our vital transportation sector and all others that utilize petroleum-based products will suffer, too.

While President Obama babbles about millionaires and billionaires, everyone will be impoverished by the loss of jobs and revenue our energy sector produces now and can produce in the future.

This isn’t an “energy policy.” It’s a “no-energy policy” and it is a guarantee of economic disaster.

Obama’s decision to reject a permit for Canada’s XL Keystone pipeline is just one example. It is a job-killer and a revenue-killer. There are thousands of pipelines serving America’s energy needs and the XL Keystone pipeline would ensure that Canada’s own vast energy reserves would flow to America. It is one of our key trade partners and Obama has slapped it in the face.

In early January, Ken Salazar, the Secretary of the Interior, announced a new 20-year, million-acre ban on uranium mining for federal lands in Arizona, despite the fact that these lands hold the highest-grade of known uranium deposits in the United States. It is an outrage that a new GOP-Congress will have to overturn if the nation is to be assured of sufficient uranium to power its nuclear plants and for weapons development. If the ban remains, these uranium resources would be inaccessible until 2023!

Tom Pyle, president of the Institute for Energy Research said that Salazar’s announcement “further compounds a man-made energy crisis that has been planned and executed in Washington, D.C.”

At the same time we are learning of enormous natural gas discoveries that can reduce our energy bills and turn sleeping little towns into boomtowns, environmental organizations have launched a vast propaganda campaign against “fracking”, a technology that has been safely used for more than fifty years. Their claims about dangers to the nation’s supply of fresh water are baseless. Their claims that fracking has caused earthquakes in Ohio are absurd.

Need it be said that the Environmental Protection Agency has turned its eyes on fracking and is working on a report due later this year that will likely call for harsh crackdowns on its use and more regulations to throttle the expansion of natural gas extraction?

The EPA has just released a report of those power plants that top the list of its regulation of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. There is no basis in science to justify the reduction of CO2. Indeed, since it is a gas on which all vegetation depends, much as oxygen is vital to all animal life, reducing it would impair great crop yields and healthier forests.

These regulations are based on the global warming hoax that blamed CO2 for warming the earth. That is utterly false. The Earth is currently in a perfectly natural cooling cycle and the climate of the Earth is almost entirely based on the Sun—solar radiation—along with the actions of oceans, clouds, and even volcanic activity that spews tons of particulates into the atmosphere.

Coal-fired power plants account for fifty percent of all the electricity generated in the United States. Fifty percent! And yet the EPA is determined to shut down dozens of them providing that vital factor in the lives of all Americans and the economy, nor does this take into account the billions that energy producers have spent to upgrade their technology to reduce emissions.

The Obama administration fuel economy agenda, a call for 54.5 miles per gallon ignores simple physics. There is a finite amount of energy a gallon of gas can generate. If you dilute it with ethanol as is currently required, you get even less mileage. The administration is trying to circumvent Congress by issuing standards based on regulating “greenhouse gas emissions”, but there is no need for this. It is a false argument. The Center for Automotive Research says that the proposed new standards would cause the retail price of average motor vehicles to increase by more than $11,000.

Americans and the nation’s future are being victimized by Obama administration policies. The 18th annual Index of Economic Freedom, was released on January 12th by The Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal, measures the many factors that contribute to the economic health of a nation—things like property rights, regulatory efficiency, open markets, free trade and labor policies.
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: 240 is Back on January 22, 2012, 08:13:27 PM
its funny how unsourced shit in a book is fact when it disses obama.

but when it disses palin or some other negligent idiot on the left?  then "we need more proof".

you have a handful of women all saying the same thing about cain "we need more proof".

But some dude selling a book "heard from someone anonymous that obama cries a lot" and suddenly we have gospel. 
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 22, 2012, 08:14:49 PM
its funny how unsourced shit in a book is fact when it disses obama.

but when it disses palin or some other negligent idiot on the left?  then "we need more proof".

you have a handful of women all saying the same thing about cain "we need more proof".

But some dude selling a book "heard from someone anonymous that obama cries a lot" and suddenly we have gospel. 


do you support Obama on the pipeline?   

f so - check this out


http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/video/keystone-calamity/1400506675001

Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: 240 is Back on January 22, 2012, 08:16:47 PM
no i disagree with obama on the pipelin, but mitt will veto it too.   presidents do what the saudis and opec says, you know this man.

bush was an oil man and never did domestic drilling.  you know why.  that won't change - accept it dog.
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 22, 2012, 08:18:31 PM
no i disagree with obama on the pipelin, but mitt will veto it too.   presidents do what the saudis and opec says, you know this man.

bush was an oil man and never did domestic drilling.  you know why.  that won't change - accept it dog.

newt said he is for the pipeline
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: 240 is Back on January 22, 2012, 08:20:32 PM
newt said he is for the pipeline

newt will say anything to be on the other side of obama.  i bet bush supported it in 2000 too.

once they get into office, they make up excuses not to drill.  ain't gonna change man.  Bush was an oil man and never touched it, despite 2 wars for energy needs. 

we ain't drilling, 33.  say it over and over.  we're stuck on mid east oil.
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 22, 2012, 08:21:48 PM
newt will say anything to be on the other side of obama.  i bet bush supported it in 2000 too.

once they get into office, they make up excuses not to drill.  ain't gonna change man.  Bush was an oil man and never touched it, despite 2 wars for energy needs. 

we ain't drilling, 33.  say it over and over.  we're stuck on mid east oil.


Aaaahhh - the Obama excuses continue.   
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: 240 is Back on January 22, 2012, 08:22:54 PM

Aaaahhh - the Obama excuses continue.   

i said i disagree with obama .  if you see that as an excuse, i dont know what to tell you.

no US prez is gonna go pissing off the mid east by drilling.  I bet you $5. you can pay me in 2016 when prez romney has made 5 excuses not to drill, dog.
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 22, 2012, 08:29:37 PM
i said i disagree with obama .  if you see that as an excuse, i dont know what to tell you.

no US prez is gonna go pissing off the mid east by drilling.  I bet you $5. you can pay me in 2016 when prez romney has made 5 excuses not to drill, dog.

Palin would have drilled - but you thugbamabots could care less.
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 22, 2012, 08:35:42 PM
She was running for President? When did this happen?

I do not think she would have drilled either... Things change one you get in the White House.

Is someone holding a gin to Obamas head that he needs to bow to the Saudi king? 
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: 240 is Back on January 22, 2012, 08:37:22 PM
Palin would have drilled - but you thugbamabots could care less.

no, she would not have.  'drill baby bill' was a clever sexual innuendo, ya doofus.  you did get that, right?

it's like is Vitter wore a vote, baby!' t-shirt.   ;)
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 22, 2012, 08:40:57 PM
Not that I'm aware of.

There are many philosophies on this middle east oil thing. The most compelling of which is that we can bleed them dry at 100 dollars a barrel and then charge them 500 dollars a barrel when they have none.

Is that correct? I don't know, but it sure sounds good.


$100 a barrel now is killing this nation, just like it helped spark the collapse of 2007
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 22, 2012, 08:44:10 PM
While we certainly aren't "recovered", the nation isn't exactly "dying" either.

If it were, wouldn't people like Mitt and Obama be losing lots of money? Yet, they are not.

even in communist Russia, there were those who prospered.  100 oil is decimating the middle class. 
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 22, 2012, 08:51:02 PM
Obama stuck us w the bill     e didn't save anything.  He handed the UAW a gift at taxpayer expense.


as far as Europe and oil - dude  W T F os wrong w you?   Europe is on the verge of collapse and extinction because of their taxes on oil, regulation, socialism, lack of social mobility caused by socialism, etc.
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 22, 2012, 08:57:52 PM
why didn't Ford need a bailout?   GM should have been allowed to go bankrupt , restructure, and rebuild according to existing laws, not bailed out and given to the unions. 

why should we attack TBTF for banks but act like it's ok for a car company?   either TBTF is ok or it's not. 
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 22, 2012, 09:05:23 PM
Blames goes solely on Obama for that one , no one else.   He rejected his own debt panel recs
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 23, 2012, 01:43:58 PM

White House to miss budget deadline for third year
← return to Inside Politics



The White House told Congress on Monday that its budget will be late this year, meaning President Obama once again will miss the deadline set in law.

Congressional officials said the president now will send up his budget on Feb. 13, which is a week later than the usual date. The law requires the budget be sent by the first Monday in February.

Late budgets are common in the first year of a presidency, but this move, in Mr. Obama's fourth year, drew fire from Congress. Rep. Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, called it an "abdication of leadership." Mr. Obama missed the mark in 2009 and 2011, though he was on time with his 2010 budget.

"This will mark the third time in four years the president has missed his statutory requirement to present a budget on time, while trillion-dollar budget deficits continue to mount," Mr. Ryan, Wisconsin Republican, said.

Tuesday, when Mr. Obama delivers his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress, also marks the 1,000th day since Congress passed a budget.

House Republicans last year powered a budget through their chamber, but Senate Democrats never put one on their chamber's floor. The last budget that passed was in 2009, which set the stage for the health care bill's passage in early 2010.

And a budget may not pass this year either. Overall spending levels for 2011 and 2012 already were set in the debt deal Mr. Obama and House Speaker John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican, agreed to last summer, meaning the toughest job of setting an overall discretionary spending ceiling already has been done.

The budget is the blueprint that governs the dozen annual spending bills Congress is supposed to pass to fund the basic operations of government.

"In this, the final year of his term, one would think he would be ready and eager to lay out his detailed plan for our nation's financial future," said Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee.

← return to Inside Politics


http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/inside-politics/2012/jan/23/white-house-miss-budget-deadline-third-year

Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 24, 2012, 10:57:52 AM
Obama Wants Another $100 Billion Bailout for Fannie, Freddie
Townhall.com ^ | January 24, 2012 | Mike Shedlock





Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have already cost US taxpayers over $200 billion. If Obama gets his way on mortgage writedowns, the GSEs estimate it would take another $100 billion.

Since such estimates are always overly-optimistic by a factor of 3 to 10, I estimate the cost to taxpayers would be $300 billion minimum.

Please consider Fannie, Freddie writedowns too costly: regulator


The regulator for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac told lawmakers that forcing the two mortgage firms to write down loan principal would require more than $100 billion in fresh taxpayer funds.

In a letter sent on Friday to the Republican and Democratic leaders of a House of Representatives government oversight panel, the Federal Housing Finance Agency explained why it has long opposed principal reductions for borrowers who owe more than their homes are worth.

It said it had determined that such reductions would be more costly for the two firms than allowing those troubled borrowers to default.

"Principal reduction never serves the long-term interest of the taxpayer when compared to foreclosure," FHFA's acting director, Edward DeMarco, wrote in the letter to lawmakers dated January 20.

About 22 percent of U.S. homes have negative equity totaling about $750 billion, according to CoreLogic.

"Given that any money spent on this endeavor would ultimately come from taxpayers and given that our analysis does not indicate a preservation of assets for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac substantial enough to offset costs, an expenditure of this nature at this time would, in my judgment, require congressional action," DeMarco said in the letter.

Another barrier to principal writedowns, aside from pushing losses at the two firms even further, DeMarco said, was the costs associated with new technology and training to servicers that would be needed to launch a program that offers principal forgiveness.

The Federal Reserve, in a white paper to Congress earlier this month, said write-downs "had the potential to decrease the probability of default" and "improve migration between labor markets."

However, the Fed stopped short of endorsing such an initiative and noted concern that writing down loan balances would create a moral hazard -- the concept that rescue efforts breed further behavior that exacerbates the existing problem -- and could prompt other borrowers to stop making timely loan payments.
Calculating the Maximum Cost

At least we know an approximate maximum cap. Negative equity totals $750 billion. Add in cost on implementing the program, graft, fraud, etc. and the cap (right now) is a conservative $760 billion or so. Factor in declining property values and a conservative cap is $800 billion or so.

Obama Seeks Vote-Buying Opportunity

Notice the ridiculous comment by the Fed: write-downs "had the potential to decrease the probability of default". Of course they do.

Write off the entire loan and there would be no chance of default. That does not mean it's a smart thing to do. Unless of course you are President Obama seeking to buy votes in November.
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 24, 2012, 12:19:40 PM
When is enough enough?

Why is he trying to save Frannie and Freddie?

I wouldn't give them a goddam dime.

its called buying votes.  It works well w democrat voters.   
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 26, 2012, 11:55:38 AM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-scheer/obamas-faux-populism-soun_b_1233095.html


even many libs are tired of BO stinking up the joint w his bad oder and shit stain speeches.   
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 26, 2012, 12:22:14 PM
Obama-backed electric car battery-maker files for bankruptcy [$118.5 million stimulus grant]
The Hill ^


Obama-backed electric car battery-maker files for bankruptcy By Andrew Restuccia - 01/26/12 11:55 AM ET

An Indiana-based energy-storage company, whose subsidiary received a $118.5 million stimulus grant from the Energy Department, filed for bankruptcy Thursday.

Ener1 is asking a federal bankruptcy court in New York to approve a plan to restructure the company’s debt and infuse $81 million in equity funding.

“This was a difficult, but necessary, decision for our company,” Ener1 CEO Alex Sorokin said in a news release. “We are extremely pleased to have the strong support of our primary investors and lenders to substantially reduce the company’s debt.”

The company said it hopes the plan will “support continued operation of Ener1’s subsidiaries and help ensure that the restructuring will not adversely impact their employees, customers and suppliers.”

The Energy Department in 2009 approved a $118.5 million stimulus grant for EnerDel, a subsidiary of the company that develops lithium-ion batteries used in electric vehicles. The company has so far spent $55 million of the federal funding.

“While it’s unfortunate that Ener1, the parent company, has entered a restructuring process, the new infusion of $80 million in private capital demonstrates that the technology has merit,” Energy Department spokeswoman Jen Stutsman said in a statement.

“The restructuring is not expected to impact EnerDel’s operations and the company has made clear that they do not expect to reduce employment at the site.”

EnerDel has received support from Republicans, including more than $4 million in federal grants under the George W. Bush administration.

The Obama administration's grant was part of a broader program aimed at promoting the development of electric-vehicle battery technology.

President Obama touted the program in his State of the Union address this year.

“In three years, our partnership with the private sector has already positioned America to be the world’s leading manufacturer of high-tech batteries,” he said.

At the time, EnerDel said the grant would help the company double its production capacity and create 1,700 jobs. But the company has faced major financial problems in recent months.

Ener1’s decision to file for bankruptcy will likely draw the attention of House Republicans, who are investigating the bankruptcy of Solyndra, the solar panel maker that received a $535 million Energy Department loan guarantee in 2009.

The GOP has pummeled the White House over Solyndra, raising broader concerns about the administration’s investments in clean-energy companies.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 26, 2012, 01:45:30 PM
Obama admin says new forest rules stress science
Associated Press ^ | Thursday, January 26, 2012 2:20 PM EST | MATTHEW DALY

Posted on Thursday, January 26, 2012 3:12:44 PM by Hunton Peck

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration says new rules to manage nearly 200 million acres of national forests will protect watersheds and wildlife while promoting uses ranging from recreation to logging.

The new rules, to replace guidelines thrown out by a federal court in 2009, are set to take effect in early March. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced the rule change on Thursday.

Vilsack said in an interview that the rules reflect more than 300,000 comments received since a draft plan was released last year. The new rules strengthen a requirement that decisions be based on the best available science and recognize that forests are used for a variety of purposes, Vilsack said.

"I think it's a solid rule and done in a collaborative, open and transparent way," he said.

***

Tom Partin, president of the American Forest Resource Council, a timber industry group, said his members will review the final rule to see if it follows a federal rule to manage forests for a diversity of plants and animals — not in a manner that places a single use or species above all else.

Jane Danowitz, U.S. public lands director for the Pew Environment Group, said national forests are the source of drinking water for one in three Americans, are home to fish and other wildlife and are an economic engine for local communities across the West.

"Faced with unprecedented threats from industrial development, these national forests need strong national protections," she said, adding that the new framework for forest management appears to reflect comments from scientists, the business community and conservation advocates.

"The plan now has stronger safeguards than what was originally proposed. That said, the true test of this plan will be how it's implemented on the ground," Danowitz said.


(Excerpt) Read more at centurylink.net ...


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Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 29, 2012, 11:31:52 AM
Obama Administration Offers $75,000 Grants to Sign Up More Food Stamp Recipients

by Wynton Hall




Over the last three years, the number of Americans on food stamps has skyrocketed by two-thirds and stands at a record-high 46 million citizens, or one out of every seven people in the United States.  Despite the historic rise in food stamp use, however, the Obama Administration believes not enough people are receiving food stamps who should be and is offering $75,000 grants to groups who devise “effective strategies” to “increase program participation” among those who have yet to sign up.



The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s website singles out Hispanics and elderly Americans as groups who often fail to enroll in the food stamp program (officially known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP) and says  that one of the contributing factors that must be overcome to get more people to sign up for SNAP benefits is individual “pride”:

There are many reasons why eligible people, including seniors and Hispanics, do not participate in the SNAP. These include unawareness of eligibility, confusion about program rules and requirements, a complex application process, and a lack of transportation and pride.

To reduce these “barriers” to food stamp enrollment, the Department of Agriculture offers non-profit groups the chance to receive $75,000 grants for projects designed to boost food stamp participation among those who are eligible but have yet to sign up.  The Department of Agriculture believes that the SNAP program is “severely underutilized” and says that 33 percent more Americans who are eligible to receive food stamps have yet to apply, thus the need to offer federal grants to sign more citizens up.


President Obama’s Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack has also argued that food stamps are an effective form of economic stimulus that puts “people to work” because each time food stamps are used at a grocery store “someone’s got to stock it, shelve it, package it, process it, ship it–all of those are jobs.”



And indeed, the SNAP Outreach Grant program likewise repeats the claim:

Communities benefit from the economic impact of food stamp redemption in local stores. Every dollar of new food stamp benefits generates a total of $1.84 in community spending.

Critics, however, find that line of logic unconvincing and say that is like arguing that car theft provides “economic stimulus” because it generates work for window repair shops, car radio stores, and police officers.

The Department of Agriculture’s website lists the 2001 through 2009 SNAP Outreach Grant recipients but offers no data for 2010 or 2011.  Of the years listed, the highest recorded total grant allocation occurred in 2002 when $5,046,915 in grants were allocated.

Given the historic rise in the number of Americans now receiving food stamps over the last three years, one might assume that a program to enroll more citizens in the SNAP program is no longer needed.  However, according to page 27 of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s 2010-2015 Strategic Plan, the Obama Administration lists as one of its goals increasing SNAP participation by 2015 to a target 75 percent of all eligible Americans from the 2007 baseline of 65.8 percent. The strategic plan says it will accomplish the Administration’s goal through “aggressive and creative outreach, customer service improvements, earned media activities, demonstration projects, and research and analysis to identify reasons for and potential solutions to participation gaps.”

Republicans, however, contend that taxpayer spending on the food stamp program has doubled under President Barack Obama and will reach $89 billion in 2012.  Furthermore, they believe the program now suffers from serious fraud, abuse, and a lack of proper oversight.



On January 9th, the Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) sent a letter to Secretary Tom Vilsack requesting a full report on the Agriculture Department’s oversight efforts.  And last year, the Wall Street Journal declared that under President Obama a “food stamp crime wave” was rampant in America.

Still, thus far, the Obama Administration has decided to continue offering cash grants through the SNAP Outreach Grant program and plans to pursue its stated strategic plan of increasing food stamp enrollment through 2015.


http://biggovernment.com/whall/2012/01/29/obama-administration-offers-75000-grants-to-sign-up-more-food-stamp-recipients








DISGUSTING!!!!
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 31, 2012, 07:54:49 AM
Congressional Budget Office reports another $1 trillion deficit
Politico ^ | 31 Jan 2012 | DAVID ROGERS




The government faces a fourth year of trillion-plus deficits in 2012, according to new projections released Tuesday—numbers which also show little relief in the future unless Washington comes to grips with needed changes in its tax and spending policies.

Like Aunt Cassandra coming down from the attic, the Congressional Budget Office steps square into the 2012 campaign season with the 147-page report which might have been subtitled “It’s not just the economy stupid, it’s also the debt.”

The $1.079 trillion deficit now projected for this fiscal year ending Sept. 30 is actually worse than what CBO had predicted in August. And to punch home its message, the non-partisan agency outlines an especially grim scenario in which Congress not only extends all the current tax cuts but pulls the plug on the $1.2 trillion in sequester set in motion by the Budget Control Act last summer.

Under this scenario—which can’t be ruled out politically—deficits would stubbornly hover just under $1 trillion through 2017 adding another $4.7 trillion altogether to the mounting federal debt.

Under the more prudent—and many would say unrealistic scenario of ending tax breaks and implementing cuts—the cumulative deficits would be $1.72 trillion or $3 trillion less from 2013-2017. But even this path comes with a warning from CBO: that debt service costs are already on the rise and will command a ever greater share of the annual budget.

“The federal budget remains out of balance throughout the decade,” the report reads. “The resulting accumulation of debt, along with rising interest rates, drives up the cost of financing that debt; in CBO’s projections, net interest costs grow significantly from 1.4 percent of GDP this year to 2.5 percent in 2022.”


(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...




Great Job obama! 
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: garebear on January 31, 2012, 08:35:19 AM
Still out of work, huh?

Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 31, 2012, 11:09:44 AM
CBO: Taxes Will ‘Shoot Up by More Than 30 Percent’ Over Next 2 Years
CNSNews ^



CBO: Taxes Will ‘Shoot Up by More Than 30 Percent’ Over Next 2 Years By Terence P. Jeffrey January 31, 2012

(CNSNews.com) - The amount of money the federal government takes out of the U.S. economy in taxes will increase by more than 30 percent between 2012 and 2014, according to the Budget and Economic Outlook published today by the CBO.

At the same time, according to CBO, the economy will remain sluggish, partly because of higher taxes.

“In particular, between 2012 and 2014, revenues in CBO’s baseline shoot up by more than 30 percent,” said CBO, “mostly because of the recent or scheduled expirations of tax provisions, such as those that lower income tax rates and limit the reach of the alternative minimum tax (AMT), and the imposition of new taxes, fees, and penalties that are scheduled to go into effect.”

The U.S. economy, CBO projects, will perform “below its potential” for another six years and unemployment will remain above 7 percent for another three.

“The pace of the economic recovery has been slow since the recession ended in June 2009, and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) expects that, under current laws governing taxes and spending, the economy will continue to grow at a sluggish pace over the next two years,” said CBO. “That pace of growth partly reflects the dampening effect on economic activity from the higher tax rates and curbs on spending scheduled to occur this year and especially next. Although CBO projects that growth will pick up after 2013, the agency expects that the economy’s output will remain below its potential until 2018 and that the unemployment rate will remain above 7 percent until 2015.”


(Excerpt) Read more at cnsnews.com ...
 
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 01, 2012, 10:03:15 AM
Obama’s Latest Mortgage Refi Program: Wealth Redistribution
By Any Other Name
Confounded Interest ^ | 02/01/2012 | Anthony B. Sanders



President Obama is in Fairfax Virginia today at 11am announcing his new mortgage refinancing program. The program is meant to compliment his already existing HARP 2.0 program for borrowers whose loans are not held or insured by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. Rather, it is meant to allow mortgage refinancing to 1 out of 3 borrowers who are not eligible for HARP 2.0 which would be an estimated 3.5 million homeowners. That is on top of the anticipated 11 million borrowers who could refinance their loans through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The estimate price tag is $5-10 billion. Here is a copy of his speech: housing fact sheet 2-1 FINAL for release

The program would target FHA insured loans. The good news is that it would be relatively easing for the FHA to modify their existing platform for such an undertaking. The bad news is that the FHA is listing badly and is likely to ask for a bailout from Congress. At the end of September, the FHA insurance fund (MMI) guaranteed nearly $1.1 trillion in mortgages with just $1.2 billion as a cushion for unanticipated losses. Therefore, the Administration is proposing a bank tax to pay for the $5-10 billion price tag rather than have the FHA MMI fund eat the cost.

To qualify for the program, homeowners 1) would have to be current on their last six mortgage payments and 2) have no more than one delinquency in the previous six months. The program would be open to owner occupants and borrowers with a minimum credit score of 580. Loans that exceed FHA limits, which range from $271,050 to $729,750, depending on local home prices, are not be eligible (bear in mind that Congress kept the FHA’s conforming loan limit at $729,750 while lowering Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s CLL). To simplify the application process, lenders would have to confirm employment but little else. Homeowners who are deeply underwater would be eligible, but lenders would have to write down the loan balance to 140% of the value of the home.

Will It Work?

Bear in mind that this proposal is a variant of the HARP 2.0 program which is a wealth redistribution from MBS investors and taxpayers to the borrowers. So for every dollar that is allocated towards reducing interest and principal there is a dollar lost to MBS investors and taxpayers. Nothing is free.

So, will a wealth redistribution of $5-10 billion revive the housing market? It is highly doubtful. Will it lower defaults? It will not lower defaults in any meaningful way. To be sure, the borrowers that receive the lower interest rates will be happy, but they should ask their neighbors if they want to pay for it.

Wealth Redistribution By Any Other Name

It just seems to me to be wealth redistribution with minimal effects on the housing market or loan defaults. Since it is a wealth redistribution, it is like taking money from one pocket and putting it in another and thinking you are suddenly wealthier.

The bank tax will simply get passed through to consumers in the form of higher fees. Apparently, the Administration didn’t learn anything from the transfer fee fiasco of the Durbin Amendment. Like in Jurassic Park, “Markets will find a way” to pass the additional costs on to consumers. And is it “fair” to bank customers to pay higher fees so 3.5 million borrowers receive lower interest payments?

The bank tax is likely a non-starter in the House of Representatives. Is there another source of funds available? How about the unused TARP funds? But regardless of how this is funded, it makes no economic sense.

The Negative Signal of Chronic Intervention

But the big issue is the signal it sends to investors that this Administration will change the rules whenever it is in their best interest and that is not good for the market. Risk premiums will rise in the MBS space (perhaps they already did!) and this will force The Fed to intervene with MORE Agency MBS purchases to lower rates. Ah, unintended consequences!

Overall, a would rank it is a political move and bad economic policy.

Remember Chaos Theory from Jurassic Park? Here is President Obama trying to influence a T-Rex (the housing market) with a flare. It didn’t work too well other than momentary distraction of a large lizard.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 01, 2012, 10:24:25 AM
Obama continues ban on importation of 600,000 historical, collectible M1 Carbine rifles;
Buckeye Firerams Association ^ | 31 January, 2012 | Chad D. Baus




The Korea Times is reporting that while it has will allow 86,000 historical M1 Garand rifles to be imported from South Korea, the Obama administration continues to block the importation of some 600,000 M1 Carbines because "they come with a magazine that can carry multiple rounds."

From the article:


Washington has agreed to allow the importation of M1 Garand rifles from Seoul, reversing its earlier decision to ban the shipping of the weapon used by South Korean and U.S. soldiers during the 1950-53 Korean War, a senior defense official said Wednesday.
"The U.S. government approved the imports of some 86,000 of the rifles," said Lee Sun-chul, deputy defense minister for force and resources management.

"The historic firearms are expected to be sold to American Korean War veterans and their families in time for the 62nd anniversary of the Korean War, which falls on June 25 this year."

Kim Mi-sung, an official of the force and resources management office, said the defense ministry received an approval letter from the United States on Sept. 2 last year that stated Washington agreed to allow the importation of the M1s.

She noted that the U.S. government, however, rejected Seoul’s proposal to export some 600,000 M1 Carbines, which were also used in the Korean War, as they come with a magazine that can carry multiple rounds unlike the Garands.

This latest development comes more than 16 months after Fox News first reported that Obama had banned the importation of the vintage, collectible rifles. At the time, a State Department spokesman told reporters the administration's decision was based on concerns that the guns could "potentially be exploited by individuals seeking firearms for illicit purposes."

When the ban was first announced, Dennis Henigan of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence said "guns that can take high-capacity magazines are a threat to public safety," said "Even though they are old, these guns could deliver a great amount of firepower. So I think the Obama administration's concerns are well-taken."

Ironically, the "firepower," as Henigan calls it, of the M1 Garand, which is chambered in .30-06 Springfield, is far stronger than that of the reduced-power .30 caliber cartridge used in the banned M1 Carbine. But in the ignorant world of the Brady Campaign, a multiple-round magazine filled with what a postwar U.S. Army evaluation concluded was an ineffective cartridge is to be feared more than a cartridge that was developed for when shots of 1000 yards were expected, and which was heavily used by military snipers.

Again, from The Korea Times:


In February last year, U.S. Sen. Jon Tester and Rep. Cynthia Lummis proposed bills for an amendment of the Arms Export Control Act to guarantee that U.S.-made military firearms classified as "curios and relics" will not be blocked from importation.
The legislations allow firearms more than 50 years old, considered antiques or relics and lawfully possessed by a foreign government, to be imported into the United States through properly licensed groups and sold without written permission from the U.S. State or Defense Departments.

Although the Garands have received tentative approval, the article goes on to say a senior defense ministry official raised the possibility that the U.S. government may cancel the plan to allow the purchase the M1s, saying Seoul has yet to finalize negotiations with Washington.

"We have yet to receive confirmation from the United States over our proposal," he said. "The U.S. government may change its position at the last minute due to political considerations."

Chad D. Baus is the Buckeye Firearms Association Vice Chairman.

Related Articles: Obama admin. blocks import of historical M1 rifles from South Korea; Highly collectible firearms possibly slated for destruction

Legislation introduced to prevent government interference with legal importation of surplus collectible firearms

Senators to Secretary Clinton: Backdoor Gun Ban Violates Americans' Constitutional Right

Report: Obama admin. reconsidering ban on importation of historical M1 rifles from South Korea



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 01, 2012, 03:27:23 PM
Related News:Corporate Sustainability .Navistar Faces EPA Fines of Up To $2,000 Per Heavy-Duty Engine

By Mark Drajem and Mark Clothier - Feb 1, 2012 12:25 AM ET .



Navistar International Corp. (NAV), the maker of International brand trucks, faces fines of as much as $2,000 for each of its heavy-duty engines because they don’t meet pollution standards, according to a federal regulation.

The Environmental Protection Agency issued an emergency rule yesterday on fines for truck-engine makers that don’t meet federal nitrogen oxides standards, without naming the company. Transport Topics reported that the regulation applied to Navistar.

“These penalties allow a manufacturer to produce and sell nonconforming engines upon payment of a penalty,” the EPA said in its regulation published on its Web site. One company was set to run out of pollution credits during this model year, according to the EPA. Credits allow it to sell engines that don’t meet federal standards, the agency said.

Navistar must pay a sliding scale of fines on its heavy- duty engines that can reach almost $2,000, according to a chart included in the rule. Its medium heavy-duty engines face fines of up to almost $700 each. The EPA didn’t provide the exact level of the maximum fine in its synopsis.

Navistar “expects to comply soon” with federal standards, spokesman Jim Spangler said in an interview. He declined to comment on whether the company may have to pay fines or how many credits are left.

Navistar chose to meet tightening federal standards with exhaust gas recirculation, and its sales have suffered. Competitors including Volvo AB (VOLVB) and Daimler AG (DAI) have adopted selective catalyst reduction technology.

Oxides of nitrogen exacerbate breathing and asthma problems, and can lead to the formation of ozone.

To contact the reporters on this story: Mark Drajem in Washington at mdrajem@bloomberg.net; Mark Clothier in Southfield, Michigan at mclothier@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jon Morgan at jmorgan97@bloomberg.net

Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 01, 2012, 06:15:07 PM
Obama’s New DHS Report Says Terror “Ordinary Crime” Not Connected To Islam
pat dollard ^ | 2/1/12 | Judicial Watch
Posted on February 1, 2012 9:04:23 PM EST by Nachum

(Judicial Watch) — A new Homeland Security report compares terrorism to “ordinary crime” in metropolitan U.S. cities and omits the radical Islamic factor, instead finding “significant variability in the ideologies motivating terrorist attacks across decades.”

This appears to be part of the Obama Administration’s Muslim outreach effort, which includes hiring a special Homeland Security adviser (Mohamed Elibiary) who supports a radical Islamist theologian and renowned jihadist ideologue. The Obama Justice Department also created a special Muslim Engagement Advisory Group to foster greater communication, collaboration and a new level of respect between law enforcement and Muslim and Arab-American communities.

And, in 2010, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano held secret meetings with radical Arab, Muslim, Sikh and South Asian “community leaders.” Judicial Watch uncovered documents from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that includes a list of the individuals who participated, including radical leaders such as Hezbollah supporter Imad Hamad and extremist Salam Al-Marayati, founder of the Muslim Public Affairs Council.

Considering this cozy relationship, the new DHS terrorism report should come as no surprise. It compares terrorist attacks to “ordinary crime” in large, metropolitan areas which is why the nation’s terrorism “hot spots” are Manhattan, Los Angeles County, Miami-Dade County Florida, San Francisco County and Washington, D.C. As if to downplay the distinct difference between crashing a plane into a high-rise and a mugging, the DHS says “terrorism and ordinary crime occur in many of the same areas.”

(Excerpt) Read more at patdollard.com ...
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 01, 2012, 07:47:22 PM
Bribery, compromised officials leave indicted financial-crime suspects free from prosecution
The Daily Caller ^ | 2/1/12 | Matthew Boyle
Posted on February 1, 2012 10:49:20 PM EST by Nachum

Attorney General Eric Holder pauses during a news conference at the Justice Department in Washington, Friday, Jan. 27, 2012. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)

A U.S. Justice Department source has told The Daily Caller that at least two DOJ prosecutors accepted cash bribes from allegedly corrupt finance executives who were indicted under court seal within the past 13 months, but never arrested or prosecuted.

The sitting governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands, his attorney general and an unspecified number of Virgin Islands legislators also accepted bribes, the source said, adding that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is aware prosecutors and elected officials were bribed and otherwise compromised, but has not held anyone accountable.

The bribed officials, an attorney with knowledge of the investigation told TheDC, remain on the taxpayers’ payroll at the Justice Department without any accountability. The DOJ source said Holder does not want to admit public officials accepted bribes while under his leadership.

That source said that until the summer of 2011, the two compromised prosecutors were part of a team of more than 25 federal prosecutors pursuing a financial crime ring, and at least five other prosecutors tasked to the case were also compromised by the criminal suspects they were investigating, without being bribed.

TheDC is withholding the name of the source, a knowledgeable government official who served on the Justice Department’s arrest team and was involved in the investigation, in order to prevent career retaliation from political figures in the Obama administration.

A former high-level elected official vouches for the government source’s veracity. “[The source] was trustworthy … and you could tell [the source] information or [the source] could hear information and [the source] would keep things close to [the source’s] chest,” that former official told TheDC. “You could trust [the source] with your life.”

The identities

(Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com ...
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 02, 2012, 12:01:18 PM
Obama ‘taking Iran’s side’ on damages from ’83 bombing that killed 241 Marines
Special to WorldTribune.com





WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama, in a bid to reconcile with the
Teheran regime, has blocked legislation that would hold Iran accountable for
the Hizbullah bombing that killed 241 U.S. Marines in 1983.


A survivors group has asserted that the administration is pressuring
Democrats in Congress not to support a bill that would enforce massive
judgements against Iran by the families of the Marines. In 2007, a U.S.
federal district court judge found Iran liable for the Beirut bombing and
ordered Teheran to pay $2.65 billion in damages.


A U.S. Marine searches the rubble on Oct. 31, 1983, after an Oct. 23 attack on the headquarters of the U.S. troops of the multinational force in Beirut, Lebanon. In twin attacks on U.S. and French military installations, suicide bombers driving trucks killed 299 French and Americans, including 241 U.S. service members.
“This administration talks a lot about sanctions, but we know Iran is watching this case closely and, astonishingly, Obama’s people are taking Iran’s side,” Lynn Smith Derbyshire, a lobbyist for the legislation, said.

Ms. Derbyshire, whose brother Marine Capt. Vincent Smith was killed in the 1983 bombing, said survivors and their families were urging Congress to support amendments to the Iran Sanctions Bill, scheduled for mark-up in the Senate Banking Committee on Feb. 2.

But they said committee members were being pressed by the White House not to vote for amendments that would hold Teheran responsible for the 1983 attack and transfer the $2.65 billion awarded in 2007. The Iran Sanctions Bill would enable U.S. sanctions on foreign companies that purchase or ship oil through the Iranian government or sell telecommunications equipment to Teheran.

“We have petitioned Congress to prevent the government of the Islamic republic of Iran from avoiding its obligations to pay judgments awarded to past and future victims and survivors of Iranian terrorism,” Ms. Derbyshire said on Jan. 30. “We’ve spoken with many sympathetic members of Congress but
they won’t act while this administration is blocking what we and the
American people know is right.”

Over the last decade, the families of Iranian-sponsored attacks have won
billions of dollars in suits against the Teheran regime. But the federal
government, particularly the State Department, has blocked access to Iranian
assets or funds in the United States.

Ms. Derbyshire said she represents more than 1,000 families across the
United States in the campaign to target Teheran and its finances. The group
has also lobbied Congress to strengthen the U.S. law that bans Iran from
laundering money in the United States to finance Hizbullah and other
insurgency proxies.

“We can show that international banks have moved billions of dollars of
funds from Bank Markazi, Iran’s central bank, through banks in the U.S.,”
Ms. Derbyshire said. “So far that money has been untouchable. We believe
that is wrong. We are confident that most Americans would agree. Yet, the
Obama administration is thwarting our efforts.”

http://www.worldnewstribune.com/2012/01/31/obama-taking-irans-side-on-damages-from-83-bombing-that-killed-241-marines

Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 02, 2012, 06:16:40 PM
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Army Gives General the Boot
Washington Update - Email | Feb 2, 2012 | Tony Perkins
Posted on February 2, 2012 7:46:10 PM EST by Iam1ru1-2

Lieutenant General William Boykin has stared cowards in the face before, and he won't hesitate to do so now. Not even when the same Army he served is trying to take away the freedom he fought to protect. Boykin, an outspoken Christian and Delta Force hero, had been looking forward to speaking at the West Point Prayer Breakfast since the Academy invited him. In the days leading up to the event, the General Boykin settled on a topic: the importance of leaders seeking God. But it was a speech he never got to deliver. The Academy withdrew the invitation when a handful of atheist and Muslim cadets complained about Boykin's beliefs. The message to this elite, three-star warrior was obvious: you and your faith aren't welcome.

In an op-ed defending Boykin, FRC's Ken Blackwell and Ken Klukowski explain that "As a private citizen retired from the Army, General Boykin has cast America 's war against radical Islamic terrorists as fighting Satan... Evidently it's not politically correct to suggest that blowing up children is the devil's work." And while the Academy was desperate to distance itself from Boykin's faith, it hasn't budged from comments made by his Muslim detractors. The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) not only called Boykin an "Islamaphobe" but compared his views to the KKK's. "It was an ecumenical presentation," Boykin said about his speech. "It had nothing to do with Islam." But even he sees the writing on the wall. "People of faith and conservative Americans are losing our voice to a very well-organized and very well-funded group of passionate people--those being the atheists and Muslims. They want to change the nature of our culture--and they're succeeding."

Unfortunately, this is part of the long shadow cast on religious freedom by the Obama administration. In three years, the White House has created an environment where hostility toward orthodox Christianity is not only tolerated, but encouraged. Franklin Graham was a target. So was I. We were all disinvited from military events for the same reason: because we live and embrace our faith. By censoring these leaders, the military is depriving young soldiers of the wisdom of a highly decorated veteran. General Boykin could have helped these cadets as they wrestle with how to integrate their beliefs with military service. Instead, the Academy is suggesting to these young soldiers that living out their faith proudly is a barrier to advancement.

Is that what our country wants--a nation of one-dimensional warriors with no moral compass? Of course not. That's why this march to obliterate faith is as dangerous as it is offensive. General Boykin survived being shot by a .50-caliber gun, and he will survive this. What concerns him, and what should concern all of us, is not whether Christianity will endure--but whether our freedom to practice it will. Without it, what would these cadets be fighting for?
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 06, 2012, 07:36:29 AM
Obama Cuts Hazard Pay for Soldiers Serving in Harm’s Way
Gateway Pundit ^ | 2/6/12 | Jim Hoft
Posted on February 6, 2012 9:08:45 AM EST by Nachum

They will now only get the $7.50 daily proration for the individual days they are actually serving in harm’s way instead of for the whole month. (DOD)

Barack Obama cut pay for military men and women serving in harm’s way starting this month. The Army Times reported:

Starting this month, some troops will begin receiving less Imminent Danger Pay when a new policy takes effect that will prorate the standard $225 monthly IDP stipend.

Under the new policy, troops will be paid only for the actual days they spend in the danger pay location, defense officials said Thursday.

Under the previous policy, troops who spent any portion of the month in a danger pay location received danger pay for the entire month.

The proration amounts to $7.50 per day. So, for example, if a service member spends only 7 days of the month in Afghanistan, he or she will have only $52.50 in Imminent Danger Pay added to their paycheck.

Doug Ross reminds us:

This follows efforts by the president to make veterans pay for their own health insurance — even those injured in combat — and his calls last month for raises for millions of federal paper-pushers.

(Excerpt) Read more at thegatewaypundit.com ...
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 06, 2012, 07:39:12 AM
Obama-appointed US trade adviser linked to illegal deal in Congolese gold
Guardian ^ | 2/5/12 | Pete Jones



A US trade adviser appointed by Barack Obama orchestrated a deal to buy gold worth millions of dollars from a wanted Congolese warlord, according to a UN report. Kase Lawal, a Nigerian-born US oil tycoon, transferred millions of dollars to the notorious rebel leader Bosco Ntaganda between December 2010 and February 2011 as part of the deal, the report by the UN's Group of Experts on the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) states.If true, this would be a contravention of UN resolutions banning individuals or organisations from financing illegal armed groups in the wartorn eastern DRC.

(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 06, 2012, 07:48:56 AM
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Hidden mortgage fee paying for payroll tax cut
CBS News ^ | February 6, 2012 | Sharyl Attkisson
Posted on February 6, 2012 10:39:12 AM EST by LibFreeUSA

(CBS News)

Just before Christmas, American workers got a rare gift from Washington politicians - the current payroll tax cut would be extended for two more months.

At the time, both President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner lauded the move to avoid a tax increase for millions of working Americans.

But there's something the politicians weren't bragging about - the fact that they're paying for the two-month tax cut with what has turned into a brand new fee on home buyers.

The new fee is a minimum of one-tenth of 1 percent on Fannie Mae- and Freddie Mac-backed loans, and is likely to go much higher.

It will be imposed for the next 10 years on most mortgages and refinancings and it lasts for the life of the loan.

Obama unveils mortgage refinancing plan Congress preps Round 2 of payroll tax-cut fight Budget cuts, fees eyed in payroll tax talks

For every $200,000, it amounts to an extra $15 dollars a month.

It's bad news for Patty Anderson, who's buying a home in Virginia.

Anderson will save a couple hundred dollars from having her payroll tax cut extended but her mortgage broker told her the new fee would cost her almost $9,500.

"I was absolutely startled that it would add up to that much," she said.

The $35.7 billion collected in fees won't go into the Social Security fund to replace the lost payroll tax. It goes to the general treasury where Congress can spend it however they please.

Bill Burnett, Anderson's broker and president of the Virginia Association of Mortgage Brokers, said you won't see Congress' new charge in the paperwork, but it's there.

"It's actually built into this [interest] rate. You would never see the fee as a cost to you," he said.

Burnett said the fee will affect a "very large number" of homeowners.

"Your pocketbook is being raided in order to pay for a tax policy issue decided at the last minute by probably people who didn't understand fully what they were legislating on."

CBS News went to Capitol Hill ask what Congress was thinking when they passed the mortgage fee hike. Boehner pointed the finger at the Senate.

"As you're well aware, this bill came over from the Senate. I don't know how they justified it. We would rather have offset that two-month extension with reductions in spending," he said.

But the Senate blamed the House. And Democrats and Republicans blamed each other.

One congressman, Florida Republican Allen West, said he tried to blow the whistle on the whole thing before Christmas.

"I read the legislation and raised the flag. Unfortunately nobody paid attention to what I was saying at the time," he said, calling the fee a backdoor tax increase on the middle class.

"It absolutely is because you're talking about the homeowners - when you're talking about the people that are gonna be using the Fannie Mae, the Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored enterprises - it is absolutely a tax increase on them."

An Obama administration official defended the mortgage fee, calling it "modest." She said it's "unlikely to negatively affect borrowers" because increases "will be phased in over the next two years." And it will "help bring private capital back into the mortgage market, which [is] good for borrowers over the long term."

Maybe so. But Patty Anderson only knows that for the next 30 years, she'll be haunted by the Washington ghost of Christmas past.

"I think it just looks like Washington grabbing more money," she said.
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 06, 2012, 07:15:48 PM
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Major Obama Donors Tied to Fugitive Who Fled to Mexico
The New York Times ^ | Monday, February 6, 2012 | Mike McIntire
Posted on February 6, 2012 8:37:02 PM EST by kristinn

Two American brothers of a Mexican casino magnate who fled drug and fraud charges in the United States and has been seeking a pardon enabling him to return have emerged as major fund-raisers and donors for President Obama’s re-election campaign.

The casino owner, Juan Jose Rojas Cardona, known as Pepe, jumped bail in Iowa in 1994 and disappeared, and has since been linked to violence and corruption in Mexico. A State Department cable in 2009 said he was suspected of orchestrating the assassination of a business rival and making illegal campaign donations to Mexican officials.

When The New York Times asked the Obama campaign early Monday about the Cardonas, officials said they were unaware of the brother in Mexico. Later in the day, the campaign said it was refunding the money raised by the family, which totaled more than $200,000.

SNIP

Although the two brothers live and work in Chicago, they maintain ties to Pepe Cardona in Mexico. Alberto Cardona operates an advertising agency in Mexico that has worked for political candidates backed by his brother, according to public records and Mexican news reports. Public records also show that the domain name for the Web site of a restaurant Pepe Cardona owns is registered to Alberto Cardona.

Obama campaign officials said most of the money raised by the Cardona brothers came from themselves and other relatives, donations of about $200,000. In addition, the campaign was identifying other donations, believed to total less than $100,000, that was bundled from other people.

SNIP

Pepe Cardona is one of the largest players in Mexico’s violent and tumultuous casino trade. SNIP The State Department cable, which was part of the cache made public by WikiLeaks, said that he was suspected of illegally funneling $5 million into Mexican political campaigns in 2006.

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 07, 2012, 06:15:16 AM
Obama to Return Major Donations Tied to Fugitive

By MIKE McINTIRE


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/07/us/politics/major-obama-donors-are-tied-to-pepe-cardona-mexican-fugitive.html?pagewanted=print




Two American brothers of a Mexican casino magnate who fled drug and fraud charges in the United States and has been seeking a pardon enabling him to return have emerged as major fund-raisers and donors for President Obama’s re-election campaign.

The casino owner, Juan Jose Rojas Cardona, known as Pepe, jumped bail in Iowa in 1994 and disappeared, and has since been linked to violence and corruption in Mexico. A State Department cable in 2009 said he was suspected of orchestrating the assassination of a business rival and making illegal campaign donations to Mexican officials.

When The New York Times asked the Obama campaign early Monday about the Cardonas, officials said they were unaware of the brother in Mexico. Later in the day, the campaign said it was refunding the money raised by the family, which totaled more than $200,000.

As recently as January of last year, one of Mr. Cardona’s brothers in Chicago, Carlos Rojas Cardona, arranged for the former chairman of the Iowa Democratic Party to seek a pardon from the governor for Pepe Cardona, according to prosecutors in that state. None was forthcoming.

Last fall, Carlos Cardona and another brother in Chicago, Alberto Rojas Cardona, began raising money for the Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee. The Cardona brothers, who have no prior history of political giving, appeared seemingly out of nowhere in the world of Democratic fund-raising, Democratic activists said.

The money Alberto Cardona raised put him in the upper tiers of fund-raisers known as bundlers, according to a list released last month by the campaign. He and Carlos Cardona each gave the maximum $30,800 to the Democratic National Committee, and a lesser amount to a state victory fund. A sister, Leticia Rojas Cardona of Tennessee, donated $13,000 to the national committee, and another relative in Illinois gave $12,600, records show. There is no record of Pepe Cardona making a donation.

Although the two brothers live and work in Chicago, they maintain ties to Pepe Cardona in Mexico. Alberto Cardona operates an advertising agency in Mexico that has worked for political candidates backed by his brother, according to public records and Mexican news reports. Public records also show that the domain name for the Web site of a restaurant Pepe Cardona owns is registered to Alberto Cardona.

Obama campaign officials said most of the money raised by the Cardona brothers came from themselves and other relatives, donations of about $200,000. In addition, the campaign was identifying other donations, believed to total less than $100,000, that was bundled from other people.

“On the basis of the questions that have been raised, we will return the contributions from these individuals and from any other donors they brought to the campaign,” said Ben LaBolt, a spokesman for the Obama campaign.

Pepe Cardona is one of the largest players in Mexico’s violent and tumultuous casino trade. In 2007, he survived an assassination attempt that was attributed to members of organized crime. The State Department cable, which was part of the cache made public by WikiLeaks, said he was suspected of illegally funneling $5 million into Mexican political campaigns in 2006.

Multiple messages left for Alberto and Carlos Cardona over several days were not returned. A sister-in-law, Sarah Westall of Minnesota, said in a telephone interview that it would be wrong to tar other members of the family with the negative publicity surrounding Pepe Cardona.

Ms. Westall, who is married to another Cardona brother, Gabriel, said Alberto and Carlos took up Democratic fund-raising because their extended family had long been involved in helping the Latino community and because they supported the president. There were no other reasons beyond those, she said. “I understand that it looks real bad,” she said. “But the rest of the family are really good people. Pepe is actually a good person too.”

Whatever the family’s motivation, the president cannot pardon someone for state crimes. On Monday, Democratic fund-raisers who have had encounters with Alberto and Carlos Cardona expressed surprise upon learning about their family history. Manuel Sanchez, a Chicago lawyer who is deeply involved in Latino outreach for the Obama administration, said he first met them in December at a finance committee meeting for the president’s campaign in Washington.

He said he had been told that they were involved in “marketing and advertising.” They impressed him as “very smart young guys who wanted to support the president,” he said.

“I did get the distinct impression that both of them are very well-to-do and successful in their businesses,” Mr. Sanchez said, adding that he “had no idea” they had a brother in Mexico or what his background was.

In Johnson County, Iowa, the authorities are well acquainted with Pepe Cardona’s past.

One of nine children of Mexican parents who grew up in Iowa, Pepe Cardona, who was born in Mexico, was active in civil rights issues at the University of Iowa and became president of the Student Senate. While at the university in 1990, he was accused of misspending student government money, and a year later he was criminally charged with defrauding associates in a telemarketing company he started, according to court records.

He was sentenced to five years in prison, and while free pending an appeal, he was arrested in New Mexico on charges of trying to smuggle marijuana across the border, court records show. He pleaded guilty to federal drug charges in 1994, but disappeared while out on bail, later surfacing in Mexico.

In 1998, federal prosecutors obtained approval from a judge to quash the drug indictment, wiping clean Pepe Cardona’s federal court record. However, his current legal status in Iowa, where a county judge had ordered him jailed in 1992, is more precarious.

On Monday, the Johnson County attorney, Janet Lyness, said there was still an outstanding warrant for his arrest on a probation violation charge. She said that at least twice over the last four years, a lawyer approached the Iowa governor’s office asking about a pardon for Pepe Cardona.

The last such request came in the final days of the term of Gov. Chet Culver, a Democrat, and was filed by Gordon Fischer, a lawyer who is a former chairman of the Iowa Democratic Party. In his pardon application, Mr. Fischer explained that he knew Pepe Cardona from his days at the University of Iowa. Mr. Fischer declined to comment on Monday, citing attorney-client privilege.

Ms. Lyness, also a Democrat, said she had been told that the application had been initiated by members of Pepe Cardona’s family in the United States. She opposed it, and it was not granted.

“I can think of few people who are less deserving of a pardon than Pepe Rojas-Cardona,” Ms. Lyness wrote in her response to the pardon request, adding that it would be “a travesty of justice.”

The first campaign donations by Alberto and Carlos Cardona came shortly after news articles revealing Pepe Cardona’s criminal past appeared in the United States and Mexico last fall.

One of them, a long exposé in September by a Mexican magazine, Proceso, chronicled Pepe Cardona’s relatively swift rise to fortune and notoriety in Mexico after fleeing the American authorities. He obtained Mexican gambling licenses, and with help from investors in Louisiana, he started opening casinos in and around Monterrey, eventually becoming known as Mexico’s “casino czar.”

The article reported that Tango Media, an advertising company it said is owned by Alberto Cardona, worked on the campaigns of politicians favored by Pepe Cardona in communities where he owned casinos. It also said Carlos Cardona was involved in one of Pepe Cardona’s business deals.

A review of public records found that several of the Cardona brothers’ business activities have intersected in the United States and in Mexico, sharing common addresses and doing work for one another’s companies. For instance, another brother, Arturo Rojas Cardona — Pepe’s main business partner in his casino and entertainment businesses — has an architecture and design firm that has done work for his brothers in the United States, including Alberto Cardona.

The nature of Alberto Cardona’s business is not exactly clear. On campaign finance reports, he listed his employer as Tango Latin, a Chicago company that seems to be connected to Tango Productions, a small video production, marketing and photography studio that Carlos Cardona listed as his employer.

A check of public records found that Alberto Cardona is the registered owner of domain names for the Web sites of Tango Media and 40 West, a restaurant owned by Pepe Cardona, both in Mexico.

Ms. Westall, the sister-in-law, said she did not know what sort of dealings Alberto and Carlos had with Pepe Cardona, but she added that it would not be unusual for large families to help each other in their business activities.

“If someone in the family does Web design, and Pepe needed someone to do that, he would hire that person first,” she said. “In Mexico, that’s the way it works.”

Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 07, 2012, 02:47:01 PM
President Obama Will Be Appointing A JP Morgan Executive Who Helped Create TARP To The FDIC Board

Lisa Du | Feb. 6, 2012, 4:01 PM | 307 | 3

C-SPAN





President Barack Obama announced on Friday plans to appoint a JP Morgan executive to the board of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

Jeremiah Norton, an executive director for investment banking at JP Morgan, is one of two Republican-backed nominees for the five-member board, which includes Consumer Financial Protection Bureau head Richard Cordray, who was recently appointed by Obama amid heavy controversy. The other appointee is Thomas Hoenig, a former president of the Kansas City Fed, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Norton worked as a deputy assistant secretary for the Treasury during the Bush administration, and was a key advisor to then-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson as the government tried to maneuver through the financial crisis.

According to Andrew Ross Sorkin's Too Big To Fail, Norton is known for his heavy hand in the 2008 government bailouts—he not only helped prepare TARP, but is also credited with convincing Paulson that a  bailout of the big banks was the right course of action. [via Suzy Khimm at Wonkblog]

Norton and Hoenig have both been confirmed by the Senate Banking Committee, and are now waiting for full chamber approval, Bloomberg reported. Approval of FDIC board members had been delayed at the Senate level as Republican members protested Obama's appointment of Cordray.

The new FDIC members could play a crucial role as the agency is tasked with overseeing implementations of parts of the Dodd-Frank Act over the course of 2012.

Please follow Clusterstock on Twitter and Facebook.
Follow Lisa Du on Twitter.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/president-obama-will-be-appointing-a-jp-morgan-executive-who-helped-create-tarp-to-the-fdic-board-2012-2#ixzz1ljpxSLFk









NICE!!!!!   Hope & change! ! ! !  !
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 13, 2012, 12:02:15 PM
White House Economic Adviser: 'We Need a Global Minimum Tax'
2:41 PM, Feb 13, 2012 • By DANIEL HALPER


       
     
    Gene Sperling, director of the White House's national economic council, said today at an official meeting that "we need a global minimum tax":


“He supports corporate tax reform that would reduce expenditures and loopholes, lower rates for people investing and creating jobs in the U.S., due so further for manufacturing, and that we need to, as we have the Buffett Rule and the individual tax reform, we need a global minimum tax so that people have the assurance that nobody is escaping doing their fair share as part of a race to the bottom or having our tax code actually subsidized and facilitate people moving their funds to tax havens," Sperling said.

The White House adviser then said that more details would be forthcoming, though "not in gory detail."

"But we will say more, perhaps not in gory detail, but in more detail, before the end of the month. And in terms of the revenues, the president is looking for shared sacrifice. This budget is a Democratic budget that has savings in Medicaid, it has savings from new beneficiaries, Medicare in 2017, it has agriculture civilian retirement savings. It has a lot of very tough choices."
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 15, 2012, 06:47:31 PM
Auto dealers warn fuel efficiency proposal will price out millions of buyers
Fox News ^ | 2/15/2012 | Judson Berger
Posted on February 15, 2012 8:45:21 PM EST by tobyhill

American auto dealers are pushing back on proposed fuel economy rules that, they claim, would price out millions of buyers from the new-car market, potentially jeopardizing the environmental benefits of the program and the resurgent auto industry itself.

Throughout the Obama administration's campaign to jack up fuel efficiency, officials claimed that for consumers, the upgrades would pay for themselves. Sure, buyers would pay more for a new vehicle off the lot, but they'd make up that cost in fuel savings in just a few years.

But the changes from two sets of fuel efficiency standards could add $3,000 to the price of a new car by 2025. And the National Automobile Dealers Association argues that if buyers can't qualify for a loan up front, the rest is fantasy. Cash-strapped buyers instead will go for gas-guzzling used cars or put off buying another car altogether, leaving the fuel-efficient marvels parked in the lots of auto dealers across the country.

"Where's the environmental savings ... if you can't get the older cars off of the road?" NADA spokesman Bailey Wood said.

The NADA estimates that by 2025, 6.8 million drivers will no longer qualify for a new-car loan if the proposed fuel efficiency standards go into effect.

(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 16, 2012, 06:11:47 AM
Obama's War on School Vouchers

The president downplays school choice in his new $3.8 trillion budget..

By JASON L. RILEY


www.wsj.com




In his State of the Union address last month, President Obama spoke about the importance of kids staying in school and even urged states to raise the dropout age to 18. So it's passing strange that his new $3.8 trillion budget provides no new money for a school voucher program in Washington, D.C., that is producing significantly higher graduation rates than the D.C. public school average.

Related Video
 Adam Emerson, director of parental choice at the Fordham Institute on President Obama turning his back on the DC voucher program.
.
.The Opportunity Scholarship Program offers vouchers to low-income students to attend private schools. A 2010 study published by Patrick Wolf of the University of Arkansas found that the scholarship recipients had graduation rates of 91%. The graduation rate for D.C. public schools was 56%, and it was 70% for students who entered the lottery for a voucher but didn't win.

Because the president's teachers union allies are opposed to school choice for poor people, Mr. Obama ignores or downplays these findings. He repeatedly has tried to shutter the program, even though it is clearly advancing his stated goal of increasing graduation rates and closing the black-white achievement gap.

The good news is that House Speaker John Boehner, who went to bat for the voucher program last year when the Obama administration attempted to phase it out, said yesterday through a spokesman that the funding cuts won't stand. The bad news is that we have a president who is more interested in doing right by teachers unions than doing right by ghetto kids confined to failing schools.

To read more stories like this one, please subscribe to Political Diary.

Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 17, 2012, 04:21:55 AM
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Taxing Medical Progress to Death
Townhall.com ^ | February 17, 2012 | Michelle Malkin
Posted on February 17, 2012 6:58:11 AM EST by Kaslin

Two years ago this month, as public debate over Obamacare raged, former President Bill Clinton rushed to the hospital because of a heart condition. He immediately underwent a procedure to place two stents in one of his coronary arteries. It was a timely reminder about the dangers of stifling private-sector medical innovation. No one listened.

Stents don't grow on trees. They were not created, developed, marketed or sold by government bureaucrats and lawmakers. One of the nation's top stent manufacturers, Boston Scientific, warned at the time that Obamacare's punitive medical device tax would lead to worker losses and research cuts. The 2.3 percent excise tax, the company said, "would be very damaging to Boston Scientific, and the medical device industry as a whole. In a nutshell, it would raise costs and lead to significant job losses. It does not address the quality of care but the political scorecard of savings."

Two years later, Bill Clinton's doing just peachy. But many medical device manufacturers are suffering, and many more are preparing for the worst as the White House gears up to collect on an estimated $20 billion from the lifesaving industry. In typical Obama-transparent fashion, the Internal Revenue Service quietly released a complex thicket of medical device tax implementation rules in a Friday document dump earlier this month. Barring congressional intervention, the medical device tax will go into full effect in 2013.

Cook Medical, which manufactures products for everything from endovascular therapy, critical care medicine and general surgery, to diagnostic and interventional procedures, to bioengineered tissue replacement and regeneration, gastroenterology and endoscopy procedures, urology, and obstetrics and gynecology, has called for the levy's repeal. Cook Group chairman Stephen Ferguson noted the tax burden amounted to a whopping 55 percent of its profits.

"For a company like ours, which pays 35 percent of our net earnings in federal corporate taxes and another 4 to 5 percent in state and local corporate taxes, the excise tax translates to another payment that will consume 15 percent more of our earnings," he estimated. "This creates tremendous pressure for us to move manufacturing to Europe and other parts of the world." According to the trade publication Mass Device, the company has already canceled plans to build a new factory in the U.S. because of the Obamacare tax burden.

Stryker, a maker of artificial hips and knees based in Kalamazoo, Mich., announced in November that it would slash 5 percent of its global workforce (an estimated 1,000 workers) this coming year to reduce costs related to Obamacare's taxes and mandates.

Covidien, a N.Y.-based surgical supplies manufacturer, recently announced layoffs of 200 American workers and plans to move some of its plant work to Mexico and Costa Rica, in part because of the coming tax hit.

Mass.-based Zoll Medical Corp., which makes defibrillators and employs some 1,800 workers in the U.S. and around the world, says the medical device tax will cost the company between $5 million and $10 million a year. Its profit in 2009 was $9.5 million. "Running our company at close to break even would not be a sustainable position for us," CEO Richard Packer said in a public statement, "so we will be forced to look at alternatives."

Those "alternatives" include cutting payroll, cutting R and D and passing on the costs to patients, of course. Industry estimates put the tax-induced job losses at 43,000. So far, the number-crunchers at 1600 Pennsylvania are mum on the number of potential jobs -- and lives -- destroyed by the medical innovation death tax.

In fact, the Obama administration's response so far has been a flippant shrug. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, whose only manufacturing claims to fame are faulty tax returns and near-double-digit unemployment figures, brushed off concerns this week about the medical device tax. Obamacare's expanded access to health care, he argues blithely, will create more consumers for their products. "On balance, it is a good package for people in the health care business," he told Bloomberg News.

Fewer jobs. Fewer entrepreneurs. Fewer medical advances. Only with a gallon of self-delusion does the Obamacare medical tax medicine amount to anything other than economic and medical malpractice.

Obama 2012: Winning the future ... by killing it.

Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 17, 2012, 03:11:44 PM
http://freebeacon.com/democratic-national-cronyism


This really is incredible.   

Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 19, 2012, 10:41:38 AM
Efforts to Prevent Another Fast and Furious Stripped by Obama
Twon Hall ^ | 2/17/12 | Katie Pavlich
Posted on February 19, 2012 1:51:41 PM EST by Nachum

Emily Miller of The Washington Times has been sifting through President Obama's latest budget boondogle and has found some pretty alarming items. First, Obama's budget strips language that would prevent another Operation Fast and Furious from occuring again.

In November, the president signed the Justice Department appropriations bill, which included language from Sen. John Cornyn, Texas Republican, prohibiting federal agencies from facilitating the transfer of an operable firearm to an individual known or suspected to be in a drug cartel, unless they monitor the weapon at all times.

Now Mr. Obama is proposing to remove that provision from the 2013 spending bill, thus making it legal to revive gun-walking operations in the future. The White House justification is merely that the prohibition is “not necessary.”

Second, the budget pushes anti-Second Amendment policies.

Mr. Obama’s budget contains other gun-grabbing surprises. The White House is looking to reclaim authority to destroy surplus M1 Garand rifles and M1 Carbines. For 30 years, the Defense Department has been blocked from scrapping these collectible firearms that served our soldiers well in World War II and the Korean War. The administration also wants to melt down the military’s spent brass casings, thwarting gun owners who have been buying and recycling the surplus materials.

The president’s budget would also restore millions in funding to the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control so they can pump out junk science studies claiming handguns are a public health hazard.

(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 19, 2012, 01:25:31 PM
It's not right to compare the Obama administration's performance in the matter of the Keystone XL pipeline to the Keystone Kops. Yes, the bunglers of the Charlie Chaplin silent movies are so busy blowing whistles that they arrest the victim while the bad guy makes off with the swag. But that was very funny, and the confused cops didn't know what they were doing. The administration knows full well what it is doing.

It has not gone so far as to kill the proposed 1,700-mile underground pipeline to carry crude oil from Canada to American refineries on the Gulf of Mexico. That might play badly against the president's vision in his State of the Union address of "a future where we're in control of our own energy, and our security and prosperity aren't so tied to unstable parts of the world" (which stand to get a lot less stable, the way things are going). Instead, in Machiavelli's dictum, the president has been willing to wound but afraid to strike. He has contrived an excuse to delay a decision yet again. An environmental impact statement was issued by the State Department on Aug. 26, 2011, the conclusion of three years of reviews and negotiation. The approval process typically takes from 18 months to two years. That's understandable given the variety of concerns and interests a massive project entails about safeguarding water supplies, disturbing local landowners and communities, and restoring the landscape.

[Read Mort Zuckerman and other columnists in U.S. News Weekly, now available on iPad.]

The original Keystone pipeline won approval after two years and is operational. But in 2013, the Keystone XL (extension) will be in its fourth year of review, a Great Dither not justified when the State Department conducted three consecutive environmental reviews to reach its conclusion of minimal environmental impact. In that time, there have been many public hearings to satisfy local communities and private property owners. More than a dozen alternative routes have been surveyed, and TransCanada Corp., the builder, agreed to 57 special conditions beyond current federal pipeline regulations.

The president wants a relatively short section of the route from Alberta through Nebraska reconsidered. It means the State Department will have to agree to a new understanding with Nebraska and secure the governor's approval. Given the long history of Keystone XL, that is not a big deal. By all accounts, it could be done within a couple of months. Yet after three years of satisfying intense reviews, the president says that decision will not come until 2013. Hello? That wouldn't have anything to do, would it, with appeasing a particular left-wing environmental lobby until after the general election?

[Check out the U.S. News On Energy blog.]

It's a calculation which assumes that the voters concerned about the energy future that Obama paraded will be less active than the more extreme environmental lobbyists—who, in fact, will never be satisfied with anything to do with villainous Big Oil. Throwing a sop to the leftist anti-oil campaigners and "four more years" are apparently more important to the president and his campaign advisers than reducing our dependence on those unstable regions he mentioned and maintaining the momentum of the small improvement in the lamentable unemployment totals.

Notably, the Great Keystone Dither does not appeal to labor or indeed to all Democrats. Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia put it well: "I'd rather buy from our closest ally and create jobs in America than push Canada to build a pipeline out to the West Coast of North America so that it ends up going to China. There is no question, this pipeline is a job creator with support of both labor and business. It needs to be built not for the benefit of one political party or one state, but for the benefit of America."

A final go-ahead for the $7 billion shovel-ready project would have supported tens of thousands of jobs now: 20,000 in new, direct well-paid construction and manufacturing jobs, and roughly 100,000 in indirect jobs along the pipeline, according to the developer, TransCanada. But the president's political concerns seem more important than enraging the Canadians, than giving China more edge in economic competition, than the defense and national security interests of truly independent energy.

[See a collection of political cartoons on energy policy.]

Keystone XL became a political issue only after the environmental lobby focused on a modest adjustment to the route involving about 100 miles of the pipeline, which would carry some 800,000 barrels of oil south each day. The state of Nebraska was unhappy about even this modest adjustment, given that its own exhaustive studies in three environmental impact statements over three years concluded that there would be "no significant impact" from the pipeline. The environmentalists argued that the state's ecologically sensitive Sand Hills region might be threatened by this minor change, but TransCanada had already said it would be willing to adjust the route in consultation with Nebraska officials. This did not suffice, because the more leftist environmentalists are just dead set against the development of Canada's oil-rich tar sands, which they wish to stifle by cutting off the export route to get the oil to market.

This is not quite 1812 again, with big bully USA intimidating the Canadians, but the fury of the Canadians is justified. Their minister of natural resources said the green movement's "goal is to stop any major project no matter what the cost to Canadian families in lost jobs and economic growth," and that these groups are willing to "sue everyone and anyone to delay the project even further."

The Canadian prime minister, with the full support of his cabinet, may seek to redirect this oil to export markets in Asia, "based on what's happened with Keystone XL." He said recently, "This does underscore the necessity of Canada making sure that we're able to access Asian markets for our energy products." This is diplomatic language for making it clear that, without progress on Keystone XL, Canada would build a pipeline across Canada to the Pacific and ship the energy to Asia. The Canadians see the U.S. inaction as a direct rebuff, taken despite the fact that Canada is the largest U.S. oil supplier at about 2.67 million barrels a day, compared with 970 thousand barrels a day from Venezuela, and that this is the biggest infrastructure project on the continent and would enhance America's oil independence.

[Washington Whispers: Most Want Keystone Pipeline Built]

Congressional Republicans are also furious, and in this instance they, too, are right in their rebuttals of the administration's half-baked case for still more dither, sacrificing thousands of American jobs and energy security to the Chinese. The business community is also up in arms. As the U.S. Chamber of Commerce put it, "The president's decision sends a strong message to the business community and to investors: Keep your money on the sidelines, America is not open for business." The president's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness restated the concern that if the United States is going to have inexpensive and reliable energy, it needs "to optimize all of its natural resources and construct pathways (pipelines, transmission and distribution) to deliver electricity and fuel."

Furthermore, legislation passed by Congress late last year, setting a 60-day deadline for granting the Keystone XL permit absent a determination by the president that the pipeline was not in the "national interest," stated clearly that Obama could not consider any new environmental impact study. "The final environmental impact statement issued by the Secretary of State on August 26, 2011, satisfies all requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 ... and section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act," it said. And to make it crystal clear: "No further Federal environmental review shall be required."

[Read Michael Lynch: Keystone XL's Rewards Outweigh Its Potential Risks]

The fight is not over. The outspoken Sen. Manchin has allies in the Democratic Party. They should coordinate their approach with the Nebraskans. The only question is how the battle will be waged. Clearly there is a national interest in securing an energy supply independent of the Middle East. No project of this scale avoids marginal costs, but the incremental benefits are such as to undermine the confidence that this administration has acted appropriately to balance the national interest with what it considers its own political interest. As Will Rogers said, "Be thankful we're not getting all the government we're paying for."

Read Mort Zuckerman on America's energy future.
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 21, 2012, 08:13:27 AM
February 21, 2012

How Obama Makes Decisions

By Ed Lasky



There is a cliché in Washington.  There are two things you do not want to see made: sausage and laws.  To those we may add a third: Barack Obama's decisions.

Americans were warned by his opponents that Barack Obama was unprepared to be president.  He had very little record to run on, and his one experience at being an executive was a failure -- his hushed up history running and running through a hundred million dollars as the head of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge in Chicago.  He had a record of avoiding tough decisions (the "voting present" issue); he was just a celebrity who was not ready for the 3 A.M. phone call.  The presidency was not an "on the job" training program.

After three years we can judge those fears to be well-warranted.

There are many people who have problems with his policies.  Barrels of ink and billions of pixels have been used to criticize his agenda.  But surprisingly little analysis has gone into figuring out the mystery of how Obama actually goes about making decisions.

Fortunately, over the last few years journalists have been obsessing over Barack Obama almost as much as he has been obsessing over himself.  They have provided various vignettes that give us a disturbing picture of a man floundering in his own careless if not willful ineptitude.

Americans should have been alert to the paucity of his own record of accomplishment.  As a state senator he showed little interest in learning the intricacies of legislation.  Instead, his political mentor, Illinois State Senate President Emil Jones, allowed him to "bill-jack" the legislative work of others and claim it as his own.  This was a practice he continued as a U.S. senator.  He was unprepared to do the homework and heavy lifting -- that was for others to toil over.

If there is one constant to Barack Obama's life, it is his lack of a work ethic.  I never doubted that the Barack Obama had stellar grades in college and law school.  He surfed the wave of grade inflation that has probably always been a factor in his success.  This is pure speculation, but the reason why he never released his transcripts was probably because they would have revealed that he took easy left-wing courses that would have reflected poorly on his work ethic.  The laziness has persisted.

A leader has to be well-informed, consult with good advisers and experts, read and research, and make a decision.  He has to prepare himself to be a leader.

We saw signs during the campaign that he had little interest in the issues of the day.  The late Dean Barnett wrote in the Weekly Standard in a column titled "How Smart is Obama":

And there's also what appears to be a lack of intellectual curiosity. Abe Greenwald of Commentary's blog calls our attention to this nugget from an enjoyable New York Times profile of Obama "body man" Reggie Love:

Along the way, some unofficial rules have emerged between the candidate and his aide. From Mr. Obama: "One cardinal rule of the road is, we don't watch CNN, the news or MSNBC. We don't watch any talking heads or any politics. We watch 'SportsCenter' and argue about that."

So how, pray tell, is Obama staying informed about what's going on in the world? When he's pressing the flesh at crummy rural diners and speaking before 75,000 adoring acolytes, he's talking, not listening. Don't you think a guy who might be president would be obsessed with world events? Don't you think that obsession would have driven him into the race? And don't you think as a potential wartime leader he might be using his downtime to study, just in case he wins?

Obama has made a habit of coming across like a man who doesn't know what he's talking about. That's bothersome enough, but what's more worrisome still is how comfortable he is with not knowing what he's talking about, and how convinced he seems that his rhetorical flourishes will obscure his ignorance. That strategy may work on the campaign trail, but it certainly won't help him govern.

Perhaps that was why he could so readily dismiss Iran as being a "tiny country" that posed no threat.  And that was just one of many statements that had a Republican made them would have been broadcast far and wide.

If anything, his television-watching has gone downhill.  Now he watches Spongebob Squarepants and Hannah Montana -- albeit with his daughters (a fact that calls into question his fathering ability but it is a step above having them hear Jeremiah Wright's racist and anti-American rants).

Alas, how true Barnett's prophecy regarding Obama's ignorance and inability to govern has been.

Ron Suskind's book Confidence Men portrays Barack Obama as being confounded by his duties as president.  Some of the scenes depicted by Suskind would be comical if they were not so tragic for America.

For example, when Obama's experts assembled to discuss the scope and intricacies of the stimulus bill, Barack Obama was out of his depth.  He was "surprisingly aloof in the conversation" and seemed "disconnected and less in control."  His contributions were rare and consisted of blurting out such gems of wisdom as "There needs to be more inspiration here!" and "What about more smart grids" and -- one more that Newt Gingrich would appreciate -- "we need more moon shot" (pages 154-5).

Suskind writes:

Members of the team were perplexed...for the first time in the transition, people started to wonder just how prepared the man at the helm was.

He repeated a similar sorry performance when he had a conference call with Speaker Pelosi and her staff to discuss the details of the planned stimulus bill.  He shouted into the speakerphone that "this stimulus needs more inspiration! Pelosi and her staff visibly rolled their eyes."

Presidential exhortations more befitting a summer camp counselor will evoke such reactions.

Perhaps if Obama had been a better leader he would have been able to assemble better advisers who could have prepped him for the rigors of the office.  He was counseled by Washington veteran Erskine Bowles to "leave your friends at home. They just create problems when you get to Chicago."  So what did Obama do?  He ignored Bowles (presaging how he later ignored the Simpson-Bowles commission on fiscal responsibility).

As Timothy Noah wrote in the New Republic:

He brought Axelrod and Jarrett to the White House, made Emanuel chief of staff, and eventually replaced Emanuel with Daley. The rap against Obama's White House management style became that he was too dependent on old friends and fellow Chicagoans.

Almost all have left -- as have a number of others.  But who stayed?  Valerie Jarrett -- his own Svengali -- who plays a key role in Obama's decision-making process.  Should President Obama rely upon her in making decisions?  Her own record as a businesswoman is flecked with failure.  Matthew Continetti recently characterized her, with good reason, as "The Worst White House Aide," who has a perfect record of giving bad advice.

Should we be surprised by Barack Obama's choice of his closest adviser?  Lest we forget, he described Jeremiah Wright as his "moral compass" and "sounding board."

This reliance is a particular problem because Barack Obama runs the most insular White House in memory.  He rarely reaches out to members of the other party for their advice and suggestions (despite the fact that they represent millions of voters), and when he does so, it is mostly for photo-ops.  The sessions are not productive.  For instance, in January 2009 he met with congressional leaders to discuss the stimulus package.  Senator Kyl questioned the plan.  Obama's response was "I won."  A year later there was another bipartisan meeting to discuss health care reform where Obama gave the Republicans short shrift and unequal time because, he said, "I'm the president."

Republicans should not fret, though, since Democrats are also frozen out.  Barack Obama does not reach out to them for their ideas or input.  Liberal Washington Post columnists noted his refusal to touch base with fellow Democrats.  In her column "The Where's Waldo Presidency," Ruth Marcus noted the "startling number of occasions in which the president has been missing in action -- unwilling, reluctant or late to weigh in on the issues of the moment."  Memo to Marcus: check the links, the basketball court, or the East Room jazz club.

His having remained aloof from budget negotiations and his absence from supercommittee talks made for such an abdication of leadership that they earned a rebuke from Erskine Bowles.  And so it goes -- the Invisible Man hiding in the Oval Office or reveling in adoration showered on him at expensive elite fundraisers.

Compare and contrast this behavior with President Bill Clinton, Lyndon Johnson, or John Kennedy.  They were all policy wonks -- able and eager to reach out to experts and politicians from across the aisle, day or evening and, in the case of Lyndon Johnson, even when he was in the bathroom.  Instead, Barack Obama seems to avoid interaction with those who could help him make wise decisions.

Indeed, he showed a similar aversion as a law lecturer at the University of Chicago.

There was a revealing New York Times report during the 2008 campaign that portrayed him as a faculty member at the University of Chicago Law School who refused to have intellectual repartee with other teachers.  He would just walk right by other academics who were chatting about the law.  There seems to be a pattern of someone who wants to avoid having his intellect scrutinized (tellingly, of course, he never completed a single work of legal scholarship).  Is he fearful of revealing that he is not the grand intellect that besotted journalists have proclaimed him to be?  Is this why he is tethered to the teleprompter?  Do his handlers know something we do not?

Certainly when he goes off the prompter he says some truly ridiculous things (Hawaii is in Asia, there are 57 states in America, "spread the wealth").

Despite his early boast that "I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors," the reality is far different than the claim.  That might explain why he just decided to stop receiving daily economic briefings early in his presidency, despite the pain and suffering that millions of Americans have experienced during his reign, and why he would just walk out on Stephen Chu, his energy secretary, after only a few slides had been shown (the rudeness punctuated with "Steve, I'm done") that explained the complexities of the BP oil spill?  After all, when one "knows more about policy" than mere mortals, who needs to waste one's time with experts -- even Nobel Prize-winning scientists?

Why should taxpayers even fund experts when we have an omniscient president making up fact-free policy?  Perhaps we should just lay off thousands of people who toil away in the federal government trying to find facts.  American taxpayers can just rely on Barack Obama.

Indeed, a good rule of thumb to judge Obama is to take his boast, reverse it, and then apply it to Obama.  He seems out of his depth when discussing policy, so he avoids press conferences and becomes irate during the rare times a non-fawning journalist poses a challenging question to him.  Or he is just reduced to "gibberish," as Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson described his answer to ABC News's Jake Tapper over a question regarding his broken promise to reduce debt .

Or he relies on fluff as deep as "hope," "change," and "yes we can," as he did during the campaign.  Now he depends on "fat cats" and "fairness."  They are easy to remember and are not as challenging for him as being able to comprehend and explain actual policy.

His vanity leads to an aversion to showing how unprepared he is to be president.

The best ticket in town would be a debate between Congressman Paul Ryan and Barack Obama regarding the huge deficits and debt Obama has imposed on us and our children.  Ryan has a fluency and knowledge of these vital issues that dwarf those of Obama.  Instead of cooperating with Ryan, he ambushes and insults him in public and for good measure later insulted opponents of his job bill for being unable to understand the "whole thing at once" so "we're going to break it into bite-sized pieces."

Psychologists would call this "projection."

This refusal to do the homework necessary to make good decisions is worrisome on several levels.  It led to not only legislation being outsourced to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, but also to foreign policy decisions that seem to come from either the Arab League or the United Nations, or from some sudden inspiration of his disconnect from reality.  After all, the path of least resistance is just to do nothing, "lead from behind," or let others do the work.  At times, he appears to have adopted a "hear no evil, see no evil" approach that may conflict with the facts and with statements made by his own officials but has the virtue of avoiding the mere prospect of having to make a decision.

Did he not do his research or ask experts when he violated, for example, agreements made with Israel regarding settlements?  Or seek counsel when he broke agreements with East European allies to station missiles on their land as part of his feckless reset with Russia?  Or violated the War Powers Act by waging war in Libya?

Perhaps ignorance is bliss -- as blissful as a sunny day on the fairway.

Now, of course, he has gone full-bore into campaign mode, and his decisions are geared to improving his own re-election prospects (the omnipresent David Plouffe, Obama's senior political adviser, has become a de facto decider-in-chief).

One can point to myriad examples that prompt inquiries along the lines of "how did he make that decision?"

Yet, Barack Obama claims that he has gotten better as president.  One can certainly hope so.  But recent evidence does not show so.  Ryan Lizza recently wrote a New Yorker column that gave readers insight into how the president makes decisions, and it is as unappealing as watching sausage being made.  Mickey Kaus at the Daily Caller distilled the essence of Obama's decision-making:

The President's decision-making method...seems to consist mainly of checking boxes on memos his aides have written for him. ... He's presented with a list of $60 billion in cuts to his core stimulus policies, and writes "OK." ... He "authorize his staff" to plan a likely-to-be-useless "bipartisan 'fiscal summit,'" asks "what are the takeaways" is told he could "ask .. for continued dialogue," and doesn't write "this is all BS" and cancel the summit, which in fact proves useless. ... He's given a memo on cutting government waste and writes "This is good stuff-we need to constantly publicize our successful efforts here." Does he later notice that either the efforts or the attempt to publicize them were wildly ineffective?  ... He's asked to check a box saying whether he wants to fund his "child nutrition agenda" out of the money for community colleges. ... He's asked about including medical malpractice reform in his health care bill, and writes ("in his characteristically cautious and reasonable style") that "we should explore it."  ... He's presented a plan for a watered-down tax on multinationals or a very watered down tax. He writes "worth discussing."

Finally, he's presented with a classic three-box-con memo-two extreme boxes (big new jobs package, big new deficit package) and a safer middle box ("smaller, more symbolic" deficit efforts), a matrix clearly designed to get him to choose the middle option. He chooses the middle option.

His handlers have been reduced to managing the president in a way more appropriate for a child in grade school.

Kaus is incredulous that Obama can't just "be an executive who spend his days checking boxes, accepting the choices presented by his aides, never reaching outside them through unconventional channels or reaching unconventional thinkers, never throwing over the framework with which he is presented."

Why not?

Can't the presidency be a multiple choice exam?  Those are always the easiest tests especially for unprepared people in over their heads -- as President Obama has proven himself to be.

Ed Lasky is news editor of American Thinker.


Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2012/02/how_obama_makes_decisions.html



 at February 21, 2012 - 10:06:24 AM CST
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 21, 2012, 07:19:45 PM
Obama to law enforcement: Stop linking Muslims to Terrorism
canadafreepress.com ^ | Feb. 20, 2012 | Jim Kouri
Posted on February 21, 2012 10:27:52 PM EST by Free ThinkerNY

In yet another curtsy to the politically correct orthodoxy, President Barack Obama’s White House plans to tinker with federal police curriculums for counterterrorism training classes. The first bit of “revamping” is the removal of all material that groups, such as the Council on American Islamic Relations, or CAIR, find offensive or containing a “negative” image of Muslims.

It’s a government-wide call to end Islamophobia, according to a blog by a Washington, DC-based watchdog group that investigates, exposes and prosecutes government corruption.

A few months after the Obama White House ordered an investigation of government counterterrorism training, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has destroyed instructional material that characterizes Muslims as prone to violence or terrorism, according to the Judicial Watch blog.

So far 700 pages of documents from about 300 presentations given to agents since the 2001 terrorist attacks have been purged, according to a new report published this week. The White House order came after the same publication reported in late November that the FBI, Department of Justice (DOJ) and Pentagon taught employees that mainstream Muslims embrace violence and compared the Islamic religion to the death star.

(Excerpt) Read more at canadafreepress.com ...
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 22, 2012, 06:26:42 AM
WTF! 



Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Shockwave on February 22, 2012, 06:33:36 AM
Obama to law enforcement: Stop linking Muslims to Terrorism
canadafreepress.com ^ | Feb. 20, 2012 | Jim Kouri
Posted on February 21, 2012 10:27:52 PM EST by Free ThinkerNY

In yet another curtsy to the politically correct orthodoxy, President Barack Obama’s White House plans to tinker with federal police curriculums for counterterrorism training classes. The first bit of “revamping” is the removal of all material that groups, such as the Council on American Islamic Relations, or CAIR, find offensive or containing a “negative” image of Muslims.

It’s a government-wide call to end Islamophobia, according to a blog by a Washington, DC-based watchdog group that investigates, exposes and prosecutes government corruption.

A few months after the Obama White House ordered an investigation of government counterterrorism training, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has destroyed instructional material that characterizes Muslims as prone to violence or terrorism, according to the Judicial Watch blog.

So far 700 pages of documents from about 300 presentations given to agents since the 2001 terrorist attacks have been purged, according to a new report published this week. The White House order came after the same publication reported in late November that the FBI, Department of Justice (DOJ) and Pentagon taught employees that mainstream Muslims embrace violence and compared the Islamic religion to the death star.

(Excerpt) Read more at canadafreepress.com ...

Jesus Christ really?
Now we have to be PC to the fucking people that hate us, attack us and decry our existence every day? REALLY!?
Were going to let them dictate what material we can have?!
So, the FBI is allowed to have material claiming that citizens that feel the government is too large are terrorists, but theyre NOT allowed to have material talking about how Muslims are prone to violence or terrorism?!?

REALLY!!?!?!?!?!?!?!
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 22, 2012, 09:42:49 AM
Obama moves on corporate-tax reform (in the wrong direction!)
Hotair ^ | 02/22/2012 | Ed Morrissey





Corporate tax reform has long been an opportunity for a win-win bipartisan effort in Washington. Everyone agrees that the corporate code needs significant changes, if not a complete overhaul; it's too complicated, too costly, and rewards the larger companies that can afford to analyze it for every possible benefit. Both parties have made corporate tax reform part of their plartforms, Democrats arguing that we need to close loopholes, Republicans that we need simplification and lower rates.

The White House decided to go first on corporate tax reform:

The Obama administration Wednesday will unveil a framework for reforming the corporate tax code that would lower the top rate from 35 percent to 28 percent but generate more total revenue by eliminating “dozens of tax loopholes and subsidies” and creating a minimum rate on foreign earnings.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner will formally unveil the tax reform blueprint at 11:30 a.m.

The “global minimum tax” makes an appearance, along with a laughable pledge to pay for the rate reduction by — wait for it — “greater fiscal responsibility”:

The tax reform framework “eliminates dozens of different tax expenditures and fundamentally reforms the business tax base to reduce distortions that hurt productivity and growth. … It reinvests these savings to lower the corporate tax rate to 28 percent, putting the United States in line with major competitor countries and encouraging greater investment,” according to an administration official.

The official added that the framework “would refocus the manufacturing deduction and use the savings to reduce the effective rate on manufacturing to no more than 25 percent, while encouraging greater research and development and the production of clean energy.”

The framework would establish “a new minimum tax on foreign earnings, to encourage domestic investment.” The proposal will be “fully paid for … to greater fiscal responsibility than our current business tax system by either eliminating or making permanent and fully paying for temporary tax provisions now in the tax code.”

“Greater fiscal responsibility”? Isn’t this the same White House that produced four trillion-dollar-plus budget deficits? Yeah, that will work out well.

James Pethokoukis takes a long look at the proposal, and declares that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner should resign for putting his name to it:

The current U.S. economic recovery is arguably the worst in modern American history. Incomes are flat, housing is moribund and the past three years have seen the longest stretch of high unemployment in this country since the Great Depression. Yet President Barack Obama—with the backing of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner—has the temerity to propose a corporate tax reform plan that would actually raise the tax burden on American business (and de facto on workers, too) without lowering rates to an internationally competitive level. This is a terrible, terrible plan:

1. The Obama-Geithner plan would lower the statutory corporate tax rate to 28 percent from 35 percent, currently the second-highest among advanced economies. But that would still leave the combined U.S. corporate tax rate — state and federal — at 32.2 percent, far above the OECD combined average of 25 percent. The U.S. combined rate would be a bit below slow-growing Japan and France but above the U.K. and Germany. That’s not nearly good enough. Canada just lowered its corporate tax rate, for instance, to 15 percent. So instead of having the second highest corporate tax rate in the world, the U.S. would probably be fourth behind Japan, France and Belgium.

2. The Obama-Geithner plan would establish, according to the New York Times, a minimum tax on multinational corporations’ foreign earnings to discourage “accounting games to shift profits abroad” or actual relocation of production overseas.

So instead of a carrot, Corporate America gets the stick. Instead of lowering the U.S. rate to a competitive level, Obama would raise the penalty on keeping profits overseas. Indeed, the United States is a huge outlier in that it taxes the foreign profits of multinational companies. Here is Obama’s own Jobs Council:

While most other developed nations have adopted territorial systems that exempt most or all foreign income from taxes when they are repatriated, the U.S. subjects all worldwide earnings to the corporate income tax when they are brought home to the U.S. This approach actually encourages U.S. companies to keep their earnings abroad rather than investing them here at home. Adopting a territorial tax system would bring us in line with our trading partners and would eliminate the so-called “lock-out” effect in the current worldwide system of taxation that discourages repatriation and investment of the foreign earnings of American companies in the U.S.

Obama’s debt commission made a similar recommendation.

James has plenty more to say, especially on the lack of understanding on the part of Obama and his team about basic economics. Who pays corporate taxes? Consumers and employees do.

However, from a political perspective, this may be even worse than its economics. For the second straight year, Obama has launched a major proposal while deliberately disregarding his own advisory panel’s recommendations. That turned into political disaster last year, when Obama’s budget ignored his own appointed deficit panel. His budget got voted down unanimously in a Senate controlled by his own party, making him look extreme and out of touch on budgetary issues.

Now his new corporate tax proposal ignores the recommendations from the panel Obama created to much fanfare last year as part of his focus on job creation and economic growth. The obvious conclusion is that Obama has prioritized punitive tax changes on American business in order to fund his spending expansion over economic growth. Republicans need to emphasize that Obama’s job council turned out to be nothing more than a smoke screen, just the same as Simpson-Bowles, and that this corporate tax “reform” is anything but.

Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 22, 2012, 10:09:40 AM
Obama to Shut Down Immigration Enforcement Program
foxnews ^ | 02.22.12 | Alan Gomez




WASHINGTON – The Obama administration is starting to shut down a program that deputized local police officers to act as immigration agents.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have trained local officers around the country to act as their agencies' immigration officers. Working either in jails or in the field, the officers can check the immigration status of suspects and place immigration holds on them.


(Excerpt) Read more at nation.foxnews.com ...






More hispandering by the Occupier in Chief 
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 22, 2012, 12:31:26 PM
Sleight Of Hand: Obama To Propose 28% Corporate Tax Rate…But Increase Dividend Tax Rate To 64.1%
Pat Dollard ^ | 2-22-2012





Sleight Of Hand: Obama To Propose 28% Corporate Tax Rate…But Increase Dividend Tax Rate To 64.1%
February 22, 2012

Mr. Obama is proposing to raise the dividend tax rate to the higher personal income tax rate of 39.6% that will kick in next year. Add in the planned phase-out of deductions and exemptions, and the rate hits 41%. Then add the 3.8% investment tax surcharge in ObamaCare, and the new dividend tax rate in 2013 would be 44.8%—nearly three times today’s 15% rate.

Keep in mind that dividends are paid to shareholders only after the corporation pays taxes on its profits. So assuming a maximum 35% corporate tax rate and a 44.8% dividend tax, the total tax on corporate earnings passed through as dividends would be 64.1%.

...

Who would get hurt? IRS data show that retirees and near-retirees who depend on dividend income would be hit especially hard. Almost three of four dividend payments go to those over the age of 55, and more than half go to those older than 65, according to IRS data.

But all American shareholders would lose. Higher dividend and capital gains taxes make stocks less valuable. A share of stock is worth the discounted present value of the future earnings stream after taxes. Stock prices would fall over time to adjust to the new after-tax rate of return. And if investors become convinced later this year that dividend and capital gains taxes are going way up on January 1, some investors are likely to sell shares ahead of paying these higher rates.

The question is how this helps anyone. According to the Investment Company Institute, about 51% of adults own stock directly or through mutual funds, which is more than 100 million shareholders. Tens of millions more own stocks through pension funds. Why would the White House endorse a policy that will make these households poorer?

Seldom has there been a clearer example of a policy that is supposed to soak the rich but will drench almost all American families.













Go figure - more lies from Obama   
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: garebear on February 22, 2012, 03:40:46 PM
Every time I see one of your threads, you are the person that started it and you are the last person to post in it.

What do you think that says about you?

Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 22, 2012, 03:53:03 PM
 :)
Every time I see one of your threads, you are the person that started it and you are the last person to post in it.

What do you think that says about you?




That I update them?   


Btw you are free to dispute anything I have posted. 
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: garebear on February 22, 2012, 04:19:35 PM
:)

That I update them?   


Btw you are free to dispute anything I have posted. 
I would love to keep up with your posts, but I have a job and human relationships.

These things, foreign as they are to you, do take up a man's time.
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 22, 2012, 07:54:30 PM
FCC chairman’s books contain undocumented meetings with left-wing lobbyists
daily caller ^ | 2/21/12 | Josh Peterson
Posted on February 21, 2012 7:22:20 PM EST by Nachum

In the months leading up to the Federal Communications Commission’s December 21, 2010 “net neutrality” vote, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s appointment book contained two key meetings not listed in Commission’s legal filings, The Daily Caller has learned.

Genachowski’s appointment book, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request and provided to TheDC by the National Legal and Policy Center, showed two meetings that were not listed in the Commission’s ex parte filings in the month prior to the “net neutrality vote.”

“Net neutrality” is where Internet traffic management policies of Internet service providers (ISPs) are governed by the FCC.

One was a half an hour meeting on November 9, 2010 called “Tim Wu JG Drop by (Conf Room One). Wu, the chairman of the board of left-wing activist media lobby group Free Press from 2008 until 2011, was one of the chief architects of the “net neutrality” principle. Another was a 15 minute meeting on November 22, 2010 with Gigi Sohn – founder and president of Public Knowledge, also a left-wing activist media lobby group – in the minutes prior to an hour long meeting with “Public Interest Groups.”

When multiple parties are involved in a single issue before the Commission, ex parte filings — which keep all parties informed of private meetings between the Commission and a single party — are required to be filed by the lobby group who petitioned the FCC. Even when the information of the meeting is considered “restricted,” there is at least a notice filed by that party indicating the meeting took place.

(Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com ...
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 23, 2012, 11:38:04 AM
The Corner

Guess Who Decides What FBI Agents Get To Learn About Islam?

By Andrew C. McCarthy

February 22, 2012 





While we’re on the subject of the Muslim Brotherhood, this February 16 report from Steve Emerson at the Investigative Project on Terrorism will be an eye-opener. As I mentioned in my column over the weekend, the FBI — following the administration’s lead — is purging its training materials of publications that are deemed offensive to Muslims (you know, crazy stuff like claims that passages in the Koran and Hadith promote violent jihad, Islamic supremacism, killing of apostates, oppression of women, etc.). So what are the criteria the Bureau uses to figure out what materials are offensive? And who decides?

You’ll never guess. Steve, who has been talking to some mighty outraged law-enforcement officials, writes:

It was just revealed two days ago that FBI Director Mueller secretly met on February 8 at FBI headquarters with a coalition of groups including various Islamist and militant Arabic groups who in the past have defended Hamas and Hizballah and have also issued blatantly anti-Semitic statements. At this meeting, the FBI revealed that it had removed more than 1000 presentations and curricula on Islam from FBI offices around the country that was deemed “offensive.” The FBI did not reveal what criteria was used to determine why material was considered “offensive” but knowledgeable law enforcement sources have told the IPT that it was these radical groups who made that determination. Moreover, numerous FBI agents have confirmed that from now on, FBI headquarters has banned all FBI offices from inviting any counter-terrorist specialists who are considered “anti-Islam” by Muslim Brotherhood front groups.

The February 8 FBI meeting was the culmination of a series of unpublicized directives issued in the last three months by top FBI officials to all its field offices to immediately recall and withdraw any presentation or curricula on Islam throughout the entire FBI. In fact, according to informed sources and undisclosed documents, the FBI directive was instigated by radical Muslim groups in the US who had repeatedly met with top officials of the Obama Administration to complain, among other things, that the mere usage of the term of “radical Islam” in FBI curricula was “offensive” and ‘racist.” And thus, directives went out by Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI Director Mueller to censor all such material. Included in the material destroyed or removed by the FBI and the DOJ were powerpoints and articles that defined jihad as “holy war” or presentations that portrayed the Muslim Brotherhood as an organization bent on taking over the world—a major tenet that the Muslim Brotherhood has publicly stated for decades.

Feel safer now?

 
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 23, 2012, 11:54:56 AM
Obama: I've got 'five years' left to solve immigration
Politico44 ^ | 2/23/12 | BYRON TAU




In an interview with Univision Radio, President Obama said that he has 'five years' left in his presidency to figure out issues like comprehensive immigration reform. Striking a confident note about his reelection prospects, Obama assured a largely Hispanic audience that he has not given up on getting an immigration bill done — one that would provide a pathway to citizenship.

"My presidency is not over," Obama told Univision's Eddie “Piolin” Sotelo "I’ve got another five years coming up. We’re going to get this done."

Obama also said that Hispanic voters would ultimately face an easy choice in deciding between him and the Republican nominee in November — emphasizing his support for comprehensive immigration reform and a pathway to citizenship.


(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...


________________________ _________________


God Help us. 
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 24, 2012, 03:56:22 AM
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The $4 Billion Obamacare Slush Fund for Progressives
Townhall.com ^ | February 24, 2012 | Michelle Malkin
Posted on February 24, 2012 6:43:56 AM EST by Kaslin

If you like how the Obama administration's multibillion-dollar "investments" in bankrupt solar companies have turned out, you'll love the latest federal loan program to nowhere. It's the Obamacare loyalty rewards program for progressives.

To appease liberal Democrats pushing for the so-called "public option" (the full frontal government takeover of our health care system), the White House settled for the creation of a $6 billion network of nonprofit "CO-OPs" that will "compete" with private insurers. It's socialized medicine through the side door. House Republicans sliced about $2 billion from the slush fund in last spring's budget deal and proclaimed the program dead. Hardly.

On Wednesday, the White House trumpeted the release of nearly $700 million in taxpayer-funded low-interest loans for seven CO-OPs in eight states. Administered by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the fund will pour more money into CO-OP plans nationwide throughout the next year. In 2014, according to Washington bureaucrats, the plans will be offered on the federally approved and federally monitored state health exchange "marketplace."

Some marketplace. Given how Team Obama has dispensed special Obamacare waivers to scores of campaign donors, it's a sure bet the CO-OP/exchange mechanism will be brazenly rigged against non-subsidized, for-profit insurers. And against taxpayers. Obama health officials assure us that there will be an "early warning system" in place before loan recipients get into financial trouble. But we know from the half-billion-dollar Solyndra scam that when this administration sees red flags, it's full speed ahead.

In fact, the Obamacare CO-OP overseers already predict a nearly 40 percent default rate for the loans, according to Kaiser Health. Welcome to the Chicago-on-the-Potomac reverse rule of holes: When you're in one, keep digging.

So, who are the lucky winners of the Obamacare slush fund lottery? Freelancers CO-OP of New Jersey, New Mexico Health Connections, Midwest Members Health in Iowa and Nebraska, Common Ground Healthcare Cooperative in Wisconsin, Freelancers CO-OP of Oregon, Montana Health Cooperative, and Freelancers Health Service Corporation in New York.

You won't be surprised to learn that the Freelancers Union -- the largest CO-OP loan beneficiary to date, with a total $341 million subsidy -- is a left-wing outfit founded by a self-described "labor entrepreneur" and MacArthur "genius." Sara Horowitz has already snagged countless grants from the city and state of New York, the liberal Ford Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation.

Horowitz and Obama served together, along with former green jobs czar Van Jones, as advisers for the progressive think tank Demos -- which in turn partnered with fraud-ridden community organizers ACORN and Project Vote. She also runs a political action committee called "Working Today" that crusades for an expanded government safety net. Crowing about the CO-OP loan from her fellow progressive warrior, Horowitz exulted: "It's like venture capital for health care." Or more accurately, to borrow South Carolina GOP Sen. Jim DeMint's phrase, venture socialism.

While Horowitz plots to rope in 200,000 new clients, existing customers protested in The New York Times over lousy customer service and abrupt changes that resulted in "higher premiums, higher deductibles and more holes than their current plans." Horowitz is more preoccupied with ensuring that the "social-purpose company" meets social and environmental justice goals than with customer needs.

Another of the Obamacare slush fund winners, Common Ground Healthcare Cooperative in Wisconsin, scooped up a $56.4 million federal loan. The group describes itself as a "coalition of religious groups and other organizations." Its pedigree is much more radical than that. As the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel noted, Common Ground "is the Milwaukee affiliate of the Industrial Areas Foundation, founded in 1940 by Saul Alinsky, a famed community organizer and author of 'Rules for Radicals.' The organization, based in Chicago, bills itself as the oldest and largest community organizing network."

The Industrial Areas Foundation was funded largely by the Gamaliel Foundation, which employed Obama in Chicago. As I first reported in 2009, Gamaliel's Gregory Galluzzo wrote that he "met with Barack on a regular basis," that Obama "acknowledged publicly that he had been the director of a Gamaliel affiliate," and that "we are honored and blessed by the connection between Barack and Gamaliel." No kidding. As Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson put it: "These grants/loans reek of political payola."

Cronies reap. Taxpayers weep.

Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 24, 2012, 08:53:05 AM
http://www.businessinsider.com/obama-gives-another-sweetheart-deal-to-his-friends-at-ge-2012-2


What a corrupt thief obama is.   
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 24, 2012, 09:28:20 AM



 :D  :D  :D  :D  :D  :D


I wonder what economics teacher taught obama this brilliant concept? 
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 24, 2012, 10:56:58 AM
Obama's "Sneak Attack" on Senior Citizens''


http://www.forbes.com/sites/prospernow/2012/02/24/obamas-sneak-attack-on-senior-citizens




 John Mariotti, Contributor John Mariotti, ContributorFear is a powerful motivator.  Millions of seniors are fearful of how they make it through their golden years.



There are a lot of senior citizens in the US now. The number is increasing by 10,000 every day as Baby Boomers turn 65—and start applying for Medicare and then shortly after that, for Social Security. These are the folks who once thought this would be the “Golden Years” when their years of hard work and savings and pension plans would let them live the good life, in places that are sunny and warm.

Then came the financial crisis and the stock market crash, the recession, and the “non-recovery.” Whatever “nest egg” they thought they had suddenly was mostly gone. Panicked, they sold their portfolio of securities on the way down, and then fearful of what came next, they didn’t buy back in on the way up. Thus they missed out on the stock market growth over the past 18-24 months. They are left with a much smaller “nest egg,” or none at all, and their pensions are either broke or being discontinued too.

As bad as that sounds, it’s not the “worst news.” The “worst news” is that President Barack Obama plans and policies constitute a multi-faceted “sneak attack on seniors.” Obama cleverly conceals this “sneak attack” while he assures seniors citizens he’s going to take care of them—and “nothing will change” for them. Nonsense!

Consider these actions, all planned or already created by Barack Obama and his minions:

1. Depress Interest Income: Interest rates have been held unnaturally low (by the Fed) for a very, very long time. Thus any money that senior citizens have in safe places like savings accounts, money market funds, and even most bonds, earns very, very little interest—between 0.3% and 2%.

2. Draining Remaining Social Security Funds: In his desire to show some economic growth and “buy votes” Obama created the “Payroll Tax Holiday,” which was supposed to be for a short time—like 6 months—because reducing the employee’s portion of payroll taxes by 2% takes that money directly out of what is used to fund Social Security. And now he has “gallantly” decided to do it again—for a year this time. This further drains a Social Security System which the president has refused to “fix and fund,” and continues to ignore as it becomes more and more insolvent.

But that’s not all. There’s more. Of course these are all part of the President’s grand plan to keep the (lukewarm) recovery going artificially until he can be reelected to a second term.

3. Dry Up Dividends, Gut Capital Gains: Obama’s latest tax proposal includes doubling the tax rate on dividends and capital gains, which is his way of paying for the irresponsible spending that is creating $5 trillion in deficits just four years. Every year Obama has been in office spending has exceeded revenue by more than a trillion dollars. The only way to over that is with tax increases, and while he talks about taxing the rich—a part of the taxes involved doubling the tax rate on dividends and capital gains. These two of the primary sources of retirement income for seniors, will be taxed more heavily and thus less desirable for companies to pay dividends.

4. New Taxes Hidden in Obamacare: There are hidden surprises in Obamacare—the massive health care bill that was supposed to fix everything—but doesn’t. The most notable one is a 3.8% tax on “unearned income,” which includes dividends, interest, and proceeds from the sale of a home (which many seniors are downsizing, and would use as a source of assets for retirement income.

5. Reduced Funding in Medicare and Rationing Health Care: This one might help seniors by shortening the time they’d have to endure the others, because part of the economic justification of Obamacare was to cut Medicare benefits by $500 billion over a period of years. How? By rationing health care—and refusing to pay for medical expenses incurred by people whose lives were nearing the end anyway. Medicare is already insolvent, and President Obama has not done anything to try fixing it—except take more money away from it.

After all, it doesn’t make sense to spend a lot on medical needs for really old people does it? Not to Barack OBAMA and his minions it doesn’t. They will do a “cost benefit analysis,” and if the medical costs are too high, their appointed commissioners will simply refuse to pay the benefits and let the older, more infirm senior citizens die (sooner). After all, seniors incur more than70% of their lifetime health care expenses in the last few years of their lives.

What the heck, Obama’s got a plan for everything. Save on interest rates, collect more taxes, depress dividend payments and capital gains, and sneak a few more hidden taxes in the 2000+-page Obamacare bill. If rationing health care reduces the number of people who live long enough to need that extra retirement income, it doesn’t matter that the first four steps in the Obama Economic Plan cuts the income of seniors so much their lives wouldn’t be very pleasant anyway.

To top things off, Obama keeps wasting money on high risk “green energy” projects like Solyndra, meanwhile blocking oil and gas exploration, stopping drilling and development of delivery projects like the Keystone pipeline. So what if America sends billions over to the Middle East for oil? So what if the cost of gas goes over $5/gallon. Seniors on reduced fixed incomes, with untreated medial conditions (under rationing) don’t need to be driving around anyway.

What a wonderful country full of HOPE and CHANGE that Barack Obama has planned for us senior citizens. Now hee wants four more years, so he can “finish the job”—or “finish us off”—or both.

I am not making this stuff up. It comes right off the reports about Obama’s plans. You might want to share this with all your senior citizen friends, to make sure they know who and what they will be voting for in 2012.

———-
John Mariotti is an internationally known executive and an award-winning author. His newest book, co-authored with D. M. Lukas, Hope is NOT a Strategy: Leadership Lessons from the Obama Presidency will be available early in March 2012 at www.amazon.com . Mariotti’s 2008 book, The Complexity Crisis was named one of 2008’s Best Business Books.

Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 24, 2012, 01:43:35 PM
Another Obama fundraiser turns out to be a bad ambassador
Foreign Policy ^ | 23 Feb 2012 | Josh Rogin






Candidate Barack Obama promised to end the time-honored American practice of appointing ambassadors who have no experience in foreign policy, but President Obama has completely ignored that promise, appointing fundraisers to dozens of ambassadorships all over the world.

Today, the State Department revealed that another fundraiser turned ambassador ran her embassy into the ground ... only to return to fundraising and leave the State Department to pick up the pieces.

According to a new State Department inspector general's report

on the U.S. Embassy in the Bahamas, Ambassador Nicole Avant presided over "an extended period of dysfunctional leadership and mismanagement, which has caused problems throughout the embassy" since she was appointed by the president in 2009. Prior to being America's envoy in the Caribbean, Avant was Southern California finance co-chairwoman of Obama's presidential campaign and vice president of Interior Music Publishing.

According to her glowingly positive Wikipedia page, Avant spent her time in the Bahamas "focused on five priority initiatives: Education, Alternative Energy, Economic and Small Business Development, Women's Empowerment and Raising awareness of the challenges facing people with disabilities."

But according to the State Department's internal investigation, Avant was away from the embassy an inordinate amount of time -- mainly shuttling back and forth to her home in Los Angeles -- and when she was in town, she worked from her residence most of the day.

Avant was absent from the embassy 276 days between September 2009 and November 2011, including 102 "personal" days and 77 "work travel" days to the United States, of which only 23 were on official orders.


(Excerpt) Read more at thecable.foreignpolicy.c om ...

Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 25, 2012, 05:21:49 AM
A123 Systems, an electric car battery company once touted as a stimulus "success story" by former Gov. Jennifer Granhom, D-Mich., has laid off 125 employees since receiving $390 million in government subsidies -- but is still handing out big pay raises to company executives.

"[T]he company has laid off 125 employees and had a net loss of $172 million through the first three quarters of 2011," the Mackinac Center for Public Policy notes, observing that the company's primary customer, Fisker Automotive, is also struggling financially. "Yet, this month A123’s Compensation Committee approved a $30,000 raise for [Chief Financial Officer David] Prystash just days after Fisker Automotive announced the U.S. Energy Department had cut off what was left of its $528.7 million loan it had previously received."

This month has seen significant pay boosts for other A123 executives, as well:

Robert Johnson, vice president of the energy solutions group, got a 20.7 percent pay increase going from $331,250 to $400,000, while Jason Forcier, vice president of the automotive solutions group, saw his pay increase from $331,250 to $350,000. Prystash’s raise was 8.5 percent, going from $350,000 to $380,000.

"It looks like they are trying to pad their top people’s wallets in case something really bad happens," Paul Chesser, associate fellow for the National Legal & Policy Center, suggested.

The Department of Energy gave the battery company $249.1 million in grant money, while the Michigan government provided A123 with another $141 million in tax credits and subsidies, according to the Mackinac Center.

 
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 26, 2012, 04:52:26 AM
Democratic governors discuss bypassing Congress with Obama
The Hill ^ | 02/24/12 | Alicia M. Cohn
Posted on February 25, 2012 5:08:01 PM EST by Da Bilge Troll

President Obama met with a group of Democratic governors on Friday and discussed plans to work around Congress toward policy goals.

Gov. Jack Markell, the Democratic governor of Delaware and the vice chairman of the National Governors Association, told The Hill that the meeting was “very good” and said many of the governors were responsive to ideas about bypassing Congress.

“There was a sense that none of us should wait, we can’t wait for things to happen in Congress,” Markell said of the meeting. “We’re going to do what we can do [now].”

Obama has positioned himself against Congress as he runs for reelection, arguing lawmakers are failing to solve the country’s problems. “Where Congress won’t act, I will,” he said in October when rolling out a series of executive orders aimed at creating jobs.

Markell said the conversation with Obama did not dwell on Republican opposition to the president’s legislative proposals.

The tone of the meeting was positive, Markell said, and the governors agreed that the Obama administration has been “terrifically responsive” to their state governments.

The Democratic governors discussed the three major job goals from Obama’s State of the Union address: building manufacturing, training workers and increasing American-made energy.

“We had a great conversation very focused, not surprisingly, on jobs,” Markell said, calling jobs the “biggest issue for all of us in the room, no matter where we come from.”

He noted that although they did not discuss the election, the sense in the room was that focusing on jobs is Democrats’ best chance to win in the fall. That is the message the Democratic Party has been sending in full force this season, ranging from Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) to Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D), who slammed the GOP presidential candidates Friday on CNN for failing to mention jobs in the most recent debate and instead talking about “divisive cultural issues.”

Markell said the discussion with Obama steered clear of the transportation bills that are being fought over in Congress, though “it’s certainly something we as governors feel strongly about.”

The meeting, which lasted about an hour and fifteen minutes, took place in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building and involved more than a dozen Democratic governors and several members of the Obama administration.

Governors present included Govs. Jerry Brown (Calif.), Jay Nixon (Mo.), O’Malley, Christine Gregoire (Wash.), Bev Perdue (N.C.), Peter Shumlin (Vt.), Neil Abercrombie (Hawaii), Deval Patrick (Mass.) and Pat Quinn (Ill.).

The governors are in town for the annual winter meeting of the National Governors Association. Markell, who attended the meeting for the first time as vice chairman of the NGA, also talked up the level of bipartisan cooperation between the governors, which he said contrasted with what has “not been a great level of cooperation between members of Congress.”

“We don’t really care where an idea comes from if it’s a good idea,” he said.

Governors from both parties will meet with the president on Monday.

TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Front Page News; Government; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections; US: California; US: Delaware; US: Florida; US: Hawaii; US: Illinois; US: Maryland; US: Massachusetts; US: Missouri; US: North Carolina; US: Vermont; US: Washington; Click to Add Topic
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 26, 2012, 08:53:06 AM
Obama Fee on Food Processors Would Raise Prices, Industry Says
February 24, 2012, 3:29 PM EST
By Stephanie Armour





Feb. 24 (Bloomberg) -- An Obama administration plan to raise $220 million for food-safety programs through fees on processing plants, warehouses and other facilities would hit consumers with higher food prices, industry groups said.

Congress rejected including a similar proposal in the Food and Drug Administration’s budget request last year and also ruled out the idea when debating a food-safety law that President Barack Obama signed last year.

Thirty-three industry groups said the cost of a food facility registration fee proposed by the administration to help fund oversight would be passed on to consumers at a time of economic hardship, according to a Feb. 23 letter the associations sent to top U.S. lawmakers.

“As food companies and consumers continue to cope with a period of prolonged economic turbulence, the creation of a new food tax would mean higher costs for food makers and higher food prices for our consumers,” associations representing egg producers, snack foods, juice, meat and other industries said in the letter.

The letter was sent to House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers, a Kentucky Republican, and Representative Norm Dicks, a Washington Democrat, among others. Rogers and Dicks sit on the panel that oversees discretionary spending for food safety and agriculture programs.

Industry Concerns

The American Frozen Food Institute, National Meat Association, International Dairy Foods Association and United Fresh Produce Association were among the groups signing the letter. The FDA projects it will collect $220 million in fees in fiscal year 2013.

“We stand ready to work with Congress and the administration to find a better and less burdensome solution,” the groups said in the letter.

Congress raised the FDA’s budget by about $40 million in fiscal 2012 to support the law, which contains the biggest changes to food safety rules in more than 70 years.

The fees are minimal compared with the cost of foodborne illness, which the act seeks to reduce, Doug Karas, a spokesman for the FDA, said in an e-mail. Such illnesses cost $77.7 billion a year, according to a 2012 study cited in the agency’s proposal. That includes medical costs, time off work and the cost of premature death.

--Editors: Adriel Bettelheim, Andrew Pollack

To contact the reporter on this story: Stephanie Armour in Washington at sarmour@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Adriel Bettelheim in Washington at abettelheim@bloomberg.net


Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 26, 2012, 09:39:05 AM
Obama's Favorite Algae Company
The Obama Solution?




President Obama’s reference to algae in his Thursday energy speech drew flak over the weekend from Newt Gingrich, who called it “weird” before calling algal biofuel “a terrific concept.” But Obama had political reasons to promote algae in Florida, the sunny, swampy, politically-volatile state he carried in 2008.

The Obama Administration has already sunk $25 million into a Florida company—Alganol Biofuels—that is building an algae biorefinery using a patented technology that promises to streamline the process of extracting oils from algae so they be converted to ethanol.

In remarks at the University of Miami, Obama highlighted two domestic energy sources more than any other—natural gas and algae. After the speech, the Administration announced $30 million in grants to develop natural gas as a vehicle fuel, $14 million for algae.

“We’re making new investments in the development of gasoline and diesel and jet fuel that’s actually made from a plant-like substance — algae,” Obama said in Miami. ” You’ve got a bunch of algae out here, right? If we can figure out how to make energy out of that, we’ll be doing all right.”

Gingrich mocked Obama during an appearance in Idaho, calling a hypothetical bottle of algae “the Obama solution.” Then, more seriously, praised the concept but said it will take 20 to 40 years to develop.

Obama’s remarks rest on a 2011 study by the Energy Department’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, which found that 17 percent of U.S. oil imports could be displaced by domestic biofuels from algae.

“Believe it or not, we could replace up to 17 percent of the oil we import for transportation with this fuel that we can grow right here in the United States,” Obama said. “And that means greater energy security. That means lower costs. It means more jobs. It means a stronger economy.”

Obama used the study’s more conservative number. The authors found that algae has the potential to replace up to 48 percent of fuel imports for transporation—but that level of production would require vast amounts of fresh water and land: 5.5 percent of the land area in the conterminous United States and nearly three times the water currently used for irrigated agriculture.

The authors consider 17 percent a viable number based on optimal land and water and geographic placement of algae farms.

They did not propose a timeline for development of an algal energy industry, but they identified a potential Achilles’ Heel of algal biofuels: up to 350 gallons of fresh water would be needed to produce one gallon of oil from algae.

That’s where Florida’s Alganol Biofuels comes in: its biorefineries grow algae in saltwater and can sequester carbon dioxide that would otherwise be released to the atmosphere from industrial or power plants.

The Energy Department study did not consider saltwater production. Alganol broke ground in October on a 36-acre facility in Lee County, Florida that will use 3,000 “bioreactors” to produce ethanol from algae. The project is expected to create 130 jobs.

The company had originally partnered with Dow Chemical to build a demonstration plant at a Dow facility in Freeport, Texas, but Dow withdrew from the project—except as a supplier of plastics and potential purchaser of ethanol. Alganol shifted the facility to Florida adjacent to laboratories it also developed with the $25 million stimulus grant.

“The Dow Chemical Company supports the decision to build one larger facility in Lee County, Florida,” Alganon announced in a 2010 press release. “A Bio-Refinery located next to Algenolʼs new state-of-the-art laboratories will have greater capabilities and be more effective and efficient.”

A year later Alganon announced its development collaboration with Dow had come to an end.

Applications are due April 18 for the Energy Department’s new $14 million in grants, with the funding subject to Congressional approval.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This article is available online at:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2012/02/26/obamas-favorite-algae-company

 
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 27, 2012, 09:55:39 AM
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/27/business/media/white-house-uses-espionage-act-to-pursue-leak-cases-media-equation.html?_r=3&ref=todayspaper#commentsContainer



Fucking wow!!!!   Are you kidding me? ?  ? ?   Obama has got to go in november.   Without this tyrant facing the voters -  he will get even worse. 

Can anyone obama drone defend this shit? 
Title: Re: Thugbama: Reckless, Incompetent, Ignorant. Inept, Criminal, & Treasonous
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 27, 2012, 02:47:51 PM
Green – the Color of Rotten Corruption
Townhall.com ^ | February 27, 2012 | Bob Beauprez



As if it were his private stash of fun-money, Barack Obama set aside $80 billion of the Stimulus boondoggle to artificially pump up the green-energy industry through a DOE administered program of grants and loans.  When three of the companies that received funding, Solyndra, Beacon Power, and Ener1, each declared bankruptcy in rapid succession, a rotten stench started to waft from the DOE and the White House.

It quickly became apparent that there were numerous close connections between many of these heavily government funded businesses and Obama campaign supporters and operatives.    While the cronyism and corruption appeared extensive, until recently no one had quantified the total extent of the cronyism and corruption that existed. 

Thanks to some extensive research by the Washington Post, the magnitude of the scandal is now better defined.  Here’s what the WaPo found:


$3.9 billion in federal grants and financing flowed to 21 companies backed by firms with connections to five Obama Administration staffers and advisers.

Sanjay Wagle, a venture capitalist and Barack Obama fundraiser in 2008, went to work at the DOE in 2009, and guided $2.4 billion to companies in which his former firm, Vantage Point Venture, had invested. 
David Danielson, formerly of General Catalyst, joined a DOE mission to fund breakthrough technologies and directed $105 million to three General Catalyst portfolio firms.

David Sandalow was a highly compensated consultant in 2008 for Good Energies, a venture capital firm, before becoming an Assistant Secretary at DOE in 2009.  SolarReserve, a Good Energies investment, received a $737 million DOE loan.

Steven Spinner, got a job as an “adviser” at DOE after having been a campaign fundraising bundler for Obama.  Spinner’s wife worked for the global law firm, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati  that specializes in clean technology companies.  WSG&R clients garnered $2.75 billion in DOE loans, including the now infamous $535 million for Solyndra. 

Steve Westly – an Obama campaign fundraising bundler in 2008 and 2012 – was the founder of the venture capital firm, the Westly Group, and an adviser to DOE Secretary Steven Chu.  Westly Group portfolio companies received $600 million in funding through the green-loan program.

David Prend is Managing General Partner at the Boston based venture capital firm, Rockport Capital Partners.   Prend also chaired a solar technologies advisory panel for the DOE, and had close ties with Energy Czar, Carol Browner.  The DOE pumped $550 million into various Rockport Partners supported firms, not including Solyndra in which Rockport Partners was a 7.5% stakeholder.  The DOE also funded electric-car battery company, Ener1 – a partner with Rockport portfolio car company Think - with a $118 million loan. 

Within weeks of Obama’s inaugural in 2009 and with the $800 billion Stimulus already passed, the green-energy community was euphoric that the new administration would soon be passing out billions like candy at a Fourth of July parade.  Wagle participated in a seminar in San Francisco in February to coach and encourage green businesses to line up at the federal trough.  In spite of the economic woes already in full swing, Wagle explained that, “The recession has actually accelerated green policies” by creating an excuse for the Stimulus – the Mother Lode for funding virtually anything that was some shade of green.  Wagle invoked Rahm Emanuel’s dictum that “a crisis is a horrible thing to waste,” and explained that Obama was going to take full advantage of the economic pain engulfing the nation to fund green technologies. 


Holly Kaufman, CEO of San Francisco based Environment and Enterprise Strategies, also participated in the Green-Biz conference with Wagle.   Reminding the attendees that George W. Bush was gone and with green-loving Democrats now in control of Congress and the White House, Kaufman said they should now “get used to success” – a quote she attributed to her good friend Nancy Pelosi. After what green-enthusiasts believe were eight years of famine, the money spigot was about to be opened full throttle according to Kaufman.

The White House pretends that it is merely coincidental that many of their political appointees were closely connected to companies that were the beneficiaries of millions and billions.  These are “all professionals with expertise in clean-energy science, finance or both – but none of them play a decisional role in DOE awards and none of them are in positions of regulating the industry,” according to White House spokesman Eric Schultz.

But a former employee at the Office of Management and Budget, David Gold, told the Washington Post that explanation doesn’t hold up.  “To believe those quiet conversations don’t happen in the hallways…is naïve,” Gold said.  “When you’re putting this kind of pressure on an organization to make decisions on very big dollars, there’s increased likelihood that political connections will influence things.”   


The one hour presentation that included Wagle and Kaufman at the 2009 San Francisco Green-Biz conference was rich with jokes and jabs over the departure of the Bush Administration.  Kaufman was elated that unlike Bush, the Obama Administration was “committed to science and transparency.”  That might be what it’s called in San Francisco or in Obama’s hometown of Chicago.  But, in most of the rest of the country – after three years of this stuff – we recognize it for what it is….old fashioned greed, cronyism and corruption. 

Our hope is that the various congressional committees and government agencies investigating the DOE green loan scandal will doggedly do their job.  After the waste of billions, the taxpayers at least deserve to know the truth of just how corrupt our government has become.

Title: Re: Obama: The 1st Rosemarys' Baby POTUS
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 28, 2012, 07:41:32 PM
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Chicago's Cardinal Warns Of An ObamaCare Gulag
Investor's Business ^ | 2/28/12 | Staff
Posted on February 28, 2012 10:28:15 PM EST by Nachum

First Amendment: The ex-head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops compares the administration take on freedom of worship to the Soviet Union's and says its contraceptive mandate will force church hospitals to close. On the first Sunday of Lent, Chicago's Francis Cardinal George issued his version of the letter issued by the USCCB he recently led. It shredded assurances by the administration that things could be worked out so that religious freedom would not be impaired and painted a bleak future that just might be the administration's intent. Going a bit further than his peers

(Excerpt) Read more at news.investors.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: The 1st Rosemarys' Baby POTUS
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 28, 2012, 07:42:57 PM
GM likely to spend $500M on worker bonuses (GM still owes billions to taxpayers for "bailout")
msnbc ^ | 2/28/2012 | TOM KRISHER /AP
Posted on February 28, 2012 10:25:54 PM EST by tobyhill

General Motors is likely to spend more than $500 million on employee bonuses and profit-sharing based on the company's performance last year.

GM, which made a record profit in 2011, will pay bonuses of at least $182 million to white-collar workers such as engineers, car designers and managers on Wednesday, according to a formula obtained by The Associated Press. That's on top of $332.5 million in profit-sharing it already agreed to pay factory workers.

In the past, such payments have drawn criticism from those who believe the government shouldn't have bailed out GM and Chrysler. But GM, which made a record $7.6 billion last year, says the payments are needed to hold on to skilled employees. It's also keeping fixed costs down by giving bonuses instead of annual pay raises.

The bonuses will go to most of the company's 26,000 salaried employees, many of whom make more than $100,000 a year. The bonuses will range from 8 percent of base pay to 14 percent, according to the formula.

The company would not release the percentages, nor would it say how much it will spend on the bonuses. But it's likely the average bonus for salaried employees will be more than the $7,000 that each of GM's 47,500 factory workers will get in March.

(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...





Thugbama at it again.   FUBO tou disgraceful ghetto leech!!!
Title: Re: Obama: The 1st Rosemarys' Baby POTUS
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 28, 2012, 07:45:41 PM
http://www.conservativesnetwork.com/2012/02/28/obama-imposes-his-religion-to-push-his-agenda-video



FUBO you disgusting communist pofs anti zmerician zealot!!!!   
Title: Re: Obama: The 1st Rosemarys' Baby POTUS
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 29, 2012, 08:13:45 AM
Al-Arabiya: US in talks to swap jihad terror Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman & 49 others for 19 Americans held in Egypt

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2012/02/al-arabiya-us-in-talks-to-swap-jihad-terror-sheikh-omar-abdel-rahman-for-19-americans-held-in-egypt.html




About to get a Get-Out-of-Jail-Free Card?

Al-Arabiya is reporting, in Arabic only so far, that the U.S. is talking with the Egyptian government to free the blind Sheikh and 49 other Egyptians currently imprisoned in the U.S. in exchange for the freedom of the 19 Americans the Egyptians are holding.

The blind Sheikh, Omar Abdel Rahman, is in prison for his role in masterminding the 1993 World Trade Center jihad terror bombing. If he is freed, it will be the apotheosis of Obama's policy of appeasement toward the Islamic world.

"Omar Abdel Rahman at the head of Egyptian-American swap deal," from al-Arabiya (Arabic), February 28 (thanks to Emad). This is my translation from the Arabic:

The Egyptian government has started real action to respond to a U.S. offer offering to release 50 Egyptians in American prisons, including Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, in return for the release of 19 Americans accused of foreign funding of nongovernmental organizations, as confirmed by Major General Mohamed Hani Zaher, an expert on military research and the fight against international terrorism.

Zaher told the newspaper that the Egyptians need to exploit the weak U.S. position, especially after the conviction of their nationals on charges affecting Egypt's sovereignty over its territory, and not to allow this deal to take place without the agreement of the U.S. administration to release more than 500 Egyptian prisoners in U.S. custody; the Egyptian Foreign Ministry does not know anything about them.

He added that the Egyptian Foreign Ministry asked the Egyptian Embassy in Washington for a list of Egyptian prisoners in the United States of America, and the Egyptian consulate there had already started procedures to account for the number of Egyptian prisoners and detainees in custody on a number of charges in the United States, he said, adding that among the prisoners in the Consulate files was Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, the Mufti of Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya (the Islamic Group) and currently imprisoned in America....

Posted by Robert on February 28, 2012 11:40 PM | 34 Comments
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Title: Re: Obama: The 1st Rosemarys' Baby POTUS
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 29, 2012, 08:23:04 AM
U.S. pays for Indonesians' master's degrees
Obama expanding program with $16-$20 million




Published: 22 hours ago (TRADE AID MONITOR) — A program providing training and scholarships to Indonesian professionals is about to be expanded by the Obama Administration, which hopes to increase the “number of Indonesian future leaders holding advanced degrees (Masters) from U.S. and in-country institutions of higher education.”

According to a Statement of Work (SOW) posted today to the FedBizOpps database, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is seeking contractors capable of carrying out Phase II of the “Program to Extend Scholarships and Training to Achieve Sustainable Impacts,” or PRESTASI.

The selected vendor will continue to assist existing Phase I participants while identifying and placing new candidates for the extended program—which will cost an additional $16-$20 million.

Read the full story ›

Title: Re: Obama: The 1st Rosemarys' Baby POTUS
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 29, 2012, 07:36:53 PM
Good Grief… Now Team Obama Wants to Blow Up 3 Dams In the Name of Junk Science
Posted by Jim Hoft on Wednesday, February 29, 2012, 5:37 AM

  
Just when you thought things couldn’t get any weirder…
The Obama Administration now wants to demolish three dams in northern California to supposedly save the salmon… But the whole reason to support the move was based on shoddy and inconclusive scientific data.

Dam fish

Greenheads say the dams threaten salmon. They want the dams gone and Obama agrees.

Now a scientist is challenging the junk science behind the decision.
The City Square reported:

Against intense local opposition, the Obama administration wants to demolish three dams on the Klamath River in Siskiyou County, California. Low-cost clean hydroelectricity as well as water for irrigation would be lost if the dams were removed. Removal of the dams would also cause chaos for ranchers, homeowners, and small business who live and work in the downstream of the dams. Despite this, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has been trying to force dam removal for the supposed benefit of some salmon and steelhead spawning habitat.

Now, Prof. Paul R. Houser of George Mason University alleges that the administration’s plan is all based on junk science. In his role as science advisor to the Bureau of Reclamation, he was closely involved in the project. He has filed a formal complaint (PDF) alleging “intentional falsification” and “intentional . . . compromise of scientific and scholarly integrity.”
Title: Re: Obama: The 1st Rosemarys' Baby POTUS
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 03, 2012, 07:46:03 AM
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Obama: Sin is what doesn't match 'my values'
SRN News.com ^ | March 2, 2012 | Michael Foust / Baptist Press
Posted on March 3, 2012 10:28:31 AM EST by Gritty

The one-hour interview by Cathleen Falsani was conducted when Obama was running for U.S. Senate (2004)...

Among Obama's most intriguing answers, he says he believes there are many paths to God. His answers on heaven and sin, though, have drawn the most discussion:

FALSANI: "Do you believe in heaven?"

OBAMA: "Do I believe in the harps and clouds and wings?"

FALSANI: "A place spiritually you go to after you die?"

OBAMA: "What I believe in is that if I live my life as well as I can, that I will be rewarded. I don't presume to have knowledge of what happens after I die. But I feel very strongly that whether the reward is in the here and now or in the hereafter, the aligning myself to my faith and my values is a good thing. When I tuck in my daughters at night and I feel like I've been a good father to them, and I see in them that I am transferring values that I got from my mother and that they're kind people and that they're honest people, and they're curious people, that's a little piece of heaven."

FALSANI: "Do you believe in sin?"

OBAMA: "Yes."

FALSANI: "What is sin?"

OBAMA: "Being out of alignment with my values."

FALSANI: "What happens if you have sin in your life?"

OBAMA: "I think it's the same thing as the question about heaven. In the same way that if I'm true to myself and my faith that that is its own reward; when I'm not true to it, it's its own punishment."

Obama said he is a Christian but that he also draws beliefs from other religions.

(Excerpt) Read more at srnnews.townhall.com ...






WTF! 
Title: Re: Obama: The 1st Rosemarys' Baby POTUS
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 08, 2012, 09:57:59 AM
The Influence Industry: Obama gives administration jobs to some big fundraisers

By T.W. Farnam, Published: March 7

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-influence-industry-obama-gives-administration-jobs-to-some-big-fundraisers/2012/03/06/gIQA9y3txR_print.html





Big donors considering whether to work the phones raising money for President Obama’s reelection campaign might consider the fate of his 2008 bundlers. Many of them, it turns out, won plum jobs in his administration.

Obama campaigned on what he called “the most sweeping ethics reform in history” and has frequently criticized the role of money in politics. That hasn’t stopped him from offering government jobs to some of his biggest bundlers, volunteer fundraisers who gather political contributions from other rich donors.

More than half of Obama’s 47 biggest fundraisers, those who collected at least $500,000 for his campaign, have been given administration jobs. Nine more have been appointed to presidential boards and committees.

At least 24 Obama bundlers were given posts as foreign ambassadors, including in Finland, Australia, Portugal and Luxembourg. Among them is Don Beyer, a former Virginia lieutenant governor who serves as ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein.

“In filling these posts, the administration looks for the most qualified candidates who represent Americans from all walks of life,” said White House spokesman Eric Schultz. “Being a donor does not get you a job in this administration, nor does it preclude you from getting one.”

It is a time-honored tradition to reward political supporters with administration jobs, ambassadorships in particular. And Obama’s administration falls in line with the previous one in terms of the share of ambassadors who are political appointees rather than career Foreign Service officers.

The Foreign Service Act of 1980, however, states that “contributions to political campaigns should not be a factor in the appointment of an individual as a chief of mission.”

Obama has appointed 59 ambassadors who were not career Foreign Service officers, and of those, 40 percent were bundlers.

“We think that the pendulum has swung a bit too far toward the patronage side of things,” said Susan Johnson, president of the American Foreign Service Association, which represents career officers.

Not all political appointees have been bad ambassadors, Johnson said, but some have been less qualified, making them “costly in terms of advancing and protecting our interests and costly for the taxpayers.”

Obama has appointed campaign bundlers to a range of other jobs as well. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. was a bundler, raising at least $50,000, as was Julius Genachowski, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, who raised at least half a million dollars.

Obama hired bundler Steve Spinner as a liaison in the Energy Department. According to internal e-mails turned over in a congressional investigation, Spinner pressed for staff members to finalize a government loan for Solyndra, the now-shuttered solar company in which another campaign bundler was a major investor. Spinner, according to the Obama administration, did not make any decisions affecting Solyndra.

At least two of Obama’s bundler-ambassadors have had rocky tenures, according to reports from the State Department inspector general.

Nicole Avant, a music industry executive who raised at least $500,000, served as ambassador to the Bahamas until November.

The inspector general wrote that her tenure was part of “an extended period of dysfunctional leadership and mismanagement, which has caused problems throughout the embassy.” The report said Avant spent roughly 40 percent of her time out of the country over a two-year period.

In an interview, Avant said that she inherited an embassy with management problems and that her travel was not out of line.

“Part of my job as a U.S. ambassador was to travel,” she said.

Avant is now helping the Obama campaign raise money from donors in Hollywood.

Luxembourg Ambassador Cynthia Stroum, a Seattle venture capitalist who raised $500,000 for Obama, was also criticized in an inspector general’s report, which said she sent her staff on a house-hunting mission, billed the government for bedding after being told she couldn’t and was “keenly interested” in the materials used for remodeling two bathrooms in her residence.

“Most employees describe the ambassador as aggressive, bullying, hostile, and intimidating,” inspectors wrote of Stroum.

Stroum did not return messages seeking comment.

She was replaced by another bundler, Robert Mandell, a Florida real estate developer who raised between $200,000 and $500,000 for Obama’s campaign.

Statistics kept by the American Foreign Service Association show that certain posts are favored for political appointees. In recent decades, many European capitals, for example, have been staffed by political appointees more than 70 percent of the time. A representative of the association called those the “well-known sumptuous posts.”


Staff writer Carol Leonnig contributed to this report.

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 09, 2012, 09:54:35 AM
Obama Will Make Taxpayers Guarantee Mortgages Without Checking Borrowers' Incomes or Employment
CNS News ^ | March 7, 2012 | Fred Lucas



CNSNews.com) – Wth no authorization from Congress, President Barack Obama has announced that his administration--through the Federal Housing Administration--will insure refinanced mortgages for 2 to 3 million borrowers without verifying their income or even if they hold a job, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

Obama announced his latest mortgage program at a White House news conference on Tuesday.

Any American with a mortgage insured by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) endorsed on or before May 31, 2009 and who is current with their mortgage payments would qualify, according to HUD.

No additional underwriting, or examining the verification of income, employment status or creditworthiness, will be done.

“Basically that’s because they already have an FHA loan and that’s just refinancing the same loan,” HUD spokesman Lemar C. Wooley told CNSNews.com.

Wooley further explained in an e-mail, “Even if their circumstances have changed, they are still managing to be current on the original higher priced mortgage, so that’s the proof to the FHA that they can handle the lower payments.”

“The streamline refinance process is only available for FHA-insured mortgages that are performing – the borrower is paying the mortgage,” Wooley said. He added, “By not requiring verification of income and other underwriting requirements, FHA reduces the cost of the transaction, as well as the time it takes – all to the mutual advantage of the borrower, the lender and FHA.”

Underwriting is generally done for both initial mortgages and refinancing, said Reed Piano, managing director of the National Association of Mortgage Underwriters. He said the normal mortgage underwriting process checks “employment verification, income verification, analysis or thorough examination of a borrower’s creditworthiness based on a lender’s requirements, any federal or state requirements.”

When an institution does the underwriting for a mortgage, it is "validating the entire process. They are validating the appraisal, the title, the credit, income verification, pretty much everything from A-to-Z and they’re seeing if the file is good and meets the requirements,” Piano told CNSNews.com.

The White House estimates 2 million to 3 million FHA borrowers are eligible. “While it is always difficult to estimate participation in these programs, this will result in significant monthly savings for hundreds of thousands of families,” a White House news release said.

“Today we’re taking it a step further--we are cutting by more than half the refinancing fees that families pay for loans ensured by the Federal Housing Administration,” Obama said at the press conference on Tuesday. “That’s going to save the typical family in that situation an extra $1,000 a year, on top of the savings that they’d also receive from refinancing. That would make refinancing even more attractive to more families. It’s like another tax cut that will put more money in people’s pockets. We’re going to do this on our own. We don’t need congressional authorization to do it.”

Banks issuing loans to borrowers who could not afford them led to the housing crisis in 2008.

Asked if a lack of underwriting requirements for this refinance program could create similar problems, Piano, with the National Association of Mortgage Underwriters, said it was too early to know.

“There’s always a possibility that it could create problems. Lenders need to be always cautiously optimistic,” Piano said.

“It’s a little too new to know what the president’s plan is going to entail,” Piano said. “From an underwriter’s perspective, they’re kind of the last person in the process. They’re going to determine ultimately if the loan is going to get approved. As long as the underwriter is doing their job, that’s going to help in the process. But again, they’re following whatever regulations and requirements are already set forth. If requirements are low, one has to be reasonably cautiously optimistic that it doesn’t present problems in the future.”

The FHA fees will be cut to encourage more people to refinance while interests, now, are very low. The FHA currently charges an upfront mortgage insurance premium of 1 percent of the balance each year, which will be lowered to .01 percent, according to the White House. Further, there is an annual fee of 1.15 percent for each year of the refinancing, which will be cut to 0.55 percent.

HUD estimates the program will save the FHA-insured borrower about $3,000 per year -- ($1000 of which will come from the lower refinancing fees mentioned by President Obama) -- or $250 per month.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 09, 2012, 06:42:06 PM
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Feds to stop funding Texas women's health program
Associated Press ^ | March 9, 2012
Posted on March 9, 2012 9:33:16 PM EST by Free ThinkerNY

The federal government will stop funding a Texas health program that serves 130,000 low-income women because of a state law that bars abortion-affiliated clinics from getting public money, a top U.S. health official said Friday.

The federal money, which covers 90 percent of the state's $40 million program, will be phased out between May and September because the law violates federal regulations requiring that women have a choice in medical care, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said during a trip to Houston.

(Excerpt) Read more at baytownsun.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 13, 2012, 03:06:17 AM
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Barack Obama-the Traveling Salesman
Townhall.com ^ | March 12, 2012 | Lurita Doan
Posted on March 12, 2012 8:04:02 AM EDT by Kaslin

 During the past year, Barack Obama has attended over 100 fundraisers. Even in a cynical, political town, such as Washington, DC Obama is racking up some staggering numbers, with time spent out of the office leading the list.

We are a generation that is used to executives who work outside of the office using air travel, telework, video conferencing, off-site, motivational conferences, international, simulcast product launches and a host of other 21st century management techniques to enhance a worker’s performance. But in this age of out of the office “productivity” activities, the average American is a mere piker compared to Barack Obama.

Peter Drucker, the management guru, once said that an effective CEO spends his time on an organization’s priorities because “time is the scarcest resource of the manager. If it is not managed, nothing else can be managed.“

Few executives seem to spend as much time out of office as of Barack Obama, but with the recent Chapter 11 filing for bankruptcy by Fuller Brush, thoughts about door-to-door traveling salesman immediately brought Barack Obama to mind.

Consider: Barack Obama has played over 90 rounds of golf in the past 36 months, attended over 250 fundraisers (100 of them in the past 12 months),and taken 78 days of vacation.

The Presidency of the United States is, arguably, the most difficult job on the planet. Certainly, Americans want a president that is refreshed, rested and capable of making sound judgment calls on the complex issues of the day, but Barack Obama has taken more than just a few days off; he’s taken them at great cost (literally) to the America people.

In the past year, Obama has done 20 fundraisers in California alone, traveling via Air Force One at a cost of approximately $180,000 per hour flying time. While several of the fundraisers occurred on the same trip, even the President of the United States can’t change the basic rules of physics, so, Obama, on Air Force One, will still require approximately 5 hours to fly to California and 5 hours to return from California.

A modest cost estimate might show that the10 hours of air time costs, alone, for a round-trip fundraiser in California is upward of $1.8 million. Then, consider the sheer number of trips made by Barack Obama, and Americans can see that Obama’s fundraisers in California cost the American taxpayer anywhere from $7 million dollars to $30million dollars –and that’s just the travel costs to California fundraising events. Imagine then, the cost of traveling to the other 80 fundraisers this past year.

If Americans consider the President’s time spent playing golf, those numbers are also startling. A round of golf, where the course has been cleared (because he’s the President and because of security) might be able to finish in about 3 hours. Of course, usually Obama golfs in the presence of hundreds of spectators such as occurred in Nantucket this past summer or in Hawaii over Christmas—so assume in those cases that the play is a bit slower. In general, though, the average time to play a round of golf is approximately 4.5 hours. If Americans do the math, then 90 rounds of golf, averaging 4.5 hours equals about 405 hours spent golfing and several dozens more hours traveling to golf courses to play..

Then there are Obama’s vacation days. (Now, hopefully some of the golfing occurred during Obama’s vacation days—though Obama often counts golf as a work day since he golfs with other politicos.) During the past three years, Obama has taken about 78 days of vacation. Most American workers work, on average, about 2000 hours annually. Obama’s 78 days of vacation equal approx. 1872 hours, so Obama has spent almost one year of his three years in office on vacation.

And, as always, there is the travel to get to the fundraising, golfing and vacationing.

What becomes clear is that Barack Obama is traveling around—a lot—selling himself, and trying to garner perks, privileges and a second term in office, but very little work that benefits the average American taxpayer seems to be getting done with our taxpayer dollars.

It’s no surprise that President Obama rarely meets with his Cabinet—he doesn’t have time—he’s traveling. It’s no surprise that Obama has little understanding of the complexity of current, American political issues since Obama rarely meets with the opposition. Obama doesn’t have time, he’s traveling.

Consider: three years is 1096 days. Even by the most modest of estimates, with over 250 fundraiser, 90 rounds of golf and 78 vacation days, Obama has spent 40% of that time pleasure-seeking and fundraising.

Is it any wonder that Obama has no understanding of the struggles of the small business owner who spends 14-hour days, six or seven days a week trying to grow a business? The struggles of the small business owner who is being crushed under the Obama Administration’s excessive regulatory stranglehold and who has to use his personal savings to finance business growth, who has to use his home as collateral to gain access to capital and who hasn’t had a vacation in five years has more in common with aliens from outer space than with Barack Obama.

Our nation is facing big problems, and we need folks willing to work now to solve these problems now. Delaying hard decisions is a sign of weakness and will surely lead to failure. So, it’s a bit scary when Drucker warns managers against ignoring fiscal priorities in favor of “a grandiose future”, as Obama seems to have done.

Golfing. Traveling. Fundraising. Vacation. Golfing, and then more fundraising. And, oh yes, vacation. Obama has made his priorities clear to Americans. Obama is all about re-election, pleasure and re-election—as long as it can continue to be done at the expense of the American taxpayer.

TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Politics/Elections; Click to Add Topic
KEYWORDS: barackobama; conman; fundraising; obama; obamagolf; shyster; travel; Click to Add Keyword
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 13, 2012, 07:28:45 AM
Regulation Nation: New study finds Obama’s regs cost $46 billion a year


Mon, 2012-03-12 16:39  Some 10,215 new federal regulations from the Obama administration are costing consumers, businesses and the economy overall $46 billion annually, more than five times the regulatory price tag of former President Bush in his first three years in office. Worse: just implementing those regulations had a one-time additional cost of $11 billion, according to a Heritage Foundation analysis provided to Washington Secrets.


Ironically, Bush instituted more regulations, 10,674, but they cost just $8.1 billion annually, said the Heritage report, titled “Red Tape Rising: Obama and Regulation at the Three Year Mark.” It will be released Tuesday.



The analysis backs ups complaints from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business groups that the president’s regulations are stalling the economy and employment growth. It also calls into question Obama’s promise to put the breaks on new regulations and his State of the Union bragging about issuing less red tape than Bush.


The fact is, said Heritage’s review, hundreds more costly regulations are coming, especially those targeting energy companies and Wall Street. They threaten “to further weaken an anemic economy and job creation,” said Heritage’s James Gattuso and Diane Katz.

While there is no central agency that collects regulation information, Katz and Gattuso mined the Federal Register and other government databases to get their numbers. What they found was that while Obama has bragging rights to claiming he’s put into place fewer regulations than Bush, his cost far more.

The $46 billion price tag calculated by Heritage is staggering, as are those hitting the economy the hardest. Just consider the regulations tagged as “major” for costing $100 million or more. Obama’s team issued 106 on private industry since taking office, compared to 28 by Bush. Last year alone, Obama’s administration issued 32 major regulations impacting everything from clothes dryers, to toy labels.

Heritage said that most expensive regulation of 2011 was from the Environmental Protection Agency, which added five major rules costing $4 billion. Among them, stricter limits on industrial and commercial boilers and incinerators, for a cost of $2.6 billion annually for compliance.

The regulations are also hitting workers through higher fees on items such as checking accounts.

“While the president cannot have it both ways: having identified over-regulation as a problem, he must take real and significant steps to rein it in. At the same time, Congress--which shares much of the blame for excessive regulation--must establish critical mechanism to ensure that unnecessary and excessively costly regulations are not imposed on the U.S,. economy and Americans,” said Gattuso and Katz. “Without decisive steps, the costs of red tape will continue to grow, and the economy, and average Americans, will be the victims.”

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 13, 2012, 12:06:09 PM
Obama Transparency Scaled Back When It Comes to Dinner Wine List

By Margaret Talev - Mar 13, 2012





When British Prime Minister David Cameron visits President Barack Obama this week, one detail may stay bottled up: the labels on the wines the White House pours at the state dinner tomorrow night.

For Obama’s first three state dinners, honoring the leaders of India, Mexico and China, the White House released the name, year and appellation of wines -- all-American -- paired with each course.

Part of a tradition observed by previous presidents, including George W. Bush, that disclosure stopped after Obama’s dinner last year for Chinese President Hu Jintao. One of the wines served on Jan. 19, 2011, was a top-rated 2005 Cabernet Sauvignon from Washington state that originally sold for $115 a bottle and went for as much as $399 by the time of the dinner. The price the White House paid per bottle was not made public.

At the next state dinner, on June 7, 2011, for German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the menu made public by the White House didn’t include details on the wines.

“An American wine will be paired with each course,” stated a note at the bottom of the menu released by the White House. So went as well the menu released for the Korean State Dinner honoring President Lee Myung-Bak on Oct. 13, 2011.

Tyler Colman, who writes the Dr. Vino wine blog and teaches at New York University, said in an interview that the shift in menu protocol may reflect political considerations given the sluggish U.S. economy.

“They’re probably sensitive to displays of wealth at a time when the economy is not firing on all cylinders,” said Colman, whose blog had noted the absence of wines on the German state dinner menu the White House released.

No ‘Picnic’
Still, keeping the wine list under wraps undercuts promotion of U.S. winemakers at a time when markets in developing nations such as China have potential to be “really hot” for U.S. labels because of the rising middle- and upper- income classes, he said.

A state dinner “isn’t a picnic or casual get-together,” and it’s justifiable from diplomatic and trade standpoints for the White House to spend money to showcase fine American wines, Colman said.

Dorothy Gaiter, wine and food editor for the quarterly France Magazine and a former wine columnist for the Wall Street Journal, said Obama was private about his wine preferences before his election.

‘Good for America’
If the Obama White House has decided to stop publicizing which American wines are served at official events, she said, “I don’t understand this. It’s good for America.”

Rick Small is co-owner of the Woodward Canyon winery in Lowden, Washington, whose 2009 Chardonnay was among the wines poured for the German dinner.

He and his wife noticed the shift because they had gotten billing on the menu when their wine was served at a Clinton administration dinner. He said he didn’t know why the practice was changed and that it probably does help the industry overall to have U.S. wines publicized by name.

At the same time, Small said, it’s an honor to be chosen at all. “You’re not going to get pushy about it since they picked your wine,” he said.

The White House declined to comment for this article or to make available Daniel Shanks, the usher who has managed wine selection since the Clinton administration, or social secretary Jeremy Bernard. First Lady Michelle Obama’s office referred questions to the White House press office.

No Disclosure
White House deputy press secretary Josh Earnest declined to disclose which wines were served at the German or Korean state dinners, identify wines from non-state dinners, make menus of past meals available for inspection or answer questions about the shift in practice.

Earnest also declined to say whether the White House would release the names of wines at the Cameron dinner.

The White House has promoted its release of other documents and data. On March 8, it announced a website, www.ethics.gov, to expand access to government databases tracking White House visitor records, lobbying disclosures and Federal Election Commission reports.

“From the day he took office, the president committed his administration to work towards unprecedented openness in government,” said the official statement announcing the site.

At the state dinner for Hu, the 2005 Quilceda Creek Cabernet Sauvignon Columbia Valley from Washington state, one of the wines poured that night, was $115 a bottle at release, the winery’s general manager, John Ware said in an interview.

Turning Point
The wine earned a rare 100-point rating from wine critic Robert Parker. By the time of the White House dinner, Ware said, it sold for $300-$350. It was listed for as much as $399 per bottle, according to wine websites.

Ware said the winery was approached by the White House and asked to choose which of its wines to serve. The price the winery charged the White House was “closer to the $115” than to $399, Ware said, while declining to name the price.

Afterward, he said, the winery’s profile in Asia got a “pretty significant” boost.

The White House selection drew derision.

The day after the Hu dinner, the anti-Obama website Gateway Pundit carried a posting entitled, “Sacrifice Is For the Little People... Obama White House Serves $399 Bottles of Wine at State Dinner.”

Comedian Stephen Colbert said that, given the U.S. debt held by China, the Hu dinner “should have been a sweatpants- potluck with box wine and a sleeve of Oreos.”

Social Secretaries
Other changes were taking place at the White House at the time. Between the Chinese and German state dinners, the White House changed social secretaries, hiring Bernard that February.

Since the start of his presidency, aides also have avoided endorsing specific brands such as which golf clubs Obama favors.

Not all wines served by the administration are shielded. At Vice President Joe Biden’s dinner last month for Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping, the list included a 2010 Sauvignon Blanc and 2009 Cabernet Sauvignon from the Hall winery in California’s Napa Valley. The wines sell for $22.99 and $48.99 per bottle, respectively, on the wine.com website. Vintner Kathryn Hall was U.S. ambassador to Austria during the Clinton administration. She didn’t return calls for comment.

Wine has been regularly served at the Executive Residence since 1800, except from 1877-1881 under President Rutherford B. Hayes, Shanks wrote in 2007 for an article for the Journal of the White House Historical Association.

Kennedy and Nixon
In the 20th century, John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon were known for their familiarity with French wine. The policy of serving American wine took hold in Lyndon Johnson’s administration, according to an article in last month’s Wine Spectator. Ronald Reagan, a former actor and California governor, raised the profile of his home state’s wines.

Ulises Valdez, 42, of the Valdez Family Winery and Tasting Room in Cloverdale, California, said he is “still celebrating” having his 2008 Silver Eagle Vineyard Chardonnay served at the White House for the Mexico state dinner on May 19, 2010.

Valdez snuck into the U.S., from Mexico, as a teenager and found work picking grapes. He got amnesty during the Reagan administration. Today he owns a vineyard management company and the winery. “This is the beauty of the U.S. --if you’re a hard worker and good and honest you can do it,” he said.

White House menus can be a point of pride and business builder for individual vintners whose wines are chosen.

China Sales ‘Quadrupled’
Kerry Murphy, proprietor of DuMOL Wines in Orinda, California, whose wines have been served at the White House since 2002, said he’s become a collector. “God knows how many menus I have -- I love ’em,” he said.

“I’ve been blessed by the association,” Murphy said. “It sets the wine to high standards,” he said, because the White House “can buy whatever they want.”

His Chardonnays sell for $50-$60 per bottle.

After his 2008 Russian River Chardonnay was served at the Hu dinner, he said, “our sales in China quadrupled.”

“I think that has a lot to do just with exposure from that one dinner,” he said. ’’It makes me feel good because we’ve got some dollars coming back’’ to the U.S. from China. “That’s a patriotic thing in itself.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Margaret Talev in Washington at mtalev@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Steven Komarow at skomarow1@bloomberg.net
.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 14, 2012, 11:02:30 AM
The Daily Outrage: Economic stimulus grant money boosted Massachusetts Elks Club

  http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/daily-outrage/2012/03/daily-outrage-economic-stimulus-grant-money-boosted-massachusetts-elks



WHAT: Paid its former executive director more than $57,000 from a federal economic stimulus program grant even though he spent most workday afternoons at a local Elks Club.

WHY IT'S AN OUTRAGE: Those economic stimulus grants were supposed to stimulate jobs and work, not Elks and booze.

WHERE TO VENT: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services public affairs office at 202-690-6343.
 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 14, 2012, 08:23:46 PM
Obama’s Top Campaign Bundlers Among State Dinner Guests
    Email57Smaller FontTextLarger Text|Print

The Camerons and The Obamas arrive for State Dinner

More than three dozen of President Obama’s top re-election campaign financiers are guests at tonight’s White House state dinner in honor of British Prime Minister David Cameron.
They include Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, media mogul Fred Eychaner, Pfizer executive Sally Susman, Stoneyfield Farms president and CEO Gary Hirschberg,  and Microsoft executives Suzi Levine and John Frank.  Several have each raised more than half a million dollars for 2012, according to estimates provided by Obama’s campaign.
All told, 41 of the 364 expected attendees are Obama campaign bundlers, or volunteer fundraisers who give the legal maximum and then gather checks from friends and colleagues who do the same.
The group attending the dinner tonight is responsible for at least $10.7 million of the roughly $250 million Obama and Democrats have amassed for the election cycle so far.
It’s not the first time Obama’s campaign donors have been spotted at a White House state dinner.  In October, at least half a dozen attended the evening in honor of South Korean President Lee Myung-bak.
Here’s the full list of donors attending the dinner tonight, including the range of their contribution and employer, as listed by the Obama campaign:
Gerald Acker, Huntington Woods, MI – $200,000-$500,000 (Goodman Acker PC)
Mark Alderman, Bryn Mawr, PA – $200,000-$500,000 (Cozen & O’Connor)
Jean-Phillipe Austin, Miami, FL – $200,000-$500,000 (Physician)
Matthew Barzun, Louisville, KY – $500,000+ (Brickpath LLC)
Tom and Andrea Bernstein, New York, NY – $500,000+ (Chelsea Piers Mgmt)
Neil Bluhm, Chicago, IL – $200,000-$500,000 (Walton Street Capital)
Wally Brewster, Jr., and Robert Satawake, Chicago, IL – $200,000-$500,000 (General Growth Properties/Keller Williams Realty)
Jim Crown, Chicago, IL – $200,000-$500,000 (Henry Crown & Co)
John Crumpler, Durham, NC – $500,000+ (Hatteras Venture Architects)
Meredith  DeWitt, Harvard, MA – $200,000-$500,000 (Political Consultant)
Fred Eychaner, Chicago, IL – $500,000+ (Newsweb Corp)
Joseph Falk, Miami, FL  – $200,000-$500,000 (Akerman, Senterfitt & Eidson)
Rajiv Kumar Fernando, Chicago, IL – $200,000-$500,000 (Chopper Trading)
John Frank, Bellevue, WA — $500,000+ (Vice President and Deputy General Counsel, Microsoft,)
William Freeman, Nashville, TN – $100,000-$200,000 (Freeman Webb Co)
Lou Frillman, Seattle, WA – $200,000-$500,000 (GVA Marquette Advisors/Financial Designs Ltd)
Anthony Gardner, Washington, DC – $200,000-$500,000 (Palamon Captial Partners)
Chad Griffin, Los Angeles, CA – $100,000-$200,000 (Chad Griffin Consulting)
Samuel Heins and Stacey Mills, Wayzata, MN – $200,000-$500,000 (Heins, Mills & Olson)
Don Hinkle, Tallahassee, FL – $100,000-$200,000 (Hinkle & Foran)
Gary Hirshberg, Concord, NH – $100,000-$200,00 (Stonyfield Farm)
Barry Karas, Los Angeles, CA – $500,000+ (Perlman & Assoc/Actor)
Janet Keller, Laguna Beach, CA – $200,000-$500,000 (Consultant)
Charlie Kireker, Weybridge, VT – $200,000-$500,000 (Twin Birches)
Orin Kramer, New York, NY – $500,000+ (Boston Provident)
Mai Lassiter, Los Angeles, CA – $200,000-$500,000 (Overbrook Entertainment)
Suzi Levine, Seattle, WA – $200,000-$500,000 (Microsoft)
Joe Liemandt, Austin, TX – $100,000-$200,000 (Trilogy Enterprises Inc)
James Murray, Keene, VA – $100,000-$200,000 (Greenbriar Square Property Management)
Susan Ness, Bethesda, MD – $200,000-$500,000 (Susan Ness Strategies)
Michael Monroe Parham, Seattle, WA – $500,000+ (Realnetworks Inc)
Carol Pensky, Washington, DC – $200,000-$500,000 (Retired)
Ellen Richman, Greenwich, CT – $50,000-$100,000 (Richman Group)
John Scully, San Francisco, CA – $50,000-$100,000 (Spo Partners & Co)
Diana Shaw Clark, Washington, DC – $100,000-$200,000 (Writer)
Jay Snyder, New York, NY – $200,000-$500,000 (HBJ Investments)
Sally Susman, New York, NY – $500,000+ (Pfizer Inc)
John and Sandi Thompson, Woodside, CA – $200,000-$500,000 (Fenwick & West)
George Tsunis, Cold Spring Harbor, NY – $200,000-$500,000 (Chartwell Hotels)
Harvey Weinstein, New York, NY – $500,000+ (Weinstein Co)
Anna Wintour, New York, NY — $500,000+ (Editor-in-Chief, Vogue Magazine)
SHOWS: World News
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 15, 2012, 06:11:25 AM
REGULATION NATION: New Study Finds Obama Is 'No. 1 Regulator'
By James Rosen

Published March 14, 2012
|



 One week after he signed Executive Order No. 13563, mandating that all executive branch agencies “identify and consider regulatory approaches that reduce burdens,” President Obama delivered his 2011 State of the Union Address: “When we find rules that put an unnecessary burden on businesses, we will fix them,” the chief executive declared on Jan. 25, to applause from the joint session of Congress.

Yet over the course of the year that ensued, a new study finds, the Obama administration enacted 32 new “major” regulations – rules that carry an estimated price tag of $100 million or more. These measures stand to cost the U.S. economy $10 billion a year, along with an additional $6.6 billion in first-time implementation costs.

Federal data marshaled in “Red Tape Rising,” a report by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington, convey an even starker picture of regulatory growth during the Obama administration’s first three years. Since January 2009, 106 new “major” regulations have been enacted, at a total estimated cost of $46 billion, plus almost $11 billion more in implementation costs.

This track record leads the study’s author, Heritage senior fellow James Gattuso, to label President Obama “the No. 1” regulator in American history.

“Now, there is some competition – and competition not just from Democrats, but from Republicans,” Gattuso hastened to add, in an interview with Fox News. “Both of the Bushes engaged in a lot of regulation, if you look at the record. But on present track, President Obama may be the most pro-regulation president we have ever had."

The greatest number of new major regulations issued last year – a full dozen of them – sprang from the massive overhaul of the financial services sector known as “Dodd-Frank,” a law sponsored by then-Democratic Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut and Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts and signed into law by Obama.

The most expensive new regulations, however, emanated from the Environmental Protection Agency, which issued four “major” rules costing the U.S. economy an estimated $4 billion a year.

Spending outlays for the nation’s major federal regulatory agencies has grown with breathtaking speed over the last half-century – and under presidents of both parties. Such expenditures totaled $533 million under President Kennedy; reached $7.29 billion by the middle of Jimmy Carter’s on term in office; skyrocketed to $25.49 billion by the end of the 1990s; and are projected at $57.33 billion for the end of this year.

“There's a predisposition among agencies, both under Republican control and Democratic control, to expand regulation,” Gattuso told Fox News. “If you're not doing that, you feel like you're not doing your job.”

Supporters of the Obama White House contend that studies like the Heritage Foundation’s can never quantify the savings amassed when a given regulation does its job: prevents an outbreak of E. coli that would devastate the American beef industry, for example, or averts another oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, with its catastrophic effects on energy, tourism and other sectors of the economy.

“I think the real question is not how many regulations [President Obama] did, but how good they were, how smart they were,” says Scott Lilly, a veteran of three decades on Capitol Hill who is now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a liberal Washington think tank. “I think [regulation] is driven much more by the events of the times that we live in than it is by the ideology of whoever's in the White House.”



Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/03/14/regulation-nation-new-study-finds-obama-is-no-1-regulator/#ixzz1pBsuzzx1

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 16, 2012, 09:14:29 PM
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White House: Colleges must cover birth control for students
The Hill ^
Posted on March 16, 2012 8:30:55 PM EDT by Sub-Driver

White House: Colleges must cover birth control for students By Sam Baker - 03/16/12 05:14 PM ET

Most universities will have to cover birth control in their students’ health plans, the Obama administration said Friday.

The Health and Human Services Department said student health plans will be treated like employees’ plans, meaning they will have to comply with new requirements under healthcare reform — including the requirement to provide contraception without charging a copay.

The contraception mandate has sparked intense criticism from some religious groups and Republican lawmakers. They say it violates employers’ religious freedoms by forcing them to provide a service they find immoral.

Religious universities will treat their student plans the same as their employees’ plans, administration officials said Friday. That means they will not have to directly offer contraception in their plans, but students and workers will be able to get birth control from their insurance companies without a copay.

Women’s-health groups praised the administration's announcement.

“For many women, especially college students, birth control is not only a health care issue, it is a financial issue. Covering birth control with no co-pays means college students will not have to choose between paying for tuition and books, or paying for basic health care like birth control,” Planned Parenthood Federation of America President Cecile Richards said in a statement.

Religious schools that self-insure, rather than contracting with an insurer, do not have to provide contraception to their students. How the mandate will work for the employees of self-insured religious institutions is still being decided.

HHS outlined three options on Friday and is asking for public comments on whether those ideas are feasible. Under those proposals, third-party administrators — the companies that manage employers’ self-insured plans — would provide contraception, similar to the role that insurers would play for traditionally insured businesses.

The third-party administrators might be asked to pay for the benefit out of other revenue streams, so that religious employers’ money doesn’t directly fund birth control.

HHS also suggested tapping multistate insurance plans to offer contraception for people who work at self-insured religious institutions. Those plans could receive a credit against other fees to help cover the cost of the benefit, administration officials said.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 18, 2012, 04:17:29 PM
Obama’s Triumphal Statist Presidency
Abe Greenwald    | @abegreenwald
03.18.2012 - 12:51 PM


 
In the March/April issue of the Washington Monthly, Paul Glastris offers a long essay in defense of Barack Obama. Titled, “The Incomplete Greatness of Barack Obama,” it is, in its own way, the clearest and most helpful analysis of the Obama presidency that’s been written so far. Glastris’s main contention is that Obama has “gotten more done in three years than any president in decades.” Yet, “the American public still thinks he hasn’t accomplished anything.” He’s right:

Measured in sheer legislative tonnage, what Obama got done in his first two years is stunning. Health care reform. The takeover and turnaround of the auto industry. The biggest economic stimulus in history. Sweeping new regulations of Wall Street. A tough new set of consumer protections on the credit card industry. A vast expansion of national service. Net neutrality. The greatest increase in wilderness protection in fifteen years. A revolutionary reform to student aid. Signing the New START treaty with Russia. The ending of “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

Glastris has unwittingly created a glossary of radical statism as a defense of Obama. His own words: “legislative tonnage,” “reform,” “takeover,” “biggest stimulus in history,” “sweeping regulations,” “protection,” “vast expansion,” “Net neutrality,” “greatest increase” in still more “protection,” and “revolutionary reform.” To liberals, this is the poetry of paternalism but to the rest of America it’s a nightmare lexicon.


Glastris is equally candid about the long-term impact of these policies. “Some are structured to have modest effects now but major ones later,” he writes. “Others emerged in a crimped and compromised form that, if history is a guide, may well be filled out and strengthened down the road.” In other words, Obama initiatives that look measured or restrained today will only expand and calcify in time. He makes the comparison to FDR’s creation of Social Security. “Only in subsequent decades, as benefits were raised and expanded, did Social Security become the country’s most beloved government program.” Right, and only in decades subsequent to that did it become an unsustainable addiction that we can neither stop nor afford in its present form.

So, the case for Obama’s greatness goes as follows: He came to office with an array of statist notions. He forced “the sheer tonnage” of them upon the country. And he will leave the rest of the leftist dream’s fleshing out to that inexorable statist force-multiplier: time.

You start to see why Obama is okay being thought of as merely ineffective.

As for the foreign policy mentions, it’s a different matter altogether and one that Glastris never really unpacks after that paragraph. But even the administration now understands that its Russia policy is a disaster. And even if you approve the end of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” you must acknowledge that it’s been replaced with the catastrophic Obama-instituted military doctrine of “don’t win, don’t lose.”

Topics: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Obama administration, Obamacare, Social Security, statism, stimulus
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Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 19, 2012, 10:31:46 AM
Firm sells solar panels - to itself, taxpayers pay
by Timothy P. Carney Senior Political Columnist
http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/article/firm-sells-solar-panels-itself-taxpayers-pay/434251





First Solar is the company. The subsidy came from the Export-Import Bank, which President Obama and Harry Reid are currently fighting to extend and expand. The underlying issue is how Obama's insistence on green-energy subsidies and export subsidies manifests itself as rank corporate welfare.

Here's the road of subsidies these solar panels followed from Perrysburg, Ohio, to St. Clair, Ontario.

First Solar is an Arizona-based manufacturer of solar panels. In 2010, the Obama administration awarded the company $16.3 million to expand its factory in Ohio -- a subsidy Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland touted in his failed re-election bid that year.

Five weeks before the 2010 election, Strickland announced more than a million dollars in job training grants to First Solar. The Ohio Department of Development also lent First Solar $5 million, and the state's Air Quality Development Authority gave the company an additional $10 million loan.

After First Solar pocketed this $17.3 million in government grants and $15 million in government loans, Ex-Im entered the scene.

In September 2011, Ex-Im approved $455.7 million in loan guarantees to subsidize the sale of solar panels to two wind farms in Canada. That means if the wind farm ever defaults, the taxpayers pick up the tab, ensuring First Solar gets paid.

But the buyer, in this case, was First Solar.

A small corporation called St. Clair Solar owned the wind farm and was the Canadian company buying First Solar's panels. But St. Clair Solar was a wholly owned subsidiary of First Solar. So, basically, First Solar was shipping its own solar panels from Ohio to a solar farm it owned in Canada, and the U.S. taxpayers were subsidizing this "export."

First Solar spokesman Alan Bernheimer defended this maneuver, saying this really was an export, pointing out that First Solar paid sales taxes on the transaction.

But this subsidy undermines the arguments for Ex-Im's existence. Ex-Im, whose authorization expires May 31, is supposed to be a job creator, helping U.S. manufacturers beat foreign manufacturers by having U.S. taxpayers backstop the financing.

"It is critical that we encourage more American companies to compete in the global marketplace," Ex-Im Chairman Fred Hochberg said about the First Solar deal, saying the subsidy "will boost Ohio's economy, create hundreds of local jobs and move us closer to President Obama's goal of doubling U.S. exports by the end of 2014."

The implication here is that First Solar was "competing" with foreign solar panel makers in order to sell solar panels -- to First Solar.

This isn't the first time Ex-Im has subsidized companies selling to themselves. In late 2000, for instance, the ill-fated power giant Enron won a $132 million direct-loan package from Ex-Im (that is, from the taxpayers) in order to sell "engineering services & process equipment" to a Venezuelan power company owned 49.25 percent by Enron. Enron was both the buyer and the seller in a 1995 sale to Turkey that Ex-Im financed through a $250 million loan.

Enron's healthy feedings at Ex-Im's trough before its bankruptcy also help poke holes in another Ex-Im defense: that it operates at no cost to taxpayers.

Sure, as long as the foreign buyer pays off the debt, then Ex-Im's loans and guarantees don't increase the deficit. But Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were profitable for years, too, before they failed and taxpayers had to bail them out. Once foreign governments and foreign companies start defaulting, taxpayers pick up the tab. At least one Enron deal resulted in U.S. taxpayers contributing to the Enron bankruptcy fund. Also, Ex-Im has ended up owning a 747 after Air Nauru failed to make its payments because the island nation's economy -- dependent on seagull droppings -- went under.

This week, First Solar unloaded its St. Clair wind farm to NextEra Energy, and so First Solar's financial troubles don't threaten to put the taxpayer on the hook for this deal. But the Ex-Im subsidy itself was a great case in point as to how national industrial policy pitched in the name of helping the U.S. economy often does nothing to help the broader economy, instead helping only those companies lucky -- or politically connected -- enough to get the handouts.

Obama, Reid and most of the Republican leadership want to reauthorize Ex-Im this month and boost the amount of debt it can have outstanding. The lobbyists at Boeing, the Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers agree. They'll claim Ex-Im is crucial to prosperity. And for a few companies, it is.

Timothy P.Carney, The Examiner's senior political columnist, can be contacted at tcarney@washingtonexaminer.com. His column appears Monday and Thursday, and his stories and blog posts appear on washingtonexaminer.com.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 19, 2012, 08:30:39 PM
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No Place to Hide After the 2012 Election
http://noisyroom.net/blog ^ | 3.19.12 | AJ
Posted on March 19, 2012 9:53:22 PM EDT by Whenifhow

This video series presents where we were just five short years ago.

No Place To Hide part 1



No Place To Hide part 2

&feature=related

No Place To Hide part 3

&feature=related

No Place To Hide part 4

&feature=related

The Obama regime and DHS have come a long way since then...

“We Are This Far From A Turnkey Totalitarian State" - Big Brother Goes Live September 2013

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/%E2%80%9Cwe-are-far-turnkey-totalitarian-state-big-brother-goes-live-september-2013

"George Orwell was right. He was just 30 years early.

In its April cover story, Wired has an exclusive report (http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/all/1) on the NSA's Utah Data Center, which is a must read for anyone who believes any privacy is still a possibility in the United States: "A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks.... Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.”... The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013." In other words, in just over 1 year, virtually anything one communicates through any traceable medium, or any record of one's existence in the electronic medium, which these days is everything, will unofficially be property of the US government to deal with as it sees fit.

The codename of the project: Stellar Wind"...

An interesting look at Derek Smith; he was the CEO of Choicepoint (as shown in the video). Guess what this globalist is up to these days... global pre-science...

Derek V. Smith

http://geek.net/index.php/about/directors/derek-smith/

Chairman and CEO, Institute of Global Prescience

"Derek Smith is Chairman and CEO of the Institute of Global Prescience, an interdisciplinary non-profit research, education and service organization dedicated to the pursuit of prescience – foreknowledge that anticipates global events and trends that are yet unseen. The Institute seeks to harness the passion of individuals to anticipate issues through clue detection engines that identify inflection points in technological, financial and social systems"...

Smith goes from CEO to futurist

http://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/stories/2009/04/20/story3.html

"At the institute, students are using computer models to study such topics as whether bandwidth will be able to keep up with the growth of data flow and when the United States might elect its first atheist president.

Other topics include the future of cell phones, obesity, how attitudes will affect climate change and when the world will run out of oil"...

Take a look at the Institute of Global Prescience Board of Directors HERE. (http://www.prescienceintl.com/cti_ab.html) Notice the Federal and state government connections:

 Amy Zimpfer, Regional Deputy Director, EPA

 Anthony Eggert, Senior Policy Advisor, Office of the Chair California Air Resources Board

 Jeffrey Byron, Commissioner, CEC

 Paul Douglas, Supervisor, Renewable Procurement and Resource Planning, California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC)

 Trina Martynowicz, Clean Air Emerging Technologies and West Coast Collaborative, Clean Energy and Climate Change Office, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

Google and PG&E (think ‘SMART Meters’) are also represented.

The Institute of Global Prescience is but one of many, many non-profits, NGO’s and individuals seeking to destroy our country from within.

Is it the intention of American tax-payers to have their hard earned dollars spent on the development of a turnkey Totalitarian State which is in direct violation of our right to privacy under the 4th Amendment? Do Americans understand that current elected officials are facilitating and funding these endeavors with our tax dollars? Will enough Americans wake up, organize and vote the career politicians out of office in November?

The real revolution must take place at the ballot box. Until enough of us can vote against the career politicians who are aiding and abetting the overthrow of our Constitutional Republic, we will have no place to hide once they turn that key. What you do for the 2012 election will determine our fate and that of future generations.

TOPICS: Education; Government; Politics; Society; Click to Add Topic
KEYWORDS: 4thamendment; election; totalitarian; tyranny; Click to Add Keyword
[ Report Abuse | Bookmark ]

1 posted on March 19, 2012 9:53:29 PM EDT by Whenifhow
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies | Report Abuse]
To: Whenifhow
No Place To Hide part 1



No Place To Hide part 2

&feature=related

No Place To Hide part 3

&feature=related

No Place To Hide part 4

&feature=related

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 21, 2012, 09:30:49 AM
Obama to tout green energy ‘investments’ at solar plant with 5 workers that cost taxpayers $54 mil
Nevada Journal ^ | March 21, 2012 | Kyle Gillis




BOULDER CITY, Nev. — President Obama will tout investments in “renewable” energy Wednesday at the local Copper Mountain Solar 1 plant, although the plant has only five full-time employees.

The plant, owned by San Diego-based energy company Sempra, was built in late 2010 at a cost of $141 million. Funding included $42 million in federal-government tax credits and $12 million in tax-rebate commitments from the state of Nevada.

Construction of the plant involved over 300 part-time jobs, but currently only five full-time employees operate the plant, a Sempra spokeswoman confirmed. That comes out to $10.8 million in tax-dollar subsidies per employee. ...

“President Obama's visit to the Solar 1 Facility in Boulder City is the perfect illustration of why the president’s economic policies are such a failure," said Andy Matthews, president of NPRI. “The government has spent over $50 million to ‘create’ five permanent jobs and build a plant producing a product — expensive solar energy — that no one would purchase without a government mandate.

“That’s not a path to a vibrant economy; it’s the road to serfdom."


(Excerpt) Read more at nevadajournal.com ...

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 22, 2012, 03:07:42 AM
Obama’s Outrageous DOL Rules Will Restrict Minors From Working on Family Farms – Killing Farm Life
gateway ^ | March 21, 2012, | Jim Hoft
Posted on March 22, 2012 12:40:19 AM EDT by george76

Barack Obama is committed to killing off the family farm – an American tradition.

For generations children and adults have worked together on the family farm. Those days are over.

Senators John Thune (R-S.D.) and Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) today introduced the Preserving America’s Family Farm Act, to prevent the Department of Labor (DOL) from enacting its controversial proposed restrictions that would ban children from working on family farms.

Senator Thune spoke out against the Obama Administration’s proposed labor rules for youth who work on farms and ranches on the Senate floor.

The Obama Administration’s rules are so strict they would restrict minors from handling most animals and even from using battery-powered screwdrivers.

(Excerpt) Read more at thegatewaypundit.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: garebear on March 22, 2012, 03:20:56 AM
What are your plans for this weekend?
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 22, 2012, 06:31:58 AM
What are your plans for this weekend?



Care to ever make a substantive comment on what your communist thug messiah is doing to collapse this nation? 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 22, 2012, 07:01:57 AM
[ Invalid YouTube link ]
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: garebear on March 22, 2012, 08:05:07 AM

Care to ever make a substantive comment on what your communist thug messiah is doing to collapse this nation? 
Are you really going to waste your entire life on Getbig political board posting copy and paste?

Why were you even born?

What's the point?
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 22, 2012, 08:06:30 AM
Are you really going to waste your entire life on Getbig political board posting copy and paste?

Why were you even born?

What's the point?

Thank you for proving my point.  Go away troll.  And go get that TBI checked out. 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 23, 2012, 09:32:48 PM
Obama administration's plan to cut back pilot firearm training raises security concerns
fox ^ | 3/23/12 | Catherine Herridge
Posted on March 23, 2012 8:21:43 PM EDT by Nachum

Pilots packing heat may soon be a relic of the 9/11 aftermath, as the White House seeks to cut the $25 million budget in half for the federal flight deck officers training program known as the FFDO.

“The Obama administration has had an institutional hostility towards the concept of arming pilots, and especially the FFDO program, since the beginning,” Lt. Col. Al Aitken, a retired Marine and now with the Airline Security Consulting Group, claimed at a panel hosted by the conservative Heritage Foundation on Friday.

The panel brought together advocates for the voluntary program that trains pilots, co-pilots and navigators to handle and carry handguns, including Minnesota Republican Rep. Chip Craavack. He said the program was cost effective – in fact, it was cheaper to arm a pilot than check a single suitcase.

“According to the estimates by the Airlines Pilots Association, FFDOs only cost $15 per flight segment. Let me say that again: To protect an aircraft and possibly the potential of thousands of people, the FFDO costs $15 per flight.

Capt. Tracy W. Price, a commercial airline pilot, warned that history might repeat itself -- he recalled that pilots carried handguns in the 80s and 90s, but the program was shuttered the summer before 9/11.

(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 24, 2012, 05:50:09 AM
http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/217925-nlrb-proposal-to-share-workers-email-phone-numbers-under-fire


Insane. 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: NEPA Rowdy on March 24, 2012, 01:52:36 PM
Nice Thread!

I hope you don't mind if I throw in.. apologies in advance.

www.infowars.com
www.prisonplanet.tv

Alex Jones

Tune In  and have every notion you have regarding our President and other leaders turned completely up side down. I was shaken by what I have learned from Alex Jones and his guests. Be warned, the TRUTH is not at all for the faint of heart.

Check it out for yourself. His daily broadcast is by far the most listened to on the web for years now. the show is also podcast and etc.

Good Luck,

Rowdy in N.E. PA

info warrior
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 25, 2012, 08:19:53 PM
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Barack Obama and the Problem of Proportion
Illinois Review ^ | March 25, 2012 A.D. | John F. Di Leo
Posted on March 25, 2012 8:29:47 PM EDT by jfd1776

Trying to make sense of a senseless administration:

Perhaps there are two kinds of people: gullible ones who listen to Barack H. Obama (D, Tupi, Brazil) and think his proposals make sense, and realistic ones who go into shock and outrage watching him misstate statistics on the television.

Back in my days in international freight forwarding, I worked for a company that had cooperative agreements with other freight forwarders all over the world. If we needed to arrange an inbound shipment from Europe or Asia, we would tell our partner the details and they’d start it on its way. If they needed to arrange an inbound from our region to theirs, they’d tell us, and we’d set it up. Obviously, enough details and time were always provided to ensure success.

Or maybe not quite always. As we were located in Chicago, with a national network of our own offices, we could handle any shipment in the United States. But we had one agent in our small island ally, Taiwan, R.O.C., who frequently failed to give us enough time. It takes five days by rail to ship cargo from Chicago to an east coast port and load it on a ship. It takes seven to ten from Chicago to Los Angeles, the biggest port on the west coast, when you allow for weekends and loading time on the 10,000-truckload megaships popular today.

And yet, this agent in little Taiwan would often send us a telex (yes, this was a while ago!) to happily announce on a Tuesday morning “New customer in Cleveland! Two containers. Pickup Wednesday and deliver to Los Angeles for Thursday loading. Ship sails Saturday.”

The agent wasn’t smoking any funny stuff in his office; this lifelong islander simply couldn’t grasp the size of the United States. He genuinely thought we could travel by land from Cleveland to California overnight! We sent him explanations, maps, transit time charts with averages to refer to when planning… nothing helped. I think we even sent him a globe once. It was just a lack of comprehension about size in general. He could go from coast to coast in his own country in a few hours; while he “knew” in his head that the USA is much bigger, he just couldn’t fathom how MUCH bigger it is. He couldn’t see the proportion.

A president with a blind spot:

Barack Obama has a similar failing. Again and again throughout his administration, he has favored policies and made comments that make a rational person’s jaw drop. He compares the big to the small with no recognition of the difference; he cites a drop in the bucket as a legitimate solution to huge problems. And he doesn’t seem to realize it at all.

Look at his recommendations on automobile maintenance, for example. Somewhere along the way, he heard that overinflating your tires improves your gas mileage by a few mpg. And that’s usually true, of course; it certainly can. If you go from 20 mpg to 23 mpg, that’s nice; a 15% increase in gas mileage. But gasoline prices have more than doubled on his watch; in some regions, they seem possibly on their way to tripling! Fifteen percent improvement is a drop in the bucket; the only solution for us is to take the necessary measures to make gasoline prices drop.

Or consider his love of solar energy: Once upon a time, he noticed that if you open a solar calculator, it can power itself without a battery, simply from the light in the room, whether natural or artificial. So he assumes that solar power could power the nation; all we have to do is switch over.

How can he not see that there’s a difference in energy use, between a tiny pocket calculator and a car, a furnace, an air conditioner, or a lawnmower? Solar power is indeed fine for some small things, and as science progresses, perhaps that list will expand. But at the current level of the technology, it simply cannot be a replacement for traditional power sources. That’s not to insult solar power; it’s just a statement of fact, one that the president appears not to grasp, though the rest of the world does, as we watch him with bafflement.

Shall we talk about algae? There have been countless jokes during the weeks since the president’s proposal that the cure for our nation’s ills lies in pond scum (though one must admit, if it did, his would be the right political party to manage it), but we should also view it seriously. Yes, there is power potential in algae. There is in fact power potential in all carbon-based life forms; that’s what wood and coal are, after all (though he hates the though of burning wood and coal; perhaps we need to paint the briquettes green first?). Every rational American watching him speak performs a quick rough calculation in his head, and says to himself A) there isn’t enough algae to make a blip in our nation’s energy usage, and B) even if there were, it’s plain as day that the processing cost would be far greater than the power potential for recovery.

Maybe the technology will get there someday. But until then, that research costs money, and uses power. And we can’t power the lights and the computers in the algae research labs without oil, coal, natural gas, and nuclear power. Those are the sources that power the American economic engine, and that fact is not changing anytime soon.

Dollars and paychecks:

The president has made a very big deal over one particularly pernicious tax cut; the practice of cutting the Social Security tax by a little less than a sixth, resulting in a paycheck 2% fatter than before. He likes this tax because it applies to almost all workers – practically everyone in the country who has a job can benefit from this 2% improvement in his paycheck, rich and poor, blue collar and white, self-employed and corporate alike.

But it’s a small amount of money, at a huge cost. The stimulative contribution of a 2% tax cut is tepid – better something than nothing, certainly, but still tepid. And the cost of this reduction is enormous, theoretically at least. Social Security funds most of America’s retirees, plus lots of our disabled and otherwise down-on-their-luck segments. Aid to young families, non-workers with disability, etc. – all these programs eat into the larger pie, so that retirement benefits are no longer entirely for senior citizens. As we have grown the beneficiary list, we are cutting its funding. Does this seem wise? Especially since Social Security has been enjoying the bubble of the Baby Boomer generation for decades, a bubble that is fast correcting itself as Baby Boomers retire, leaving the ranks of the funders to join the ranks of the beneficiaries.

The president counts on people being grateful for this tiny tax cut, even as its temporary savings are dwarfed by the permanent price increases in fuel, tuition costs, food, and other goods and services. Does he believe that this $40 average monthly benefit for one class of workers, for example, will outweigh the hundreds of dollars per month his policies have cost them in raises, prices, and economic opportunity? He’s counting on it!

We in the public watch this, and understand. Why does our president fail to?

The Chevy Volt:

Like most car companies, Chevrolet was working on a concept car – electrically powered, with a regular gas engine for when the battery ran out. It was something to display at car shows, but it wasn’t yet ready for prime time. It needed more study; it needed a better battery.

Among the first priorities of the Obama presidency was to get America making “green” cars, so they took over GM so they could give the orders – destroying old low-mpg product lines that sell well, replacing them with new high-mpg product lines that won’t sell at all. No problem if people don’t like them, the government can just write tax rebate checks to make up the difference. The rebates won’t be enough (by some counts, the Chevy Volt’s federal tax rebates really total over $100,000 per vehicle, when you count not only what the government pays the buyer, but also what the government has paid Chevrolet and the battery manufacturers to produce it); even after all these rebates, the car is horrendously overpriced.

The car would allegedly go forty miles on a battery charge. In practice, real users report eighteen to twenty-five. The car would allegedly be good for people’s average commuting needs, but would be admittedly insufficient for vacation travel. And on top of it all, the car is small and uncomfortable, and must be plugged in overnight to power up from the nation’s coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear grid. Not for nothing is it nicknamed “the coal-powered car.”

But it doesn’t even meet the few needs that it promises to meet, perhaps partially because the president doesn’t understand how America works. Yes, some people have a two mile commute. But a huge percentage of Americans live in rural areas with a ten or twenty mile commute, or are suburbanites with even more (I live and work in the Chicago suburbs, seventeen miles each way; one night’s charge would get me to the office, and I’d be on gasoline the whole way back). We do errands on our lunch hour, or after work on the way home, adding a few miles. These details are none of the government’s business, but these general issues need to be considered by a manufacturer seeking to meet the needs of its consumers.

For all these reasons, Chevrolet knew that the car wasn’t ready for prime time, but the administration forced their hand, made them go into production on a car suitable only for further research. Why? Because the administration didn’t know what the automobile industry executives did: that all production vehicles have to fit some balance of pricing and practicality that will draw enough buyers to be worth producing. The huge Tahoe, midsized Taurus, and tiny Focus are very different vehicles, but each one produces a balance that works for some group of buyers. The Volt works for none, but the president ordered it into production anyway.

Four years of anguish:

The punditry has been given a plethora of statistics to use against this president. We hear that in three years, he built up more national debt than the preceding 43 presidents put together. We learn that unemployment is worse than ever, because of the way the administration plays with the counts; the publicly declared eight to nine percent unemployment level is really sixteen to eighteen, if we calculated it honestly, the way we used to. We know that we have some twenty percent of the world’s known oil available for recovery, more than the entire middle east, but the president botches even that simple statistic and lops off the zero, claiming repeatedly and ridiculously that we have only two percent of the world’s oil, so there’s no point in drilling for more of it. We all know better.

These four years have been an endless parade of misunderstood statistics, of misinterpretations and misjudgments. The president dismisses numbers as irrelevant, perhaps because he simply doesn’t understand them?

We know he was never challenged in school or career; he’s never shared his school records. Perhaps he never passed a math class in his life, or perhaps he received the social passes so popular in some schools, where the child’s self-esteem at the moment, however fictionally established, is considered more important to society than the student’s future responsibilities as a parent, employee, or (Heaven forbid) elected official.

But that’s not the cause for alarm. If a political candidate is clueless, there’s a simple solution: the voters just won’t elect him.

Is our nation’s grasp of the most basic mathematics so weak that a majority would re-elect someone this out of touch, this unable to comprehend the effects of his decisions? Is our electorate unable to understand the damage that double-digit unemployment and geometric increases in debt are doing to our nation’s future?

We’ll find out in November. That’s just months away… or hundreds of days away… or an eternity away, depending on how you look at it. It’s all a matter of proportion.

Copyright 2012 John F. Di Leo

John F. Di Leo is a Chicago-based Customs broker and international trade lecturer. Permission is hereby granted to forward freely, provided it is uncut and the IR URL and byline are included. Follow me on LinkedIn or Facebook!
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 27, 2012, 03:12:19 PM
House GOP eyes another possible green-tech scandal
Published: 12:45 PM 03/27/2012
By Neil Munro - The Daily Caller




Heidi Bray, of Olympia, Wash. demonstrates how she charges her Nissan Leaf at the new ECOtality Blink Commercial charging stations in Seattle. (Photo: AP)

GOP leaders are investigating Ecotality Inc., yet another troubled green-tech company that has received taxpayer funds and public support from the White House.

The firm has received roughly $126 million from the the Department of Energy to install roughly 14,000 electric car chargers, has donated thousands of dollars to Democratic politicians, and was showcased by President Barack Obama in his 2010 State of the Union speech.

But the company has installed less than 7,000 of the chargers, its subsidiary is being investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission for insider trading, and it has only created 144 jobs, according to the federal Recovery.gov website.

The Heritage Foundation’s investigative unit reported that the company’s financial document showed the company got a SEC subpoena in Oct. 2010.

“It is the same story, different day, with the administration’s green-energy agenda,” said a source. “They’re rewarding friends at the expense of taxpayers.”

Several other taxpayer-funded green-tech companies have gone bankrupt or laid off employees.

Famously, California-based Solyndra went bankrupt in 2010 after getting more than $500 million in federal loans, and General Motors recently stopped production of the Chevy Volt because of low sales. Battery-maker A-123 laid off a third of its workforce in 2011, despite getting $249 million in taxpayer funds.

(RELATED: Obama proposes bumping Chevy Volt subsidy up to $10K)

Ads by GoogleFord Focus Electric Buzz
Research the Ford Focus Electric. You'll Never Need a Drop of Gas.




www.ford.com/electric/focuselectric/2012/Private sector funding for green-tech companies is also drying up as investors worry about declining federal subsidies.

The numerous problems have delayed pending loans by the Energy Department, even though Obama again touted the green-tech push in his 2012 State of the Union speech.

So far, the administration has spent at least $13 billion on green-tech subsidies, which are derided by GOP advocates as “crony capitalism.”

On Monday House Republicans asked the Department of Energy for more information about the troubled green-tech program and the Ecotality company.

The information is needed to weigh the merits of Obama’s 2013 budget-request for $1 billion “National Community Deployment Challenge” program that would subsidize local governments’ support for green-tech vehicles.

“Details of the President’s initiative are severely lacking… it is imperative that Congress receive further details on this proposal,” said a March 26 letter from Maryland Rep. Andy Harris, the Republican chairman of the House science committee’s panel on energy and environment.

Harris’ letter to the Energy Department Secretary Steven Chu also demanded more information about Ecotality, whose charging stations for electric autos — such as the stalled Volt — might be funded by the proposed $1 billion NCDC program.

“Was DoE aware Ecotoality received a subpoena from the SEC in October 2010? Why did DoE award Ecotality and additional $26 million contract nearly a year after SEC issues the company a subpoena in October 2010?” asked Harris’ letter.

Follow Neil on Twitter



Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/03/27/house-gop-eyes-another-possible-green-tech-scandal/#ixzz1qMF2KNFQ




Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 29, 2012, 03:22:10 PM
BOMBSHELL BETRAYAL: Obama Leaking Info to Media to Thwart Israeli Strike and Protect Iran's Nuclear
Atlas Shrugs ^ | 3/29/12 | Pamela Geller

Posted on Thursday, March 29, 2012 3:04:11 PM by Nachum

Iran's plan for a second Holocaust must be stopped John Bolton

The Obama administration is leaking information to pressure Israel not to bomb Iran. Enemy in the White House. Not only is Obama an anti-semite, he is anti-American (anti-freedom.) His islamophiliac polcies compromises American security. Iran is clearly an American threat.They have been at war with us since '79. Israel was willing to do the heavy lifting because our reckless and feckless president was too weak, too compromised. But to betray an ally like this?

'Baku grants Israel use of its air bases' Senior US officials tell 'Foreign Policy' "Israelis have bought an airfield and the airfield is called Azerbaijan."

Is it any wonder that 20% of Americans think Obama is Muslim. But their fruits ye shall know him and so we know him.

ABC is soft selling this bombshell story but this steaming pile of dung will expose this saboteur no matter how pretty the package the enemedia manufactures.

JERUSALEM – Two reports today about Iran’s nuclear program and the possibility of an Israeli military strike have analysts in Israel accusing the Obama administration leaking information to pressure Israel not to bomb Iran and for Iran to reach a compromise in upcoming nuclear talks.

The first report in Foreign Policy quotes anonymous American officials saying that Israel has been given access to airbases by Iran’s northern neighbor Azerbaijan from which Israel could launch air strikes or at least drones and search and rescue aircraft.

The second report from Bloomberg, based on a leaked congressional report, said that Iran’s nuclear facilities are so dispersed that it is “unclear what the ultimate effect of a strike would be…” A strike could delay Iran as little as six months, a former official told the researchers.


(Excerpt) Read more at atlasshrugs2000.typepad. com ...

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 29, 2012, 08:01:16 PM
Mideast officials: Obama in secret talks with Iran Asking Tehran to guarantee it won't hit U.S. if
wnd ^ | 3/29/12 | Aaron Klein
Posted on March 29, 2012 10:44:21 PM EDT by Nachum

JERUSALEM – President Obama has been engaged in secret, back-channel talks with Iran in which he informed Tehran’s leaders he is completely opposed to any Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, according to informed Middle Eastern officials.

The officials told WND the behind-the-scenes talks aim to secure a guarantee from Iran that it will not retaliate against the U.S. in the event of any Israeli military strike, the officials said.

It was unclear what, if anything, Obama offered Iran in exchange for a pledge against targeting U.S. installations, including in the Gulf.

The State Department did not immediately return a WND request seeking comment on the alleged back-door talks.

In a wide-ranging interview March 9 with Al-Monitor, an Arab website founded in the wake of the Middle East revolutions, former Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel hinted that private approaches to Iran were already occurring.

Hagel is co-chairman of Obama’s Intelligence Advisory Board. While he was in the Senate he served on the Foreign Relations Committee.

Al-Monitor’s Washington correspondent, Barbara Slavin, interviewed Hagel at Georgetown University, where he teaches a weekly class.

Slavin asked Hagel: “Do you know if there any private approaches going on, or is it all through the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany?

(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Shockwave on March 29, 2012, 08:21:39 PM
Mideast officials: Obama in secret talks with Iran Asking Tehran to guarantee it won't hit U.S. if
wnd ^ | 3/29/12 | Aaron Klein
Posted on March 29, 2012 10:44:21 PM EDT by Nachum

JERUSALEM – President Obama has been engaged in secret, back-channel talks with Iran in which he informed Tehran’s leaders he is completely opposed to any Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, according to informed Middle Eastern officials.

The officials told WND the behind-the-scenes talks aim to secure a guarantee from Iran that it will not retaliate against the U.S. in the event of any Israeli military strike, the officials said.

It was unclear what, if anything, Obama offered Iran in exchange for a pledge against targeting U.S. installations, including in the Gulf.

The State Department did not immediately return a WND request seeking comment on the alleged back-door talks.

In a wide-ranging interview March 9 with Al-Monitor, an Arab website founded in the wake of the Middle East revolutions, former Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel hinted that private approaches to Iran were already occurring.

Hagel is co-chairman of Obama’s Intelligence Advisory Board. While he was in the Senate he served on the Foreign Relations Committee.

Al-Monitor’s Washington correspondent, Barbara Slavin, interviewed Hagel at Georgetown University, where he teaches a weekly class.

Slavin asked Hagel: “Do you know if there any private approaches going on, or is it all through the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany?

(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...

Wonder how Israel feels about this?
Good job Obama, throw our friends to the wolves and jump in bed with our enemies, stupid fuck.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 29, 2012, 08:25:29 PM
Wonder how Israel feels about this?
Good job Obama, throw our friends to the wolves and jump in bed with our enemies, stupid fuck.


I knew everything I needed to know about Obama when he was silent was the protesters were hung in 2009 2010.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 30, 2012, 05:44:55 AM
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/mar/29/hurt-was-week-was-obama-style



HA HA HA HA - PLEASE EVEN ONE OBAMA DRONE DEFEND THIS
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 30, 2012, 05:59:39 AM
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303816504577312043447691520.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop#articleTabs%3Darticle




LMFAO!    Peggy Noonan is only realizing now that obama is a lying fraud and dishonest thug? 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 02, 2012, 01:34:23 PM
DHS To Grant Illegal Aliens “Unlawful Presence Waivers”
Judicial Watch ^ | April 2, 2012





In its quest to implement stealth amnesty, the Obama Administration is working behind the scenes to halt the deportation of certain illegal immigrants by granting them “unlawful presence waivers.”

The new measure would apply to illegal aliens who are relatives of American citizens. Here is how it would work, according to a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announcement posted in today’s Federal Register, the daily journal of the U.S. government; the agency will grant “unlawful presence waivers” to illegal aliens who can prove they have a relative that’s a U.S. citizen.

Currently such aliens must return to their native country and request a waiver of inadmissibility in an existing overseas immigrant visa process. In other words, they must enter the U.S. legally as thousands of foreigners do on a yearly basis. Besides the obvious security issues, changing this would be like rewarding bad behavior in a child. It doesn’t make sense.

But the system often causes U.S. citizens to be separated for extended periods from their immediate relatives,” according to the DHS. The proposed changes, first announced in January, will significantly reduce the length of time U.S. citizens are separated from their loved ones while required to remain outside the United States during the current visa processing system.

The administration also claims that relaxing the rule will also “create efficiencies for both the U.S. government and most applicants.” How exactly is not listed in the Federal Register announcement, which gives the public 60 days to comment. That’s only a formality since the DHS has indicated that the change is pretty much a done deal.

This appears to be part of the Obama Administration’s bigger plan to blow off Congress by using its executive powers to grant illegal immigrants backdoor amnesty. The plan has been in the works for years and in 2010 Texas’s largest newspaper published an exposé about a then-secret DHS initiative that systematically cancelled pending deportations. The remarkable program stunned the legal profession and baffled immigration attorneys who said the government bounced their clients’ deportation even when expulsion was virtually guaranteed.

In late 2011 a mainstream newspaper obtained internal Homeland Security documents outlining “sweeping changes” in immigration enforcement that halt the deportation of illegal aliens with no criminal records. This also includes a nationwide “training program” to assure that enforcement agents and prosecuting attorneys don’t remove illegal immigrants who haven’t been convicted of crimes.

Judicial Watch has been a front runner in investigating the Obama Administration’s stealth amnesty program by pursuing DHS records concerning “deferred action” or “parole” to suspend removal proceedings against a particular group of individuals. Last spring JW sued DHS to obtain information because the agency ignored a federal public records request that dates back to July 2010.


Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 03, 2012, 08:21:52 PM
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Analysis: Obama's Worst Speech Yet
Townhall.com ^ | April 3, 2012 | Guy Benson
Posted on April 3, 2012 10:41:05 PM EDT by Kaslin

Today we witnessed something truly remarkable. Barack Obama managed to out-do himself by uncorking what very well may have been the most dishonest, demagogic, and bitterly partisan speech of his presidency. I render that assessment as someone who has sat through and analyzed countless Obama lectures, some of which earned very high marks for deceit and ideological invective. Indeed, today's Occupy-inspired rant takes the cake. It was a depressing and enraging preview of the next seven months, over which this president will unleash a barrage of sophistic and pernicious arguments deliberately designed to sow discord and divide Americans. He will do so with no regard for the truth, history, or the Constitution he swore to uphold. I genuinely cannot see how anyone who considers him- or herself a "conservative" in any meaningful sense could watch this screed and not immediately redouble his resolve to help defeat the man who delivered it. Adequately addressing and debunking this speech is going to be a Herculean undertaking. Nearly every single paragraph is littered with distortions, scorched straw men, and flat untruths. But I'm going to take a stab at it.

Disclaimers: (1) This is going to be a very long post, even as I try to pare down my responses. If I dissected every misstatement and fib in the full remarks, this piece might achieve War and Peace proportions. (2) I'm working from C-SPAN's rush transcript. (3) I'll add video as it become available. And with those items securely in place, we're off ... President Obama begins by feigning fealty to the private sector and free markets. After ticking off a list of Republican presidents who supported some form of government expansion, he assails "trickle-down" economics, branding the conservative vision for America a failed "experiment:"

Show me a business leader who would not profit if more americans could afford to get the skills and education that today's jobs require. Ask any company where they would rather locate and hire workers, a country with crumbling roads and bridges or one committed to high-speed internet and high- speed railroad and high-tech research and development? It doesn't make us weaker when we guarantee basic security for the elderly, sick, or those who are actively looking for work. What makes us weaker is when fewer and fewer people can afford to buy the goods and services are businesses sell. When entrepreneurs don't have the financial securities to take a chance and starting a business. What drags down our entire economy is when there is an ever widening chasm between the ultra rich and everybody else...Yet, for much of the last century, we have been having the same argument with folks who keep paddling some version of trickle-down economics.


How is it possible that America remains plagued by "crumbling roads and bridges" after we've just spent $825 Billion of borrowed money on a stimulus program ostensibly fashioned to fund and execute precisely those types of "shovel ready projects"?  Obama's solution is more spending, more borrowing, more failure.  Next, income inequality exists, but this "ever-widening chasm" language is both exaggerated and unsupported by the facts.  The presidential "education" goes on:
 

They keep telling us that if we convert more of our investment in education, research and health care into tax cuts, especially for the wealthy, our economy will grow stronger. They keep telling us if we strip away more regulations and let businesses pollute more and treat workers and consumers with impunity, somehow we will all be better off. We are told that when the wealthy become even wealthier and corporations are allowed to maximize profits by whatever means necessary, it's good for America and their success will translate into more jobs and prosperity for everyone else. That is the theory. The problem for advocates of this theory is that we have tried their approach on a massive scale. The results of their experiments are there for all to see. At the beginning of the last decade, the wealthiest americans received a huge tax cut in 2001 and another huge tax cut in 2003. We were promised that these tax cuts would lead to faster job growth. They did not. The wealthy got wealthier, we would expect that. the income of the top 1% has grown by more than 275% over the last few decades to an average of $1.3 million a year. But prosperity sure did not trickle down. Instead, during the last decade, we had the slowest job growth in half a century.


Here, our "post-partisan," self-stylized messiah accuses Republicans of supporting pollution and worker abuse.  How insulting.  I'll address this point when he revisits it with a vengeance later on.  His unserious caricature of free market capitalism is hardly worth responding to.  It's the equivalent of a petulant Republican president standing up and saying the Democrat vision for the country is to transform it into a North Korea-style police state.  This brand of rhetoric is below the presidency, but has never been below this president.  The 2001 and 2003 tax cuts helped pull America out of the recession that President Bush inherited.  It led to more than 50 consecutive months of job growth and declining deficits (prior to the 2008 crisis) -- even as we spent heavily on two wars.  President Obama is asking Americans to turn their backs on the "bad old days" of 5.3 percent unemployment (Bush's average) and annual deficits that look like foothills compared to today's Obama-institutionalized Himalayas of red ink.  And does this president really want to gripe about previous "slow job growth"?
 

The typical American family actually saw their incomes fall by about 6% even as the economy was growing. there was a time when insurance companies and insurance -- and a financial lenders did not have to abide by strong enough wedges -- strong enough regulations and found ways around them. what was the result? Profits for these companies soared, but so did people's health insurance premiums, patients were repeatedly denied care, often when they needed it most, families were enticed and sometimes just plain tricked into buying homes they could not afford, huge, reckless bets were made with other people's money on the line and our entire financial system was nearly destroyed. We tried this theory out. you would think after the results of this experiment in trickle-down economics, after the results were made painfully clear, the proponents of this theory might show some humility. might moderate their views a bit. You would think they would say, you know what? Maybe some rules and regulations are necessary to protect the economy and prevent people from being taken advantage of by insurance companies or mortgage lenders. Maybe, just maybe, at a time of growing debt and widening inequality, we should hold off and giving the wealthiest americans another round of big tax cuts.


Banks were forced into lending people money to "buy" homes they couldn't afford through federal edicts like the Community Reinvestment Act.  As a young community organizer, Barack Obama trained Left-wingers to aggressively agitate in favor of coercing banks into issuing these risky, subprime mortgages.  Directly contradicting the tale Obama is now spinning, Republicans repeatedly tried to increase regulation to prevent the meltdown that Barack Obama helped cause -- and that perversely helped sweep him into office.  Democrats strenuously objected at the time.  It takes a stunning degree of cognitive dissonance and cynicism to pawn off the consequences of your mess onto your political opponents after it nearly sinks the entire economy.  And to echo a previous question, does this president really want to discuss "reckless bets made with other people's money"?  Really?  Next, Obama paints a cartoonish portrait of the dystopian hell-hole America will become if Paul Ryan's budget is enacted:
 

Instead of moderating their views even slightly, the Republicans running congress right now have double down. They have proposed a budget so far to the right it makes the Contract for America look like the new deal. In fact, that renowned liberal, Newt Gingrich, first called the original version of the budget radical. He said it would contribute to right- wing social engineering. This is coming from newt gingrich. This is not a budget supported by some small group in the republican party. This is now the party's governing platform. This is what they are running on. One of my potential opponents, Governor Romney, has said he hopes a similar version of this plan from last year would be introduced as a bill on day one of his presidency. He says he's very supportive of this new budget and he even called it marvelous -- which is a word you don't often hear when it comes to describing the budget. [laughter] It's a word you don't often hear generally. [Laughter].


Hilarious!  Say, has Obama himself used "marvelous" in public remarks on multiple occasions?  Of course he has!  But that's a silly critique.  In the passage above, Obama plays into the tired liberal trope that every single Republican politician or idea is either dumber or more evil than the previous one.  He expects us to believe the Contract for America was spectacularly awesome compared to this wing-nut Ryan budget.  (Also, thanks a lot, Newt).  And since when did Republicans take over "Congress"?  Last time I checked, Democrats -- who have intentionally avoided offering budget plans of their own to escape all accountability -- run the Senate.  The president elides this pesky little nugget for some reason.  It's almost as if he's actively trying to confuse people, or something.  We continue...
 

Here is what this marvelous budget does...I want to go through what it would mean for our country if these cuts were to be spread out evenly. Bear with me, I want to go through this because I don't think people fully appreciate the nature of this budget. The year after next, nearly 10 million college students would see their financially cut by an average of more than $1,000 each. There would be 1600 fewer medical grants, research grants for things like alzheimer's, cancer and AIDS. There would be 4000 fewer scientific research grants, eliminating support for 48,000 researchers, students and teachers. Investments in clean energy technologies helping us reduce our dependence on foreign oil would be cut by nearly a fifth.

If this budget becomes law and cuts were applied evenly, starting in 2014, over 200,000 children would lose their chance to get an early education in the headstart program. 2 million mothers and young children would be cut from a program that gives them access to healthy food. There would be 4500 fewer federal grants at the department of justice and the FBI to combat by the crime, financial crime, and helped secure our borders. Hundreds of national parks would be forced to close for part or all of the year. We would not have the capacity to enforce the laws that protect the air we breathe, the water we drink, or the food we eat. Cut to the FAA would likely result in more flight cancellations, delays, and the complete elimination of air- traffic control services and parts of the country. Over time, our weather forecasts would become less accurate because we would not be able to afford to launch new satellites. That means governors and mayors would have to wait longer to order evacuations in the event of a hurricane. That's just a partial sampling of the consequences of this budget.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 05, 2012, 03:59:11 AM
Judge Napolitano: I Think the President Is Dangerously Close to Totalitarianism (Video)
thegatewaypundit.com ^ | 4/4/2012 | Jim Hoft
Posted on April 5, 2012 6:53:04 AM EDT by servo1969

Don’t hold back, Judge. FOX News contributor Judge Napolitano told Neil Cavuto today,

“I think the president is dangerously close to totalitarianism. A few months ago he was saying the Congress doesn’t count. The Congress doesn’t mean anything. I am going to rule by decree and by administrative regulation. Now he’s basically saying the Supreme Court doesn’t count. It doesn’t matter what they think. They can’t review our legislation. That would leave just him as the only branch of government standing.”

(Excerpt) Read more at thegatewaypundit.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 07, 2012, 06:11:13 PM
Skip to comments.

EDITORIAL: Obama’s war on the courts
The Washington Times ^ | April 6, 2012 | Editorial
Posted on April 7, 2012 5:41:34 PM EDT by jazusamo

Administration fears ruling will strike down Obamacare as unconstitutional

Word seems to have gone out in liberal circles that Obamacare is in trouble with the Supreme Court. A systematic and unprecedented assault is undermining the integrity of the system in an attempt to defend this highly unpopular law.

President Obama claimed Tuesday that the court has not overturned a congressional economic regulation in more than 80 years, saying, “a law like that has not been overturned at least since Lochner, right?” Well, wrong. The 1905 case of Lochner v. New York dealt with a state statute and had nothing to do with the powers of Congress. The law professor should check his notes.

Another problem with trying to invoke precedent is that Obamacare defenders can’t keep their story straight on whether the constitutional authority for the health care takeover was found in the government’s taxing power, regulation of interstate commerce, a necessary and proper power, or something else. White House attorneys still can’t seem to agree, and the grounds kept shifting even during oral arguments before the nation's highest court. It’s never a good sign when the solicitor general elicits laughter in the courtroom.

University of Houston law professor David R. Dow suggested impeaching justices who vote against Obamacare...

~snip~

Mr. Obama treats the “unelected justices” as just another impediment to his power-to be picked, frozen, personalized and polarized. Perhaps he should appoint a judicial czar to look into the matter.

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 08, 2012, 05:43:08 AM
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The smartest president in history?
Philadelphia Inquirer ^ | April 8, 2012 | by George Parry
Posted on April 8, 2012 8:40:42 AM EDT by Oldeconomybuyer

Despite 40 years of practicing law, I am no expert when it comes to arguing appeals. But I do know enough not to gratuitously insult and try to humiliate the appellate judges who will decide my client's case.

Apparently they don't teach those fundamentals at Harvard Law School. How else to explain the absolutely boneheaded attempts by President Obama, a past president of the Harvard Law Review, to intimidate the U.S. Supreme Court as it decides the constitutional fate of Obamacare?

And he did this when anyone who could see past his next meal knew that Obamacare, which was being shoved through the Congress, would ultimately wind up before that very same court.

As we used to say in the Organized Crime Strike Force, "That's smart, Freddo, really smart."

How could a president of the United States of America, of all people, not know something so basic about our system of government? Where has he been all these years? Kenya?

How can the so-called smartest president in history be so out of touch with human nature, common sense, and reality as to think that he can intimidate a coordinate branch of government - composed of judges with life tenure - by advancing such a baseless and preposterous argument as the one that he trumpeted to the media?

Now that the president has made a complete fool of himself in public, is it too much to ask that the mainstream media, at long last, begin to question and investigate his much-vaunted credentials as our Genius-in-Chief?

(Excerpt) Read more at philly.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 08, 2012, 04:19:15 PM
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The President’s Abysmal Record
Commentary ^ | 04.05.2012 | John Steele Gordon
Posted on April 7, 2012 7:31:32 PM EDT by neverdem

Is this the week the Obama administration’s remarkable incompetence begins to be the narrative? If so, he’s toast.

The president’s astonishing, not to mention indefensible, lecture to the Supreme Court this week, in which he turned 200 years of American constitutional history on its head, has been the talk of the blogosphere. But it’s not just the fact that he pretends to have not heard of Marbury v. Madison, it’s the anger behind his remarks that he is having trouble concealing. Even his old professor at Harvard felt he had to weigh in.


It is not hard to see why he might be angry. His single major domestic accomplishment, Obamacare, is in mortal peril in the Supreme Court. InTrade has the chances of its being overturned at 63.8 percent this morning. And it remains deeply unpopular with the public at large. His other domestic efforts have been largely a bust. The stimulus did not produce the promised economic boost and recovery from the recession remains stubbornly slow and unemployment stubbornly high. Green energy is failing and failing and failing. The price of gas has nearly doubled since he became president, despite the recession, while domestic production of oil and natural gas has been rising despite his policies, not because of them.

And, of course, the country continues hell-bent towards the fiscal cliff at the rate of $1 trillion plus per year. Obama, and the Senate Democrats, have not even tried to do anything about something the people in poll after poll have called their number one concern.

As for his foreign policy successes, I’d list them except there haven’t been any. His failures are numerous. Our antagonists, such as Iran, Korea, Russia, and China have little or no respect for him, and thus no inclination to play ball. He has managed to alienate such important allies as Britain and Israel. Indeed, his very first foreign policy act was to insult Britain by summarily returning a bust of its great national hero, Winston Churchill–the man who saved the world in 1940–to the British Embassy. It’s only gotten worse. Last week, his open-mic gaffe with the Russian president was greatly embarrassing. This week’s summit with Mexico and Canada revealed deep problems within the North American alliance, problems that were hardly noted in the American mainstream press–a wholly owned subsidiary of the Obama re-election campaign–but were widely on view in the Mexican and Canadian media.

In sum, it’s a remarkable record, especially for a man who thinks of himself as a transformational figure in American history. The president looks in the mirror and sees FDR. Increasingly, the rest of the country look at him and see Jimmy Carter, perhaps even James Buchanan. They were both one-term presidents.

@steelegordon
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: garebear on April 08, 2012, 10:35:22 PM
How about you just skip the copy and paste jobs and, if we want to read your right-wing rags, we'll just go ahead and get do it on our own.

That way, you can get out of the house and have human relationships.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 09, 2012, 07:55:36 AM
The Obama Thugocracy
Personal Liberty Digest ^ | 4/9/2012 | Bob Livingston








(President Barack Obama rose to office like a Mafioso don.)


With his approval ratings below 50 percent as an election looms, Congress gridlocked over his economy-destroying budget proposal and the prospect that his signature piece of legislation — Obamacare — is likely to get thrown out as unConstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court, President Barack Obama and his minions have ratcheted up their tried and true modus operandi: thuggery.

This has long been common practice for Obama. His career was launched from the home of a convicted terrorist. His parents, friends and key influencers were socialists and communists. It is who he is.

Obama was first elected as a U.S. Senator from Illinois only after he and chief operative David Axelrod arranged to have the sealed divorce records of Obama’s opponents unsealed: first Democrat primary opponent Blair Hull’s, then Republican Jack Ryan’s.

Polls showed Hull enjoyed a healthy lead over Obama as late as one month before the primary. But then The Chicago Tribune — Alexrod’s former employer — began publishing stories accusing Hull of violent behavior in his marriage and claiming that an ex-wife had sought a protective order during their divorce. Finally, Hull and his ex-wife agreed to have the records unsealed; and another ex-wife, their children and a number of Hull’s acquaintances denied Hull was violent. But Hull’s poll numbers began to tank and Obama won the primary.

In the general election Obama faced Jack Ryan, husband of actress Jeri Ryan. During a child custody dispute some years prior to the election, Jeri Ryan had claimed that Jack Ryan made her accompany him to swingers clubs in New York and Paris. Axelrod obtained “leaked” copies of the couple’s Chicago divorce records and then The Tribune sent lawyers to California to request the sealed child custody case records be unsealed. Over the objections of both Ryans, the judge released the records. Shortly thereafter, Jack Ryan withdrew from the race.

During the 2008 Democrat Presidential primary, Obama operatives intimidated Hillary Clinton supporters and engaged in improper and possibly illegal activities to win the nomination, according to a former Clinton campaign worker. Michelle Thomas told WND that she received death threats and was called a racist for opposing Obama. She also accused the Obama campaign of stealing caucuses by throwing away votes and intimidating people trying to enter the caucus locations.

Thomas also believes the Obama campaign is behind the death of Arkansas Democratic Party Chairman Bill Gwatney, who was shot in his office days before the Democratic National Convention by Timothy D. Johnson, who was then killed by police after a car chase. The day before he was shot, Gwatney and Thomas had agreed that Gwatney would find a superdelegate from the Arkansas delegation to introduce a petition to have Clinton’s name placed in nomination for President.

Another Clinton supporter Thomas met with about introducing the petition, Stephanie Tubbs Jones, died mysteriously the next week.

“We found it quite a coincidence that Bill Gwatney was killed the day after we talked with him,” Thomas told WND. “And just a few days later that Tubbs Jones died suddenly of an aneurysm, after she had agreed to introduce our petition.”

Hollywood film producer Bettina Viviano told WND that she heard Bill Clinton say on a conference call during the 2008 primary that he believed Obama was ineligible to be President, and that he was prepared to go public with the information until Gwatney was murdered.

According to Viviano, a campaign staffer who was close to Hillary Clinton said Bill Clinton received a message after Gwatney’s death: “Shut up, Bill, or you’re next.” But Clinton, who was a friend of Gwatney’s, intended to speak out anyway until he received another message: “OK, it’s your daughter, now, we’ll go after.”

After receiving the threats directed toward Chelsea Clinton, Bill Clinton never said anything else about it, Viviano told WND.

The Obama Administration used thuggery to defeat a Texas bill that would have kicked the Transportation Security Administration out of the State’s airports, ignored a judge’s order over offshore oil drilling permits and used intimidation to call the media off the story regarding Obama’s forged birth certificate and Selective Service registration form.

The Obama Justice Department is also reportedly set to sue Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Ariz. Arpaio is investigating whether Obama’s birth certificate and Selective Service registration are forgeries and is also trying to find other missing Obama documents that would prove whether Obama is a U.S. citizen.

Obama’s comments on the Trayvon Martin shooting were designed to inflame an already volatile incident that already had race hucksters stoking a racial fire. His comments had the intended effect. Since then, there have been several incidents reported of blacks attacking whites in the name of Martin.

Now, with his freedom- and America-destroying Marxist agenda getting pushback from an awakening American populace, Obama is at it again. He’s taking on the Supreme Court.

During a press conference last week at the White House, Obama said:

We are confident that this will be over – that this will be upheld. I’m confident this will be upheld because it should be upheld. Again, that’s not just my opinion. That’s the opinion of a whole lot of constitutional law professors, academics and judges… Ultimately, I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress. I guess I would remind conservative commentators that for years what we’ve heard is the biggest problem on the bench is judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint. For an unelected group of people to somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law is a good example of that, and I’m pretty sure this court will recognize that and not take that step… With respect to health care, I actually continue to be confident that the Supreme Court will uphold the law. The reason is, in accordance to precedent out there, it’s constitutional.

Obama is channeling his inner FDR. As President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt sought — with some success — to intimidate the Supreme Court after it began striking down sections of the New Deal by threatening to pack the court with more justices who would be favorable to New Deal legislation.

New Deal proponents accused the court of being obstructionist and political. That’s essentially Obama’s argument. He may also be laying the groundwork to ignore the court’s order. It wouldn’t be first time the Obama Administration had ignored a court’s order, and it wouldn’t be the first time a President had done so.

In 1861, President Abraham Lincoln ignored an opinion by Chief Justice Roger Taney that Lincoln had no lawful power to suspend habeas corpus. So if Obama does ignore the Supreme Court, he’ll be channeling his inner Lincoln.

But even more troubling is that in saying that the Supreme Court’s striking down of Obamacare would be unprecedented, Obama is just lying. It’s a wonder his pants aren’t on fire.

As a so-called “Constitutional scholar,” Obama has to know that the court has overturned laws passed by “a democratically elected Congress” 165 times (click here and see page 201). And it doesn’t matter whether the law was passed “by a strong majority” (although only in Obama’s mind is 219-212 partisan vote a strong majority), that doesn’t exempt it from judicial review.

“That the Supreme Court would declare as unconstitutional congressional ‘laws’ which illegally violated the Constitution was one of the benefits of the Constitution, which the Constitution’s advocates used to help convince the People to ratify the Constitution,” writes David Kopel in The Volokh Conspiracy. “In Federalist 78, Alexander Hamilton explained why unconstitutional actions of Congress are not real laws, and why the judiciary has a duty to say so… Because Hamilton was the foremost ‘big government’ advocate of his time, it is especially notable that he was a leading advocate for judicial review of whether any part of the federal government had exceeded its delegated powers.”

Obama’s actions make clear the reasons the Founding Fathers inserted the phrase “natural-born citizen” into the Constitutional requirements for President. They wanted a President who was loyal to “these United States” and the Constitution.

But Obama sees the Constitution and the rule of law as impediments to his Marxist, America-destroying agenda. He rose to the office like a Mafioso don. His political career was born in the home of convicted terrorist Bill Ayers (Obama’s mentor who also wrote Obama’s “biography” and says he wakes up every morning thinking he’s going to end capitalism and goes to bed every evening disappointed that he didn’t). Obama was fed from the pulpit of the racist preacher Jeremiah Wright. And rose to prominence with the help of a complicit — even sycophantic — mainstream media, with which he now enjoys a carrot-and-stick relationship.

If he came to power like a don, it should come as no surprise he is governing (or ruling, according to Valerie Jarrett) like one as well.

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Tigerblood on April 10, 2012, 11:57:09 AM
I am starting this thread to list the daily examples of how the Obama Admn is killing the economy and destroying jobs.  

I'll start with the Stim Bill.  See below.

[ Invalid YouTube link ]


  

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 11, 2012, 10:01:54 AM
EPA Fines School Bus Company 438K For 'Excessive Idling'
CNSNews.com ^ | April 10, 2012 | Elizabeth Harrington




The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) enforced nearly $500,000 in fines and mandatory “environmental projects” on a school bus contractor for “excessive idling,” and as part of its anti-idling campaign to reduce the carbon footprint of school buses waiting to pick up children for their routes.

“As part of a settlement for alleged excessive diesel idling in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, Durham School Services will commit to reduce idling from its school bus fleet of 13,900 buses operating in 30 states,” read an EPA press release on Tuesday.

The EPA says an agency inspector two years ago spotted buses of the Durham School Services, the second largest school bus transportation contractor in the country, “idling for extended periods of time” in school lots in New England.

“The inspector observed some buses idling for close to two hours before departing the bus lot to pick up school children,” it said. State rules limit idling to three minutes in Connecticut and five minutes in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, where the infractions occurred.

Durham reached a settlement for the violation and agreed to pay $90,000 in penalties. It also agreed to pay for $348,000 worth of environmental projects, including implementing a national training and management program “to prevent excessive idling from its entire fleet of school buses.”

Under the program Durham must require its supervisors to “monitor idling in school bus lots, post anti-idling signs in areas where drivers congregate, and notify the school districts it serves of its anti-idling policy.”

The EPA’s enforcement is part of its broader national campaign aimed at reducing idling among public school bus fleets. The federal agency claims a bus whose engine is running while stationary consumes about one-half gallon of fuel per hour.

“By reducing the idling time of each bus in its fleet by one hour per day, Durham would reduce its fuel use by 1.25 million gallons per year and avoid emitting 28 million pounds of carbon dioxide per year,” the release stated, adding, “Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change.”

According to the EPA, as of 2006, 30 states plus the District of Columbia had either state, county or local anti-idling regulations in place, with the city of Philadelphia setting the maximum allowable time for diesel powered motor vehicles at two consecutive minutes.

The EPA Web site even provides a “do it yourself kit” for those wishing to bring the anti-idling campaign to their school district, providing brochures, posters, a “Teacher’s Guide for use in reinforcing key messages of the Idle-Reduction campaign,” and pledge cards for drivers that read, “I’m doing my share for clean air.”

Also available for order are bus driver key chains “that can be used by bus drivers daily to remind them that they hold the key to a healthier ride,” and a five-minute training video entitled “Reducing School Bus Idling: The Key to a Healthier Ride.” Also referenced is California’s 2003 anti-idling regulation that bus drivers must to turn off their vehicle within 100 feet of a school and must not turn the bus back on more than 30 seconds before beginning to depart – or face a minimum penalty of $100.

The EPA suggests purchasing block engine pre-heaters, which cost approximately $1,200 to $1,500 each, to reduce idling and warm up engines and passenger compartments during colder months. Also available are Compartment/Engine Block Heaters that cost approximately $2,300 to $2,500.

The EPA claims the diesel emitted from school buses pollutes the air, wastes fuel, causes excess engine wear, and is harmful to children’s health.

“Children, especially those suffering from asthma or other respiratory ailments, are particularly vulnerable to diesel exhaust,” said Curt Spalding, regional administrator of EPA’s New England office, in announcing the fines levied on Durham.

“EPA is pleased with this settlement, which will dramatically limit school bus idling and help protect the health of school children in dozens of communities across the country,” he said.

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: garebear on April 12, 2012, 08:10:24 AM
Why all the copy and pastes?

Are you and your girl having problems?

Too much litigation these days?

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Fury on April 12, 2012, 08:53:55 AM
Why all the copy and pastes?

Are you and your girl having problems?

Too much litigation these days?



You're in China and the best thing you have to do is stalk someone 15,000 miles on an internet forum all day? Someone is definitely in need of a hobby and some social skills.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 13, 2012, 06:03:55 AM
[ Invalid YouTube link ]
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 13, 2012, 07:59:35 AM
Analysis: Obama's "green jobs" have been slow to sprout
Reuters ^ | April 13, 2012 | by Andy Sullivan

Posted on Friday, April 13, 2012 10:53:12 AM by Oldeconomybuyer

...Three years after Obama launched a push to build a job-creating "green" economy, the White House can say that more than 1 million drafty homes have been retrofitted.

But the millions of "green jobs" Obama promised have been slow to sprout, disappointing many who had hoped that the $90 billion earmarked for clean-energy efforts in the recession-fighting federal stimulus package would ease unemployment - still above 8 percent in March.

Supporters say the administration over-promised on the jobs front and worry that a backlash could undermine support for clean-energy policies in general.

"All of this stuff is extraordinarily worthy for driving long-term economic transformation but extremely inappropriate to sell as a short-term job program," said Mark Muro, a clean-energy specialist at the Brookings Institution.

A $500 million job-training program has so far helped fewer than 20,000 people find work, far short of its goal.

On the campaign trail in 2008, Obama promised that a $150 billion investment would generate 5 million jobs over 10 years.

Obama included $90 billion in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to weatherize drafty buildings, fund electric-car makers and encourage other clean-energy efforts.

In December 2009, Vice President Joe Biden said the effort would create 722,000 green jobs.

The rush of funding encouraged private-sector participants to inflate their job-creation projections as they angled for a piece of the action, insiders say.

"They were obviously just guessing," said Robert Pollin, a University of Massachusetts professor and green-energy supporter who helped the Energy Department sort through loan applications. "If an undergraduate gave me a paper of that quality I would have probably given them a C or a C-plus."


(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 13, 2012, 08:42:00 AM
April 12, 2012 3:17pm

Obama regs to cut 7 mil car buyers out of market

by Conn Carroll Senior Editorial Writer





The Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) regulations that President Obama announced last summer will make it impossible for 7 million lower income consumers to buy a new car according to a National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) study released today.

“While you can mandate what automakers must build, you can’t dictate what customers will buy, nor can you dictate if a bank will make a loan,” New Mexico Ford dealer Don Chalmers said today.

Obama's proposed CAFE standards, which will begin taking effect in 2017, raise minimum average vehicle fleet fuel efficiency to 54.5 mpg by 2025. The Environmental Protection Agency and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimate that this regulation will raise the average price of passenger cars and light trucks by $3,000.

“The unintended consequences of the proposed fuel economy increases are clear,” NADA Used Car Guide analyst David Wagner said. “If the price of a vehicle goes up by the government estimate of almost $3,000, millions of people will no longer be able to finance a new vehicle.”

Not only would Obama's fuel efficiency regulations make it impossible for lower income Americans to afford new cars, but it will also increase deaths. The Heritage Foundations's Diane Katz explains:

Some fuel-efficiency gains would likely result from drive-train re-engineering, improved aerodynamics, and reduced tire resistance. But as in past years, weight reduction would be unavoidable. And with downsizing comes risk.

In past years, the structure of the regulations induced automakers to dramatically downsize some vehicles to meet the standard, which increased traffic fatalities by the thousands.

Obama's higher standards probably will not help the environment either. Katz explains:

To the extent that the standards increase sticker prices, consumers are more likely to continue using older, less fuel-efficient vehicles. A host of research also documents that increased fuel efficiency, by lowering the cost of driving, actually increases travel—thereby negating at least some of the supposed environmental effects.

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 14, 2012, 08:29:13 AM
Obama's Plan To Raise Taxes Ignores Fundamental Economics
Townhall.com ^ | April 13, 2012 | Donald Lambro




WASHINGTON - President Obama admitted this week that the "Buffett Rule," his plan to raise taxes on wealthier Americans, is "a gimmick."

"There are others who are saying: 'Well, this is just a gimmick.

Just taxing millionaires and billionaires, just imposing the Buffett Rule, won't do enough to close the deficit," Obama said Wednesday to a handpicked group of backers the White House gathered here Wednesday.

"Well, I agree," he added. "But the notion that it doesn't solve the entire problem doesn't mean that we shouldn't do it at all."

Where's the logic in that? No, it won't really fix the severe economic problems America faces, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't give it a try.

Actually, raising taxes wouldn't scratch the surface of the gargantuan fiscal and financial mess he has created and that now threatens America's economic security.

The revenue from his Buffett Rule tax increase has been estimated at about $47 billion, a thimble full of what may be needed to pound his huge $1.3 trillion budget deficit into submission. It wouldn't even pay a fraction of the interest on his ballooning $15 trillion debt.

Yet he's made this pathetic excuse for an economic and fiscal agenda the centerpiece of his campaign for another four years.

Before Obama made his "gimmick" remarks, Democrats on Capitol Hill were saying essentially the same thing.

Sen. Chris Coons, Delaware Democrat, acknowledging Republican criticisms of Obama's Buffett Rule, admitted that it "isn't going to balance the budget. This is an issue about fairness."

"I question the priority of doing this right now," said Former Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine. "This is tripping over dollar bills to pick up pennies."

So that's what Obama is peddling in this fiscal snake oil remedy that the Senate will vote on next week -- pennies disguised as fairness.

Obama says it isn't fair that wealthy Americans like billionaire Warren Buffett pay a 15 percent tax rate on their income, while other taxpayers pay a higher rate on lower incomes.

Here's what's wrong with Obama's foggy thinking which is sorely in need of an economic overhaul:

1. Obama's tax hike plan is aimed at the capital gains tax which was cut from 20 percent to 15 percent in 2001. That tax, which is levied on dividends, interest and capital gains from stocks, is lower than regular middle income tax rates because the government wants to encourage investment.

Whenever the capital gains tax has been raised, as Obama wants to do, it discourages the sale of assets and reduces badly needed investment in our economy. That will lower tax revenues and worsen the deficit. That's what will happen if Obama has his way.

2. Billionaires and millionaires benefit from a lower capital gains tax because almost all of their income comes from capital investment in our economy. But they're not the only ones who benefit from the lower tax. More than half of all American workers who save for their retirement years by investing in stocks, mutual funds or other assets also pay the same rate that Buffett does on their capital gains and dividend income. But Obama doesn't seem to understand this or conveniently chooses to ignore it because it sounds fair.

3. Warren Buffet's secretary, who he said paid a higher tax rate than he does, probably invests in stocks, too, and the tax rate on her capital gains and dividends is the same rate that her boss pays.

Millions of retirees today, who do not think of themselves as rich, live off the cap gains and dividends from a lifetime of savings and investment and pay 15 percent on that portion of their income.

But while Obama is ranting about "fairness" in the tax code, that isn't the problem facing our country or that most Americans care about right now. What they're worried sick about is a weak economy that's barely growing at a snail's pace and the need for good paying jobs that are in short supply.

This is the legacy of Obamanomics. He isn't talking about about growing the economy or jobs or incentives to boost capital investment to escalate new business creation that is the wellspring of a prosperous, capitalist country.

No, he wants to distract voters from his failures on the economy by playing the class warfare card and calling for inserting some theoretical egalitarian fairness into the tax code.

While this hat trick appeal to many Americans, polls suggest that it may not be enough to keep him from becoming a one term president.

A poll of 1,000 independents in 12 battleground states, released by the centrist Democratic group Third Way, found that 80 percent of independent-minded voters who did not have a strongly held views about Mitt Romney or Obama said they were more likely to vote for a candidate who focused on economic growth and jobs.

That bodes well for Romney because economic growth, jobs and creating an "opportunity society" remain at the heart of his presidential campaign.

What this economy needs right now is a strong dose of tax reform that that lowers the oppressive 35 percent tax rate on corporations, reduces the capital gains tax rate even further to give business investment a booster shot, and lowers marginal income tax rates for the middle class.

That's what Obama's very own bipartisan budget-cutting commission proposed in a plan that would have cleansed the tax code of needless exemptions, deductions and loopholes, only to be given the cold shoulder by the White House.

Republican leaders in Congress are pushing the Bowles-Erskine plan but not the Obama campaign who think they can win in November by campaigning on "fairness" instead of economic growth and tax reform.

But even the national news media is getting fed up with Obama's empty class warfare rhetoric at a time when the country is crying out for economic policy reforms to get the country moving again.

Dana Milbank, the Washington Post's fire-breathing liberal columnist, says his patience is wearing thin: "Three years into his presidency, Obama has not introduced a plan for comprehensive tax reform -- arguably the most important vehicle for fixing the nation's finances and boosting long-term economic growth."

Tax cut crusader Jack Kemp, and Ronald Reagan for that matter, couldn't have said it any better.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 15, 2012, 05:49:43 AM

Published on The Weekly Standard (http://www.weeklystandard.com)

Clueless About Job Creation

Obama’s invincible economic ignorance.

Fred Barnes

April 23, 2012, Vol. 17, No. 30
Does President Obama have the foggiest idea how jobs are created in America? There’s not much evidence he does, beyond lip service to the helpfulness of the private sector.

When the president begins a speech these days with praise for free markets, look out! What comes next are proposals for more government intervention in the economy and higher taxes. That’s the recipe, Obama says, to “encourage our long-term economic growth and stabilize our budget.” 

He said so in his Republicans-are-Social-Darwinists speech in Washington two weeks ago to newspaper editors. Near the outset, Obama declared: “I know that the true engine of job creation in this country is the private sector, not Washington, which is why I’ve cut taxes for small-business owners 17 times over the last three years.”

Those cuts have had minimal effect, and not surprisingly. They were tiny and temporary, and few small-business owners bothered to claim them, if indeed they were eligible to do so. Meanwhile, the president has persistently sought to raise their income taxes.

In Washington, Obama didn’t suggest, much less propose, a single incentive or spur to private investment, yet he insisted “we continue to make investments in growth today.” These consist solely of government-funded jobs, such as “putting some of our construction workers back to work” and “helping states to rehire teachers.”

Obama yearns for a hefty increase in hiring by state and local governments. If hiring were “on par to past recoveries, the unemployment rate would probably be about a point lower than it is right now.” Restoring “huge cuts in state and local government” is “part of the challenge we have in terms of growth.”

The lesson here is that Obama has learned no lesson from what Edward Lazear of the Hoover Institution has called the “worst economic recovery in history”—that is, the Obama recovery. The economy has grown at a rate of 2.4 percent since the recession ended in June 2009, a full percentage point below average long-term growth. But the president is sticking with his plan for a government-led economic boom. This is Obamanomics: If it doesn’t work, then double down.

Obama once told a group of investors that the private sector didn’t need incentives to invest because his administration’s massive subsidies of green technology would lead the way. Now the mention of “green jobs” has become a laugh line. The main news from the green sector is another company bankrolled by Obama going belly-up.

In The Escape Artists: How Obama’s Team Fumbled the Recovery, Noam Scheiber describes the president’s “obsession” with green jobs. Eco-nomic adviser Christina Romer “would march in with an estimate of the jobs all the investments in clean energy would produce; week after week, Obama would send her back to check the numbers. ‘I don’t get it,’ he’d say. ‘We make these large-scale investments in infrastructure. What do you mean there are no jobs?’ But the numbers rarely budged.”

Obama’s latest fixation is the Buffett Rule, named after billionaire Warren Buffett. “We can’t afford to keep spending more money on tax cuts for wealthy Americans,” the president said last week. (Note: Under Obamanomics, untaxed earnings of private citizens are “spending.”) The new rule would force those earning more than $1 million to pay at least 30 percent of their annual income, whether earnings (already taxed at a marginal rate of 35 percent) or capital gains (now taxed at 15 percent), in income tax. “This is not just about fairness,” the president said. “This is also about growth.” And thus about jobs, and more.

But not deficit reduction, according to Jason Furman, the deputy director of the White House National Economic Council. He said the 30 percent tax was “never our plan to bring the deficit down and get the debt under control.” It would raise only $4 billion to $5 billion a year, a peewee bite out of Obama’s $1.3 trillion deficit for fiscal year 2012.

Obama and Vice President Biden claim deficit reductions anyway. The new tax floor is “about we as a country being willing to pay for those [government] investments and closing our deficits,” Obama said. “That’s what this is about.” Biden defended the tax hike with a question. “Do we pay down those deficits, cutting wherever we can, as we’ve been doing, while at the same time investing in things we know we must invest in, in order for the economy to grow and create good middle-class jobs?”

One response to the Buffett Rule has been to dismiss it as a campaign gimmick. Yes, it is that, but it’s much more. Obama, Biden, and their allies believe raising taxes will boost the economy by paying for increased government spending. They believe the investor class of millionaires and billionaires will invest as robustly as ever, producing growth and jobs, even if subjected to higher income tax rates and a doubled rate on capital gains. They’re wrong on both counts.

Obama has taken recently to quoting Ronald Reagan, while ignoring Reagan’s formula for recovering from the deep recession in 1981 and 1982. It consisted of tax and spending cuts, the exact opposite of Obama’s policy. By mid-1984, Reagan noted happily in a letter that job growth had exceeded 300,000 a month for more than a year. The Obama economy, which the president says is “gaining speed” and “getting strong,” hasn’t come close to that.

Obama has his excuses. State and local governments are supposedly at fault for not hiring more. And if the construction industry were functioning normally, that would shave another percentage point off the jobless rate, he claims. In March, the rate of unemployment was 8.2 percent. But by Obama’s figuring, it should be 6.2 percent.

The president doesn’t realize how lucky he is. There have been twice as many dropouts from the economy as jobs added since he became president. Were the dropouts counted as unemployed, the jobless rate would be well above 11 percent. And Obama would be hard put to come up with an excuse.

Fred Barnes is executive editor of The Weekly Standard.

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Copyright 2012 Weekly Standard LLC.

Source URL: http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/clueless-about-job-creation_637018.html
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 15, 2012, 06:07:18 AM
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Former GE CEO Jack Welch Blasts Obama’s Leadership
CNBC ^ | April 13, 2012 | Bruno J, Navarro
Posted on April 15, 2012 6:50:29 AM EDT by lbryce

President Obama’s “divide-and-conquer” approach isn’t what great leaders do, Jack Welch said Thursday.

The renowned former General Electric [GE 18.88 -0.42 (-2.18%) ] CEO chided the president for blaming others for economic woes.

“It was the insurance executives in health care. It was the bankers in the collapse. It was the oil companies as oil prices go up. It was Congress if things didn’t go the way he wanted. And recently it’s been the Supreme Court,” he said.

“He’s got an enemies list that would make Richard Nixon proud.”

Welch, who helmed GE for 21 years and founded the Jack Welch Management Institute at Strayer University, penned an op-ed article for Reuters with wife Suzy Welch this week in which he tackled the idea of Obama’s enemies list.

“Surely his supporters must think this particular tactic is effective, but there can be no denying that the country is more polarized than when Obama took office,” Welch wrote, making a case for presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney



“Without doubt, Romney is not the model leader (his apparent lack of authenticity can be jarring), but he has a quality that would serve him well as president — good old American pragmatism,” he wrote. “Perhaps that’s the businessman in him. Or perhaps you just learn to do what you’ve got to do when you’re a GOP governor in the People’s Republic of Massachusetts or the man charged with salvaging the scandal-ridden Salt Lake City Olympics. If Romney’s long record suggests anything, it’s that he knows how to manage people and organizations to get things accomplished without a lot of internecine warfare.”

In 1981, Welch became GE’s youngest CEO, and increased its market value by $387 billion, making it the world’s most valuable company. But the move came in part by slashing GE’s workforce by more than 100,000 workers, earning him the nickname he despised, “Neutron Jack,” a reference to the bomb designed to eliminate people while leaving buildings intact.

On “The Kudlow Report,” Welch argued that “great leaders are interested in coalescing” the way they would run a company.

TOPICS: Extended News; Government; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections; Click to Add Topic
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 15, 2012, 06:58:38 AM
White House Opens Door to Big Donors, and Lobbyists Slip In
By MIKE McINTIRE and MICHAEL LUO
Last May, as a battle was heating up between Internet companies and Hollywood over how to stop online piracy, a top entertainment industry lobbyist landed a meeting at the White House with one of President Obama’s technology advisers.

The lobbyist did not get there by himself.

He was accompanied by Antoinette C. Bush, a well-connected Washington lawyer who has represented companies like Viacom, Sony and News Corporation for 30 years. A friend of the president and a cousin of his close aide Valerie B. Jarrett, Ms. Bush has been to the White House at least nine times during his term, taking lobbyists along on a few occasions, joining an invitation-only forum about intellectual property, and making social visits with influential friends.

At the same time, she and her husband, Dwight, have donated heavily to the president’s re-election effort: Mr. Bush gave $35,800 on the day of his wife’s White House meeting last year, and Ms. Bush contributed the same amount a month later. In November, they hosted a $17,900-a-plate fund-raiser at their home, where Mr. Obama complained that the nation’s capital should be more “responsive to the needs of people, not the needs of special interests.”

“That is probably the biggest piece of business that remains unfinished,” the president said, as about 45 guests dined under a backyard tent.

Although Mr. Obama has made a point of not accepting contributions from registered lobbyists, a review of campaign donations and White House visitor logs shows that special interests have had little trouble making themselves heard. Many of the president’s biggest donors, while not lobbyists, took lobbyists with them to the White House, while others performed essentially the same function on their visits.

More broadly, the review showed that those who donated the most to Mr. Obama and the Democratic Party since he started running for president were far more likely to visit the White House than others. Among donors who gave $30,000 or less, about 20 percent visited the White House, according to a New York Times analysis that matched names in the visitor logs with donor records. But among those who donated $100,000 or more, the figure rises to about 75 percent. Approximately two-thirds of the president’s top fund-raisers in the 2008 campaign visited the White House at least once, some of them numerous times.

The reasons someone might have gained access to the White House and made a donation are wide-ranging, and it is clear that in some cases the administration came down against the policies being sought by the visitors. But the regular appearance of big donors inside the White House underscores how political contributions continue to lubricate many of the interactions between officials and their guests, if for no other reason than that donors view the money as useful for getting a foot in the door.

Timing of Donations

Some of the donors had no previous record of giving to the president or his party, or of making donations of such magnitude, so their gifts, sometimes given in close proximity to meetings, raise questions about whether they came with expectations of access or were expressions of gratitude.

Dr. William C. Mohlenbrock, chairman of a health care data analysis firm, Verras Ltd., gave occasionally to political candidates over the years, mostly small amounts to Republicans. But last May he contributed the maximum allowable gift, $35,800, to the Obama Victory Fund, which benefits the president’s campaign and the Democratic Party. Later in the year, with help from a Democratic consultant, he landed a meeting with a top White House aide involved in the health care overhaul, but failed to persuade Medicare officials to require more health data collection as part of the new regulations.

Joe E. Kiani, who heads a medical device company, Masimo Corporation, stepped up his giving to Democrats last year as medical device makers campaigned unsuccessfully for the repeal of an excise tax imposed on the industry. Mr. Kiani had several meetings with White House officials last year, including two with lobbyists from his company and another with representatives from his industry’s trade association. In the midst of these gatherings, he donated $35,800 to the victory fund.

Administration officials insisted that donations do not factor into White House visits, and they cited steps taken to curb the influence of money in politics, including a ban on executive branch employees’ accepting gifts from lobbyists and on appointees’ lobbying the White House after they leave. Eric Schultz, a White House spokesman, pointed out that Mr. Obama was the first president to release the visitor logs regularly, and added that “being a supporter of the president does not secure you a visit to the White House, nor does it preclude you from one.”

“The people selected for this article are contributors to the president,” Mr. Schultz said, “but this article excludes the thousands of people who visit the White House every week for meetings and events who did not contribute to the president, many of whom may not have even supported the president.”

‘How This Business Works’

Most donors, including Dr. Mohlenbrock and Mr. Kiani, declined to talk about their motivations for giving. But Patrick J. Kennedy, the former representative from Rhode Island, who donated $35,800 to an Obama re-election fund last fall while seeking administration support for a nonprofit venture, said contributions were simply a part of “how this business works.”

“If you want to call it ‘quid pro quo,’ fine,” he said. “At the end of the day, I want to make sure I do my part.”

Mr. Kennedy visited the White House several times to win support for One Mind for Research, his initiative to help develop new treatments for brain disorders. While his family name and connections are clearly influential, he said, he knows White House officials are busy. And as a former chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, he said he was keenly aware of the political realities they face.

“I know that they look at the reports,” he said, referring to records of campaign donations. “They’re my friends anyway, but it won’t hurt when I ask them for a favor if they don’t see me as a slouch.”

Others, like Ms. Bush, rejected the notion that their donations were tied to access. Her husband said it was a coincidence that his contribution last May — made at a Democratic fund-raiser — came on the same day his wife was at the White House. And Ms. Bush noted that most of her meetings occurred before she made her donation in June. She added that as a longtime lawyer with the firm Skadden Arps, it should not be surprising that her work would occasionally take her to the White House.

“Communications law is what I do for a living,” Ms. Bush said. “Yes, I’m an Obama supporter, but in the end I’m a communications law expert. I had the same clients in the Bush administration as well as the Obama administration.”

Although those in office invariably deny it, the notion that access is available at a price is a well-founded reality of Washington. Memorably, President Nixon was caught on tape remarking that $250,000 should be the minimum donation for an ambassadorship. The Clinton White House offered major donors coffees with the president or sleepovers in the Lincoln Bedroom. More recently, Republicans in Congress have raised questions about whether Democratic donors who invested in the solar energy company Solyndra and other troubled firms influenced the administration’s support of those businesses, pointing to White House visits and other official contacts. The administration denies there was any wrongdoing.

At a minimum, it is standard for administrations to recognize generous supporters with sought-after invitations to special events. The Obama White House logs are filled with the names of donors welcomed for St. Patrick’s Day receptions, Super Bowl parties and concerts. Last year, several major Democratic donors rounded out the guest list for a film screening with the first lady.

But in addition to social events, business is also carried out in the White House and its executive offices. The logs suggest some Obama fund-raisers and donors have been trafficking in ties they forged to the administration, helping clients get a seat at the table.

When Los Angeles officials wanted White House backing for a program that would speed up local transit projects, they turned last spring to a California political operative, Kerman Maddox, a top Obama fund-raiser and party donor. “We thought he could help our outreach in Washington,” said Richard Leahy, chief executive of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

In an internal memo justifying Mr. Maddox’s hiring, the authority wrote that he had “direct access to the Executive Oval Office” and cited his position on the Obama campaign’s National Finance Committee. Mr. Maddox’s company Web site prominently features photographs of him with the Obamas.

One day after the authority signed off on his contract, Mr. Maddox made a $10,000 donation to the Obama re-election effort; he donated an additional $6,000 in June. In August, Mr. Maddox landed a meeting for himself and the authority officials with Melody Barnes, then director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, one of several meetings the officials were able to get.

The administration had previously been supportive of Los Angeles County’s efforts to accelerate its transit projects, but the following month, Mr. Obama also announced, as part of his jobs package, a proposal to significantly expand a Transportation Department loan program. The plan, which has drawn bipartisan support, is something Mr. Maddox’s clients had sought. Mr. Maddox, soon donated an additional $11,250 to the victory fund. He said in an e-mail that his donations were tied to fund-raising events and had nothing to do with visiting the White House.

Navigating Washington

Noah Mamet, another veteran Democratic fund-raiser and consultant, emphasizes on his firm’s Web site that he and his partners “are not lobbyists.” Instead, they help their clients “strategically navigate the worlds of politics, philanthropy and business.” Mr. Mamet, who donated $35,800 last year, and his partners have visited the Obama White House more than a dozen times, including at least four occasions on which they accompanied clients to meetings with administration officials. Mr. Mamet declined to comment.

Lamell McMorris, a Chicago native and longtime Obama supporter who appears in White House visitor logs 20 times, runs a Washington consulting firm that, as recently as last year, was registered to lobby. He also operates a sports management company, and has taken clients like the football player Cam Newton and the New Jersey Nets guard Anthony Morrow to the White House for private tours. Mr. McMorris did not reply to requests for comment.

With many of these meetings, it is often difficult to discern what exactly was being discussed. Clues can sometimes be gleaned by looking at the positions and interests of other attendees — who often include lobbyists.

David Beier, who oversees government affairs at the pharmaceutical company Amgen, has had nearly a dozen meetings at the White House, according to the visitor logs. On a single day in February last year, Mr. Beier, Amgen’s chief executive, Kevin W. Sharer, and lobbyists from the Podesta Group, the firm led by the Democratic fund-raiser Tony Podesta, had four meetings with top White House officials, including Ms. Jarrett, Pete Rouse and Austan Goolsbee. Mr. Beier — who was registered to lobby for Amgen for 10 years until last year — donated $35,800 in January, his largest such contribution. The donation came two weeks after he and Mr. Podesta visited the White House for another meeting with an economic official.

Amgen declined to comment, but lobbying disclosure reports show that the company hired the Podesta Group to press the White House and Congress on Medicare coverage and reimbursement for drugs for end-stage renal disease, among other issues.

As for Ms. Bush, a former Senate staff member whose stepfather is the Democratic power broker Vernon E. Jordan Jr., she declined to comment on the nature of her visits. But the purpose of some of them can be inferred from the more detailed records of meetings she had around the same time with officials at the Federal Communications Commission. Those agency meetings — some of which included the same Sony and Viacom lobbyists whom she accompanied to the White House — were mostly about shaping regulations to discourage piracy of digital media.

She also helped Viacom fight an F.C.C. complaint that one of its Nickelodeon shows, Zevo-3, was little more than a vehicle for the show’s marketing partner, Skechers. Writing to the agency for Viacom, Ms. Bush argued that the cartoon show, which features characters with special powers who previously appeared in Skechers commercials, intentionally distances itself from the footwear Skechers sells.

“In particular,” she wrote, “the characters in Zevo-3 do not derive any powers from their shoes, do not go out of their way to refer to their shoes and do not indicate that their shoes bear any relation to their roles on the program.”








Hope and change! 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 15, 2012, 07:03:46 AM
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/15/us/politics/white-house-doors-open-for-big-donors.html?ref=politics#commentsContainer


Hahaha aha.   Even the libs over there can't even make a feeble attempt at defending thus shit.   
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: garebear on April 15, 2012, 07:35:55 AM
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/15/us/politics/white-house-doors-open-for-big-donors.html?ref=politics#commentsContainer


Hahaha aha.   Even the libs over there can't even make a feeble attempt at defending thus shit.   
.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 15, 2012, 02:02:44 PM
White House Allowed Hilary Rosen Back-Door Lobbying Privileges
Breitbart ^ | 4/15/12 | staff
Posted on April 15, 2012 4:52:55 PM EDT by Nachum

Hilary Rosen, the Democratic National Committee consultant who told CNN last week that Ann Romney had “never worked a day in her life,” has used her power with the White House to swing special lobbying privileges for her friends – all without meeting reporting requirements. One senior Democrat told Ben White at Politico:

Serious Dem operatives are aghast at Hilary Rosen’s misguided attack on Ann Romney’s work history. She and others at PR firm SKD Knickerbocker have represented many clients that have raised hackles with senior White House staff. It’s an open secret in the Dem consultant community that SKD has been signing up clients based on ‘perceived White House access’ tied to prior relationships and employment.

In other words, SKDKnickerbocker has been using its “ins” at the White House to sign up its biggest clients. As The Nation reports, Kaplan Education hired SKDKnickerbocker to help block Obama’s anti-college companies legislation; Win America, a lobbying campaign, has used SKDKnickerbocker to push for big tax breaks; food manufacturers paid SKDKnickerbocker to battle food regulations. The list goes on and on. Anita Dunn, Hilary Rosen’s partner over at SKDKnickerbocker, even used her access to the White House to sign up big businesses for anti-Buffett Rule lobbying while working as a “paid media” advisor for another PR firm.

(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 16, 2012, 07:04:02 AM
Corzine Steals Billions Sans Charges, Errant Whale Watcher Faces Prison
By Bill Frezza


www.realclearpolitics.co m



Justice may be blind, but who works overtime to make it deaf, dumb, and stupid?

Which would you imagine might attract more aggressive enforcement from the Justice Department: the theft of $1.2 billion from supposedly segregated customer brokerage funds, or lying about an alleged incident of whistling to attract the attention of a whale so that whale watchers could get a better peep? If you said the latter, then you appreciate the extent to which federal law enforcement priorities have run off the rails.

We know for a fact that enormous sums of money legally off limits have disappeared into the maw of disgraced Senator John Corzine's gambling counterparties, all of whom seem to have taken the oath of omerta. We know that Corzine personally asked employees at MF Global, the financial firm he headed until recently, to transfer the funds. We know that his underlings balked at signing false statements attesting the transfers to be legal. So how is it that the man ultimately responsible for this brazen theft and spectacular bankruptcy gets away with performing a perfunctory Sergeant Schultz "I know nothing" routine in front of his old Senate buddies, after which he is left free to walk out the door without handcuffs?

 Meanwhile, marine biologist and whale watching ship captain Nancy Black faces 20 years in prison, not for "harassing" whales (which believe it or not is a crime), but because she has been charged with lying to Justice Department prosecutors investing allegations that some of her crew members whistled at a whale to keep it hanging around their boats.

You can't make this stuff up.

Title 18, Section 1001 of the United States Code is the successor to the False Claims Act of 1863, originally intended to punish crooked Civil War contractors. It has since metastasized into an all-purpose bludgeon that federal prosecutors routinely use to squeeze fines and plea bargains out of anyone unfortunate enough to become ensnared in one of the hundreds of thousands of regulations that govern everything from selling goldfish to the volume of your toilet flush.

As Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg characterizes it, Section 1001 has conferred "extraordinary authority" for prosecutors to "manufacture crimes." That is because Section 1001 charges are both entirely discretionary and subsidiary to any primary charges, making every indictment an act of selective prosecution. In fact, Section 1001 prosecutions are so selective that primary charges are not even necessary, meaning you can go to jail even if there is no underlying crime. Ask Martha Stewart about that.

This is a horrendous misapplication of justice. But as long as it has become the norm in federal law enforcement whenever prosecutors are directed by their political masters to send a message about policy, why haven't Section 1001 charges been thrown at John Corzine? How long do we have to wait for the feds to collect evidence from the hapless employees on whom Corzine has tried to pin the blame before the big fish gets hauled in for the perp walk?

Are prosecutors even trying to get their man or have friends in high places waved them off? Why haven't Corzine's gambling counterparties been squeezed to turn over evidence in return for immunity from prosecution - as well as the first pick in next year‘s draft of who gets to rotate back out of government service to return to one of the firms they used to regulate? It's not as if prosecutors couldn't bring all manner of securities cases against companies that did business with MF Global until they found someone willing to throw the mendacious Senator under the bus.

With all the securities regulations we now have on the books - from Sarbanes Oxley to Dodd Frank - and politicians incessantly bloviating about the importance of bringing Wall Street miscreants to justice, what are the rest of us supposed to think if the befuddled whale watcher gets hauled off to prison while the Willie Sutton of derivatives brokers hops in his limo and rides off into the sunset to collect his Senator's pension?

Who has set the priorities at the Justice Department that is allowing this to happen, and why? How can an SEC that can't catch a Bernie Madoff before he blows himself up or nail a guy like John Corzine after his hand, arm, neck, and head are caught in the cookie jar be expected to professionally, effectively, and impartially enforce the thousands of regulations inflicted on the rest of us?

But woe to anyone who messes with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's rules on harassing marine mammals. Or runs afoul of the Environmental Protection Agency when their backyard is declared a wetland. Or gets in a Davis Bacon labor dispute with a powerful union. Or fails to file accurate Affirmative Action Plan paperwork. Yet it seems that if you‘ve got the right Washington connections you can pick your clients' pockets and even burn the economy to the ground without suffering any consequences.

This is more than just justice gone awry. It is the systematic destruction of the rule of law and its replacement by shameless cronyism.

 

 


Bill Frezza is a fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and a Boston-based venture capitalist. He can be reached at bill@vereverus.com. If you would like to subscribe to his weekly column, drop a note to publisher@vereverus.com or follow him on Twitter @BillFrezza.

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 16, 2012, 10:17:02 AM
Guest Post: Another Empty Obama Promise

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/16/2012 11:07 -0400

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-post-another-empty-obama-promise




Another Empty Obama Promise



The extent of Obama’s duplicity continues to grow apace. And yes — it’s duplicity. If you can’t or won’t fulfil a promise, don’t make it.

From Bloomberg:

Two years after President Barack Obama vowed to eliminate the danger of financial institutions becoming “too big to fail,” the nation’s largest banks are bigger than they were before the credit crisis.

 

Five banks — JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., Wells Fargo & Co., and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. — held $8.5 trillion in assets at the end of 2011, equal to 56 percent of the U.S. economy, according to the Federal Reserve.

 

Five years earlier, before the financial crisis, the largest banks’ assets amounted to 43 percent of U.S. output. The Big Five today are about twice as large as they were a decade ago relative to the economy, sparking concern that trouble at a major bank would rock the financial system and force the government to step in as it did during the 2008 crunch.

 

“Market participants believe that nothing has changed, that too-big-to-fail is fully intact,” said Gary Stern, former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.

And the hilarious (or perhaps soul-destroying) thing?

The size of the banks isn’t even the major issue. AIG didn’t have to be bailed out because of its size; AIG was bailed out because of its interconnectivity. If AIG went down, it would have taken down assets on balance sheets of a great deal more firms, thus perhaps triggering even more failures. So the issue is not size, but systemic interconnectivity.

And yes — that too is rising, measured in terms of gross OTC derivatives exposure, as well as the size of the shadow banking system (i.e. pseudo-money created not by lending but by securitisation) — which sits, slumbering, a $35 trillion wall of inflationary liquidity ready to crash down on the global dollar economy.

On the other hand, Keynesians — and Obama (in spite of his supporters’ best protestations) is certainly one — are insistent that the easiest and best way to reduce systemic indebtedness is by unleashing additional inflation, and thus reducing the real value of debt.

From Paul Krugman:

To be sure, more aggressive Fed policies to fight unemployment might lead to inflation above that 2 percent target. But remember that dual mandate: If the Fed refuses to take even the slightest risk on the inflation front, despite a disastrous performance on the employment front, it’s violating its own charter. And, beyond that, would a rise in inflation to 3 percent or even 4 percent be a terrible thing? On the contrary, it would almost surely help the economy.

Such simplistic reasoning. Given the sizeable deflationary impact we know that deleveraging in the shadow banking system can have — even in spite of a tripling of the monetary base — we should surely understand by now that the global financial system no longer works by the old rules.   We are living in the fat tail of history.

As I wrote in January:

Simply, the Fed’s huge expansion of the monetary base has still failed to prevent the contraction of this strange and exotic part of the “money” supply. It has failed to prevent the sector from deflating and sucking down the wider economy.

 

In the years preceding 2008 the definition of “money” became extremely loose. When securities made up of sub-prime mortgages which are in arrears comes to pass for “money” — and came to stand on balance sheets as debt — it should have been painfully obvious that modern finance had mutated into an uncontrollable monster, and that no amount of quantitative easing could prevent prevent the inevitable credit contraction from blown-up asset prices tanking.

 

The shadow banking sector was never “too big to fail”; it was too monstrous to succeed.

Working toward a “mild” inflationary uptick would certainly debase the real value of debt, but there is a clusterflock of black swans circling above that road, not least the impact on U.S. relations with creditor nations who also happen to produce a huge portion of the goods we consume. What would we do if the Chinese central planners decided to slash exports to America (e.g. by imposing heavy tariffs) and instead recycle their $3 trillion dollar hoard on domestic consumption (after all, they hardly need any more of our dollars)? America would be faced with a painful transition.

Today it struck me that Franklin D. Roosevelt’s famous aphorism that “all we have to fear is fear itself” — at least applied to the present situation — is possibly one of the most dangerous and foolish ideas in history. We have plenty of things to fear; real and present dangers to our civilisation.

Living with a fundamentally broken, fundamentally monstrous economic and financial paradigm is a recipe for future disasters. Here is something for Obama and Bernanke to think about:

One should never stand in a place of danger and say that a miracle will be wrought for them, lest it is not. And if a miracle is wrought for them, it is deducted from their merits.

 

Shabbat 32a

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 17, 2012, 03:49:51 AM
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America elected an ignoramus
Renew America ^ | 4-16-12 | Alan Caruba
Posted on April 16, 2012 11:33:13 PM EDT by ReformationFan

I do not write unpleasant things about Barack Hussein Obama because he is a Democrat, a far-left liberal ideologue, a confirmed liar, or the sock-puppet of whatever cabal that chose him long ago to be the President. I write unpleasant things because he is all of these things, but also because he is the most stupid man to have ever held the office of President.

As far back as January 2, 2010 I wrote that Obama had "an imaginary life" because there was no proof that anything he claimed in his two memoirs, written by the age of 45, was true. His resume listed "community organizer," an amorphous term that could mean anything, as his primary occupation. By October 2010 the Washington Times published a commentary of mine that said "millions of Americans are beginning to ask: Is President Obama just a moron?"

Even prior to his election, he had ensured that his entire paper trail of birth certificates, passports, college records, and other items most people can produce in under five minutes were "sealed" from public review, despite the fact that most modern presidents have had to submit their personal records, short of a colonoscopy exam, for examination. Among his first executive orders was one issued on January 21, 2009 to ensure none of these records saw the light of day.

When he finally produced a birth certificate, forensic analysts deemed it a forgery.

So, what really occurred on Election Day in 2008 was that a majority of voters, guided by an adoring mainstream press, elected an enigma. He rewarded their obsequiousness by being the first President since Grover Cleveland to not attend their annual Gridiron dinner.

Since then, anyone paying any attention has had to conclude that Americans elected an ignoramus, based solely on his own words and actions.

Here's just a quick look at some of them.

Hans Bader, a scholar with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, addressed recent examples of Obama's ignorance when he mocked Republicans as members of the Flat Earth Society in Columbus' day for their skepticism of his green energy policies, among which was a hearty endorsement of algae — pond scum, but Columbus' contemporaries knew the Earth was round, but doubted he could reach Asia via the Atlantic Ocean. Bader noted that Obama "falsely attributed to Muslims the invention of printing and even falsely claimed that Morocco was the first country to recognize the United States as a new nation."

The problem for many Americans, mostly registered Democrats and self-identified liberals is that his gaffes are dismissed despite the evidence that his policies have proved to be huge failures. His "stimulus" program wasted billions without producing any jobs, shovel-ready or not. We still have an 8.2% unemployment rate.

The fate of Obamacare will be decided shortly by the Supreme Court after 26 States brought suit against it as unconstitutional, but Obama, who was the editor of the Harvard Law Review and taught constitutional law, apparently has not read the document, claiming the judges are "unelected" (they are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate) and therefore have no right to pass judgment despite Marbury v Madison that established the Court's role of judicial oversight.

Obama's disdain and contempt for just about everyone except Muslims is astonishing. He has insulted just about every element of American society and many world leaders. In ways large and small this has been a constant element of his presidency. After gratuitously insulting doctors, bankers, and the insurance industry, he pushed hard to provide the planner of 9/11 a civil trial without all the protections afforded by the Constitution — in New York City.

Between January and July 2009, Obama sent a bust of Winston Churchill back to the British embassy. He gave the Queen of England an iPod with 40 show tunes, photos of his inauguration, and two of his speeches. Former Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, was given a box set of 25 DVDs, all in a format that does not work in England. Later, eager to empty Guantanamo, he authorized the transfer of some detainees to a British protectorate, Bermuda, without consultation with the UK.

Obama's contempt for Catholics has long been on display before the Obamacare demand that they jettison their consciences regarding the sanctity of human life. His nomination of Kathleen Sebelius, a Catholic apostate, as Secretary of Health and Human Services earned her a warning from Bishop Joseph Naumann not to present herself for Holy Communion.

His antipathy for Israel and its Prime Minister, Benyamin Netanyahu has been on display from the beginning of his term, at one point admonishing the Israelis for building new housing in their own capitol and at another suggesting they retreat to their 1967 borders, a suicidal notion that Israelis found appalling.

At one point he said, "One thing I'm proud of is that very rarely will you hear me simplify issues." His campaign motto was "Yes we can."

Early on, he sent Air Force One to do a low fly-by of New York City for a photo op, neglecting to tell anyone there and generating 9/11 flashbacks and panics. Then he embarked on a global trip that quickly was dubbed his "apology tour" for an America about which he could little good to cite. At one point, he actually bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia. We do not dip our flag to any other and no U.S. President bows to any other state leader, let alone a monarch.

His ignorance has been on display for so long the public hardly takes notice. "I've now been in 57 states. I think one left to go," he said during his 2008 campaign. He referred to "Austrian" as a language when no such language exists; Austrians speak German.

His ignorance of economics is legendary. He referred to a "profit and earnings ratio" when the correct term is price-to-earnings (P/E). He still thinks that, as long as the Federal Reserve can print money out of thin air, the nation can never go broke.

He actually believes the economy will improve if taxes are increased; something that has never before happened in the history of the nation.

Whole books can and will be written about Obama's ignorance and failures of judgment that Americans will have to live with for a very long time, especially as future generations try to dig out from his tripling of the national debt, the highest unemployment rates since the Great Depression, and a housing market that has yet to have rebounded.

Add in gas prices Americans have never seen since gasoline was invented to power our cars and you have a man who is not what he claims to be and is too stupid to be the President of the United States, let along serve as a White House tourist .
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 17, 2012, 04:25:20 AM
The Seen Most Disturbing Moments So Far in Barack Obama's Presidency
Townhall.com ^ | April 17, 2012 | John Hawkins
Posted on April 17, 2012 6:53:18 AM EDT by Kaslin

Picking out the most disturbing moments of Barack Obama's presidency is kind of like trying to choose the wettest parts of the ocean. Other than his "Even a blind squirrel sometimes gets a nut" moment where he said "yes" when the SEALS asked if they were allowed to kill Osama Bin Laden, his entire presidency has been one long, slow motion bamboo shoot sliding under the country's fingernails. So, everyone reading will probably be able to think of a few national nightmares that aren't included.

7) Obama bows to a Saudi King: Had Obama spent his childhood entirely in the United States, he probably would have known that real Americans don't bow. Unfortunately, since that's a lesson Obama hasn't learned, Americans have had to endure their President humiliating himself and by extension, the rest of the country, by servilely bowing to foreign leaders. Perhaps the worst of these was the tyrannical, fanatical Saudi king. As Newt Gingrich has said, "I want America to become so energy independent that no American president ever again bows to the Saudi king." No American President should have ever bowed to him in the first place.

6) Obama sides with a foreign leader against an American state: It's bad enough that Obama has been persecuting Arizona for enforcing illegal immigration laws when his administration won't do the job. However, in a despicable display Barack Obama held a joint press conference at the White House with Mexican President Felipe Calderon that featured both of them criticizing Arizona's immigration law. If only there had been someone there to represent America at that event.

5) Obama shoves through history's single most wasteful spending bill. The very first thing Barack Obama did after he was elected was push through the largest and most wasteful spending bill in human history. Most calculations of the cost of the bill came in somewhere between 800 billion and 1.2 trillion dollars. The whole purpose of the bill was supposed to be to create jobs and the Obama Administration claimed the bill would keep unemployment below 8%. Conservatives almost universally said the bill wouldn't work and it received no GOP votes in the House along with only 3 in the Senate (Snowe, Collins, and Specter -- before he changed parties). So, who turned out to be right about a bill that cost more than FDR’s New Deal AND the war in Vietnam combined in today's dollars? Not Obama. We've now had 38 straight months of above 8% unemployment, the longest streak since the Great Depression.

4) The manned space program comes to an end: Putting a man on the moon is one of America's greatest accomplishments and the catalyst for a wide range of scientific achievements. Under Obama, America's Space Shuttle program was ended and in a twist so bizarre you wouldn't buy it if you saw it in a movie, NASA's mission has been changed to getting children excited about math and science, expanding international relationships, and doing Muslim outreach.

3) Paul Ryan alerts Tim Geithner that the economy ends in 2027: In one of the most amazing exchanges in the history of American government, after Tim Geithner presented the Obama Administration's stratospherically high long-term budget projections, Ryan showed off a chart created by the CBO estimating that America's economy will shut down in 2027 because of out-of-control government spending. In other words, in 15 years life as you know it in America is over because of the Obama Administration's spending and Obama has absolutely no intention of doing anything about it.

2) Obamacare passes: Never before in American history has one party been arrogant and paternalistic enough to push through a massive entitlement program that was wildly unpopular with the American people and had zero votes from the opposing party. If it isn't stopped, Obamacare will destroy America's health care system by dramatically driving up the cost of care, rationing care, instituting death panels, driving tens of millions of Americans off their health care policies, adding trillions to the debt, and dramatically reducing the number of doctors available to treat patients. Of course the future of medicine in this country could be worse....well, that is if any of those zombie movies turn out to be right.

1) America loses its AAA rating: Despite the fact that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner assured Americans that there was "no risk" America would lose its AAA credit rating, America did indeed lose its rating for the first time since 1917 because of Barack Obama's adamant refusal to cut spending. It's worth noting that another credit rating company, Egan-Jones, downgraded the United States AGAIN just a couple of weeks ago from AA+ to AA. Unless something changes, historians will point to the Obama downgrade as the very moment when America started to come down like the Hindenburg.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: garebear on April 17, 2012, 10:14:17 AM
Got any more?

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Straw Man on April 17, 2012, 10:16:17 AM
Got any more?



he forgot the huge controversy about the ornaments on the White House christmas tree
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 17, 2012, 11:23:32 AM
Obama Administration Discontinues Transparency Tool
The Foundry/Heritage Foundation ^ | April 16, 2012 at 12:00 pm | Patrick Tyrrell




Since 1993, the Census Bureau has made available detailed data about federal government expenditures in its Consolidated Federal Funds Report (CFFR). The 2012 report will be the last one.

Through the CFFR website, the public had access to such data as federal expenditures made at the county level for programs such as Medicaid, Social Security, and Medicare as well as for more obscure federal spending programs. How much did the federal government send to Autauga County in Alabama for a hazardous materials training program? That data was available, but now it is concealed.

The CFFR states:

The U.S. Census Bureau has terminated the Federal Financial Statistics program effective for the FY 2012 budget. The termination of the program results in the elimination of the Consolidated Federal Funds Report (CFFR), including the publication, downloadable data, and the On-Line Query System, as well as the annual Federal Aid to States Report (FAS). In preparation for the Fiscal Year 2012 budget, the Census Bureau did a comprehensive review of a number of programs and made the difficult decision to terminate and reduce a number of existing programs in order to secure funding for new programs or cyclical increases for other programs.

Did someone tell the Census Bureau that it must end the CFFR in order to expand other, less transparent data collection? The Obama Administration’s 2012 budget appendix includes a request to expand the Census Bureau’s research and production capabilities in some areas and a request to reduce them in others. It does not name exactly what is to be terminated but only what is to be expanded.

Under the table cuts are not transparent.

The old CFFR website refers people to USASpending.gov, with the caveat that not all of the data is available there. For the past two weeks, none of the data was available there.

I spoke with the chief of the Federal Programs Branch at the Census Bureau, who pointed me to the archives section of USASpending.gov there. When we click on any of the files that are supposed to contain federal contracts however, we continually got “page not found” messages. Researchers who want to continue to use data they have had access to since 1993 are out of luck. On Friday, April 13, the data mysteriously returned to the page and is now located there, but the availability of the data remains spotty—one day in the last two weeks.

With the Obama Administration outspending all prior Administrations while adding to the astronomical federal debt, the fact that taxpayers can no longer rely on access to where and how their money is being spent at the county and city level is disquieting. So far, Administration officials have been able to brush the lack of transparency under the rug. For the good of the country, that needs to change. Citizens should demand to know what is happening to their tax dollars once they are sucked up by the federal government’s vacuum cleaner.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Shockwave on April 17, 2012, 12:28:27 PM
Obama Administration Discontinues Transparency Tool
The Foundry/Heritage Foundation ^ | April 16, 2012 at 12:00 pm | Patrick Tyrrell




Since 1993, the Census Bureau has made available detailed data about federal government expenditures in its Consolidated Federal Funds Report (CFFR). The 2012 report will be the last one.

Through the CFFR website, the public had access to such data as federal expenditures made at the county level for programs such as Medicaid, Social Security, and Medicare as well as for more obscure federal spending programs. How much did the federal government send to Autauga County in Alabama for a hazardous materials training program? That data was available, but now it is concealed.

The CFFR states:

The U.S. Census Bureau has terminated the Federal Financial Statistics program effective for the FY 2012 budget. The termination of the program results in the elimination of the Consolidated Federal Funds Report (CFFR), including the publication, downloadable data, and the On-Line Query System, as well as the annual Federal Aid to States Report (FAS). In preparation for the Fiscal Year 2012 budget, the Census Bureau did a comprehensive review of a number of programs and made the difficult decision to terminate and reduce a number of existing programs in order to secure funding for new programs or cyclical increases for other programs.

Did someone tell the Census Bureau that it must end the CFFR in order to expand other, less transparent data collection? The Obama Administration’s 2012 budget appendix includes a request to expand the Census Bureau’s research and production capabilities in some areas and a request to reduce them in others. It does not name exactly what is to be terminated but only what is to be expanded.

Under the table cuts are not transparent.

The old CFFR website refers people to USASpending.gov, with the caveat that not all of the data is available there. For the past two weeks, none of the data was available there.

I spoke with the chief of the Federal Programs Branch at the Census Bureau, who pointed me to the archives section of USASpending.gov there. When we click on any of the files that are supposed to contain federal contracts however, we continually got “page not found” messages. Researchers who want to continue to use data they have had access to since 1993 are out of luck. On Friday, April 13, the data mysteriously returned to the page and is now located there, but the availability of the data remains spotty—one day in the last two weeks.

With the Obama Administration outspending all prior Administrations while adding to the astronomical federal debt, the fact that taxpayers can no longer rely on access to where and how their money is being spent at the county and city level is disquieting. So far, Administration officials have been able to brush the lack of transparency under the rug. For the good of the country, that needs to change. Citizens should demand to know what is happening to their tax dollars once they are sucked up by the federal government’s vacuum cleaner.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lol, the wheels are fate turn slowly.
Slowly but surely phasing the public's knowledge governmental affairs out. This is horseshit, the government is supposed to be by the people for the people, not by those in power for whoever they want with no oversight.
This is just another little thing that people arent going to know about, slowly taking the publics ability to monitor their government away while increasing the governments ability to monitor us.
What possible reasoning could be behind taking away our knowledge of what they spend their (OUR) cash on? Id imagine Obama doesnt like the idea of citizens being able to hold him accountable for how he spends his money. This administration hates having to be held accountable to the public, ive noticed.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 19, 2012, 07:19:02 PM
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2012/04/19/obama-admin-seeks-release-of-terrorist-who-killed-us-soldier




Defend this you communist pieces of garbage. 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 22, 2012, 02:30:45 PM
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/hilarious-week-lined-obama-prez-fallon-kimmel-roast-white-house-dinner-article-1.1065337#ixzz1smlw9oEm


Considering Obama is such a joke I guess this makes sense. 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 23, 2012, 03:58:14 AM
Skip to comments.

G.A.O. Calls Test Project by Medicare Costly Waste
ny times ^ | 4/23/2012 | ROBERT PEAR
Posted on April 23, 2012 6:30:59 AM EDT by tobyhill

Medicare is wasting more than $8 billion on an experimental program that rewards providers of mediocre health care and is unlikely to produce useful results, federal investigators say in a new report.

The report, to be issued Monday by the Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress, urges the Obama administration to cancel the program, which pays bonuses to health insurance companies caring for millions of Medicare beneficiaries.

Administration officials, however, defended the project and said they would not cancel it because it could improve the quality of care for older Americans.

In the 2010 health care law, Congress cut Medicare payments to managed care plans, known as Medicare Advantage, and authorized bonus payments to those that provide high-quality care. Investigators found that most of the money paid under the demonstration program went to “average-performing plans” rated lower than the benchmarks set by Congress.

The report said the project would cost $8.3 billion over 10 years, with 80 percent of the cost occurring in the first three years.

Federal investigators are trying to determine whether Medicare officials had the legal authority to make the changes.

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 23, 2012, 04:07:15 AM
Call it President Obama’s Committee for the Re-Election of the President — a political slush fund at the Health and Human Services Department.

Only this isn’t some little fund from shadowy private sources; this is taxpayer money, redirected to help Obama win another term. A massive amount of it, too — $8.3 billion. Yes, that’s billion, with a B.

Here is how it works.

The most oppressive aspects of the ObamaCare law don’t kick in until after the 2012 election, when the president will no longer be answerable to voters. More “flexibility,” he recently explained to the Russians.

But certain voters would surely notice one highly painful part of the law before then — namely, the way it guts the popular Medicare Advantage program.

For years, 12 million seniors have relied on these policies, a more market-oriented alternative to traditional Medicare, without the aggravating gaps in coverage.

But as part of its hundreds of billions in Medicare cuts, the Obama one-size-fits-all plan slashes reimbursement rates for Medicare Advantage starting next year — herding many seniors back into the government-run program.

Under federal “open-enrollment” guidelines, seniors must pick their Medicare coverage program for next year by the end of this year — which means they should be finding out before Election Day.

Nothing is more politically volatile than monkeying with the health insurance of seniors, who aren’t too keen on confusing upheavals in their health care and are the most diligent voters in the land. This could make the Tea Party look like a tea party.

Making matters even more politically dangerous for Obama is that open enrollment begins Oct. 15, less than three weeks before voters go to the polls.

It’s hard to imagine a bigger electoral disaster for a president than seniors in crucial states like Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio discovering that he’s taken away their beloved Medicare Advantage just weeks before an election.

This political ticking time bomb could become the biggest “October Surprise” in US political history.

But the administration’s devised a way to postpone the pain one more year, getting Obama past his last election; it plans to spend $8 billion to temporarily restore Medicare Advantage funds so that seniors in key markets don’t lose their trusted insurance program in the middle of Obama’s re-election bid.

The money is to come from funds that Health and Human Services is allowed to use for “demonstration projects.” But to make it legal, HHS has to pretend that it’s doing an “experiment” to study the effect of this money on the insurance market.

That is, to “study” what happens when the government doesn’t change anything but merely continues a program that’s been going on for years.

Obama can temporarily prop up Medicare Advantage long enough to get re-elected by exploiting an obscure bit of federal law. Under a 1967 statute, the HHS secretary can spend money without specific approval by Congress on “experiments” directly aimed at “increasing the efficiency and economy of health services.”

Past demonstration projects have studied new medical techniques or strategies aimed at improving care or reducing costs. The point is to find ways to lower the costs of Medicare by allowing medical technocrats to make efficient decisions without interference from vested interests.

Now Obama means to turn it on its head — diverting the money to a blatantly nonexperimental purpose to serve his political needs.

A Government Accounting Office report released this morning shows, quite starkly, that there simply is no experiment being conducted, just money being spent. Understandably, the GAO recommends that HHS cancel the project.

Congress should immediately launch an investigation into this unprecedented misuse of taxpayer money and violation of the public trust, which certainly presses the boundaries of legality and very well may breach them.

If he’s not stopped, Obama will spend $8 billion in taxpayer funds for a scheme to mask the debilitating effects on seniors of his signature piece of legislation just long enough to get himself re-elected.

Now that is some serious audacity.

Benjamin E. Sasse, a former US assistant secretary of health, is president of Midland University. Charles Hurt covers politics in DC.

charleshurt@live.com






Hope and Change!!!!
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 23, 2012, 04:14:58 AM
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Obama is the World’s Worst Investor
Townhall.com ^ | April 23, 2012 | Lurita Doan
Posted on April 23, 2012 7:10:34 AM EDT by Kaslin

Barack Obama recently campaigned in Ohio about the importance of his policies, solar energy efforts. Solyndra, endorsed enthusiastically by Department of Energy and the president, declared bankruptcy less than 12 months after receiving Obama’s “investment” of $534 million dollars. Unfortunately, Solyndra was not Obama’s only poorly performing solar energy investment. Obama has, so far, lost over 2 billion dollars in poorly performing solar companies that, soon after huge infusions of taxpayer dollars, filed for bankruptcy protection.

Consider Obama’s investment in “green jobs”. After three and a half years and almost one hundred billion dollars of “investments”, Obama’s programs have been able to create only a few thousand jobs, certainly not the 5 million “green jobs” originally promised by the president. And, many of those few thousand jobs created are actually existing government jobs that have been re-categorized by Team Obama.

Consider Obama’s investment in “shovel ready” projects, which he promised would reduce unemployment dramatically and revitalize the engine of our economy. The only problem was that Team Obama didn’t understand their own government regulations, and they allowed themselves to be “snookered” into allocating Stimulus infrastructure funds for pet projects such as the San Francisco Harvest Marsh Mouse research. Two years later, the president admitted that perhaps he did not understand what it took to make a project shovel ready. Obama seemed to think it was a joke, but it turned out to be yet another bad investment for the American taxpayer. Unfortunately, the president’s $787 million dollar “investment” was lost—and the American taxpayer was, once again, left holding the empty bag.

Investment advisors in the private sector also are evaluated on the investments they passed on. For example, some of the investments that Obama decided to pass on were investments in the Keystone pipeline and additional nuclear energy plants, denying our nation energy independence and preventing hundreds of thousands of new jobs from being created.

Any way that Americans look at it, Obama’s record as an investor is appalling. He has blown through trillions of dollars of taxpayer money, added another 5 trillion dollars of debt and has little to show for all the spending. Time and again, his touted investments have gone bust, and never has he been able to achieve the returns he has promised. Curiously, despite these poor returns, the president continues to campaign on the promise of making even more “investments” for the American people.

In the private sector, when an investment advisor performs as poorly as Obama has, investors take their money and go elsewhere. Perhaps, in November, American voters need to follow that same example.

Let’s remember, too, that most investment prospectuses post a warning: “past performance does not guarantee future results”, but in Obama’s case, maybe it does.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: garebear on April 23, 2012, 08:08:10 AM
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2012/04/19/obama-admin-seeks-release-of-terrorist-who-killed-us-soldier




Defend this you communist pieces of garbage. 

You: Defend this you communist pieces of garbage. 

North Korea: North Korea threatened Monday to initiate military action against South Korean targets and called South Korean President Lee Myung-bak a "traitor" and "scum."

special actions of our revolutionary armed forces will start soon to meet the reckless challenge of the group of traitors,"

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 23, 2012, 09:11:28 AM
Shift on executive power lets Obama bypass rivals
New York Times ^ | 4/23/2012 | Charlie Savage

Posted on Monday, April 23, 2012 10:16:30 AM by IbJensen

— One Saturday last fall, President Obama interrupted a White House strategy meeting to raise an issue not on the agenda. He declared, aides recalled, that the administration needed to more aggressively use executive power to govern in the face of Congressional obstructionism.

-snip-

But increasingly in recent months, the administration has been seeking ways to act without Congress. Branding its unilateral efforts “We Can’t Wait,” a slogan that aides said Mr. Obama coined at that strategy meeting, the White House has rolled out dozens of new policies — on creating jobs for veterans, preventing drug shortages, raising fuel economy standards, curbing domestic violence and more.

Each time, Mr. Obama has emphasized the fact that he is bypassing lawmakers.

-snip-

Aides say many more such moves are coming. Not just a short-term shift in governing style and a re-election strategy, Mr. Obama’s increasingly assertive use of executive action could foreshadow pitched battles over the separation of powers in his second term, should he win and Republicans consolidate their power in Congress.

-snip-

Mr. Obama has issued signing statements claiming a right to bypass a handful of constraints — rejecting as unconstitutional Congress’s attempt to prevent him from having White House “czars” on certain issues, for example. But for the most part, Mr. Obama’s increased unilateralism in domestic policy has relied on a different form of executive power than the sort that had led to heated debates during his predecessor’s administration: Mr. Bush’s frequent assertion of a right to override statutes on matters like surveillance and torture.

-snip-


(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 24, 2012, 07:29:51 PM
Obama Administration Says It Talked With Muslim Brotherhood to Promote Small Business
cnsnews.com ^ | 4/23/2012 | Terence P. Jeffrey
Posted on April 24, 2012 8:37:24 PM EDT by PieterCasparzen

(CNSNews.com) - The Obama administration says that it has talked with members of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood in order to promote small business.

The Muslim Brotherhood, which was banned in Egypt during the regime of former President Hosni Mubarak, leads the Freedom and Justice Party which, according to the Congressional Research Service, won 235 of the 498 seats (47 percent) in Egypt’s new People’s Assembly, which convened in January. The fundamentalist Islamist Alliance won another 125 seats (or 25 percent of the assembly).

In an online briefing for foreign reporters last week, Undersecretary of State Robert Hormats said that the State Department is trying to promote collaboration between small and medium-sized businesses in the United States and businesses overseas.

In this context, he said he had talked to members of the Muslim Brotherhood about promoting smaller enterprises. He said he would be having similar discussions this week with leaders from Middle Eastern and North African countries.

(Excerpt) Read more at cnsnews.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 25, 2012, 08:55:52 AM
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 25, 2012, 07:55:00 PM
Obama vows to fight for climate action, make global warming a key 2012 issue (Inner Weatherman)
The Hill ^ | 4/25/12 | Ben Geman
Posted on April 25, 2012 9:34:06 PM EDT by Libloather

Obama vows to fight for climate action, make global warming a key 2012 issue
By Ben Geman - 04/25/12 10:40 AM ET

President Obama is vowing to make the case for action on global warming during the 2012 campaign.

“I suspect that over the next six months, this is going to be a debate that will become part of the campaign, and I will be very clear in voicing my belief that we're going to have to take further steps to deal with climate change in a serious way,” Obama told Rolling Stone magazine in a newly published interview.

Obama’s comments follow a first term that saw global warming legislation collapse in Congress but several administrative steps to address climate proceed, such as tougher auto mileage rules and first-time greenhouse gas standards for new power plants.

“Part of the challenge over these past three years has been that people's No. 1 priority is finding a job and paying the mortgage and dealing with high gas prices. In that environment, it's been easy for the other side to pour millions of dollars into a campaign to debunk climate-change science,” Obama said.

Mitt Romney, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, has called for stripping the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) power to regulate greenhouse gases and also opposes cap-and-trade proposals.

On Capitol Hill, where Republicans are trying to thwart EPA’s rules, skepticism about climate science has become commonplace in the GOP, and cap-and-trade legislation is a nonstarter.

The vast majority of scientists say global warming is occurring and human activities are a key factor. A small minority call data on warming trends and the human contribution inconclusive or inaccurate.

Obama, in the interview, cited climate change in noting the GOP’s broader rightward shift.

“Think about John McCain, who obviously I have profound differences with. Here's a guy who not only believed in climate change, but co-sponsored a cap-and-trade bill that got 43 votes in the Senate just a few years ago, somebody who thought banning torture was the right thing to do, somebody who co-sponsored immigration reform with Ted Kennedy. That's the most recent Republican candidate, and that gives you some sense of how profoundly that party has shifted,” he said.

Internationally, plans for a binding global emissions treaty are proceeding far more slowly than advocates have hoped, although diplomats have made some progress in areas such as slowing deforestation and providing aid to help poor countries tackle climate change.

“Frankly, I'm deeply concerned that internationally, we have not made as much progress as we need to make. Within the constraints of this Congress, we've tried to do a whole range of things, administratively, that are making a difference — doubling fuel-efficiency standards on cars is going to take a whole lot of carbon out of our atmosphere. We're going to continue to push on energy efficiency, and renewable energy standards, and the promotion of green energy. But there is no doubt that we have a lot more work to do,” Obama said.

But while environmentalists will likely welcome Obama’s comments on climate, in the same interview he downplayed the climate-change impact if the Keystone XL oil sands pipeline is built.

The administration has delayed, until well after the 2012 elections, a decision about whether to issue a cross-border permit for the project, which would bring Canadian oil sands to Gulf Coast refineries.

High-profile NASA climate scientist James Hansen has said that exploiting the massive oil sands, which are already being developed significantly, would mean “game over” for the climate.

“James Hansen is a scientist who has done an enormous amount not only to understand climate change, but also to help publicize the issue. I have the utmost respect for scientists,” Obama said in the interview. “But it's important to understand that Canada is going to be moving forward with tar sands, regardless of what we do. That's their national policy, they're pursuing it.”

He later added: “The reason that Keystone got so much attention is not because that particular pipeline is a make-or-break issue for climate change, but because those who have looked at the science of climate change are scared and concerned about a general lack of sufficient movement to deal with the problem.”

Congressional Republicans are pushing legislation that would require approval of TransCanada Corp.’s project, efforts that Obama bashed in the interview.

“My goal has been to have an honest process, and I have adamantly objected to Congress trying to circumvent a process that was well-established not just under Democratic administrations, but also under Republican administrations,” he said.

Capitol Hill Republicans have also alleged that regulation of greenhouse gases will hurt the economy and attacked federal spending on green energy programs.

But Obama told Rolling Stone that the nation can take serious steps to battle climate change in a way that’s “entirely compatible with strong economic growth and job creation,” such as retrofitting buildings to slash energy use.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 25, 2012, 08:19:48 PM
Salazar: Congress Should Ratify Mexico Offshore Oil Pact This Year
Dow Jones Newswires ^ | Tuesday, April 24, 2012 | Ryan Tracy
Posted on April 25, 2012 10:27:22 PM EDT by Rabin

The agreement, which would open up an area the size of Delaware to (Mexico's) exploration, has already been confirmed by Mexico's legislature, Salazar said in a speech calling for action on U.S. energy policy. "We shouldn't have to wait to act on the agreement either," he said. "Congress should act."

(Excerpt) Read more at rigzone.com ...




Amazing. FUBO!!!
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 26, 2012, 01:47:57 PM
DreamWorks Nightmare

Major Obama Donor’s Film Studio Under SEC Investigation

BY: CJ Ciaramella - April 26, 2012 2:34 pm




http://freebeacon.com/dreamworks-nightmare



The Hollywood studio run by one of President Obama’s biggest donors is under investigation by the Securities Exchange Commission for bribing Chinese officials to secure exclusive film rights in the communist country—rights secured in secretive negotiations that included Vice President Joe Biden.
 
The SEC is investigating at least five Hollywood studios—including 20th Century Fox, Disney, and DreamWorks Animation—for allegedly making illegal payments to Chinese officials, Reuters reported Tuesday.
 
DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg is the largest donor to the Obama reelection super PAC Priorities USA.
 
Dreamworks announced in February a $2 billion deal with the Chinese government for the company to build a production studio in Shanghai. The deal came just days after Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping held an extensive meeting with Barack Obama in Washington, followed by the Chinese Vice President’s trip to Los Angeles to meet with Katzenberg.
 
The deal was part of a larger agreement under which China increased its annual quota of foreign-produced films to 34 from 20 and increased the revenue it allowed foreign studios to keep to 25 percent from 15 percent.
 
The additional films must use either Imax or 3-D technologies, according to the deal.
 
At the time of the deal, Katzenberg spokeswoman Jennifer Lin denied to the Free Beacon that there was any collusion between Katzenberg and the Obama administration.
 
However, the New York Times reported Tuesday that Biden joined Xi in personal negotiations to secure the deal.
 
Katzenberg and Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chief executive, also helped negotiate, according to the report.
 
Katzenberg cut a $2 million check to Priorities USA last spring, and his Dreamworks colleague Steven Spielberg followed with another $100,000 just a few months later.
 
In addition to his fundraising this cycle, Katzenberg was a bundler for Obama’s 2008 campaign, raising at least $500,000. He and his wife personally gave $352,402 to Democrats in 2008.
 
Dreamworks Animation declined to comment.
 
Katzenberg’s spokeswoman and the SEC did not return requests for comment.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 01, 2012, 07:10:40 AM
“As President, I will go through the entire federal budget, page by page, line by line, and I will eliminate the programs that don’t work and aren’t needed. As for the programs we do need, I will make them work better and cost less. I will create a High-Performance Team that evaluates every agency and every office based on how well they’re serving the American taxpayer. We will fire government managers who aren’t getting results, we will cut funding for programs that are wasting your money, and we will use technology and lessons from the private sector to improve efficiency across every level of government – because we cannot meet twenty-first century challenges with a twentieth century bureaucracy.” (Senator Barack Obama,, Remarks At Event, Green Bay, WI, 9/22/08)  


GSA
solyndra
solar trust
beacon watt
first solar


and on and on and on and on. 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 06, 2012, 04:34:29 PM
The temple of postmodern liberalism was rocked these last few weeks, as a number of supporting columns and buttresses simply crashed, leaving the entire edifice wobbling.

Fake but Accurate Identities?

The trivial Elizabeth Warren “high cheekbones” fraud nonetheless offered a draw-back-the-curtain look into the gears and levers of our national race industry. The real story is not that the multimillionaire liberal (and one-percenter) Warren fabricated a Cherokee identity for over a decade (to the delight of her quota-thirsty universities), but rather the notion that if a pink blond at Harvard can get away with faking a career-enhancing minority identity, then anyone, anywhere, can—or rather often has.

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Give Ward Churchill his due: he worked at it—unlike Warren, who junked her supposed great, great, great grandparent once she got tenure and being “Indian” was a drag at Cambridge cocktail parties. At least, like the proverbial chameleon on the leaf, Churchill tried to alter his appearance with buckskin, beads, and braids to find an edge his otherwise mediocre talents and white male status would not supply. In contrast, Warren simply by fiat claimed high cheekbones—no beads, no trips to the reservation, no buckskin, no Churchillian effort. Note the connivance of Harvard, which hand-in-glove used Warren’s pseudo-identity to pad its “diversity” goals, which enable a mostly white yuppie left-wing faculty to, well, not feel too guilty about remaining a mostly white yuppie left-wing faculty.

Anyone who has taught in a university has come across the “Cherokee” con, especially given the Oklahoma diaspora in California. By the time I retired from CSU, I was exhausted with “1/16th” Cherokee students, who claimed success with their gambits. This was a world of Provost Liz Smith-Lopezes, José Beckers, Simba Bavuals, and all the other attempts to traffic in victimized identities.

Still, Warren, as no other recent examples, reminds us of the bald fakery in America these days. “Van” Jones was not born Van Jones. Louis (note the Jehmu Greene bowtie) Farrakhan was not born Farrakhan (yet just try to be a cool black racist as the Caribbean Louie Wolcott, aka Calypso Gene). In his twenties, Barry Dunham Obama went from Barry (a not very useful preppie suburbanite-sounding name) to Barack Obama. In the La La lands of academia, high journalism, and big government (though not in the landscaping business, farming, or short-order cookery), we sometimes wear identities in America as we do clothes, a different outfit as the occasion demands, given that our present-day Jim Crow racialists are busy figuring out to what degree pigment, ethnic ancestry, nomenclature, or assumed identity “counts.”

Cross the border and you in theory can go from an impoverished Mexican national that lived a wretched material existence thanks to grandees in Mexico City to a “minority” with vicarious claims against the American system who is suddenly eligible for oppression-based, affirmative action recompense. But if your family came from Egypt in 1950, you apparently qualify for very little reparations, even if you are darker than the recent Jalisco arrival. Yet again, score 1600 on the SAT and achieve a 4.5 GPA in high school, and if both Asian and wanting to go to Berkeley or Stanford, well then, who cares about the Japanese interment, the Chinese coolie labor of the 1850s, or the exclusionary acts of the 1920s? Too many Asians doing too well is not diversity at all, so we go into the reverse quota mode of exclusion. Warren reminded us that we will soon need DNA badges to certify the exploding ethnic, racial, and gender claims against society. And just as there are too few young these days to support the retiring Baby Boom generation on Social Security, so too we have too few oppressors left to pay out subsidies and recompense for the growing legion of Warren-like victims.

Isn’t It the Economy, Stupid?

We have had 38 months of 8% plus unemployment. We are setting records in the numbers of Americans not working and the percentage of the adult population not employed. GDP growth was a pathetic 1.7%. The borrowing hit $5 trillion under Obama, who between golf outings and campaign hit-ups of wealthy people, adds $1 trillion plus each year in more debt. To question how to pay it back is to pollute the air or abandon the children. In 2005, Paul Krugman was writing why Bush’s spending was going to crash the economy; in 2012, Paul Krugman is writing why Obama’s far greater deficit spending, on top of Bush’s debts, is not going to crash the economy, given that we need to borrow far more than our paltry $3 or $4 billion a day.

In 2004, the media’s “jobless recovery” was the description of George W. Bush’s 5.4% unemployment rate. “It’s the economy, stupid” referred to George H.W. Bush’s 1992 annual 3.3-4% GDP growth rate. “Unpatriotic” was W’s $4 trillion in borrowing in eight years, not $5 trillion in three. If Obama right now had 5.4% unemployment, 3.4% economic growth, and a budget deficit of about $400 billion, what would the media call it—a job-full recovery, “it’s not the economy, smarty,” or patriotic borrowing?

Those with capital—slurred as one-percenters, fat cats, and corporate jet owners unless hit up for Obama campaign donations—are not hiring or buying. Maybe they think oncoming Obamacare will smash them. Maybe they see on the Obama horizon rampant inflation, debt cancellation, or higher taxes as planned liberal remedies for our endless borrowing. Maybe these shrugging Atlases see that fossil fuel energy is not pursued on federal lands, but needless new regulations are implemented.

Whatever the reason, they hesitate—only sorta buying here, kinda hiring there. And the result of millions of these collective hesitancies is an ossified Europeanized economy, run by technocrats without private sector experience and exempt from the sacrifice they demand of others, as they desperately try to borrow and grow the government to ensure a permanent lease on power through the creation of a vast angry dependent constituency. Not near-zero interest rates, not nearly a trillion dollars in “stimulus,” not four years of chronic deficits, not “quantitative easing,” not any classical priming seems able to shock the unwilling and hesitant back into action.

And Then There Is Our Survival

For about three years I have been monotonously suggesting that we were once again in a 1977-1979 Carteresque era, as Obama systematically trashed his predecessor’s policies, denounced “exceptionalism” and “unilateralism,” gave soaring narcissistic sermons on his/our new morality abroad, redefined both allies and enemies as morally equivalent neutrals, and generally suggested that if you were a China, Russia, Middle East, or Latin America, you had justifiable grievances against the pre-Obama U.S., at least during the era when the president was just “three years old.” Last time we did this, after three years of Carter’s sermonizing, calculating nations in 1979-1980 saw that it was time to get up from the table and cash in their chips. So we saw Russia in Afghanistan, China in Vietnam, Iranians in the U.S. embassy, communist insurgencies in Latin America, and radical Islam on the rise, culminating in the annus terribilis 1980. I’m afraid 2012 may be our 1980. For the Carter Doctrine will we get a Johnny-come-lately “Obama Doctrine”?

A “reset” Russia now threatens unilaterally to preempt and take out proposed U.S. anti-missile sites in Eastern Europe (Poland and the Czech Republic should enjoy that, even though it is mere bluster). The Chen case reminds of China’s growing contempt for the indebted U.S. (They did not get the message that a community organizer and Chicago part-time lecturer is a postnational, postracial healer.) The Arab Spring is turning into an Islamist Winter. What the media forgot to tell us about the spike-the-ball presidential trip to Afghanistan is the president’s promise to end Predator drone strikes against al-Qaeda targets in Pakistan—the liberal favorite tool of foreign policy (no prisoners in Guantanamo, no tribunals, no trials, no media videos of the explosions, no reports of the kids and granny blown up along with the suspect, little dollar costs, no U.S. lives endangered, no downside really other than we sometimes are not quite sure whom we blew up below).

The more we praised and emulated the EU, the more it unraveled and the more its leaders distrust the “lead from behind” America (Obama never quite got it that, when Europeans trashed us for leading and being capitalist, the whining was a psychological mechanism for being happy that someone other than themselves was still leading and somewhere outside Europe was still capitalist). Or alternatively, just as Obama is our Nemesis, so too he is Europe’s: be careful what you pine away for.

If I were a state or clique up to no good, and if I thought Obama might not be reelected, in my final window of opportunity, perhaps around September, I might flex my muscles in the former Soviet republics, send another missile over Japan or South Korea, cruise into Taiwanese waters, put some Argentine Marines on the “Malvinas,” seek readjustment in Cyprus and the Aegean, send some rockets into Tel Aviv, dispatch some suicide bombers from Gaza, and let off more missiles from Iran. Not just to make a statement, or to gain more “please don’t” concessions, but because it was my pleasure to do it—if only for the hell of it.

Ministry of Truth

Around January 2009, deficits became “stimulus.” “Jobless recovery” vanished from the vocabulary. Guantanamo, renditions, and preventative detention virtually ended. And Obama’s successful surge paved the way out of Iraq. Predator assassinations of hundreds of suspected terrorists and anyone nearby when the explosives went off were liberal improvements over waterboarding three confessed terrorists.

The good war in Afghanistan turned bad, and the bad one in Iraq turned good. The Obama “surge” brought peace to Iraq. We were told that we could not just sit by and watch Libyan thugs kill the innocent, but could do just that in oil-scant Syria. Obtaining UN and Arab League approval to go to war without the U.S. Congress was “leading from behind.”

Those who made over $200,000 never paid their “fair share,” but could—and not by paying more in taxes, but by buying a $40,000 a person ticket to an Obama fundraiser. Golf was now longer an aristocratic indulgence, but fresh-air, healthy downtime for an overworked president. Mangling words and abject ignorance—whether “corpse-man” or Maldives/Malvinas—were evident only to nit-picking partisans. A downright mean country redeemed itself with free jet service to Costa del Sol, Aspen, Vail, and Martha’s Vineyard.

Yes, after January 2009, Al Gore lives in a tiny green home. “Two Americas” John Edwards did not really build a 30,000 square foot mansion, with a 4,000 square foot “John’s Lounge.” “Punish our enemies” was the new civility.

What Does It All Mean?

In short, liberalism does not work, contrary as it is to human nature. I wish I could just say that about every thirty years or so, forgetful Americans take an allergy shot of it, suffer the reaction, and then get another three decades of Carter/Obama immunity. But instead statist redistribution and intrusion are an insidious process, no longer specific just to Democrats, but bound up in the growing affluence and leisure of the West—both serving its various needs of alleviating guilt to the masses, subsidizing half the nation, and providing much envied power and lucre to a highly educated and technocratic elite who have little talent for acquiring either in the private sector. That it is not sustainable does not mean that it will not cause havoc as it totters and collapses. Look at Russia and Eastern Europe circa 1989, or the present-day EU, or Greece proper, or California or Illinois today.

     
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 09, 2012, 06:03:20 AM
Why Do We Continue To Accept Obama’s Corruption As The Norm?

http://www.westernjournalism.com/why-do-we-continue-to-accept-obamas-corruption-as-the-norm

May 8, 2012 By Edie Boudreau




I have been shouting about our government’s actions from the rooftops for more than three years, while so many US voters just hide from the limelight and say “But Fox News says….” Fox News is owned by Murdoch, who is more concerned with ratings than the truth and has so much power over Fox commentors that they all had to parrot the liberal media or leave, like Beck. Besides, I would still like to know his connections with Soros, the Illuminati, and the Bilderbergs). (For those of you who are uninformed about the Illuminati and Bilderbergs–just Google them.)
 
I have been an investigative reporter for many years and found newspaper articles and photos of Obama while he was still a young man posing with his cabal of Communist organizers–joining clubs and advertising meetings. Plus, Obama is ineligible for President for three reasons: his British-citizenship father; his Indonesian stepfather who bestowed Indonesian citizenship on “Barry,” which allowed him to use his foreign passport to go to countries that did not allow Americans in; and his foreign birthplace, about which there is more than sufficient evidence to prove he is NOT an American.
 
As “Barry Soetoro,” he applied for student foreign aid at one of his colleges; at Columbia University, not one of his supposed classmates recognize him. He lied about being a Constitutional Professor–he was just a guest lecturer. He is using an illegal Social Security number. I could go on and on. Finally, enough judges are being convinced to order him to unseal all of his records–which he has spent $2 million of taxpaper money on legal fees to seal and keep hidden.
 




Pray to God that his Traitorous actions, plus all those of the people who helped him get elected, will cause them all to be imprisoned and tried for Treason this summer before the election. I know that might throw the country into chaos, but that might just be the way that we can clean house and get rid of all corrupt local, state, and national politicians, judges, and even civilians.
 
Then we can start over with a restored Constitution and Bill of Rights. At least we will then be able to undo all the damage inflicted by Obama during the past four years, and we can start making new rules to protect us from this happening again…No ObamaCare! Give us back access to our own energy sources and provide the jobs we need. Throw out the UN and denounce our membership. Strengthen our Military personnel and bring them home from countries that we are not fighting.
 
Give term limits and civilian perks to all politicians. No public employee unions. No FED, Fannie May, or Freddie Mac. No corporate handouts–they sink or swim on their own. No government departments that do nothing but harm, like the Depts. of Energy and Education as well as alphabet soup agencies such the EPA, IRS (only flat tax). Go back to the Gold Standard and LOCK the lockbox for good… a secured border and all illegals deported, TORT reform with a cap of 10% for lawyers, workfare at minimum wage instead of welfare, no unemployment without training/classes attendance to learn a needed skill. No aid to foreign countries except directly to starving people who are victims of their own hierarchy or a natural catastrophe. No financial aid to any countries.
 
If we do all this and get rid of the corruption, we can catch up on our debt and keep a balanced budget for all of us. The problems for us is that we have become a country of “give-aways” to deadbeats or those we want to buy for friends. We need to go back to our original work ethics, God as our Savior, Golden Rule standards, and stop letting the corrupt rule us with “Political Correctness,” Elitist mentalities
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 11, 2012, 02:42:11 PM


Underwear bomb plot: British and US intelligence rattled over leaks

Leak about UK involvement described as despicable by CIA as anger turns to Obama administration for compromising mission

Ewen MacAskill in Washington and Ian Black, Middle East editor

guardian.co.uk, Friday 11 May 2012 14.26 EDT




The headquarters of MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service, in Vauxhall, London. Photograph: Tim Ireland/PA


Detailed leaks of operational information about the foiled underwear bomb plot are causing growing anger in the US intelligence community, with former agents blaming the Obama administration for undermining national security and compromising the British services, MI6 and MI5.

The Guardian has learned from Saudi sources that the agent was not a Saudi national as was widely reported, but a Yemeni. He was born in Saudi Arabia, in the port city of Jeddah, and then studied and worked in the UK, where he acquired a British passport.

Mike Scheur, the former head of the CIA's Bin Laden unit, said the leaking about the nuts and bolts of British involvement was despicable and would make a repeat of the operation difficult. "MI6 should be as angry as hell. This is something that the prime minister should raise with the president, if he has the balls. This is really tragic," Scheur said.

He added: "Any information disclosed is too much information. This does seem to be a tawdry political thing."

He noted that the leak came on the heels of a series of disclosures over the last 10 days, beginning with a report that the CIA wanted to expand its drone attacks in Yemen, Barack Obama making a surprise trip to Afghanistan around the time of the Bin Laden anniversary and "then this inexplicable leak".

Robert Grenier, former head of the CIA counter-terrorism centre, said: "As for British Intelligence, I suppose, but do not know, that they must be very unhappy. They are often exasperated, quite reasonably, with their American friends, who are far more leak-prone than they.

"In their place, I would think two and three times before sharing with the Americans, and then only do it if I had to. The problem with that dynamic is that you don't know what you don't know, and what opportunities you might be missing when you decide not to share. The Americans are doing a very good job of undermining trust, and the problem starts at the top."

The name of the British passport-holder has not yet been released but may come out through al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. He is reported to have spent time at at language school in Sana'a, the Yemeni capital, and been recruited by al-Qaida as a suicide bomber.

Mustafa Alani of the Gulf Research Centre in Dubai told CNN that the bomber had been recruited by the Saudis to penetrate al-Qaida about a year ago, in part because the group would be attracted by the fact that his UK passport meant he could travel to the US without a visa.

"Apparently he was able to convince al-Qaida that he is genuinely ready to carry out the mission," said Alani, who CNN said had been briefed by Saudi counter-terrorism officials. Alani said his understanding was that al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (Aqap) intended the would-be suicide bomber to fly through a Gulf country to connect to a US-bound flight.

The Saudi operation culminated with the agent and another Saudi informant – likely his handler – being whisked out of Yemen, Alani said. "My information is that he was pulled out after the device was handed to him, and they ordered the green light to carry out the operation," he told the US network.

Yemen has been a key target country for the CIA and MI6 in line with the growing strength of Aqap in recent years. But the lead on the ground has been taken by the Saudi intelligence service, the Mabahith, which is best placed to operate in the local environment and exploit links on either side of the border.

Both the US and British intelligence communities are known to work closely with their Saudi counterparts and both have liaison officers permanently stationed in Riyadh and Sana'a.

Aqap moved its operations to Yemen in 2007 after the defeat of al-Qaida in Saudi Arabia. The Nigerian "underwear bomber", Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who tried to blow up a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit in 2009, was radicalised in Yemen while claiming to be there as a student.

The US, Britain and the Saudis are likely to have preferred their own intelligence operation to co-operation with the Yemeni security authorities, who are anxious to avoid being seen as a western pawn.

Cables released by WikiLeaks exposed the scale of US covert involvement in the Arab world's poorest country. In 2009 the Saudi deputy interior minister, Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, told General James Jones, President Obama's national security adviser: "The Saudis have been monitoring conversations of al-Qaida operatives in Yemen very closely and whereas before the [recent] attack they were hearing relaxed 20-minute phone conversations over cellphones, after the attack the phones went virtually silent. This suggests that at least for now these operatives are more focused on their own security rather than on planning operations."

Bin Nayef's support for operations against Aqap is unsurprising. He survived an assassination attempt in Jeddah in September 2009 when a Saudi Aqap operative named Abdullah al-Asiri feigned repentance for his jihadi views in a meeting with the prince then blew himself up with a bomb concealed in his anus. Al-Asiri's brother Ibrahim is Aqap's chief bombmaker.

Gregory Johnsen, a US expert on Aqap, pondered on his blog whether the group would now reveal the identity of the undercover agent. "Undoubtedly, Aqap recorded a marytrdom video of the undercover agent before giving him the bomb," Johnsen wrote. "The US and Saudis won't divulge his identity for obvious reasons, but will Aqap?"


http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/11/underwear-bomb-plot-mi6-cia-leaks

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 12, 2012, 06:41:45 AM
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Obama is Scamming the Disabled
Townhall.com ^ | May 12, 2012 | John Ransom
Posted on May 12, 2012 7:56:13 AM EDT by Kaslin

I have to credit our own Mike Shedlock for writing about how Obama’s been able to drive down the topline unemployment number even though unemployment remains as a big problem today as it has ever been.

I’m often reluctant to piggy back on a contributor’s work, but when something is really newsworthy, I think it’s justified.

Yesterday Mish pointed out that:

In the last year, the civilian population rose by 3,638,000. Yet the labor force only rose by 945,000. Those not in the labor force rose by 2,693,000.

In the last month, actual employment fell by 169,000, but the unemployment rate dropped by .1%.

That is an amazing "achievement" to say the least.

How did Obama do this magic trick of moving unemployment from a high of 10 percent to 8.1 percent without adding, you know, jobs?

Well according to Shedlock, economists at JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley say that those on Social Security Disability (SSDI) checks have risen by about 2.2 million.

People who qualify for SSDI are automatically excluded from the workforce, meaning that you can actually have an economy losing jobs while technically the unemployment rate will go down as more people received disability benefits and are subtracted from the workforce.

Social Security Disability is a picture perfect program scam for the Obama administration. It allows Obama to say that unemployment is going down, while adding to the rolls of people who are dependent on some sort of Democrat-Party enabled government assistance.

Prior to these revelations, I had thought that the country’s workforce was shrinking because persistent joblessness was causing people to stop looking for work. In other words, I though it was just another example of Obama’s economic incompetence.

I’m not ruling out incompetence completely, but when the administration has a vested interest in allowing fraud to happen by turning a blind eye, they act like caravan stuck in a sand storm, especially if it adds more potential voters to the dole.

And what’s worse, the damage done to the economy by this type of fraud - and to the legitimately disabled who need the benefits- will take generation to fix.

Because, while joblessness can be reversed with some sensible economic policies, adding to the disability rolls creates permanent damage to the economy from which the country will not recover in generations.

Writes Bloomberg.com:

TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Editorial; Politics/Elections; Click to Add Topic
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 14, 2012, 12:42:27 PM

HHS Sends $5.9 Million to Program Run by Obama Buddy

by Keith Koffler on May 14, 2012, 11:42 am


The Department of Health and Human Services last week announced it had awarded a $5.9 million grant to a University of Chicago Medical Center program tied to Michelle Obama and run by Eric Whitaker, one of President Obama’s closest friends.

The Urban Health Initiative, which received the award, was originally based on a smaller program launched during the last decade by Michelle Obama, who was an executive at the University of Chicago Medical Center before she departed to become first lady. The UHI is headed up by Obama basketball and golf buddy Whitaker, who has known the president since Obama’s days in law school and who also vacations with the first family.

Obama senior adviser Valerie Jarrett also has ties to the UHI. Until resigning to go work at the White House, Jarrett was Chairman of the University of Chicago Medical Center Board of Trustees. And in 2007, a PR firm run by former senior White House adviser and Obama political guru David Axelrod provided provided public relations strategy advice to the UHI, according to the Washington Post.

There is no specific evidence that any of those linked to the Obamas, or the Obamas themselves, influenced the HHS decision to grant the funding to the UHI. But the large award raises questions about appearance, given the number of Obama associates connected to the program and the involvement of the first lady with its founding.

The UHI won out over lots of competition. According to HHS, some 3,000 applications were received for a share on the $1 billion in 3-year grants available. Only 26 programs were included in the first batch of awards doled out.

An HHS spokesperson said that while “final determinations” were made by the HHS’s CMS Innovation Center Director, objective standards were used in selecting the awards and the White House was not “in any way” involved in the selection of grantees.

“Applications that met the basic eligibility requirements underwent a competitive, objective review,” the spokesperson said. “Independent health care expert review panels  from outside government and staff from all across the Department of Health and Human Services reviewed the applications for how well they met the criteria outlined in the grant solicitation, and made recommendations regarding funding . . . scoring was conducted by an independent panel of content experts that was organized by an experienced contractor.”

The awards have been politicized by the administration, which is touting them as part of its “We Can’t Wait” initiative to create jobs by executive action while the White House “waits” for the Republican-led House to act. The Innovation Center was established under Obamacare.

The Urban Health Initiative was founded to help link low-income patients to health providers in their communities.

According to HHS, UHI received the grant to help it, in partnership with other groups, increase patients’ access to health resources by developing an electronic database of health providers that links to electronic health records maintained by “local safety net providers.”

Last week’s award is not the first time money directed toward the UHI has raised red flags. In September, The Daily Caller reported that the private philanthropy of billionaire Obama supporter and donor George Kaiser had donated $10,000 to the UHI during 2009, the same year Kaiser secured the now-infamous $535 million government loan guarantee to failed solar panel maker Solyndra.


http://www.whitehousedossier.com/2012/05/14/hhs-sends-59-million-program-run-obama-buddy

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 16, 2012, 06:49:33 PM
Emails show direct link between White House and energy loans, GOP says
Wash, Free Beacon ^ | 5/16/12 | CJ Ciaramella
Posted on May 16, 2012 8:33:18 PM EDT by Nachum

New emails obtained by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform show a direct link between the Department of Energy’s controversial green energy loan program and the White House, Republicans on the committee said Wednesday.

The White House and Energy Department have long held there was no political influence in the decision-making process that awarded billions of dollars in federal loan guarantees to renewable energy companies. However, emails disclosed at the hearing reference to communications with the White House.

House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) said the emails are the first in the committee’s more than yearlong investigation that show a direct link between the White House and the decision to award the loan guarantees.

“Department of Energy’s credibility is thin, and I’m currently trying to put off communications with people on the Hill,” Brightsource CEO John Woolard wrote to Matt Rogers, senior adviser to the secretary of energy for the Recovery Act.

Brightsource received a conditional loan guarantee worth $1.6 billion in taxpayer dollars to build a solar farm in California.

“Also, Darbee at PG&E talked directly to Obama about the program’s challenges and the bad situation it puts him in,” Woolard wrote in the email.

That was a reference to Peter Darbee, the former CEO of Pacific Gas and Electric.

PG&E has entered into power purchase agreements with Brightsource for its new solar project. As previously reported by the Free Beacon, PG&E is an aggressive purchaser of renewable power in California and has a formidable presence on Capitol Hill. The company has spent $82.3 million on lobbying since 2008, and the company’s political action committee has given nearly $380,000 to Democrats since 2008.

(Excerpt) Read more at freebeacon.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 17, 2012, 06:42:05 PM
Federal government spent nearly $70 billion on "climate change activities" since 2008
Daily Caller ^ | 5/17/12 | Caroline May
Posted on May 17, 2012 6:34:48 PM EDT by Nachum

The Congressional Research Service estimates that since 2008 the federal government has spent nearly $70 billion on “climate change activities.”

Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Inhofe presented the new CRS report on the Senate Floor Thursday to make the point that the Obama administration has been focused on “green” defense projects to the detriment of the military.

The report revealed that from fiscal years 2008 through 2012 the federal government spent $68.4 billion to combat climate change. The Department of Defense also spent $4 billion of its budget, the report adds, on climate change and energy efficiency activities in that same time period.

Inhofe, the Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works and a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, argued that the expenditures are foolish at a time when the military is facing “devastating cuts.”

(Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 20, 2012, 07:32:02 AM
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GOP probe uncovers deal between Obama and drug cos
The Examiner ^ | May 16, 2012 | Phillip Klein
Posted on May 16, 2012 6:30:18 PM EDT by Kaslin



Three years ago, President Obama cut a secret deal with pharmaceutical company lobbyists to secure the industry’s support for his national health care law. Despite Obama’s promises during his campaign to run a transparent administration, the deal has been shrouded in mystery ever since. But internal emails obtained by House Republicans now provide evidence that a deal was struck and GOP investigators are promising to release more details in the coming weeks.

“What the hell?” White House Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina, who is now Obama’s campaign manager, complained to a lobbyist for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) in January 15, 2010 email. “This wasn’t part of our deal.”

This reference to “our deal” came two months before the final passage of Obamacare in an email with the subject line, “FW: TAUZIN EMAIL.” At the time, Billy Tauzin was president and CEO of PhRMA.

The email was uncovered as part of investigation into Obama’s closed-door health care negotiations launched by the House Energy and Commerce committee’s oversight panel.

“In the coming weeks the Committee intends to show what the White House agreed to do as part of its deal with the pharmaceutical industry and how the full details of this agreement were kept from both the public and the House of Representatives,” the committee’s Republican members wrote in a memo today.

On June 20, 2009, Obama released a terse 296-word statement announcing a deal between pharmaceutical companies and the Senate that didn’t mention any involvement by the White House.

“The investigation has determined that the White House, primarily through Office of Health Reform Director Nancy Ann DeParle and Messina, with involvement from Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel, was actively engaged in these negotiations while the role of Congress was limited,” the committee members wrote. “For example, three days before the June 20 statement, the head of PhRMA promised Messina, ‘we will deliver a final yes to you by morning.’ Meanwhile, Ms. DeParle all but confirmed that half of the Legislative Branch was shut out in an email to a PhRMA representative: ‘I think we should have included the House in the discussions, but maybe we never would have gotten anywhere if we had.’”
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 21, 2012, 02:25:46 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/white-house-visitor-logs-show-lobbying-going-strong/2012/05/20/gIQA2ok4dU_story.html



Nice.    Can anyone try to defend this shit?    Another promise broken.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: garebear on May 21, 2012, 02:42:03 AM
Up early for a long day of futile rage, I see.

You.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 22, 2012, 01:12:58 PM
Health Care Probe May Ensnare Jim Messina
By Jonathan Strong
Roll Call Staff
May 22, 2012, Midnight


Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call File Photo

Rep. Michael Burgess says he’s gotten “stony silence” from the White House since 2009 on his questions into behind-the-scenes health care law deal-making.


House Republicans are preparing to unveil results of an investigation into deals the White House made to help pass the health care overhaul, and the findings might saddle Jim Messina, President Barack Obama’s campaign manager, with unwanted distractions.
 
Rep. Michael Burgess told Roll Call that Messina’s name was “the one that came up most consistently” in emails and other documents about the deals. The Texas Republican, a member of the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, said Messina might have violated the Presidential Records Act by using a personal email account to discuss official White House business. Before joining the re-election campaign, Messina served as White House deputy chief of staff.
 
Republicans said privately that focusing on Messina’s role will be an unneeded irritant for the man tasked with re-electing Obama in November. 
 
Burgess said Messina might have taken steps that investigators are unaware of to comply with the records law, but he surmised that “were the rules broken there? Sure, it appears that they were.”
 
White House spokesman Eric Schultz said in a statement: “Unfortunately, House Republicans remain determined to spend their time and taxpayer resources refighting two-year old political battles, instead of creating jobs or growing the economy. But the White House is committed to compliance with the Presidential Records Act. All emails on the White House email system are archived; access to personal email and social networks from the White House network is blocked; and staff is instructed to use official accounts for official communications, and to take steps to ensure that emails subject to archiving requirements are archived.”
 
House Democrats, led by Rep. Henry Waxman (Calif.), extensively investigated the Bush administration’s use of Republican National Committee email accounts in possible violation of the records act when Waxman chaired the Oversight and Government Reform Committee from 2007 to 2009.
 
At the time, GOP officials complained bitterly about the investigation, with Rep. Darrell Issa (Calif.), now head of the Oversight panel, saying Waxman adopted a voyeuristic attitude toward White House adviser Karl Rove’s emails.
 
Asked whether he was unveiling the results of the investigation so close to the elections for political gain, Burgess said, “Dude, I’ve been asking these questions since the summer of 2009. They’ve had ample opportunity to answer our questions, to sit down for a private meeting with me, and say, ‘Look, Congressman, this is off the record, but let us tell you what we did.’ Nothing! I’ve gotten stony silence.”
 
Still, the findings of the health care investigation could provide the GOP a useful vehicle to revisit some of the uglier moments of the polarizing fight for the health care law’s passage.
 
Burgess, while cagey on details of the investigation’s findings, said the deals struck by White House officials with industry lobbyists showed hypocrisy on the part of Obama, who vowed during the 2008 campaign to hold televised negotiations on C-SPAN so the public could see who was making arguments on behalf of whom, including who was negotiating on behalf of drug and insurance companies.
 
Obama announced an agreement with the pharmaceutical industry in June 2009.
 
In the deal, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America agreed to $80 billion in revenue cuts for the drug sector over 10 years. PhRMA later pledged $150 million for advertising to support the health care law.
 
But the details of the deal — and others with industry players — were hazy, and some Democrats questioned whether they were bound by the terms.
 
A May 16 staff memo from aides to Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) highlighted that “the existence of an agreement or series of agreements between powerful health care industry stakeholders and the authors of [the health care law] is ... widely known — albeit poorly understood.”
 
The closed-door nature of the talks has provided Republicans with a rallying cry.
 
“Does that happen in this town all the time? Yeah it does,” Burgess said of the deals. But Obama “stood up there and said, ‘It will be on C-SPAN.’” 
 
Waxman, who chaired the Energy and Commerce Committee when the law was considered, strongly defended the negotiations as part of lawmaking, but he said the administration could have held out for more from PhRMA.
 
“Every president makes deals in order to get things passed. That happened when Medicare was adopted and it happened with the Affordable Care Act,” he said.
 
“I thought that the pharmaceutical industry got a very good deal, and I thought the administration could’ve gotten more from them. But I can understand their point of view — they thought this was a very powerful group that could help them, and it did.”
 
When Republicans took the House, rather than subpoenaing the White House, Burgess and Upton got the cooperation of six interest groups that negotiated with the White House over the health care law, including PhRMA, America’s Health Insurance Plans and the American Medical Association.


JonathanStrong@cqrollcall.com | @j_strong



________________________ ________________________ ______________________


Most disgustintg corrupt pofs ever to hold office.   


FFFFUUUUBBBBOOOO!!!!!
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 23, 2012, 09:35:16 AM
Barack Obama's 7 Nastiest Nixonian Moments
 Townhall.com ^ | May 23, 2012 | John Hawkins


Posted on Wednesday, May 23, 2012 9:58:52 AM by Kaslin

During his 2008 campaign, Barack Obama was like a mixture of the Teletubbies, a Hallmark card, and Morgan Freeman's portrayal of God in Bruce Almighty all mixed up in one big fruity glass. Every time you listened to the guy it was "hope" this, "change," I love "unity," "we are the ones we've been waiting for," and creating a "new tone" in D.C. That strategy turned out to be plausible because Bush was so unpopular and Obama's entire career consisted of getting elected to office and moving on before he had time to accomplish anything. That allowed Americans to see what they wanted to see instead of the real Barack Obama.



Since then, the American people have gotten an opportunity to see Barack Obama perform up close and personal in the world's most high profile job and they've found out the reality isn't much like the pretty picture the media and Obama's teleprompter painted for them in 2008. Barack Obama is not a nice guy, a genuine fellow, or someone you'd enjoy going to a ballgame with. He's everything people hate about politics personified: He's a nasty, habitually dishonest, hyper-partisan extremist whose entire strategy seems to be to drag the country off to the left while he blames other people for his failures and pits Americans against each other as much as possible. Comparing him to Nixon is even a bit of a stretch in that Tricky Dick may have been a son-of-a-b*tch, but he was at least a bipartisan and competent son-of-a-b*tch, which is something you can't truly say about Obama. There are, however, a lot of other points of comparison.



1) President "punish our enemies:" On Univision radio, Barack Obama actually referred to Republicans as "enemies" of Hispanic Americans,





And if Latinos sit out the election instead of saying, we're gonna punish our enemies and we're gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us, if they don't see that kind of upsurge in voting in this election, then I think it's gonna be harder - and that's why I think it's so important that people focus on voting on November 2.



You could say that the President of the United States telling an entire ethnic group that an opposing political party is its "enemy," like Al-Qaeda, because they don't agree with his political stance represents a "change in tone," but it's a change for the worse.



2) Obama's Bain attacks: It's hard to find an example of political cynicism that tops the way Barack Obama is treating Mitt Romney's time at Bain Capital. At the same time that Obama is running ads attacking Romney for working at a private equity firm that cost some people jobs while it created even more jobs for other people, Obama is doing fund raisers with other private equity groups. In fact, in 2008, Obama raised almost twice as much as McCain in private equity, hedge funds. Additionally, one of Obama's top bundlers, Jonathan Lavine, used to work at Bain. Even more importantly, "employees of Bain Capital and Bain & Company have given more than $152,000 to Obama's campaign and the joint fundraising operation he runs with the Democratic National Committee." Arguing that Mitt Romney was incompetent at his job would be one thing, but if Obama is going to argue that working at Bain Capital is so disreputable that it should be a disqualifier for the presidency, then maybe he shouldn't be taking their money.



3) Fast and Furious: Nixon had Watergate and Obama has Fast and Furious. In both cases, there has been stonewalling and a cover-up by the Administration, but there was no bodycount associated with Watergate. The Department of Justice under Barack Obama helped facilitate the death of hundreds of Mexican citizens and at least one American. Although Obama talked a lot about "transparency" when he was running for President, it looks like Republicans may have to hit Obama's Attorney General, Eric Holder, with contempt charges just to get the basic information they need to investigate the scandal.



4) Teabaggers: It's no surprise that the bottomfeeders in the left-wing media use the sexual slur "teabaggers" to describe Tea Partiers they disagree with. However, when the President of the United States uses a crude sexual term to describe his political enemies, it stands out.





In Jonathan Alter’s “The Promise: President Obama, Year One,” President Obama is quoted in an interview saying that the unanimous vote of House Republicans vote against the stimulus bills “set the tenor for the whole year … That helped to create the tea-baggers and empowered that whole wing of the Republican Party to where it now controls the agenda for the Republicans.”



The same guy who lectured the country on the importance of civility after Gabrielle Giffords was shot also refers to people he disagrees with politically as "teabaggers." That says a lot about his, "There's one set of rules for me and another set of rules for the rest of you" mentality.



5) "I won:" Anyone who wanted more evidence that all of Obama's "unity" and "new tone" talk was pure phoniness got their proof early in his administration.





The top congressional leaders from both parties gathered at the White House for a working discussion over the shape and size of President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus plan. The meeting was designed to promote bipartisanship.



But Obama showed that in an ideological debate, he’s not averse to using a jab.



Challenged by one Republican senator over the contents of the package, the new president, according to participants, replied: “I won.”



The statement was prompted by Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl of Arizona , who challenged the president and the Democratic leaders over the balance between the package’s spending and tax cuts, bringing up the traditional Republican notion that a tax credit for people who do not earn enough to pay income taxes is not a tax cut but a government check.



Say good-bye to post-partisanship and hello to arrogance.



6) "Don't do a lot of talking:" Along those same lines, Obama didn't sound so concerned about reaching out to the GOP when he simultaneously blamed them for all of America's problems and told them to shut up and do as they were told,





"But I don’t want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking. I want them to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess. I don’t mind cleaning up after them, but don’t do a lot of talking.."



Wow, this guy has trouble playing in the sandbox with Republicans? What a shocker.



7) Get under the bus, grandma! There was one indication of Barack Obama's surly, narcissistic temperament during the 2008 campaign that was very telling. At the time, he was standing with his anti-Semitic, anti-white, anti-American spiritual mentor Jeremiah Wright because he had voluntarily associated with him for 20 years. While giving a speech defending his association with that vile hatemonger, he besmirched his own grandmother as part of his defense of Wright.





“I can no more disown (Jeremiah Wright) than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.”



In the history of American politics, I'm not sure there has ever been a politician before Obama who was willing to smear his own grandmother because he thought it might help him politically.

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 24, 2012, 08:39:35 AM
http://www.businessinsider.com/obamas-department-of-energy-is-an-enormous-embarrassment-2012-5?op=1



INCREDIBLE.   Article is too long to post but details the corruption and billions in fraud and waste by obnama on his green pipe dreams. 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 25, 2012, 06:25:19 AM
Obama's EEOC Goes After Coffee Chain For Hiring Too Many Attractive Women
 Boston Herald ^ | May 25, 2012 | Michael Graham

Posted on Friday, May 25, 2012 8:52:53 AM by suspects

Some advice to the folks at Marylou’s coffee chain, now under investigation by the EEOC, on how to fight back:

Start laughing.

Back during the Clinton years the EEOC went after Hooters for its alleged hiring bias (we all remember how hard Bill Clinton was on women... uh, let me re-phrase that). Hooters refused to hire men to wear the infamous “orange short-shorts and white tank-top” ensemble. The EEOC spent four years pressuring them to hire male waiters, which would have ruined the Hooters concept.

Hooters tried reasoning and logic. As one would expect when dealing with bureaucrats, they failed miserably. So Hooters turned to anther weapon: mockery.

They put up billboards showing what a hairy, beer-bellied guy would actually look like in Hooters garb. They took out newspaper ads showing a bearded guy in a blonde wig and Hooters T-shirt saying “Come on, Washington. Get a grip.”

It worked. The EEOC stayed just as stupid — still insisting that Hooters was doing something wrong — but it became clear that if they kept pushing the stupidity, Congress might step up and take away some of their power. So the EEOC “quietly ended its investigation,” according to the Los Angeles Times.

Today, dimwit EEOC attorneys in yet another Democratic administration are at it again — this time in Massachusetts. As the Herald reported yesterday, the EEOC “has been quietly probing Marylou’s’ hiring practices for nearly a year . . . grilling the 29-store chain’s pink-clad clerks about their co-workers’ gender, age, race and body type, according to the company.”

Let’s get something on the record. Yes, Marylou’s “discriminates.” Every employer “discriminates.” If they didn’t, I’d be working as a Chippendales dancer.

If you own a business, you...


(Excerpt) Read more at bostonherald.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 25, 2012, 10:39:54 AM
Foreign students enjoy new summer job protections — but what about Americans?
By Pamela Constable, Published: May 22
Across the Washington area last week, young workers from Europe arrived in droves, heading for jobs at community swimming pools. Lugging duffel bags, they filled out forms, picked up safety gear and chatted in a variety of Slavic languages, eager to plunge into a summer experience of new friends, skills and culture.

“Now I can meet many people and see America,” gushed Anzhala Scherbina, 21, a petite student from Ukraine whose family spent $3,000 so she could fly here and enter a U.S.-sponsored work-travel program. “My parents say this will be a very good experience,” she said with a giggle.

The Obama administration is going to great lengths to make sure Scherbina and about 100,000 other foreign student workers are not disappointed. Last summer, the popular program, aimed at creating good will abroad, was rocked by scandal when students working at a candy warehouse in Pennsylvania staged a protest, complaining of isolation and overwork.

On May 11, the State Department issued rules that ban foreign students from jobs that could be harmful, limited them to light, seasonal occupations that are not likely to displace U.S. workers and required closer scrutiny of their conditions.

But the new rules do not address a broader, more profound question that some immigration and labor experts have raised about many sectors of the economy. Today, more than 50 ­million Americans of traditional working age are not employed, and yet a growing number of domestic jobs — from hotel clerks to nurses to computer scientists — are being performed by foreign-born workers.

For college-age Americans, there is a high rate of unemployment among those from poor families and fierce competition among middle-class students to build résumés that show responsibility. So why, critics wonder, are fewer young Americans snapping up relatively easy summer jobs? In other words, why is Scherbina here?

“The glory isn’t there any more. A lot of young Americans just don’t want to be lifeguards,” said Douglas Winkler, whose Hyattsville company manages 225 pools in residential complexes and hotels. When his father started the firm in the 1950s, all the guards were local kids. Today, one-third of Winkler’s seasonal staff of 650 pool workers are foreign students, mostly from Eastern Europe.

“The international students are really grateful to be here and have a job, while American students have so many other activities and demands on their time now,” he said. “I truly wish we didn’t have to rely so much on international labor, but the bottom line is that we don’t have any choice.”

At the much larger High Sierra Pools in Arlington County, managers hired about 600 Americans and 900 foreign students for the summer. One reason for the lopsided numbers, they said, is the United States’ longer academic years and sports programs that cut into the summer, leaving the company scrambling to fill shifts.

“We have to staff pools from Memorial Day to Labor Day, and the Americans can’t commit to the entire season,” said Radac Kaczor, a manager at High Sierra who is from Poland. “For us to replace them with international workers requires a lot of effort. We have to find them housing and make sure they have good English and swimming skills. If we could fill our staff with 100 percent Americans, we would.”

Global marketplace

Some immigration experts and companies that hire local pool guards are skeptical of such claims. They said that profit is the real issue and that foreign students are cheaper because employers get a tax break and are not required to pay Social Security or Medicaid benefits. Most foreigners are hired at job fairs in their native countries; recruiters offer them a package of terms and wages starting at the U.S. minimum of $7.25 an hour. They can’t negotiate or go “pool shopping,” as Winkler put it.

“From age 18 to age 65, there has been a massive deterioration in native employment,” said Steven Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies, a policy research firm in the District. “No one disputes this. What they dispute are the reasons why.”

He said that some recruiters lure contracts with U.S. firms by promising savings and that visitors who depend on employers for visas and housing are less likely to object to abuses.

Among the several thousand foreign students who flood the Washington region each summer, there have been few complaints. Pool company officials said the job is pleasant and lends itself to socializing, in keeping with the State Department’s cultural mission. Some guards are returning for their second or third summer, and they said the chance to mingle and bond with Americans is as much a motive as the income.

Robert Stamojkovski, 24, a student from Macedonia, just started his fourth season with High Sierra. At home, he is studying for a career in information security, and he said his U.S. sojourns have made him more worldly and connected.

“You have fun, you make friends and you keep in touch with Skype,” he said. “I think I’ll come back one more year. After I graduate, I will be working to have a better life, not to be a lifeguard.”

One family-owned pool management company, Crystal Aquatics in Chantilly, has made a commitment to hire only Americans. Company officials said that they sometimes confront underbidding by firms that hire foreign students but that they prefer Americans as a matter of principle.

“I know it’s a global marketplace now, but our kids should be able to compete on an even plane,” said Casey Ford, Crystal’s president. “The international guards are not subject to the same rules. If you crowd eight people into a one-bedroom apartment, you can save a lot of money. Companies should not be rewarded for bringing in outside labor when people here want to work.”

Ford said the firm has plenty of local applicants for 400 guard slots, including many repeats from previous summers. Eric Javage, 21, just graduated from George Mason University and is about to start his sixth summer at $10 per hour.

“I like the responsibility,” he said. “People listen to me. It’s nice to have the extra money, and it’s a huge résumébuilder.”

Clear safeguards

In addition to correcting abuses such as overpriced housing and unsavory work conditions for foreign students, the new rules provide safeguards for adult American workers so they will not be replaced by less-costly foreign students. This is a second reason the visitors are being barred from warehouses, factories or any company where U.S. workers are on strike.

“The new rules add some clear protections for both American workers and temporary guest workers,” said Jennifer Rosenbaum, a lawyer for the nonprofit National Guestworker Alliance in New Orleans. “These are complimentary issues. The students need to be placed in seasonal jobs that have a strong cultural component and not in permanent ones that could be done by Americans. This will definitely create more American jobs.”

Area pool managers said they had no objection to the new rules, except for initial scheduling glitches, because their jobs are not onerous and offer cultural interaction. Most foreign students in the Washington region work at recreational or tourist facilities; most jobs that are now off-limits — such as fish canneries and traveling fairs — are in other parts of the country.

Several sponsors who recruit and place foreign students were reluctant to discuss the new rules or past abuses. CETUSA, a California sponsor that recruited the protesting candy factory workers, has been barred from State Department programs. Officials at the Center for Cultural Interchange, a Chicago sponsor that places many lifeguards in the Washington region, said that they strongly endorsed the rule change but that it was too early to tell how it would affect them.

At High Sierra in Arlington last weekend, American and foreign students seemed unaware of the new rules or the concerns about abuse and unfair competition that spawned them. About 30 recruits grabbed free sodas and snacks during a break from a training video about how to rescue unconscious swimmers, avoid falling asleep in the sun and locate bodies in deep water.

“I like this job. I can be my own boss, stay in shape and get invited to barbecues,” said Peter Jones, 19, a student from Alexandria who is about to start his fourth season as a pool guard and hopes to become a dentist. “Once I got to rescue someone,” he added. “It made me feel very capable.”


Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 25, 2012, 05:02:45 PM
Biden Will Deliver Remarks to Families of Fallen Troops This Year… Barack Obama Has No
Gateway Pundit ^ | 5/25/2012 | Jim Hoft
Posted on May 25, 2012 7:55:43 PM EDT by combat_boots

Joe Biden will deliver remarks to families of fallen troops this year for Memorial Day.

Barack Obama has no events scheduled.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Shockwave on May 25, 2012, 05:08:30 PM
Biden Will Deliver Remarks to Families of Fallen Troops This Year… Barack Obama Has No
Gateway Pundit ^ | 5/25/2012 | Jim Hoft
Posted on May 25, 2012 7:55:43 PM EDT by combat_boots

Joe Biden will deliver remarks to families of fallen troops this year for Memorial Day.

Barack Obama has no events scheduled.

Too busy golfing or going on rediculous vacations.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 25, 2012, 05:09:21 PM
Too busy golfing or going on rediculous vacations.

Or holding fundraisers w private equity CEOs.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 30, 2012, 02:47:13 AM
Obama Honors Socialist Leader at White House – Admits He Stole Her “Yes We Can” Slogan (Video)
The Gateway Pundit ^ | May 29, 2012 | Jim Hoft
Posted on May 29, 2012 11:26:35 PM EDT by CitizenM

Barack Obama gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Dolores Huerta, an honorary chair of the Democratic Socialists of America. During the ceremony today President Obama admitted he stole her slogan “Yes we can!” for his 2008 campaign. (Video at link)

---snip---

...Dolores Huerta, an 82-year-old labor activist and co-founder of the United Farm Workers union.

Huerta is also an honorary chair of the Democratic Socialists of America.

DSA describes itself as “the largest socialist organization in the United States, and the principal U.S. affiliate of the Socialist International.”

Huerta has claimed, “Republicans hate Latinos,” and has spoken fondly of Hugo Chavez’s despotic regime in Venezuela.

The Medal of Freedom is awarded to individuals who have made “especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.

---snip---

And on a personal note, Dolores was very gracious when I told her I had stolen her slogan, “Si, se puede.” Yes, we can. (Laughter.) Knowing her, I’m pleased that she let me off easy — (laughter) — because Dolores does not play. (Laughter.)

(Excerpt) Read more at thegatewaypundit.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 01, 2012, 03:48:25 AM
Drugmakers led by Pfizer (PFE) (PFE) Inc. agreed to run a “very significant public campaign” bankrolling political support for the 2010 health-care law, including TV ads, while the Obama administration promised to block provisions opposed by drugmakers, documents released by Republicans show.

The internal memos and e-mails for the first time unveil the industry's plan to finance positive TV ads and supportive groups, along with providing $80 billion in discounts and taxes that were included in the law. The administration has previously denied the existence of a deal involving political support.

The documents were released today by Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee. They identify price controls under Medicare and drug importation as the key industry concerns, and show that former Pfizer Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Kindler and his top aides were involved in drawing it up and getting support from other company executives.

“As part of our agreement, PhRMA needs to undertake a very significant public campaign in order to support policies of mutual interest to the industry and the Administration,” according to a July 14, 2009, memo from the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. “We have included a significant amount for advertising to express appreciation for lawmakers’ positions on health care reform issues.”

The goal, the memo said, was to “create momentum for consensus health care reform, help it pass, and then acknowledge those senators and representatives who were instrumental in making it happen and who must remain vigilant during implementation.”

Republican View
Republicans, including Representative Joe Pitts, of Pennsylvania, have been probing promises made during the March 2010 passage of the health law, with some arguing that political activity by the drugmakers in any agreement may cross an ethical line.

“After promising transparency, the White House turned around and cut a secret deal with pharmaceutical companies,” Pitts said today in a statement. “Today’s revelation about the $80 billion deal shows an administration that cared more about victory than reform.”

White House spokesman Eric Schultz called the Republican probe “a nakedly political taxpayer-funded crusade to hurt the president’s re-election campaign.”

The committee has wasted time on investigations “but has done almost nothing to move legislation that would create jobs or grow the economy,” Schultz said today in an e-mail.

Committee Investigation
The Republican probe began last year. Bloomberg reported earlier this month that the committee was targeting whether Democrats were promised political support from drugmakers in exchange for limiting what the industry would be asked to contribute under the 2010 health-care overhaul, according to people familiar with the talks who asked not to be identified because they were private.

“PhRMA has a long history of advocating for policies that ensure patient access to innovative medicines and foster medical progress,” said Matt Bennett, a PhRMA spokesman, in an e-mailed statement. “Before, during and since the health-care reform debate, PhRMA engaged with Congress and the administration to advance these priorities.” Bennett declined further comment.

The Supreme Court is considering a challenge to the law and is expected to rule in June.

Obama’s fellow Democrats who backed the health-care law’s passage in 2010 pushed back against Republicans and said today that the documents released by the Republicans were misleading.

‘Always Done’
“President Obama’s efforts to enlist the support of private industry are exactly what presidents have always done to enact major legislation,” U.S. Representatives Henry Waxman of California and Diana DeGette of Colorado said in a joint statement.

Waxman and DeGette, in their statement, said the Democrats had managed to get more than the $80 billion out of drugmakers described in the memos, putting the figure at $110 billion to $125 billion.

Included in the documents released by the Republicans was an October 2012 e-mail from Bryant Hall, a PhRMA lobbyist,

In it, Hall wrote that the Obama administration had agreed to block a proposal by Democrats in Congress that would let people import pharmaceutical products from outside the U.S., where price controls offer them at lower costs than they can be obtained inside the U.S.

The White House “is working on some very explicit language to kill it in health-care reform,” Hall wrote in an e-mail sent to Kindler and Sally Susman, a current Pfizer executive vice president and head of the New York-based drugmaker’s public policy and communications operations.

Three Groups
In other documents, PhRMA agreed to help back at least three different advertising and advocacy groups that pushed for health-care reform.

A PhRMA memo described a group called Health Economy Now, and noted that under an agreement “the industry provides the majority of financial support for positive TV ads advocating passage of health reform.”

It also provided financial backing for television ads thanking lawmakers for their support of an expansion of children’s health care insurance under Medicaid, the U.S. insurance program for the poor, and a campaign called “Harry and Louise,” run with Families USA, a Washington-based pro- health care reform group that advocates for consumers.

To contact the reporter on this story: Drew Armstrong in New York at darmstrong17@bloomberg.net;

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Reg Gale at rgale5@bloomberg.net








Please any obamabot defend this.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 01, 2012, 08:09:32 PM
Obama returning to SF for (another!) fundraising sweep — 2 events here on Wednesday (6-6-12)
SFGate.com ^ | 6/1/12 | Carla Marinucci
Posted on June 1, 2012 8:20:24 PM EDT by NormsRevenge

On a non-stop fundraising roll, President Barack Obama is making his 16th trip to California next week, hitting two San Francisco campaign events on Wednesday to pick up more cash.

He’ll star at a luncheon at the fabulous Julia Morgan Ballroom in Clint Reilly’s historic Merchants Exchange building on California Street — site of a Michelle Obama fundraiser last year.

The San Francisco events come just two weeks after his last Bay Area fundraising trip which included three Bay Area events — a Redwood City Fox Theatre appearance and an Atherton fundraiser at the home of Doug Goldman on May 23, and a May 24 roundtable with Asian and Pacific Islander business supporters in Silicon Valley.

Here’s the link to the luncheon invite now on the Obama campaign website: .

https://donate.barackobama.com/page/contribute/o2012-June6SanFranLunch

Tickets go from $5,000 for general admission to $75,00 for “photo reception,” to a stratospheric $50,000 for “table captain” status.

Campaign officials said the other event, a “small roundtable,” is planned at Landmark at One Market Plaza.

He’ll then head down to Los Angeles for a major LGBT gala, also on June 6. Obama will overnight there and then head to University of Las Vegas, Nevada for a public event, White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters today at a gaggle.

(Excerpt) Read more at blog.sfgate.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 02, 2012, 12:46:57 PM
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Obama’s ‘Truth Team’ Wrong on GOP Donor
Yahoo ^ | 6/1/12 | FactCheck.org
Posted on June 2, 2012 3:19:43 PM EDT by NormsRevenge

The Obama “Truth Team” blames GOP donor Thomas O’Malley’s refinery company for helping to “drive gas prices up this year by curtailing gas production.” But the facts are the exact opposite. The Energy Information Administration credits PBF Energy for preventing a price spike in the Northeast this year by opening a refinery in Delaware — partially offsetting the loss of production from two other Philadelphia-area refineries that have closed.

The “truth team” also claimed that one event — a March fire at the company’s Delaware refinery — “directly contributed to a spike in gas prices.” But that fire was under control in about an hour and had a “minimal impact” on production — despite published speculation that it might hurt production and affect gasoline prices.

Obama’s ‘Enemies List’?

We came across these bogus claims while following the name-calling going on between the Obama campaign and GOP donors — .. Some — including Democratic pollster Doug Schoen — compared it to Richard Nixon’s “enemies list.”

In a May 31 Politico story, headlined “Mega-donors: Quit picking on us,” one of those donors claimed that the Obama campaign got his “brief history” wrong. “I think somebody screwed up,” O’Malley told Politico. ..

Obama campaign, April 20: Thomas O’Malley is the CEO of PBF Energy, America’s fourth largest petroleum refining company, and gave $100,000 to Restore Our Future. Not only did PBF energy help drive gas prices up this year by curtailing gas production, but it spilled 6.6 million gallons of oil at a refinery in New Jersey. ..

...

But what about the claim that PBF is helping to “drive gas prices up this year”? .. On more than one occasion, we have found fault with those who blame Obama for high gasoline prices. But is PBF to blame? No.

(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...







Disgusting.       
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 03, 2012, 05:15:01 AM
Electric Vehicles Fall Drastically Short of Obama's 1 Million Goal
CBS News ^ | Saturday, June 2, 2012 | Sharyl Attkisson
Posted on June 2, 2012 9:13:25 PM EDT by kristinn

The Obama administration invested $2.4 billion as part of its goal of putting one million electric vehicles on the road by the end of 2015. But that effort has, in part, stalled.

Nothing is more emblematic of the industry's troubles than the Fisker Karma. In 2010, Fisker got a $529-million taxpayer loan to build a luxury electric sports car.

But the government cut off the loan to Fisker after $193 million when Fisker failed to meet its ambitious sales and production goals. Then, a Consumer Reports test dealt the Karma another blow.

"It is low. It is sleek. It is sensuous," the Consumer Reports' video narrator says.

"It's also broken," the narrator adds as a clip of the Fisker Karma being towed on a flatbed airs.

Fisker blamed the car's lithium ion battery, which happened to be made by another government loan recipient, A123 Systems.

A123 got a $249-million taxpayer loan. This year's first-quarter losses totaled $125 million.

The industry's misfortunes have seriously undermined President Obama's goal.

"We can replace our dependence on oil with biofuels and become the first country to have a million electric vehicles on the road by 2015," Obama said in January 2011.

To get to one million, the White House pinned its hopes on 11 models of electric vehicles -- including the Karma. Our CBS News investigation found that six of the 11 -- Ford Focus, Ford Transit Connect, Fisker Nina/Atlantic, Tesla Model S, Tesla Roadster and Think City -- either haven't made their first delivery or are already out of business.

Others aren't even close to the government's 2015 projections. For example, 36,000 Fisker Karmas and 505,000 Chevy Volts were supposed to be made. But current projections slash the Karma's 2015 number in half to 18,000 and put the Volt at one-eighth of the...

(Excerpt) Read more at cbsnews.com ...








Fail.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 03, 2012, 08:33:57 AM
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Why Obama Failed
Capitalism Magazine ^ | May 29, 2012 | Michael Hurd
Posted on June 3, 2012 8:33:05 AM EDT by Misterioso

In a recent campaign speech, Obama said: “See, the question is not whether things will get better — they always do… The question is whether together, we can muster the will — in our own lives, in our common institutions, in our politics — to bring about the changes we need.”

This is a revealing statement. It reveals the assumption of all liberals and socialists, Obama included, that the money will always be there. Will a wrecked economy improve? “They always do.” This implies that the economy will get better, no matter what the government does to it.

Tell this to people in Communist or former Communist countries. Or to people living under religious or fascist dictatorships. The government throttles these economies to no end. The only economic growth that ever takes place is to the benefit of the rulers — mainly because of places like the United States, from whom they can beg, borrow and steal.

It’s beyond foolish to assume the economy can get better no matter what. To think this is to assume that economic growth and wealth creation happen automatically. This explains the attitudes of liberals like Obama. They resent “the rich” and people who have more because they got “more than their share” of the inevitable wealth. There’s no concept that somebody works to create the wealth, and maintain wealth and profit once it’s there. This is the attitude of a spoiled adolescent or a moocher. It’s not an attitude we should find in a President of the United States.

Liberals passed ObamaCare on the assumption that the American economy will keep on growing as it always has. Three years into Obama’s term, and it’s still not happening. The government is totally bankrupt and the currency is imperiled by the unprecedented and almost unimaginable national debt. There’s no money to pay for Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid, the most expensive parts of the government. This is before the demand for these programs rises due to the aging of the population over the coming two decades. And it’s before ObamaCare, which will put millions more Americans (ultimately everyone) on government insurance, the most expensive social program in human history.

How much debt are we supposed to sustain? Hundreds of millions of trillions? What’s higher than the trillions? Do our economists even know? On our current course of little to no economic growth, and exponential growth in government spending, we’re going to get there sooner than you think.

Obama has criticized the idea of “American exceptionalism.” American exceptionalism refers to the idea that Americans are somehow different, that Americans are somehow better than everyone else. But this is the very thing Obama implies when he says that the American economy will come back, no matter what. He’s suggesting that America is somehow above the stagnation, unemployment and ruin that befell all other socialist countries and nationalist economies throughout the world. It can’t happen here, right?

The American people are not paying attention. Slightly more than half are ready to vote for his reelection, in an economy that has actually worsened under his watch. No Republican president and probably no other Democratic president would ever have enjoyed such a free ride. Too many Americans are just not thinking.

I’m not suggesting that the opposition, Mitt Romney, is any inspiration. Of course he isn’t. But voting Obama out of office ought to be a no-brainer to anybody who’s not a committed and ideological Big Government socialist. Polls show a huge majority of Americans think the country is on the wrong track. But Obama gets almost none of the blame, and a majority like him. If you were on a sinking ship and the captain stood there saying, “No worries. It never sinks,” how much support would you give this captain? Or would you look for another leader, or perhaps take matters of survival into your own hands, instead?

Liberals like Obama are in a bind. They hate the rich and they hate wealth. But the definition of a growing economy is wealth production. In a thriving economy, of 4 or even 6-8 percent growth a year, you see (1) the rich getting richer and (2) the poor and middle class getting richer. These are the trends. In a declining or stagnating economy, the rich stay rich while the poor and the middle class get poorer. That’s what we see happening now. Obama points to the fact that the rich are still rich and says, “See? I told you so. The rich need to pay more taxes.” This will not change a thing, and will only make matters worse.

Taxes have to actually be lowered. Of course the rich will get the biggest tax cuts — because they already pay for most of what the government does! Economic freedom will raise the standard of living for everyone. Socialism and government interventionism don’t do a thing, other than hamper or reduce the strength of the economy. Obama’s policies tend to freeze everything in place. The rich don’t mind this too much, at first, but the poor and middle class are the first to feel it. They’re the ones who will feel the inflation. Government welfare programs cannot save them, because government welfare programs do not raise the standard of living and can never hope to cover the cost of lost economic growth by all this Big Government interventionism in the economy.

The absence of a “populist’ or “blue collar” revolution for free market capitalism shows just how ignorant most people are, and how woefully ignorant their teachers, talking head intellectuals, and professors have been. The current President, a former professor himself, is the worst one of them all.

Can the economy get better and can the debt crisis be reversed? Of course they can. But not through anything Obama has done, or is proposing. To start with, we have to reverse every single thing Obama has done in office. Then we have to start reversing all the other things previous governments — Republican and Democratic — have done to hamper or harm the economy. We have to stop this cycle of insanity whereby government intervenes, makes things worse, the people scream “do something!” and the government proceeds to make it even worse.

We don’t need a bloody revolution, and we don’t need to overthrow our system of government. But we do need to radically reverse and revise almost all of our government policies of the last century in particular. Obama was supposed to bring “change,” but in reality he brought more of the same. A lot more of it. If most Americans are so convinced that the country is headed in the wrong direction, why can’t they see Obama as part of the problem?
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 04, 2012, 08:57:46 AM
Friends of Obama Allowed to Opt Out
 Townhall.com ^ | June 4, 2012 | Lurita Doan




Emigrant Bank was recently identified to receive a waiver that would allow the bank to opt out of rigorous Dodd-Frank requirements. These of course are the same new rules and regulations that Barack deems essential to the nation. Yet when the bank’s owner, Howard Milstein, who is a close friend and was a bundler for President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, protested that the new rules would seriously crimp operations of his bank, the Obama Administration worked with members of congress to grant him a waiver from the new rules.



Other financial institutions and banks have consistently and vehemently argued that the Dodd-Frank Legislation that Obama championed is seriously flawed and will bring a raft of unintended consequence--but they were not friends of Barack Obama. These many other banks and institutions are not deemed worthy of a waiver.



Sadly, the case of Emigrant Bank is not the only example of the Obama Administration’s mercurial application of our nation’s laws. There is the obvious case, now being decided by the Supreme Court, of Obamacare, in which some (Nebraska´s Cornhusker’s Kickback or Louisiana’s Purchase) are allowed full exemption from the law’s requirements. What those who are exempted have in common is that, once again, friends of Obama can expect special exemptions from the rules and laws that others must follow.



There seem to be two sets of rules. The special, privileged class of people and businesses (Friends of Obama -FOO) can expect to be granted unique waivers, carve outs and shameful side deals designed to escape, to dodge, and to be exempted from much of the overreaching, poorly conceived legislation and administrative orders that Obama’s White House pushes with utter conviction on the rest of the nation.



On the other hand, if an organization, such as the Catholic Church, that is not a FOO, seeks a principled exemption to an emerging national policy, the organization is ridiculed, dismissed, and ignored.



This disgraceful double standard is becoming a standard practice in the Obama Administration.



Want more examples? Arne Duncan has recently allowed some 10 states to have exemptions from No Child Left Behind. No doubt the Teachers’ Unions in these states, critical to Obama’s reelection, were keen to ditch the pesky requirements for improved accountability. How much easier to call up friend in the White House and demand an exemption from rules and regulations that are not popular with Union members!



Consider too, the case of government-backed loans to Solyndra. Typically, in a government-backed loan, the government’s is the first debt that must be settled. But if one is a FOO, the rules are different. In that kind of situation, the debt to the federal government (read American taxpayer) is subrogated to that of a friend of Obama—not only friend, but, one of his largest campaign contributors. Other organizations and companies cannot expect similar sweetheart deals--they are not FOO.



Consider also, the case of the revolving door. The law for the Standards of Ethical Conduct for Employees of the Executive Branch, is very clear. The statute mandates a two year ban on any kind of direct involvement with a previous employer, client or co-worker. Unless, it seems, if one is a FOO. In that case, the rules are different, which seems to have exempted Craig Becker, former counsel for the Service employees International Union (SEIU) who, through an Obama Administration recess appointment, served as a member of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and who moved directly from there to his current position serving as general counsel to the AFL-CIO.



No time off or recusal needed for FOOs.



What does it mean for the country that the Obama Administration spends so much time exempting certain privileged individuals and businesses from the law?



Under Obama, will the United States devolve into a nation where laws are negotiable and will be applied differently for different people, as long as they belong to a special interest group that wants to opt out of the law and that also happens to be a friend of the president?



Our nation could once proudly boast of our national adherence to the Rule of Law. Every American should expect and demand equal treatment under the law, and special friends of the president should not expect or apply a different set of laws for themselves.



But, Barack Obama doesn’t seem to understand this basic principle that governs our nation, and , instead, seems to think that laws are flexible and the rules apply to others. (“Others” means anyone who is not a Friend of Obama-FOO).



Somewhere inside the White House, it is likely that yet another czar is employed to process the many requests for special treatment and waivers from the many new rules and regulations that Barack Obama has inflicted on the rest of the nation.



FOO have learned to expect special exemptions. The unlucky others are not only expected to follow those same rules, but to do so knowing full well that other, more connected FOO are escaping the burdensome new costs, and can avoid the intrusive requirements.



What a deal.

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 04, 2012, 10:43:23 AM
June 4, 2012
Barack Obama's Stolen Valor
By William A. Levinson

 



It may or may not be a coincidence that film director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal have an October 2012 release date for a movie about the killing of Osama bin Laden.  There is little doubt, however, that the Obama campaign will use it to remind voters that the perpetrator of 9/11 died on Barack Obama's watch.  Those who oppose this self-serving exploitation of the valor of our Navy SEALs can turn it against the Obama campaign with a short and simple response: "Obama's Stolen Valor."  It is in fact short enough to fit on a bumper sticker.
 
"Stolen Valor" refers to charlatans who claim falsely to have served in the Armed Forces and/or who wear medals they have not earned.  Barack Obama's sole claim on any role in the takedown of Osama bin Laden stems from the fact that it happened on his watch, as did the more recent loss of 22 SEALs and eight other service members in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan.
 
Let's make it very clear up front.  Barack Obama did nothing more than to tell the Armed Forces to go ahead with a plan they developed.  He did not, no matter what his campaign staff or the pre-election movie might suggest, take out bin Laden personally, as might be fantasized by Garry Trudeau's Red Rascal.  Nor did he play any role in planning the mission like Tom Clancy's fictional hero Jack Ryan (a former Marine officer, not a community organizer). If he or his campaign staff engage in chest-pounding to the effect that Mr. Obama played some personal role in the mission's planning and execution, it would be entirely fair to accuse him of stolen valor.
 
It is already a matter of record that Mr. Obama has referred to our men and women in uniform as "photo opportunities," with the specific words "You guys make a pretty good photo op."  Past presidents have doubtless praised our service members for defending the country, but it is doubtful that any president, especially one with his own service record (e.g., Theodore Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, or either Bush) ever called our troops a "photo op."
 
Mara Zebst has meanwhile provided evidence in the American Thinker that the Clancy-esque Situation Room photo in which Obama supervised the bin Laden takedown was Photoshopped.  If this is proven, it will mean that the Obama administration disseminated propaganda in the manner of George Orwell's Ministry of Truth to reinforce the image of the Dear Leader as a godlike hero.  A case could then be made to the effect that the Obama administration used government facilities and senior government officials for electioneering purposes, which is a felony.  (This assumes that the prohibition on solicitation for political contributions includes the use of government property to support any campaign-related activities.)
 
The bottom line is, however, that anybody sitting in a bar with a bottle of beer in his or her hand could have taken a call from a Navy SEAL commander and heard, "We found out where the individual who orchestrated the murder of 3,000 American citizens lives, and it is my judgment as a military professional that we can put him down without significant risk of losing the men we send to do it.  All I need is your approval, Sir/Madam."
 
A person who had actually served in the U.S. Navy, such as John McCain, would have replied, simply, "Make it so!," while a person of somewhat less refinement might have said, "Waste the SOB!" or "Smoke him!"  Neither would have, however, taken credit for the job as if he had personally rappelled out of a helicopter and then fought his way Rambo-style through bin Laden's lair.
 
The bottom line is that a leader or commander in chief takes responsibility for a decision, but only the people who put their lives on the line to carry it out take the credit.  Theodore Roosevelt accordingly took both the responsibility (as the decision maker) and the credit (because he led the attack) for the charge up San Juan Hill, but such cases are rare.  President Harry Truman did not even think of taking credit for bombing Hiroshima because he did not fly the mission and he did not share any risks taken by the crew of the Enola Gay.  All he took was responsibility for the mission's approval and its effectiveness in ending the war.  Winston Churchill took credit for his role in the Battle of Omdurman (1898) because he fought there personally and killed the enemy with his own hand.  All he took for the disaster of Gallipoli (1915) was the responsibility and the blame, which is what a leader of character should have done.  Only a self-aggrandizing narcissist like Barack Obama steals the valor of genuine heroes and claims it as his own.
 
William A. Levinson is the author of several books on business management including content on organizational psychology, as well as manufacturing productivity and quality.


Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/06/barack_obamas_stolen_valor.html#ixzz1wqbfLRE3

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 05, 2012, 07:09:22 AM
Obama Lunges Toward Global Government
 Town Hall ^


Posted on Tuesday, June 05, 2012


One of the biggest issues in the November election is whether we will continue or stop President Obama's move toward restricting U.S. sovereignty and rushing down the road to global governance. One would think that the obvious failure of the European Union and disdain for the euro would put the skids on global integration, but no such luck.

Obama has such delusions of his own power that he thinks he can do by executive order whatever he cannot get Congress to approve, even Harry Reid's Democratic Senate. Obama's most recent executive order starts off with the extravagant claim that it is issued "by the authority vested in me as president by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America."

On the contrary, the president is not vested with the authority asserted in Executive Order 13563, which locks us into a worldwide regulatory system and thereby gives up a huge slice of U.S. economic and environmental sovereignty. The proclaimed purpose is to globally harmonize regulations on environmental, trade and even legislative processes.

This executive order is larded with globalist gobbledygook about the obligation of our regulatory system to "protect public health, welfare, safety and our environment while promoting economic growth, innovation, competitiveness, and job creation." Those pie-in-the-sky goodies are designed to benefit "an increasingly global economy," rather than the United States.

The executive order specifies that this new "international regulatory cooperation" will function "particularly in emerging technology areas." That's an open door for dangerous mischief in sensitive areas that the new global busybodies might get into, and it will probably give Communist China the opportunity to steal more of our technology.

The crux of the purpose for this tremendous assumption of presidential power is to establish a "regulatory plan" and "reforms" of "significant regulations that address unnecessary differences in regulatory requirements between the United States and its major trading partners." Wow! Will we be harmonizing U.S. regulations with Communist China, one of our biggest trading partners?

Do you remember Cass Sunstein, Obama's regulatory czar who became famous for saying that the government "owns the rights to body parts of people who are dead or in certain hopeless conditions, and it can remove their organs without asking anyone's permission," and bow wow, that dogs are entitled to have lawyers to sue humans in court? He has recently emerged to publish an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal enthusiastically supporting Obama's global regulatory harmonization.

Maybe Sunstein will try to harmonize our dog-food regulations with China, whose dog food just sickened 1,000 U.S. dogs. Maybe Sunstein will find a way to harmonize U.S. production of electronic parts for our military aircraft with the 1,800 cases of counterfeit parts Communist China sold to our military.

Obama's executive order creates a "working group" to issue a "regulatory plan" and "guidelines" that will "operate on consensus." That's the favorite United Nations procedure of reducing the power of the United States in international confabs.

Former President George W. Bush had dreams of harmonizing our regulations with those of Canada and Mexico as a stepping stone to creating a North American Union. He set up a bunch of working groups in the Commerce Department under the name Security and Prosperity Partnership.

But Bush's three-country plan was not acceptable to Americans who value our independence and not global enough for Obama, who is eager to turn us into world citizens under global governance. After Obama was elected, SPP closed down and deleted its website.

The next step of the global governance lobby is likely to be a push for U.S. acceptance of the United Nations' demand for a global tax on all financial transactions "to offset the costs of the enduring economic, financial, fuel, climate and food crises and to protect basic human rights." That's on the agenda for the U.N. Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro this month known as Rio-plus 20.

Don't expect any benefit to the United States. The real purpose is to reduce our standard of living by transferring U.S. wealth to dictators all around the world.

In one of Obama's most revealing moments, he was caught on an open mike in Seoul, South Korea, telling Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, "This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility."

Obama's clear meaning was that he is prepared to cave in to Russian demands on missile defense after his re-election but needs more "space" until then. Medvedev responded, "I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir (Putin)."

If you think Obama has already gotten away with unconstitutional actions, his second term can take us over the cliff and make us targets for countries that threaten us with nuclear missiles.

Phyllis Schlafly is a lawyer, conservative political analyst and author of 20 books. Her latest, written with co-author Suzanne Venker, is "The Flipside of Feminism" published by WorldNetDaily. She can be contacted by e-mail at phyllis@eagleforum.org. To find out more about Phyllis Schlafly and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Website at www.creators.com.

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 05, 2012, 09:35:42 AM
Obama’s Memorial Day Photo-Op Blocks Families, Vets from Vietnam Memorial for 7 Hours
 
Posted by Rachel Bjorklund Bio ↓ on Jun 5th, 2012 Comments ↓

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/06/05/obama%e2%80%99s-memorial-day-photo-op-blocks-families-vets-from-d-c-vietnam-memorial-wall-for-7-hours




 
On Memorial Day, the Vietnam Memorial in D.C. is supposed to look like this:


Instead, for seven long hours, it looked like this:
 


Obama’s secret service shut down the memorial for most of the day, as families and veterans who had come to pay their respects to fallen loved ones were forced to stay hundreds of feet away.
 
Why?  So that the Narcissist-in-Chief could show up for 15-minute speech and photo-op with his carefully selected fans in the audience.
 


In his campaign speech remarks, Obama made sure to mention that:
 

“As long as I’m president, we will make sure you and your loved ones will receive the benefits you’ve earned and the respect you deserve,” Obama said. “America will be there for you.”
 
Wow.  How did our veterans ever get their benefits before the benevolent Obamessiah came to office?   Is that his argument for why they should vote for him?  Because their benefits are only available “as long as I’m president?”  Perhaps he’s hoping they’ll forget that he suspended hazard pay for deployed U.S. troops, terminated 157 Air Force Majors without retirement benefits, and proposed a budget that would cut healthcare benefits for active duty and retired US military while protecting union benefits.
 


Brian Trubee left this comment on Weasel Zippers:
 
I just received this e-mail from a brother in arms who I served with as a USAF pararecueman. A link to his e-mail is at the bottom of the message. I deleted the photos because the server rejected them. -Brian Trubee, Redmond, Washington.:
 

I am currently in Washington DC and witnessed the following. I saw this first hand and I bet you won’t hear about this from the Liberal media…
 
Vietnam veterans and the families of Vietnam veterans killed in action whose names are etched on the Wall were denied access to their memorial today, of all days, Memorial Day. The Vietnam Memorial was shutdown, cleared and secured for approximately 5 hours prior to Obama, his cronies and hand picked veterans for a 15 minute appearance by Obama. It’s obvious it was all for show. After all, this is an election year.
 
Hundreds if not thousands of Vietnam veterans and families of Vietnam veterans killed in Vietnam stood in disbelief as Secret Service, Park Police, Washington DC Police, etc., blocked all access to the Vietnam Memorial and kept everyone approximately 100 yards away from their memorial for the first time in the history of the Memorial so Obama could get some photos of him at the Wall. Veterans in uniforms stood in the heat angered as Obama makes them wait. It was a photo op at their expense and families of those killed in Vietnam.
 
As I stated, I was there and witnessed all of this. Many veterans and others flipped Obama the finger as his motorcade drove past. I didn’t honor him with a finger salute because I was busy holding up my 3′x5′ Don’t Tread on Me Flag as his motorcade drove past.
 
On another note, I was able to dedicate some port-o potties to Jane Fonda. Pictures attached. Maybe Obama should share this honor with Jane Fonda henceforth.
 
Jim Morris
 
Kristinn at Free Republic confirms the story:
 
So this is how Obozo honors those who served….I just had this passed on from a friend who was at the wall this morning:
 

I normally try to avoid political statements, but this one is a bit different. This was received by Colonel Wayne Morris just a few moments ago, who was refused access to the Vietnam War Memorial, where he has visited his fallen comrades for the last 15 years.
 
Today is Memorial Day and I went to the Vietnam Memorial and something happened there that upset me greatly and I want to pass it on.
 
For over 15 years I had been going with my dear Marine buddy, Larry Cullen. Since he passed away last year and was interned at Arlington Cemetery, I went this year accompanied by my grandson, Cameron. I had my list of Recon Marines, school classmates, and Larry’s fallen buddies to visit but, as we got close to the area of the National Mall where the Wall is located, we saw huge white tents. We also saw barricades all along Constitution Ave and for a couple blocks in each direction from the Wall. They even closed down all of Constitution Av from the Lincoln Memorial all the way to the WW-II Memorial and there was a virtual army of uniformed and plain-clothes security everywhere.
 
The biggest tent was right at the west end of the Wall entrance and there was a covered walkway leading right up to The Wall. It was so close, you couldn’t get to the Wall on that side so, my grandson and I went all the way around to the eastern entrance to the Wall and walked down along the Wall to the first of my names and I began telling my grandson about my buddies and how each one died. In short order, a guy in a dark suit and earpiece in his ear told us we had to leave as it was 0730 and they were closing Memorial until at least 1400 so the President could drop by. I asked if he was serious and he assured me he was. We and all the other veterans and families were forced to leave and it was locked down.
 
The Vietnam Memorial is the most visited site on the entire National Mall. Memorial Day has more visitors to the Vietnam Memorial than almost any other day. Even at the rather early hour Cameron and I were there, there were a lot of veterans and family members down there. In the midst of all that, Obama decides to close it for over seven hours just so he can roll by for 30 minutes in the afternoon for a campaign appearance with Democrats, supporters, and campaign donors? This is an incredulously arrogant, egotistical, and inconsiderate thing to do. What in hell was Obama thinking?
 
Hey President Obama: Since you ran me (and all the other veterans and family members) out of the Memorial before we finished our business there, how about doing me a favor. If you can take a short break from all the grippin’, grinnin’, posin’ and pontificatin’, how about taking a minute or two to stop by and say hello to my fellow Recon Marines and other classmates on the Wall. I suspect you’ll be too busy with photo ops, campaigning, and stroking donors to be troubled with a couple minutes doing what the Memorial was built for but, just in case, here’s a list so you can have your man find them and point them out to you. Hope you have a Meaningful Memorial Day.
 
Joseph J. JONES; 53-W-02
 Sherwood David Kreis, 42-W-40
 Dale Kagebein, 34-W-50
 Jerry Bock, 25-W-95
 Larry Daniels, 09-E- 66
 Joe Mack Kemp, 09-E-69
 Rhonda L. Raglan, 09-E-70
 Robert L. Studards, 09-E-71
 Jose D. Flores, 09-E-74
 Arthur Willie Greene, 14-E-56
 Eric Barnes, 17-E-41
 Godfried Blankenship, 17-E-48
 Michael Ray Smith, 19-E-113
 Ervin Lovell, 19-E-120
 William D. Martin, 25-E- 87
 Michael L. Laporte, 26-E-1
 Ronald Frederick Kitzke, 32-E-76
 Charles Harris, 34-E-48
 Robert Tracy, 34-E-72
 Michael G. Murdock, 36-E-57
 
Maybe it would have been better for everyone if Obama had just gone golfing like last year. Unfortunately, this is what veterans and their families have to suffer when Obama is in full campaign mode.
 
No wonder a recent Gallup poll showed veterans prefer Mitt Romney to Obama, 58% to 34%.
 
H/T Jan Weeks
 
UPDATE: The National Park Service, Public Affairs, and Vietnam Veterans of America all confirmed the shut-down when contacted by phone.  VVA said that all the guests had to be pre-screened for security reasons, and it would have been “very difficult” to give advance notice to all the families and vets who arrived to find it closed.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 06, 2012, 05:47:23 AM
Ilya Shapiro: Why Obama Strikes Out In Court

Three unanimous Supreme Court decisions against the government suggest that the administration has a faulty view of federal power..

By ILYA SHAPIRO


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303918204577444221444859342.html#articleTabs%3Dcomments




As the world awaits the Supreme Court's ruling on ObamaCare, there's a larger story that the pundits are missing: the court's rejection of the Obama administration's increasingly extreme claims on behalf of unlimited federal power.
 
This term alone, the high court has ruled unanimously against the government on religious liberty, criminal procedure and property rights. When the administration can't get even a single one of the liberal justices to agree with it in these unrelated areas of the law, that's a sign there's something wrong with its constitutional vision.
 
Let's take these cases in order:
 
First, in Hosanna-Tabor Church v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the government sued a church school that fired a teacher for violating one of the church's religious tenets: threatening to sue over an employment dispute rather than resolving the disagreement internally. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission claimed this violated the Americans with Disabilities Act because the firing was related to the teacher's health issues.

The Supreme Court ruled 9-0 in January that punishing a church for failing to retain an unwanted teacher "interferes with the internal governance of the church, depriving the church of control over the selection of those who will personify its beliefs." Such interference, it concluded, violates the First Amendment's Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses.
 
In United States v. Jones, also decided in January, the government claimed the power to attach a GPS device to a suspected drug dealer's car and electronically monitor his movements, all without a warrant. This claim drew opposition not just from the ACLU and the Cato Institute, but from the conservative Rutherford Institute, the liberal Constitution Project and organizations ranging from the Gun Owners of America to the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
 

While the justices had differing opinions on why this action violated the Fourth Amendment—was it a physical trespass, a violation of privacy expectations, or something else?—all agreed it was unconstitutional. Nevertheless, last week the Justice Department was back in a lower court, using technicalities in Jones to claim again (United States v. Pineda-Moreno) that it could attach GPS devices without seeking warrants.
 
Third, in Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency, the government denied the right of property owners to judicial review of an EPA order to stop building a house it claimed was in violation of the Clean Water Act. In March the court unanimously rejected that position. Justice Antonin Scalia, who wrote the opinion, called access to courts the least the government could provide in response to "the strong-arming of regulated parties" by government agencies. "In a nation that values due process, not to mention private property," wrote Justice Samuel Alito in a concurring opinion, the government's "treatment [of the homeowners] is unthinkable."
 
Later in March, the administration claimed in the ObamaCare case that the government could require people to buy something as a means of regulating a broader national market. And a month later in Arizona v. United States, the government said that a federal policy decision regarding immigration enforcement priorities could by itself trump state law—a position that seemed to trouble even Justice Sonia Sotomayor, one of the president's own nominees.
 
More recently, the Justice Department has been suing states over voter-ID laws. Attorney General Eric Holder makes speeches claiming these laws herald the return of Jim Crow. Never mind that the Supreme Court has found them to satisfy the Voting Rights Act and the Constitution, most recently by 6-3 in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board (2008), where plaintiffs claimed that needing a photo-ID placed an undue burden on their right to vote.

The government's arguments across a wide variety of cases would essentially allow Congress and the executive branch to do whatever they wanted without meaningful constitutional restraint. This view is at odds with another unanimous Supreme Court decision, Bond v. United States (2011). Bond vindicated a criminal defendant's right to challenge the use of federal power to prosecute her. As Justice Kennedy wrote, "[F]ederalism protects the liberty of the individual from arbitrary power. When government acts in excess of its lawful powers, that liberty is at stake."
 
If the government loses in the health-care or immigration cases, it won't be because its lawyers had a bad day in court or because the justices ruled based on their political preferences. It will be because the Obama administration continues to make legal arguments that don't pass the smell test.
 
Mr. Shapiro is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and editor in chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review.
 
A version of this article appeared June 6, 2012, on page A15 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Why Obama Strikes Out In Court.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 06, 2012, 09:45:46 AM
Team of Mascots

 http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/2012/07/obama-cabinet-team-rivals-lincoln.print




Four years ago, Barack Obama said he wanted a Lincoln-esque “team of rivals” in his Cabinet. Thanks to his own temperament, the modern White House, and the 24-hour news cycle, what the president has created is something that doesn’t look Lincoln-esque at all.

National editor Todd S. Purdum’s weekly dispatch from Washington, D.C. on politics and current affairs.
 


By Todd S. Purdum



 

CAN YOU NAME THEM?

Gone are the days when presidents relied on their Cabinets as privy councillors on the most important questions.

 Photographs by Bill Clark/Roll Call (Napolitano), Yuri Gripas/AFP (Obama’s hands), Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg (Obama’s head), Pete Marovich (Holder’s head), Aris Messinis/AFP (Clinton’s head), William B. Plowman/NBC/NBC Newswire (Biden’s head), Chip Somodevilla (Chu, Donovan’s head, Hood’s head, Shinseki’s head, Solis), Roger L. Wollenberg (Salazar’s head, Sebelius’s head), Alex Wong (Geithner, Panetta’s head), all from Getty Images.
 


Just four years ago, when it was clear that he would be the Democratic presidential nominee, Barack Obama famously declared that, if elected, he would want “a team of rivals” in his Cabinet, telling Joe Klein, of Time magazine, “I don’t want to have people who just agree with me. I want people who are continually pushing me out of my comfort zone.” His inspiration was Doris Kearns Goodwin’s best-selling book about Abraham Lincoln, who appointed three men who had been his chief competitors for the presidency in 1860—and who held him, at that point, in varying degrees of contempt—to help him keep the Union together during the Civil War. To say that things haven’t worked out that way for Obama is the mildest understatement. “No! God, no!” one former senior Obama adviser told me when I asked if the president had lived up to this goal. There’s nothing sacred about the team-of-rivals idea—for one thing, it depends on who the rivals were. Obama does have one former rival, Hillary Clinton, in his Cabinet, and another, Joe Biden, is vice president. Mitt Romney would have fewer options. Can anyone really imagine Romney making Rick Santorum his secretary of health and human services, or Herman Cain his commerce secretary, or Newt Gingrich the administrator of nasa? Well, maybe the last, if only so Romney could have the satisfaction of sending the former Speaker—bang! zoom!—to the moon! For the record, Gingrich has said he’d be unlikely to accept any position in a Romney administration, and Romney himself has given almost no real hints about whom he might appoint. In light of his propensity to bow to prevailing political pressures, his Cabinet might well be, as he described himself, “severely conservative.” But the way presidents use their Cabinets says a lot about their style of governing. Richard Nixon created a deliberately weak Cabinet (he ignored his secretary of state William Rogers to the point of humiliation, in favor of his national-security adviser, Henry Kissinger), and he rewarded their loyalty by demanding all their resignations on the morning after his landslide re-election, in 1972. John F. Kennedy, having won a whisker-close election against Nixon, in 1960, wanted Republicans such as Douglas Dillon at Treasury and Robert McNamara at Defense to lend an air of bipartisan authority and competence. George W. Bush had a very powerful Cabinet, especially in the persons of Donald Rumsfeld, Robert Gates, and Condoleezza Rice, if only to compensate for his pronounced lack of experience in foreign policy and military affairs.
 
Obama’s own approach falls somewhere in the middle. With a few prominent exceptions—Gates, whom he held over at the Pentagon, to broad acclaim; Clinton, who has become a highly effective secretary of state; Timothy Geithner, who left the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to become the influential Treasury secretary and part of the president’s inner circle (but also a lightning rod for criticism that the administration is too deferential to Wall Street); and Leon Panetta, an old Washington hand who first ran the C.I.A. and is now secretary of defense—Obama has surrounded himself mostly with a team of loyalists. They range from the very competent (Janet Napolitano at Homeland Security) to the perennially controversial (Eric Holder at Justice) to the underwhelmingly anonymous (could anyone but a union leader pick Labor Secretary Hilda Solis out of a lineup?). In the main, Obama relates to his Cabinet the way he relates to the rest of the world. “He’s a total introvert,” the former adviser told me. “He doesn’t need people.” So it hardly matters that Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, is widely seen as quietly capable; she was not front and center in Obama’s public push for health-care reform, a topic that another former senior administration aide now calls the Lord Voldemort of policy questions, the issue that must not be named. Arne Duncan gets high enough marks as education secretary (and is a friend and basketball teammate of the president’s), but his profile is comparatively low. As executive director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources in the cabinet of Governor Roy Romer, 20 years ago, Ken Salazar played a key political advisory role; he plays no comparable role as interior secretary today. None of the domestic Cabinet officers are reliable regulars on the Sunday talk-show circuit (nor were they in the second Bush administration). The administration prefers to offer up senior White House aides, over whom it has tighter control, and who may actually know more about the president’s real agenda. Obama’s Cabinet secretary, Christopher Lu, has been known to say that it’s his job to tell Cabinet members they can’t do things, one former colleague recalls, adding that there is a feeling in the White House that people in the Cabinet “are creating headaches for the president,” whether it’s Lisa Jackson promulgating a new rule at E.P.A. or Ray LaHood floating the idea of a mileage-based tax to pay for highway projects at Transportation or Eric Holder filing a reply brief—never mind the reality that it is the job of the E.P.A. administrator to promulgate rules, and of the attorney general to involve himself in court proceedings. The good news, administration veterans tell me, is that Obama’s Cabinet is remarkably free of internal bickering and infighting, even if the White House keeps Cabinet secretaries on a shorter leash than Bill Clinton did.
 
The days when presidential Cabinets contained the likes of Thomas Jefferson as secretary of state, or Alexander Hamilton as secretary of the Treasury, are long since gone (and those early Cabinets displayed a fractiousness that no modern president would be likely to tolerate), though Cabinet officers retain symbols of office—from flags to drivers to, in some cases, chefs—befitting grander figures. The lingering public image of Cabinet meetings as the scene of important action is largely a myth. “They are not meetings where policy is determined or decisions are made,” the late Nicholas Katzenbach, who served Lyndon Johnson as attorney general, recalled in his memoirs. Nevertheless, Katzenbach attended them faithfully, “not because they were particularly interesting or important, but simply because”—remembering L.B.J.’s awful relationship with the previous attorney general, Bobby Kennedy—“I did not want the president to feel I was not on his team.” Even as recently as the 1930s, Cabinet figures such as Labor Secretary Frances Perkins, Interior Secretary Harold Ickes, and Postmaster General James A. Farley were important advisers to Franklin D. Roosevelt (and, in the cases of Perkins and Ickes, priceless diarists and chroniclers) in areas beyond their lanes of departmental responsibility, just as Robert F. Kennedy was his brother’s all-purpose sounding board and McNamara provided J.F.K. with advice on business and economics well outside his purview at the Pentagon. “Cabinet posts are great posts,” says Dan Glickman, who was Bill Clinton’s agriculture secretary. “But you realize that the days of Harry Hopkins and others who were in the Cabinet and were key advisers to the president—that really isn’t true anymore.” “In the case of Clinton,” Glickman went on, “it was a joy to work for him, because, in large part, he gave each of us lots of discretion. He said, ‘If it’s bad news, don’t call me. If it’s good news, call me. If it’s exceptionally good news, call me quicker.’ ” The way Cabinet officers relate personally to the president is—no surprise—often the crucial factor in their success or failure. Colin Powell had a worldwide profile and a higher approval rating than George W. Bush, and partly for those very reasons had trouble building a close rapport with a president who had lots to be modest about. Obama’s energy secretary, Steven Chu, may have a Nobel Prize in physics, but that counted for little when he once tried to make a too elaborate visual presentation to the president. Obama said to him after the third slide, as one witness recalls, “O.K., I got it. I’m done, Steve. Turn it off.” Attorney General Eric Holder has been particularly long-suffering, although he and his wife, Dr. Sharon Malone, are socially close to the Obamas. Set aside the controversy that surrounded his failure, as deputy attorney general at the end of the Clinton administration, to oppose a pardon for Marc Rich, the fugitive financier whose ex-wife was a Clinton donor. Holder, the first black attorney general, has taken a political beating more recently for musing that the country is a “nation of cowards” when it comes to talking about race, and for following through on what seemed to be the president’s own wishes on such matters as proposing to try the 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in an American courtroom (in the middle of Manhattan, no less). The sharp growth in the White House staff in the years since World War II has also meant that policy functions once reserved for Cabinet officers are now performed by top aides inside the White House itself. Obama meets regularly and privately with Tim Geithner and Hillary Clinton, but almost certainly sees his national-security adviser, Tom Donilon, and his economic adviser, Gene Sperling, even more often. The relentless media cycle now moves so swiftly that any president, even one less inclined toward centralized discipline than Obama, might naturally rely on the White House’s quick-on-the-draw internal-messaging machine instead of bucking things through the bureaucratic channels of the executive departments. In dealing with a Cabinet, as with life itself, there is no substitute for experience. Clinton-administration veterans told me that their boss made better, fuller use of the Cabinet in his second term than he did in his first, when officials such as Les Aspin at the Pentagon and Warren Christopher at the State Department sometimes struggled to build a cohesive team. Lincoln’s choice of William H. Seward at State, Salmon P. Chase at Treasury, and Edward Bates as attorney general were far from universally applauded. “The construction of a Cabinet,” one editorial admonished at the time, “like the courting of a shrewd girl, belongs to a branch of the fine arts with which the new Executive is not acquainted.” Lincoln’s Cabinet did solve one political problem but it created others—Lincoln had to fight not one but two civil wars.






Jesus Christ is this admn fucked up.   
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 06, 2012, 06:19:27 PM
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Issa: Obama administration classifies jobs with political purpose
Published June 06, 2012 | FoxNews.com
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The Obama administration on Wednesday acknowledged a wide-ranging definition of  “green jobs” that includes bus driver, bicycle-shop clerk and other unexpected lines of employment, which the chairman of the GOP-led House oversight committee said is being done for “clearly political purposes.”

GOP Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, made the assertion during a hearing on how the administration counts so-called green jobs and the Labor Department’s recent change to how reporters can access key unemployment reports and other information.

The Labor Department "has jeopardized the integrity of employment data in some cases for clearly political reasons," he said.

Issa suggested the administration is reclassifying such jobs to prove that billions of taxpayer dollars, through the federal stimulus program, have created green, or environmentally-focused jobs – a major initiative for President Obama.

“It’s about politics. It’s always been about politics,” said Issa, R-Calif. “If you work at the Salvation Army, that’s a green job.”

When Bureau of Labor Statistics Acting Commissioner John Galvin balked on what qualifies as a green job under the agency definition, Issa responded, “Just answer the question.”

“Does someone who sweeps the floor at a company that makes solar panels -- is that a green job?” Issa asked.

“Yes,” replied Galvin, who also acknowledged that a bike-repair shop clerk, a hybrid-bus driver, any school bus driver and “the guy who puts gas in a school bus” are all defined as green jobs.

He also acknowledged that an oil lobbyist, if his work is related to environmental issues, would also have a green job.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics states a green job is either: a business that produces goods or provide services that benefit the environment or conserve natural resources, or a job in which a worker's duties involve making their establishment's production processes more environmentally friendly or use fewer natural resources.

The bureau states on its website it developed the definition of green jobs for use in data collection in two planned surveys. 

Diana Furchtgott-Roth, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and contributing editor of RealClearMarkets.com, said the administration should be focused on simply creating jobs, not classifying them.

She cited the administration putting $3.5 million into the failed Solyndra solar-energy company as an example of the administration appearing to misleadingly or incorrectly tout green-job creation.  

Rep. Elijah Cummings, the committee’s ranking Democrat, said the number of green jobs created under the administration is even higher than the 3 million reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“Unfortunately, this committee seems more intent on challenging the methodologies used by the Bureau of Labor Statistics rather than helping put people back to work,” said Cummings, D-Md.

The second concern is the Labor Department recently ordering reporters to use government-issued software and other equipment to access Bureau of Labor Statistics reports, perhaps a violation of free-speech laws.

“This proposal threatens the First Amendment," said Daniel Moss, a Bloomberg News executive editor, testifying at the hearing.

The Labor Department officials suggested they would allow some flexibility on the July transition date.

 

 

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Jesus Christ. 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: garebear on June 06, 2012, 10:26:50 PM
Are you having a productive day?

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 07, 2012, 08:34:27 AM
Biggest DoE solar-power loan guarantee went to firm that hired former Biden chief of staff





How does one go about getting a federally-guaranteed loan for solar-power technology in the era of Hope and Change?  Well, you have to show that your company has solid fundamentals, competes on price, and can attract private financing based on … oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to laugh out loud.  While Barack Obama tries to defend his green-tech stimulus spending and public-equity decisions, the Wall Street Journal exposes yet another political machination from the Obama administration.  The administration that once decried lobbying and its influence on government awarded the largest solar-technology loan guarantees to a firm who had to hire Vice President Joe Biden’s former chief of staff to close the deal:
 

The recipient of the Obama administration’s biggest loan guarantee for solar energy won federal money after an intense push in early 2011 that included hiring a former chief of staff to Vice President Joe Biden to lobby the administration, according to federal records and people involved in the approval process.
 
The lobbying blitz came as the $1.6 billion loan to BrightSource Energy Inc.—a centerpiece of the administration’s program to promote nascent green-energy projects—faced a do-or-die moment, and the company called on its Democratic connections to help push the deal forward, according to emails, records and those familiar with the loan.
 
The White House says … it’s just a coincidence.  Nothing to see here.  Move along:
 

White House spokesman Eric Schultz said the Department of Energy made the loan-approval decision, not Mr. Biden nor other White House officials. A Department of Energy spokeswoman said it chose BrightSource, whose solar power plant in California continues to move ahead, based on the project’s merits.
 
Well, you decide. Here’s the timeline as laid out by the WSJ:
 

On March 9, 2011, just days after being hired, Mr. Toon went to the White House with three BrightSource executives, according to Senate and White House records. There he visited a former colleague, Alan Hoffman, now the top aide to Mr. Biden, whose office was working on green-energy programs, the records show. The White House didn’t make Mr. Hoffman available for comment.
 
The company’s message to the administration, according to Mr. Judge, was that by allowing the BrightSource deal to languish, “you are kind of shooting yourselves in the foot in terms of your own policy” of promoting green energy.
 
Mr. Toon was hired because he had previously lobbied for BrightSource contractor Bechtel Corp. and was familiar with the project, BrightSource said. Reached for comment, Mr. Toon said he couldn’t talk about clients.
 
Another visit came March 15, when BrightSource executives went to the White House for a meeting with the Office of Management and Budget, which also was reviewing the loan, White House records show. A top Washington energy lawyer with Perkins Coie LLP accompanied the BrightSource team.
 
Brightsource got the contract on April 5th.  Toon’s contract then ended.  For the single month of work, Toon got … $40,000.  Since then, Brightsource has canceled an IPO planned for two months ago because of “poor market conditions.”  Oddly, at that time the stock market was performing rather well; apparently Brightsource wasn’t.
 
Wasn’t this the kind of influence that Obama himself decried in 2007-8?  This was exactly the kind of transaction that “Hope and Change” was supposed to end, no?  Instead, Biden’s crony ended up with $40,000 for four weeks of work, and taxpayers funded yet another green-tech company that couldn’t survive on its own.
 
Speaking of green-tech stimulus, it appears that Fisker Automotive — one of the Obama administration’s high-profile recipients — has had to recall more of the handful of vehicles it has produced since getting its cash:
 

Fisker Automotive is recalling another 19 of its Karma luxury plug-in hybrid sedan because of a fire hazard, according to a report posted over the weekend on the Web site of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The action widened a recall undertaken in December, which affected 239 vehicles.
 
Fisker said 10 of the 19 additional vehicles were in the hands of consumers.
 
By the way, that’s nearly 2% of their total output.  ABC News reports that Fisker might now never produce any vehicles inside the US, the reason for getting the loan guarantees in the first place:
 
video platformvideo managementvideo solutionsvideo player
 

The luxury carmaker Fisker Automotive continues to signal it could ditch plans to build its next generation hybrid electric vehicle in the United States, despite the nearly $200 million in Obama administration loan money it has already received.
 
Fisker received federal funds in part to help purchase a shuttered General Motors plant in Delaware, where it predicted it would one day employ 2,000 auto workers to assemble the clean-burning gas-electric family car, known as the Atlantic.
 
But company executives began hinting in February that it would reconsider that plan and look for a cheaper place to build the car after the Department of Energy froze the $529 million green-energy loan the company had received, and had been drawing on since 2010.
 
Fisker used the first $169 million in taxpayer funds to bring to market the Karma, a flashy $100,000 hybrid sports sedan that it assembles in Finland. After a series of delays and stumbles, the company announced it had sold its first 1,000 Karmas, bringing in $100 million in revenues so far this year. The sleek, high-end model has been well received by critics, and the company reported this week it has started to sell in Europe, and could soon be on sale in the Middle East.
 
And thankfully, drivers in Europe and the Middle East will enjoy those cars at a lower price, thanks to subsidies provided by American taxpayers that will eventually create no American jobs.
 
I’m not sure which is worse — the incompetence or the corruption.


http://hotair.com/archives/2012/06/06/biggest-doe-solar-power-loan-guarantee-went-to-firm-that-hired-former-biden-chief-of-staff

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 07, 2012, 01:21:33 PM
First Solar's Crony Socialism is a Big Failure
 National Legal & Policy Center ^ | June 7, 2012 | Paul Chesser





 Renewable-loving Los Angeles is showing that even the power of billions of dollars in taxpayer“stimulus” cannot overcome the dominant hand of government regulation, and ironically it’s costing President Obama more green jobs.

One of the darlings of the Department of Energy’s Loan Guarantee Program,First Solar, has seen itsstock price take a drubbing, laid off thousands of workers, and left its leadership – with significant influence from Walmart’sWalton family – scrambling to save the company. The latest stumble has led to another setback of worker inactivity at First Solar’s Antelope Valley Solar Ranch One project in California, approximately 75 miles north of downtown Los Angeles, despite$646 million in taxpayer-guaranteed loans. At issue is a disagreement with Los Angeles County safety inspector over electrical installations and whether they meet standards.

According to one “Green tech” Web site, approximately half of the workers – 120 or so – at AVSR1 have been furloughed. But a local newspaper, The Mountain Express, reports the actual figure may be twice that. The dispute over the standards has extended several weeks with both sides firmly entrenched.

“First Solar denied the electrical inspector access to these [equipment] shelters that need to be inspected,” said one anonymous electrician who worked the project. “That is what brought all of these furloughs for us and the layoffs for First Solar May 25. The electrical inspector shut down all deliveries of electrical and mechanical [supplies].”

The conflict may not come at a worse time for First Solar. A sale of AVSR1 to Exelon Corporation (with First Solar to remain as manager and operator) was just completed in the fall, and the release of the first funds from its loan began in April. But AVSR1 has been the subject of controversy in the local community over the effects it will have on land use, wildlife, and water usage, which led to a previous round of layoffs at the end of 2011. Overall First Solar had cut 100 jobs earlier in December, and then slashed global payroll by 2,000 workers in April.

As the “green jobs” hemorrhaged, executive pay rose. Former CEO Rob Gillette received $32 million over a two-year period before he was dismissed in October. The Arizona Republic reported in April that First Solar also paid its eight top executives nearly $16 million last year.

Besides AVSR1, taxpayer money backs two other major First Solar projects:Desert Sunlight (Calif.) and Agua Caliente (Ariz.). All three solar farms combined have more than $3 billion in loan guarantees at stake. The Department of Energy pegged job creation for AVSR1 at 350 construction jobs and 20 permanent jobs. That works out to $1.75 million per job just from the loan guarantee, not taking into account the renewable energy tax credits and state incentives the project would receive.

Until its recent announcement to close operations in Germany and Malaysia, First Solar was one of the world’s largest – if not the largest – solar companies. It may still be, with billions of dollars in private investment including that of the aforementioned Walton family, reportedly the largest stakeholder. With the enormity of resources at its disposal, management should be able to deliver and operate its projects, right?

The Waltons appear to think so, too (although they likely welcome the government help). With ownership of 112 million shares, according to The Street Web site, the family (and especially heiress Kristy Walton) can’t be happy with the massive devaluation of First Solar’s stock. Under Gillette’s leadership price-per-share dropped from $143 to below $100 (after peaking at just above $175 in February 2011), leading its board to bring back founding CEO Michael Ahearn on an interim basis. The bleeding hasn’t stopped, as the price stood at about $33 at the beginning of this year. Yesterday it closed at $12.65, below the $20 price at which it went public five years ago.

The Street reported in April that the Waltons sought an expansion (which was successful) of First Solar’s board, adding Walton Enterprises CFO Richard Chapman, who is also director of the Walton family office. Ahearn remains as chairman of the board, and James A. Hughes – a former Enron executive – was installed as CEO. The discount empire’s influence has been met with skepticism, according to The Street, which said Ahearn’s return could only be considered a success if a sale of the company could be engineered “at some premium that big shareholders can stomach.”

That might be a challenge as First Solar also faces a shareholder class action lawsuit, which alleges the company failed to disclose the massive costs it was incurring due to defects in its solar panels. The company reported it replaced $125.8 million-worth of panels in the 4th quarter last year, and set aside $37.5 million to cover future claims. The Securities and Exchange Commission is also investigating First Solar for violations of Regulation Fair Disclosure.

Perhaps if First Solar overseers were focused on product quality and running a viable business, without dependence on taxpayers, they might not find themselves in such fixes with intense public scrutiny. But instead they played the crony socialism game in pursuit of government favors and cash, as federal candidates reaped benefits of First Solar employees’ generosity, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Michael Ahearn donated $40,400 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee since 2008, and company executives and staffers also gave $37,158 to President Obama and various other Democrat candidates for Congress during that time. Recently departed First Solar board member Jose Villarreal, who is also a board member of the extreme left-wing Center for American Progress, has given more than $42,000 to Democratic congressional candidates and campaign committees since the 2008 election cycle.

And according to the Washington Free Beacon, “ Kathleen Weiss, the head lobbyist and (former) vice president of First Solar, has visited the White House at least 16 times to meet with Obama confidante Valerie Jarrett and other senior administration officials.”

All that and First Solar can’t overcome shareholder anger, managerial shortcomings, and a little safety inspector in Los Angeles. When will cronyism-inclined business people figure out that ingratiation with government doesn’t work nearly as well as hard work, good service and product value?

Paul Chesser is an associate fellow for the National Legal and Policy Center.

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 07, 2012, 06:04:48 PM
Solar Company Hired Biden Staffer to Help Secure $1.6 Billion Federal Loan
Heritage ^ | 6//6/12 | Lachlan Markay
Posted on June 7, 2012 8:36:55 PM EDT by Nachum

Internal emails show that BrightSource Energy, which received the largest federal loan for a solar energy project under President Obama’s stimulus package, leveraged its considerable political connections with top Democratic policymakers to secure its $1.6 billion in taxpayer backing.

BrightSource energy faced a “do-or-die moment,” according to a report in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal, as the Energy Department weighed a federal loan for its massive Ivanpah solar farm in the California Mojave Desert.

To spur the administration to approve the loan, BrightSource beefed up its lobbying presence, most notably by hiring Bernie Toon, former chief of staff for then-Senator Joe Biden, to lobby on its behalf. Toon was paid $40,000 for his efforts, according to disclosure forms.

Toon’s connections immediately paid dividends:

On March 9, 2011, just days after being hired, Mr. Toon went to the White House with three BrightSource executives, according to Senate and White House records. There he visited a former colleague, Alan Hoffman, now the top aide to Mr. Biden, whose office was working on green-energy programs, the records show. The White House didn’t make Mr. Hoffman available for comment.

Overall, BrightSource dropped half a million dollars on lobbyists in the run-up to DOE’s decision on the Ivanpah loan.

(Excerpt) Read more at blog.heritage.org ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 07, 2012, 06:54:42 PM
http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2012/06/former-acorn-director-gets-445-mil-from-u-s-treasury



Holy fivking shot.   


very Obama voter deserves to be publicly hanged for treason.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 08, 2012, 06:59:50 AM
Obama Trade Deal Secrecy Insulting, According To Key Democrat


Posted: 06/07/2012 4:31 pm Updated: 06/07/2012 5:22 pm

Via HP




WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration has loosened some of its most stringent secrecy policies surrounding a controversial set of free trade negotiations, but the Democratic chair of a Senate subcommittee on international trade is demanding far greater transparency provisions -- and garnering Republican support for his effort.

In late May, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), chair of the Senate Finance Subcommittee on International Trade, introduced new legislation that would require the White House to share trade documents with all members of Congress and their qualified staff. The move was largely a symbolic act of protest against the secrecy the White House has imposed on a new trade deal, known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

The agency responsible for trade negotiations -- the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative -- had denied Wyden office access to any of the draft documents involved in the trade pact, offering an unusual legal argument that only a handful of members of Congress were permitted to view them. After Wyden introduced his legislation, however, USTR partially relented, allowing Wyden to see the documents, but not his staff.

That's better than nothing, Wyden spokeswoman Jennifer Hoelzer told HuffPost, but not helpful from a practical standpoint, given that congressional staff perform much of the legislative work on Capitol Hill.

"I would point out how insulting it is for them to argue that members of Congress are to personally go over to USTR to view the trade documents," Hoelzer said. "An advisor at Halliburton or the MPAA is given a password that allows him or her to go on the USTR website and view the TPP agreement anytime he or she wants."

The general public and most nonprofit organizations have no access to the documents, although a number of corporate officials can see them.

USTR told HuffPost that members of Congress can "be accommodated at an appropriate location on Capitol Hill" and said, "We are continuing to work directly with Senator Wyden and his staff to be responsive to the concerns he raises about TPP transparency, and are glad to be doing so; this is an important conversation."

USTR's refusal to share documents with congressional staffers has also raised the hackles of Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), who agreed to co-sponsor Wyden's bill after his own staffer was turned away.

"When our staff requested to review the TPP on behalf of the senator, even staff with what we consider to be appropriate clearance were denied access," Burr spokesman David Ward told HuffPost.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) has been more aggressive, leaking the entire text of the draft intellectual property chapter to the public on his website. Although the document had previously been available over the internet through legally dubious channels, Issa's posting was viewed as a political shot across the bow.

Public health experts and internet freedom advocates have bemoaned both the secretive negotiation process and the actual terms of the trade pact, which they claim threaten to drive up global medicine prices and curb online innovation.

Wyden and Issa are widely viewed as Capitol Hill allies of the tech community as a result of their efforts to block the Stop Online Piracy Act and its Senate partner, the Protect IP Act. The administration's refusal to share Trans-Pacific documents with Wyden for months sparked concern that Obama was selectively freezing out critics of the deal from the talks.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 08, 2012, 04:12:31 PM
ACORN Official Grabs $445 Million Grant From Obama Admin
 Breitbart.com ^ | 6/8/12 | Breitbart News




ACORN, the supposedly defunct organization defunded by Congress in the aftermath of James O’Keefe’s video exposing ACORN employees’ willingness to help out pimps and prostitutes attain government benefits, is back. As Judicial Watch has uncovered, the Obama administration offered $445 million to a former ACORN official as part of a $7.6 billion government program designed to help “unemployed or substantially underemployed” Americans make their mortgage payments.

The ACORN official, Joe McGavin, is director of Hardest Hit, an Illinois program that received that massive Treasury infusion. Prior to his time at Hardest Hit, McGaven was director of counseling for ACORN Housing in Chicago, and the operations manager for Affordable Housing Centers of America (AHCOA), an ACORN affiliate.

While ACORN was supposedly cut off from taxpayers, the facts say otherwise. And this is just the latest indicator. As Judicial Watch reported,


(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 09, 2012, 04:31:18 AM
WASHINGTON — After weeks of talks, drug industry lobbyists were growing nervous. To cut a deal with the White House on overhauling health care, they needed to be sure that President Obama would stop a proposal intended to bring down medicine prices.

On June 3, 2009, one of the lobbyists e-mailed Nancy-Ann DeParle, the president’s health care adviser. Ms. DeParle reassured the lobbyist. Although Mr. Obama was overseas, she wrote, she and other top officials had “made decision, based on how constructive you guys have been, to oppose importation” on a different proposal.

Just like that, Mr. Obama’s staff signaled a willingness to put aside support for the reimportation of prescription medicines at lower prices and by doing so solidified a compact with an industry the president had vilified on the campaign trail. Central to Mr. Obama’s drive to remake the nation’s health care system was an unlikely collaboration with the pharmaceutical industry that forced unappealing trade-offs.

The e-mail exchange three years ago was among a cache of messages obtained from the industry and released in recent weeks by House Republicans — including a new batch put out Friday detailing the industry’s advertising campaign supporting Mr. Obama’s health care overhaul. The broad contours of his dealings with the industry were known in 2009, but the newly public e-mails open a window into the compromises underlying a health care law now awaiting the judgment of the Supreme Court.

Mr. Obama’s deal-making in 2009 represented a pivotal moment in his young presidency, a juncture where the heady idealism of the campaign trail collided with the messy reality of Washington policy making. A president who had promised to negotiate on C-Span cut a closed-door deal with a powerful lobby, signifying to disillusioned liberal supporters a loss of innocence, or perhaps even the triumph of cynicism.

But the bargain was one that the president deemed necessary to forestall industry opposition that had thwarted efforts to cover the uninsured for generations. Without the deal, in which the industry agreed to provide $80 billion to expand coverage in exchange for protection from policies that would cost more, Mr. Obama calculated he might get nowhere.

“Throughout his campaign, President Obama was clear that he would bring every stakeholder to the table in order to pass health reform, even longtime opponents like the pharmaceutical industry,” Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director, said Friday. “He understood correctly that the unwillingness to work with people on both sides of the issue was one of the reasons why it took a century to pass health reform.”

Republicans see the deal as hypocritical. “He said it was going to be the most open and honest and transparent administration ever and lobbyists won’t be drafting the bills,” said Representative Michael C. Burgess of Texas, a Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee examining the deal. “Then when it came time, the door closed, the lobbyists came in and the bills were written.”

Some liberals bothered by the deal in 2009 now find the Republican criticism hard to take given the party’s longstanding ties to the industry.

“Republicans trumpeting these e-mails is like a fox complaining someone else raided the chicken coop,” said Robert Reich, who was labor secretary under President Bill Clinton. “Sad to say, it’s called politics in an era when big corporations have an effective veto over major legislation affecting them and when the G.O.P. is usually the beneficiary.”

In a statement, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the drug industry lobby known as PhRMA, called its interactions with the White House part of its mission to “ensure patient access” to high-quality medicine: “Before, during and since the health care debate, PhRMA engaged with Congress and the administration to advance these priorities,” the lobby statement said.

If the negotiations resembled deal-making by past presidents, what distinguished them was that Mr. Obama had strongly rejected business as usual. During his campaign, he singled out the power of the pharmaceutical industry and its chief lobbyist, former Representative Billy Tauzin, a Democrat-turned-Republican from Louisiana.

“The pharmaceutical industry wrote into the prescription drug plan that Medicare could not negotiate with drug companies,” Mr. Obama said in a campaign advertisement, referring to 2003 legislation. “And you know what? The chairman of the committee who pushed the law through went to work for the pharmaceutical industry making $2 million a year.”

Mr. Obama continued: “That’s an example of the same old game playing in Washington. You know, I don’t want to learn how to play the game better. I want to put an end to the game playing.”

The e-mails document tumultuous negotiations, at certain times transactional, at others prickly. Each side suspected the other of operating in bad faith. Led by Rahm Emanuel, Mr. Obama’s chief of staff at the time, and Jim Messina, his deputy, the White House appeared deeply involved, and not averse to pressure tactics.

In May, the White House was upset industry had not signed on to a joint statement. One industry official urged colleagues to sign: “Rahm is already furious. The ire will be turned on us.” By June, tension flared again. “Barack Obama is going to announce in his Saturday radio address support for rebating all of D unless we come to a deal,” wrote Bryant Hall, a PhRMA lobbyist, referring to a Medicare Part D change that would cost the industry.

A public confrontation was averted and an agreement announced, negotiated down to $80 billion from $100 billion. “We got a good deal,” Mr. Hall wrote.

The White House thought it did, too, and defended it against Democrats in Congress. “WH is working on some very explicit language on importation to kill it in health care reform,” Mr. Hall wrote in September.

Mr. Emanuel, now mayor of Chicago; Mr. Messina, now the president’s campaign manager; Ms. DeParle, now deputy White House chief of staff; and Mr. Bryant, now heading his own firm, all declined to comment.

The e-mails released Friday also underscored detailed discussions about an advertising campaign supporting Mr. Obama’s health overhaul. “They plan to hit up the ‘bad guys’ for most of the $,” a union official wrote after an April meeting. “They want us to just put in enough to be able to put our names in it — he is thinking @100K.” In July, Mr. Hall wrote, “Rahm asked for Harry and Louise ads thru third party,” referring to the characters the industry had used to defeat Mr. Clinton’s health care proposal 15 years earlier.

Industry and Democratic officials said advertising was an outgrowth of the deal, not its goal. The industry traditionally advertises for legislation it supports.

In the end, balky House Democrats imposed additional conditions on the industry that pushed the cost above $100 billion, but the more sweeping policies it feared remained out of the legislation. Mr. Obama signed it in March 2010. He had the victory he wanted.









Eat shit Obama thugs.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 10, 2012, 03:35:27 PM
ObamaCare Uncovered: Even Worse Than You Thought
 LiveActionNews ^ | 6/9/12 | Kristi Burton Brown

Posted on Sunday, June 10, 2012 1:48:56 PM by wagglebee

In two short minutes, you can find out even more things than you’ve heard before about what’s wrong with ObamaCare. (And this doesn’t even cover it all, folks.) We knew it was bad – we knew it was really bad – but did we know it was this bad? I mean, seriously, $100-a-day fines for each employee? If this isn’t an extreme violation of personal, constitutional, and conscience rights, I don’t know what is.

Of course, we shouldn’t be surprised at all the things that can hide in a nearly 1,000 page law, with even more pages of regulations implementing that law. In 2011, John Vinci of NetRight Daily wrote (footnotes omitted):


If you thought that Obamacare was long, it is only a fraction of the length of the regulations.

Obamacare contains over 700 directives for HHS and other agencies to implement Obamacare.

We went through and counted all of the Obamacare regulation documents published so far. We found that the number of pages in regulations are already 114 percent as long as the number of pages in the Obamacare statutes! The statutes contain 961 pages compared to 1,093 pages of regulations … What is more telling is the word count comparison. The Obamacare statutes together contain 425,116 words. Compare that to 1,147,271 words published so far in Obamacare regulation documents. The regulations are 270 percent as long as the statute itself.

Alliance Defense Fund, the organization who created the video at the beginning of this article, has also designed an easily sharable collection of facts about ObamaCare. You can share the fact sheet with your friends on Facebook, Twitter, and more. ADF has done a well-researched job of explaining just what ObamaCare means to everyday Americans. And they reveal multiple hidden facts that must be brought to light.

For example:


Employees who don’t purchase ObamaCare will be fined up to 2.5% of their salary.

Some ObamaCare plans can take $ straight out of your paycheck and put it in an abortion-on-demand fund.

The U.S. Department of Labor reports that there are approximately 154,000,000 people in the U.S. labor force.  If only half of plans include the Abortion Premium, at only $1 per month, the yearly income into this fund would be $924,000,000.

On average, an abortion costs $450.  At the above rate, this fund could completely subsidize 2 million abortions per year.  Currently, there are 1.2 million abortions per year in the U.S.

The employee will discover that their plan contains an abortion premium either by seeking it out in the fine print once they have enrolled, or noticing the separate surcharge taken from their paycheck.

ADF provides sources for the claims made in its fact sheet. The facts are chilling, but they must be studied, understood, and broadcasted by every American. Clearly, President Obama has used ObamaCare as an avenue to give a committed Planned Parenthood associate and abortion advocate – HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius – free rein to impose conscience violations and abortion funding on millions of Americans who are pro-life or who simply do not desire to fund someone else’s abortion.

As ADF correctly states, “[f]orced purchase is usually called ‘coercion’ rather than ‘commerce.’”

Know the facts, and speak out, America.



YouTube: ObamaCare Mandate Is Worse Than You Think

[ Invalid YouTube link ]
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 10, 2012, 07:43:54 PM
Free Republic
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US Ousts Israel From Counterterrorism Forum
Arutz Sheva ^ | 10/6/12 | Rachel Hirshfeld
Posted on June 10, 2012 6:50:19 PM EDT by Eleutheria5

The United States blocked Israel's participation in the Global Counterterrorism Forum's (GCTF) first meeting in Istanbul on Friday, despite Israel's having one of the most extensive counterterrorism experiences in the world.

Israel was excluded from the meeting due to fierce objections by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a Washington-based source told Globes news.

According the State Department’s website, the GCTF, which was established in September 2011, aims at “strengthening the global counterterrorism (CT) architecture in a manner that complements and reinforces the CT work of existing multilateral bodies.”

Twenty-nine countries are participating in the GCTF, ten of which are Arab and/or Muslim countries.

"The GCTF sought from the outset to bridge old and deep divides in the international community between Western donor nations and Muslim majority nations. And it has, I think, done that quite effectively," a top US official said at the press briefing prior to the opening session.

Republican politicians claim that since one third of the GCTF's members are Muslim countries, the Obama administration is trying to deepen ties with the Muslim world at Israel's expense, Globes noted.

"Our idea with the GCTF was to bring together a limited number of traditional donors, front line states, and emerging powers develop a more robust, yet representative, counterterrorism capacity-building platform. A number of our close partners with considerable experience countering and preventing terrorism are not included among the GCTF’s founding members,” a State Department spokesman said in response to questions about Israel's exclusion from the GCTF.

"We have discussed the GCTF and ways to involve Israel in its activities on a number of occasions, and are committed to making this happen," he added.

Pro-Israeli sources say that the Obama administration decided to ignore the fact that Turkey, which has a key role in the GCTF...

.....

(Excerpt) Read more at israelnationalnews.com ...

TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; Israel; News/Current Events; War on Terror; Click to Add Topic
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 11, 2012, 02:08:08 PM

Obama Housing Fix Faltered on Carrots-Not-Sticks Policy

 By Clea Benson - Jun 11, 2012



Three years ago, when President Barack Obama unveiled his plan for solving the U.S. housing crisis, one in five borrowers owed more on mortgages than their homes were worth, banks were repossessing 74,000 homes per month and sale prices had plunged 30 percent from their 2006 peak.

“All of us will pay an even steeper price if we allow this crisis to deepen -- a crisis which is unraveling homeownership, the middle class, and the American Dream itself,” Obama told the audience gathered at a high school in Mesa, Arizona, an area with one of the highest foreclosure rates in the country.

The crisis did deepen. Home prices continued to fall in most states during the Obama administration. Nearly 23 percent of borrowers are underwater on their loans, virtually unchanged from 2009, according to real estate data firm CoreLogic.

Obama didn’t deliver on his vow that day to avert as many as 9 million foreclosures. While his plan was undermined in part by the weak U.S. economic recovery, it also lacked broad and aggressive measures. Relief programs have tinkered around the edges of the housing finance system because Obama’s advisers chose early on not to expend political capital forcing banks to forgive mortgage debt. Instead, they created homeowner aid programs with voluntary participation by lenders and strict rules to avoid rewarding speculators or irresponsible borrowers.

‘Not Bold’

“They were well-intended, but they were not bold enough,” said Steven Nesmith, a former vice president at loan servicer Ocwen Financial Corp. (OCN) who served as an assistant secretary in the Department of Housing and Urban Development during the administration of President George W. Bush. “They should have gone bigger and bolder with a robust plan to deal with housing, not just trying to stabilize the broader financial-services system and the banks.”

The administration’s strategy of providing incentives to lenders to help troubled homeowners has been hobbled by complexity, according to mortgage bond investors, advocates for borrowers and those in the business of managing home loans.

Some critics say the administration’s mistake was intervening to stop foreclosures in the first place and that home prices should have been left to hit bottom on their own.

“We would have been better off letting the market heal itself,” said Anthony B. Sanders, professor at George Mason University. “The recovery would have been quicker.”

Long-Term Uncertainty

At the same time, expecting that the market would have improved by now, the administration didn’t push to eliminate uncertainty that hinders long-term planning by private players in the business. Lenders have tightened credit while they await details of new housing finance rules and a plan for winding down government-owned mortgage companies Fannie Mae (FNMA) and Freddie Mac. While interest rates are at historic lows, would-be buyers of troubled properties are finding it difficult to get loans.

“We’re three years into the administration and six years into the decline in housing,” said Jonathan Lieberman, head of residential mortgage securities business at the Angelo, Gordon & Co. investment firm. “It’s important to have some rules.”

To be sure, Obama’s housing officials can point to some successes. While falling short of the goal of reaching 9 million people, the two main federal programs for refinancing or modifying mortgages have reached 2.2 million borrowers. The free fall in home prices has slowed. There are bidding wars on properties again in some markets.

‘Mixed Reviews’

“To be fair, you’d say there are mixed reviews on any individual program, but the multitude of programs clearly had an impact on stemming the crash,” said David Stevens, president of the Mortgage Bankers Association, who served as commissioner of the Federal Housing Administration during the first two years of Obama’s term.

White House officials in recent weeks have been speaking out about their housing record, saying that any assessment must take into account the impact their programs have had as a model for private industry. Under that standard, there have been 5 million loan modifications, government and private, since 2009.

“One of the most important things government can do in its efforts to heal the housing crisis is to set a template that the private industry can use and follow,” Gene Sperling, director of the president’s National Economic Council, told a real estate industry audience last month. “Setting an industry standard like that is a meaningful accomplishment.”

What the officials don’t emphasize is that one in five borrowers helped by the government’s mortgage modification program since 2009 has slipped back into default. A recent revamp of the separate refinancing program helped 180,000 homeowners in the first quarter of this year, but only 4,400 of them were the most deeply troubled borrowers -- those whose loans exceed the value of their homes by at least 25 percent.

Obama pledged to use $50 billion from the $700 billion bank bailout approved by Congress in 2008 to help homeowners. Only about $3.7 billion of that has been spent.

Ripple Effect

Brian Deese, deputy director of the National Economic Council, said the administration should be measured by the ripple effect of its policies, and by the broad set of steps now being taken to encourage everything from refinancing to principal reductions on underwater loans.

“I think those steps are all making a difference,” Deese said. “Most importantly, every place we can responsibly do something to help homeowners and help heal the market, we’re going to take those steps. It reflects the president’s commitment that this is a tough and intractable problem, but we’re going to stay on it.”

Campaign Promise

The week before the 2008 election, soon-to-be Vice President Joseph Biden Jr. told a campaign crowd in Ocala, Florida, that he sympathized with the hundreds of thousands of Floridians who were upside down on their mortgages.

“If we can help Wall Street, folks, we sure can help Silver Springs Boulevard right here in Ocala,” Biden said. “That’s why we believe we should reform our bankruptcy laws, giving bankruptcy judges the authority to reduce the amount of principal owed, give them the authority to go out and reset the terms of the mortgage so people can stay in their homes.”

Obama also said in 2008 that he backed the change in bankruptcy law, popularly known as “cram-down.” While the change in law could have given people in dire straits an avenue to rebuild their finances, it was vigorously opposed by lenders.

The campaign promise wasn’t kept. The White House never publicly changed its stance but didn’t push for passage when a cram-down bill came to a vote in the Senate in April 2009. The measure failed, with 12 Democrats voting against it.

Peter Swire, who coordinated housing finance policy at the National Economic Council from 2009 to 2010, said the White House and the Treasury Department were so focused on getting banks to raise capital in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis that they had no ability to also push for cram-down. In addition, cram-down would be a complicated process that they believed would not work for every troubled borrower.

‘Huge Priority’

“Getting the financial system to work was a huge priority,” said Swire, an Ohio State University law professor. “The vote on cram-down happened in that context.”

Another former White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the internal discussions were private, said the White House thought it couldn’t win the cram-down fight and stayed out to preserve political capital.

The White House focused on developing the voluntary Home Affordable Modification Program and the Home Affordable Refinance Program, known by the easily confused names of HAMP and HARP, which paid lenders an incentive fee for each loan they modified if borrowers could meet a long list of criteria.

“Instead of using sticks, they tried to use carrots,” said Jeff Gentes, managing attorney at the Connecticut Fair Housing Center, who often tries to stop foreclosures by taking banks and other firms that service mortgages to court. “Obama abandoned the campaign promise to pursue cram-downs, which would have given us a stick. Servicers are incorrigible. They only respond to sticks.”

No Rewards

At the same time, there was a debate within the administration about just who should benefit from its aid programs. Shaun Donovan, secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, pushed for the government to bear some of the cost of reducing mortgage principal for underwater borrowers. Others, including Treasury Secretary Timothy J. Geithner, argued against it, saying they feared it could reward people who tapped home equity to support lavish lifestyles.

The administration chose to focus on reducing monthly payments for troubled borrowers, not their overall debt, and set barriers to entry to help only homeowners who had ended up in trouble through no fault of their own.

“We made that choice because we thought it would be dramatically more expensive for the American taxpayer, harder to justify,” Geithner said at a congressional hearing in December 2009, adding that paying banks to reduce principal would “create much greater risk of unfairness.”

No Bailouts

That choice ultimately limited the program’s reach. The often difficult process of getting a HAMP modification was an “unfortunate outcome” of designing a program that would “protect against providing free bailouts to people who weren’t deserving,” said Stevens, the former FHA commissioner, who is to become president of SunTrust Mortgage later this month.

By the end of 2009, banks and other servicers had completed fewer than 70,000 permanent mortgage modifications under HAMP.

The lenders were unprepared to make the switch from collecting mortgage payments to walking borrowers through the complexities of a mortgage restructuring. In addition, the administration didn’t anticipate that squabbles between lenders who held primary mortgages and those who held second liens on properties would prevent homeowners from getting modifications.

Executives for the largest servicers, including Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC) and Bank of America Corp., were summoned to White House meetings to discuss why progress was so slow. Servicers complained borrowers were hard to reach and failed to fill out paperwork correctly. Meanwhile, outside Washington, borrowers told housing counselors that servicers were hard to reach and weren’t acting in good faith to keep them in their homes.

Overlapping Initiatives

When the administration changed its programs in response to the complaints, not everyone viewed it as an improvement. Having a set of overlapping initiatives, each with its own regulations, was difficult enough. Modifying those rules added to “the lack of clarity,” said Nesmith, now chief operating officer of Ticor Title, a title-insurance company.

“Any time you do something too many times, you keep rolling it out and rolling it out, it creates confusion,” he said.

In retrospect, said Swire, the former NEC official, it would have made sense for the administration to push for cram- down early on. If bankruptcy judges had been given the power to decide disputes between multiple lenders with claims on the same property, more foreclosures would have been averted.

“Cram-down, on balance, today, would have been a good idea,” he said.

Dodd-Frank Act

Besides temporary relief to troubled borrowers, Obama vowed during the 2008 campaign to overhaul the broader set of rules for mortgage finance to protect buyers and prevent future housing bubbles. He made good on the promise by signing the Dodd-Frank regulatory overhaul in July 2010.

Still, regulators didn’t meet the July 2011 deadline set by Congress to settle on the language in most of the rules. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, for example, hasn’t yet defined which mortgages are considered consumer-friendly and which are considered abusive. Banking regulators including the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. are still working on a rule requiring lenders to retain an interest in risky loans that they securitize.

In addition, Geithner hasn’t released a long-promised plan for winding down Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (FMCC), the taxpayer-owned mortgage financiers that own or guarantee $5 trillion in loans. The two companies have been operating under U.S. conservatorship since bad bets on risky loans drove them to the brink of insolvency in 2008.

Pricing ‘Unknown’

That leaves the government as the primary source of funds for new mortgages.

“Investors cannot come back into the mortgage market because we cannot price the unknown,” said Chris Katopis, executive director of the Association of Mortgage Investors.

Lenders are also facing the fallout from the poor underwriting standards of the past. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are reviewing billions of dollars in loans issued during the bubble years and are requiring lenders to buy many of them back if there’s evidence of inadequate documentation.

Uncertain about their liability for vetting borrowers, lenders have raised credit standards to new highs, shutting out some would-be buyers of distressed properties. To qualify for a loan, average buyers need a 20 percent down payment and a 745 credit score, which would rank them in the top 40 percent of borrowers, according to data from Ellie Mae, a Pleasanton, California, software company.

Shrinking Loans

As a result, the number of new loans is shrinking. While the government share of the mortgage market has ballooned to 90 percent, the overall number of new purchase loans backed by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the FHA dropped to 1.7 million in 2011, down from 2.1 million in 2009, according to data compiled by Brian Chappelle, a partner at bank consulting firm Potomac Partners.

“The typical first-time and move-up buyers who have been the backbone of the housing market are really the ones being hurt,” Chappelle said.

The Obama administration faced another obstacle to housing momentum in the fall of 2010. Lawyers representing borrowers in many states and cities discovered that banks were seizing homes on the basis of faulty legal documents. Major servicers including JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) and Bank of America suspended foreclosures amid state and federal investigations.

In February, Donovan helped broker a $25 billion settlement between the five largest servicers and 49 state attorneys general. The banks agreed to spend $17 billion of that on troubled borrowers, including writing down principal on delinquent loans.

Cleaning Up

“One of the most important ways this settlement helps homeowners is that it forces the banks to clean up their acts and fix the problems uncovered during our investigations,” the HUD secretary said at a press conference where the settlement was announced.

Out in the field, housing counselors and troubled borrowers say they’re seeing little evidence that servicers are more willing to modify loans rather than foreclose.

Since the settlement, “I have seen virtually no improvement whatsoever,” said Melissa Huelsman, a Seattle attorney who specializes in aiding homeowners with mortgage problems.

Huelsman said she filed an emergency injunction in King County Court to stop HomeStreet Bank, a servicer for Fannie Mae, from seizing a client’s home using what she alleges are the same kind of faulty documents at issue in the national investigation.

California Funds

The administration also is hamstrung when it comes to forcing states to use the proceeds of the settlement to help homeowners. California Governor Jerry Brown is pushing to use $400 million of his state’s share to help plug a $15.7 billion hole in the budget instead of its intended purpose: monitoring how banks comply with the agreement.

H.D. Palmer, a spokesman for Brown, said the governor is proposing to use the funds for other housing-related expenses “in a way that provides relief to the state’s general fund.”

With five months before the Nov. 6 presidential vote, Obama expanded the HARP refinancing program, which can stave off foreclosure and put extra spending money into the pockets of homeowners able to get a lower interest rate.

On a visit last month to Nevada, a key swing state among the hardest-hit by the popped housing bubble, Obama asked voters to give his plans more time. He chose to deliver the message while standing in front of a Reno home with a couple whose refinance under HARP saved them $240 on their monthly payment.

The president’s speech all but acknowledged that the recent changes were more tweaks than sweeping reforms. He urged his audience to pressure lawmakers to allow underwater borrowers with privately backed mortgages to switch into cheaper government loans.

‘Nag Them’

“Nag them until they actually get it done,” Obama said. “It’s one small step that will help us create the kind of economy that all Americans deserve.”

The Reno couple who hosted Obama, Paul and Valerie Keller, also have modest goals after being crushed in the credit crisis.

Their troubles started when customers of Paul Keller’s home-remodeling business stopped paying bills as the economy soured, Keller said in a phone interview. In a 2007 refinance, the couple took $51,000 out of their home’s equity to cover his business debts. Then their home’s value plunged from about $250,000 to $100,000, with $168,000 still left on the loan.

Lowering the monthly payment “is nice, and the HARP program did work for us,” Keller said.

He said he and his wife aren’t looking to do more than escape without any more financial disasters.

“Breaking even -- at this point that’s the goal,” Keller said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Clea Benson in Washington at cbenson20@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Maura Reynolds at mreynolds34@bloomberg.net
.
®2012 BLOOMBERG L.P. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 11, 2012, 08:09:28 PM
Obama donors get deal; depositors get ‘stiffed again’ - FDIC eases settlement for bankers
Washington Times ^ | 6/10/12 | Chuck Neubauer
Posted on June 10, 2012 11:55:54 PM EDT by Nachum

A billionaire Chicago family that has donated and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for President Obama got a deal from the federal government to avoid paying all of a $460 million settlement it agreed to in the 2001 failure of a Chicago-area bank it owned, while 1,400 former depositors are still owed more than $10 million in lost savings.

And now, 11 years later, the prospect that any of the depositors will get their money back is bleak.

The Pritzker family, which made its fortune in hotels and manufacturing, agreed to a $460 million settlement offer in December 2001 to avoid sanctions and civil lawsuits in the failure of Superior Bank in Hinsdale, Ill.

But after paying $316 million of the interest-free debt, the family quietly struck a deal with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) in June 2011 to discount the balance in return for paying off the debt early.

“We have been stiffed again,” said Fran Sweet, 67, a depositor still owed $70,000. “It is a lot to lose. We are not wealthy people. We are white-collar and blue-collar workers who saved this money, [or] thought we saved this money.”

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 13, 2012, 10:56:32 AM
Obama Trade Document Leaked, Revealing New Corporate Powers And Broken Campaign Promises

www.huffingtonpost.com

Posted: 06/13/2012 9:17 am Updated: 06/13/2012 12:22 pm




WASHINGTON -- A critical document from President Barack Obama's free trade negotiations with eight Pacific nations was leaked online early Wednesday morning, revealing that the administration intends to bestow radical new political powers upon multinational corporations, contradicting prior promises.

The leaked document has been posted on the website of Public Citizen, a long-time critic of the administration's trade objectives. The new leak follows substantial controversy surrounding the secrecy of the talks, in which some members of Congress have complained they are not being given the same access to trade documents that corporate officials receive.

"The outrageous stuff in this leaked text may well be why U.S. trade officials have been so extremely secretive about these past two years of [trade] negotiations," said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch in a written statement.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) has been so incensed by the lack of access as to introduce legislation requiring further disclosure. House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) has gone so far as to leak a separate document from the talks on his website. Other Senators are considering writing a letter to Ron Kirk, the top trade negotiator under Obama, demanding more disclosure.

The newly leaked document is one of the most controversial of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact. It addresses a broad sweep of regulations governing international investment and reveals the Obama administration's advocacy for policies that environmental activists, financial reform advocates and labor unions have long rejected for eroding key protections currently in domestic laws.

Under the agreement currently being advocated by the Obama administration, American corporations would continue to be subject to domestic laws and regulations on the environment, banking and other issues. But foreign corporations operating within the U.S. would be permitted to appeal key American legal or regulatory rulings to an international tribunal. That international tribunal would be granted the power to overrule American law and impose trade sanctions on the United States for failing to abide by its rulings.

The terms run contrary to campaign promises issued by Obama and the Democratic Party during the 2008 campaign.




"We will not negotiate bilateral trade agreements that stop the government from protecting the environment, food safety, or the health of its citizens; give greater rights to foreign investors than to U.S. investors; require the privatization of our vital public services; or prevent developing country governments from adopting humanitarian licensing policies to improve access to life-saving medications," reads the campaign document.

 Yet nearly all of those vows are violated by the leaked Trans-Pacific document. The one that is not contravened in the present document -- regarding access to life-saving medication -- is in conflict with a previously leaked document on intellectual property (IP) standards.

"Bush was better than Obama on this," said Judit Rius, U.S. manager of Doctors Without Borders Access to Medicines Campaign, referring to the medication rules. "It's pathetic, but it is what it is. The world's upside-down."

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative insists that while broad standards require many medical patents and IP rules that would increase the price of medications, the U.S. intends to work with countries involved in the Trans-Pacific talks to ensure that the agreement does not restrict access to life-saving drugs.

USTR was not immediately available to comment on the newly leaked investment chapter of the Trans-Pacific deal, and has previously stated that it cannot comment on the terms of an allegedly leaked document.

That statement is belied somewhat by recent American efforts in other international negotiations to establish controversial medical patents that grant companies long-term monopolies on life-saving medications. Those monopolies increase drug prices, which impede access to medications, particularly in developing nations. The World Health Organization and dozens of nonprofit public health groups have objected to the standards sought by the Obama administration. Two United Nations groups recently urged global governments not to agree to trade terms currently being advocated by the Obama administration, on the grounds that such rules would hurt public health.

Such foreign investment standards have also come under fire at home, from both conservative sovereignty purists and progressive activists for the potential to hamper domestic priorities implemented by democratically elected leaders. The North American Free Trade Agreement, passed by Congress in 1993, and a host of subsequent trade pacts granted corporations new powers that had previously been reserved for sovereign nations and that have allowed companies to sue nations directly over issues.

While the current trade deal could pose a challenge to American sovereignty, large corporations headquartered in the U.S. could potentially benefit from it by using the same terms to oppose the laws of foreign governments. If one of the eight Pacific nations involved in the talks passes a new rule to which an American firm objects, that U.S. company could take the country to court directly in international tribunals.

Public Citizen challenged the independence of these international tribunals, noting that "The tribunals would be staffed by private sector lawyers that rotate between acting as 'judges' and as advocates for the investors suing the governments," according to the text of the agreement.

In early June, a tribunal at the World Bank agreed to hear a case involving similar foreign investment standards, in which El Salvador banned cyanide-based gold mining on the basis of objections from the Catholic Church and environmental activists. If the World Bank rules against El Salvador, it could overturn the nation's domestic laws at the behest of a foreign corporation.

Speaking to the environmental concerns raised by the leaked document, Margrete Strand Rangnes, Labor and Trade Director for the Sierra Club, an environmental group said, "Our worst fears about the investment chapter have been confirmed by this leaked text ... This investment chapter would severely undermine attempts to strengthen environmental law and policy."

Basic public health and land-use rules would be subject to challenge before an international tribunal, as would bank regulations at capital levels that might be used to stymie bank runs or financial crises. The IMF has advocated the use of such capital controls, which would be prohibited under the current version of the leaked trade pact. Although several countries have proposed exceptions that would allow them to regulate speculative financial bets, the U.S. has resisted those proposals, according to Public Citizen.

Trans-Pacific negotiations have been taking place throughout the Obama presidency. The deal is strongly supported by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the top lobbying group for American corporations. Obama's Republican opponent in the 2012 presidential elections, Mitt Romney, has urged the U.S. to finalize the deal as soon as possible.

This post has been updated to include comment from the Sierra Club.




________________________ ________________________ _________________


And you stupid fucks plan on voting for this again? 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 15, 2012, 02:52:59 AM
Obama Energy Dept. awards $2 million grant to solar company linked with Van Jones
The Daily Caller ^ | 06/14/2012 | Hal Libby
Posted on June 15, 2012 4:35:06 AM EDT by markomalley

On Wednesday the Department of Energy began financing solar power installation research with a $2 million award to Solar Mosaic. The solar energy research company has former Obama “green jobs” czar Van Jones listed as an advisor. It also employed Rebuild the Dream, Jones’ firm, to do its public relations work.

The DOE’s grant money will be distributed to nine companies in four states. Solar Mosaic received the most money, four times the amount of most other grants.

Jones resigned his post in the Obama administration three years ago amid controversy stemming from his past remarks.

Before working in the Obama White House, Jones signed a petition alleging officials in the George W. Bush administration “may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war.”

Jones later made crude remarks about Republicans in a public speech and expressed support for Mumia-Abu Jamal, a death row inmate convicted of killing a Philadelphia police officer.

It’s unclear whether the Department of Energy knew of Jones’ position at Solar Mosaic. Agency spokeswoman Jen Strutsman told The Daily Caller that grantmaking was “decided solely on the merits of the project, assessed by career civil servants.”

“Each of the awards … was selected because of its technology and the project’s potential to reduce the cost of solar energy for American families and businesses,” she added.

Van Jones did not respond to requests for comment.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 15, 2012, 05:03:40 AM
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2159554/Barack-Obama-New-York-President-jets-evening-star-studded-fundraisers.html#ixzz1xrBM6E6y


So basically we paid for obama's star studded bash w the girls last night because of his 15 minute fake photo op at WTC.


FUBO you pofs! 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 16, 2012, 04:01:06 AM
HHS Inks $20 Million Contract to Sell Obamacare to Skeptical Public! (Before SCOTUS/Election Day)
Heritage Foundation ^ | Lachlan Markay
Posted on June 14, 2012 10:47:57 PM EDT by MindBender26

The Department of Health and Human Services has inked a $20 million contract with a public-relations firm to sell aspects of Obamacare to the American public.

The PR push is part of a sustained effort to sell the unpopular Obamacare law to the American public. Last year, HHS asked Congress to quadruple the budget for its public affairs office – to nearly $20 million – and nearly double the size of the office’s staff. The department insisted the changes were necessary to “help Americans understand and access their benefits and information under the law.”

•The Obama HHS launched a campaign to track Internet searches and to use online search engines such as Google and Yahoo to drive traffic to a government website promoting Obama’s health care overhaul. Using “pay-per-click” advertising tools, such as Google Adwords, HHS purposely targeted people searching the term “Obamacare,” a word that has been described as “disparaging” by political agents of the president.

•According to a budget summary prepared by Ogilvy, from October 2010 through February 2011, the Obama administration spent $1,435,009 on these online advertisements alone, including advertising campaigns with Google and Yahoo, almost $300,000 per month.

•A number of documents address the need to target the Obamacare propaganda campaign to Hispanics, blacks, and women. For example, according to an email from Chris Beakey, vice president of Ogilvy PR Worldwide, to HHS officials on Dec. 16, 2010, summarizing a conference call, “You want to utilize the bulk of their paid media efforts (which would include expenditures for Radio One and Univision) on media that reaches African Americans and Hispanics. The money will go farther and these audiences continue to be a top priority.”

The Obama administration has also coordinated with liberal activist groups and friendly media organizations to spin the law in a positive light.

(Excerpt) Read more at blog.heritage.org ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 18, 2012, 03:44:47 AM
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Barack Obama the Shape Shifter
Townhall.com ^ | June 18, 2012 | Lurita Doan
Posted on June 18, 2012 4:11:08 AM EDT by Kaslin

Barack Obama does lip service to the concept of entrepreneurship and small business ownership and, as he moves full tilt into election campaign mode, repeatedly cues up small business photo ops in an effort to become all things for all people. Like a shape-shifter from a sci-fi film, Obama’s primary skill is to appear to be something he is not, as he repeatedly masks his full-tilt assault on entrepreneurs and small businesses.

Consider the many, small business photo-ops that Team Obama has staged in the past few months, in New York, Ohio, Wisconsin, Georgia, Michigan, and Florida. At the same time, the regulatory costs and burdens of Obama’s policies have fallen heavily on the small business community, even as the net worth of Americans has plunged 40% in the past three years under the Obama Administration.

Barack Obama has, arguably, destroyed more wealth during his three years in office than almost any other individual in the history of the United States. And much of this destruction has occurred because Obama is anti-small business and anti-entrepreneurship. Much of this destruction of the economy has occurred because Barack Obama does not understand that business owners and risk takers are what grow an economy, and when the government creates an environment of instability, uncertainty, scapegoatism, topped off with draconian tax regulations, businesses and the economy suffer.

To Obama’s thinking, small business owners are considered part of the “rich”, and thus have become the whipping boy of the Obama Administration. The group labeled “rich”, earning $200,000 or more annually, whom Barack Obama believes need to be taxed at 40% or higher is mainly composed of small business owners, sole proprietors and entrepreneurs, who file their business taxes on Schedules and addenda to their personal income taxes.

Consider, too, that the group hardest hit by the mandates of Obamacare is the small business community which will be required to provide government-legislated healthcare options to employees, regardless of business size and profitability. The new rate hikes due to Obamacare may result in businesses facing a 9% increase in the cost of healthcare premiums. For many small businesses, 9% oftentimes represents the business' entire profit that year, so the Obamacare mandate could wipe out the fruits of an entire year's effort, or even worse, put a small business in the red.

The sad story goes on, as the group hardest hit by the reporting requirements of the Obama Administration policies is the small business community, where the SBA estimates that the cost of the various reports now required by the federal government cost approximately $10,000 to $20,000 dollars—often more than what the average small business makes in profit annually.

The proof that the small business community is the hardest hit by the Obama Administration’s anti-business policies is evidenced in several surveys that have been released this past month.

Small businesses are the biggest employer for minorities and teenagers. But, hiring by small business has slowed to the lowest point ever measured over a ten year period—which also helps to explain the disastrous unemployment numbers for minorities and teens. (The Administration has been trying to posit that teen hiring improved in May, but studies show that teens are discouraged and, thus, there are fewer teens in the market looking for jobs.)

Since small businesses are not hiring, they are also not borrowing as much—which affects the banking industry. Business lending to small business has slowed. Small loans to business of $1 million or less have been shrinking consistently since June 2008.

Average monthly pay for all small business employees decreased to $2,688 in May, a decrease of 13 percent.

The construction sector which has a large proportion of small businesses is, as a direct result of Obama’s anti-business assault is also in serious trouble. Construction sector revenue stopped growing at the beginning of 2006, began a slow decline in mid 2007, and then continued a more dramatic decline starting in mid-2008

“The most common source of startup capital for immigrant-owned businesses is personal or family savings, with roughly two-thirds of businesses reporting this source of startup capital”. But, the devastation within the economy over the past three years means that there’s a lot less “family savings” available for use as startup capital.

There’s an oft heard saying “small businesses need a hand up, not a hand out”, but in the Obama Administration, these kinds of assistance to small businesses are regarded, incorrectly, as one in the same.

The belief that one person can make a difference, can create a thing of value with no help from the government is antithetical to everything that Obama believes. Furthermore, the entrepreneurial ideology scares Obama because business owners act in direct opposition to the kind of government-doled out opportunities that Obama wants Americans to think is the best they can do.

The 2012 election is all about the government and its relationship to the American people and American business. That’s it. That’s all. Whether the issue under discussion is the economy, strengthening the capital markets, the bloated entitlement system, the military, American involvement overseas, Greek debt, healthcare legislation, attracting talented and educated workers, the tax code, or the risks and rewards of being an American, there’s just one degree of separation from these issues and the Obama Administration’s heavy-handed, regulatory overreaching into the lives of Americans.

Barack Obama’s policies cannot and will not work, because the Obama Administration does not truly believe that the economic success of America is intrinsically tied to the success of the American small business community.

And so, our shape-shifting president hopes to disguise his antipathy towards business, entrepreneurs and small business leaders, as he moves skillfully around the country in one staged photo-op after another. Each carefully orchestrated to mask the economic destruction caused by his policies.

Americans should watch how effortlessly Obama shifts his shapes, how effortlessly Obama dons whatever mask is calculated to disguise his intents and best serve his reelection efforts. Americans better say a prayer for the small businesses and entrepreneurs pitted against Barack Obama—a most formidable foe, capable of destroying vast amounts of wealth, ushering in even more restrict regulations, and killing off job creators.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: whork on June 18, 2012, 03:58:45 AM
I need a lawyer can you show up in court and NOT talk Obama and Socialism? :)
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 18, 2012, 04:06:15 AM
I need a lawyer can you show up in court and NOT talk Obama and Socialism? :)

I don't represent pedos sorry.   
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: whork on June 18, 2012, 05:13:10 AM
I don't represent pedos sorry.   

Haha auch nice comeback
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 18, 2012, 07:37:19 AM
King Con: The Legend of Obama
 Sultan Knish ^ | Sunday, June 17, 2012 | Daniel Greenfield





Let us suppose for a moment that Obama's endorsement of gay marriage was a courageous step, rather than an admission of an opinion that everyone but a few dupes knew he already held. Now let's allow that moment to pass, because if, as liberals say, it was the right thing to do, then why did he wait so long to do it?

(A preview of the next Newsweek cover) When Obama first came out against gay marriage, he was doing it to pander to voters. Now that he came out for gay marriage, he was pandering to a different set of voters. A small set with deep pockets who needed a reason to cheer him and donate to him.

No matter how many rainbow halos Newsweek sticks around his photoshopped head, there is no escaping the inescapable conclusion that Obama's alternating opposition and support for two men holding hands in a Las Vegas chapel while an Elvis impersonator pronounces them man and man, has nothing to do with his ideals and everything to do with precise political calculations.

Liberal apologetics explain Obama's decline as the woes of a naive idealistic lad, another Mr. Smith who spends too much stuttering and playing golf, to be able to properly explain to America why it needs to get in touch with its inner liberal child. But if Obama had been that fellow, he would have given his Adam and Steve speech a few days into his administration, not after a few years and some heckling from gay rights advocates.

Obama's Dream Act is a creature from the same closet. Trade in the rainbow halo for a tricolor sombrero and give Latino voters something to chew on going into the election. There's nothing idealistic about the maneuver. Much as liberals want their Josiah Bartlet, instead they've got David Hampton, who's slick, smooth and completely unprincipled.

If legalizing illegals is the right thing to do, then like gay marriage, it was the right thing to have done years ago. Instead the timing testifies that it wasn't the right to do for America. It was the right thing to do for Obama.

Obama deciding to carpet bomb American jobs would be bad enough, but what's worse is that he did it in the service of his own needs. It's grand scale policymaking whose only purpose is to get one man another four years doing a job that he isn't very good at. And if a few hundred thousand Americans have to lose their jobs for him to get his back, that doesn't bother him.

Liberals can defend a politician who comes out for gay marriage or legalizing aliens, but how do you defend a man who does these things not because he believes in them, but because they're convenient for him at a given place and time. You can't defend him as a deep thinker who doesn't seem to know how to handle real world politics. And you certainly can't defend him as a babe in the woods who just wants to make the country a better place. A man who does these things has only one agenda and all the liberal pieties come second to keeping his ass firmly in the Oval Office chair.

The unpleasant truth that Obama supporters have to face is that he isn't losing because of anything that the Republicans have done. He isn't losing because of FOX News or Rush Limbaugh. Those are reasons why Republicans are winning, but they're not the reason why he's losing.

Americans generally don't hate him. What they hate is seeing their finances unravel while the only thing he has to offer them is another sonorous speech that tries to remix FDR, JFK and LBJ but only leaves them worried and scratching their heads.

Obama in 2008 was like Madoff in the 90's. He had a good suit and an even better line. Mostly he made people feel like he was going places and if they hitched their wagon to his hybrid, they would go places too. But Obama in 2012 is more Madoff in 2008. The patter is still good, but nobody's seeing any money and they're starting to get worried. Suddenly the, "Let's invest trillions in America" line sounds like the biggest scam in the world.

Every time Obama walks out to give another speech, what hundreds of millions of people hear is a drawn out, "Just trust me." The check is in the mail. I sent it out last week. You want me to talk to Helen in accounting, I can do that. I'll go talk to her right now. We'll clear this thing right up. But I promise you'll get your money. I just have to work a few things out. But it's in the mail. Just trust me.

Liberals agonize that Obama isn't communicating to the American people. But he is communicating, the problem is that he has nothing to communicate to them. Just another round of blaming everyone else while telling people that "the rich" have their money. And once people have listened to that, once they've sat through another 54 minutes of, "Some say that ______, but I say_______" what then?

Then you go back to the people who gave you money when you were just working your way up. The people you began ignoring once you got into the big leagues. But now you come right back to them and endorse gay marriage. No more "not defending" the Defense of Marriage Act, which happens to be law. No more "not enforcing" Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Now you're committed.

Now you'll openly endorse gay marriage, and stop enforcing whatever relevant laws remain, because what the hell, the white men care about that sort of thing are never going to vote for you anyway. But if they did, if you could get all those white men back, why you'd run out on your gay pride fundraiser and be over to Virginia or North Carolina in a minute, denying that you ever contemplated accepting Adam and Steve.

Any gay donors who don't know that Obama is as reliably politically monogamous as David Bowie, will figure it out when he begins carving out a new territory in the dark hours of the election. Just as Latinos will figure out that a man who will deport them in the hopes of boosting employment numbers and then offer them a "Get Out of Deportation" card before the election, is about as likely to keep his word to them, as he is to Middle America.

Obama became popular whoring himself out to Chicago's aging Socialists on an Anti-War platform. But before you could whistle, "Hail to the Chief", he was in office and had his war on. Liberals who backed Obama over Hillary Clinton on his anti-war credentials, might just as easily have gone with John Edwards. They would have been screwed either way.

Now that Obama has done the gays and Latinos, look for him to go running back to the anti-warries to show them how many wars he's ended. And just like gay marriage and the Dream Non-Act, he did it right in time for the election.

"Afghanistan? Taken care of. Gay marriage, done. Dream Act, done. We've got gay illegal alien soldiers getting married in empty cells in Guantanamo Bay. What more do you guys want from me?"

How about the truth? But that's the one thing that Obama doesn't give anyone. You can have made up stories about his agonizing quest to come to terms with being a half-black half-hippie space alien, but don't ask him what he's actually going to do a year from now or whom, if anyone, he's loyal to. If you want a speech that invokes the Gettysburg Address and the time that his white grandmother said something racist, he can have that for you in 15 minutes or less. But don't ask him why he violated every promise that he ever made, often more than once.

David Hampton conned money out of wealthy Hollywood liberals by pretending to be Sidney Poitier's son. Obama conned money out of them by pretending to be America's son, the man who would finally reconcile their contradictory identities as Americans and as liberals by inspiring the country to be as liberal as it could be. Like David Hampton, Obama was lying to them.

Obama certainly tilted America leftward, but he didn't do it through inspiration, he did it through deception. This was not an administration that created a new consensus, but one that functioned as its own closed door consensus that it occasionally stepped out to announce to the American People.

Not only didn't Obama win the argument, but he lost the election. Congress snapped back to the right so fast that it might have been a rubber band on steroids. And this was to Obama's advantage because it allowed him to spend the next two years blaming his own laziness, corruption and ineptitude on a Congress which had only tilted right because of him.

Most legends are about heroic deaths. The warrior who falls in defense of his cause. His nobility enshrined in defeat. That's the story that liberals want to tell about Obama. A great man who was too good for us. Who fell in the electoral field because he was too honest, too decent and too right for us to acknowledge his virtues. But that's not the story of Obama. It's not even in the same fairy kingdom as his story.

Obama isn't losing because he's too good to cheat, too noble to mess with the political process, too decent to answer the evil Republicans in kind, too idealistic to turn the system to his advantage, or any of the ridiculous myths being spun to explain his fall. He is losing because he has done all these things and more, in the service of nothing but his own power.

Before Obama lied to America, he lied to the left. Before he cheated us, he cheated them. Now he comes to them with some pink underwear and a tricolor sombrero and the people he conned eagerly cheer for him, the way that investors cheered when despite all the investigations around him, he sent them a check.

"If it was all scam, why would he be sending us money? If it's all a scam, why did he endorse gay marriage and illegal aliens?" That's the mark's question that hangs in the air and there is no answer. The question is already the answer. If you're looking for proof that you haven't been conned, it's the best proof that the con has already happened.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 18, 2012, 09:48:29 AM
Google: Obama Administration Increases Requests for Content Removal
 Newsmax ^ | 6/18/12 | Thomson/Reuters




U.S. authorities are leading the charge as governments around the world pepper Google (GOOG) with more demands to remove online content and turn over information about people using its Internet search engine, YouTube video site and other services.  

Google provided a glimpse at the onslaught of government requests in a summary posted on its website late Sunday. The breakdown covers the final six months of last year. It's the fifth time that Google has released a six-month snapshot of government requests since the company engaged in a high-profile battle over online censorship with China's communist leadership in 2010.

The country-by-country capsule illustrates the pressure Google faces as it tries to obey the disparate laws in various countries while trying to uphold its commitment to free expression and protect the sanctity its more than 1 billion users' personal information.

Governments zero in on Google because its services have become staples of our digital-driven lives. Besides running the Internet's most dominant search engine, Google owns the most watched video site in YouTube, operates widely used blogging and email services and distributes Android, the top operating system on mobile phones. During the past year, Google has focused on expanding Plus, a social networking service, that boasts more than 170 million users.


(Excerpt) Read more at newsmax.com ...



________________________ ________________________ _______________________


HOPE AND CHANGE!
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 18, 2012, 02:56:40 PM
Obama Administration's Drone Death Figures Don't Add Up


ProPublica  |  By Justin Elliott Posted: 06/18/2012 4:59 pm

By Justin Elliott ProPublica
 June 18, 2012, 4:12 p.m.



Last month, a "senior administration official" said the number of civilians killed in drone strikes in Pakistan under President Obama is in the "single digits." But last year "U.S. officials" said drones in Pakistan killed about 30 civilians in just a yearlong stretch under Obama.

Both claims can't be true.

A centerpiece of President Obama's national security strategy, drones strikes in Pakistan are credited by the administration with crippling Al Qaeda but criticized by human rights groups and others for being conducted in secret and killing civilians. The underlying facts are often in dispute and claims about how many people died and who they were vary widely.

So we decided to narrow it down to just one issue: have the administration's own claims been consistent?

We collected claims by the administration about deaths from drone strikes in Pakistan and compared each one not to local reports but rather to other administration claims. The numbers sometimes do not add up. (Check out our interactive graphic to explore the claims.)

Even setting aside the discrepancy between official and outside estimates of civilian deaths, our analysis shows that the administration's own figures quoted over the years raise questions about their credibility.
 



There have been 307 American drone strikes in Pakistan since 2004, according to a New America Foundation count. Just 44 occurred during the Bush administration. President Obama has greatly expanded the use of drones to attack suspected members of Al Qaeda, the Pakistani Taliban, and other groups in Pakistan's remote northwest region.

Obama officials generally do not comment by name on the drone strikes in Pakistan, but they frequently talk about it to reporters (including us) on condition of anonymity. Often those anonymously sourced comments have come in response to outside tallies of civilian deaths from drone attacks, which are generally much higher than the administration's own figures.

The outright contradiction we noted above comes from two claims made about a year apart:

* April 22, 2011 McClatchy reports that U.S. officials claim "about 30" civilians died in the year between August 2009 and August 2010.

* May 29, 2012 The New York Times reports that, according to a senior Obama administration official, the number of civilians killed in drone strikes in Pakistan under president Obama is in the "single digits."

As we also show in our interactive graphic, other anonymous administration claims about civilian deaths are possible but imply conclusions that seem improbable.

Consider:

* April 26, 2010 The Washington Post quotes an "internal CIA accounting" saying that "just over 20 civilians" have been killed by drones in Pakistan since January 2009.

* Aug. 11, 2011 The New York Times reports that CIA officers claim zero civilians were killed since May 2010

* Aug. 12, 2011 CNN quoted a U.S. official saying there were 50 civilians killed over the years in drones strike in Pakistan.

If this set of claims is assumed to be accurate, it suggests that the majority of the 50 total civilian deaths occurred during the Bush administration — when the drone program was still in its infancy. As we've noted, in the entire Bush administration, there were 44 strikes. In the Obama administration through Aug. 12, 2011, there were 222. So according to this set of claims more civilians died in just 44 strikes under Bush than did in 222 strikes under Obama. (Again, the graphic is helpful to assess the administration assertions.)

Consider also these three claims, which imply two lengthy periods when zero or almost zero civilians were killed in drone strikes:

* September 10, 2010 Newsweek quotes a government estimate that "about 30" civilians were killed since the beginning of 2008.

* April 22, 2011 McClatchy reports that U.S. officials claim "about 30" civilians died in the year between August 2009 and August 2010.

* July 15, 2011 Reuters quotes a source familiar with the drone program as saying "about 30" civilians were killed since July 2008.

It's possible that all these claims are true. But if they are, it implies that the government believes there were zero or almost zero civilian deaths between the beginning of 2008 and August 2009, and then again zero deaths between August 2010 and July 2011. Those periods comprise a total of 182 strikes.

The administration has rejected in the strongest terms outside claims of a high civilian toll from the drone attacks.

Those outside estimates also vary widely. A count by Bill Roggio, editor of the website the Long War Journal, which bases its estimates on news reports, puts the number of civilian killed in Pakistan at 138. The New America Foundation estimates that, based on press reports, between 293 and 471 civilians have been killed in the attacks. The London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which draws on a wider array of sources including researchers and lawyers in Pakistan, puts the number of civilians killed at between 482 and 832. The authors of the various estimates all emphasize that their counts are imperfect.

There are likely multiple reasons for the varying counts of civilian deaths from drone strikes in Pakistan. The attacks are executed remotely in often inaccessible regions. And there's the question of who U.S. officials are counting as civilians. A story last month in the New York Times reported that President Obama adopted a policy that "in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants."

There are also ongoing debates in the humanitarian law community about who the U.S. may legitimately target with drone strikes and how the CIA is applying the principle of proportionality — which holds that attacks that might cause civilian deaths must be proportional to the level of military advantage anticipated.

In a rare public comment on drone strikes, President Obama told an online town hall in January that the drones had not caused "a huge number of civilian casualties."

When giving their own figures on civilian deaths, administration officials are often countering local reports. In March 2011, for example, Pakistanisincluding the country's army chief accused a U.S. drone strike of hitting a peaceful meeting of tribal elders, killing around 40 people. An unnamed U.S. official rejected the accusations, telling the AP: "There's every indication that this was a group of terrorists, not a charity car wash in the Pakistani hinterlands."

Unnamed U.S. officials told the Los Angeles Times last year that "they are confident they know who has been killed because they watch each strike on video and gather intelligence in the aftermath, observing funerals for the dead and eavesdropping on conversations about the strikes."

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said during a visit to Pakistan this month that there should be investigation of killings of civilians by drones and that victims should be compensated. The U.S. has given compensation to victims of airstrikes in Afghanistan but there are no reports of victims of drone strikes in Pakistan being compensated.

Since the various administration statements over the years were almost all quoted anonymously, it's impossible to go back to the officials in question to ask them about contradictions.

Asked about the apparent contradictions, National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor told ProPublica: "[W]e simply do not comment on alleged drone strikes."

Additional reporting by Cora Currier.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/18/drones-obama-administration-figures_n_1607030.html






drip drip drip   
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 20, 2012, 06:16:05 AM
How Obama Bureaucrats Fueled Western Wildfires
 Townhall.com ^ | June 20, 2012 | Michelle Malkin




COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. -- The smell of singed air here is inescapable. Less than 50 miles west of my neighborhood, the latest wildfire has spread across 1,100 acres. It's the fifth active blaze to erupt in our state over the past month. But ashes aren't the only things smoldering.

The Obama administration's neglect of the federal government's aerial tanker fleet raises acrid questions about its core public safety priorities. Bipartisan complaints goaded the White House into signing a Band-Aid fix last week. But it smacks more of election-year gesture politics: Too little, too late, too fake.

Ten years ago, the feds had a fleet of 44 firefighting planes. Today, the number is down to nine for the entire country. Last summer, Obama's National Forest Service canceled a key federal contract with Sacramento-based Aero Union just as last season's wildfires were raging. Aero Union had supplied eight vital air tankers to Washington's dwindling aerial firefighting fleet. Two weeks later, the company closed down, and 60 employees lost their jobs. Aero Union had been a leader in the business for a half-century.  

Why were they grounded? National Forest Service bureaucrats and some media accounts cite "safety" concerns. But as California GOP Rep. Dan Lungren noted in a letter obtained by reporter Audrey Hudson of the conservative D.C. newspaper Human Events last year, a Federal Aviation Administration representative said it was a contractual/compliance matter, not safety, that doomed Aero Union's fleet.

"I am deeply troubled by the Forest Service's sudden action," Lungren warned, "particularly as California enters into the fire season. Our aerial firefighting fleet is already seriously undercapitalized." Both the U.S. Government Accountability Office and the Department of Agriculture's Inspector General have been critical of the Forest Service's handling of the matter. All of this has been known to the Obama administration since it took the reins in 2009.

Nine months after Lungren's warning, the deadly High Park fire in Larimer County, Colo., claimed a grandmother's life, destroyed 189 homes and scorched nearly 60,000 acres. Arizona, New Mexico, Washington and Wyoming also have battled infernos this summer.

After months of dire red flags from a diverse group of politicians ranging from Texas GOP Gov. Rick Perry and Arizona GOP Sen. Jon Kyl to Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden and New Mexico Democratic Sen. Jeff Bingaman, President Obama finally signed emergency legislation last week to expedite the contracting process. Obama will borrow planes from Canada and provide $24 million for new aerial tanker contracts.

But the money won't come until next year, and the dog-and-pony rescue moves will not result in any immediate relief. "It's nice, but this problem isn't fixed with a stroke of the pen," former Forest Service official and bomber pilot Tony Kern told the Denver Post this week. "You need to have the airplanes available now." Veteran wildland firefighter and blogger Bill Gabbert of WildfireToday.com adds: "The USFS should have awarded contracts for at least 20 additional air tankers, not 7."

Imagine if Obama's Forest Service had been a private company. White House eco-radicals would be rushing to place their "boots on the necks" of the bureaucrats who made the fateful decision to put an experienced aerial tanker firm out of business as wildfires raged and the available rescue fleet shrunk.

"The Obama administration is scrambling now to help ensure the Forest Service has the air assets it needs to fight the ongoing inferno," Colorado free-market environmental watchdog Sean Paige reported at MonkeyWrenchingAmerica.c om last week. "But the crisis is bound to raise questions not just about whether the cancelled contract created additional weaknesses and vulnerabilities, but about what the administration has been doing over the past three summers to shore-up the service's air fleet."

Where there's smoke swirling over Team Obama there are usually flames of incompetence, cronyism and ideological zealotry at the source. The ultimate rescue mission? Evacuating Obama's wrecking crew from the White House permanently. November can't come soon enough.



________________________ ________________________ _________



Disgraceful.   Fuck you every obama voter.   
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 20, 2012, 06:37:29 AM
 :)
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: whork on June 20, 2012, 06:42:20 AM
If i got political info from AQ regarding a repub president would you take it seriously?
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 21, 2012, 09:52:01 AM
4 Pinocchios for Obama’s newest anti-Romney ad

Posted by Glenn Kesslerat 06:00 AM ET, 06/21/2012




“Running for governor, Mitt Romney campaigned as a job creator. But as a corporate raider, he shipped jobs to China and Mexico. As governor, he did the same thing: Outsourcing state jobs to India.”
 
— Voiceover of new Barack Obama campaign ad


The Obama campaign apparently loves to ding former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney with the charge of “outsourcing.” On several occasions, we have faulted the campaign for its claims, apparently to little avail.

 Now, all of the claims have been combined in one 30-second ad, with the added incendiary charge that Romney was a “corporate raider.” Let’s look anew at this material.

 

The Facts
 

 The phrase “corporate raider” has a particular meaning in the world of finance. Here’s the definition on Investopedia:



“An investor who buys a large number of shares in a corporation whose assets appear to be undervalued. The large share purchase would give the corporate raider significant voting rights, which could then be used to push changes in the company’s leadership  and management. This would increase share value and thus generate a massive return for the raider.”
 

In other words, this is generally an adversarial stance, in which an investor sees an undervalued asset and forces management to spin off assets, take the company private or break it up.

 In a previous life, The Fact Checker covered renowned corporate raiders such as Carl Icahn and his ilk. We also have closely studied Bain Capital and can find no examples that come close to this situation; its deals were done in close association with management. Indeed, Bain generally held onto its investments for four or five years, in contrast to the quick bust-em-ups of real corporate raiders. So calling Romney a “corporate raider” is a real stretch.

 So how does the Obama campaign justify this phrase? It cites a single Reuters story from last August, about a campaign stop in New Hampshire, written by a stringer, Jason McLure, who was previously based in Africa. Buried in the article is a reference to Romney as a “former corporate raider.”

 “Reuters typically refers to Romney as a ‘former private equity executive’ or something along those lines,” said Ros Krasny, the Boston bureau chief.  “Of the hundreds of times we have referenced Romney over the past year or more, honestly, that example from Jason must have just slipped through the net — 10 months ago.”

 A better source for Romney’s behavior as an investor might be someone who actually worked on Wall Street, such as former Obama auto czar Steven Rattner. “Bain Capital is not now, nor has it ever been, some kind of Gordon Gekko-like, fire-breathing corporate raider that slashed and burned companies, immolating jobs wherever they appear in its path,” Rattner wrote in Politico this year.

Regarding the outsourcing claims, we have frowned on these before. The Obama campaign rests its case on three examples of Bain-controlled companies sending jobs overseas. But only one of the examples — involving Holson Burns Group — took place when Romney was actively managing Bain Capital.

 Regarding the other claims, concerning Canadian electronics maker SMTC Manufacturing and customer service firm Modus Media, the Obama campaign tries to take advantage of a gray area in which Romney had stepped down from Bain — to manage the Salt Lake City Olympics — but had not sold his shares in the firm. We had previously given the Obama campaign Three Pinocchios for such tactics.

The Modus Media case is also not an example of shipping jobs overseas. The company closed one plant in California and transferred the jobs to North Carolina, Washington and Utah. At the same time, it opened an unrelated plant in Mexico. The Obama campaign once trumpeted the fact that we had dinged a conservative Super PAC for making the same leap in logic.

 The claim that Romney outsourced jobs as governor is equally overblown.

 This concerns Romney’s veto of a bill that would have prohibited Massachusetts from contracting with companies that outsourced the state’s work to other countries. Lawmakers were especially concerned about a $160,000-a-month contract with Citigroup to operate a system of electronic food-stamp cards that included a customer phone service center in India.

Both the liberal editorial page of the Boston Globe and conservative editorial page of the Boston Herald urged Romney to veto the amendment, saying it would cost the state money. Romney agreed, saying the measure did not protect state jobs — the call center might have moved from India to another state — but “had the potential of costing our citizens a lot more money.” The Democratic-dominated Massachusetts legislature did not override his veto, even though it overturned 117 others, suggesting that there was little real support for the measure.

 When the food-stamp contract expired, the Massachusetts Department of Transitional Assistance insisted that those jobs be returned to the United States. But they ended up in a call center based in Utah — just as Romney had predicted.

As we mentioned, we recounted this ancient Massachusetts history before, giving the campaign Two Pinocchios. So we were very surprised that the Obama campaign cited that critical Fact Checker column as a source for the ad in its back-up materials. 

The ad also cites as a source a Boston Globe article from last month that merely reports on an earlier ad making similar charges. That’s highly circular reasoning — and is not fair play.

Upon hearing this ad was under consideration for a tough rating, the Obama campaign supplied reams of additional SEC documents regarding Romney’s ownership in Bain after he left for the Olympics, most of which we had examined previously when we first looked at this question. The campaign also supplied SEC documents showing that two of these companies, Modus and SMTC, as well as one called Stream International (a predecessor of Modus), earned money in part by helping other companies subcontract work overseas. Some of this business predated Romney’s departure from Bain, but thus far it seems a slim case for this particular ad.

“Romney can’t run from his record. At Bain and in Massachusetts, he had the chance to keep jobs in America and sent them overseas instead,” said Kara Carscaden, deputy press secretary for the Obama campaign. “Even while he was at the Olympics, Romney owned and profited from Bain, continues to profit from it today and cannot ignore what Bain did during that time. Whether it’s outsourcing public jobs to India or shipping private ones to Mexico and China, Romney’s record is clear.”

 

 

The Pinocchio Test
 

 The Obama campaign fails to make its case. On just about every level, this ad is misleading, unfair and untrue, from the use of “corporate raider” to its examples of alleged outsourcing.  Simply repeating the same debunked claims won’t make them any more correct.



Four Pinocchios

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/4-pinocchios-for-obamas-newest-anti-romney-ad/2012/06/20/gJQAGux6qV_blog.html?wprss=rss_fact-checker

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 21, 2012, 05:47:55 PM
Worldcom convict gets $7.5 (Million) loan guarantee from Obama’s stimulus [Tax Dollars for Crooks]
Washington Examiner ^ | 6/21/12 | Joel Gehrke
Posted on June 21, 2012 8:03:59 PM EDT by SoFloFreeper

David Myers, a former Worldcom executive who served 11 months in prison after being convicted of fraud, received a $7.5 million loan that was guaranteed by the federal government with money from the 2009 stimulus.

Worldcom filed the largest Chapter 11 bankruptcy in U.S. history 2002, after three years of “falsely professing financial growth and profitability to increase the price of WorldCom’s stock.” As Worldcom controller, Myers was one of the three executives most intimately involved in perpetrating the fraud, which exaggerated that company’s value by $11 billion.

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2898017/posts






WTF! 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 21, 2012, 06:18:30 PM
Skip to comments.

Obama's Green-Jobs Fraud Exposed
IBD Editorials ^ | June 21, 2012 | Editor
Posted on June 21, 2012 8:49:46 PM EDT by Kaslin

Industrial Policy: For a $9 billion investment, the administration created just over 900 new, permanent jobs. We could've had 20,000 jobs building a pipeline with not a dollar of taxpayer money being wasted.

According to the report by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which is part of the U.S. Department of Energy, Section 1503 of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (aka the stimulus), the part that covers green energy projects got some $9 billion in stimulus cash for 2009-11 and created a whopping 910 direct jobs — those involved in the ongoing operation of the wind and solar projects that were funded.

Now, the report doesn't come right out and say this. You have to pick through it and look past the "indirect" jobs said to have been created by the manufacture and installation of the bird-chopping wind turbines and water-cleansed solar panels.

The administration has a most curious way of describing what a green job is, but if you count just the "direct" jobs, it cost taxpayers $9.8 million to create each of those long-term jobs.

Throw in the indirect jobs supporting the direct jobs estimate of 4,600 (we're confused too) and there are 5,510 total jobs (direct and indirect). Starting with the $9 billion in grants, the result to establish 5,510 jobs averages out to $1.63 million per job.

In an attempt to make things look not quite so wasteful, the report in its summary claims that for the 2009-11 time frame, there were an average 52,000-75,000 "direct and indirect jobs per year" created for the construction, installation and related work on the wind and solar projects

(Excerpt) Read more at news.investors.com ...

http://news.investors.com/article/615697/201206211849/green-stimulus-created-just-910-jobs.htm




Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 21, 2012, 06:48:35 PM
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-industry/et-cetera/top-ubs-executive-and-barrack-obamas-leading-fundraiser-robert-wolf-under-bank-scrutiny/articleshow/14329896.cms




Nice.   Obama Bundler getting TJE heat now. 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 22, 2012, 08:15:59 AM
Strassel: Axelrod's ObamaCare Dollars

Emails suggest the White House pushed business to the presidential adviser's former firm to sell the health-care law.

By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL



Rewind to 2009. The fight over ObamaCare is raging, and a few news outlets report that something looks ethically rotten in the White House. An outside group funded by industry is paying the former firm of senior presidential adviser David Axelrod to run ads in favor of the bill. That firm, AKPD Message and Media, still owes Mr. Axelrod money and employs his son.

The story quickly died, but emails recently released by the House Energy and Commerce Committee ought to resurrect it. The emails suggest the White House was intimately involved both in creating this lobby and hiring Mr. Axelrod's firm—which is as big an ethical no-no as it gets.
 
Mr. Axelrod—who left the White House last year—started AKPD in 1985. The firm earned millions helping run Barack Obama's 2008 campaign. Mr. Axelrod moved to the White House in 2009 and agreed to have AKPD buy him out for $2 million. But AKPD chose to pay Mr. Axelrod in annual installments—even as he worked in the West Wing. This agreement somehow passed muster with the Office of Government Ethics, though the situation at the very least should have walled off AKPD from working on White-House priorities.

It didn't. The White House and industry were working hand-in-glove to pass ObamaCare in 2009, and among the vehicles supplying ad support was an outfit named Healthy Economy Now (HEN). News stories at the time described this as a "coalition" that included the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the American Medical Association, and labor groups—suggesting these entities had started and controlled it.

House emails show HEN was in fact born at an April 15, 2009 meeting arranged by then-White House aide Jim Messina and a chief of staff for Democratic Sen. Max Baucus. The two politicos met at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) and invited representatives of business and labor.
 
A Service Employees International Union attendee sent an email to colleagues noting she'd been invited by the Baucus staffer, explaining: "Also present was Jim Messina. . . . They basically want to see adds linking HC reform to the economy. . . . there were not a lot of details, but we were told that we wd be getting a phone call. well that call came today."

The call was from Nick Baldick, a Democratic consultant who had worked on the Obama campaign and for the DSCC. Mr. Baldick started HEN. The only job of PhRMA and others was to fund it.

Meanwhile, Mr. Axelrod's old firm was hired to run the ads promoting ObamaCare. At the time, a HEN spokesman said HEN had done the hiring. But the emails suggest otherwise. In email after email, the contributors to HEN refer to four men as the "White House" team running health care. They included John Del Cecato and Larry Grisolano (partners at AKPD), as well as Andy Grossman (who once ran the DSCC) and Erik Smith, who had been a paid adviser to the Obama presidential campaign.

 In one email, PhRMA consultant Steve McMahon calls these four the "WH-designated folks." He explains to colleagues that Messrs. Grossman, Grisolano and Del Cecato "are very close to Axelrod," and that "they have been put in charge of the campaign to pass health reform." Ron Pollack, whose Families USA was part of the HEN coalition, explained to colleagues that "the team that is working with the White House on health-care reform. . . . [Grossman, Smith, Del Cecato, Grisolano] . . . would like to get together with us." This would provide "guidance from the White House about their messaging."

According to White House visitor logs, Mr. Smith had 28 appointments scheduled between May and August—17 made through Mr. Messina or his assistant. Mr. Grossman appears in the logs at least 19 times. Messrs. Del Cecato and Grisolano of AKPD also visited in the spring and summer, at least twice with Mr. Axelrod, who was deep in the health-care fight.

A 2009 PhRMA memo also makes clear that AKPD had been chosen before PhRMA joined HEN. It's also clear that some contributors didn't like the conflict of interest. When, in July 2009, a media outlet prepared to report AKPD's hiring, a PhRMA participant said: "This is a big problem." Mr. Baldick advises: "just say, AKPD is not working for PhRMA." AKPD and another firm, GMMB, would handle $12 million in ad business from HEN and work for a successor 501(c)4.
 
A basic rule of White House ethics is to avoid even the appearance of self-dealing or nepotism. If Mr. Axelrod or his West Wing chums pushed political business toward Mr. Axelrod's former firm, they contributed to his son's salary as well as to the ability of the firm to pay Mr. Axelrod what it still owed him. Could you imagine the press frenzy if Karl Rove had dome the same after he joined the White House?

Messrs. Axelrod and Messina are now in Chicago running Mr. Obama's campaign. Mr. Axelrod, the White House and a partner for AKPD didn't respond to requests for comment on their role in HEN, the tapping of Mr. Baldick, and the redolent hiring of AKPD. Until the White House explains all this, voters can fairly conclude that the President's political team took their Chicago brand of ethics into the White House.

Write to kim@wsj.com
 
A version of this article appeared June 22, 2012, on page A15 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Axelrod's ObamaCare Dollars.


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304765304577480871706139792.html?mod=hp_opinion




Disgraceful.   
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 24, 2012, 07:52:10 PM
http://offgridblogger.wordpress.com/2012/03/15/the-20-most-disgusting-things-from-barack-obama


Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 26, 2012, 05:52:18 AM
June 26, 2012
32 Grieving Parents with Absolute Moral Authority over Obama
By Stella Paul


I know you're busy writing to your friends to ask them to skip your birthday present this year and send the cash to Obama, but I just want to interrupt you for a minute to introduce you to 32 parents who probably won't be fundraising for Obama anytime soon.

Kent and Josephine Terry are the parents of slain Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, who sacrificed his life protecting ours.  Last week, they spoke up for the first time with a message to Obama, who has asserted executive privilege to hide documents on Operation Fast and Furious.

When asked what they'd say to Obama and Eric Holder, Kent Terry replied, "I probably couldn't say on camera what I'd like to say to them.  But I'd say get their heads out of their butt anyway."

(Please don't share this quote with the "important" gay activists whom Obama invited to the White House, where they ran riot, kissing and exposing their middle digits to Reagan's portrait.  They might get too excited.)

Brian Terry was murdered in December 2010 with guns from Obama's Fast and Furious program, which is politely (and fictitiously) described as a botched gun-tracing operation.  Somehow this "botching" resulted in the most violent Mexican drug cartels being armed with thousands of assault weapons, which they used to slaughter 300 Mexicans and Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.

I'm not buying that Obama ever had any interest in reining in Mexican gangs.  I think he and Holder looked across the border and said, "Hey, violent drug cartels with a bottomless capacity to launder cash and growing ties to Hezb'allah and Iranian terrorists.  Those are our kind of guys!"

Which brings us to Mary and Amador Zapata, the parents of slain ICE agent Jaime Zapata.  Last week, the Zapatas filed a $25-million wrongful death claim against the government.

Jaime Zapata was ambushed in a roadside attack in Mexico in February 2011, while working for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.  Highly informed sources say that Zapata was investigating Fast and Furious at the time of his murder.

The Zapatas' lawsuit claims that Jaime Zapata informed his supervisors that he had misgivings about the safety of his trip but was ordered to go anyway.  "All of these legitimate concerns were put aside ... and agents Avila and Zapata were required to follow orders," the lawyers wrote.

But, of course, Obama's withholding of Fast and Furious documents from Congress via executive privilege is all about "the principle of the matter," as spokesman Jay Carney asserted last week, with an admirably straight face.  Obama's heart is pure as the Chicago snow.

Next, I'd like you to meet Daris and Janet Long, the parents of the late Private William Long.  In June 2009, 23-year-old "Andy" Long was murdered at an Army recruitment center in Little Rock, Arkansas by an American-born Muslim convert.  Daris, an ex-Marine, is on a grief-stricken mission to see his son awarded a Purple Heart, since he was killed on active duty in a jihad-inspired attack.

But good luck with that in Obama's regime.  The purported commander-in-chief threatened to veto the 2012 Defense Authorization Act, because Congress had inserted a clause awarding Purple Hearts to Andy Long and the 12 murdered soldiers of Fort Hood.

Obama delights in handing out awards to those he deems worthy: why, just a few weeks ago, he gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Delores Huerta, honorary chair of the Democratic Socialists of America, which describes itself as "the principal U.S. affiliate of the Socialist International."

But Obama is not terribly keen at recognizing the sacrifices of those who serve.  (Although to be fair, he did tell troops stationed overseas, "You guys make a pretty good photo op.")

Obama's Department of "Justice" declined to press federal charges against Andy Long's murderer, Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, formerly known as Carlos Bledsoe.  Instead, the murder of a uniformed soldier on Army property was treated as a drive-by shooting.  Similarly, the murder of 12 soldiers and a civilian at Fort Hood was deemed a state-level offense of "workplace violence," despite the passionate jihadist proclivities of alleged shooter Major Nidal Hasan.

A riveting new documentary, Losing Our Sons, tells the story of Daris Long's quest for justice for his murdered son, and of Melvin Bledsoe's determination to expose the government's negligence that ruined the life of his promising son.  Melvin, an African-American small business owner in Memphis, sent Carlos to Tennessee State University in Nashville.  There he was recruited by radical Muslims, who sent him to a terrorist training camp in Yemen and brought him back to murder Andy Long.

Mike Huckabee featured Losing Our Sons on his Father's Day show on Fox, saying, "Get your friends and your family to see it.  It opened my eyes to some things, and I thought I was fairly informed.  And it is powerful.  It is a gut punch."

When a mentally unbalanced bereaved mother named Cindy Sheehan theatrically pursued President George Bush for months after her son Casey was killed in Iraq, she was proclaimed to have "absolute moral authority" by New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd.

Well, I hereby proclaim the absolute moral authority of the Terrys, Zapatas, Longs, and the parents of the 13 men and women murdered at Fort Hood.

Maybe these bereaved mothers and fathers should take inspiration from Cindy Sheehan and join together for some attention-grabbing theater inside the Democratic National Convention.  Considering all the anxious politicians beginning to bail out, they should find plenty of empty seats.

How about it?  Why not make some noise and raise some hell?  America is on your side.

And to prove it, let's all go to www.losingoursons.com and sign the petition to award a Purple Heart to Private William Long and the Fort Hood soldiers now.

Write Stella Paul at stellapundit@aol.com.


Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2012/06/32_grieving_parents_with_absolute_moral_authority_over_obama.html at June 26, 2012 - 07:49:45 AM CDT
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 26, 2012, 07:18:52 AM
[ Invalid YouTube link ]
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 26, 2012, 08:12:43 PM
Border Patrol Being Taught To Run, Hide & Throw Things, Not Shoot
Freedom Outpost ^ | June 26, 2012 | Tim Brown
Posted on June 26, 2012 11:04:23 PM EDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks

It appears that the Obama administration is not only getting in the face of the American people with their immigration policies, but they are also running a little private campaign of their own when it comes to the border patrol. Instead of the border patrol doing their job in an aggressive case in public, they are now being taught to run away and hide and only as a last resort are they to open fire. Wait! No! They can’t do that. They are supposed to become “aggressive” and “throw things.

You heard that right. Local 2544 posted a brief statement in regards to the new “training tactics” they are being taught. Welcome to the new world of Barack “The Golfer” Obama and Janet “Can I have another doughnut” Napolitano.

In another nauseating series of “Virtual Learning Center” brainwashing courses that Border Patrol agents are forced to sit behind a computer for hours and endure, we are now taught in an “Active Shooter” course that if we encounter a shooter in a public place we are to “run away” and “hide”. If we are cornered by such a shooter we are to (only as a last resort) become “aggressive” and “throw things” at him or her. We are then advised to “call law enforcement” and wait for their arrival (presumably, while more innocent victims are slaughtered). Shooting incidents cited in the course are Columbine, the Giffords shooting and the Virginia Tech shooting.
These types of mandatory brainwashing courses and the idiocy that accompanies them are simply stunning when they are force-fed to law enforcement officers. Anyone with an ounce of common sense knows that any three of the above shootings would have been stopped cold by an off-duty law enforcement officer or a law abiding citizen with a gun. The Fort Hood shooting would have been stopped cold by someone with a gun as well. The shooters in these situations depend on unarmed and scared victims. It gives them the power they seek. We could go on and on with examples of shootings that could have been stopped by someone with a firearm. One of the videos in this course actually shows a terrified female hiding behind a desk as an example of how to “hide” from some deranged shooter. Multiple quizzes throughout the course and a final test ensure repeatedly that we know that we only have three options when encountering some murderous thug in a public place. 1. Run away; 2. Hide; and 3. Only put up a fight as a last resort by acting aggressively and throwing things at the shooter. Not one mention anywhere of “if you are carrying a gun and you have the opportunity take the shooter out”. Calling 911 in these instances is obvious, but we all know that waiting on the arrival of uniformed law enforcement will ensure more people are killed, injured, or taken hostage. Telling law enforcement officers that in all instances they are to run away and hide from some thug while innocent victims are butchered is simply inexcusable and pathetic.

It is always comforting to know that for those of us who carry a weapon when we are off-duty, if we should encounter such a situation, stop a shooter and save countless lives, we can look forward to being disciplined or fired by the Border Patrol because we should have run away to hide and then maybe thrown objects at the deranged killer instead of taking action and stopping him with a firearm. This, in addition to the scrutiny and second-guessing that will come from local authorities and the inevitable possibility of lawsuits and criminal conviction.

Welcome to the New Patrol.

This is the kind of thing that makes you want to pull your hair out. We are in the middle of an investigation where this administration used an operation, which was called Fast and Furious but should have been called Dumb and Dangerous, that put thousands of weapons into the hands of some of Mexico’s most dangerous drug cartels. Some of these weapons were used to kill American and Mexican citizens, including border patrol agent Brian Terry. They want their people to be weak and cut off at the knees while the real criminals face no handicaps. This is a demonstration of absolute stupidity on the part of the Obama administration who provide such non-sensical training.

It’s not bad enough that the federal government, under this administration want our guns, but now they don’t seem to want border patrol to use theirs either. What kind of fantasy world do these lunatics, who are running the asylum, live in?
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 27, 2012, 06:31:39 PM
Colorado's 'Epic Firestorm' Reveals Danger of Air Force Cuts

Michael Auslin

June 27, 2012 12:10 PM

Colorado's wildfire has exploded into an "epic firestorm," in the words of Colorado Springs fire chief Richard Brown. Over 30,000 people have evacuated, and already hundreds of homes have been consumed. Ironically, the U.S. Air Force Academy has also been evacuated, at the very time that Colorado desperately needs more Air Force C-130s to fight the massive fire.

A C-130 fitted with the Modular Airborne FireFighting System (MAFFS) can drop 3,000 gallons of fire-retardant material in 5 seconds, and reload in just 15 minutes. This tempo is crucial to containing wildfires like the one devastating Colorado Springs. However, of a current fleet of nearly 380 C-130s, only eight can be fitted with the MAFFS—and four of them are already in the skies over Colorado. With another fire looming in the north of the state, there is no excess capacity to help protect civilian areas. That means thousands of exhausted firefighters on the ground are without enough of the crucial support they need to control the fires.

All this raises concerns about President Obama’s defense budget, which cuts 65 C-130s from the fleet over the next four years. While that will leave 318 C-130s, the demands on the fleet are not shrinking in Afghanistan or other places. Nor did the Air Force have much choice in the matter.

The Air Force took the brunt of Pentagon budget cuts in the 2013 budget, shrinking by 4 percent (or roughly $4 billion dollars), after having a flat budget since 2004. Since 2001, over 500 aircraft have been retired, and another 300 will be scrapped by 2017. All this is happening while demand for the Air Force increases: The service flew approximately 400 sorties per day in Afghanistan and Iraq during 2011, while also fighting in Libya and delivering thousands of tons of disaster relief aid to Japan after its earthquake and tsunami. C-130s have been central to all these operations, and the proposed cuts will reduce airlift capacity among all the Air Force's components: active, reserve, and guard. Sequestration would be even worse, mandating equal percentage cuts down to the program level across the service, with no flexibility for Air Force leadership to target the cuts. 

But as the wildfire in Colorado shows, readiness and flexibility are sometimes needed at home as much as abroad. Cutting more C-130s puts a greater strain on the entire Air Force fleet. It means fewer planes will be available for possible conversion to the MAFFS configuration. And that means that as hundreds of houses burn in Colorado, only eight planes can be called upon to help the thousands of firefighters on the ground. America should not have to make such tradeoffs: We can fight both aggressors and fires smarter and better, but only if we do it increasingly from the sky. 

Michael Auslin is a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.

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Copyright 2012 Weekly Standard LLC.

Source URL: http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/colorados-epic-firestorm-reveals-danger-air-force-cuts_647897.html

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 30, 2012, 05:20:01 PM
OBAMA CAMPAIGN CELEBRATES INDEPENDENCE DAY ... WITH FUNDRAISER IN PARIS
Big Hollywood ^ | 6.29.12 | Ben Shapiro
Posted on June 30, 2012 8:51:12 AM EDT by Behind Liberal Lines

Apparently tiring of US soil as a source of campaign dollars, the Obama campaign is headed overseas -- with its celebrity friends in tow. The European Obama campaign starts next week in Paris on July 4 with a reception organized by various fundraising heavy-hitters. Independence Day fundraisers in Paris – now that’s a flag-waving campaign.

(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 04, 2012, 05:53:59 AM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/03/squelching-secrets-why-is_n_1628547.html



And you communist rats complained about W?   
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: garebear on July 07, 2012, 10:09:54 AM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/03/squelching-secrets-why-is_n_1628547.html



And you communist rats complained about W?   
Bro, I bet you get so much pussy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 09, 2012, 09:52:14 AM
Obama Spends Record $12 Billion To Keep Documents Secret

by Wynton Hall

8 Jul 2012121post a comment

www.breitbart.com





President Barack Obama has said his administration is the most most transparent administration in the modern era. 

But a new report by the Information Security Oversight Committee found that in 2011, the Obama Administration spent a record $12 billion to keep documents secret, a 12 percent increase over last year's classification costs. 

As Asawin Suebsaeng of the liberal Mother Jones publication puts it, "It's safe to say that it is long past due to officially declare the Obama era a transparency #fail."
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Option D on July 09, 2012, 11:03:21 AM
Obama Spends Record $12 Billion To Keep Documents Secret

by Wynton Hall

8 Jul 2012121post a comment

www.breitbart.com





President Barack Obama has said his administration is the most most transparent administration in the modern era. 

But a new report by the Information Security Oversight Committee found that in 2011, the Obama Administration spent a record $12 billion to keep documents secret, a 12 percent increase over last year's classification costs. 

As Asawin Suebsaeng of the liberal Mother Jones publication puts it, "It's safe to say that it is long past due to officially declare the Obama era a transparency #fail."


what kind of docs?
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 09, 2012, 11:05:44 AM
what kind of docs?


http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/07/government-secrecy-costing-even-more-money-these-days


Most transparent president ever! 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: blacken700 on July 09, 2012, 11:17:23 AM
what kind of docs?


to keep classified files secret     your [333386]post are bullshit you word shit to sound like something else
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 09, 2012, 11:20:13 AM
to keep classified files secret     your post are bullshit you word shit to sound like something else

Like what?  Even MJ, a far left progressive site is calling Obama a complete failure on transparency. 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 09, 2012, 11:22:37 AM
to keep classified files secret     your [333386]post are bullshit you word shit to sound like something else



It's safe to say that it is long past due to officially declare the Obama era a transparency #fail.



PROMISE BROKEN
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: blacken700 on July 09, 2012, 11:23:55 AM
as far as i know a classified file is classified and can't  be made known to the public,it's always been that way.that's why your post are mostly bullshit
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 09, 2012, 11:24:50 AM
as far as i know a classified file is classified and can't  be made known to the public,it's always been that way.that's why your post are mostly bullshit

Tell that to Mother Jones.

Obama is covering up his many crimes in office. 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: blacken700 on July 09, 2012, 11:33:31 AM
Tell that to Mother Jones.

Obama is covering up his many crimes in office. 

proof ,or your just making shit up again
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 09, 2012, 11:44:28 AM
Team Obama Regulates Goat Herders’ Workplaces
 www.humanevents.com ^ | 8/24/2011 | Audrey Hudson





The Obama administration is setting new workplace regulations to assist foreign workers who fill goat herding positions in the U.S. , including employee-paid cell phones and comfy beds.

These new special procedures issued by the Labor Department must be followed by employers who want to hire temporary agricultural foreign workers to perform sheep herding or goat herding activities. It describes strict rules for sleeping quarters, lighting, food storage, bathing, laundry, cooking and new rules for the counters where food is prepared.

“A separate sleeping unit shall be provided for each person, except in a family arrangement,” says the rules signed by Jane Oates, assistant secretary for employment and training administration at the Labor Department.

“Such a unit shall include a comfortable bed, cot or bunk, with a clean mattress,” the rules state.

Diane Katz, a research fellow in regulatory policy at The Heritage Foundation, unearthed the policy in the “Federal Register,” the massive daily journal of proposed regulations that Washington bureaucrats publish every day.

Under the Obama Administration, the nanny state has imposed 75 new major regulations with annual costs of $38 billion.

“This captures what is wrong with government,” Katz said. “I could not have made this up.”

With unemployment holding steady at 9% and government regulations adding more burden to small businesses, such as those run by ranching families, Katz said, bureaucrats aren’t helping.

“Instead of remedying the problem, the regulations make it that much harder,” Katz insisted. “We may need a whole set of regulations just to define what a comfortable bed is. I imagine it’s not straw.”

The new lighting standards say that in areas where it is not feasible to provide electrical service such as tents or mobile trailers, lanterns must be provided. “Kerosene wick lights meet the definition of lantern,” the regulations say.

“When workers or their families are permitted or required to cook in their individual unit, a space shall be provided with adequate lighting and ventilation.”

“Wall surfaces next to all food preparation and cooking areas shall be of nonabsorbent, easy-to-clean material. Wall surfaces next to cooking areas shall be of fire-resistant material,” the regulations say.

“It makes you wonder,” Katz said, “how they ever did this before the government got involved?”

“Who knew we needed all of this federal help for herding goats?” Katz quipped.



________________________ ________________________ _____________________


More jobs down the toilet. 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 10, 2012, 07:34:03 AM
Obama's Global Health Policy Undercuts Reform At Home


Posted: 07/10/2012 9:20 am Updated: 07/10/2012 9:47 am




WASHINGTON -- A few hours after the Supreme Court upheld his signature health care legislation last week, President Barack Obama approached a White House podium, addressed the camera and declared that the nation's top justices had reaffirmed an important guiding principle of his presidency.

"Here in America -- in the wealthiest nation on Earth -- no illness or accident should lead to any family's financial ruin," Obama said.

That single sentence was a compelling invocation of nearly every political theme Obama has presented on the campaign trail this year: To live in a nation is to take part in a social contract; personal wealth does not determine human dignity; decent people in a nation of means do not allow the less fortunate to suffer needlessly.

But while the president has focused on lowering health care costs at home, he has repeatedly sought to impose higher drug prices abroad. For pharmaceutical companies, that has meant steady profits, but for the global poor in desperate need of affordable drugs, those lofty prices are often a matter of life and death.

Nevertheless, members of the Obama administration continue to pursue policies around drug pricing that multiple United Nations groups, the World Health Organization, human rights lawyers and patient advocates worldwide decry.

Two weeks ago, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Deputy Director Teresa Stanek Rea sparked an uproar among public health experts when she testified before Congress on multiple administration strategies to affect drug pricing abroad by using American international political muscle. Her testimony focused on the Indian government’s efforts earlier this year to create an affordable generic alternative to an expensive cancer drug called Nexavar, which had been patented by Bayer AG, a multinational pharmaceutical conglomerate best known in the United States for aspirin pills.

Over the course of 70 minutes, Rea repeatedly castigated India's government for approving the generic drug, calling the move an "egregious" violation of World Trade Organization treaties. India's decision, Rea said, "dismayed and surprised" her, and she boasted about "personally" engaging "various agencies of the Indian government" in efforts to overturn it.

"This is unprecedented, really shocking testimony," says Judit Rius, the U.S. manager of Doctors Without Borders Access to Medicines Campaign, an international humanitarian aid group that won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999. "It doesn't have any ground in international legal norms. I've never really seen a U.S. government official misinforming Congress in public like this. It's embarrassing for the White House."

The Rea hearing, which had all the trappings of an inconsequential technocratic snoozefest, was almost completely ignored by American media -- drowned out by the furor over the Supreme Court’s historic health care ruling. Only eight members of the 23-person House Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, Competition and the Internet showed up and asked questions.

Thus far the Indian government has resisted American pressure and continues to offer the generic alternative, which was approved in March after several months of negotiations with Bayer.

Not once during her testimony did Rea -- or any member of Congress -- cite the price Bayer posted in India for its version of the drug. Bayer, which earned $3.4 billion last year, was charging over $5,000 a month for standard doses, according to data from the Indian government. The cost of a generic version: $157 a month.

It was the high price that Bayer demanded for its cancer medication that prompted the Indian government to act. In a nation with a per capita income of just $3,693, the Bayer drug is financially out of reach for most Indians. The government authorized Natco Pharma to begin selling the generic version and ordered the firm to pay Bayer a 6 percent royalty on the proceeds.

That practice, known as compulsory licensing, is commonplace. It's explicitly protected by World Trade Organization treaties, an effort to ensure that good health care is not merely a privilege for the rich -- the kind of principle outlined by Obama in his celebration of the Affordable Care Act. The U.S. even deploys the compulsory licensing process to address domestic drug shortages.

But at the hearing, Rea said she planned to deploy the pressure it has used against India in other countries, too. "This is front and center," Rea said. "[We are] trying to stop the granting of further compulsory licenses."

Public health advocates have an entirely different take on the issue. They emphasize that Rea, who declined to comment for this article, did not offer a legal rationale for her agency's opposition to compulsory licensing, which goes against decades of international practices. Even the "Frequently Asked Questions" section of the WTO's website details broad leeway to approve generics that clearly apply to the Bayer cancer drug.

"Ignorance is no excuse for bad argument," says Anand Grover, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health and Senior Advocate for the Supreme Court of India, who notes that, under WTO rules, "Setting an exorbitant price which makes the drug unavailable to those who need it ... [is] grounds for the issuance of a compulsory license."

Bayer declined to comment on specific pricing for the drug, or the Indian government's calculations, based on Bayer data, that just 2 percent of eligible patients had received the drug during its first few years on the market.

"We will rigorously continue to defend our intellectual property rights which are a prerequisite for bringing innovative medicines to patients," Bayer spokeswoman Heather Levis Guzzi said in an emailed statement. "The limited period of marketing exclusivity made possible by patents ensures that the costs associated with the research and development of innovative medicines can be recovered."

The company also pointed to the fact that Nexavar is not one of the 348 drugs on India’s National List of Essential Medicines -- a compilation of treatments intended to be available in a country’s health care system at all times.

The medical patent system has plenty of detractors. Many public health experts and economists advocate for public financing of research and development costs to avoid private sector pricing problems. Public health experts who deal with AIDS, in particular, have long sought to reform the patent regime, since HIV drugs must be taken continuously for decades, making high dosage costs an acute problem. Nexavar is one of several new cancer drugs featuring a similar treatment regimen to the best HIV drugs. It can extend a patient's life for years, but only if taken continuously.

Whatever the import patents have in protecting intellectual property and corporations' bottom lines, even the strictest patent rights have always been accompanied by exceptions and flexibilities.

"It's disappointing and outrageous," says Peter Maybarduk, director of Public Citizen's Access to Medicines Program, a consumer advocacy group, in reference to Rea's testimony. "Compulsory licensing is a sovereign right to protect public health and other public interests. It's been around as long as patents have been around. It goes back to the concept of 'crown use' in the oldest patent rules."

Rea and others at the briefing also failed to note that Bayer is a German company. During a lengthy discussion of the Obama administration's efforts to prevent the Indian government from providing affordable medication to its citizens, Rea declared, "We are doing everything we can to respect the rights of U.S. innovators." But she didn't mention that her efforts weren’t actually supporting an American corporation.

This is new territory for U.S. trade negotiation and enforcement, according to trade experts. During the Clinton and Bush years, American diplomats were dispatched to Brazil and Thailand to fight compulsory licenses on key AIDS drugs. However, the medications facing newfound competition were patented by U.S. corporations -- not foreign companies.

The Obama administration was quick to push back on Rea's testimony, with another key trade office downplaying her comments.

"We have expressed concern with India's interpretation of its law in authorizing the issuance of this license but we have not opined with regard to whether the action is consistent with [WTO treaties]," Carol Guthrie, spokeswoman for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, told HuffPost.

While the Patent Office has extensive foreign educational and advisory operations in developing nations, it does not have authority to bring unfair trade cases before the WTO. That power rests with the USTR, a White House agency that is also responsible for negotiating international trade deals. In a blog post published a few days after the hearing, Rea walked back some of her comments, acknowledging that compulsory licenses can be acceptable under WTO rules. Nevertheless, she said her agency "encourages" other nations to adopt policies that are stricter than WTO standards and maintained her opposition to the Indian generic.

"Although compulsory licensing can be permissible under the TRIPS Agreement, we encourage our trading partners to consider ways to address their public health challenges while maintaining intellectual property rights systems that promote investment, research, and innovation," Rea wrote. "The broad interpretation of Indian law in a recent decision by the Controller General of Patents of India regarding compulsory licensing of patents, in my view, may undermine those goals."

Public health experts emphasize that this kind of political pressure from the U.S. can be damaging to developing nations, even if no formal trade complaint is ever brought before the WTO.

"The [U.S. Patent and Trademark Office] is viewed as a regulator in other parts of the world, and not a lobbyist for U.S.-style patent laws or patent enforcement," says Kajal Bhardwaj, a human rights lawyer in India who has done extensive work on legislation to combat HIV in India."The statement by the USPTO official that its trainings are a method for preventing the issue of compulsory licenses is of great concern."

Rea's testimony is only the most explicit example of the Obama administration's efforts to use intellectual property maneuvering to inflate medical costs abroad. This year alone, the Department of Health and Human Services and the State Department have joined USTR and the USPTO in disrupting World Health Assembly talks over reducing research and development costs for medicines targeting developing nations, and shut down World Intellectual Property Organization negotiations aimed at curtailing the prices of existing drugs in poor countries.

Of course, high medicine prices abroad mean high profits for pharmaceutical firms, and drug companies were an important White House ally during the legislative push for the Affordable Care Act. Obamacare seeks to contain medical costs by focusing on insurance reform -- it makes only very modest changes to prescription drug policies, and in many respects, actually breaks new ground on pharmaceutical company efforts to establish drug monopolies.

"We're taking the worst parts of U.S. law, the parts that make these medications unavailable to patients, and putting them into a trade policy as a guiding principle for developing countries," says Reshma Ramachandran, a fellow with the American Medical Student Association, which advocates for universal quality affordable health care and global health equity, among other priorities. "That's ridiculous."

As HuffPost reported in the fall of 2009, the Obama administration cut a deal with PhRMA -- the dominant drugmaker lobbying group -- intended to smooth the bill's congressional path. Obama agreed to go easy on pharmaceutical companies with his reforms, if PhRMA would support the overall legislation. One of the key giveaways to PhRMA? A new 12-year monopoly on test data used in medical trials for drugs derived from proteins or living tissues. Obama approved the PhRMA freebie over the explicit objections of the Federal Trade Commission, which concluded in a 2009 report that the new test data rights would lead to anti-competitive behavior.

This new power, called data exclusivity, prevents companies from relying on another firm's clinical trials when seeking government approval for their own drug. The practice violates centuries of scientific standards, but it can also lengthen patent monopolies and prevent the development of new, even broadly unrelated, medications that rely on previous scientific tests.

"The 12 years of exclusive rights in test data creates an automatic monopoly right that is stronger than a patent monopoly in most countries, and it raises drug prices," says James Love, Director of Knowledge Ecology International, a nonprofit dedicated to public health and access to knowledge. "It violates the Helsinki Declaration on ethical principles for research involving human subjects, because it requires the duplication of experiments on human subjects."

The WTO has never required countries to abide by these standards, but according to Rea, the U.S. is trying to use trade negotiations with 10 other Pacific nations to export the policy abroad.

India isn't part of the Trans-Pacific deal, but Rea's discussion of the pact underscores the administration's multi-pronged approach to elevating drug prices. While attempting to prevent the introduction of generic drugs in WTO nations, the U.S. is simultaneously seeking new trade agreements that would impose stricter rules than those required by the WTO. Countries involved in the Trans-Pacific talks include Malaysia, which has a per capita income one-third less than that of the U.S., and Vietnam, a nation significantly poorer than India.

"We view that the Trans-Pacific Partnership provides a good venue to make sure that we get appropriate data protection, and that the 12 years of data exclusivity is something that we are definitely trying to negotiate for right now," Rea said during her testimony.

The USTR rejected Rea’s statement.

"That is incorrect," USTR's Guthrie told HuffPost, referring to Rae's claim about data exclusivity. "U.S. negotiators have not proposed a specific term for data exclusivity for biologics ... discussions on issues relating to biologics are continuing because we want to get the substance right."

Although the Patent Office is a key adviser on trade agreements, negotiating the Trans-Pacific deal is USTR's responsibility. Draft terms of the pact, and the Obama administration's hoped-for final results, are withheld from the public -- a policy which has embroiled the agency in considerable controversy with members of Congress, who want staffers to be able to access key documents. Rea's announcement of a negotiating goal was a major diplomatic faux pas.

Rae walked back this point from her under-oath testimony in her blog.

"I was also asked to comment on a twelve year period for data protection for biologics which is favored by the research-based pharmaceutical industry," Rae wrote. "The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations are ongoing and the United States Government has not made a proposal for a longer term of data protection for biologic medicines."

But while there is a clear pattern to the Obama administration's strategy on such issues, different factions of the executive branch do not always agree on details. In its latest budget proposal, the Office of Management and Budget suggested a 7-year time limit on data exclusivity. But if Rea's preference policy made its way into the Trans-Pacific deal, the U.S. would be subject to international trade sanctions if it ever opted to shorten or eliminate the 12-year right.

The U.N. Development Program and UNAIDS, meanwhile, oppose any term of data exclusivity whatsoever, and issued a report in June encouraging countries not to sign trade agreements that include the provision.

The latest round of Trans-Pacific negotiations began the week after the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act. The irony is not lost on health care reform activists in developing nations.

"That the Obama administration cannot see the gross inequity of charging $5000 per person per month for a cancer medicine in a developing country says a lot about this government," says Shiba Phurailpatam of the Asia Pacific Network of people living with HIV/AIDS. "Affordable care, it seems, is only for U.S. citizens, not for the developing world."



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/10/obamas-health-policy-global-health-reform_n_1659742.html




________________________ ________________________ _______________


Obama = OWNEd by BIG PHARMA 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 10, 2012, 07:35:35 AM

"This is unprecedented, really shocking testimony," says Judit Rius, the U.S. manager of Doctors Without Borders Access to Medicines Campaign, an international humanitarian aid group that won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999. "It doesn't have any ground in international legal norms. I've never really seen a U.S. government official misinforming Congress in public like this. It's embarrassing for the White House."




________________________ _______________________


To obamabots - they could care less. 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 10, 2012, 08:44:56 AM
The 8 Most Shameful Moments of Barack Obama's Presidency
 Townhall.com ^ | July 10, 2012 | John Hawkins




8) "The private sector is doing fine:" Know what hasn't been "doing fine" for a single day since Barack Obama came into office? The private sector. So when Barack Obama bizarrely proclaimed that "the private sector is doing fine" earlier this year, Obama was further out of touch than E.T. was when he wanted to phone home.

7) Obama bows to Saudi king: If Barack Obama had spent his formative years in the United States instead of overseas, he'd know that real Americans don't bow. Moreover, no American, especially the President, should be bowing down to a dictatorial king like the one we had to overthrow in the Revolutionary War. Besides the Saudi king, Obama also continued to humiliate himself and his country by bowing to Japanese Emperor Akihito and the Chinese PM. We're lucky that the SEALs killed Osama Bin Laden as opposed to capturing him or we might have seen pictures of Obama bowing to him on MSNBC by now.

6) Son looked like Trayvon: At a time when George Zimmerman was publicly being threatened with death and white people were being beaten "For Trayvon," there was an opportunity for the President to show leadership and encourage people to calm down. Instead, after making some perfunctory remarks towards that end, Obama added fuel to the fire by noting, "If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon." This was a follow-up to Obama's similarly foolish decision to insert himself into another local situation that didn't concern him. After his friend Henry Gates smashed his own door in and made such an ass of himself that he was arrested when the police arrived, Obama noted that he didn't know the facts, but he did know that the "police acted stupidly." He then followed that up by suggesting racism was probably to blame. Fortunately, he managed to patch over that bit of idiocy with a "beer summit" as opposed to the Trayvon Martin case where he increased the chances that someone would get killed because he was thoughtlessly shooting off his mouth.

5) Refusing to pick up illegals from Arizona: After the Obama Administration refused to enforce federal immigration law in Arizona, the state passed a tough new law that allowed local police to do the job ICE wouldn't do. Disgracefully, Barack Obama held a White House press conference where both he and Mexican President Felipe Calderon ganged up against Arizona for doing little more than enforcing the laws on the book. The Obama Administration then sued Arizona and after it didn't emerge completely victorious, simply refused to pick up illegal aliens that aren't felons from Arizona. In other words, not only is Barack refusing to enforce the law of the land, he won't allow anyone else to uphold the laws he falsely swore to uphold when he became President.

4) Persecuting the Catholic Church: Obama spat in the face of the Catholic Church and violated its constitutionally-protected 1st Amendment religious rights by demanding that it provide birth control and abortifacient drugs in its hospitals. Unless this policy is stopped, millions of Americans will pay the price as the Catholic Church closes its hospitals rather than violate its deeply-held religious beliefs in order to cater to Barack Obama's whims.

3) Passing Obamacare: Health care reform was opposed by the Republican Party and the American people despite endless lies the Obama Administration told about what a wonderful program it would be. The Obama Administration lied when it said everyone could keep their health insurance, that it wouldn't increase the deficit, when it said there were no death panels in the bill, when it said it wouldn't increase taxes, and when it said abortion wouldn't be funded with your tax dollars. All of these lies were for a program that took 500 billion dollars out of Medicare to fund a new entitlement program that will cause large numbers of doctors to quit, dramatically reduce the quality of care, and force Americans to deal with the IRS just to get health care. It's one of the single worst bills in America history that delivers an incredibly expensive new entitlement program at the point in American history where we can least afford it.

2) Obama's lawless attempt to pass the Dream Act by Fiat: After the DREAM ACT failed to make it through Congress, Barack Obama illegally decided to implement it anyway. After instructing the Department of Justice to stop following the law in regard to illegals under 30, Obama decided to issue work permits for illegals. That's an illegal act that directly contradicts the existing immigration law. It also makes little sense to give somewhere between 800,000 and 3 million foreigners work permits when every job they take will keep another American out of work in tough economic times.

1) Eric Holder held in contempt of Congress after Obama uses executive privilege: On Barack Obama's watch, the Department of Justice helped put guns into the hands of Mexican cartels and these guns were used to kill hundreds of Mexicans along with American Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. Did Eric Holder know about this beforehand? Did Barack Obama? We don't know for sure because they've been engaged in a Nixonian cover-up. They've dragged their feet, stonewalled, and when they couldn't hold off any longer, Obama declared executive privilege in an attempt to hide the truth about how deeply his administration is tied to the deaths of 300 plus people. Obama's behavior was so sleazy that 17 House Democrats felt compelled to vote with Republicans to find Eric Holder in contempt of Congress. Say what you want about Watergate, but at least no one was killed during the scandal, which is something that can't be said about Obama's Fast and Furious debacle.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 10, 2012, 07:03:37 PM
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/07/10/closure-border-patrol-stations-across-four-states-triggers-alarm



WTF!!!! 

FUBO.

ou Obama drone should all just swallow the pill.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 10, 2012, 07:43:30 PM
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Obama’s ATF Targeting Hispanic Gun Buyers
PGNH Website ^ | 7/10/2012 | Evan Nappen, Esq.
Posted on July 10, 2012 9:22:39 PM EDT by Revtwo

A new, controversial question now appears on the most recent “Firearms Transaction Record Part I – Over-the Counter” (A.K.A. Form 4473), which must be filled out by anyone purchasing a firearm from a Federal Firearm Licensee, meaning a gun shop or other licensed dealer.

Every person completing this form must now, under a new question “10.a,” either confirm or deny whether they are Hispanic/Latino. Failure to do so will cause potential criminal prosecution and a denial of Second Amendment Rights.

What if the “ethnicity” question demanded “Jew or Not a Jew”? Would that “ethnicity” question be acceptable? Like the Hispanic/Latino question, it is offensive and not necessary. It has nothing whatsoever to do with one’s qualification to purchase a gun.

(Excerpt) Read more at pgnh.org ...







Lol. 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deciet and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 11, 2012, 03:24:45 AM

Bump.




Obama's Global Health Policy Undercuts Reform At Home


Posted: 07/10/2012 9:20 am Updated: 07/10/2012 9:47 am




WASHINGTON -- A few hours after the Supreme Court upheld his signature health care legislation last week, President Barack Obama approached a White House podium, addressed the camera and declared that the nation's top justices had reaffirmed an important guiding principle of his presidency.

"Here in America -- in the wealthiest nation on Earth -- no illness or accident should lead to any family's financial ruin," Obama said.

That single sentence was a compelling invocation of nearly every political theme Obama has presented on the campaign trail this year: To live in a nation is to take part in a social contract; personal wealth does not determine human dignity; decent people in a nation of means do not allow the less fortunate to suffer needlessly.

But while the president has focused on lowering health care costs at home, he has repeatedly sought to impose higher drug prices abroad. For pharmaceutical companies, that has meant steady profits, but for the global poor in desperate need of affordable drugs, those lofty prices are often a matter of life and death.

Nevertheless, members of the Obama administration continue to pursue policies around drug pricing that multiple United Nations groups, the World Health Organization, human rights lawyers and patient advocates worldwide decry.

Two weeks ago, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Deputy Director Teresa Stanek Rea sparked an uproar among public health experts when she testified before Congress on multiple administration strategies to affect drug pricing abroad by using American international political muscle. Her testimony focused on the Indian government’s efforts earlier this year to create an affordable generic alternative to an expensive cancer drug called Nexavar, which had been patented by Bayer AG, a multinational pharmaceutical conglomerate best known in the United States for aspirin pills.

Over the course of 70 minutes, Rea repeatedly castigated India's government for approving the generic drug, calling the move an "egregious" violation of World Trade Organization treaties. India's decision, Rea said, "dismayed and surprised" her, and she boasted about "personally" engaging "various agencies of the Indian government" in efforts to overturn it.

"This is unprecedented, really shocking testimony," says Judit Rius, the U.S. manager of Doctors Without Borders Access to Medicines Campaign, an international humanitarian aid group that won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999. "It doesn't have any ground in international legal norms. I've never really seen a U.S. government official misinforming Congress in public like this. It's embarrassing for the White House."

The Rea hearing, which had all the trappings of an inconsequential technocratic snoozefest, was almost completely ignored by American media -- drowned out by the furor over the Supreme Court’s historic health care ruling. Only eight members of the 23-person House Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, Competition and the Internet showed up and asked questions.

Thus far the Indian government has resisted American pressure and continues to offer the generic alternative, which was approved in March after several months of negotiations with Bayer.

Not once during her testimony did Rea -- or any member of Congress -- cite the price Bayer posted in India for its version of the drug. Bayer, which earned $3.4 billion last year, was charging over $5,000 a month for standard doses, according to data from the Indian government. The cost of a generic version: $157 a month.

It was the high price that Bayer demanded for its cancer medication that prompted the Indian government to act. In a nation with a per capita income of just $3,693, the Bayer drug is financially out of reach for most Indians. The government authorized Natco Pharma to begin selling the generic version and ordered the firm to pay Bayer a 6 percent royalty on the proceeds.

That practice, known as compulsory licensing, is commonplace. It's explicitly protected by World Trade Organization treaties, an effort to ensure that good health care is not merely a privilege for the rich -- the kind of principle outlined by Obama in his celebration of the Affordable Care Act. The U.S. even deploys the compulsory licensing process to address domestic drug shortages.

But at the hearing, Rea said she planned to deploy the pressure it has used against India in other countries, too. "This is front and center," Rea said. "[We are] trying to stop the granting of further compulsory licenses."

Public health advocates have an entirely different take on the issue. They emphasize that Rea, who declined to comment for this article, did not offer a legal rationale for her agency's opposition to compulsory licensing, which goes against decades of international practices. Even the "Frequently Asked Questions" section of the WTO's website details broad leeway to approve generics that clearly apply to the Bayer cancer drug.

"Ignorance is no excuse for bad argument," says Anand Grover, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health and Senior Advocate for the Supreme Court of India, who notes that, under WTO rules, "Setting an exorbitant price which makes the drug unavailable to those who need it ... [is] grounds for the issuance of a compulsory license."

Bayer declined to comment on specific pricing for the drug, or the Indian government's calculations, based on Bayer data, that just 2 percent of eligible patients had received the drug during its first few years on the market.

"We will rigorously continue to defend our intellectual property rights which are a prerequisite for bringing innovative medicines to patients," Bayer spokeswoman Heather Levis Guzzi said in an emailed statement. "The limited period of marketing exclusivity made possible by patents ensures that the costs associated with the research and development of innovative medicines can be recovered."

The company also pointed to the fact that Nexavar is not one of the 348 drugs on India’s National List of Essential Medicines -- a compilation of treatments intended to be available in a country’s health care system at all times.

The medical patent system has plenty of detractors. Many public health experts and economists advocate for public financing of research and development costs to avoid private sector pricing problems. Public health experts who deal with AIDS, in particular, have long sought to reform the patent regime, since HIV drugs must be taken continuously for decades, making high dosage costs an acute problem. Nexavar is one of several new cancer drugs featuring a similar treatment regimen to the best HIV drugs. It can extend a patient's life for years, but only if taken continuously.

Whatever the import patents have in protecting intellectual property and corporations' bottom lines, even the strictest patent rights have always been accompanied by exceptions and flexibilities.

"It's disappointing and outrageous," says Peter Maybarduk, director of Public Citizen's Access to Medicines Program, a consumer advocacy group, in reference to Rea's testimony. "Compulsory licensing is a sovereign right to protect public health and other public interests. It's been around as long as patents have been around. It goes back to the concept of 'crown use' in the oldest patent rules."

Rea and others at the briefing also failed to note that Bayer is a German company. During a lengthy discussion of the Obama administration's efforts to prevent the Indian government from providing affordable medication to its citizens, Rea declared, "We are doing everything we can to respect the rights of U.S. innovators." But she didn't mention that her efforts weren’t actually supporting an American corporation.

This is new territory for U.S. trade negotiation and enforcement, according to trade experts. During the Clinton and Bush years, American diplomats were dispatched to Brazil and Thailand to fight compulsory licenses on key AIDS drugs. However, the medications facing newfound competition were patented by U.S. corporations -- not foreign companies.

The Obama administration was quick to push back on Rea's testimony, with another key trade office downplaying her comments.

"We have expressed concern with India's interpretation of its law in authorizing the issuance of this license but we have not opined with regard to whether the action is consistent with [WTO treaties]," Carol Guthrie, spokeswoman for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, told HuffPost.

While the Patent Office has extensive foreign educational and advisory operations in developing nations, it does not have authority to bring unfair trade cases before the WTO. That power rests with the USTR, a White House agency that is also responsible for negotiating international trade deals. In a blog post published a few days after the hearing, Rea walked back some of her comments, acknowledging that compulsory licenses can be acceptable under WTO rules. Nevertheless, she said her agency "encourages" other nations to adopt policies that are stricter than WTO standards and maintained her opposition to the Indian generic.

"Although compulsory licensing can be permissible under the TRIPS Agreement, we encourage our trading partners to consider ways to address their public health challenges while maintaining intellectual property rights systems that promote investment, research, and innovation," Rea wrote. "The broad interpretation of Indian law in a recent decision by the Controller General of Patents of India regarding compulsory licensing of patents, in my view, may undermine those goals."

Public health experts emphasize that this kind of political pressure from the U.S. can be damaging to developing nations, even if no formal trade complaint is ever brought before the WTO.

"The [U.S. Patent and Trademark Office] is viewed as a regulator in other parts of the world, and not a lobbyist for U.S.-style patent laws or patent enforcement," says Kajal Bhardwaj, a human rights lawyer in India who has done extensive work on legislation to combat HIV in India."The statement by the USPTO official that its trainings are a method for preventing the issue of compulsory licenses is of great concern."

Rea's testimony is only the most explicit example of the Obama administration's efforts to use intellectual property maneuvering to inflate medical costs abroad. This year alone, the Department of Health and Human Services and the State Department have joined USTR and the USPTO in disrupting World Health Assembly talks over reducing research and development costs for medicines targeting developing nations, and shut down World Intellectual Property Organization negotiations aimed at curtailing the prices of existing drugs in poor countries.

Of course, high medicine prices abroad mean high profits for pharmaceutical firms, and drug companies were an important White House ally during the legislative push for the Affordable Care Act. Obamacare seeks to contain medical costs by focusing on insurance reform -- it makes only very modest changes to prescription drug policies, and in many respects, actually breaks new ground on pharmaceutical company efforts to establish drug monopolies.

"We're taking the worst parts of U.S. law, the parts that make these medications unavailable to patients, and putting them into a trade policy as a guiding principle for developing countries," says Reshma Ramachandran, a fellow with the American Medical Student Association, which advocates for universal quality affordable health care and global health equity, among other priorities. "That's ridiculous."

As HuffPost reported in the fall of 2009, the Obama administration cut a deal with PhRMA -- the dominant drugmaker lobbying group -- intended to smooth the bill's congressional path. Obama agreed to go easy on pharmaceutical companies with his reforms, if PhRMA would support the overall legislation. One of the key giveaways to PhRMA? A new 12-year monopoly on test data used in medical trials for drugs derived from proteins or living tissues. Obama approved the PhRMA freebie over the explicit objections of the Federal Trade Commission, which concluded in a 2009 report that the new test data rights would lead to anti-competitive behavior.

This new power, called data exclusivity, prevents companies from relying on another firm's clinical trials when seeking government approval for their own drug. The practice violates centuries of scientific standards, but it can also lengthen patent monopolies and prevent the development of new, even broadly unrelated, medications that rely on previous scientific tests.

"The 12 years of exclusive rights in test data creates an automatic monopoly right that is stronger than a patent monopoly in most countries, and it raises drug prices," says James Love, Director of Knowledge Ecology International, a nonprofit dedicated to public health and access to knowledge. "It violates the Helsinki Declaration on ethical principles for research involving human subjects, because it requires the duplication of experiments on human subjects."

The WTO has never required countries to abide by these standards, but according to Rea, the U.S. is trying to use trade negotiations with 10 other Pacific nations to export the policy abroad.

India isn't part of the Trans-Pacific deal, but Rea's discussion of the pact underscores the administration's multi-pronged approach to elevating drug prices. While attempting to prevent the introduction of generic drugs in WTO nations, the U.S. is simultaneously seeking new trade agreements that would impose stricter rules than those required by the WTO. Countries involved in the Trans-Pacific talks include Malaysia, which has a per capita income one-third less than that of the U.S., and Vietnam, a nation significantly poorer than India.

"We view that the Trans-Pacific Partnership provides a good venue to make sure that we get appropriate data protection, and that the 12 years of data exclusivity is something that we are definitely trying to negotiate for right now," Rea said during her testimony.

The USTR rejected Rea’s statement.

"That is incorrect," USTR's Guthrie told HuffPost, referring to Rae's claim about data exclusivity. "U.S. negotiators have not proposed a specific term for data exclusivity for biologics ... discussions on issues relating to biologics are continuing because we want to get the substance right."

Although the Patent Office is a key adviser on trade agreements, negotiating the Trans-Pacific deal is USTR's responsibility. Draft terms of the pact, and the Obama administration's hoped-for final results, are withheld from the public -- a policy which has embroiled the agency in considerable controversy with members of Congress, who want staffers to be able to access key documents. Rea's announcement of a negotiating goal was a major diplomatic faux pas.

Rae walked back this point from her under-oath testimony in her blog.

"I was also asked to comment on a twelve year period for data protection for biologics which is favored by the research-based pharmaceutical industry," Rae wrote. "The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations are ongoing and the United States Government has not made a proposal for a longer term of data protection for biologic medicines."

But while there is a clear pattern to the Obama administration's strategy on such issues, different factions of the executive branch do not always agree on details. In its latest budget proposal, the Office of Management and Budget suggested a 7-year time limit on data exclusivity. But if Rea's preference policy made its way into the Trans-Pacific deal, the U.S. would be subject to international trade sanctions if it ever opted to shorten or eliminate the 12-year right.

The U.N. Development Program and UNAIDS, meanwhile, oppose any term of data exclusivity whatsoever, and issued a report in June encouraging countries not to sign trade agreements that include the provision.

The latest round of Trans-Pacific negotiations began the week after the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act. The irony is not lost on health care reform activists in developing nations.

"That the Obama administration cannot see the gross inequity of charging $5000 per person per month for a cancer medicine in a developing country says a lot about this government," says Shiba Phurailpatam of the Asia Pacific Network of people living with HIV/AIDS. "Affordable care, it seems, is only for U.S. citizens, not for the developing world."



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/10/obamas-health-policy-global-health-reform_n_1659742.html




________________________ ________________________ _______________


Obama = OWNEd by BIG PHARMA 

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 11, 2012, 06:05:09 PM
Solyndra-Linked Executive to Lead Pentagon’s Advanced Tech Agency
The Foundry ^ | 7/11/12 | Melanie Wilcox
Posted on July 11, 2012 8:51:11 PM EDT by Nachum

A venture capital executive with ties to defunct solar company Solyndra has been hired as the new chief of the Defense Department program heading up the Pentagon’s renewable energy push.

Arati Prabhakar, a former partner at U.S. Venture Partners, a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm that backed Solyndra, has been named the new director of DoD’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Prabhakaker will administer DARPA’s roughly $3 billion budget, some of which will likely continue funding projects in renewable energy.

While there is no indication that Prabhakar was involved with Solyndra during her time at USVP, her appointment to DARPA may rekindle allegations of cronyism in the administration’s dealings with Solyndra and other green energy companies.

DARPA itself has been scrutinized for some of its green energy deals. Former chief Regina Dugan was investigated by federal watchdogs after her family’s company won $400,000 in DARPA contracts while she headed the division.

DARPA was also responsible for the $21.8 million deal with biofuel company Solazyme, inviting further scrutiny. A member of Solazyme’s corporate board sat on President Obama’s transition team, where he helped form renewable energy policy.

Given the large pricetag of the Solazyme deal – the Navy paid $26 per gallon for Solazyme fuels – its merits mention that Prabhakar stresses the importance of relying on alternative energy despite its admittedly high costs to American taxpayers.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 11, 2012, 06:06:32 PM
Perfect: Obama adviser outsourced hundreds of jobs to India last year
Doug Ross Journal ^ | 7/11/12 | Doug Ross
Posted on July 11, 2012 8:21:35 PM EDT by Nachum

Curious: didn't see any stories on this outrage on ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, MSNBC or read about it in The New York Times-Democrat or The Washington Post-Democrat:

About a year ago, Xerox told some 600 employees, many of them engineers, that their jobs were being transferred to an India-based IT services firm.

How has that worked out? Neither company is disclosing detail about what's been going on, but information is leaking out about some layoffs.

The move by Xerox goes to the heart of the outsourcing debate between President Barack Obama and the presumptive Republican nominee, Mitt Romney.

It involves outsourcing product engineering employees, a skill set often linked to the nation's innovation capacity, to an offshore company. Will Xerox's moves result in a net gain or net loss of jobs? The answers may still be in the future, but one of the people involved has the president's ear.

Xerox's CEO, Ursula Burns, is playing a prominent advisory role in the Obama administration as the vice chair of the President's Export Council as well serving on the President's Jobs Council.

As Jim Geraghty observes, Mitt Romney has outsourced a grand total of zero jobs, while our beloved President Zippy McStatist has spent about $29 billion of your money outsourcing. At least.

Oh, and vintage media hacks: don't bother picking up this story and running with it. We've got it handled, thanks.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 12, 2012, 03:01:02 PM
Obama Guts Welfare Reform
 The Foundry (Heritage Foundation) ^ | July 12, 2012 | Robert Rector and Kiki Bradley

 


Today, the Obama Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released an official policy directive rewriting the welfare reform law of 1996. The new policy guts the federal work requirements that were the foundation of the reform law. The Obama directive bludgeons the letter and intent of the actual reform legislation.

Welfare Reform under Clinton

Welfare reform replaced the old Aid to Families with Dependent Children with a new program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). The underlying concept of welfare reform was that able-bodied adults should be required to work or prepare for work as a condition of receiving welfare aid.



The welfare reform law is often characterized as simply giving state governments more flexibility in operating welfare programs. This is a serious misunderstanding. While new law (the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996) did grants states more flexibility in some respects, the core of the act was the creation of rigorous new federal work standards that state governments were required to implement.



The welfare reform law was very successful. In the four decades prior to welfare reform, the welfare caseload never experienced a significant decline. But, in the four years after welfare reform, the caseload dropped by nearly half. Employment surged and child poverty among affected groups plummeted. The driving force behind these improvements was the rigorous new federal work requirements contained in the TANF law.



Obama’s Trick to Get Around Work Requirements



Today the Obama Administration issued a new directive stating that the traditional TANF work requirements can be waived or overridden by a legal device called the section 1115 waiver authority under the Social Security law (42 U.S.C. 1315).



Section 1115 states that “the Secretary may waive compliance with any of the requirements” of specified parts of various laws. But this is not an open-ended authority: Any provision of law that can be waived under section 1115 must be listed in section 1115 itself. The work provisions of the TANF program are contained in section 407 (entitled, appropriately, “mandatory work requirements”). Critically, this section, as well as most other TANF requirements, are deliberately not listed in section 1115; they are not waiveable.



In establishing TANF, Congress deliberately exempted or shielded nearly all of the TANF program from the section 1115 waiver authority. They did not want the law to be rewritten at the whim of Health and Human Services (HHS) bureaucrats. Of the roughly 35 sections of the TANF law, only one is listed as waiveable under section 1115. This is section 402.



Section 402 describes state plans—reports that state governments must file to HHS describing the actions they will undertake to comply with the many requirements established in the other sections of the TANF law. The authority to waive section 402 provides the option to waive state reporting requirements only, not to overturn the core requirements of the TANF program contained in the other sections of the TANF law.



The new Obama dictate asserts that because the work requirements, established in section 407, are mentioned as an item that state governments must report about in section 402, all the work requirements can be waived. This removes the core of the TANF program; TANF becomes a blank slate that HHS bureaucrats and liberal state bureaucrats can rewrite at will.

Congressional Research Service: “There Are No TANF Waivers”



In a December 2001 document, “Welfare Reform Waivers and TANF,” the non-partisan Congressional Research Service clarified that the limited authority to waive state reporting requirement in section 402 does not grant authority to override work and other major requirements in the other sections of the TANF law (sections that were deliberately not listed under the section 1115 waiver authority):





Technically, there is waiver authority for TANF state plan requirement; however, [the] major TANF requirements are not in state plans. Effectively, there are no TANF waivers.



Obviously, if the Congress had wanted HHS to be able to waive the TANF work requirements laid out in section 407, it would have listed that section as waiveable under section 1115. It did not do that.



Define “Work”…



In the past, state bureaucrats have attempted to define activities such as hula dancing, attending Weight Watchers, and bed rest as “work.” These dodges were blocked by the federal work standards. Now that the Obama Administration has abolished those standards, we can expect “work” in the TANF program to mean anything but work.



The new welfare dictate issued by the Obama Administration clearly guts the law. The Administration tramples on the actual legislation passed by Congress and seeks to impose its own policy choices—a pattern that has become all too common in this Administration.



The result is the end of welfare reform.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 15, 2012, 07:39:06 PM
Autopsy Inconclusive for Obama Campaign Worker Who Collapsed at Chicago Campaign HQ
NBC Chicago ^ | 7/14/12 | NBC Chicago
Posted on July 15, 2012 10:21:34 PM EDT by jimbo123

An autopsy for an Obama for America campaign staffer who died after collapsing in the Chicago headquarters was inconclusive Saturday.

-snip-

The autopsy requires further studies before a cause of death can be determined, according to the medical examiner’s office.

(Excerpt) Read more at nbcchicago.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: blacken700 on July 15, 2012, 07:46:43 PM
Autopsy Inconclusive for Obama Campaign Worker Who Collapsed at Chicago Campaign HQ
NBC Chicago ^ | 7/14/12 | NBC Chicago
Posted on July 15, 2012 10:21:34 PM EDT by jimbo123

An autopsy for an Obama for America campaign staffer who died after collapsing in the Chicago headquarters was inconclusive Saturday.

-snip-

The autopsy requires further studies before a cause of death can be determined, according to the medical examiner’s office.

(Excerpt) Read more at nbcchicago.com ...


let me guess you think he was poisioned  ::)
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 15, 2012, 07:48:26 PM
let me guess you think he was poisioned  ::)


LOL.    nothing is beyond MurderBa,a.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 16, 2012, 07:01:32 AM

Treasury probe cites officials for soliciting prostitutes, accepting industry gifts, FOIA docs reveal

 By Bob Cusack - 07/15/12 08:19 PM ET


www.thehill.com






Treasury Department officials have been cited for soliciting prostitutes, breaking conflict-of-interest rules and accepting gifts from corporate executives, according to the findings of official government investigations.
 
The revelations of unethical behavior at Treasury are detailed in little-noticed documents posted this month on governmentattic.org, which publishes agency responses to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.
 
While it is not uncommon for departments within the executive branch to have personnel issues, it is unusual for these types of documents to become public. They provide a rare glimpse of internal probes within the Treasury Department, exposing different episodes of misconduct.
 
Investigators at the Treasury's Office of Inspector General (OIG), which responds to tips and official referrals from within the department, found that employees had engaged in unethical, and perhaps criminal, conduct.

The emergence of the OIG probe findings come in the wake of embarrassing scandals for the Obama administration at the General Services Administration (GSA) and the Secret Service. Even though the wrongdoing at Treasury is not as far-reaching or as embarrassing as those controversies, it could put the administration on the defensive with less than four months before the election.
 
Some of the OIG's work focused on the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), an agency housed within Treasury that was created by Congress to oversee banking institutions. It also homes in on the now-defunct Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS), which recently became part of the OCC as a result of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law.
 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

More from The Hill
 • Thune rising: GOP senator on veepstakes and his future
• Hill Poll: Voters say wealth is an impossible dream
 • Ron Paul readies for last showdown with Bernanke
 • GOP ramps up attacks on Obama over military cuts
 • White House holds 'pep talk' on military use of biofuels
 • Defense hawks take cautious approach with NRA, UN arms treaty
 • Dems use wildfires to call for hearings on climate change
 • Boehner has raised $80M as Speaker

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The identities of the government officials who were investigated are unclear. Their names were redacted from the documents released under FOIA, consistent with FOIA law.

 In 2010, an OTC employee “misused” government resources to solicit prostitutes on three separate occasions via Craigslist. While working at the OTC, investigators said the government staffer “viewed websites offering erotic services on a weekly basis as well as communicating with and arranging meetings with women offering erotic services."
 
The OIG concluded that the OTC worker had violated government rules on “notoriously disgraceful conduct.” The case was referred for criminal prosecution to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District for Columbia, which opted not to prosecute "absent aggravating circumstances such as underage prostitutes or human trafficking." The employee, who was not a political appointee, subsequently retired from the government, according to the documents.
 
In another finding, the OIG cited an OCC staffer for accepting golf fees and meals from bank executives. The staffer, who had received ethics training, said he believed playing golf with industry officials under the purview of OCC was “a condoned activity.”
 
The golf outings took place on multiple occasions during work weeks when OCC was conducting bank examinations. Many of the greens fees and meals at the golf course were paid for by corporate executives.
 
The OIG stated the OCC official “violated several regulations covering ethics and the conduct of employees in the performance of their official duties.”
 
The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Georgia, however, declined to pursue criminal charges.
 
OIG found other financial conflict of interest with the OCC relating to contract bids and the acceptance of improper gifts such as flowers, meals and at least one limosine ride. A separate Treasury official was deemed to have a financial conflict of interest in 2010 when the bank examiner disclosed he had an overdraft protection line of credit loan from a financial institution that was regulated by the OTS.
 
The documents from OIG also show that a few allegations of unethical conduct were found to be without merit.
 
Treasury Department officials say the violations are isolated incidents.
 
"Treasury has a strong ethics policy that we expect all of our employees to follow, and the overwhelming majority of them do. As with any large organization, issues of misconduct occasionally arise. When that happens at Treasury, we act promptly and decisively to address them. The OIG moved aggressively to investigate the isolated instances of misconduct referenced in these documents, most of which were brought to the OIG’s attention by bureau management," a Treasury spokesman told The Hill.

An OCC spokesman said that "the agency does not comment on individual personnel matters. As your review of the documents will note, many of the investigations were found to be without merit, others are several years old, and some reference referrals made by the OTS, prior to the integration of that agency’s responsibility’s into the OCC."
 
Unlike most government entities, the OCC does not receive appropriations from Congress. Its operations are primarily funded from assessments levied on national banks and federal saving associations.
 
OCC has nearly 4,000 full-time equivalents (FTEs) while Treasury has more than 107,000 FTEs. The OIG report highlights the wrondoing of a handful of Treasury workers.
 
The OIG determined that a Treasury employee in the Financial Management Services division used government resources to mail personal bills over an eight-year-period.
 
Another ethics violations stipulated in the OIG documents focused on a Treasury Department employee in the Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC).
 
The intoxicated OFAC official attempted to bring prohibited alcoholic beverages into a college football game, and was stopped by law enforcement.
 
The OFAC official was perceived to be “disorderly and disruptive” and was nearly arrested even after University of North Carolina police noticed the official’s badge and credentials. The report said the officers used “restraint because they believed him to be a law enforcement officer.” OIG found him to be in “violation of Treasury policy.”
 
Other than the employee who surfed the Internet for prostitutes, it's unclear if the workers that the OIG investigated are still employed at Treasury.
 
In an interview with The Hill, Eric Thorson, the IG at Treasury, praised senior leaders at Treasury for giving his department the freedom to aggressively investigate allegations. He noted that Treasury is a "fairly large department," suggesting the actions of a few should not tarnish the vast majority of employees who comply with government ethics laws.
 
"Many organizations have people who do dumb things," he said.
 
Thorson stressed that the OIG findings are not comparable to GSA's scandal of lavish spending, saying Treasury has a clear track record of not tolerating misconduct. He and other Treasury officials said that the OIG reports show Treasury's systems are working because they have rooted out problems within the department.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: garebear on July 17, 2012, 05:10:28 AM
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Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 17, 2012, 06:06:40 AM
.

Should-Have-Known File: Big-Time Obama Fundraiser in Mortgage Seizure Scheme
 Townhall.com ^ | July 17, 2012 | John Ransom


Posted on Tuesday, July 17, 2012 8:12:44 AM by Kaslin

Municipalities in California are considering a scheme whereby they seize home mortgages that are underwater through the process known as eminent domain, pay off investors at reduced rates, and allow new investors to refinance the underlying homes at current value.

“The eminent-domain gambit is being advocated by Steven Gluckstern,” reports the Wall Street Journal, “the chairman of Mortgage Resolution Partners, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm that has been the guiding force behind three California municipalities that are considering the approach.” 

And like all schemes weird and wacky in this Occupy Anything country we have become, it’s the brainchild of someone with deep ties to the Obama administration.

Steven Gluckstern raised $120,900 for the Obama campaign in 2008 as a bundler, according to opensecrets.org, the web site that tracks political donations.

A bundler is someone who raises campaign cash from others on behalf of a campaign and then gets special treatment from the president if the candidate wins.

Gluckstern was also the founding chairman of the Democracy Alliance, a George Soros-sponsored liberal money machine matrix ;-), that meets secretly in luxury hotel rooms across the country and has dispersed reportedly $150 million in donations to liberal causes since 2005.

Like all true Obamtrepreneurs, Gluckstern has- gasp and surprise- opened a new company, Mortgage Resolution Partners (MRP) to “partner” with local government in this extra legal scheme to steal from some mortgage companies and give to other mortgage companies with the full sanction of the government.

And the only thing that MRP wants in return is a small “fee”- a “fee is very similar to the fee paid by the government to banks that modify mortgages under federal programs.”

Oh, so: It is only a fee that is very similar to other government-sponsored theft?

How nice of them.

Would any Obama bundler that isn’t trying to bilk the country with some private venture that steals from others please raise your hand now?

Thought so.

Gluckstern joins list of professional fundraisers who have sought to cash in on their ability to raise money for Obama that includes recent scandals such as Solyndra and Lightsquared.   

Gluckstern has told the Journal that he has “wound down” his political involvement in recent years, besides the $2,500 check he wrote recently to the Obama campaign. However, opensecrets.org actually shows two $2,500 donations this year to Obama from Steven Gluckstern, plus two $2,500 donations from Judith Gluckstern on the same dates, AND two donations from Sarah Gluckstern of $2,300 from previous election cycles. Gluckstern’s wife and daughter are named Judith and Sarah, respectively. 

I know in my family, when I’m trying to wind my political involvement with someone, I generally try to keep the combined contribution checks just a tad under $15,000.

That goes double if I think the “investment” in the candidate isn’t working out that great. 

To do more would just “look” bad when I’m meeting secretly in luxury hotels rooms with bags full of cash to disperse to liberal causes.

Did I tell you the Democracy Alliance distributed a reported $150 million in cash to liberal groups since 2005?

I did?

Good.

The Journal reports the White House is “skeptical” of the Gluckstern plan, which is probably a polite way fo telling Gluckstern that he has to come up with more cash. Once a bundler, after all. 

The White House could have said that they have grave constitutional concerns about government seizure of private property just because it seems like a cool idea that can generate a lot of fees.

They might have denounced it as incompatible with private property rights as protected under the Fifth Amendment.

But instead, they weakly mentioned that it as a “local” issue while saying they have “concerns.”

I’m wondering if there is any part of the constitution that Professor Obama has actually read. Or did he just color between the words?

And all this time I thought Obama wasn’t very business-friendly.

I guess the rest of us non-bundlers better get into the bundling business.Because under Obama, that business is booming.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 18, 2012, 01:53:30 PM
Amonix: Another Obama-Subsidized Solar Company Fails
 Breitbart ^ | 7/18/12 | John Nolte


Posted on Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Here we go again.

Yet another example of the Obama White House's failed attempt to pick winners and losers and doing so by gambling with our our tax dollars, this time to the tune of $6 million in tax credits and $15.6 in grant money from the U.S. Department of Energy.

This company, Amonix, is only 14 months old.

How in the world did it qualify for that kind of tax dollar windfall without any kind of track record?

Oh:

Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, U.S. Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., and Gov. Brian Sandoval were among the political leaders who lauded the company when it announced it would start making solar cells in the Golden Triangle Industrial Park.

And naturally, Obama has his fingerprints all over it:

The Amonix solar manufacturing plant in North Las Vegas, heavily financed under an Obama administration energy initiative, has closed its 214,000-square-foot facility 14 months after it opened.

Officials at Amonix headquarters in Seal Beach, Calif., have not responded to repeated calls for comment this week. The company today began selling equipment, from automated tooling systems to robotic welding cells.


(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 19, 2012, 10:55:35 AM
Timothy Geithner Peppered TARP Inspector General Barofsky With F-Bombs: Book


Posted: 07/19/2012 11:49 am Updated: 07/19/2012 1:41 pm


"I never would have imagined that one day one of the most powerful government officials in the world would be dropping f-bombs on me."

That's Neil Barofsky's response to being on the receiving end of an epic tantrum by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner in the fall of 2009, after Barofsky dared to suggest that Geithner had perhaps not been the most transparent Treasury secretary in the entire history of the country.

Warning: Sailor talk ahoy!

"Neil, I have been the most fucking transparent secretary of the Treasury in this country's entire fucking history!" Geithner erupted, in an episode that had Barofsky wondering if Geithner was going to "throttle" him. At the time, Barofsky was the special inspector general in charge of oversight of the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

It's one of the juicier episodes in Barofsky's new book, "Bailout: An Inside Account of How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street." The book recounts Barofsky's front-row view of how the Bush and Obama administrations handled the bailouts of banks, auto makers and homeowners after the financial crisis. Few players come off looking great in the book, but Geithner and his Treasury Department are cast in a particularly bad light.

Congress created Barofsky's position of special inspector general to keep tabs on how TARP money would be spent. Though a Democrat who donated to President Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, Barofsky was appointed by President George W. Bush and had a cordial relationship with then-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. Barofsky hoped for even better things from the Obama administration.

Instead, Geithner's treatment of Barofsky ranged from disdain to thundering rage.

In the thundering-rage episode, Barofsky met with Geithner in the fall of 2009 to express his concern that the Treasury Department had made TARP unpopular by not being fully forthcoming about how TARP was being used, including not forcing banks disclose how they were spending TARP funds.

"I said that I thought our capacity as a nation to deal with what could be a continuing financial crisis was being undermined by a loss of faith in government," Barofsky writes. "Then I said that the current loss of government credibility could be traced to Treasury's mishandling of TARP."

"Geithner got dramatic," Barofsky writes: "'Neil, you think I don't hear those criticisms? I hear them. And each one, they cut me,' he said, pausing and then making an emphatic cutting motion with one hand as he said 'like a knife.'"

After a Geithner subordinate in the room, Herb Allison, expresses personal offense at Barofsky's suggestion that Geithner has not been fully transparent, Barofsky responds:

"I am not suggesting that the secretary has failed in transparency, I am stating it. Mr. Secretary, you've failed to be sufficiently transparent, and that is one of the reasons why people are so angry. But you can still fix it."

And that's when the ticking time bomb that was Geithner erupted, says Barofsky:

"'No one has ever made the banks disclose the type of shit that I made them disclose after the stress tests. No one! And now you're saying that I haven't been fucking transparent?'"

Barofsky writes that he'd heard about Geithner's propensity for potty talk, but was still taken aback.

Barofsky writes that he responded to the meltdown with some mollifying words, but without backing down: "'Mr. Secretary, you've done some good things, to be sure,' I responded, and after a pause, I said slowly, 'but you could do so much more.'"

At that point in the meeting, Barofsky says, "Geithner looked as if he was going to get out of his chair and throttle me."

Cooler heads prevailed, and the meeting went on, but Geithner never really came fully off the boil, Barofsky writes:

"As we parried back and forth, Geithner repeatedly reached a pitch of anger, regaling me with detailed expletive-filled explanations that established my apparent idiocy. He would then calm himself down and give me a forced, almost demonic smile."

The meeting ended on a relatively cordial note, but that did not change Barofsky's assessment of the meeting: "It was the weirdest meeting of my life."

After the meeting was over, Barofsky and his deputy, Kevin Puvalowski, had a big laugh about it:

"'In all honesty, I think he was about to come out of his chair and beat the living shit out of you,' Kevin said. ... 'That was fantastic.'"

The Treasury Department was not immediately available for comment about the episode, or about the more-damning allegations of the book: that Geithner's Treasury Department repeatedly tried to undermine Barofsky's authority, ignoring his warnings about the risk of fraud in TARP programs and generally carrying water for the banking industry.

The Huffington Post is reading through the book and will file more posts about it shortly.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 20, 2012, 03:23:42 PM


Strassel: Obama's Enemies List—Part II

First an Obama campaign website called out Romney donor Frank Vandersloot. Next the IRS moved to audit him—and so did the Labor Department.



By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL

r
 


This column has already told the story of Frank VanderSloot, an Idaho businessman who last year contributed to a group supporting Mitt Romney. An Obama campaign website in April sent a message to those who'd donate to the president's opponent. It called out Mr. VanderSloot and seven other private donors by name and occupation and slurred them as having "less-than-reputable" records.

Mr. VanderSloot has since been learning what it means to be on a presidential enemies list. Just 12 days after the attack, the Idahoan found an investigator digging to unearth his divorce records. This bloodhound—a recent employee of Senate Democrats—worked for a for-hire opposition research firm.

Now Mr. VanderSloot has been targeted by the federal government. In a letter dated June 21, he was informed that his tax records had been "selected for examination" by the Internal Revenue Service. The audit also encompasses Mr. VanderSloot's wife, and not one, but two years of past filings (2008 and 2009).

Mr. VanderSloot, who is 63 and has been working since his teens, says neither he nor his accountants recall his being subject to a federal tax audit before. He was once required to send documents on a line item inquiry into his charitable donations, which resulted in no changes to his taxes. But nothing more—that is until now, shortly after he wrote a big check to a Romney-supporting Super PAC.
 






Enlarge Image




Zhang Jun/Xinhua/ZUMAPRESS.com.
Two weeks after receiving the IRS letter, Mr. VanderSloot received another—this one from the Department of Labor. He was informed it would be doing an audit of workers he employs on his Idaho-based cattle ranch under the federal visa program for temporary agriculture workers.

The H-2A program allows tens of thousands of temporary workers in the U.S.; Mr. VanderSloot employs precisely three. All are from Mexico and have worked on the VanderSloot ranch—which employs about 20 people—for five years. Two are brothers. Mr. VanderSloot has never been audited for this, though two years ago his workers' ranch homes were inspected. (The ranch was fined $8,400, mainly for too many "flies" and for "grease build-up" on the stove. God forbid a cattle ranch home has flies.)

This letter requests an array of documents to ascertain whether Mr. VanderSloot's "foreign workers are provided the full scope of protections" under the visa program: information on the hours they've worked each day and their rate of pay, an explanation of their deductions, copies of contracts. And on and on.
 
Perhaps all this is coincidence. Perhaps something in Mr. VanderSloot's finances or on his ranch raised a flag. Americans want to believe the federal government performs its duties without fear or favor.

Only in this case, Americans can have no such confidence. Did Mr. Obama pick up the phone and order the screws put to Mr. VanderSloot? Or—more likely—did a pro-Obama appointee or political hire or career staffer see that the boss had an issue with this donor, and decide to do the president an unasked-for election favor? Or did he or she simply think this was a duty, given that the president had declared Mr. VanderSloot and fellow donors "less than reputable"?

Mr. VanderSloot says he "expected the public beatings" from the left after the naming, but he "also wondered whether government agencies, anxious to please their boss, would take notice of the target he had apparently placed on me. Now that I'm being singled out for audits, I can't help but wonder whether there is a connection."
 
As for other Romney donors: "It is un-American and irresponsible for a president to target individual, law-abiding citizens for political retribution, and it is inconceivable that any U.S. agency would stoop to do the bidding for this campaign's silliness," says Louis Bacon, an investor and conservationist who also made the Obama list.

We don't know what happened, and that's the problem. Entrusted with extraordinary powers, Mr. Obama has the duty to protect and defend all Americans—regardless of political ideology. By having his campaign target a private citizen for his politics, the president forswore those obligations. He both undermined public faith in federal institutions and put his employees in an impossible situation.

Every thinking American must henceforth wonder if Mr. VanderSloot has been targeted for inquiry because of his political leanings. And every federal servant must wonder if his inquiries into an Obama enemy will bring suspicion or disgrace on the agency—even if the inquiry is legitimate.

As for Mr. VanderSloot, to what authority should he appeal if he believes this to be politically motivated—given the Justice Department on down is also controlled by the man who targeted him? (The White House did not return an email requesting comment.)

If this isn't a chilling glimpse of a society Americans reject, it is hard to know what is. It's why presidents are held to different rules, and should not keep lists. And it's why Mr. Obama has some explaining to do.

Write to kim@wsj.com.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 23, 2012, 03:50:04 AM
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Obama Donor: Stimulus Was Like a Hooker in Prison
Townhall.com ^ | July 23, 2012 | John Ransom
Posted on July 23, 2012 8:24:52 AM EDT by Kaslin

Another green company backed by an Obama bundler just bit the dust.

After announcing earlier this year that the company would lay off 200 of its 300 employees, solar manufacturer Amonix Inc. closed its operation in North Las Vegas leaving taxpayers in the red by $20 million.

Editor's note: We've updated this piece with research from the RNC below, entitiled:  "The Big Payback: Where It All Began," which details the massive payoffs directed to Obama supporters using taxpayer dollars in the guise of "stimulus." 

“Just seven months after California-based solar power company Amonix Inc. opened its largest manufacturing plant, in North Las Vegas,” reports the Las Vegas Sun, a liberal paper, last January, “the company’s contractor has laid off nearly two-thirds of its workforce. Flextronics Industrial, the Singapore solar panel manufacturer that partnered with Amonix to staff the new $18 million, 214,000-square-foot plant, laid off about 200 of its 300-plus employees Tuesday.”

Now only 14 months after opening the facility, and seven months after massive layoffs, it has closed due to manufacturing over-capacity in the solar industry, along with quality control issues.

"I don't think they had a lot of training," said Rene Kenerly, a former material and supply manager at Amonix, according to the Las Vegas Review Journal. "There were a lot of quality issues. A lot of stuff was coming back because it had some functionality issues."

Sounds like a picture perfect Obama program: Very expensive with "functionality issues."     

The man behind the company, Steve Westly, has received over $500 million in taxpayer-funded grants, loans and cash for a variety of companies- mostly in the in the green space after raising $86,000 for Obama as a bundler in 2008, according to the campaign cash website opensecrets.org.

So far this election cycle, Westly has donated $101,000 to various Democrat candidates and groups according to data compiled by opensecrets, including $60,000 to DNC Service Corp, also known by the less creepy name of the Democrat National Committee.

Earlier this week, I detailed plans by another Obama bundler, Steven Gluckstern, to help municipalities seize mortgage loans under eminent domain laws- that is, abuse eminent domain laws- in order to generate fees for his company, Mortgage Resolution Partners.

Westly’s list of interests backed by the Obama administration is much, much longer than the Gluckstern scheme however.

From the Center for Public Integrity:

“We believe that with the Obama administration, and other governments … committing hundreds of billions of dollars to clean tech, there has never been a better time to launch clean tech companies,” says his company website. “The Westly Group is uniquely positioned to take advantage of this surge of interest and growth.”

Uniquely positioned, indeed.

One of President Barack Obama’s most prolific fundraisers, Westly was among guests at January’s state dinner for the president of China. A month later, he dined with Obama again at an exclusive San Francisco Bay area gathering for prominent high tech CEOs, including the leaders of Facebook, Google and Apple.

In addition to the $20 million in loans and tax credits for the failed Amonix plant, Westly also is involved in other companies that have benefited from Obama-directed taxpayer help: Tesla Motors, CalStar Products, Solexel, Recycle Bank, EdenIQ and Amyris Biotechnologies.

Now I understand why the Democrats are so worried about Mitt’s tax returns: Mitt’s showing income not losses.

Obama's taxpayer rate of returns shows losses not income.

Occupy that.

Here’s my proposal: If it’s constitutional to tax people who don’t have healthcare, isn’t it constitutional to levy a tax on investors who benefit from federal green energy boondoggles?

If you are going to go after millionaires and billionaires, here’s a set of folks who are just crying for it.

Because if you want to know what happened to the all the stimulus jobs that were supposed to be created, now you know: They were sacrificed to stimulate the bundlers.

That’s all.

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 24, 2012, 11:40:51 AM
Obama Fundraises With Players in Solyndra Scandal






SAN FRANCISCO — At an exclusive re-election fundraiser tonight, President Obama hobnobbed with 60 of his wealthiest supporters, including two figures at the center of the Solyndra loan controversy.
 
Steve Westly, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, was one of the first to raise red flags about the administration’s support for a $500 million loan to Solyndra, the solar energy start-up that later went bankrupt.  He wrote directly to senior Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett in 2010 to raise concerns about the company’s viability ahead of the president’s high-profile visit that year.
 
Matt Rogers, a former senior adviser at the Department of Energy, played a key role in approving Solyndra’s loan as part of the stimulus plan.
 
Both men were spotted by White House print pool reporter Darren Samuelsohn of Politico at the Piedmont, Calif., home of Quinn Delaney and Wayne Jordan, who were hosting the $35,800-a-head event.
 
Samuelsohn noted that Westly was seen near the pool “juggling lemons, entertaining kids at the party.”
 
Republicans have seized on Obama’s ties to Westly and Rogers — and the Solyndra loan — as part of their case that the president engages in “crony capitalism.”
 
“The Obama Administration betrayed American taxpayers when it dumped hundreds of millions of public dollars into Solyndra while ignoring clear warnings about the company’s dire financial situation,” Romney campaign spokesman Ryan Williams said in a statement.
 
“President Obama’s first term worked out well for his donors who got special access and taxpayer money for their failed ventures,” Williams said. “It hasn’t worked as well for the 23 million Americans struggling for work in the worst economic recovery our country has ever had.”
 
Before receiving a fast-tracked loan from the Obama administration in 2010, Solyndra had been singled out by both Republicans and Democrats as a promising venture potentially worthy of government investment. The company first applied for a Department of Energy grant under the George W. Bush administration.
 
Get more pure politics at ABC News.com/Politics and a lighter take on the news at OTUSNews.com


SHOWS: World News

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/07/obama-fundraises-with-players-in-solyndra-scandal

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 24, 2012, 12:48:54 PM
AP Exclusive: Internal documents shows Obama deportation proposal could cost more than $585M
ALICIA A. CALDWELL  Associated Press
First Posted: July 24, 2012 - 2:09 pm
Last Updated: July 24, 2012 - 2:03 pm
 

 FILE - In this June 15, 2012 file photo, President Barack Obama talks about granting work permits to younger illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as children and have since led law-abiding lives, in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington. The Obama administration's new plan to grant temporary work permits to many young, illegal immigrants who otherwise could be deported may cost the government more than $585 million and require hiring hundreds of new federal employees to process more than 1 million anticipated requests, according to internal Homeland Security Department plans obtained by The Associated Press. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)




WASHINGTON — The Obama administration's new plan to grant temporary work permits to many young, illegal immigrants who otherwise could be deported may cost more than $585 million and require hiring hundreds of new federal employees to process more than 1 million anticipated requests, according to internal documents obtained by The Associated Press.

The Homeland Security Department plans, marked "not for distribution," describe steps that immigrants will need to take — including a $465 paperwork fee designed to offset the program's cost — and how the government will manage it. Illegal immigrants can request permission to stay in the country under the plan by filing a document, "Request for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals," and simultaneously apply for a work permit starting Aug. 15.



Under the new program, which President Barack Obama announced last month, eligible immigrants must have arrived in the U.S. before their 16th birthday, are 30 or younger, have been living here at least five years, are in school or graduated or served in the military.
 They also must not have a criminal record or otherwise pose a safety threat. They can apply to stay in the country and be granted a work permit for two years, but they would not be granted citizenship.

The internal government plans obtained by the AP provide the first estimates of costs, how many immigrants were expected to participate and how long it might take for them. It was not immediately clear whether or under which circumstances any immigrants would not be required to pay the $465 paperwork fee. The plans said there would be no waivers, but Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told Congress last week that the government would grant waivers "in very deserving cases." She said details were still being worked out.

"We anticipate that this will be a fee-driven process," Napolitano said.

A spokesman for the Homeland Security Department, Peter Boogaard, said the plans obtained by the AP were "preliminary documents" and the process is still being worked out. Boogaard said processing immigrant applications under the program "will not use taxpayer dollars" because of the fees that will be collected.

Fee waivers could dramatically affect the government's share of the cost. The plans said that, depending on how many applicants don't pay, the government could lose between $19 million and $121 million. Republican critics pounced on that.

"By lowering the fee or waiving it altogether for illegal immigrants, those who play by the rules will face delays and large backlogs as attention is diverted to illegal immigrants," said House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas. "American taxpayers should not be forced to bail out illegal immigrants and President Obama's fiscally irresponsible policies."

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services estimated it could receive more than 1 million applications during the first year of the program, or more than 3,000 per day. It would cost between $467 million and $585 million to process applications in the first two years of the program, with revenues from fees paid by immigrants estimated at $484 million, according to the plans. That means the cost to the government could range from a gain of $16 million to a loss of more than $101 million.

The government estimated that as many as 890,000 immigrants in the first year would be immediately eligible to avoid deportation. The remaining 151,000 immigrants would likely be rejected as ineligible.

The plans estimated that the Homeland Security Department could need to hire more than 1,400 full-time employees, as well as contractors, to process the applications. Salaries were included in the agency's estimates of total program costs.

Once immigrants submit their applications, it could take between two and 10 days for the Homeland Security Department to scan and file it. It could take up to four weeks longer to make an appointment for immigrants to submit their fingerprints and take photographs. A subsequent background check could take six more weeks, then three more months for the government to make its final decision before a work permit would be issued.

Napolitano said new information about the program should be made available by Aug. 1. She has said immigrants would generally not be detained by immigration authorities while their application is pending.

___

Alicia A. Caldwell can be reached on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/acaldwellap







Disgusting. 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 25, 2012, 06:22:16 PM
Jul 25, 4:38 PM EDT

Obama creating African-American education office

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WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama is creating a new office to bolster education of African-American students.

The White House says the office will coordinate the work of communities and federal agencies to ensure that African-American youngsters are better prepared for high school, college and career.

Obama is announcing his election-year initiative Wednesday night in a speech to the civil rights group the National Urban League as he seeks to rally black voters. Aides say his executive order, to be signed Thursday, will set a goal of producing "a more effective continuum" of programs for African-American students.

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Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 25, 2012, 07:04:23 PM
1. Nope.

2. Sounds like Bullshit.

3. Nah... my shit works well.
;D.   You made my day w that post.


LOL!!!
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 26, 2012, 03:11:45 AM
Danish MPs call Obama ‘assassin’ over drones use (Hussein's extended 'kill' list?)
The Nation ^ | 7/26/12
Posted on July 25, 2012 10:43:52 PM EDT by Libloather

Danish MPs call Obama ‘assassin’ over drones use
By: The Nation Monitoring | July 26, 2012

COPENHAGEN - Danish lawmakers are levelling unprecedented criticism at US President Barack Obama for his use of remote-controlled attack drones in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen.

Rasmus Helveg Petersen, Radikale foreign policy spokesperson, told Politiken newspaper that Obama’s actions mirror those of the terrorists he professes to be fighting against. “It’s terrible,” said Petersen. “The United States has no right to carry out these types of executions of suspected political adversaries. It contravenes international law.”

Petersen added that executing political adversaries within another country’s borders was tantamount to terrorism. The comments came after Soren Pind, of the opposition party Venstre, in an interview with the magazine Ræson, likened the drone attacks to ‘assassination’. “I criticised George Bush for allowing torture during his presidency,” Pind told Politiken. “But what he is doing is much worse and violates the principles of the Western world.” Representatives from the far-left Enhedslisten joined in bashing the US president and said it would raise the issue with parliament’s foreign policy committee. The attack drone issue has arisen following the disclosure of Obama’s involvement in some 261 drone raids against suspected terrorists in Pakistan alone. During his eight years in office, President George W Bush approved a total of 45 drone attacks.

(Excerpt) Read more at nation.com.pk ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 26, 2012, 08:54:12 AM
White House tailors minority health care pitch (brags about all the 'free stuff')
 politico ^ | 7/26/12 | REID J. EPSTEIN





President Barack Obama tends to skim lightly over the details of his health care law in speeches.

But his administration has a far more specific pitch to black and Hispanic audiences.

The message: Blacks and Hispanics, among whom uninsured rates are significantly higher than among whites, stand to benefit disproportionately under the health law, gaining access to free preventive care and other services that will help reduce existing health care disparities. The sustained outreach from the White House aims to make voters eligible for new benefits aware of them and how to get them.

Obama’s staff has invited groups of black journalists and publishers to the White House for health care briefings with senior officials and conducted traveling policy road shows in black and Hispanic neighborhoods across the country. On the day the Supreme Court upheld Obama’s health law, senior adviser Valerie Jarrett held an on-background conference call for black reporters.

Obama rarely emphasized specific benefits for blacks and Hispanics as he pushed his law through Congress, focusing instead on its benefits for the general populace. And the law itself includes only a smattering of programs designed to address racial disparities in health care — even though 22 percent of African Americans and 32 percent of Hispanics are uninsured, compared to 14 percent of whites, according to Kaiser Family Foundation data.

As his campaign leans heavily on repeating 2008’s historic margins and turnout from black voters, months of White House outreach on the Affordable Care Act could help rally African Americans in November. While the president polls far better among blacks and Hispanics than GOP challenger Mitt Romney, every vote matters in such a tight race.

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) said the appeals are key to boosting black turnout in swing states such as Florida and Ohio, and he’d like to see even more of them.

“It is a rallying call and it would help excite the African-American vote because this is something that African Americans truly care about,” Cummings said. “If there is one piece of legislation that I have voted for that I hear mentioned most is the Affordable Care Act. It is just amazing to me, you know, I think about my constituents, if they didn’t watch the news, would be shocked that there’s so much opposition to it.”

To general audiences and in televised speeches, Obama frames his signature policy achievement as a protection for the middle class against insurance companies that would otherwise bleed them dry. At the National Urban League in New Orleans Wednesday, he highlighted popular provisions in the controversial law — children staying on their parents’ health care plans until they turn 26, an end to insurers’ discrimination against sick people, lower prescription drug prices for senior citizens and “30 million Americans without health insurance” who “will finally know the security of affordable care.”

To black audiences, his aides also offer a more comprehensive focus on the law’s details and how they will reduce inequalities in care.

Jarrett ticked through Obama’s Affordable Care Act talking points during a regional African American Policy Forum at Morgan State University in Baltimore.

“Given the health disparities, it will disproportionately benefit the African-American community,” Jarrett said at the July 13 event, at which she was the featured speaker.

“So many folks in our community, and you know people who do this, use the emergency room as their primary care. That is not good. You need a primary care physician who you go to see on a regular basis who provides you with preventive care. So under the Affordable Care Act, the cost of that preventive care is free,” she said, according to a recording of the meeting.

“So no more excuses for not going in for those checkups, whether it’s a mammogram, or prostate testing, or, we know that, for example, asthma is so prevalent in the black community among our children. You need to take your children in for those regular checkups and know that it’s going to be covered and you’re not out of pocket,” she added during the discussion, which was moderated by satellite radio host Joe Madison, known to his listeners as “The Black Eagle.”

Jarrett also cited the reluctance of Southern GOP governors to support the health law.

“If you don’t have insurance currently, we’re going to subsidize it through exchanges around the states. You may have been hearing recently that some of the Republican governors, particularly the Southern Republican governors, are talking about not expanding Medicare, which the Affordable Care Act provides for them to do,” she said, apparently referring to Medicaid. “We think that they should, but we’re also going to set up a federal exchange that allows people who don’t have health insurance to have it and have it in an affordable way.”

The White House declined to make Jarrett available for an interview.

“The health care law will help every American by reducing costs, ending the worst insurance company abuses and extending coverage to millions of Americans who have gone without insurance,” White House spokesman Nick Papas said. “It shouldn’t surprise anyone that administration officials discuss provisions of the law that will benefit the audiences they are addressing.”

But Florida GOP strategist Rick Wilson said Jarrett’s words show the health law is geared more toward eliminating racial disparities than helping the middle class.

“They sold the Affordable Care Act largely as, ‘We’re going to keep middle-class families from having catastrophic non-covered expenses and we’re going to help average, everyday Americans.’ She has a very specific race-based message, she’s playing to her audience at Morgan State,” Wilson said. “It plays to the race-driven mindset of a lot of these people in the Obama administration who look at the entitlement state as a way to address racial disparities.”

Chip Saltsman, who ran Mike Huckabee’s 2008 campaign, said the right will seize on Jarrett’s words as evidence that Obama’s health care reforms are not directed toward the middle class.

“Am I shocked that a senior adviser to the president would go to Baltimore and pander to a town hall to try and get votes for the president? No,” Saltsman said. “Neither will I be shocked that after hearing her remarks, a lot of conservatives are going to say, ‘I told you so.’”

Romney frequently attacks the health care law with a warning that some voters will be attracted to “free stuff” he says Obama has offered them.

“Your friends who like Obamacare, you remind them of this,” Romney told donors this month in Montana. “If they want more stuff from government, tell them to go vote for the other guy, more free stuff. But don’t forget, nothing is really free.”

Obama portrays his law as a matter of fairness.

“As Americans, we don’t expect handouts,” Obama said last week in Jacksonville, Fla. “But we expect hard work to pay off.”

In March, the administration invited the National Association of Black Journalists and the National Newspaper Publishers Association, which represents the black press, to separate White House briefings.

Surgeon General Regina Benjamin spoke and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius took questions from the black journalists group, which was in Washington for its annual conference to address inequities in the U.S. health care system.

“They knew that we were addressing specifics in our conference of inequity, so they tailored their speeches to why African Americans stood to benefit more disproportionately or more profoundly than the general population,” said Cindy George, a Houston Chronicle reporter who chaired the NABJ’s D.C. health conference.

Tailoring a message to a particular audience is hardly unusual. And the administration is fine-tuning its health care message for other groups as well: Obama told a crowd of senior citizens in West Palm Beach, Fla., last week that his law would allow people who “had been unlucky and ended up getting laid off at the age of 55 or 57” to stay covered.

To reach Hispanic audiences, the White House in 2011 held “White House Hispanic Community Action Summits” in 21 cities. Officials discussed several initiatives, including how people newly eligible for health insurance can get it now and once more benefits become available in 2014. The campaign also has produced Spanish-language ads about the law.

A White House spokesman said the outreach to Hispanic constituents is more granular, targeting audiences that can benefit from the changes.

“We go through, here are the benefits, here’s how it works, here’s how you can get more information,” said Luis Miranda, the White House director of Hispanic media. “It’s about public health, we’re trying to inform people. We’re trying to do what good government does, which is to be accessible and responsive to constituents.”

Part of the motivation for the White House to be so explicit in its health care message to African Americans and Hispanics is that other efforts to relay the specific benefits of the law to a broader audience have failed, said Gordon Whitman, the policy director at the Pico National Network, an alliance of faith-based organizations.

Whitman said mainstream press coverage has emphasized the political battle more than what’s actually in the law, forcing the administration to offer more detail to groups that officials think will be receptive to its benefits.

“This is an area where it’s not what’s said, but what’s heard,” Whitman said. “I think the president and the White House have talked pretty consistently about the benefits of the Affordable Care Act and what it means for people and probably more so since the Supreme Court decision. … But there have been a lot of filters that have made it difficult for people to hear it.”

Rep. Bennie Thompson, who in June hosted one of four White House African American policy forums in his Mississippi district, said Obama hasn’t done enough to explain his health care reforms.

But he counseled the president to avoid delving into the Affordable Care Act’s details with audiences that aren’t pre-sold on the changes. Crowds that oppose the health care reform, Thompson said, will only be more turned off to Obama by hearing more about it.

“If the president decides to use it in those venues where he feels it’s advantageous, he’ll use it,” Thompson said. “But I wouldn’t seek reelection in an area that was against it. I would talk about whatever interest that that area had that we agreed to.”
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 26, 2012, 12:00:37 PM
REVEALED: Corzine’s MF Global Was Client of Eric Holder’s Law Firm
by Wynton Hall

26 Jul 2012, 6:24 AM PDT189post a comment


via Breitbart



Those wondering why the Department of Justice has refused to go after Jon Corzine for the vaporization of $1.6 billion in MF Global client funds need look no further than the documents uncovered by the Government Accountability Institute that reveal that the now-defunct MF Global was a client of Attorney General Eric Holder and Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer’s former law firm, Covington & Burling.
 
There’s more.
 
Records also reveal that MF Global’s trustee for the Chapter 11 bankruptcy retained as its general bankruptcy counsel Morrison & Foerester--the very law firm from which Associate Attorney General Tony West came to DOJ.
 
And more.
 
As Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer explains in the Washington Times Thursday, the trustee overseeing MF Global’s bankruptcy is former FBI Director Louis Freeh. At Holder’s Senate confirmation hearing Freeh served as a character witness for Holder and revealed that Holder had previously worked for Freeh. “As general counsel,” Freeh said, “I could have engaged any lawyer in America to represent our bank. I chose Eric.”
 
Until now, the conventional wisdom for why Holder wouldn’t throw the book at Corzine was that Corzine is an Obama campaign bundler. Indeed, as Breitbart News reported, four of the top officials at the Department of Justice--Eric Holder, Thomas Perrelli, Karol Mason, and Tony West--were also big money bundlers for Obama.
 
But the newly understood crony connections reveal conflicts of interest that extend well beyond mere political support for a common candidate--they go to a tangle of prior business dealings that further underscore the need for a special prosecutor in the Corzine case.
 
At least 65 members of Congress have already signed a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder requesting that he appoint a special prosecutor to investigate MF Global’s collapse and the loss of $1.6 billion in customer money. What’s more, even progressives have begun to wonder whether Holder’s Covington & Burling connection explains why the Department of Justice has not charged, prosecuted, or jailed a single Wall Street executive after the biggest financial collapse in American history.
 
As Richard Eskow of the Huffington Post recently wrote:
 

More and more Washington insiders are asking a question that was considered off-limits in the nation's capital just a few months ago: Who, exactly, is Attorney General Eric Holder representing? As scandal after scandal erupts on Wall Street, involving everything from global lending manipulation to cocaine and prostitution, more and more people are worrying about Holder's seeming inaction -- or worse -- in the face of mounting evidence.
 
This isn’t going away.
 
Both the left and the right are onto Holder’s Wall Street head fake. With the revelation of the new crony connections, the time for Eric Holder to appoint a special prosecutor in the Corzine/MF Global case is now.
 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 26, 2012, 05:07:47 PM
Executive Order -- White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans
White House ^ | July 26, 2012 | White House
Posted on July 26, 2012 7:36:34 PM EDT by eak3

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, to restore the country to its role as the global leader in education, to strengthen the Nation by improving educational outcomes for African Americans of all ages, and to help ensure that all African Americans receive an education that properly prepares them for college, productive careers, and satisfying lives, it is hereby ordered as follows:

(Excerpt) Read more at whitehouse.gov ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 27, 2012, 11:29:09 AM
Disgraced Penn State President Hired by Obama Administration for Top Secret National Security Post



You just cant make this stuff up folks. Of course Spanier has been shilling and covering for the progressive secular left for years – LINK and was invested in the child sex abuse cover-up.
 
Political commentator Marie Garr said it best, “Guess they figure he can keep a secret……….GEEZ!”
 
Our take: What if Bush had done this?
 

Disgraced Penn State President Graham Spanier
 
Washington Post:
 

Graham Spanier might have been ousted from his post at the helm of Penn State over the sex-abuse scandal that engulfed the university, but it seems he’s found a backup employer: the American taxpayer.
 
Only a disgraced public figure would consider joining the much-maligned ranks of the federal workforce as a step up, reputation-wise. We can assume there were no openings for a used-car salesman.
 
Spanier was faulted in an internal Penn State report after the conviction on child-molestation charges of former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky. The report said he, head coach Joe Paterno and others helped cover up Sandusky’s abuse.
 
His lawyer confirms to the Loop that Spanier is working on a part-time consulting basis for a “top-secret” agency on national security issues. But the gig is so hush-hush, he couldn’t even tell his attorneys the name of the agency. In April — months after his ouster as president but before the release of the internal report — he told the Patriot-News of central Pennsylvania that he was working on a “special project for the U.S. government relating [to] national security.”
 
But who’s he working for? The CIA? Homeland Security? Or maybe just a dull consulting firm with a government contract?
 
“I have no idea,”says his lawyer, Peter Vaira. “We know the work is in security and he’s prohibited from disclosing which agency or agencies he’s working for.”

http://politicalarena.org/2012/07/27/disgraced-penn-state-president-hired-by-obama-administration-for-top-secret-national-security-post

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 28, 2012, 10:30:04 PM
Obama gave tax money to campaign donors, then falsely claimed it was for "green energy"
wordpress.com ^
Posted on July 29, 2012 12:46:01 AM EDT by grundle

Number 25 on a very long list of Obama's misdeeds:

The Obama administration gave $535 million to Solyndra, claiming that it would create 4,000 new jobs. However, instead of creating those 4,000 new jobs, the company went bankrupt. It was later revealed that the company’s shareholders and executives had made substantial donations to Obama’s campaign, and that the company had also spent a large sum of money on lobbying. In April 2012, CBS News reported that Solyndra had left a substantial amount of toxic waste at its abandoned facility in Milpitas, California. After Obama gave Raser Technologies $33 million to build a power plant, the company declared bankruptcy, and owed $1.5 million in back taxes. After Obama gave Abound Solar, Inc. a $400 million loan guarantee to build photovoltaic panel factories, the company halted production and laid off 180 employees. After Obama gave Beacon Power a $43 million loan guarantee to build green energy storage, the company filed for bankruptcy. After Obama approved $2.1 billion in loan guarantees for Solar Trust of America so it could build solar power plants, the company filed for bankruptcy. Although Obama stated that all of the green energy companies that received taxpayer money were chosen “based solely on their merits,” the truth is that 71% of these grants and loans went to Obama donors and fundraisers, who raised $457,834 for his campaign, and were later approved for grants and loans totaling more than $11 billion. By November 2011, the Energy Department’s inspector general had begun more than 100 criminal investigations related to Obama’s stimulus.

(Excerpt) Read more at danfromsquirrelhill.word press.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 29, 2012, 06:01:18 PM
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/it-can-wait-obama-admin-reportedly-putting-off-costly-controversial-regs-until-after-the-election


Yeah let's vote 4 more years of this shit.   ::)
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 31, 2012, 12:53:13 PM
Inhofe: Obama Administration 'Doesn't Want All These Pink Slips Going Out 5 Days Before Election'

By Susan Jones

July 31, 2012

Subscribe to Susan Jones's posts


 


Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.)
 
(CNSNews.com) - President Obama is trying to prevent thousands of layoff notices from going out a few days before the November election, Sen. Jame Inhofe (R-Okla.) said on Tuesday.

Obama's Labor Department on Monday issued "guidance" to the states, telling them that a federal law requiring advance notice of mass layoffs does not apply to the layoffs that may occur in January as a result of automatic budget cuts known as "sequestration."

Inhofe, appearing on Fox & Friends Tuesday morning, said President Obama, through his Labor Department, "is trying to intimidate businesses, companies, corporations -- not just defense contractors -- into not issuing the pink slips," which are required by federal law 60 days before mass layoffs or plant closings.

"(T)he president doesn't really want all these pink slips going out five days before the election," Inhofe said.

He noted that if the automatic budget cuts kick in on Jan. 2 -- as they will if Congress can't reach a deficit-reduction agreement -- layoff notices would have to go out no later than Nov. 2. The general election is on Nov. 6.

Under the WARN Act -- The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act -- companies with more than 100 employees must give 60 days' notice if there is to be a mass layoff during any 30-day period for 500 or more employees (or for 50-499 employees if they make up at least 33% of the employer's active workforce).

But in guidance issued on Monday, Assistant Labor Secretary Jane Oates said never mind about those pink slips:

"Questions have recently been raised as to whether the WARN Act requires Federal contractors...whose contracts may be terminated or reduced in the event of sequestration on January 2, 2013, to provide WARN Act notices 60 days before that date to their workers employed under government contracts funded from sequestrable accounts. The answer to this question is 'no.' In fact, to provide such notice would be inconsistent with the purpose of the WARN Act."

In its guidance, the Labor Department also noted that "efforts are being made to avoid sequestration," making its occurrence "not necessarily foreseeable."

"You can't not comply with the law," Inhofe said on Tuesday. "Put yourself on the board of directors of Lockheed Martin. If they came out with a class-action suit of a thousand dollars per employee, that would be $120 million. You bet they're going to send out pink slips. And by the way, they don't have to wait until Nov. 2. They can send them out today if they want," Inhofe added.
 
Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) also criticized the Obama administration for the "obvious political aim" of its guidance on the WARN Act.

“At a time when our economy continues to suffer from staggeringly high unemployment, the Obama Administration today took away an important planning tool for Americans who may lose their jobs as a result of the failure of Congress and the White House to address the looming and entirely predictable threat of budget sequestration. Sequestration is currently the law of the land, and our nation's workers have a right to know how these sequestration cuts which begin in January may impact them," the senators said in a news release.

“This decision is especially disturbing in light of the fact that the Department of Labor previously stated in a Fact Sheet that ‘since it has no administrative or enforcement responsibility under’ the WARN Act, it ‘cannot provide specific advice or guidance with respect to individual situations.’ Today the Department did just that, issuing guidance to government contractors not to provide their employees advance notification of potential layoffs as a result of sequestration. This is a troubling turnaround that lays bare the obvious political aim of today’s announcement – avoiding mass layoff notices just days before the November 6th election.

McCain, Ayotte and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) this week are visiting communities in Florida, North Carolina and Virginia and New Hampshire that will be hardest hit by the steep, automatic cuts to the Defense budget.

"The Americans we have met today are asking Republicans and Democrats to do their jobs – to come together to find a solution that avoids this threat to our national security and economy. They are also asking for something that has been totally lacking in Washington – presidential leadership," they said.

Republicans say President Obama has refused to engage in the debate and will share responsibility for the potential loss of one million jobs if sequestration takes effect.

"The Senate Armed Services Committee has received letters from eight defense companies, all of which advise that they will have to lay off thousands – if not tens of thousands – of workers if sequestration occurs. These Americans deserve fair warning that politics in Washington is placing their jobs in jeopardy," McCain and Ayotte said.

Under the Budget Control Act of 2011, if Congress can't produce deficit-reduction legislation by the end of the year, automatic spending cuts will take effect in 2013, split 50-50 between domestic and defense spending.  That amounts to a $500-billion cut to the Defense budget over ten years.
 
In theory, the deep Defense cuts were supposed to be so unpalatable that Democrats and Republicans would come together to find other ways to reduce the deficit.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 01, 2012, 06:20:18 PM
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White House officials caught out with lobbyists
Telegraph (UK) ^ | 8:07PM BST 01 Aug 2012 | By Raf Sanchez, Washington
Posted on August 1, 2012 9:00:36 PM EDT by DeaconBenjamin

Aides to President Barack Obama used personal email accounts to contact pharmaceutical companies and deliberately scheduled meetings in coffee shops away from the White House in order to skirt disclosure rules, according to a Congressional report on Wednesday.

Among the most damaging findings are emails from Jim Messina – the former White House deputy chief of staff who now manages the president's re-election campaign – to a drugs lobbyist in the days before Mr Obama's health care reforms passed Congress in 2010.

In an email from his personal account, Mr Messina promised "I will roll [Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi] for the 4 billion" needed to fund expansion of health care coverage. Mr Messina also promised the lobbyist he would deal with a reporter who had been questioning the White House's links with the pharmaceutical industry.

The report by the Republican-controlled oversight and investigations sub-committee also contained details of a proposed meeting between Jeffrey Smith, one of the president's science advisers, and an executive from a technology company.

Mr Smith suggested meeting at a Caribou Coffee near the White House, explaining that meeting in his office would mean "you'd appear on an official WH Visitor List which maybe not [what] you want at this stage".

Representative Cliff Sterns, the sub-committee chairman, said: "What we have learnt from our many investigations is that, time and again, the Obama administration's actions have failed to match the president's lofty rhetoric on transparency."

The sub-committee did not accuse the White House of breaking the law but rather of failing to live up to its own claim of being "the most open and transparent administration in history".

The White House declined to address the allegations directly, insisting that Mr Obama worked with "unprecedented openness in government".

(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...







Obamabots? 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 01, 2012, 06:25:28 PM
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/democrats/9445120/White-House-officials-caught-out-with-lobbyists.html



Obama bots please defend this ?
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 02, 2012, 11:09:35 AM
Sen. Obama supported layoff warnings; now sees no need

Will affect contractors if budget cuts hit Jan. 2

http://www.washingtontimes.com/guy-layoff-warnings-07/print



President Obama's administration doesn't see the need for defense contractors to warn employees about possible layoffs from across-the-board budget cuts, but in 2007, then-Sen. Barack Obama railed against employers for failing to notify workers who were in danger of losing their jobs.

"The least employers can do when they're anticipating layoffs is to let workers know they're going to be out of a job and a paycheck with enough time to plan for their future," Mr. Obama said in a news release on July 17, 2007, while campaigning for president.

The Obama administration said Monday in guidance from the Labor Department that federal contractors don't need to warn their employees that they could lose their jobs because of the looming budget cuts that are slated to begin Jan. 2. The agency said it would be "inappropriate" for employers to send such warnings because the $110 billion in cuts are still speculative. Defense programs would be the target of about half of the cuts.

The Labor Department's letter came after a Pentagon official said Defense Department contractors could be sending layoff notices days before the Nov. 6 presidential election. Some industry groups predict the budget cuts could cause as many as 1 million workers in the U.S. to lose their jobs. Lockheed Martin, for example, has told Congress it might be forced to lay off 10,000 of its 120,000 employees.

The White House is worried that thousands of those jobs would be lost in election battleground states such as Florida, Virginia and North Carolina.

The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act requires employers with 100 workers or more to give 60 days' notice of a plant closing or mass layoffs. And in 2007, then-Sen. Obama urged Congress to beef up the law, arguing that employers were ignoring it and the government wasn't enforcing it.

"For too long, employers have failed to notify workers that they're about to lose their jobs due to mass layoffs or plant closings even though notice is required by the WARN Act," Mr. Obama said in that news release on July 17, 2007.

That same month, Mr. Obama also said, "We must act at the federal level to close the loophole that allows employers to disregard the WARN Act without penalty. We must give the WARN Act teeth, to ensure that workers are not left in the lurch without a job or a paycheck."

That year, Senate Democrats led by Mr. Obama, Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York proposed the Forewarn Act, which would have added to the regulations by requiring 90 days notice of layoffs and expanding the number of companies under federal jurisdiction. The legislation died.

The White House did not respond to a question about the apparent inconsistency between Mr. Obama's position five years ago and the administration's policy guidance this week.

The chairman of House Armed Services Committee said the new guidance was politically motivated.

"People will still get laid off because of the president's irresponsibility, but they won't have the notice to protect themselves and their families," said Rep. Howard "Buck" P. McKeon, California Republican.

The Defense Department faces a reduction of $492 billion over 10 years, with $55 billion in cuts due in January, unless the Obama administration and Congress can agree on an alternative. Domestic programs also would be reduced by $492 billion over the next decade. The automatic cuts are to take effect because of the failure of the bipartisan congressional supercommittee to find a way to reduce the deficit by $1.2 trillion over 10 years.

Speaker John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican, said Wednesday he's prepared to cancel part of Congress' vacation this month and call the House back into session if Senate Democrats agree to work on the looming defense spending cuts.

In a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, Mr. Boehner said Republicans were reluctant last year to include defense spending cuts in the deal that allowed Mr. Obama to raise the debt ceiling. He said the Democrats are now blocking Republicans' efforts to head off the cuts.

"Translation: We're putting this right at your doorstep. You own it. If Harry Reid, [House Minority Leader] Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama want to own a small business tax hike and a devastating cut to our national defense, they are now set up perfectly to do so," Mr. Boehner told House Republicans, according to text his office released.

© Copyright 2012 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 02, 2012, 01:15:21 PM

Waxman criticizes White House on transparency

 By Sterling C. Beard - 08/02/12 01:35 PM ET






The Obama administration has come under fire from Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) amid accusations that the White House failed to live up to its own ethical standards.

"The Presidential Records Act was enacted to ensure that White House records are preserved for history and are owned by the American people," Waxman said. "Everyone who is covered by the law should follow it, regardless of which party controls the White House."

Republican members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee issued a report two days ago that detailed members of the Obama White House using personal email accounts to conduct official business with representatives of the pharmaceutical industry. The report also listed occasions where the same officials met outside of the White House, apparently at a Caribou Coffee, ensuring the meetings would not be recorded in official visitor logs. One official named in the report is Jim Messina, a former deputy chief of staff, now the Obama campaign manager.


Many Democrats and interest groups that had been critical of the Bush administration’s transparency were unwilling to comment. Sen. Patrick Leahy’s (D-Vt.) office did not respond to a request for comment according to The Huffington Post, nor did Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

The Republican National Committee circulated the Huffington Post piece to reporters.

Waxman had demanded that Bush administration aides preserve emails when it was discovered during an investigation into the firing of U.S. attorneys that as many as 22 million Bush administration emails may have been deleted.

The Romney campaign took advantage of the situation, echoing an Obama attack on Mitt Romney’s taxes that implied the candidate might have committed a crime.

"This appears to be a violation of the law, which requires that all official communications be preserved," Romney adviser Eric Fehrnstom said on a conference call with reporters Thursday.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 03, 2012, 09:57:56 AM
BOMBSHELL: Obama chief of staff Daley briefed on Solyndra concerns six months before bankruptcy
 Hot Air ^ | August 3, 2012 | Ed Morrissey


Posted on Friday, August 03, 2012 9:54:46 AM by


The Solyndra scandal took a big step up the ladder today, as ABC News uncovers new evidence that shows fears over a collapse reached all the way into the West Wing. An OMB analyst tried to raise red flags on the Obama administration’s attempt to rescue the now-bankrupt green-tech firm, before the Department of Energy rejected her advice and restructured the loans in March 2011, which illegally subordinated taxpayers in case of default. An e-mail from Kelly Colyar in August 2011 reminded recipients that she had predicted that very scenario — and that White House chief of staff had been briefed on her warning in February, before the restructuring:

Buried in the treasure trove of White House emails related to Solyndra released Thursday by the House Energy and Commerce Committee is one suggesting that concerns about Solyndra’s viability were shared all the way up to then-White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley a full six months before the company went bust. …

As Solyndra began sinking for good last August, Colyar sent an email summarizing the events leading to a near total taxpayers loss of the $535 loan.

“You may recall that DOE announced in March that they had restructured the Solyndra loan,” Colyar writes. “Prior to this restructuring, OMB staff expressed reservations about the prospects of the company and DOE’s proposal.”

And here’s the key line: “The issue was discussed with the NEC and the Chief of Staff.”

Oh, my. Until now, the closest this has come to Barack Obama himself was yesterday’s revelation that Rahm Emanuel — Daley’s predecessor — came up with the brilliant idea to tie his boss personally to Solyndra.

..When Solyndra imploded, Emanuel’s advice ended up backfiring on Obama and leaving him open to charges of crony capitalism.


(Excerpt) Read more at hotair.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 04, 2012, 05:06:30 AM
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Five dozen lawmakers protest ‘untenable’ oil field regulations
The Hill ^ | August 3, 2012 | Pete Kasperowicz
Posted on August 4, 2012 7:58:19 AM EDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks

A bipartisan group of House members has called on the Department of Transportation to reverse regulatory guidance issued in June that limits the ability of supply trucks to service oil and gas fields.

Rep. Jeff Landry (R-La.) and 60 other members of the House argued in a letter to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood that the guidance will harm not just the oil and gas industry, but related industries that contribute to job growth. They also argue that the guidance reversed 50 years of established practice with little warning to the industry.

"Such a change significantly restricts the operations of individuals and businesses engaged in hydraulic fracturing or 'fracking' operations, thereby increasing their costs and restricting their ability to provide good-paying jobs to American citizens and low-cost energy to U.S. consumers," they wrote in a letter released Friday.

At issue is regulatory guidance that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) released in June. For the first time in decades, the FMCSA said that some supply vehicles would not benefit from a policy that allows drivers of commercial vehicles to stay on duty beyond the 11-hour limit that the government imposes for safety reasons.

It is often necessary for drivers servicing oil and gas fields to stay on duty beyond 11 hours because these fields can be in remote areas accessible only by unpaved roads. In addition, once these trucks get to the oil or gas field, they are often forced to wait to load or unload, based on the activity going on at the site.

Under the FMCSA's regulatory guidance, only drivers of trucks related directly to oil and gas operations will still benefit from the ability to stay on duty for extended periods of time. But other drivers, such as those driving trucks supplying general supplies, or moving sand and water to and from the site, will be capped at 11 hours a day.

The House letter argued that this new guidance would create two classes of drivers that would make it much harder for the oil and gas site to coordinate its operations. It also warned that the change would require more drivers and more trucks, which would increase cost and produce more vehicle traffic.

"Considering the substandard condition of this infrastructure, we believe this increased traffic to be an untenable outcome of this Guidance," they wrote.

A House aide said members are pressing the FMCSA to reassess its guidance, and at the very least go through formal rulemaking process rather than make this change through a guidance document. An official process would also allow industry input into the decision.

"Changes of such magnitude must be made only after the industry has had proper time to review this change and submit comments to FMCSA," they wrote.

The aide said that while the FMCSA guidance took effect in early June, officials have since extended the comment period and are holding "listening sessions" across the country, which could be a sign that the FMCSA is open to adjusting the guidance.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 05, 2012, 07:58:54 AM
http://www.naturalnews.com/036689_NSA_whistleblowers_spying.html



Just wow. 

And you far leftists attacked cheney and bush?   LMFAo!!!!
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 06, 2012, 03:56:41 AM
Obama associate got $100,000 fee from affiliate of firm doing business with Iran
WASHINGTON POST ^ | 8/6/2012 | By Tom Hamburger
Posted on August 6, 2012 6:51:37 AM EDT by tobyhill

David Plouffe, a senior White House adviser who was President Obama’s 2008 campaign manager, accepted a $100,000 speaking fee in 2010 from an affiliate of a company doing business with Iran’s government.

A subsidiary of MTN Group, a South Africa-based telecommunications company, paid Plouffe for two speeches he made in Nigeria in December 2010, about a month before he joined the White House staff.

Since Plouffe’s speeches, MTN Group has come under intensified scrutiny from U.S. authorities because of its activities in Iran and Syria, which are under international sanctions intended to limit the countries’ access to sensitive technology. At the time of Plouffe’s speeches, MTN had been in a widely reported partnership for five years with a state-owned Iranian telecommunications firm.

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 07, 2012, 07:16:59 AM
August 7, 2012 4:00 A.M.

Obama in Never-Never Land

A slavish regard for truth is no match for inspired mythography.

By Victor Davis Hanson




The chief tenet of postmodernism is that truth and facts are arbitrary constructs, set up by the privileged to manipulate others less fortunate. In the case of our first postmodernist president, Barack Obama, there cannot be facts, past or present, only a set of shifting assertions that gain credence to the degree that they prove transitorily useful for progressive causes. A sympathetic biographer, David Maraniss, noted that almost all the touchstone events in Barack Obama’s mythographic memoir were fabricated. Of course, Obama would object to such a value-laden term and instead call them composites, impressions stitched together and presented as truth to serve the higher moral narrative: a young biracial idealist searching for his identity in a mostly racist and oppressive America. To the degree that Dreams from My Father enhanced that narrative, then all of what was in it was “true” — even the literary agent’s bio attesting that the exotic author was born in faraway Kenya.
 
For the fabulist Obama, the past is a vague mess with shifting narratives that can serve noble contemporary causes. Take World War II — the old war that supposedly proves that victory is now an obsolete term, since, as Obama explained, Japanese Emperor Hirohito capitulated to General MacArthur, apparently on the deck of the Missouri, in a rare act never to happen again. Obama’s own grandfather was in the forefront of stopping Nazism, and the more dramatic the circumstances the better — so who cares whether the Russians, and not an American unit, liberated Auschwitz and Treblinka?
 

Indeed, the war is a sort of a vague haze where Nazi death camps become “Polish” and Pearl Harbor was hit with “the bomb.” If it is useful while speaking in Cairo to pretend that the Islamic world helped to prompt the European Renaissance (which benefitted enormously from the flight of Greek scholars as Constantinople was threatened by the Ottoman Turks) and Enlightenment (which ignited a Romantic interest in freeing Greece from Islam), then so be it. If Córdoba had few, if any, Muslims during the Spanish Inquisition, who cares, if we wish to hold up the Muslims there as beacons of tolerance in comparison to murderous Catholics?
 
No American has any idea whether recess appointments, executive privilege, executive orders, or filibusters are to be considered good, bad, or indifferent, since Senator/President Obama has damned and embraced them all. I vaguely remember that at one time Guantanamo, renditions, tribunals, and preventive detention were either of no value or unconstitutional, and trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a civilian court and prosecuting CIA agents for supposedly too harsh interrogations were good. But that was all more than three years in the past, and hundreds of “Make no mistake about it”s and “Let me be perfectly clear”s  ago.
 
I recall that there were once admonitions that President Obama could not by fiat enact amnesty or special programs for African-Americans based on race, and that he could not come out unequivocally for gay marriage. But who knows, since someone did enact amnesty, set up a special bureau for African-American education, and use support for gay marriage as a wedge issue in the 2012 campaign.
 
It is demagogic to suggest that anyone in the Obama administration deliberately leaked national-security secrets to favored New York and Washington reporters, so leaks about Predator-drone targeting, cyber war against Iran, double agents in Yemen, and the details of the Osama bin Laden mission were not really leaks at all, or, if they were, they came from non-administration sources.
 
The Obama health-care plan was once different from Hillary Clinton’s in that it never included an individual mandate, but then it did have a mandate, then it had a tax instead, and it ended up with a penalty. The only constant is that names change as circumstances dictate. Barack Obama does not take money from oil companies, hire lobbyists, approve of earmarks, or raise money from Wall Street, but somebody with that name did. The new civility is “punish our enemies.”  Voter intimidation is asking for an ID at the polls — it is not trying to make it more difficult for those in the military to vote. Developing domestic energy means canceling the Keystone pipeline and putting vast areas of federal lands off limits to gas and oil production. If the private sector goes ahead, despite federal regulations and discouragement, with new fracking and horizontal drilling, then the Obama administration achieved record levels of domestic oil and gas production.
 
Someone said something about cutting the deficit in half within four years and, through borrowing, forcing unemployment under 6 percent, but I am not sure any more who it was — given that that was 42 months of 8 percent–plus unemployment and $5 trillion in borrowed money ago. 
 
No one knows what “reset” with Russia was, or is, or will be; it didn’t so much fail as simply got erased. Nor can anyone figure out whether the dissidents in the streets of Tehran in 2009 were noble or to be ignored, or why exactly we belatedly  supported the ouster of Mubarak, or what exactly turned Qaddafi from a monstrous oil exporter who had to be appeased to a really monstrous oil exporter who had to be removed, or why we had to reopen our embassy in Damascus as a gesture to the “reformer” Assad, who is now a murderous non-reformer who must go.
 
I am sure Presidents Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush flip-flopped and did things that they had said they would not, but there was always the clear sense that their hypocrisies were adjudicated by some sort of standard. With President Obama there is neither a reality nor a standard, just words that so often have no connection to the real world, past or present.
 
— NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author most recently of The End of Sparta, a novel about ancient freedom.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 07, 2012, 10:21:16 AM
Report: Cronyism, political donations likely behind Obama, Holder failure to charge any bankers after 2008 financial meltdown

http://dailycaller.com/2012/08/07/report-cronyism-political-donations-likely-behind-obama-holder-failure-to-charge-any-bankers-after-2008-financial-meltdown/?print=1


Report: Cronyism, political donations likely behind Obama, Holder failure to charge any bankers after 2008 financial meltdown
 

12:34 AM 08/07/2012


A new report from the Government Accountability Institute (GAI) finds that President Barack Obama’s and Attorney General Eric Holder’s failure to criminally charge any top Wall Street bankers is likely a result of cronyism inside the Department of Justice and political donations made to Obama’s campaign.
 
Despite Obama’s and Holder’s “heated rhetoric” against Wall Street (in 2009, Obama blamed the 2008 financial collapse on “reckless speculation of bankers” while Holder charged that “unscrupulous executives, Ponzi scheme operators and common criminals alike have targeted the pocketbooks and retirement accounts of middle class Americans”), they haven’t “filed a single criminal charge against any top executive of an elite financial institution,” GAI wrote in its report, exclusively obtained by The Daily Caller.
 
GAI argues that the Obama administration’s decision to not go after Big Finance is due to senior DOJ leadership — Holder, Associate Attorney General Tom Perrelli, Associate Attorney General Tony West, Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer, Deputy Attorney General James Cole and Deputy Associate Attorney General Karol Mason — who “all came to the DOJ from prestigious white-collar defense firms where they represented the very financial institutions the DOJ is supposed to investigate.”
 
The report details how Holder and Breuer both came to the DOJ from Covington & Burling, a “top-tier Washington law firm” with a client list that includes financial firms like Wells Fargo, J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America, CitiBank, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, ING, Morgan Stanley, UBS and Wilmington Trust.
 
GAI said that President Obama’s decision to choose Holder, “a white-collar defense attorney from Covington,” as his attorney general, over a “more fiery prosecutor,” appears to have sent “a subtle signal to the financial community” that this administration isn’t going to actually do anything, despite the harsh words.
 
Cole, the report outlines, was with Bryan Cave LLP — “a white-shoe firm with A-list clients” — before becoming Holder’s right-hand man at the DOJ. One of Cole’s clients while at Bryan Cave LLP, the GAI report shows, was insurance and financial giant AIG.
 
Cole had done $20 million worth of work for AIG between 2004 and 2008, but his close ties with the company — which was “at the heart of the financial crisis largely because of its noncompliance in regulatory and compliance issues” — didn’t stop Obama or Holder from welcoming him aboard their administration.
 
The Obama administration’s decision to not appoint an independent counsel to investigate the MF Global scandal, despite more than 60 members of Congress demanding it, also reeks of cronyism, the GAI report details. Obama bundler and former Democratic New Jersy Gov. Jon Corzine was at the center of MF Global.
 
GAI points out how West — the DOJ’s no. 3 official — worked as a white-collar defense attorney for Morrison and Foerster before he came to the DOJ. Morrison and Foerster is currently providing legal representation to MF Global. Holder and Breuer’s old law firm — Covington & Burling — provided legal services to MF Global too, before MF Global sought bankruptcy protection.
 
GAI adds that the appearance of MF Global cronyism is “further complicated” by how Reid Weingarten — an attorney at Steptoe & Johnson — was selected to be MF Global treasurer Edith O’Brien’s lawyer.
 
“Weingarten previously served as Holder’s attorney following the controversial pardon of Marc Rich in the Clinton Justice Department,” the GAI report reads, adding that the blog Main Justice points out how Weingarten is “one of Holder’s best friends.”
 
In addition to those officials’ potential personal financial interests — were they to return to their old firms after their time at the DOJ ends — in avoiding investigating those big banks, GAI points out how “Obama’s top DOJ officials played prominent roles in his 2008 campaign.”
 
Holder, the nation’s top DOJ official, “co-chaired the campaign with Tony West, the DOJ’s third highest official.”
 
“No other modern administration has staffed the DOJ with big money fundraisers,” GAI wrote. “Holder bundled $50,000 for Obama’s 2008 campaign, while Perrelli, West, and Mason all bundled $500,000 for the campaign. West also helped Obama raised an estimated $65 million in California.”
 
GAI president Peter Schweizer told TheDC that cronyism appears to be infiltrating the halls of the DOJ with the Obama administration, and that it appears Holder’s team has no interest in fighting for accountability when it comes to Wall Street because he, Obama and the rest of the DOJ team have a financial interest in not enforcing those laws.
 
“When we think of cronyism and the problems of cronyism and crony capitalism, we think in terms of economic loss and gain,” Schweizer said in a phone interview. “What we’re showing here is that cronyism is now permeating our justice system. So, it’s not just a question of dollars and cents, it’s a question of whether you’re going to face legal jeopardy or not on what you’re doing.”
 
“The issue of a revolving door — people who go in and out of, for instance, the Department of Energy who go work for energy companies then come back to the Department of Energy — is always there,” Schweizer added. “But, we’re not used to associating the top leadership of the Justice Department with the revolving door. And, I think that’s what makes this so troubling — because you can’t trust them. All their financial interests are tied up with these large firms that do an enormous amount of business with Wall Street.”
 
In the report, GAI details how the George W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations both actually took down financial criminals — unlike the Obama administration. Between 2002 and 2008, for instance, GAI points out how a Bush administration task force “obtained over 1,300 corporate fraud convictions, including those of over 130 corporate vice presidents and over 200 CEOs and corporate presidents.”
 
“Clinton’s DOJ prosecuted over 1,800 S&L [savings and loans] executives, senior officials, and directors, and over 1,000 of them were sent to jail,” GAI adds.
 
But, despite having “promised more of the same,” especially in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the Obama administration’s DOJ has not brought criminal charges against a single major Wall Street executive.
 
The Bush and Clinton administrations’ track records on prosecuting white-collar crime, and the Obama administration’s failure to do so, Schweizer said, is “evidence that this has less to do with some sort of partisan or philosophical issue.”
 
“I think it has to do with the fact that, previously, under Clinton or under Bush, you had senior people who were prosecutors — who not only had previous experience, but were actually active prosecutors,” Schweizer said. “The problem that you have at the Obama Justice Department, particularly bizarre at this time and place where we were coming off the financial crisis, is that they really have no recent prosecutors at the top of the Justice Department. They’re all white-collar criminal defense attorneys. That’s what’s so troubling. One would think that, given the financial crisis, and the widespread conduct, they would have at least carved out some senior positions for prosecutors who could really drill down on this. That’s what Clinton did, and that’s what Bush did.”
 
As one of many examples of where Holder’s DOJ could have gone after Wall Street but failed, GAI cites how Michigan Democratic Sen. Carl Levin “proposed that the DOJ criminally investigate Goldman Sachs for its handling of the Abacus 2007-AC1 transaction” in an April 2011 Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations report. In that 635-page report, Levin and his staff — who are Democrats — recommended that Holder’s DOJ investigate potential crimes committed. Levin’s subcommittee and the Federal Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission both made formal referrals to the DOJ for investigation – and Forbes magazine ran an article with the headline, “Criminal Charges Loom for Goldman Sachs After Scathing Report.”
 
Nothing happened. But, over the course of the rest of 2011, Obama went on a massive fundraising drive down Wall Street.
 
“By the fall of 2011, Obama had collected more donations from Wall Street than any of the Republican candidates, and employees at Bain Capital had donated more than twice as much to Obama as they did to [Mitt] Romney, the firm’s founder,” GAI wrote in its report.
 
“In the weeks before and after the Senate report on Goldman Sachs, several Goldman executives and their families made contributions to Obama’s Victory Fund and related entities and some contributors maxed out at the largest individual donation allowed, $35,800.”
 
“Five senior Goldman Sachs executives wrote more than $130,000 in checks to the Obama Victory Fund,” GAI continued. “Two of these executives had never donated to Obama before and had previously only given small donations to individual candidates.”
 
While GAI said in the report that it would be a “reach to conclude that the Department of Justice dropped its criminal investigation of Goldman Sachs solely in response to large campaign contributions” from its executives, it certainly doesn’t pass the smell test — and calls for investigations continue.
 
Follow Matthew on Twitter


Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/08/07/report-cronyism-political-donations-likely-behind-obama-holder-failure-to-charge-any-bankers-after-2008-financial-meltdown/#ixzz22sjtgqi7



Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 07, 2012, 01:47:41 PM
David Plouffe and ‘The Same-Old Game Playing in Washington.’
By Jim Geraghty

August 6, 2012 9:18 A.M.

Comments
6


 

http://www.nationalreview.com/campaign-spot/313169/david-plouffe-and-same-old-game-playing-washington



Pick out the more surprising news here:
 
1) David Plouffe, a senior White House adviser who was President Obama’s 2008 campaign manager, accepted a $100,000 speaking fee in 2010 from an affiliate of a company doing business with Iran’s government.
 
2) David Plouffe gets $50,000 per speech.
 
As the Post reports:
 

Since Plouffe’s speeches, MTN Group has come under intensified scrutiny from U.S. authorities because of its activities in Iran and Syria, which are under international sanctions intended to limit the countries’ access to sensitive technology. At the time of Plouffe’s speeches, MTN had been in a widely reported partnership for five years with a state-owned Iranian telecommunications firm.

There were no legal or ethical restrictions on Plouffe being paid to speak to the MTN subsidiary as a private citizen. But for a close Obama aide to have accepted payment from a company involved in Iran could prove troublesome for the president as the White House toughens its stance toward the Islamic republic. In recent weeks, Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney has accused the administration of being soft on Iran.
 
If you want to argue that the Obama administration’s policies towards Iran are soft because of a speech that David Plouffe gave in 2010 to a South African company, you can go ahead and do that. I think the simpler explanation is that President Obama is the man who declared in a Democratic presidential debate that he was willing to meet with Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad without preconditions. This is not a man with gut-level revulsion for the Iranian regime, which announced its worldview and intent to the world by taking Americans hostage and parading them before television cameras, which spent the following decades becoming the preeminent state sponsor of terror and blew up 19 U.S. Airmen in Khobar Towers in 1996. President Obama is a man who really does believe, or did believe, that America and Iran could “get past” previous acts of mass murder and come to a peaceful agreement.
 
No, the bigger story out of the Plouffe speeches is that President Obama, who campaigned so passionately against what he called the “revolving door” between the highest levels of government and the lobbying/influence business, has absolutely no problem with it when his friends do it.
 
The White House assures us that Plouffe merely went to speak to the company about “mobile technology and digital communications.” It was merely his technical expertise, and not his connection to the president, that spurred MTN Group to spend $100,000, and probably about $5,000-$10,000 on air fare (how likely is it that Plouffe flew coach, or had many layovers?) and more on lodging.
 
Now, how many speeches are worth $110,000 to a company? What could President Obama’s 2008 campaign manager have to say about “mobile technology and digital communications” that would create $110,000 in value to a telecommunications company?
 
Perhaps Plouffe really is that smart. Or perhaps what made him worth the expense was his relationship to the president – and perhaps MTN Group, like many large international business, felt it would be good to have friends in high places. Friends in high places are often for sale once the campaigns end or they leave government work. It’s all legal, both sides do it, and attempting to ban it would probably create more problems than it would solve. (For example, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle provides “strategic advice on public policy matters” to a law firm that is one of the most powerful lobbyists in Washington, but he insists that he does not lobby.)
 
Government work and campaign work often don’t pay very well. But those who choose that path can develop relationships with powerful people – and thus, once a campaign or government worker has built up enough solid relationships with powerful lawmakers, they can cash in on the decades of effort with highly-compensated “totally not a lobbyist” jobs like Daschle’s, or through extremely well-compensated speaking gigs like Plouffe. Again, both sides do it.
 
But as a candidate, Obama explicitly and loudly denounced this phenomenon, and he ran ads on it: “The chairman of the committee who pushed the law through went to work for the pharmaceutical industry, making $2 million a  year. Imagine that! That’s an example of the same-old game playing in Washington. I don’t want to play the game better, I want to put an end to the game-playing.”
 


Of course, since then, we’ve seen this bold opposition and determination reach its expiration date. This was one of the first promises that PolitiFact declared explicitly “broken”:
 

Obama’s ethics proposals specifically spelled out that former lobbyists would not be allowed to “work on regulations or contracts directly and substantially related to their prior employer for two years.” On his first full day in office, Obama signed an executive order to that effect. But the order has a loophole — a “waiver” clause that allows former lobbyists to serve. That waiver clause has been used at least three times, and in some cases, the administration allows former lobbyists to serve without a waiver. After examining the administration’s actions for the past two months, we have concluded that Obama has broken this promise.
 
More than 40 lobbyists served or serve in top-level positions within the Obama administration.
 
Top lobbyists are among those who visit the White House most frequently. And we’ve seen that in order to avoid meetings with lobbyists showing up in the White House logs, Obama staffers meet with them at the Caribou Coffee just down the street from the White House. There’s your reform, lobbyists; under Obama, the staffers come closer to you.
 
Obama proudly declares he doesn’t accept donations from lobbyists… so the lobbyists give to the DNC, which runs ads on behalf of Obama.
 
President Obama is very pleased with a slipshod illusion of reform. Deals like MTN Group’s one with Plouffe reveal what he really thinks of “the same-old game playing in Washington.”




Tags: Barack Obama, David Plouffe
 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 08, 2012, 06:19:20 PM
Small Business Owner Threatens To Sue Obama Over Campaign Ad
fox news ^ | 8/8/12 | jprendergast


The owner of a specialty deli at Findlay Market wants her store’s name removed from an ad President Obama used to explain his record on small business.

Ten seconds into the ad “Always,” an employee is shown from behind, pushing up the security door of Krause’s while Obama talks about owners sacrificing to make their businesses run. The owner of the store, Debra Krause-McDonnell, said she did not give permission for her business to be shown and that some customers have told her they’ll no longer shop there. She says she’s “contemplating legal action.”

(Excerpt) Read more at nation.foxnews.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Kazan on August 08, 2012, 07:37:57 PM
The Chicago way on a national level
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 09, 2012, 06:12:21 AM
E-mails about clean-energy loans provide new details on White House involvement
By Carol D. Leonnig and Joe Stephens, Published: August 8
President Obama’s staff arranged for him to be personally briefed last summer on a loan program to help clean-energy companies, two months before the program was thrust into headlines by the collapse of its flagship, the solar com pany Solyndra, records show.

About the same time, then-White House Chief of Staff William Daley resolved a dispute among administration officials over another project in the program, clearing the way for a $1.4 billion loan, according to documents and sources familiar with the situation.

The documents, a series of e-mails among Energy Department staff members involved in managing the program, provide new details about the level of White House involvement in the controversial initiative. White House officials have said in the past that final decisions about which companies would receive the loan guarantees were made by career staff members at the Energy Department, not political appointees.

Administration officials said Wednesday that the e-mails show that the White House involvement was appropriate and that there was no pressure on agency officials.

That loan program, a signature piece of the Obama administration’s effort to stimulate the economy, has become a major issue in this year’s presidential campaign. Republicans have charged that the program wasted critical stimulus money meant to create jobs, spending it instead on ill-advised projects that benefited Democratic fundraisers.

The documents, provided to The Washington Post by Republican investigators for the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, show that White House aides asked Energy Secretary Steven Chu to deliver a June 27, 2011, presentation to the president on the status of the loan program. The interest in a presidential briefing came as other senior administration figures were challenging parts of the program and debating whether the Energy Department was cutting deals that gave “unjust enrichment” to private companies.

An Energy staffer explained that the president “wants to know its status” so he could be prepared when the loan program came up “at official events and political events where he interacts with [the] business community and Congressional members.” The e-mail from the department’s chief of staff, Brandon Hurlbut, went on to say that many people attending such gatherings “have some affiliation or interest in the numerous applications received that involve substantial funds.”

The documents do not indicate whether the presidential briefing took place as scheduled and, if so, whether Obama offered guidance on the program’s future.

‘A right to know’

On Wednesday, Rep. Darrell Issa (Calif.) and other Republican members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee wrote to Obama requesting a “full and complete” explanation of his involvement in the issue and seeking additional internal documents, including a list of all private individuals with whom the president met to discuss loan projects.

“The American people have a right to know the level of involvement you and other senior White House officials had in the loan guarantee program,” the committee members wrote. “Your interactions with business leaders at political events affected decisions to give billions of taxpayer dollars in loan guarantees to green energy companies.”

Energy Department spokesman Damien LaVera said that the collection of internal documents provided thus far to congressional investigators “validates what we have said from day one: All decisions on loan applications were made on the merits after careful review by career officials and technical experts in the loan program.”

Rather than revealing any White House pressure to give money to certain companies, the new e-mails show that “Department of Energy officials appealed to the White House to resolve legitimate disagreements between agencies” so the applications could move forward, LaVera said.

White House spokesman Clark Stevens added that “internal debates about complex programs like this should be expected, and the White House playing a role in assisting interagency discussion surrounding that process is entirely appropriate.”

Solyndra, a Silicon Valley start-up that manufactured solar panels, received a half-billion dollar federal loan from the program before suddenly closing last August. A short time later, the FBI raided its offices as part of a criminal investigation into whether the company misled the government about its finances.

The government is expected to recover just $24 million of the $527 million that taxpayers lent the company. Republicans have accused the administration of favoring Solyndra because its largest investors were funds linked to Oklahoma billionaire George Kaiser, an Obama donor.

‘Some serious gloating’

Other e-mail exchanges in the documents appear to show deep divisions between Chu and some senior Obama economic advisers over the program.

After the June 2011 meeting with Daley, Jonathan Silver, the director of the Energy Department’s loan office, celebrated “total victory” over administration opponents. He described in an e-mail to a colleague how Chu came as “close to an annihilation of the economic team’s position as you could possibly hope for.” Silver speculated that Daley had given the economic team “a fig leaf” and that the Energy Department’s victory was cause to “do some serious gloating.”

A draft of Energy Department talking points prepared for the presidential briefing highlights that the program had committed more than $34 billion and asserted that it had created or saved 68,000 jobs. Those talking points forecast little risk from the program, although Solyndra was already showing signs of distress: The department months earlier had negotiated a loan restructuring amid threats that the firm would have to liquidate for lack of operating cash.

“DOE expects that all loans will be repaid,” one presentation slide said. “When loans are repaid, the benefits — including the creation of tens of thousands of jobs — will have been obtained at little cost to taxpayers.”

Chu appeared eager to make sure that Obama heard about the disagreements over the program within the administration.

“We need to tell the President the truth, as we see it. We need to also present the other side’s point of view as fairly as possible,” the secretary wrote in an e-mail to Hurlbut.

Officials at the Treasury Department and the White House Office of Management and Budget often argued that government subsidies to clean-energy companies gave them too great of a return on investment, or an “unjust enrichment,” Chu wrote.

“Many times, they felt that a ‘better deal’’ could have been brokered by DOE and asked us to renegotiate,” he said.



Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 09, 2012, 02:10:41 PM
http://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/WH-1705-Docs.pdf



Obama BUSTED lying on Solyndra
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 14, 2012, 05:59:15 AM
Obama Administration Tries to Force Catholic Employer to Violate Beliefs or Pay $9,672,500 a Year
Liveaction news ^ | July 27, 2012 | Kristi Burton Brown
Posted on Tue Aug 14 2012 08:25:35 GMT-0400 (Eastern Daylight Time) by Mrs. Don-o


Hercules owners (Newland family) putting up a fight
Hercules Industries, a Colorado-based HVAC manufacturer, is a family-owned business that has been operated for 50 years. Currently, the four Newland siblings – James, Paul, William, and Christine – own the business and employ 265 people. According to CNS News, the Department of Justice is taking action to ensure that this Catholic family complies with the demands of the contraceptive mandate in ObamaCare:

"The Justice Department last week presented the Newland family of Colorado–who own Hercules Industries, a heating, ventilation and air-conditioning business–with what amounted to an ultimatum: Give up your religion or your business.

Who will win in the battle of Hercules vs. Obama?

The Newland family has taken the time to evaluate their own religious beliefs and has come to the conclusion that they are morally unable to provide contraceptives, abortifacients, abortion, or sterilization in their employee health care plan. Hercules Industries is self-insured by the Newlands. Despite the Newlands’ sincere religious beliefs, the Department of Justice insists that this Catholic family must comply with the contraceptive mandate.

The Newlands and Hercules Industries have brought a suit to stop the Obama administration from forcing them to violate their religious beliefs. The family and their business is being represented by Alliance Defending Freedom (formerly the Alliance Defense Fund). On July 25, Matthew Bowman – an attorney for Alliance Defending Freedom – argued for a preliminary injunction against the mandate.

According to the Newlands’ brief:

"They believe that according to the Catholic faith their operation of Hercules must be guided by ethical social principles and Catholic religious and moral teachings, that the adherence of their business practice according to such Catholic ethics and religious and moral teachings is a genuine calling from God, that their Catholic faith prohibits them to sever their religious beliefs from their daily business practice, and that their Catholic faith requires them to integrate the gifts of the spiritual life, the virtues, morals, and ethical social principles of Catholic teaching into their life and work.

I participated in a moot court session where Mr. Bowman gave his arguments and clearly laid out the Newlands’ case. Lest anyone think that the Newlands do not provide well for their employees, Hercules Industries’ current health care plan goes above and beyond many plans in its provisions for women. Mr. Bowman’s arguments detail the health benefits given to pregnant women, those who miscarry, and those with other reproductive-related issues. All the Newlands want is the freedom to adhere to their own religious beliefs concerning abortion, contraception, and sterilization – something that the First Amendment allows.

In order to force a person – or in many cases a corporation – to violate his or her religious beliefs, the government must have a compelling interest. The government is held to a strict scrutiny standard, and it must find the “least restrictive means” possible to enforce its rules. While the government claims that it has a compelling interest in forcing the Newlands to violate their strongly held religious beliefs, this claim rings false. In their filed brief, the Department of Justice, claims:

"Thus, it is just not true … that the burdens of the [regulations] fall on religious organizations “but almost no others.”‘

However, written into ObamaCare is an exemption for “grandfathered plans.” Any corporation with this type of health care plan will not be forced to comply with the contraceptive mandate at this time – even though such corporations will be forced to comply with other portions in the preventive care section of ObamaCare. By exempting certain companies – even without religious reasons – the Obama administration has demonstrated that there really is no compelling government interest in forcing the Newlands or other religious employers to violate their beliefs. How much sense does it really make to say, in effect, “We will not force countless employers to provide contraception, but we will force companies owned by religious people to provide it”? (Grandfathered health care plans cover millions of employees in the United States.)

In short, President Obama’s Justice Department thinks the answer is simple: comply with our demands, pay millions of dollars in fines, or quit your family business:

"Hercules Industries has ‘made no showing of a religious belief which requires that [it] engage in the [HVAC] business,’ the Justice Department said in a formal filing in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado.

In response to the Justice Department’s argument that the Newlands can either give up practicing their religion or give up owning their business, the Alliance Defending Freedom, which is representing the family, said in a reply brief: ‘[T]o the extent the government is arguing that its mandate does not really burden the Newlands because they are free to abandon their jobs, their livelihoods, and their property so that others can take over Hercules and comply, this expulsion from business would be an extreme form of government burden.’

Employers who fail to comply with the contraceptive mandate will be forced to pay $100 per day, per employee, as a fine. (The provisions of ObamaCare are complicated, and under certain circumstances, the amount may be lessened.)

"With 265 employees, a business like the Newlands’ would need to pay the government $26,500 per day if they decided not to comply with Sebelius’s regulation and insured their employees anyway. Over 365 days that would amount to $9,672,500.

As Mr. Bowman states:

"The government shouldn’t punish people of faith for making decisions in accordance with their faith. Every American should know that a government with the power to do this to anyone can do this–and worse–to everyone. The abortion pill mandate unconstitutionally coerces the leadership of Hercules Industries to violate their religious beliefs and consciences under the threat of heavy fines and penalties. That is simply not acceptable in America.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Kazan on August 14, 2012, 06:29:23 AM
This is just business as usual with the Chicago Political machine, I put out the warning, no one wants Chicago politics on a national level.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 17, 2012, 11:41:25 AM
http://dailycaller.com/2012/08/17/bidens-good-friend-donor-receives-20m-federal-loan




Unreal.   

Kudos to Howard for finding this.   

Outrageous 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 19, 2012, 03:53:29 AM
As ATP Oil Files For Bankruptcy, CEO Blames Obama For Company's Collapse
Forbes ^ | 8/18/2012 | Christopher Helman
Posted on August 18, 2012 3:35:31 PM EDT by mojito

When I get Paul Bulmahn on the phone rumors are swirling that he’s just days from putting his company, ATP Oil & Gas, into Chapter 11. He can’t confirm it yet, but he wants to make one thing perfectly clear: If it does come to bankruptcy (which it did on August 17) it isn’t his fault. The founder and chairman of publicly traded ATP (Nasdaq:ATPG), Bulmahn wants the world to know that the Obama Administration—and its illegal ban on deepwater drilling in the wake of the BP disaster—is to blame for the implosion of his company. Not him.

“It is all directly attributable to what the government did to us,” he rails. “This Administration has gone out of its way to create problems for my company, the company that I formed from scratch.” He’s more than angry. Bulmahn, 68, has already brought suit against the U.S. government seeking damages ($68 million to start with) for the 2010 moratorium that shut down deepwater operations in the Gulf of Mexico for the better part of a year. In an earlier case brought by ATP and rig company Ensco, Federal District Judge Martin Feldman ruled in May 2011 that the feds “acted unlawfully by unreasonably delaying action” on drilling permit applications. Still, ATP has a long, winding road to any hope of recovering damages from the government (which says it’s protected from claims by sovereign immunity).

That’s proving disastrous for Bulmahn. While hundreds of companies with operations in the gulf were affected by the government’s decision, perhaps no other was as hard hit as ATP—or as vulnerable.

(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 20, 2012, 06:06:26 AM
Former Biden Staffer's New Book Suggests The Justice Department Was Hardly Thinking About Going After Wall Street
Linette Lopez|12 minutes ago|3|

 




The Biggest Names In The Hedge Fund World Have Officially Gone Sour On Financials
 
A former staffer for Vice President Joe Biden and ex-Senator Ted Kauffman (D-DE) is out with a new book called 'The Payoff: Why Wall Street Always Wins,' about how the D.C. power structure allowed Wall Street to emerge from the financial crisis unscathed.
 
The staffer's name is Jeff Connaughton, and back in 2009 (after working as a D.C. lobbyist as well as for Biden) he joined Ted Kauffman in Delaware where Kauffman was filling Joe Biden's vacant Senate seat.
 
Connaughton's book is the story of how he Kauffman watched everyone in Washington from the Obama administration to the SEC back down from a fight with Wall Street banks.
 
Or, as the book's website describes:
 
It’s the story of a twenty-month struggle to hold Wall Street executives accountable for securities fraud, to stop stock manipulation by high-frequency traders, and to break up too-big-to-fail megabanks. In this book, we experience a US senator’s vigorous crusade—side-by-side with his most trusted advisor—against Wall Street’s irresponsible risk-taking that destabilized the American economy.
 
Check out this excerpt from the book about Connaughton's effort to work with the Justice Department on forming a strategy for charging individuals in the financial industry with fraud (h/t Politico's Morning Money).
 
"In the summer of 2009, we asked Lanny Breuer, by then confirmed by the Senate as the new assistant attorney general for the Criminal Division, for a meeting. It was September before Breuer and his top team of fraud-enforcement advisors could see us. ... Ted started by saying he appreciated all the effort that he knew was under way, but that Chairman Leahy had asked him to chair an oversight hearing, which would create a public forum for learning about the strategy and direction of the Justice Department's and FBI's investigative work.
 
This was news to Breuer and the other Justice Department lawyers, and it certainly got their attention. In the chitchat prior to the meeting, Breuer had mentioned that he'd done a series of speeches to the white collar bar and that he was going to Romania (where former Biden staffer Mark Gitenstein serves as ambassador) to give a speech. I remember wondering: "What is he doing spending all his time on a speech tour?"
 
Sounds like the DOJ was really pumped to get a jump on the whole thing.


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-connaughton-the-payoff-justice-department-and-wall-street-2012-8#ixzz245iJdEin

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 20, 2012, 07:24:29 PM
Obama Knocks Romney for Not Releasing Medical Records, Hasn't Disclosed His Own
Breitbart ^
Posted on August 20, 2012 9:48:00 PM EDT by chessplayer

"This was brilliant timing on the president's part. All last week the Romney campaign was on offense and Obama was dealing with Vice President Race-Baiter and a campaign that had gotten so vicious it had finally backfired. But with the media all excited and eager to use GOP senate candidate Todd Akin's rape comments to damage the Romney-Ryan ticket and the GOP as a whole, Obama picked the perfect time to come before the White House press corps."

"First off, by surprising the media, Obama knew the few good ones in there wouldn't be as ready to hit him with tough questions as they would with some notice. Secondly, Obama knew that he would be asked about Akin and that his response would be what got all the media attention afterwards --"

"The President was asked about Akin, his negative campaign and the economy, but it was NBC's Chuck Todd who did Obama's bidding and lobbed a sweet softball right over the plate about Romney's taxes. This is when things got bizarre, because this is when Obama said something inadvertently hilarious. Yes, the least vetted president in the history of our great republic said that president's should be "open books," and then specifically cited tax returns and medical records."

While Obama has released a decade or so worth of tax returns, otherwise, he is the furthest thing from an "open book" when it comes to his medical records -- which he refuses to release. And yet, there stood Obama unchallenged by the lapdog media as he implied he's an "open book" about those very same medical records. And these records are important and relevant, especially in light of the fact that Obama is a former smoker (so we're told) and an admitted illegal drug abuser (including cocaine).

(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 21, 2012, 08:26:18 PM
Click here to print.
Jarrett Towers
White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett’s real-estate investment jumped in value between 2010 and 2011, documents show

President Obama with Valerie Jarrett
BY: Andrew Stiles
August 21, 2012 5:00 am

Senior White House adviser and long-time Obama confidant Valerie Jarrett’s role in a number of controversial Chicago housing developments has garnered her investments worth millions of dollars while highlighting the administration’s extensive business ties to presidential donors.

Before joining the Obama administration in 2009, Jarrett was president and chief executive officer of the Habitat Company, a real estate development firm founded by major Democratic donor Daniel Levin. Before that, she served three years as commissioner of the Chicago Department of Planning and Development under Mayor Richard Daley.

Jarrett currently owns an 11-percent equity interest in Kingsbury Plaza, a 46-story luxury apartment complex developed by Habitat between 2005 and 2007 at a cost of more than $100 million.

She valued the investment at between $1 million and $5 million on her 2011 financial disclosure form, up from $250,001 in 2010. A Jarrett spokesman told the Washington Times that the investment was “a direct result of her 13 years working for Habitat.”

Cook County records show the Kingsbury property is worth around $27.2 million, but thanks to a series of legal appeals beginning in 2003, the land and building are assessed at a much lower value for tax purposes. Since 2008, the property has been designated a “special commercial structure” and is taxed at a value of just $6.8 million, or 25 percent of the actual value.

Asked how such a property could enjoy such a low taxable value, an official with the Cook County Assessor’s Office told the Free Beacon that the property’s owners “must have good attorneys.”

In addition to Jarrett’s investment through her former employer, she received deferred compensation of more than $556,000 in January 2009, on top of her $302,000 salary the previous year.

Levin, the firm’s founder, has close ties to the Obama administration and the Democratic Party. Levin and his wife, Fay Hartog Levin, are long-time acquaintances of the president’s, and have personally donated nearly $1 million to Democratic candidates and committees since 1989, including about $25,000 each to Obama.

In 2009, President Obama appointed Hartog Levin ambassador to the Netherlands, a move that drew criticism from government accountability advocates. The president has a history of awarding top donors and fundraisers with ambassadorships and other administrations posts.

The Levins each hold personal stakes in the Kingsbury development worth at least $1 million as of 2011.

Jarrett’s involvement in Chicago real estate development between 1992 and 2009 was marred with controversy, much of which centered on Habitat’s role as the sole developer for “family public housing,” a status granted under a district court ruling in 1987.

Under Jarrett’s leadership, Habitat oversaw the development of a number of public housing projects, one of which, in the Cabrini Green neighborhood, was dubbed a “national symbol of urban despair.” Others became so run-down the city had to ask the federal government to intervene.

A 2003 Harvard Law Review article cited the decline of the Cabrini Green development as an embodiment of the negative consequence associated with the “privatization of public housing.”

“They are rapidly displacing poor people, and these companies are profiting from this displacement,” Matt Ginsberg-Jaeckle of Southside Together Organizing for Power, a Chicago community organization, told the Boston Globe in 2008.

Habitat and the Chicago Housing Authority in 2000 announced an ambitious, multi-million dollar “Plan for Transformation” in an effort to revitalize the city’s decrepit housing projects. The plan involved the establishment of Tax Increment Financing (TIF) districts, an accounting method through which state and local governments would subsidize redevelopment projects.

Such financing often leads to an increase in property values in surrounding areas, benefitting developers such as Habitat. The Kingsbury property in which Jarrett owns a stake lies just outside a TIF district.

The Cabrini Green neighborhood in 1997 was designated a “blighted” area, a portion of which was established as a TIF district. Thousands of families were displaced and many relocated to unsafe, unfinished housing projects elsewhere in the city. Experts questioned whether redevelopment resulted in a net benefit for the city.

The city’s transformation plan included an effort to establish a separate TIF district just south of Cabrini Green in the Kingsbury neighborhood, a relatively well-off area that did not initially meet the Chicago Community Development Commission’s (CCDC) requirements for TIF status.

The city ultimately approved the project on the grounds that the neighborhood was a “conservation area” and argued that its redevelopment would help revitalize the blighted Cabrini Green area.

The CCDC held a public hearing on February 29, 2000, regarding the Kingsbury development project, but it is unclear if Jarrett or other Habitat executives testified in favor of granting TIF status.

The transcripts of such hearings are typically turned over the Chicago Municipal Library as a matter of public record. The transcript from that particular hearing, however, was never provided. A CCDC representative told the Free Beacon the document was unavailable but could be requested through the Freedom of Information Act.

The White House and the Habitat Company did not return requests for comment.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 23, 2012, 06:17:20 AM
AP Exclusive: Energy loan watchdog an Obama donor

By STEPHEN BRAUN
Associated Press


WASHINGTON (AP) -- A veteran Wall Street executive who performed an independent review that exonerated the Obama administration's program of loans to energy companies contributed $52,500 to re-elect President Barack Obama in the months since completing his work, according to an Associated Press review of campaign records. The executive defended the integrity of his conclusions and said he decided to donate to Obama after his work was finished.

The campaign contributions to Obama started just weeks after Herbert M. Allison Jr., in congressional testimony in March, minimized concerns that the Energy Department was at high risk in more than $23 billion in federal loans awarded to green energy firms. Two weeks later, Allison began giving to the Obama campaign. His contributions to Obama and the Democratic National Committee totaled $52,500 by last month. Allison previously was the former head of the government's mass purchase of toxic Wall Street assets.

Allison did not make any Obama donations during his four-month review of Energy Department loans, and he has a long history of working with and giving money to both political parties. However, Republican Party officials and congressional critics of the energy loans said Allison's donations to Obama raise doubts about his objectivity and highlight his decision not to assess multimillion-dollar loans to two companies that later went into bankruptcy - the troubled Solyndra solar panel company and Beacon Power, an energy storage firm.

Allison's report, completed in February and touted by the White House, acknowledged that the Energy Department could lose as much as $3 billion in loans, but it concluded that was far less than the $10 billion set aside by Congress for high-risk companies. The review did not assess the two bankrupt firms because those loans were no longer current. Allison told Congress that "DOE has negotiated protections in the loan agreements that enable it to cut off further funding and to demand more credit protection if projects do not meet targets." He also urged the Energy Department to toughen its oversight.

Allison defended the integrity of his review in an interview with The Associated Press. He said that he did not make the decision to back a presidential candidate until after he had finished his work and that his selection was approved by Energy Department lawyers before he began his review last October to "ensure there was no hint of bias or conflict of interest."

"I was on the record with the White House that this had to be completely independent review and they agreed," he said Wednesday in a telephone interview from his home in Westport, Conn. "It didn't hew to anybody's political suasion, I think, and it had to be fully factual or it wouldn't be credible."

Allison said he made his decision to support Obama after he saw "his administration in action and decided that I believe broadly in the things he's trying to accomplish."

Allison gave $2,500 to the Obama campaign on March 29, two weeks after he testified to the Senate Energy and Commerce Committee about his review. In May, he gave $15,000 to the Obama Victory Fund, a joint fundraising committee that supports both the president's re-election campaign and the Democratic National Committee. Allison gave the same amount to the fund again in June and then $20,000 more in July.

Allison has donated money to both parties, but his gifts in the past have tended to be much smaller than his current contributions, typically no more than $1,000 or $2,000, according to Federal Election Commission records. Allison explained his larger donations to the Obama campaign by saying "there's a hell of a lot more money in politics today than in years past and I decided I could go this route."

Allison has given to GOP figures such as Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, and to Democrats such as Rep. Carolyn Maloney of New York and former Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey. Allison's presidential preferences have been mostly Republicans - Sen. John McCain of Arizona and former Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas. He also gave $2,300 to Obama in 2008, a year before Obama appointed Allison as an assistant treasury secretary.

The White House and the Obama campaign defended Allison, saying his donations did not taint his work as independent reviewer of the loans program. They pointed to his repeated hiring over the past two decades by Republican presidential administrations and GOP campaigns as justification that Allison had the independence to oversee troubled government programs.

"Mr. Allison was selected to do this study because of his relevant expertise and he is a public servant widely respected by Democrats and Republicans alike," said Eric Schultz, a White House spokesman. Schultz added that Allison's "analysis of the DOE loan portfolio was thorough and reliable as evident by additional independent reports affirming his findings." The Obama campaign said, "Having completed an independent assignment does not cost him his right to continue participating in the political progress on behalf of many candidates, as he has in the past."

A former Merrill Lynch executive, Allison worked for several Republican administrations and earned a reputation for tackling troubled federal programs. During McCain's failed 2000 presidential run, he served as national finance chairman and was rumored to be McCain's choice to become treasury secretary if he had won.

Allison was named by President George W. Bush to head Fannie Mae after the quasi-government home lending agency was placed in conservatorship in 2008 following the Wall Street collapse. A year later, Obama named Allison as an assistant treasury secretary to oversee the Troubled Asset Relief Program that Bush had created to stabilize Wall Street banks and investment houses reeling with toxic debt.

During his work at the Treasury Department, Allison was among top officials who crossed swords with TARP Inspector General Neil Barofsky, who accused the department of failing to properly track government bailout money given to banks and investment houses. Barofsky declined to comment about his dealings with Allison.

Allison left the Treasury Department in 2010 but returned last year to head up the review of energy loans. The White House agreed to the review in the wake of mounting Republican criticism after Solyndra, a California firm, went belly up. The bankruptcy cost U.S. taxpayers $528 million in lost loans.

Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., who chairs the House Energy Committee's oversight subcommittee, said Allison's donations to the Obama campaign back up GOP warnings this year that the White House review was suspect. Stearns said Allison's "financial support for the Obama campaign undermines (his) credibility and shows once again that the president did not want a careful, independent review of his risky green jobs scheme."

Allison's role as a large Obama donor "raises serious questions about an administration that puts campaign cash before taxpayer money," said Joe Pounder, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee.

Allison declined to say whether he will keep donating to Obama. "Next time around," he said, "I might support a Republican."

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 24, 2012, 07:13:39 AM
Barack Obama asks eurozone to keep Greece in until after election day

US officials are worried that if Greece exits the eurozone, it will damage President's election hopes


Oliver Wright

Friday, 24 August 2012



The Obama administration will pressure European governments not to let Greece fall out of the eurozone before November's Presidential elections, British Government sources have suggested.

Representatives from the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the European Commission are due to arrive in Athens next month to assess Greece's reform efforts.

They are expected to report in time for an 8 October meeting of eurozone finance ministers which will decide on whether to disburse Greece's next €31bn aid tranche, promised under the terms of the bailout for the country.

American officials are understood to be worried that if they decide Greece has not done enough to meet its deficit targets and withhold the money, it would automatically trigger Greece's exit from the eurozone weeks before the Presidential election on 6 November.

They are urging eurozone Governments to hold off from taking any drastic action before then – fearing that the resulting market destabilisation could damage President Obama's re-election prospects. European leaders are thought to be sympathetic to the lobbying fearing that, under pressure from his party lin Congress, Mitt Romney would be a more isolationist president than Mr Obama.

The President discussed the eurozone crisis with David Cameron during a conference call on Wednesday and both welcomed statements by the European Central Bank that it was "standing firmly behind the euro".

The ECB is expected to present a plan in the next few weeks to help indebted countries like Spain and Italy by buying their government bonds.

Today, Prime Minister Antonis Samaras will travel to Berlin to meet Chancellor Angela Merkel, and to France tomorrow for talks with President François Hollande. He is asking that Greece be given more time to meet its deficit targets and implement its reforms as its economy is struggling through a fifth year of recession.

But Germany's Finance Minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, said it was only months since creditors drew up a second bailout package and agreed on a massive debt write-down for Greece.

Britain is understood to have pressed the Germans to ensure that if eurozone leaders decide Greece's position is unsustainable the financial "firewall" around Spain and Italy is made stronger. Officials are worried that if Greece was to exit the eurozone, the move could result in dramatic increases in the cost of debt for other weaker eurozone members – making their financial situation unsustainable.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 25, 2012, 04:34:25 AM
Here’s the book-jacket teaser: A major U.S. environmental disaster strikes. As Coast Guard and other heroes struggle to contain the unprecedented damage, a different scene unfolds in a dimly lit conference room in Washington. A small group of high-ranking political hacks and overzealous ideologues see an opportunity to manipulate the situation to advance their agenda. They doctor a key report on the disaster by experts in order to justify shutting down all exploration and new production. They explain the sweeping decision as something sound science requires.

Several weeks later, members of Congress and a few in the media dig deeper into the alleged science behind bringing an entire industry to a screeching halt. That’s when the cover-up begins.

A catchy political thriller? If only it were fiction. Instead, it’s what seems to have happened in the Obama administration following the BP disaster.

ADVERTISEMENT

And as a U.S. senator from Louisiana, I suffered through seeing it firsthand.

Some aspects of the 30-day experts’ report seemed suspect to me from the beginning. So I called for an inspector general to investigate the Obama administration’s claim that science supported the decision to shut down the Gulf. That investigation revealed that high-ranking officials in the Department of the Interior and the White House inappropriately manipulated the 30-day experts’ report to justify the offshore drilling moratorium — all in violation of the Information Quality Act and contrary to sound science.

On June 21, 2010, new reports revealed that the scientists in question in fact opposed the moratorium. They were shocked that their report was doctored to justify it. They even actively lobbied Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to soften the ban.

However, on Nov. 10, 2010, Mary Kendall, the inspector general for the Interior Department investigation, concluded that Interior officials were really only guilty of sloppy editing. She determined that Interior’s moving some words around in the experts’ report was more akin to a clerical error, and that Interior Secretary Salazar had already apologized for that.

But that wasn’t the end of the story. In May 2011, a government whistleblower came forward. He alleged that Kendall in fact colluded with Interior officials during her “independent” investigation. And then, after exploring this claim, a congressional committee unveiled specific materials that showed that Kendall had actually attended meetings in which Interior officials reviewed working drafts of the very same report she later was tasked with investigating — a clear conflict which Kendall never revealed.

Once confronted with this startling conflict, Kendall confirmed her attendance in those meetings to USA Today, claiming she “was an active listener” but not an “active participant in these meetings.”

As Mark Twain once famously said: “Truth is stranger than fiction.” Unfortunately, it can also have serious, real-world consequences, unlike a cleverly written political thriller.

The biggest consequence in this case is that major energy exploration and new production in the Gulf of Mexico was basically turned off for more than six months. Many thousands of workers directly involved in that work were laid off. Many more in oilfield service and related support businesses lost their jobs and livelihoods or were forced to split from their families and seek work overseas. Eleven massive deepwater rigs left the Gulf of Mexico for redeployment in Brazil, Africa, even Australia. Other rigs that were headed to the Gulf turned away and shallow-water rigs were idled. The economic hit to my state of Louisiana was actually bigger than that of the recent recession.

In light of all of this, I’ve joined with other Senate colleagues from the Gulf region in calling for an independent Integrity Committee to conduct a thorough and accurate investigation and get to the bottom of the apparent inspector general cover-up. They are actively reviewing the matter now.

It’s pretty outrageous that politics seem to have tempered significantly the inspector general’s investigation. And that politics and ideology, not sound science, is what led to the unprecedented moratorium decision in the first place.

It would all make for one heck of a political thriller. If only it were fiction.

David Vitter (R) is the junior senator from Louisiana. His committee posts include the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works and the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 25, 2012, 08:48:20 AM


One of the women in the Obama campaign's new video of Republicans supporting the president because of GOP positions on women's rights appears not to be a Republican at all.

Maria Ciano who is featured in the web video has been a registered Democrat since October 2006 according to voter registration records.

"People like me and my family have realized that the Republican Party once was inline with our views, but are no longer," the Colorado resident says in the video.

The video is one component of a larger Obama campaign push on women in light of the recent controversy surrounding Todd Akin.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/zekejmiller/republican-in-obama-ad-is-a-democrat

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: garebear on August 25, 2012, 10:29:37 AM
Ever think about getting a job?

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 25, 2012, 10:34:08 AM
Busted: “Republican” woman in Obama ad has been a registered Democrat since 2006
Hot Air ^ | 25 Aug 2012 | Ed Morrissey
Posted on August 25, 2012 1:28:13 PM EDT by mandaladon

Via Drudge, the inevitable finish for an ad for a President whose track record on vetting and research has been all too vividly featured in our Obamateurism series. Earlier this week, Team Obama stepped up its War On Wimminses strategy with this ad, featuring women who identify as Republican but who intend to vote for Barack Obama in 2012. However, as the old Sesame Street song used to go, at least one of these women are not like the other:

Maria Ciano who is featured in the web video has been a registered Democrat since October 2006 according to voter registration records.

“People like me and my family have realized that the Republican Party once was inline with our views, but are no longer,” the Colorado resident says in the video.

It’s certainly possible that Ms. Ciano had at one time been Republican. Her conversion to Democrat had nothing to do with Mitt Romney, or even Barack Obama, however. And it’s difficult to ascertain exactly what about Romney would have driven the rest of them off, either. One woman cites Romney’s desire to see Roe overturned, as if she’s never heard that argument in the four decades that Republicans have been making it. George W. Bush made it just as much of an issue when running for President, if not more; every Republican nominee for President since Reagan has taken that position, as have most of the candidates who failed to get the nomination. This must be one of the most low-information groups of voters ever featured in a national campaign.

(Excerpt) Read more at hotair.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 25, 2012, 04:27:50 PM
President Barack Obama recently signed an executive order hiring race-sensitive bureaucrats to hold meetings and mandate racial discipline quotas.


The order charges his new racial justice team, in part, with "promoting a positive school climate that does not rely on methods that result in disparate use of disciplinary tools."  In plain English, that means that if different races have different incidences of disciplinary action, those of a favored race who act worse will be punished less, or those of a disfavored race who act better will be punished more, or both.

It's true that a higher percentage of black students than white students receive school discipline such as suspensions or expulsion.  A recent, representative study of nearly half the country's school districts found that 17.3 percent of black students were suspended in 2009-10, whereas 4.7 percent of whites and 7.3 percent of Latinos were.  Only 2.1 percent of Asians were suspended that year.  The black graduation rate is 64 percent.  For whites, it's 82 percent, and for Asians, it's 92 percent.

Given these and similar statistics on practically every measure of academic success and self-discipline, the president wants to require schools to punish equal proportions of white and black students, regardless of how individual students behave.  That will mean overlooking infractions by black students or punishing more white students for pettier infractions.
Punishing students differently based on skin color -- that's not racist?
The president's reasoning is utterly incoherent: the superior performance of Asian students must indicate that schools are racist against whites, according to his thinking.  Requiring equal discipline outcomes as the president desires would punish good behavior by white, Asian, and Latino students and reward bad behavior by black students.  That is just a horrific moral example, teaching students that rewards and punishment should be dictated by race, which you cannot control, instead of behavior, which you can.
The president's policies would perpetuate a victim mentality among minority students -- and such a mindset victimizes no one more than those who hold it.  A person who believes that her unhappiness is someone else's fault will be demoralized or motivated to act out against those she thinks have oppressed her, rather than inspired to rise above her circumstances.
That will accelerate the cycle of futile violence and lack of academic ambition already roiling urban schools.  Black high school students are 60 percent more likely than whites, and more than twice as likely as Asians, to be in a physical fight on school property, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
The CDC lists risk factors for violent behavior, including family instability, poor self-control, antisocial beliefs and attitudes (such as, perhaps, "everyone's out to get me because of my race"), low parental education and income, low parental involvement, and poor academic performance.

All these behaviors also correlate with something more prevalent among blacks than any other major U.S. group: single motherhood.  Two-thirds of black children live with a lone parent.  Children of single mothers are more likely to drop out of school, never attend college, and learn less.  They are more likely to be aggressive, depressed, and distressed.  These children have been irrevocably harmed by their own parents, not by school discipline policies.

Eliminating racial disparities requires race-blindness so all people will rise on their own merits and know they can do so, not giving children a free ride for failure.  The real tragedy is that while the president attempts to mandate injustice through race-based school discipline quotas, he refuses to address black Americans about what gives their children the best chance at a good life: an intact family.

Joy Pullmann is managing editor of School Reform News and a research fellow in education at The Heartland Institute.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 26, 2012, 02:53:28 PM
Obama Administration Agrees To Release 4 Taliban Leaders
NEWSMAX ^ | Sunday, 26 Aug 2012 02:47 | Patrick Hobin





The Obama administration has tentatively agreed to release four Taliban leaders from Guantanamo prison and allow them to resettle in Afghanistan, Paul Sperry of the Hoover Institution wrote in the New York Post. Sperry, the author of the book “Infiltration,” said that Afghan President Hamid Karzai wants to free some top Taliban commanders who led deadly attacks on American troops when the United States invaded Afghanistan after 9/11. Among the prisoners are some of the “most dangerous detainees remaining at Gitmo,” and include a former Taliban deputy intelligence chief, former interior minister, defense chief and military commander, Sperry wrote. “Shockingly, the Obama administration has tentatively agreed to release the four suspected terrorists if Karzai can certify they no longer pose a threat,” he said. “They must disavow terrorism and any allegiance to al-Qaida.” Karzai claims his government obtained such assurances in a recent trip to Gitmo, according to Sperry. He noted that a recent intelligence report found that more than one in four of the 600 former Guantanamo detainees rejoined the jihad. The agreement comes as there appears to be rampant infiltration of Taliban insurgents in the Afghan national army and police, he wrote. The Obama administration agreed to the deals, according to Sperry, in order to help stabilize Afghanistan ahead of the 2014 withdrawal of troops. “They also help Obama fulfill his 2008 campaign pledge to empty and shutter Gitmo,” he wrote. “Antiwar activists among his base are upset he’s freed just 70 detainees, leaving 168. The White House last month confirmed the president still plans on closing the prison camp.”


(Excerpt) Read more at newsmax.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 26, 2012, 07:15:17 PM
http://www.soopermexican.com/2012/08/26/obama-remembers-neil-armstrong-with-a-big-picture-of-himself



Disgusting.   
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 27, 2012, 08:51:52 AM
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 30, 2012, 09:17:33 PM
--President Obama has Tour Buses Flown to Stump Speeches-
Red State ^
Posted on August 30, 2012 10:20:24 PM EDT by djone

"...he hasn’t really been riding these buses much at all They say, he’s been flying them...Apparently President Obama only rode the buses for a couple of miles at a time, spending the rest of the time flying from community to community in Air Force One. Whats more, the buses were flown from stop to stop as well... But why wouldn't the presidential limousine have sufficed Or one of the other armored vehicles that routinely travel with the President? Apparently because the President wanted the imagery of a bus. And buses are what he got...So good news America! If these reports are true, then not only do you get the pleasure of having a $1.1 million dollar bus carting the President around to “enlist” voters to fight for his reelection, but you get to marvel at the hypocrisy of an administration hell bent on destroying industries with carbon footprints too large for comfort, while they themselves are flying entire caravans of SUVs and buses in giant 747s flanked by fighter jets."

(Excerpt) Read more at redstate.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 31, 2012, 06:41:58 PM
House panel probing stimulus cash for MSNBC ads
 
By Jim McElhatton
 
The Washington Times
 
Friday, August 31, 2012
 





A House panel is calling on the U.S. Department of Labor to turn over all records involving a half-million dollar contract funded through President Obama’s $831 billion stimulus program that paid for more than 100 commercials on MSNBC touting a “green jobs” initiative.
 
The contract with McNeely Pigott & Fox Public Relations LLC in 2009 resulted in more than 100 commercials on cable shows hosted by Rachel Maddow and Keith Olberman to raise awareness about the Job Corps program’s training in environmentally-friendly career areas.
 
But spending reports showed that no jobs were created through the contract. The Washington Times first reported on the contract earlier this month, quoting one taxpayer watchdog who questioned not only the lack of jobs but why the commercials aired only on MSNBC, considered the most liberal of the major cable news outlets.
 
Republican leaders on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, which oversees the Labor Department, are raising similar questions in a recent letter they sent to Labor Secretary Hilda Solis.
 
The letter, signed by Reps. John Kline of Minnesota, chairman of the committee, and Phil Roe of Tennessee, who chairs the panel’s subcommittee on health, employment, labor and pension issues, seeks all documents and communications concerning the public relations contract, as well as a list of dates, attendees and topics for any meetings between Labor officials and the public relations firm concerning the “public relations strategy.”
 
“We understand this contract used taxpayer dollars purchase advertisements on MSNBC during ‘Countdown with Keith Olbermann’ and ‘The Rachel Maddow Show,’” the lawmakers wrote.
 
“Despite the fact that these funds were made available as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act — legislation President Obama said was critical for immediate job creation — an examination of public records show that the contract that resulted in the advertisements on MSNBC created no jobs.”
 
A spokesman for the Labor Department, Stephen Barr, said officials have received the committee’s letter and will be responding.
 
In an earlier statement to The Times, Labor Department officials said there was nothing political about the placement of the ads. They said research showed the advertisements would reach the target demographic of business owners and managers interested in hiring “green-trained” employees through a programming list that initially also included shows hosted by CNN’s Larry King and public television’s Jim Lehrer.
 
Public television was eliminated because advertising rates were too high, officials said, and Mr. King’s show was dropped because MSNBC, since renamed NBCNews.com, held the potential to reach more viewers.
 
The use of tax dollars on media and advertising services also came under scrutiny from Democratic lawmakers during the George W. Bush administration. In 2006, a Government Accountability Office (GAO) study requested by Democrats found more than $1.6 billion in public relations and media spending by the Bush administration during a two-year span.


Read more: House panel probing stimulus cash for MSNBC ads - Washington Times
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 31, 2012, 07:28:06 PM
President Obama marks end of combat operations in Iraq with another portrait of himself
Twitchy ^ | 8/31/12 | staff
Posted on August 31, 2012 9:48:15 PM EDT by Nachum

Posted at 9:09 pm on August 31, 2012 by Twitchy Staff | View Comments

Barack Obama



@BarackObama

A promise kept: pic.twitter.com/m7iLA3eF 31 Aug 12

Reply Retweet Favorite

We’re certainly aware the president isn’t sitting in front of a copy of Photoshop putting these tweets together personally, but are we the only ones noticing a peculiar trend?

The Obama campaign recently honored the late astronaut Neil Armstrong by posting a photo of … Obama. So what better way to mark the anniversary of the end of combat operations in Iraq than by posting another photo of Obama?

(Excerpt) Read more at twitchy.com ...

http://twitchy.com/2012/08/31/president-obama-marks-end-of-combat-operations-in-iraq-with-another-portrait-of-himself/?utm_source=autotweet&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=twitter






WTF!!!!
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 03, 2012, 04:53:59 PM
U.S. officials concede American lives were sacrificed in rush to implement Obama's Afghan strategy
The Obama Report ^ | 9/1/12
Posted on September 3, 2012 5:49:29 PM EDT by Frankusa

U.S. and NATO officials have acknowledged that, in the rush to implement the President's politically calculated troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, Afghan troops were not properly vetted, which resulted in the deaths of 45 coalition members - most of them Americans - at the hands of their supposed Afghan allies.

Hence, in an extremely belated response, the senior commander of U.S. special forces in Afghanistan has finally decided to suspend training for all new Afghan recruits until they can be re-vetted...

The spike in green-on-blue attacks has forced NATO officials to concede the 'painful truth': Many of the attacks might have been prevented "if existing security measures had been applied correctly,"...

Numerous military guidelines were not adhered to by either Afghans or Americans because of concerns that they might impede the growth of the Afghan army and police...

Requirements that Afghan soldiers produce proper credentials while on base were also ignored.

One U.S. official said there was a lot of pressure to increase the size of the Afghan forces. Consequently, the vetting process was "was cast aside" because it was viewed as an impediment to accomplishing this goal.

But why was there was a lot of pressure to increase the size of the Afghan forces?

Because President Obama is exerting this pressure.

Mr. Obama [the Politician-in-Chief] insists on handing over primary responsibility for Afghanistan’s security to Afghan forces by the middle of 2013 and to withdraw all U.S. combat troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014. That requires developing a sizable Afghan force in a short period of time, which is why stringent security measures and a thorough vetting process have not been properly implemented. And sadly, this has led to a huge spike in green-on-blue attacks, which has resulted in the deaths of U.S. and coalition troops....

(Excerpt) Read more at obamareport.blogspot.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 05, 2012, 08:50:47 PM
GAO: Obama Admin Circumvented Law with Welfare Waivers
CNSNews ^ | September 5, 2012 | Matt Cover
Posted on September 5, 2012 11:46:34 PM EDT by george76

The Obama administration circumvented federal law in announcing it would waive the work requirements in welfare, a GAO review found, saying that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) should have submitted the new policy to Congress for review.

At issue is whether the policy falls under the purview of the Congressional Review Act (CRA) that requires all administrative changes of policy or regulation be submitted to Congress for review and possible disapproval.

...

HHS must formally submit the letter to Congress and the Comptroller General before it can legally issue the waivers to the requirement that a certain portion of welfare recipients work.

...

Camp, whose office released the GAO finding, said that HHS’ waiver policy amounted to an “end-run” around Congress.

“Despite his latest attempt at an end-run around Congress, this GAO report clearly states that the Administration must submit this rule to Congress for review before it can take effect. Work requirements were the centerpiece of welfare reform, and we cannot allow that progress to be undone,”

(Excerpt) Read more at cnsnews.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 07, 2012, 08:17:15 AM
[ Invalid YouTube link ]
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 07, 2012, 10:15:40 PM
http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/budget/248213-white-house-will-miss-fiscal-cliff-deadline



Disgraceful
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 10, 2012, 01:00:56 PM
Obama Skipping Staggering Amount of Daily Intelligence Meetings

Posted on September 10, 2012 at 1:36pm by Mytheos Holt


http://www.theblaze.com/stories/obama-skipping-staggering-amount-of-daily-intelligence-meetings





One of the centerpieces of the Democratic case for Barack Obama‘s reelection in Charlotte last week was the President’s record on national security – specifically, his decision to pursue the operation that eventually led to the death of Osama bin Laden.
 
That impressive achievement, however, may be blunted by the force of revelations by former Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen in today’s Washington Post. Thiessen writes:
 

President Obama is touting his foreign policy experience on the campaign trail, but startling new statistics suggest that national security has not necessarily been the personal priority the president makes it out to be. It turns out that more than half the time, the commander in chief does not attend his daily intelligence meeting.
 
The Government Accountability Institute examined President Obama’s schedule from the day he took office until mid-June 2012, to see how often he attended his Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) — the meeting at which he is briefed on the most critical intelligence threats to the country. During his first 1,225 days in office, Obama attended his PDB just 536 times — or 43.8 percent of the time. During 2011 and the first half of 2012, his attendance became even less frequent — falling to just over 38 percent. By contrast, Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush almost never missed his daily intelligence meeting.
 
Thiessen was able to get comment from the White House’s National Security spokesman, Tommy Vietor, who told him,  “The president gets the information he needs from the intelligence community each day.”

 



Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 11, 2012, 04:03:28 AM
Obama says he’ll be taking ‘executive actions’ without Congress on ‘regular basis’ to ‘heal the economy’
11:37 PM 10/24/2011

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President Barack Obama told an audience in Nevada on Monday that he will be regularly announcing “executive actions” his administration will take to “heal the economy” without the “dysfunctional” Congress.

“I’m here to say to all of you and to say to the people of Nevada and the people of Las Vegas, we can’t wait for an increasingly dysfunctional Congress to do its job. Where they won’t act, I will,” Obama said.

“I’ve told my administration to keep looking every single day for actions we can take without Congress, steps that can save consumers money, make government more efficient and responsive, and help heal the economy. And we’re going to be announcing these executive actions on a regular basis,” the president said.

Obama then explained the home mortgage refinancing plan that his administration announced on Monday.

“The barrier will be lifted that prohibits responsible homeowners from refinancing if their home values have fallen so low that what they owe on their mortgage is 25 percent higher than the current value of their home,” he said. “And this is critically important for a place like Las Vegas, where home values have fallen by more than 50 percent over the past five years.”

“If you’ve got a $250,000 mortgage at six percent interest rates, but the value of your home has fallen below $200,000, right now you can’t refinance,” Obama explained. “You’re ineligible. But that’s going to change. If you meet certain requirements, you will have the chance to refinance at lower rates, which could save you hundreds of dollars a month, and thousands of dollars a year on mortgage payments.”

Virginia Democratic Rep. Jim Moran told TheDC last Thursday that he would like to see the Obama administration refinance every home mortgage to three and a half to four percent without congressional approval. (RELATED: Obama admin. to offer home re-fi plan regardless ‘of how deeply underwater they are’)

“The banks aren’t doing it, but the federal government can borrow money at three-and-a-half percent today,” Moran said. “It would reset the economy, and I think it’s the one thing that would most quickly get this economy back on its feet.”

Moran’s recommendation foreshadowed the president’s statements on Monday.

“Where we don’t have to wait for Congress, we’re just going to go ahead and act on our own, and we’re going to keep on putting pressure on Congress to do the right thing for families all across the country,” Obama said.

“And I am confident that the American people want to see action,” he said. “We know what to do. Question is whether we’re going to have the political will to do it.”

Follow Nicholas on Twitter








Dictator in the making
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 12, 2012, 08:10:47 PM
Obama compares his campaign volunteers to embassy staff killed in Libya
washingtonexaminer.com ^ | Sept. 12, 2012 | Joel Gehrke
Posted on September 12, 2012 11:01:48 PM EDT by Free ThinkerNY

President Obama told his campaign volunteers in Nevada that he is “really proud” of them after comparing them to the U.S. ambassador and embassy staff murdered in Libya.

“And obviously [our] hearts are broken for the families but I wanted to encourage those folks at the State Dept. that they were making a difference,” Obama told volunteer leaders in Las Vegas, according to the pool report. “The sacrifices that our troops and our diplomats make are obviously very different from the challenges that we face here domestically but like them, you guys are Americans who sense that we can do better than we’re doing….I’m just really proud of you.”

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 13, 2012, 08:44:01 AM
List of Failed Obama Green Energy & Solar Companies in the Billions (useful info)
 Divided States ^ | 09-11-2012 | Staff

Posted on Thursday, September 13, 2012 11:33:39 AM


[...]

List Of Failed Green Energy Jobs & Companies...

7/19/12: The Amonix Solar: FAIL – manufacturing plant in North Las Vegas, subsidized by more than $20 million in federal tax credits and grants given by Obama Administration, has closed its 214,000 square foot facility a year after it opened.

Solar Trust of America: FAIL - Filed Bankruptcy in Oakland, CA, April 3, 2012 – On April 2, 2012

Bright Source: FAIL - Bright Source warned Obama’s Energy Department officials in March 2011 that delays in approving a $1.6 billion U.S. loan guarantee would embarrass the White House and force the solar-energy company to close. Lost Billions of dollars but Getting More Money To Keep Trying. Can you say, “This isnt working?”

Solyndra: FAIL - Obama gave Solyndra $500,000,000 in taxpayer money and Solyndra shut its doors and laid off 1100 workers in August 2011 After Billions in Losses due to failure to make a solar product that works!

LSP Energy: FAIL - LSPEnergy LP filed bankruptcy protection and a sale of its assets in Feb 2012 Energy Conversion Devices: FAIL – On February 14, 2012 Energy Conversion Devices, Inc. and its subsidiaries filed for bankruptcy

Abound Solar: FAIL - Abound Solar received a $400 million loan guarantee from Barack Obama announced in June, 2012 that it would file for bankruptcy

SunPower: FAIL – SunPower stopped producing solar cells last year at near bankruptcy restructured only with help of, get this, oil giant TOTAL who owns 60% stake. Irony! Still struggling…

Beacon Power: FAIL – Beacon Power Corp filed for bankruptcy Oct 2011 just a year after Obama approved $43 million loan Government loan guarantee

Ecotality: FAIL - ECOtality, a San Francisco green-tech company that never earned any money on the verge of bankruptcy after receiving roughly $115 million in two loan guarantees from Obama

A123 Solar: FAIL-A123 received $279 million from taxpayers thanks to President Obama’s Department of Energy loan guarantees and after Solyndra bankruptcy is getting another $500M from Obama and it has lost $400M

UniSolar: FAIL - Uni-Solar filed for Ch 11 bankruptcy in June 20 this year laid off hundreds got more Obama money still failing but still in business

Azure Dynamics: FAIL - Azure Dynamics files for bankruptcy in June ter millions in Obama “Stimulus”

Evergreen Solar: FAIL - Evergreen Solar received $527 Million in Taxpayer money from Obama filed bankruptcy

Ener1: FAIL received more than $100 million in government funding from the Obama administration filed for bankruptcy January 2012

Update: In May 2012 Obama visited a dusty, desert town 30 miles outside Las Vegas Wednesday to declare he’s doubling down on failed federal efforts to boost the solar industry which has NEVER proven to produce a single working product. Like Socialism, no evidence ot works, but they just keep doubling down on the failed ideals!.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 13, 2012, 07:42:48 PM
White House indicates Sebelius won't be punished over Hatch Act violation
fox news ^ | 9/13/2012 | staff
Posted on September 13, 2012 10:23:54 PM EDT by tobyhill

The White House indicated that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius would probably not be punished, after federal investigators determined she had violated the law when she campaigned earlier this year for President Obama.

Sebelius broke the law by making "extemporaneous partisan remarks" during a speech in February at a Human Rights Campaign Event in Charlotte, N.C., according to the Office of Special Counsel (OSC). She made the comments in the city that would later host the Democratic National Convention.

White House spokesman Eric Schultz explained in a statement that the administration has already taken action on the matter, though, putting Sebelius through training and making sure taxpayers were reimbursed.

(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 14, 2012, 10:22:27 AM
September 14, 2012
Obama Is a Spokesmodel for Tyranny
By Stella Paul

 



Barack Obama is not a real president, though he does play one on TV.  So what is he?  It's my contention that the bizarre creature currently residing in the White House is an attractive spokesmodel for our destruction, sponsored by America's mortal foes.
 
The time for politely mincing words is over.  After the Democrats booed God and Jerusalem at their national convention; after Obama refused to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as Israel faces nuclear destruction; after Obama enthroned the Muslim Brotherhood throughout the Middle East and then apologized for America when our embassies were fatally attacked there on 9/11 -- well, really, what's the point of making nice?
 
Forget calling Obama "incompetent."  This tiresome meme presupposes that Obama wants to do what's right for America but doesn't know how.  Does anyone honestly believe that anymore?
 
Yes, he's incompetent, in that he's a fairly unimpressive bloke with no skills, imagination, or ability to learn, who couldn't run a third-rate laundromat.
 
But so what?  His sponsors didn't install him for his competence.  They installed him so that he could strut on the runways of the world, showing off his fashionable skin color and perfectly creased pants, while babbling whatever useful venom they put on his teleprompter.
 
As the body of America's Libyan ambassador was dragged through the streets and three other American embassy workers lay dead, we learned that Obama attended only 38% of his intelligence briefings in 2012.  In fact, he didn't attend a single intelligence briefing in the week preceding 9/11.  So ask yourself: would the outcome be any different if he had?
 
Of course not.  Does L'Oréal spokesmodel Beyoncé attend board meetings in which the location of new factories or other nitty-gritty corporate business is decided?  Why should she?  Her job is to go out there and look good and sell the brand.
 
And thus our Spokesmodel-in-Chief, who found no opening in his schedule to meet with Benjamin Netanyahu, somehow made the time to appear on the 9/11 radio show of "The Pimp with a Limp," fly to Las Vegas, and clown around with David Letterman.  Next up is a fundraiser at the 40/40 Club in Manhattan with fellow spokesmodel Beyoncé, and a whirlwind of similar brand-promoting frippery, as the world burns.
 
If you haven't figured out the nature of the brand that Obama is promoting, the Democrats helpfully informed us in their opening convention video: "Thegovernment is the only thing we all belong to."  We all belong to the government, and the government is Obama -- so we all belong to Obama, that exciting celebrity with the big smile who loves to give us free stuff.  And now that we've been docilely collectivized, our celebrity friend, "President Obama," can deliver us into submission at the hands of those who despise us.
 
And thus, "President Obama" will have "more flexibility" to surrender to the Russians, whose warships he displayed at his convention, after his election.  And when rabid Islamists storm American embassies, and sodomize and murder an American ambassador, the reaction of "President Obama's" White House is to abjectly apologize to the protestors for America's right to free speech.  Meanwhile, "President Obama" weakens and undermines America's military, leaving us ever more vulnerable in an increasingly chaotic world.
 
Who is this "President Obama" who puts such an appealing face on our destruction?  Just a few weeks before the election, we still don't really know.  Two gripping documentaries, 2016 and Dreams From My Real Father, portray different aspects of his background, exposing the America-hating fervor of his various mentors.
 
A blockbuster hit, 2016 examines the anti-colonial politics of his purported father, the Harvard-educated Kenyan governmental economist, Barack Hussein Obama, Sr.  With its glossy production values brought to you by Schindler's List producer Gerald Molen, 2016 takes us on a fast-paced tour of Obama Sr.'s worldview, in which villainous America and the West must be humbled for deliberately ravaging the third world.  Along the way, we meet freedom-hating influences on "President Obama," including terrorist emeritus Bill Ayers, leading Israel-basher Professor Edward Said, and card-carrying Communist agitator Frank Marshall Davis.
 
It's Frank Marshall Davis who takes center stage in Joel Gilbert's fascinating documentary, Dreams From My Real Father.  Gilbert contends that Davis was Obama's biological father and deploys some compelling physical and circumstantial evidence to make his point.  Even Obama's pre-presidential nose job can't mask the physical resemblance of the two men, and Frank Marshall Davis's side job as a pornographer allowed him access to Obama's teen mother, as Gilbert's photo cache dismayingly proves.
 
But whoever spawned "President Obama," the end result is the empty, angry Spokesmodel-in-Chief, whose sponsors now hold our fate in their hands.  While Obama preens and prances around the country, the real workers continue their destruction of our national security and economy, strangling us with a $16-trillion debt and another threatened downgrade.  The Spokesmodel saw no need to attend any job council meetings as 23 million Americans suffered without work; those jobs could be destroyed without any personal input from him.
 
Now the Spokesmodel's contract is up for renewal, and like all successful celebrities, he's demanding we pay a higher price for his services.  If he wins, many Americans may be forced to pay the ultimate price.
 
Write Stella Paul at Stellapundit@aol.com.


Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/09/obama_is_a_spokesmodel_for_tyranny.html#ixzz26SwA9U1B
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 18, 2012, 12:25:22 PM
Feds ignore rules and use stimulus cash to buy Chinese solar panels
By Jim McElhatton
 
-

The Washington Times
 
Monday, September 17, 2012







Government officials blame unfair competition from China for the collapse of solar panel manufacturer Solyndra, but such concerns didn’t stop the federal government from breaking stimulus program rules to use Chinese solar panels atop a federal building housing the offices of a senator, congressman and several agencies.
 
Even the contractor questioned whether Chinese-made panels could be used under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the stimulus program that mandated use of U.S.-made products. His query in early 2010 was dismissed and the General Services Administration moved forward with using the Chinese panels on the Sen. Paul Simon Federal Building in Carbondale, Ill., records show.
 
Questions about the panels, which were assembled overseas, were raised in a four-page advisory memo sent by the inspector general to the GSA in the summer of 2011, but the findings take on added significance as government officials increasingly place blame on Chinese subsidies for troubles in the U.S. solar market.
 
Since last summer, Solyndra LLC and another solar company, Abound Solar, have filed for bankruptcy despite receiving generous federal loan guarantees. After both bankruptcies, government officials were quick to place blame on subsidies from China that allowed foreign solar panel manufactures to sell their products below cost, squeezing U.S. solar companies.
 
Meanwhile, the contractor on the Illinois building project, J.R. Conkey & Associates, initially questioned GSA officials on whether solar panels assembled in China could be used under the stimulus program, but a procurement officer told the company to proceed, according to records.
 
“We did what we were told to do by the federal government,” Jim Conkey, the company’s president, said Monday.
 
According to the inspector general’s memo, Conkey officials asked the GSA contracting official “whether non-ARRA [Recovery Act] compliant solar panels could be used” on Feb. 16, 2010, before the installation of the panels.
 
“The contracting officer directed Conkey to ‘proceed with the panels specified in the schedule contract since they have already been determined as satisfying all applicable contract clauses including the ARRA Buy American Act requirement,’ ” the memo stated.
 
The inspector general’s memo said the overall roof work was performed under a $1.8 million task order awarded to J.R. Conkey & Associates, though Mr. Conkey said a portion of the project involving stimulus funding for the panels at issue involved about $200,000.
 
Dan Cruz, a GSA spokesman, said an agency review found no other instances of GSA projects using solar panels made outside of the U.S.
 
In a written response to the inspector general last year, officials also disagreed with several aspects of the review. The Federal Acquisition Service, an arm of the GSA, said the contract to J.R. Conkey was for a “complex roof mounted electrical grid system” and that the panel in question — the SP205 — was “one component of this overall system.”
 
“Here, the panels themselves are not a contract item” the service’s response stated. “Rather, they are an important part of a solar system, but are integrated along with an inverter, tubes and other components into a system.”
 
And for purchases of such systems, the Trade Agreements Act, not the Buy America Act, applies, according to Federal Acquisition Service officials, who added that only the Bureau of Customs, now a part of the Department of Homeland Security, could make a determination of [Trade Agreements Act] compliance.
 
Still, the inspector general’s memo stated that the panels violated the provisions of the stimulus program, according to the memo.
 
“The photovoltaic panels installed were assembled in and shipped from China,” the memo stated. “Under the ARRA, the Chinese panels cannot be purchased with ARRA funds.”


Read more: Feds ignore rules and use stimulus cash to buy Chinese solar panels - Washington Times http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/sep/17/lambasted-chinese-solar-panels-placed-on-governmen/#ixzz26qpCWeYD
 Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 18, 2012, 02:32:48 PM
Report: Top Obama Bundlers Bag Millions in Taxpayer Money

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
by Wynton Hall

17 Sep 2012

www.breitbart.com

 



An investigation by the Government Accountability Institute found that more than half of the most politically active 50 campaign bundlers for President Obama were either appointed to a presidential council, committee, board, or other White House post. Many bundlers’ businesses or relatives' businesses also received millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded federal contracts, grants, loans, or other crony perks.

In all, the top 50 bundlers received three council appointments, one ambassadorship, two committee appointments, and a whopping 20 State Dinner invitations. Two bundlers were also placed on a presidential board, and another two were picked for other White House posts. 

Bundling campaign donations for Mr. Obama can produce a lucrative return on “investment” in the form of crony deals. For example, one of the president’s biggest bundlers, Penny Pritzker, is the national co-chair of Obama for America 2012 and was a member of President Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board. Mrs. Pritzker has bundled at least $904,957 for Mr. Obama. A former board member of the Marmon Group, the Pritzker family owns as much as 40% of Marmon while Berkshire Hathaway owns the rest. Marmon and Berkshire own IMPulse, a transit-manufacturing firm, located in Mount Olive, North Carolina. IMPulse received or directed numerous construction projects that received millions in taxpayer-funded stimulus money. Among others, those projects include:

•A $485.8 million contract that was awarded for the extension of the Metro Gold Line from Pasadena to Azusa

•A San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) infrastructure project worth $67 million in ARRA funds

•The Portland streetcar eastside loop which received $75 million in funds
 The value of the projects that IMPulse Manufacturing received total nearly $1 billion in American Recovery Reinvestment Act funding.
 
In 2010 testimony before the House Committee on Transportation & Infrastructure on the “Recovery Act: Progress Report for Highway, Transit, and Wastewater Infrastructure Formula Investments," Jeffery Wharton, president of IMPulse Manufacturing, LLC explained:


IMPulse is a Marmon Group / Berkshire Hathaway Company. We are a member of the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) and I serve on the APTA Board of Directors, but my testimony today is on behalf of my company.   
 
I am pleased to report that IMPulse’s new project business has grown 35% in 2009 and expected to grow at least another 10% to 15% in 2010.I do not believe my business would have survived without the investment in public transportation by way of the ARRA stimulus funding. In 2009, ARRA partially funded projects accounted for 46% of my total sales. In 2010, I anticipate the ARRA type funded projects will account for 62% of my total sales.
 
What's more, Nicholas Pritzker is chairman of the board and senior development adviser of the Pritzker family-owned Hyatt Hotels Corp. He invested an unspecified amount in Tesla Motors, the electric car company that received a $465 million interest-bearing loan from the DOE.
 Another Obama bundler who has seemingly gained from his presidential fundraising is Richard Richman, chairman of the Richman Group. In September 2010, the Richmans held a $30,000 a plate fundraising dinner for Obama in their 20-acre estate in Greenwich, Connecticut. They also donated $50,000 to Obama's inaugural. In total, the Richmans have bundled $1,073,750 for Mr. Obama.

And what did they get in return for their fundraising efforts? Richman Group’s Balton-Douglass Park--a $100 million mixed use, mixed income development which will hold 226 apartments in central Harlem--received a $21 million subsidy through the stimulus.

Ellen Richman is listed five times as a visitor in the White House visitors database, and Richard Richman is listed four times since December 2009. They also attended the March 14, 2012 State Dinner.

Mark Gallogly also came up a big winner in the Obama bundler-a-thon. In total, Mr. Gallogly has bundled $903,834 for Mr. Obama. Gallogly serves on the board of Dana Holdings Corp., a manufacturer of drivetrains and other industrial parts. Until earlier this year, Dana Holdings was heavily involved in a joint venture with Eaton Corp., another manufacturer who received numerous stimulus grants, on a line of products known as Roadranger. Roadranger received $3.1 million in stimulus funds for a line of plug in vehicles. Additionally, Dana Holdings supplies parts for Tesla Motors, which received a $465 million loan from the Department of Energy.
 
Gallogly was appointed to the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board and has visited the White House 39 times.

The nonpartisan Government Accountability Institute says it will release its findings for Mitt Romney’s bundlers next week. The organization says the Romney campaign’s refusal to release the names and amounts of all its bundlers made analyzing possible crony connections more difficult. 

“If Romney wants the transparency and anti-cronyism themes to catch fire,” writes Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer, “he needs to do the right thing and release the names of his bundlers.”
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: garebear on September 20, 2012, 07:24:37 AM
My readers were dumbfounded when I picked the 2012 Seahawks to make the Super Bowl. By Sunday night, I was equally dumbfounded. Somehow, Seattle couldn't hold a fourth-quarter lead against an ice-cold Kevin Kolb. An ice-cold Kevin Kolb??? I spent Monday and Tuesday regrouping, and by Wednesday, I was ready to start cranking out excuses. (Come on, you knew this was coming — it was a bigger lock than Adrian Grenier being available for the new Entourage movie.) Climb into the Excuse Machine with me, would you?
 
I thought about using these first three excuses before realizing they were total reaches:
 
Excuse No. 1: Spending a month in London and immersing myself in the Olympics inadvertently murdered my feel for the 2012 NFL season. That's four weeks without SportsCenter, the NFL Network, sports radio, NFL Live, and USA Today Sports Weekly. That's four weeks of missing out on Skip and Stephen A forcing each other to argue about Tebow. That's four lost weeks of Grantland office arguments — including multiple chances for me to say, "I'm thinking about picking Seattle to make the Super Bowl," followed by Robert Mays recoiling in horror and saying, "Are you on bath salts again?"
 
Excuse No. 2: In London, they call soccer "football" and get snotty anytime you refer to the NFL or college football as "football." By embracing London and English people in general, that meant I was embracing their definition of "football." Maybe the real football gods took it personally. That means I have to renounce London, deny that I ever considered moving there permanently, stop saying things like "one of my biggest regrets is never studying abroad there," and go back to despising British people and making Revolutionary War jokes. Consider it done.
 
Excuse No. 3: Had either Doug Baldwin or Braylon Edwards held on to game-winning touchdown passes on totally catchable throws, the Seahawks would be 1-0 and I'd be selling tickets for obstructed seats on the sold-out bandwagon. Even if you might debunk this by saying, "Isn't that a bad sign that your Super Bowl sleeper threw game-deciding passes to Doug Baldwin and Braylon Edwards?," I can pick that argument apart in three words: Yeah, but still.
 
(This next excuse might have some legs, though … )
 
Excuse No. 4: We're 14 weeks away from the Mayans being proven wrong about 2012, but one of their less-ballyhooed predictions came true: "In 2012, Bill Simmons will suffer a prolonged and humiliating gambling swoon." A quick recap …
 
• In August of 2011, I made a Patriots/Super Bowl wager (5-to-1 odds) and eventually ended up with a dream gambling scenario for Super Bowl XLVI — the Patriots being favored by three points, making it impossible for me to lose if I hedged the right amount with the Giants. Did I hedge? Of course not! You can't hedge with your favorite team! But hey, at least the Pats didn't blow the game in the most agonizing way possible.
 
• In March, I bought my daughter a $20 Stanley Cup ticket for the Kings (15-to-1 odds!) that, of course, she lost during the playoffs. Disappeared in her room. Vanished. The good news — I became the first father in history to console a sobbing 7-year-old girl after she lost a $300 Vegas ticket. Welcome to gambling, sweetie!
 
• My post-lockout NBA strategy of "Keep going the other way against Miami, they'll eventually choke" couldn't have worked out worse. I lost not once, not twice, not three times … oh, and don't think I didn't have a series bet on the Spurs trouncing Oklahoma City in the Western Conference finals.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 20, 2012, 07:25:43 AM
$1.8 trillion shock: Obama regs cost 20-times estimate

September 20, 2012 | 8:51 am
36Comments

Paul Bedard

Washington Secrets
The Washington Examiner
E@SecretsBedard

 

Popular in Politics

1$1.8 trillion shock: Obama regs cost 20-times estimate



Current federal regulations plus those coming under Obamacare will cost American taxpayers and businesses $1.8 trillion annually, more than twenty times the $88 billion the administration estimates, according to a new roundup provided to Secrets from the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute.

And it could grow, warned the author of the report, Clyde Wayne Crews, a CEI vice president.
 
Complying with Health and Human Services Department requirements alone, he revealed, costs $184 billion a year, yet regulators are still drafting the rules for the 2,400-page Obamacare law that kicks into gear in 2014.
 
Crews has made a working project of his "Tip of the Costberg" report which he regularly updates. In it, he compares the cost of regulations estimated by federal agencies to a much broader list of estimates from multiple federal and independent sources. And even then, he said, it doesn't include hard-to-calculate costs associated with antitrust intervention, regulation of electricity networks, or the cost of constrained access to natural resources.
 
"While OMB officially reports amounts of only up to $88.6 billion in 2010 dollars," said Crews, "the non-tax cost of government intervention in the economy, without performing a sweeping survey, appears to total up to $1.806 trillion annually."
 
But, he added, "according to back of the envelope surveys and roundups, with gaps big enough to fit the beltway through, that up to $1.806 trillion annually and in many categories perhaps even considerably more, is a defensible assessment of the annual impact on the economy."
 
His estimate is close to the $1.7 trillion estimate from the Small Business Administration which the White House distanced itself from. For comparison, the total U.S. GDP is $15 trillion.
 
The wave of Obama regulations has become a huge sore point in the business world with groups as large as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce down to the International Franchise Association crying for fewer rules. The administration, however, argues that the rules and regulations pushed out under the president have made products and workplaces safer.
 
Below are some of the estimates from Crews' report:
 
- A Baseline for Aggregate Annual Economic Regulation Costs: $373 Billion.
 
- A Baseline for Aggregate Annual Social Regulation Costs: $406 Billion.
 
- Additional Executive Agency Major Rule Costs Presented by OMB (But Not Tallied): $22.3 Billion.
 
- Independent Agencies' Annual Regulatory Costs: $4.58 Billion.
 
- Other Independent Agency Paperwork Costs: $21.56 Billion.
 
- Dep't of Agriculture: $9.05b
 
- Dep't of Commerce: $1.801b
 
- Dep't of Education: $3.032b
 
- Dep't of Energy: $9.089b
 
- Dep't of Health & Human Services: $184.805b
 
- Dep't of Homeland Security: $55.331b
 
- Dep't of Housing & Urban Development: $1.827b
 
- Dep't of the Interior: $5.321b
 
- Dep't of Justice: $1.253b
 
- Dep't of Labor: $121.987b
 
- Dep't of Transportation: $64.226b
 
- Dep't of the Treasury: $$1.32b
 
- Environmental Protection Agency: $352.997b
 
- U.S. Access Board (ATBCB): $851mil.
 
- Federal Acquisition Regulation: $1.356b
 
- Independent Agency and Certain Sectoral Regulatory Costs Antitrust: $2.34b
 
- Federal Communications Commission: $141.58b
 
- Financial Services: $102.46b
 
- Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (paperwork): $336mil.
 
- Federal Trade Commission (paperwork): $2.85b
 
- Consumer Product Safety Commission: $193mil.
 
- EEOC: $122mil.
 
- Nuclear Regulatory Commission, plus paperwork: $414mil.
 
- E-gov (paperwork): $380mil.
 
- NASA (paperwork): $107mil.
 
- Nat'l Science Foundation (paperwork): $231mil.
 
- Small Business Admin (paperwork): $43mil.
 
- Social Security Admin (paperwork): $1.06b.
 
- Privacy Regulation: $1b.
 
- Immigration Restrictions: $12b



Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 20, 2012, 08:19:27 PM
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0912/81470.html?hp=t1_3



FAIL
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 21, 2012, 05:24:54 AM
Obama's Dangerous and Disastrous Presidency

By Quin Hillyer on 9.19.12 @ 6:09AM



Name a single thing that has improved under his rule.

How can any cogent American citizen possibly even consider voting for Barack Obama now? That's what lots of conservatives and moderates are asking each other, again and again. It's completely baffling, to those who grew up with any sort of sense of what America means and what the American character traditionally has been, that anybody can look at the man's record and want more of the same.
 
Almost the entirety of the Muslim world is now rioting against an American president who promised that his olive branches to Muslims would secure peace. Like Jimmy Carter, Obama has only shown a weakness that has emboldened the Islamist haters. Meanwhile, our closest ally in the region, Israel, a stable representative democracy led by an American-educated, America-loving prime minister, has repeatedly been insulted, abandoned, and undermined. In short, the United States is in worse position with all sides in the Middle East/northern Africa. We are embarrassed, feckless, wounded... and in four tragic cases, dead.
 
Allies in Poland and the Czech Republic have been repeatedly let down and sometimes insulted. The "re-set" with Russia earned us only Russian contempt. China and Russia ignore our entreaties around the world, with absolute disdain for our wishes, our olive branches, or Obama's supposedly Nobel-worthy and messianic genius for diplomacy.
 
Domestically, our debt has increased by 50 percent in just four years, by some $5 trillion, with not a single observable benefit from the spending. Our bond rating already has been downgraded by one agency, and another major agency threatens to downgrade us. Our unemployment rate has never been beneath 8 percent since Obama's first month in office, even though his economic team said his outrageously expensive "stimulus" package would ensure that it would never rise above 8 percent, and indeed that it would drop below 6 percent within four years.
 
Our politics is more fractured, less civil, than ever -- and as Bob Woodward, of all people, indicates in his new book, this is largely the fault of Obama. He has been the first president in history to push through a major new program without a single vote from the opposing party -- and while refusing to incorporate a single major idea from the other party, while ignoring overwhelming public sentiment to pass it, and while bending the rules in multiple ways to force it through Congress. Meanwhile, on the real business of Congress, his Senate allies have ignored longstanding law by refusing to pass a budget for three years now, while twice rejecting the president's own pitiful budget proposal by unanimous votes.
 
Obama campaigned with a promise to rein in abuses of executive power, but instead he increasingly rules by executive decrees of dubious constitutionality. Congress won't pass cap-and-trade, so he orders it anyway. Congress won't pass amnesty for illegal immigrants, so he orders it anyway. Congress won't undermine the work requirement in the welfare system, so he guts the work requirements by executive order. And on and on go the abuses.
 
His Justice Department is flagrantly corrupt and racialist. It told a black majority town in North Carolina that it could not hold nonpartisan elections because voters would fail to elect the black "candidates of choice" if the candidate weren't identified as Democrats. It intervened against the heroic Fire Department of New York to push racial hiring quotas on the department so outrageous that it would force admittance into the fire academy of candidates who missed as many as 70 percent (!!!) of the questions on a simple entrance exam; and, in blocking all applicants expected to be hired under the previous exam, it prohibited a number of black applicants who actually had met standards from being hired. So outrageous was this abuse that even the leftist Village Voice ran a long feature story taking up for the qualified black applicants whose chances for employment were dashed.
 
And, of course, DoJ ran an idiotic gun-running program on the Mexican border that led to the deaths of two American agents and countless Mexicans while drawing a rebuke from the Mexican ambassador, and then covered up and even lied about its actions. Also, infamously, it dropped already-won cases against New Black Panther thugs for flagrant voter-intimidation outside a Philadelphia polling place in 2008 -- dropped the cases, indeed, just in time, meaning four days in advance, for one of those thugs again to serve as an official Democratic Party poll-watcher in municipal elections in 2009.
 
Gasoline prices are twice what they were when Obama took office -- and rising again. The housing market remains in the doldrums. Food stamp use is by far at the highest level in history, and poverty is markedly up. Food prices are markedly higher. Small businesses are jettisoning the health-insurance benefits they offered employees until Obamacare made it prohibitively expensive. Doctors are retiring in record numbers rather than face Obamacare's scourges -- and most of the law hasn't yet taken effect. Coming soon are new taxes on medical device manufacturers: Patients will pay more for wheelchairs, prosthetics, insulin pumps, asthma inhalers, pacemakers, and other essential fruits of modern medical technology.
 
Taxpayers are on the hook for huge losses from the auto bailouts, even as most of GM's new jobs have been created overseas rather than here, and even as auto dealerships across the nation were shut down by administration fiat on political bases rather than on the basis of which ones were profitable. Taxpayers are on the hook for politically inspired "investments" to Obama cronies in failing businesses such as Solyndra. Taxpayers are on the hook for higher electricity prices due to a backdoor cap-and-trade scheme imposed by (illegal) administrative fiat.
 
Religious liberties, meanwhile, are under repeated and sustained attacked from an administration openly hostile to traditional faith. And the president even refuses to defend in federal court laws duly passed by Congress and signed by former President Clinton.
 
The parade of abuses, incompetencies, extravagances, and illegalities goes on and on. The record of improvements in any sector of American life is… well, nil. Nothing is better, not a single thing, at home or abroad. And Obama has offered no recognizable plans, no new proposals, no substance at all, for making things better in a second term.
 
This presidency is a disaster. Reasonable people are gobsmacked at the possibility that it could somehow be allowed to continue its degradations of American society.
 


















About the Author

Quin Hillyer is a senior editor of The American Spectator and a senior fellow at the Center for Individual Freedom. Follow him on Twitter @QuinHillyer.
 







http://spectator.org/archives/2012/09/19/obamas-dangerous-and-disastrou
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 23, 2012, 12:19:54 PM
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2012/09/23/chris-wallace-asks-obama-adviser-president-has-time-whoopi-goldberg-n#ixzz27Iq8zOCR


WOW!
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 23, 2012, 03:21:48 PM
Chris Wallace Asks Obama Adviser 'President Has Time for Whoopi Goldberg But Not World Leaders?'
 





By Noel Sheppard | September 23, 2012 | 10:22
 
 1010 275Reddit13 68

A  A

 



Fox News's Chris Wallace on Sunday asked senior Obama campaign adviser Robert Gibbs an absolutely delicious question about the current White House resident's schedule.
 
During a Fox News Sunday interview, the host said, "The President has blocked out time to appear on The View on Tuesday. So, he has time for Whoopi Goldberg but he doesn’t have time for world leaders?" (video follows with transcript and absolutely no need for commentary):
 



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CHRIS WALLACE, HOST: I want to go back to the UN though and New York this week. You say that he’s got schedules, that foreign leaders have schedules. But the President has blocked out time to appear on The View on Tuesday. So, he has time for Whoopi Goldberg but he doesn’t have time for world leaders?
 
ROBERT GIBBS, OBAMA SENIOR CAMPAIGN ADVISER: No, Chris. Look, the President is going to be actively involved at the UN General Assembly.
 
WALLACE: He’s not meeting with any private leaders. He's giving a speech.
 
GIBBS: Chris, they have telephones in the White House. Last week, he talked to the President of Egypt. He talked to the leader in Libya. We don't need a meeting in Washington just to confer with leaders. We’ve got a strong...
 
WALLACE: But he does need the time to be on The View?
 
GIBBS: We have a strong diplomatic – I’m sure if he was doing an interview with you on Fox News, you’d have no problem with that.
 
WALLACE: Well, he hasn't, but that’s not the point.
 
GIBBS: I’m sure that’s not the point. No, look Chris, he’s got a strong schedule. He’s actively involved.
 
WALLACE: You don't have a problem with the fact that he’s not meeting with any world leaders, but he’s going to appear on The View?
 
GIBBS: I have no problem with that, because, Chris, you’re the President of the United States every minute of every day.
 






About the Author
Noel Sheppard is the Associate Editor of NewsBusters. Click here to follow Noel Sheppard on Twitter.

Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2012/09/23/chris-wallace-asks-obama-adviser-president-has-time-whoopi-goldberg-n#ixzz27KmRZFsG
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: chadstallion on September 23, 2012, 04:45:45 PM
Whoopi's more interesting than the Jewish man.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 25, 2012, 12:44:14 PM
SHEILA BAIR: Tim Geithner Was 'The Bailouter In-Chief'
Michael Kaplan|11 minutes ago|0|
 


Former FDIC chairman Sheila Bair has a new book out slamming Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and his handling of the bank bailouts during the financial crisis.
 
Bair went on CNBC's Power Lunch today to discuss her book "Bull by the Horns" in which she dubs Geithner "the bailouter in chief" during the crisis.
 
Here are some key points from her appearance:

  "I think [Geithner] viewed the problems through the prism of the large financial institutions, particularly Citigroup, and his worldview was if you help them out of their troubles you're going to help out the economy. I wanted to impose some market accountability. I wanted bondholders to take losses, I wanted those who had lent money to these institutions, the investors, to share more of the pain and share more of the risk. I think it was just a constant conflict throughout…There was just a philosophic disagreement throughout my tenure."


 "I do know that my voice wasn't heard as it should, I was not included in as many meetings as I should have been. I was not given any advance warning on our actions."


 "We didn't help homeowners, we didn't tackle the way we should have, we didn't clean up the bank balance sheets. It continues to be a drag on the economy and there remains horrible public cynicism and anger towards Washington and toward large financial institution. There's this perception that the game is rigged, everybody in Washington is captive, and it was all created by the bailout. It still makes me angry."
 
Check out the video below:


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/bair-slams-geithner-on-bank-bailouts-2012-9#ixzz27VpKd1WK

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 25, 2012, 02:03:01 PM
Sheila Bair Book Says Obama Foreclosure Prevention Program 'Cheated Borrowers'


Posted: 09/25/2012 1:08 pm EDT Updated: 09/25/2012 4:22 pm EDT





WASHINGTON -- Former bank regulator Sheila Bair cringed when President Barack Obama promised at an Arizona high school gymnasium in 2009 that his administration could save millions of homes from foreclosure.

"If lenders and home buyers work together, and the lender agrees to offer rates that the borrower can afford, then we'll make up part of the gap between what the old payments were and what the new payments will be," Obama said, explaining the program with Bair at his side. "And this will enable as many as 3 to 4 million homeowners to modify the terms of their mortgages to avoid foreclosure."

In her new book, "Bull by the Horns: Fighting to Save Main Street from Wall Street and Wall Street from Itself," Bair recounts how her own housing proposals were passed over in favor of a much weaker program, which she knew would never save 4 million homes. Bair served as chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation until July 2011.

"At the Phoenix announcement, the president was masterful in announcing the program, though I cringed as he threw out what I considered to be wildly inflated numbers on the programs' impact," Bair wrote. "Even with our own, more aggressive proposal, we had estimated the number of successful modifications at 2.1 million tops."

The plan, known officially as the Home Affordable Modification Program, offers struggling homeowners reduced monthly payments through a standardized modification process. The program won't reach its goal of 3 to 4 million restructured loans, but it recently achieved a sadder milestone: 1 million failed modifications. Fewer than 900,000 homeowners are making modified payments, which are typically $500 lower than before the modification.

The huge number of loans that needed to be reworked, combined with burdensome documentation requirements and a lackluster effort on the part of banks' mortgage servicing divisions, guaranteed the program was "doomed to failure," according to Bair.

"What's more, it cheated borrowers," she wrote. "Because Treasury wanted to demonstrate quickly that huge numbers of borrowers were being modified, it let borrowers enter into 'trial modifications' whereby they would start making reduced payments pending completion of all of their paperwork. But many of the borrowers could not provide all of the extensive documentation required by the program, so they would be put into foreclosure even though they had been making timely payments for months!"

Bair's book describes Obama as engaged and knowledgable about housing recovery efforts, but undermined by his aides, particularly Treasury Secretary Tim Geither and former economic adviser Larry Summers.

"HAMP was a program designed to look good in a press release, not to fix the housing market," Bair wrote. "Larry and Tim didn't seem to care about the political beating the president took on the hundreds of billions of dollars thrown at the big-bank bailouts and AIG bonuses, but when it came to home owners, it was a very different story. I don't think helping home owners was ever a priority for them."

Bair's book echoes the criticism in Neil Barofsky's "Bailout," another recent insider account of the Obama administration's housing failures.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/25/sheila-bair-book_n_1912699.html

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 26, 2012, 09:10:53 AM
Obama claim that Bush is 90% responsible for current deficit gets 100% of Pinocchios at WaPo
 

posted at 10:01 am on September 26, 2012 by Ed Morrissey
 





I hit this 60 Minutes quote two days ago in yesterday’s OOTD, but it’s worth revisiting in the form of Glenn Kessler’s fact check at the Washington Post.  Kessler misses one of the biggest problems with Barack Obama’s response to Steve Kroft’s question, which was about national debt, and Obama responded by talking about deficits — two different issues, although related.  I’ll put the question and the longer answer provided by Kessler together, emphases mine:
 

KROFT: The national debt has gone up sixty percent in — in the four years that you’ve been in office.
 
OBAMA: Well, first — first of all, Steve, I think it’s important to understand the context here. When I came into office, I inherited the biggest deficit in our history. And over the last four years, the deficit has gone up, but ninety percent of that is as a consequence of two wars that weren’t paid for, as a consequence of tax cuts that weren’t paid for, a prescription drug plan that was not paid for, and then the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.  Now we took some emergency actions, but that accounts for about 10 percent of this increase in the deficit, and we have actually seen the federal government grow at a slower pace than at any time since Dwight Eisenhower, in fact, substantially lower than the federal government grew under either Ronald Reagan or George Bush.
 
Now, if the deficit goes up, the solution would be to either spend less or tax more.  Obama has done neither in any of his budget proposals, and as I wrote yesterday, his last two budget proposals would have made the situation worse — which is why even his own party gave neither of them so much as one supporter in three floor votes.  Furthermore, the FY2009 budget in place when Obama took office was the creation of the Democrat-controlled House and Senate from the year before, and it was signed into law by Obama in March 2009, not Bush, after Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid played keep-away in the fall of 2008.  Barack Obama was part of that effort as a member of the Senate.
 
Kessler skips over these points to address Obama’s argument that the structural deficit is 90% George Bush’s problem.  Kessler says it’s the other way around — that Bush policies account for about 10% of the current annual structural budget deficit, and the rest is evenly split between bad projections from the CBO and Obama’s spending and economic policies:
 

As can be seen above, CBO’s errors in forecasting played a large role in the demise of the projected surpluses. CBO had kept counting on a gusher of capital gains revenue — and then obviously failed to predict the recession of 2008.
 
But Obama’s policies also played a big role during his presidency. Using the CBO data for the years 2009-2011, here’s a very rough calculation of the contribution to the deficit. To keep things simple, we did not try to allocate interest expense, and we did not include categories of spending or taxes that were difficult to allocate.
 
The 2009 fiscal year is especially hard because that budget year is so much of an amalgam of Bush and Obama policies; we essentially split the cost of the Troubled Asset Relief Program between the two of them. Since this is not intended to be exact, but illustrative, we have rounded numbers and percentages:
 
2009:
 •Economic/technical differences: $570 billion (46 percent)
 •Bush policies: $330 billion (27 percent)
 •Obama policies: $325 billion (27 percent)
 
2010:
 •Economic/technical: $815 billion (51 percent)
 •Bush: $225 billion (14 percent)
 •Obama: $565 billion (35 percent)
 
2011:
 •Economic/technical: $720 billion (46 percent)
 •Bush: $160 billion (10 percent)
 •Obama: $685 billion (44 percent)
 
Clearly, a huge part of the deficit problem — about half — stems from the recession and forecasting errors. But Obama’s policies represent a big chunk as well.
 
So how many Pinocchios does Obama get?  One hundred percent of them:
 

Obama certainly inherited an economic mess, and that accounts for a large part of the deficit. But Obama pushed for spending increases and tax cuts that also have contributed in important ways to the nation’s fiscal deterioration. He certainly could argue that these were necessary and important steps to take, but he can’t blithely suggest that 90 percent of the current deficit “is as a consequence” of his predecessor’s policies — and not his own.
 
As for the citing of the discredited MarketWatch column, we have repeatedly urged the administration to rely on estimates from official government agencies, such as the White House budget office. It is astonishing to see the president repeat this faulty claim once again, as if it were an established fact.  Four Pinocchios[.]
 
And as Kessler points out, the real structural bomb to annual deficits has yet to be triggered.  ObamaCare may be deficit neutral in its first ten years — which is still arguable, and based on a fiscal shell game — but after that, “all bets are off
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 27, 2012, 12:28:54 PM
NDAA Plaintiffs Say Obama Flipped Out When A Judge Blocked The Act Because He Was Already Detaining People
Abby Rogers|29 minutes ago|0|
 






The Obama administration might be coming for you, no matter who you are, according to a group of people fighting President Barack Obama's indefinite detention act.
 
Chris Hedges, Daniel Ellsberg, and a whole host of others involved in the fight against the National Defense Authorization Act yesterday took to Reddit to answer questions about the act.
 
A federal judge permanently blocked the NDAA — which allows the government to indefinitely detain anyone even remotely related to terrorism — claiming it has a "chilling effect" on free speech.
 
But the Obama administration was quick to pounce, saying Judge Katherine B. Forrest overstepped her bounds in opposing the White House.
 
"Anyone who dissents is in threat," Hedges wrote in response to a question about who should fear the act. "The legislation, as the dumped emails by Wikileaks from the security firm Stafford illustrated, allows the state to tie a legitimate dissident group to terrorism and strip them of their right of dissent."
 
Another Redditor asked why Obama was so quick to fight Forrest's ruling.
 
"If the Obama administration simply appealed it, as we expected, it would have raised this red flag," Hedges wrote. "But since they were so aggressive it means that once Judge Forrest declared the law invalid, if they were using it, as we expect, they could be held in contempt of court. This was quite disturbing, for it means, I suspect, that U.S. citizens, probably dual nationals, are being held in military detention facilities almost certainly overseas and maybe at home."


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/ndaa-plaintiffs-answer-questions-on-reddit-2012-9#ixzz27hSaNKLi

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 28, 2012, 08:16:47 AM
60% of firms to kill health insurance, charge more under Obamacare

 The Washington Examiner ^ | September 26, 2012 | Paul Bedard

Posted on Friday, September 28, 2012 10:55:31 AM by





A majority of small business owners and manufacturers are mulling drastic changes to comply with Obamacare, with 21 percent set to drop health insurance to workers altogether and 38 percent planning to make employees pay much more.

In a poll done for the National Association of Manufacturers and National Federation of Independent Businesses, 59 percent said that they will have to consider changes once the full law kicks in because increased costs will jeopardize their operations. According to the poll, 67 percent expect Obamacare to raise healthcare costs.


(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 28, 2012, 11:37:09 AM
Obama Cabinet Flunks Disclosure Test With 19 in 20 Ignoring Law
By Jim Snyder and Danielle Ivory - Sep 28, 2012 12:31 PM ET


http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-28/obama-cabinet-flunks-disclosure-test-with-19-in-20-ignoring-law.html


On his first full day in office, President Barack Obama ordered federal officials to “usher in a new era of open government” and “act promptly” to make information public.

As Obama nears the end of his term, his administration hasn’t met those goals, failing to follow the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act, according to an analysis of open-government requests filed by Bloomberg News.


 Sept. 28 (Bloomberg) -- On his first full day in office, President Barack Obama ordered federal officials to "usher in a new era of open government" and "act promptly" to make information public. Megan Hughes reports on Bloomberg Television's "In The Loop." (Source: Bloomberg)
.
Nineteen of 20 cabinet-level agencies disobeyed the law requiring the disclosure of public information: The cost of travel by top officials. In all, just eight of the 57 federal agencies met Bloomberg’s request for those documents within the 20-day window required by the Act.

“When it comes to implementation of Obama’s wonderful transparency policy goals, especially FOIA policy in particular, there has been far more ‘talk the talk’ rather than ‘walk the walk,’” said Daniel Metcalfe, director of the Department of Justice’s office monitoring the government’s compliance with FOIA requests from 1981 to 2007.

The Bloomberg survey was designed in part to gauge the timeliness of responses, which Attorney General Eric Holder called “an essential component of transparency” in a March 2009 memo. About half of the 57 agencies eventually disclosed the out-of-town travel expenses generated by their top official by Sept. 14, most of them well past the legal deadline.

Public Interest

Bloomberg reporters in June filed FOIA requests for fiscal year 2011 taxpayer-supported travel for Cabinet secretaries and top officials of major departments. Justice Department official Melanie Ann Pustay said in an interview that disclosure of those records is in the public interest.

Data and Graphics: Testing Obama's Promise of Government Transparency

Even agency heads who publicly announce their events -- including Holder, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius -- didn’t provide the costs of their out-of-town trips more than three months after the initial request.

“It’s ironic that the demands in the presidential campaign for Mitt Romney’s tax returns are unrelenting, but when it comes time to release the schedules for senior appointees there’s the same denial of access,” said Paul Light, a New York University professor who studies the federal bureaucracy.

“Over the past four years, federal agencies have gone to great efforts to make government more transparent and more accessible than ever, to provide people with information that they can use in their daily lives,” said White House spokesman Eric Schultz, who noted that Obama received an award for his commitment to open government. The March 2011 presentation of that award was closed to the press.

2013 Delivery

The travel costs generated by some other Obama officials --Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson, and Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano -- also remain undisclosed.

A request made in June for the travel records of Susan Rice, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, will remain unfulfilled for more than a year, according to a federal official involved in the case.

“We really appreciate your patience in this matter. The estimated completion date is July 2013,” wrote Chris Barnes, a State Department FOIA official, in a Sept. 24 e-mail. Under FOIA, the department is required to offer a timetable for delayed responses.

GSA Scandal

Government travel costs have received greater scrutiny since a report by the General Services Administration’s inspector general on April 2 revealed that a 2010 Las Vegas junket -- featuring a mind reader and a clown -- cost taxpayers more than $823,000. Since then, GSA Administrator Martha Johnson has resigned and the IG has referred the matter to the Department of Justice.

Related: Activist's Nine Year Navy FOIA Fight Results in Supreme Court Win

Records obtained as a result of another Bloomberg FOIA request showed that the GSA almost tripled its expenditures for conferences from 2005 to 2010. Taxpayers paid $27.8 million for more than 200 overnight gatherings attended by at least 50 GSA employees over the five-year period, according to the records.

Under Obama, federal agencies also have stepped up the use of exemptions to block the release of information.

During the first year of the administration, cabinet agencies employed exemptions 466,402 times, a 50 percent jump from the last year of the presidency of George W. Bush. While exemption citations have since been reduced by 21 percent from that high, they still are above the level seen during the Bush administration, according to Justice Department data.

DHS Exemptions

The majority of the exemptions came from the Department of Homeland Security, which gets the most requests, records show.

The greater number of documents released online helps explain the increased use of exemptions, according to Tracy Russo, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department. “The pool of requests that are made tend to be more complex,” she said.

Open government advocates note that Obama’s transparency pledge is undermined by a federal bureaucracy that often cites staff shortages and compliance costs to delay the release of information.

“I don’t think the administration has been very good at all on open-government issues,” said Katherine Meyer, a Washington attorney who has been filing open records requests since the late 1970s. “The Obama administration is as bad as any of them, and to some extent worse.”

Fee Fight

In one case Meyer pursued, the Center for Auto Safety was told by Treasury FOIA officials that its request for records relating to the U.S. auto bailout would cost $38,000. Meyer successfully argued the fees should be waived because the request was in the public interest.

The Freedom of Information Act, signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1966, is designed to open up the process of government to citizens. Individuals have the right to file requests, and the law mandates that the department answer the query within 20 working days, ask for a 10-day extension, or offer a timetable for the release of the information.

In the past, FOIA has been used to obtain a wide range of government records. Among them: Documents on the use of the defoliant Agent Orange during the Vietnam War; Department of Transportation reports detailing safety issues with the Ford Pinto’s fuel tank that contributed to some 500 deaths; and details of the Bush administration’s deliberations on the use of torture following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

‘Smoking Gun’

“It’s the smoking gun that often holds government accountable for its misdeeds,” said Kevin Goldberg, a First Amendment attorney at Fletcher, Heald & Hildreth Plc in Arlington, Virginia, who also serves as legal counsel for the American Society of News Editors.

Miriam Nisbet, the head of the Office of Government Information Services, which acts as a FOIA ombudsman, said Obama deserves praise for highlighting government accountability.

“We see a great deal of emphasis and attention paid to transparency,” she said. “That is a really important message.”

Nisbet’s office offered travel documents three days after acknowledging the FOIA request.

The Bloomberg FOIA filing also asked each department to identify trips, lodging and meals provided by non-federal sources. All told, 30 of the 57 agencies contacted replied with those travel records by Sept. 14.

SBA Response

Of the 20 Cabinet-level agencies contacted by Bloomberg News, only the Small Business Administration met the legal 20- day deadline by disclosing that Administrator Karen Mills took 27 trips out of Washington at a total cost to the U.S. taxpayer of $15,856.

The records of Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, Labor Hilda Solis, former Secretary of Commerce and Acting Secretary Gary Locke and Rebecca Blank, U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk and Jacob Lew, the former director of the Office and Management and Budget who is now White House Chief of Staff, were released to Bloomberg News under the request, though those agencies did not meet the 20-day deadline.

Kirk, “who travels all over the world” for his duties according to the USTR website, took 23 business trips in fiscal 2011, 17 of which involved domestic travel, for a cost of about $45,000. Kirk “has said many times that increased outreach to the American people” is important for economic growth, USTR spokeswoman Carol Guthrie said in an e-mail.

No Excuse

Eric Newton, senior adviser at the Knight Foundation, a Miami-based group that promotes citizen engagement, said agencies have no excuse not to rapidly disclose travel costs.

“In a 24/7 world, it should take two days, it should take two hours,” Newton said. “If it’s public, it should be just there.”

The Department of Justice, which is charged with monitoring how all federal agencies respond to FOIA requests, has yet to release the travel details of top officials at three of its affiliated agencies: The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Pustay, head of the Justice Department’s Office of Information Policy, said that taxpayer-supported travel records are “certainly something that people would ask for and something that’s of interest to the public.” She said “the crush of work” makes swift replies difficult.

Redacted Information

None of the nine exemptions under the FOIA -- which protect national security, personal information or corporate trade secrets, for example -- allow taxpayer-supported travel expenses to remain hidden from view.

Those records may include information, such as private mobile-phone numbers or information related to security, that is exempted from disclosure, which could be causing the delays, Pustay said.

Responsive agencies were able to redact personal details within the FOIA time period. The Federal Housing Finance Agency, the chief regulator for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, provided the travel expense records for Acting Director Edward DeMarco’s six trips out of town within 15 days of the filing.

DeMarco’s trips cost $5,653.29, the documents show. Personal information such as his Social Security number and home address were blacked-out in the file.

Data and Graphics: Testing Obama's Promise of Government Transparency

The process for accessing information that hasn’t been already released remains confusing, time-consuming and at times antagonistic, said Thomas Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, a Washington-based open-information repository.

‘Obfuscation’ Culture

“There is a culture of obfuscation among agency Freedom of Information officials,” he said. “Bureaucrats are able to deter a lot of citizen engagement.”

Travel records were largely shielded from public view until Johnson signed the Freedom of Information Act on July 4, 1966. Congress adopted post-Watergate reforms in 1974, giving agencies a deadline to comply with requests and narrowing exemptions for law enforcement and national security agencies. The FOIA law was updated another four times through 2007, when the Office of Government Information Services was established as the federal ombudsman.

The White House says it has released more than 2.5 million records since Obama took office. Recovery.gov allows citizens to track stimulus spending by state. The administration also has for the first time posted the names of White House visitors, though not a full list of who has attended meetings.

Backlogged Files

Other records now disclosed include the number of weapons in the nation’s nuclear arsenal, report cards for veterans’ hospitals, and employer-specific workplace safety records kept by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

The total number of FOIA requests increased, with 631,424 processed last year, compared with 600,849 in 2010.

The government’s website dedicated to monitoring its response to filings, FOIA.gov, shows the number of backlogged requests grew 20 percent to 83,490 filings from 2010 to 2011.

The Justice Department reported in 2008 that there were 3,691 full-time FOIA personnel across all departments and agencies. In 2011, the figure increased by 19 percent to 4,400, according to the department. Some agencies outsource FOIA- related tasks, including the redaction process. The government has spent at least $86.2 million on contracts described as pertaining to FOIA since 2009, according to federal procurement data compiled by Bloomberg.

The administration acknowledged systemic issues with the FOIA process when the Office of Management and Budget issued guidelines Aug. 24 to all federal agencies on how to streamline government information. The memo called for all government information to be stored in an electronic format by December 2019 -- almost three years after the end of a potential second Obama term.

Stephen Hess, a presidential historian at the Washington- based Brookings Institution, called the survey results a “grim” assessment of Obama’s transparency record. He said the president -- like many of the men who have occupied the Oval Office -- has discovered how difficult it is to bend the government’s bureaucracies to his will.

“The sad part is it won’t be any better for the next folks either,” Hess said. “The only difference perhaps is the Obama people led us to believe it would be different.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Jim Snyder in Washington at jsnyder24@bloomberg.net; Danielle Ivory in Washington at divory@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jon Morgan at jmorgan97@bloomberg.net; Stephanie Stoughton at sstoughton@bloomberg.net
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 28, 2012, 01:13:34 PM
Former Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN): ObamaCare ‘Threatens Thousands Of American Jobs’

Written By: Steve Foley

September 28, 2012






ObamaCare ‘Threatens Thousands Of American Jobs’
 
Democrat Former Senator Who Voted For ObamaCare Exposes Real World Consequences
 

Former Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN): ‘Threatens Thousands Of American Jobs’
 
“A 2.3% tax on medical-device sales, not profits, was imposed… there will be little or no increase in sales volume to offset the added cost of $30 billion—according to the Congressional Budget Office—to the industry. This tax comes straight out of a company’s bottom line.” (“Evan Bayh: ObamaCare’s Tax Raid On Medical Devices,” The Wall Street Journal, 9/27/12)

 •“The hit will be severe. For a typical company, a 2.3% tax on revenues equals a 15% tax on profits. When combined with a 35% corporate tax and state corporate taxes, the tax rate for the medical-device industry will exceed 50% in most jurisdictions. Many marginally profitable businesses will then hemorrhage red ink, since they’ll have to pay the excise tax whether they are making money or not.” (“Evan Bayh: ObamaCare’s Tax Raid On Medical Devices,” The Wall Street Journal, 9/27/12)
 
“…tax on medical devices that threatens thousands of American jobs…” (“Evan Bayh: ObamaCare’s Tax Raid On Medical Devices,” The Wall Street Journal, 9/27/12)

 •“This month, Welch Allyn—a maker of stethoscopes and blood-pressure cuffs—announced that it will lay off 10% of its global workforce over the next three years, but all of the jobs being cut are in the U.S.” (“Evan Bayh: ObamaCare’s Tax Raid On Medical Devices,” The Wall Street Journal, 9/27/12)

 •“In my state of Indiana alone, Cook Medical has canceled plans to build one new U.S. facility annually in each of the next several years, and Zimmer plans to lay off 450 workers, while Hill-Rom expects to lay off 200. Stryker, based in Michigan, anticipates having to lay off 1,000 workers.” (“Evan Bayh: ObamaCare’s Tax Raid On Medical Devices,” The Wall Street Journal, 9/27/12)
 
 Sen. Bayh Voted For ObamaCare Twice
 

Sen. Bayh voted for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.  (H.R. 3590, Roll Call Vote #396, Passed 60-39: R 0-39; D 58-0; I 2-0, Bayh Voted Yea, 11/24/09)

 •Sen. Bayh voted for the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act. (H.R. 4872, Roll Call Vote #105, Passed 56-43: R 0-40; D 54-3; I 2-0, Bayh Voted Yea, 3/25/10)
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 29, 2012, 02:45:46 PM
http://offgridblogger.wordpress.com/2012/09/29/disgusting-revelations-from-barack-obama



Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 01, 2012, 03:54:23 PM
Obama uses Down syndrome to hit Romney (Shameful Exploitation Alert!)
 Red Alert Politics ^ | 10-1-2012 | Paul Bedard

Posted on Monday, October 01, 2012 4:03:47 PM by smoothsailing

October 1, 2012

Obama uses Down syndrome to hit Romney
 Paul Bedard
In its latest effort to slap Mitt Romney's "47 percent" comment, the Obama campaign on Monday tapped a young woman with Down syndrome to pull at the heartstrings of undecided voters.



The Obama-Biden campaign's web page featured a "letter of the week" from a 25-year-old woman who wrote that "I am one of the 47% of Americans who fall under Mitt Romney's definition of 'entitled' and 'unable to take responsibility for my life.' I have Down syndrome."

The letter comes on the heel of the campaign's TV ad playing in battleground states that uses the audio of Romney dismissing efforts to win over 47 percent of voters dedicated to Obama because they receive some kind of government assistance. While the Romney campaign said the context is about the election and not how he will approach the nation as president, the Obama campaign has made the case that Romney won't look out for those who need help.

Enter "Brittany" and her letter. In it, she said that she is a registered Democrat, and on assistance, which she said makes her part of Obama's 47 percent.

"My mother applied for Social Security's Supplemental Security Income program (SSI) for me when I was 19. I really want to make lots of money and have a hot tub someday, but SSI subtracts my paychecks from my SSI benefits, so I don't have much to put into a savings account," she wrote.

"I am now working for a store, folding clothes and doing returns. I like my job a lot! I make $4.98 an hour and I am allowed to work 25-30 hours a week (I have paid $542.72 in federal, FICA, state, and city taxes this year as of August 31st)," she added in a knock at Romney's other comment that many of Obama's supporters don't pay taxes.

It's full of very cute lines. "I just got my own apartment and share it with another girl like me. I get to pay rent now ($325 a month) and pay for my telephone and cable because I like the Disney Channel. I was not allowed to take my dog with me, but I can hang all of my Hannah Montana posters on my bedroom wall," she wrote.

And, she added, "I have also included my picture, not just because I'm cute, but because I wanted to give you a face of one of the 47% to share with Mr. Romney."

Blogger Jeryl Bier noticed the letter first, calling it an "exploitive cheap shot."
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 03, 2012, 08:27:52 AM
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2012/10/03/bob-woodward-obama-proposing-cutting-medicare


Bob Woodward - Obama is lying about medicare 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 03, 2012, 09:03:36 AM
Obama appoints Vicious Anti-Israel, Pro-Hamas Muslim Leader...to Warsaw Human Rights Conference
 Atlas Shrugs ^ | October 3, 2012 | Pamela Geller


Posted on Wednesday, October 03, 2012 11:44:09 AM


It is not difficult to see what a horror a second Obama presidency will look like. Obama is consistent in his foreign policy -- anti-freedom, pro-jihad. Four years into his presidency, the world is radically transformed, and soon will be unrecognizable.

Anti-Israel, Pro-Hamas Muslim Leader Is US Delegate to Warsaw Human Rights Conference

His most infamous statement was during a radio interview on September 11, 2001, accusing Israel of the attack on the WTC. Lori Lowenthal Marcus, Jewish Press

For two weeks every year, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe holds what it refers to as the world’s largest human rights and democracy conference, called the Human Dimension Implementation Meeting. Organized by the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, this year’s meeting is taking place in Warsaw, and it began last week. Special attention is focused this year on freedom of religion and belief, the rights of Roma (formerly called gypsies) women and the rights of national minorities in OSCE countries.

The head of the U.S. delegation to the conference this year is Ambassador Avis Bohlen, a retired foreign service officer whose career included serving as Ambassador to Bulgaria from 1996 – 1999.

There are three public members of the U.S. delegation. Nida Gelazis, of the Woodrow Wilson Center, is a scholar of international human rights, international law and citizenship policies and protection of national minorities.

Dr. Ethel Brooks, professor of sociology at Rutgers University, is the second representative of the U.S. at the conference. Brooks has published many articles on her research areas which include child labor in third world countries, globalization and political economies.

The third public member chosen to attend the human rights conference as a representative of the U.S. is Salam Al-Marayati, president of the Muslim Public Affairs Council.


(Excerpt) Read more at atlasshrugs2000.typepad. com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 04, 2012, 07:08:04 PM
Was Obama rattled by developing donor scandal story?

October 4, 2012 | 9:51 pm

The Washington Examiner
E@SecretsBedard

 


President Obama's reelection campaign, rattled by his Wednesday night debate performance, could be in for even worse news. According to knowledgeable sources, a national magazine and a national web site are preparing a blockbuster donor scandal story.

Sources told Secrets that the Obama campaign has been trying to block the story. But a key source said it plans to publish the story Friday or, more likely, Monday.
 
According to the sources, a taxpayer watchdog group conducted a nine-month investigation into presidential and congressional fundraising and has uncovered thousands of cases of credit card solicitations and donations to Obama and Capitol Hill, allegedly from unsecure accounts, and many from overseas. That might be a violation of federal election laws.
 
The Obama campaign has received hundreds of millions in small dollar donations, many via credit card donations through their website. On Thursday, the campaign announced a record September donor haul of $150 million.
 
At the end of the 2008 presidential campaign, the Obama-Biden effort was hit with a similar scandal. At the time, the Washington Post reported that the Obama campaign let donors use "largely untraceable prepaid credit cards that could potentially be used to evade limits on how much an individual is legally allowed to give or to mask a contributor's identity."
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: blacken700 on October 04, 2012, 07:13:46 PM
another game changer story,boy you cease to amaze me,how many times can you look like a fool and not have it bother you :D :D :D :D
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 08, 2012, 06:06:55 AM

October 8, 2012

Corruption: Exposing Barack Obama’s Illegal Foreign Campaign Money Loophole

By Katie Pavlich


10/8/2012

 

 A new report obtained by Townhall from the non-partisan Government Accountability Institute [GAI] shows the Obama campaign has potentially violated federal election law by failing to prevent the use of fraudulent or foreign credit card transactions on the official Obama for America [OFA] donation webpage.
 
For the past eight months, GAI has been investigating the potential influence of foreign online campaign donations in House, Senate and presidential elections. The report was conducted using spidering software and found thousands of foreign sites linking to campaign donation pages. The investigation was conducted with the guidance of a former U.S. attorney. GAI is led by Peter Schweizer, who recently exposed congressional insider trading in his book Throw Them All Out.

“As FBI surveillance tapes have previously shown, foreign governments understand and are eager to exploit the weaknesses of American campaigns,” the report says. “This, combined with the Internet’s ability to disintermediate campaign contributions on a mass scale, as well as outmoded and lax Federal Election Commission rules, make U.S. elections vulnerable to foreign influence.”

OFA seems to be taking advantage of a “foreign donor loophole” by not using CVV on their campaign donation page. When you donate online to the Obama campaign using a credit card, the contribution webpage does not require donors to enter a secure CVV number (also known as CSC, CVV2 or CVN), the three-digit securing code on the back of credit cards. This code, although not 100 percent effective, is used to ensure a person making a purchase physically possesses the card. According to the report, 90 percent of e-commerce and 19 of the 20 largest charities in the United States use a CVV code, making its use standard industry practice in order to prevent fraud. Another anti-fraud security measure includes software, better known as an Address Verification System, to verify a donor’s address matches the address on file with the credit card company. The investigation could not determine whether OFA is using this type of software to prevent fraudulent or illegal donations.

 Because of the lack of a CVV code requirement, the door is opened for OFA to accept robo-donations, or in other words, large numbers of small and automatic donations made online to evade FEC reporting requirements. Although it isn’t illegal to decline the use of a secure CVV credit card code for campaign donations, it is illegal to accept campaign donations from foreign sources. Campaigns are required under criminal code not to solicit, accept or receive foreign donations in any amount. The Federal Elections Commission doesn’t require campaigns to disclose the names of donors making contributions of less than $200 unless audited. In addition, FEC rules don’t require campaigns to keep records of those giving less than $50. These rules combined with the lack of a CVV numbers make it easy for campaigns to get away with taking foreign donations.
 
According to GAI, it is the duty of the campaign to “ensure compliance with the law. Indeed, they risk criminal prosecution for the conscious failure to do so. This means that whether or not the FEC requires it to be reported, campaigns have an independent duty under the law to discover and protect against criminal campaign contributions.” Protecting against criminal campaign contributions is easily accomplished by requiring a CVV code on the campaign donation page.
 
OFA has specifically touted its “grassroots” success by showcasing the majority of its donations coming from those giving less than $200. It appears the campaign also solicits funds for less than $200 in order to avoid having to report the name of the person making a donation under FEC rules. The GAI documents included the following email from Barack Obama to campaign supporters:
 





IT ALL ADDS UP

 A large part of the Team Obama operation is outsourced. More than 200 domain names with the word “Obama” in the web address have been purchased. The most significant of these websites may be Obama.com, which is owned by an Obama bundler in Shanghai, China with “questionable business ties to state-run Chinese enterprises,” according to the report.

 Obama.com was purchased in 2008, and, although Obama.com is owned by a third party, not the campaign itself, the site redirects its foreign traffic, a whopping 68 percent, directly to the official Obama for America campaign donation page. The Obama campaign’s official and main website, BarackObama.com, sees 43 percent of its traffic coming from foreign IP addresses, according to web metrics firm Markosweb and noted in the report.
 

According to industry leading web analytics site Markosweb, an anonymously registered redirect site (Obama.com) features 68 % foreign traffic. Starting in December 2011, the site was linked to a specific donation page on the official BarackObama.com campaign website for ten months. The page loaded a tracking number, 634930, into a space on the website labeled "who encouraged you to make this donation." That tracking number is embedded in the source code for Obama.com and is associated with the Obama Victory Fund. In early September 2012, the page began redirecting to the standard Obama Victory Fund donation page. Search engine optimization (SEO) efforts, using common spamming techniques, may have been undertaken by unknown third-parties, generating foreign traffic to Obama.com.
 
China has a long history of trying to illegally influence American elections. Their efforts were most prominent in the 1990s.
 

In the past, foreign governments have relied on middlemen to transfer illegal campaign contributions. With the explosion of Internet campaign fundraising, the prospect of foreign powers, criminal gangs, foreign individuals, or domestic fraudsters making direct campaign contributions to American elections becomes far more likely. Put simply, campaign fundraising crimes are now just a click away. Rather than risking detection or relying on a middleman, donations can be anonymously donated through campaign websites. The state of Internet security of many political campaigns’ websites leaves American elections vulnerable to fraud or foreign influence.
 
AN HONEST MISTAKE, OR SOMETHING MORE?
 
Is the non-use of CVV code verification simply an oversight or mistake made by Obama for America? Most likely, no. The Obama campaign is willing to pay millions in fees in order to accept unsecured contributions on their donation page without the CVV code. Attorney Kenneth Sukhia analyzed the GAI’s findings and this revelation in the following way in a separate report.
 
“As GAI points out, if a campaign is truly seeking to do all it can to prevent illicit contributions, there is no reason not to employ these basic fraud prevention tools. First, these tools are easily installed, and once set up, operate with a minimum of administrative oversight by the vendor. They are fully automated, but can be easily re-calibrated as called for. “
 
“Under these circumstances, a campaign’s decision to turn off either of these systems despite the increased fees raises legitimate questions as to a campaign’s knowing failure to use its best efforts to comply with the laws prohibiting foreign contributions. Indeed, it’s reasonable to ask why any campaign would ever opt to pay card issuers more for less information and less security. More importantly, why pay card issuers more when doing so lessens a campaign’s ability to comply with the law? It’s hard to imagine any campaign would pay extra for less security and marketing intelligence, unless it stood to benefit in some way from doing so.”
 
“Because a campaign’s decision to opt out of the standard security measures and to pay more to receive less information about their contributors defies all conventional campaign logic, and because it is difficult to identify a more plausible motive, there is reason to suspect that such decisions may be motivated by the belief that more money could be raised through foreign contributions than lost in added fees by declining security tools designed to stop them.”
 
OFA isn’t run by amateurs and has a highly sophisticated online presence. OFA is known as the “gold standard” in online technology with a Facebook co-founder, veteran YouTube videographer and an award-winning CNN producer keeping everything running smoothly.

 Not to mention, the campaign obviously sees the benefits in using a CVV code to prevent fraud. After all, OFA uses a CVV security code for merchandise purchases. To purchase a sweatshirt or other item in the OFA store, a CVV code must be entered at check out, but the donation page does not require a credit card security code to be used. In addition, the chief technology officer of the Obama campaign, Harper Reed, is a former chief technology officer of the T-shirt company Threadless. Threadless requires a CVV code for online purchases. They clearly know how CVV codes work.

THE NUMBERS

 As of September 26, 2012, the Obama campaign has raised $271,327,755 in contributions under $200 for the 2012 cycle. In 2008, it was $335,139,233. The Romney campaign has raised just $58,456,968 in contributions under $200 and has all CVV and online security measures in place. In total, the Obama campaign raised $500 million online in 2008 with $335 million in contributions--more than half--falling under the $200 reporting requirement. Obama has raised more online funds than any campaign in history.
 
As reported over the weekend, the Obama campaign raised $181 million in September alone--only 2 percent of those donations are required to be reported to the FEC.
 
The campaign said that just over 1.8 million people made donations to the campaign last month. According to the campaign, over 500k of these were brand-new donors, having neither given in 2008 nor 2012. 98% of contributions were under the reporting threshold of $250. Of these, the average contribution was $53. [It's] really a tale of two worlds. 35k people gave an average of $2,600, while just over 1.7 million people gave an average of $53. Half the campaign's haul came from people giving around the maximum amount and half from people who don't have to be disclosed. Seems a bit odd. The average of $53 from small donors is particularly noteworthy. Contributions under $200 don't have to be disclosed, but the campaign still has to keep track of the donor's name, in case subsequent donations push their contribution over the reporting threshold. For contributions under $50, however, the campaign doesn't even have to keep track of the donor's name. It is effectively considered a "petty cash" donation. A person could theoretically make 10 $49 donations and never be reported, even though their total contributions are above the FEC's reporting threshold. With an average donation of $53 from small donors, Obama has A LOT of donors who will never be disclosed and whose names aren't even known to the campaign. Tens of millions of dollars worth.
 
HOW LIABLE?

 As previously mentioned, the GAI report mentions campaigns have an obligation to protect against illegal campaign contributions. The law under U.S. Code makes it illegal for campaigns or political committees to accept direct or indirect contributions of money from foreign nationals. It is also illegal for a campaign or committee to “solicit, accept, or receive a contribution from a foreign national." Penalties for violations are stiff, according to the report.
 
While no person can be held accountable under the law for violations he or she is powerless to prevent or for violations of which a person had no knowledge, the law recognizes that to permit meaningful enforcement a person cannot escape responsibility for a crime by deliberately ignoring facts and circumstances that would lead a reasonable person to conclude that a crime is most likely being committed. Moreover, the FEC regulations make it clear that a campaign official cannot avoid criminal culpability by ignoring facts that would lead a reasonable person to inquire whether foreign nationals are contributing funds to the campaign.
 
DIRECT SOLICITATIONS FROM OFA TO FOREIGN NATIONALS AND THE ONLINE PAPER TRAIL

 The internet for the Obama campaign has proved to be a cash cow, but it's also provided a digital paper trail of potential illegal activity for investigators. When foreign bloggers received donation solicitations from the Obama campaign, they wrote about it online. GAI found their sites and documented their experiences. Social media accomplished the same thing--an online trail of Obama campaign solicitations to foreign nationals.
 
 
1. In July and August, a Chinese blogger reposts letters he has received from the Obama campaign, each of which contains a solicitation for $3 or $5 (note that these smaller donations don’t require the campaign to keep any record of them).118 Markosweb states that 87.8% of the traffic flowing to the site comes from China while only 4.5% is from the United States. The website contains hyperlinks that lead to the campaign’s donation page. The website also contains graphics showing the disparity between Romney’s and the President’s fundraising and a countdown clock to the date of the election. Other than the campaign solicitation letters, the website is in Chinese characters.

 2. On August 9th, 2012 the Obama campaign sent a solicitation letter to “Hikemt Hadjy-Zadh,” an Azerbaijani citizen. His email address is on an Azerbaijani domain and he posts numerous solicitation letters he has received from the Obama campaign. Mr. Hadjy-Zadh reposts the complete letters on a discussion forum, including numerous hyperlinks that go directly to the campaign’s donation page.

 3. A writer in Vietnam writes on a website for the Vietnam Institute for Development Studies (a government-backed think tank) and posts emails he has received from my.barackobama.com with more than 24 total links to the campaign’s donate page embedded in the emails. The website is in the Vietnamese language, hosted on a Vietnamese server, and uses a Vietnamese domain address. In one instance, a letter from Mitch Stewart, Director of the Obama campaign’s “Organizing for America,” asks for donations. Ironically, Stewart laments that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is reportedly taking money from foreign sources. The reader is then prompted to give his name and email address and thereafter begins receiving solicitation letters for donations.

 4. A Dutch blogger writing in Dutch on a Dutch website reprints an email from March 22, 2010 in which President Obama thanks his supporters for their help. “You’re welcome, Mr. President,” he writes back.

 5. The Dutch blog “His Dirk” received a donation request from the campaign. Aware of the U.S. law, the blogger decided not to contribute. The blogger observed, “I imagine many non- Americans have money transferred to the Obama campaign. It’s just too easy.”

6. A member of the Italian Radical Socialist movement and an administrator of their website reposts solicitations from the Obama campaign which he reports receiving regularly for three years. “And because we are three years in his mailing list...But frankly after 3 years his letters excite me much less...”

7. A Japanese blogger named Isogaya posts a link to the Obama campaign’s donation page. When posting the link, Isogaya notes that an option in giving would be to give a gift card.

 8. A Norwegian blogger posts a solicitation from the Obama campaign, including the link to the donate page. When another blogger opines that non-U.S. citizens cannot contribute because of American law, the blogger responds in Norwegian,“I have in practice given money to Obama, I had done it.”

9. A blogger in Egypt who serves on the board of the Union of Arab Bloggers posts the solicitation letters he reports to regularly receive from the Obama campaign.127 “We as Arabs and Muslims” support the “Democratic party, compared to the Republican Party,” but notes his objection to the President’s stand on gay marriage.
 
WIDESPREAD CORRUPTION

 Although GAI's findings were most prominent with Obama for America, the “CCV loophole” is a problem across the political spectrum. The report found nearly half of Congress is at least vulnerable to fraud and foreign donations.
 
Of the 446 House and Senate members who have an online donation page, 47.3% do not require the three or four digit credit card security number (officially called the Card Verification Value, or the CVV) for Internet contributions.
 
During his run for U.S. Senate, then Republican candidate Marco Rubio’s campaign donation website didn’t have CVV protection. The protection was put in place in May 2012 after the campaign was over. The report alleges the connection to foreign websites could be a violation of the Federal Election Commission solicitation laws and at minimum put Rubio at risk for fraud in his campaign.
 
The Government Accountability Institute found considerable international interest in the Rubio campaign, including significant foreign traffic going to the website marcorubioforussenate.co m. Links on foreign websites often took the form of videos that featured links to “donate” to the Rubio campaign.
 
Sukhia also mentioned the Rubio campaign in his anaylsis of the report.
 
“The Government Accountability Institute found considerable international interest in the Rubio campaign, including significant foreign traffic going to the website marcorubioforussenate.co m.”
 
“GAI found numerous video links on foreign websites that featured running ads to “donate” to the Rubio campaign.”
 
Although campaigns may have CVV in place, organizations they take money from often times do not. For example, Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren has accepted more than $5.7 million from ActBlue, a fundraising organization that does not require U.S. citizenship verification or a CVV code when accepting contributions.

 Because the problems of potential fraud due to a lack of CVV use are so widespread, GAI created a 50-state interactive map to show which members of Congress lack standard secure campaign donation websites.

SOLUTION FOR OBAMA CAMPAIGN

 In his 2010 State of the Union Address, President Obama said, “I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, and worse, by foreign entities.”

In this situation, the foreign donation problem coming from online sources can be solved and President Obama’s promise of transparency can be kept in one click by enabling all security protections and releasing the names and records on all transactions under $200 to verify Obama for America is a clean campaign operating within FEC law.

 Overall, major reforms are needed to ensure foreign contributions are not interfering with or influencing elections in the United States.

Obama for America did not return calls for comment.

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2012/10/08/exposing_barack_obamas_illegal_foreign_campaign_money_loophole
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 08, 2012, 10:29:21 AM
ObamaPhones Profiting ObamaDonors

Program to aid the poor lining the pockets of the wealthy

BY: Andrew Stiles

October 8, 2012 5:00 am





A wireless company profiting from the so-called “Obama phone” giveaway program is run by a prominent Democratic donor whose wife has raised more than $1.5 million for the president since 2007.
 
Last week a video of a President Barack Obama supporter in Ohio claiming to have received a free phone from the president—“[Obama] gave us a phone!”—went viral, prompting media outlets to investigate.
 
Since 1985 the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has operated a program called Lifeline, originally designed to provide free landline phone service for low-income individuals. The government subsidizes telecommunications firms providing the service, and those firms also pass on costs to customers via the “Universal Service Charge” on their phone bills.
 
The program expanded to include cell phones in 2008. That change has rapidly increased the cost to the federal government—$1.6 billion in 2011, up from $772 million in 2008. The number of Lifeline beneficiaries rose from 7.1 million to 12.5 million during the same period; cell phones account for roughly half of that 12.5 million.
 
One of the major providers of the free cell phones—3.8 million subscribers as of late 2011—is Miami-based TracFone Wireless, a company whose president and CEO, Frederick “F.J.” Pollak, has donated at least $156,500 to Democratic candidates and committees this cycle, including at least $50,000 to the Obama campaign.
 
Pollak’s wife, Abigail, is a campaign bundler for Obama who has raised more than $632,000 for the president this cycle, and more than $1.5 million since 2007. She has personally contributed more than $200,000 to Democratic candidates and committees since 2008.
 
The Pollaks hosted Obama at their Miami Beach home in June for a $40,000-per-plate fundraising dinner, and hosted a similar event with Michelle Obama in July 2008. The couple personally donated a combined $66,200 to Obama’s reelection effort that year.
 
Visitor logs indicate that Frederick and Abigail Pollak have visited the White House seven times. In 2009, the president appointed Abigail to serve on the “Commission to Study the Potential Creation of a National Museum of the American Latino.”
 
TracFone, a direct financial beneficiary of the Lifeline program, receives $10 a month for each subscriber in the form of federal subsidies. The company can make an additional profit selling extra minutes to Lifeline subscribers who exceed their monthly allowance of 250 prepaid minutes.
 
TracFone and other wireless providers claim that revenue from selling additional minutes to Lifeline customers is low, but decline to publicly release such figures.
 
The program’s rapidly increasing costs have attracted the attention of Republicans and Democrats in Congress, and have prompted calls for reform. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D., Mo.), for example, found that the program was “ripe for fraud.” In some cases, McCaskill noted in a December 2011 press release, the government was issuing multiple free phones to the same individuals.
 
“I remain troubled by the expansive potential for the program to be abused, especially since Americans contribute to the program through their monthly phone bills,” McCaskill, who is up for reelection, wrote in a formal letter to the FCC. “The current requirements to determine eligibility often do not require customer documentation for participation in Lifeline, which may result in individuals receiving phones who should not be.”
 
Rep. Tim Griffin (R., Ark.) has introduced legislation to restore the program to its originally intended purpose—providing landlines for use in emergencies—and stop the federal government from issuing free cell phones. Griffin told the Daily Caller he had heard reports of individuals receiving dozens of phones, some of which were of the expensive smartphone variety.
 
The FCC in response to such pressure announced in February 2012 to reform the program and “reduce the potential for fraud while cutting red tape for consumers and providers.”
 
TracFone, which did not return a request for comment, is the U.S. affiliate of America Movil, one of the largest phone service providers in Latin America.
 
America Movil is one of many business ventures controlled by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, currently the world’s richest man, according to Forbes. Slim’s stake in the firm accounts for more than half of his $70 billion net worth.
 
Slim—who bailed out the New York Times and is often referred to as “Mexico’s Mr. Monopoly”—has visited the White House at least twice, according to visitor logs.

 This entry was posted in Democratic Donors, Obama Campaign, Politics and tagged Abigail Pollak, America Movil, Andrew Stiles, Barack Obama, Carlos Slim, Claire McCaskill, FCC, Frederick Pollak, Lifeline Program, Obama Phone, Tim Griffin, TracFone. Bookmark the permalink.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 12, 2012, 02:02:07 PM
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SolarCity — Another Obama Scandal
Western Journalism ^ | October 12, 2012 | Jack Inglewood
Posted on October 12, 2012 4:51:43 PM EDT by Cincinatus' Wife

SolarCity (SCTY), another “green energy” company and recipient of millions of dollars of taxpayer funds, in under investigation by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), sources reveal.

The company, which recently filed for its initial IPO, has disclosed that it received subpoenas in July from the U.S. Treasury Department. The Treasury Department is investigating whether companies overstated the market value of solar panel arrays they installed when claiming the 30% federal cash grant. The IRS also notified SolarCity that it is auditing two of its investment funds and reviewing the claimed value of solar systems submitted to receive the federal cash grants.

The story of SolarCity is different from that of Solyndra, Evergreen Solar, Beacon Power, and the host of other companies that gave big political contributions to the Obama campaign and received taxpayer loans and grants in return because it’s worse.

Like the other scandals, SolarCity’s founder is Elon Musk; the high-profile billionaire has a history of giving lots of money to the Obama campaign. Musk is a big donor to Obama, having given $35,800 to the Obama Victory Fund and another $30,400 to the Democratic National Committee. The relationship has paid huge dividends for the billionaire.

But unlike the other scandals, he has been able to parlay his relationship with the president to creating not one but three Solyndra-type companies.

The National Legal and Policy Center discovered that SolarCity spent $535,000 in 2009 and 2010 to lobby Congress and the Department of Energy on climate legislation, the Recovery Act, “green workforce training and development,” and provisions in various legislation “relevant to solar development.” SolarCity has sought to extend a program, due to expire at the end of 2012, that delivers to manufacturers an upfront cash grant in lieu of a 30 percent Investment Tax Credit (called the Section 1603 grant program). So far, according to DOE reports, SolarCity has received more than $66 million from that program.

SolarCity also received a $344 million loan guarantee from the Department of Energy. Most suspiciously, much of the company’s revenue is generated from a partnership with military housing developers with a goal of installing solar panels on 120,000 rooftops of military housing units across the country

This is not Musk’s first foray into the Washington, DC swamp. His electronic car company Tesla received a loan guarantee for $465 million. Thanks in part to Obama’s DOE, Tesla went public, enriching Musk by nearly $1 billion on his $35 million investment. His other company SpaceX relies on over $1 billion in NASA funding.

Musk symbolizes the Obama entrepreneur — someone who relies on government to make their riches as opposed to the marketplace.

During his debate with President Obama, Mitt Romney quipped that the president was not picking “winners and losers”, but “losers and losers.” This certainly appears to be the case with SolarCity
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: garebear on October 13, 2012, 10:28:05 PM
Free Republic



SolarCity also received a $344 million loan guarantee from the Department of Energy. Most suspiciously, much of the company’s revenue is generated from a partnership with military housing developers with a goal of installing solar panels on 120,000 rooftops of military housing units across the country


Was this you?
---------------------
Someone vandalized an Obama campaign building in Des Moines by spray painting the words “Muslim Lier” on a large banner, police said.

The word “liar” was misspelled on the sign, officers said.

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 15, 2012, 03:20:16 PM
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/obama-we-got-back-every-dime-bailout-cbo-bailout-will-lose-24-billion



Obama lies like no one we have ever seen in public office 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 18, 2012, 07:48:54 AM
As it struggled, A123 showered Democrats with donations, hired pricey lobbyist


http://www.washingtonguardian.com/battery-makers-beltway-power-play


Troubled battery maker won private meeting and phone call with Obama, a trade mission slot and $250 million in stimulus money before it went bankrupt

 UPDATED 7:04 AM EDT, October 18, 2012 | BY John Solomon AND Phillip Swarts


Why It Matters:


 
Executives of an energy company that received $250 million in federal money made donations to members of Congress while the company was facing bankruptcy.
 



Even as advanced battery maker A123 Systems struggled for financial viability, it played the Washington insider game, where political money and access go hand in hand.

The Massachusetts firm dished out nearly $1 million to hire a powerhouse lobbying firm with close ties to President Barack Obama between 2007 and 2009, and two of its top executives made personal donations to several high-profile Democrats in Congress as it won federal funding for its efforts to build the next generation of lithium batteries for electric vehicles.

And its president and CEO, David Vieau, an early financial backer of President Barack Obama, scored five invitations to the White House in 2009 and 2010, including a meeting he attended with the president, White House logs show.  And when the company opened a new Michigan plant, Obama made a high-profile call to congratulate.

The company offered a compelling storyline for an administration eager to create jobs and spur alternative energy: it would employ hundreds of new workers at two plants in the politically critical state of Michigan that was hoping to revive its lagging auto industry.

The efforts paid off.

The company managed to get several lawmakers in both parties to support its request for federal funding, securing almost $6 million during the end of the Bush administration and then a $250 million grant from the American Recovery and Reconstruction Act after Obama took office.

A123's stimulus grant accounted for 12.5 percent of the stimulus' $2 billion fund to support the manufacturing of advanced electrical vehicle components, making it one of the biggest beneficiaries among 29 companies that split the momney.

And the firm scored a spot on a 2011 Obama administration's trade mission to India, a country hungry for alternative energy technologies. The trip put A123 in elite company as just one of only about 300 American companies to get invited on a trade mission during Obama's first term in office.

The company drew praise from both sides of the aisle, including from Samuel Bodman, Bush's Energy secretary, and from Obama himself who called the firm's new Michigan plant when it opened Sept. 13, 2010 and even boasted how he had met with Vieau personally at the White House.

"You guys are making us proud," the president said. "The work you’re doing will help power the American economy for years to come."

But all the promise and political influence couldn't overcome the realities of a startup industry. And when electric vehicle sales lagged and the firm had to replace defective cells in a battery it made for a Fisker electric car, the company teetered toward collapse.

By the time it filed for bankruptcy Tuesday -- the fourth major clean energy company backed by the Obama administration to fail -- it had already collected more than half the taxpayer money it had won from the stimulus. And it reignited an election-year debate over the government's screening process for picking clean energy loan and grant recipients.

Republicans and Democrats immediately traded barbs from Michigan to Washington, a process certain to play out for several days as the merits of government support for the clean energy sector remains a hot topic of debate.  The GOP jumped at the chance to portray the company as a failed pet project of the Obama administration, but as reported by the Washington Guardian, several Republican lawmakers have been advocates for cleaner car technology, including current Michigan Senate candidate Pete Hoekstra.

Whatever the arguments in the election, the company's efforts to win political influence are undisputed.

Senate lobbying records show A123 hired the powerhouse lobbying firm of Skadden Arps, paying it $380,000 in 2007, $480,000 in 2008 and $110,000 in 2009 to help it secure government backing. The firm has connections across the lobbying company, including four lawyers who served as fundraising bundlers for Obama's 2008 election.  Lobbyist Leslie Goldman - the Energy Assistant Secretary for International Affairs under President Jimmy Carter - handled A123's lobbying, disclosure records show.

Among the company's early accomplishments was getting several members of Congress to support its case for federal funding.

Inside the White House, A123's Vieau won invitations to several events, including at least one meeting with President George W. Bush to show off the company's technology in 2007.  More recently, the CEO was invited to at least five events or meetings in 2009 and 2010 at the Obama White House, attending at least three of them. One was a small meeting with just seven people and Obama on April 30, 2010, the White House visitor logs show.

Obama referenced the meeting when he called the company's new factory a few months later. "I met with David and some of the A123 team here at the White House back in April, and it’s incredibly exciting to see how far you guys have come since we announced these grants just over a year ago," the president said.

White House spokesman Eric Schultz did not return repeated calls and emails seeking comment Wednesday.

Vieau was an early supporter of Obama, donating $2,300 to the then-senator’s 2008 campaign. His generosity to Democrats continued. He donated a total of $5,000 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee between 2010 and 2011; $2,000 to Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry in 2010; and since 2009 almost $5,000 to Rep. Edward Markey, who represents Massachusetts’s 7th district near the company's headquarters, according to Federal Election Commission donation records.

One of the company’s vice presidents, Mujeeb Ijaz, also made some donations, chiefly $2,300 this year to Rep. Gary Peters, a Democrat in Michigan where the company has two plants,including one producing lithium batteries for cars.  Peters was one of 17 Michigan members of Congress who wrote a letter to Energy Secretary Steven Chu in 2009, advocating that some Recovery Act money be given to A123 to support job growth in the state.

The company doesn't have its own political action committee and neither Vieau nor A123 officials returned phone calls seeking comment.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 18, 2012, 11:03:30 AM

Obama Pursuing Leakers Sends Warning to Whistle-Blowers

 By Phil Mattingly and Hans Nichols - Oct 17, 2012 8:01 PM ET


Eric Holder, attorney general under President Barack Obama, has prosecuted more government officials for alleged leaks under the World War I-era Espionage Act than all his predecessors combined, including law-and-order Republicans John Mitchell, Edwin Meese and John Ashcroft.

The indictments of six individuals under that spy law have drawn criticism from those who say the president’s crackdown chills dissent, curtails a free press and betrays Obama’s initial promise to “usher in a new era of open government.”





Enlarge image








The Obama administration has prosecuted more leakers of classified information to the news media than Republican predecessors.




7:17

 Oct. 18 (Bloomberg) -- Thomas Drake, a whistle-blower and former analyst at the National Security Agency, talks about the personal and professional toll resulting from an allegation that he gave a reporter classified information about inefficiencies and cost over-runs in an NSA surveillance program. Drake, who was prosecuted in 2010 by Obama’s Justice Department under the Espionage Act and maintains he never shared classified information, spoke this week to Bloomberg's David Ellis. (Source: Bloomberg)

Chart: Obama Outpaces Republicans in Pursuit of Leakers




In 2009, former FBI linguist Shamai Leibovitz was indicted for handing over transcripts of government wiretaps of the Israeli embassy in Washington to a blogger. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 20 months in prison. Photographer: Peter Dejong/AP Photo
.
Earlier: Obama Cabinet Flunks Disclosure Test With 19 in 20 Ignoring Law.

“There’s a problem with prosecutions that don’t distinguish between bad people -- people who spy for other governments, people who sell secrets for money -- and people who are accused of having conversations and discussions,” said Abbe Lowell, attorney for Stephen J. Kim, an intelligence analyst charged under the Act.

Lowell, the Washington defense lawyer who has counted as his clients the likes of Jack Abramoff, the former Washington lobbyist, and political figures including former presidential candidate John Edwards, said the Obama administration is using the Espionage Act “like a club” against government employees accused of leaks.

Multimedia: Despite Transparency Promise, U.S. Denies More Than 300,000 Information Requests in One Year.

The prosecutions, which Obama and the Justice Department have defended on national security grounds, mean that government officials who speak to the media can face financial and professional ruin as they spend years fighting for their reputations, and, in some cases, their freedom.

‘Sense of Shame’

Kim’s troubles began in September 2009 when Federal Bureau of Investigation agents appeared at the State Department, where he worked as a contract analyst specializing in North Korea. He was questioned about contacts with a reporter about North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. Eleven months later, Kim was indicted by a grand jury on counts of disclosing classified information and making false statements.

“To be accused of doing something against or harmful to U.S. national interest is something I can’t comprehend,” said Kim, 45, who has pleaded not guilty and faces as many as 15 years in jail if convicted. “Your reputation is shot and there is such a sense of shame brought on the family.”

Kim is one of five individuals who have been pursued by Obama’s Justice Department in connection with alleged leaks of classified information to the news media. The Defense Department is pursuing a sixth case against Bradley Manning, the U.S. Army private accused of sending documents to the WikiLeaks website.

New Directive

The Justice Department said that there are established avenues for government employees to follow if they want to report misdeeds. The agency “does not target whistle-blowers in leak cases or any other cases,” Dean Boyd, a department spokesman, said.

“An individual in authorized possession of classified information has no authority or right to unilaterally determine that it should be made public or otherwise disclose it,” he said.

Read more here: Transparency Outsourced as U.S. Hires Vendors for Disclosure Aid

On Oct. 10, Obama issued a policy directive to executive- branch agencies extending whistle-blower protections to national security and intelligence employees, who weren’t included in the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act that passed the U.S. House last month and awaits Senate approval.

While the directive seeks to protect those workers from retaliation if they report waste, fraud or abuse through official channels, it “doesn’t include media representatives within the universe of people to whom the whistle-blower can make the disclosure,” said Elizabeth Goitein, co-director of the Brennan Center of Justice’s Liberty and National Security Program. That still gives Obama the option of pursuing prosecutions of intelligence employees who talk to the press, she said.

‘Important Step’

“The directive is definitely an important step in the right direction, but even if it’s faithfully enforced -- and that’s an open question -- it may not always be enough,” Goitein said. “A whistle-blower’s report could go to the very people who are responsible for the misconduct.”

Lisa O. Monaco, the top Justice Department official in its National Security Division, told lawmakers earlier this year that leaks are damaging to intelligence operations and the country’s national security as a whole.

“Virtually all elements of the intelligence community have suffered severe losses due to leaks,” Monaco said in February testimony in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Romney Criticism

Still, even as the administration pursues its unprecedented crackdown on government leaks it does not condone, the prosecutions have fallen short of the wishes of lawmakers and other national security experts, who point to books and articles that have shed new light on classified operations.

The administration stands accused of anonymously releasing sensitive information to suit its own political purposes. The disclosure of operational details of the raid that led to the death of Osama bin Laden and attempts to disrupt Iran’s nuclear weapons program triggered the announcement in June of a Justice Department probe of those leaks.

That move was criticized by Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who called for an independent investigation.

“Obama appointees, who are accountable to President Obama’s attorney general, should not be responsible for investigating leaks coming from the Obama White House,” Romney said in a speech at national convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in July. “Who in the White House betrayed these secrets?”

‘Chilling Message’

Administration officials are far less forgiving of those who conduct unauthorized contacts with the press.

“They want to destroy you personally,” said Thomas Drake, a senior National Security Agency employee prosecuted in 2010 by Obama’s Justice Department under the Espionage Act. The message to government workers seeking to expose waste, fraud and abuse is “see nothing, say nothing, don’t speak out -- otherwise we’ll hammer you,” he said.

Drake faced 10 felony counts in connection to an allegation that he shared classified information with a reporter. He was linked to a report in the Baltimore Sun about inefficiencies and cost over-runs in an NSA surveillance program that was later abandoned.

The case against Drake collapsed last year before trial after he agreed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor, and the government dropped the more serious charges that could have sent him to jail for 35 years.

The prosecution was meant to “make me an object lesson and to send the most chilling message,” said Drake, who is adamant that he never handed over any classified information. “I was essentially bankrupted, blacklisted and blackballed. I was turned into damaged goods.”

Security Exception

Cases such as Drake’s indicate that Obama doesn’t “see the world of national security as being part of open government,” said Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, a Washington-based federal watchdog group. “To me, that’s the most important part that needs an open government ethos foisted upon it.”

Monaco, who is an assistant attorney general, told lawmakers this year that advances in technology play a role in the uptick in prosecutions. Where investigators used to struggle to track down the origins of leaks, they now are able to check phone records, e-mail trails and even “employee physical access or badging records” to trace disclosures, she said.

Intelligence agencies are required to report any unauthorized disclosures to the Justice Department, Monaco said. From there, the department, along with the reporting agency, decide whether to open an investigation.

Kim’s Story

The South Korea-born Kim emigrated to the U.S. with his parents and sister in 1976. He spoke little English when he arrived and was enrolled in third grade. A naturalized citizen and graduate of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, Kim made a brief stop on Wall Street before heading to Harvard University to earn a Master’s degree in National Security. He then went to Yale, where at age 31, he earned his Ph.D in diplomatic and military history.

“I decided to forgo a lot of other career opportunities to work in the government,” Kim said.

Kim took a role as an analyst on a range of East Asian matters, with a specialty in North Korea. He briefed many high ranking officials, including then-Vice President Dick Cheney.

In June 2009, Kim is alleged to have discussed how North Korea might react to a United Nations resolution condemning its nuclear tests with reporter James Rosen of Fox News, according to a person familiar with the case. The relationship between Kim and Rosen began when the State Department’s press office arranged a briefing at the request of Kim’s superiors.

Allegations

Prosecutors say that when asked about his communications with the press by the FBI in their initial meeting in September 2009, Kim lied about a continued relationship with the reporter. That same day, he was told his State Department contract had been terminated for budget reasons, according to court filings.

The government alleges Kim’s contacts with Rosen included “efforts to conceal his relationship with the reporter and the secretive nature of their communications speaks volumes about the defendant’s knowledge of who was, and who was not, entitled to receive” information.

Kim declined to discuss specifics of his case in the interview in his lawyer’s office in Washington. His efforts to get the charges dismissed were rejected last year by U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who in denying the motions to dismiss said that the alleged leak involved a report with a classification level that “could be expected to cause grave damage to the national security” if disclosed.

Costly Cases

Cases such as Kim’s, which can be drawn out for years as the prosecution and defense teams work with sensitive materials through dozens of filings and status reports can cost upwards of $1 million, according to Jesselyn Radack, a lawyer with the Government Accountability Project who has defended two individuals prosecuted under the law.

Kim said his parents sold their home in South Korea to help pay for his defense. His sister has also pitched in and a former college roommate has created a website to publicize his case and raise funds.

Radack said the Obama administration crackdown is part of an effort to shut down investigations into the workings of the national-security apparatus.

“At first I thought these Espionage Act prosecutions were to curry favor with the national security and intelligence establishments, which saw Obama as weak when he entered office,” Radack said. “It became abundantly clear the more people were indicted, when you read their indictments, that this was a way to create really terrible precedent for ultimately going after journalists.”

Subpoena Fight

The Justice Department disputes the claim that it would use the law to go after journalists. Monaco, in her testimony this year, pointed to department regulations that limit investigators’ access to reporters, even when doing so “makes these investigations more challenging.”

Still, those rules haven’t completely insulated journalists. James Risen, the Pulitzer Prize winning writer for the New York Times, was subpoenaed to testify at the trial of Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA officer indicted under the law for allegedly disclosing information about Iran’s nuclear program.

Risen and his lawyers have fought the subpoena, arguing in February that the subpoena threatens the role of journalism in serving the public interest.

Espionage Act

The Espionage Act, signed by President Woodrow Wilson in 1917, has until Obama took office been primarily deployed against some of the most damaging double agents in the U.S. history. Those include Aldrich Ames, a Central Intelligence Agency operative convicted in 1994 for spying for Russia, and Robert Hanssen, a former FBI agent convicted in 2001 of similar offenses. Both men are serving life sentences without parole in high-security federal prisons.

The law also prohibits the unlawful disclosure of national defense information to those not entitled to receive it -- a provision that defense lawyers say is being abused by Obama’s prosecutors.

“I campaigned for him, contributed to him, voted for him and believed him,” said Radack of Obama. “For someone who pledged to protect and defend whistle-blowers, he certainly has not even remained neutral, he’s affirmatively set us back really, really far.”

Disclosure Provision

The Justice Department has used the disclosure provision to pursue five cases against government officials for allegedly sharing classified information with members of the news media. In 2009, former FBI linguist Shamai Leibowitz was indicted for handing over transcripts of government wiretaps of the Israeli embassy in Washington to a blogger. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 20 months in prison.

Obama also continued the George W. Bush administration’s investigation of Drake, the NSA employee.

“It’s important to understand what’s going on in this country -- the government has criminalized whistle-blowing,” said Drake, 55, who lost his $155,000-a-year NSA job in 2008. He now works as a wage-grade employee at an Apple store in a Washington suburb to support his family.

The Justice Department also continues to pursue Sterling, the former CIA officer, and John Kiriakou, an intelligence official who wrote a book detailing the illegal use of waterboarding by the CIA. Kiriakou is also accused of disclosing the identity of a CIA analyst to reporters.

Two Scandals

“The two biggest scandals of the Bush administration in terms of constitutional violations was the use of torture, and renditions, and secret surveillance -- and the only two people to date who have been charged in connection with those scandals are myself and John Kiriakou,” Drake said. “That should tell you something about how hard the Obama administration is going to protect those programs.”

The Espionage Act charges against Drake were dropped last year, with the defendant accepting a minor penalty for exceeding the authorized use of a computer. The Justice Department prosecutors were excoriated by U.S. District Judge Richard Bennett for the more than two-year delay between the first search of Drake’s home and the indictment, as well as the decision to drop the most serious charges days before the case was scheduled to go to trial.

Judge’s Rebuke

“I find it extraordinary in this case for an individual’s home to be searched in November of 2008, for the government to have no explanation for a two-year delay, not a two and a half year delay, for him to be indicted in April of 2010, and then over a year later, on the eve of the trial, in June of 2011, the government says, whoops, we dropped the whole case,” Bennett said at Drake’s July 2011 sentencing, according to a court transcript.

Manning, the analyst who allegedly disclosed hundreds of thousands of confidential government documents to WikiLeaks, faces court-martial under the espionage law.

The president’s openness pledge is also undermined by a recent Bloomberg News analysis, which showed that 19 of 20 cabinet-level agencies disobeyed the Freedom of Information Act requiring the disclosure of public documents. In all, just eight of the 57 federal agencies met Bloomberg’s FOIA requests for top officials’ travel costs within the 20-day window required by the Act.

The White House disputes the notion that the president hasn’t kept his promise of transparency.

“While creating a more open government requires sustained effort, our continued efforts seek to promote accountability, provide people with useful information and harness the dispersed knowledge of the American people,” White House spokesman Eric Schultz said in an e-mailed statement.

Obama Meeting

In March last year, Obama met with five open-government advocates in the Oval Office. In the session, Brian of the Project on Government Oversight told Obama that the leak prosecutions were undermining his legacy.

“The president shifted in his seat and leaned forward. He said he wanted to engage on this topic because this may be where we have some differences,” Brian wrote in a March 29, 2011 POGO blog post. “He said he doesn’t want to protect the people who leak to the media war plans that could impact the troops.”

Today, Kim rarely sees his South Korean-born wife, who spends time largely in her native country with her parents. Without any security clearances, Kim is restricted to working on non-classified projects for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He said that most of his colleagues have abandoned him, refusing to return phone calls or letting him know that for professional reasons they’d rather he not pick up the phone. The case has left him isolated personally and professionally.

‘Like a Disease’

“I’m like a disease,” Kim said.

Because of preliminary legal wrangling, Kim’s case is unlikely to make it to court before the end of the year, according to a joint status report filed on Aug. 31.

Sitting in his lawyer’s office a few blocks away from the State Department where he once worked, Kim acknowledges that while he’s had bad days in the past 16 months, he has recognized that in the wake of his personal and financial woes, he may be the only person that can keep himself afloat.

“There was one time at home, one time, when I screamed out loud, when I yelled and I cried. The resentment was so deep,” Kim said. “But ever since then I haven’t shed another tear because if I break down, everything breaks down.”

The Kim case is U.S. v. Kim, 10cr00225, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (Washington).

To contact the reporters on this story: Phil Mattingly in Washington at pmattingly@bloomberg.net Hans Nichols in Washington at hnichols2@bloomberg.net;

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Steven Komarow at skomarow1@bloomberg.net David Ellis at dellis5@bloomberg.net
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 19, 2012, 05:48:03 PM
Official: Obama campaign refusing to pay bill from 2008 rally
 WLS-AM ^ | 10-19-12 | John Dempsey

Posted on Friday, October 19, 2012 7:57:36 PM by bigbob

President Obama's campaign has raised millions of dollars, but officials in Springfield Illinois are still griping about an upaid bill from a 2008 campaign rally.

When he was a candidate in August of 2008, Barack Obama used Springfield as a backdrop to introduce Joe Biden as his running mate. However Springfield Alderman Frank Edwards tells WLS that the Obama campaign has refused to pay $55,000 it owes in police overtime costs:

"If you're going to go after your citizens for bills they owe you then everybody's in. And that's just kind of the way I look at it. I think if the Obama campaign owes us money they ought to pay it."

Edwards says the Obama campaign has given him and other Springfield officials the runaround when they have asked to be paid what is owed.

He also says with Obama planning to hold his election night rally next month at McCormick Place in Chicago, he would advise Mayor Rahm Emanuel to demand all payments upfront, for any costs Chicago taxpayers might incur:

"That's exactly what I'd do. It would be no different than if you, a private individual, went and had an event somewhere and you didn't pay your bill, you didn't pay your catering bill, you didn't pay the rental hall. Anybody that goes to rent you a facility is going to be a little leery of you because you haven't paid your bill. I'd be especially leery now because if he doesn't win re-election his campaign's gonna have debt. And you're gonna be at the bottom of the pile."

Edwards says there also appears to be some confusion about whether the campaign or the Secret Service is responsible for the costs.


(Excerpt) Read more at wlsam.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 20, 2012, 03:38:17 PM
George Kaiser's Great Big Green Energy Scam (Obama bundler makes out like a bandit at our expense)
 American Thinker ^ | 10/20/2012 | Michael Iachetta

Posted on Saturday, October 20, 2012 4:21:23 PM by SeekAndFind

The Wall Street Journal reports that George Kaiser, "a Tulsa oil billionaire who bundled campaign checks for Mr. Obama in 2008," is poised to accomplish one of the great scams of all time. Here is how it works. The "primary investment arm of the George Kaiser Family Foundation" is Argonaut Ventures I LCCC. Argonaut Ventures happens to be the largest shareholder in Solyndra LCC, the California-based solar panel maker that received a $535 million U.S. Energy Department loan guarantee in September 2009 and went bankrupt two years later, laying off nearly 1,000 workers.

Now the very same Argonaut Ventures, thanks to a February 2011 deal with President Obama's Energy Department, (along with Madrone Partners LP) ranks ahead of the U.S. government in order of creditors who will be repaid from the proceeds of the sale of Solyndra's assets. As Bloomberg reports, the sale of the proceeds amounted to $117 million minus the $46 million it cost to sell the assets, for a total of$71 million. Since this is $6 million short of the $77 million Argonaut and Madrone loaned to Solyndra, the U.S. government will not receive a cent from the sale.

Not only that, but thanks to the same deal with the Energy Department, a holding company owned by George Kaiser's Argonaut Ventures will come into possession of Solyndra's net operating losses, which the IRS estimates will save George Kaiser's company as much as $350 million in future taxes.


(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 20, 2012, 06:12:11 PM
 :D
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 25, 2012, 08:01:41 PM
Obama swipes at Paul Ryan's Ayn Rand fandom
 Associated Press ^ | Oct. 25, 2012 | Justin Sink

Posted on Thursday, October 25, 2012 10:46:33 PM by Free ThinkerNY

President Obama dismissed Ayn Rand, whom Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan said at one point "inspired him," as having "a pretty narrow vision" in an interview with Rolling Stone.

"Well, you'd have to ask Paul Ryan what that means to him," Obama said in the interview. "Ayn Rand is one of those things that a lot of us, when we were 17 or 18 and feeling misunderstood, we'd pick up. Then, as we get older, we realize that a world in which we're only thinking about ourselves and not thinking about anybody else, in which we're considering the entire project of developing ourselves as more important than our relationships to other people and making sure that everybody else has opportunity – that that's a pretty narrow vision."

The president went on to describe Rand's objectivist philosophy — which emphasizes self-interest — as having overtaken the GOP.

"It's not one that, I think, describes what's best in America," Obama said. "Unfortunately, it does seem as if sometimes that vision of a 'you're on your own' society has consumed a big chunk of the Republican Party."


(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 26, 2012, 10:24:03 AM
Economy & Budget

Is this what Obama’s green-energy future looks like?



By: David Harsanyi 
10/26/2012 10:24 AM

RESIZE: AAA






Print

175


It was one of Barack Obama’s favorite green-energy companies. And green-energy companies, according to the president, are one of the best ways to facilitate economic growth.
 
Well, yesterday, The Denver Post detailed the criminal investigation of Abound Solar, a defunct solar-panel manufacturer in Colorado that was run on taxpayer “investments,” for securities fraud, consumer fraud and financial misrepresentation.
 
Abound shuttered its Colorado plant during the summer and filed for bankruptcy, leaving “125 workers without jobs and taxpayers holding the bag for up to $60 million in defaulted loans.” (Human Events senior reporter Audrey Hudson has already detailed the efforts by the House to investigate the company.)  Here’s what Weld County prosecutors are  looking into:
 

The securities-fraud investigation stems from allegations that “officials at Abound Solar knew products the company was selling were defective, and then asked investors to invest in the company without telling them about the defective products,” the DA’s office said in a news release.
 
Similarly, the consumer-fraud allegation is that Abound knowingly sold defective panels to customers.
 
The third subject of investigation is that Abound allegedly misled financial institutions when the company was seeking loans.
 
Since Obama’s “jobs plan” brochure pins the nation’s economic future on the growth of “green-energy jobs” — in fact, it’s one of two areas in the glossy pamphlet that has anything to do with job growth –  it seems fair to judge the campaign’s case for the future using one of the companies it touted in the past. Abound was rolled out continually by the administration, the subject of numerous mainstream news stories regarding the stimulus in particular and clean energy generally.
 
Here is Obama touting Abound Solar personally in a weekly address in 2009. The president claims the project will create 2,000 construction jobs and 1,500 permanent jobs.
 
(more below)
 


The company first began fleecing the American people with the help of the president in 2009, when then-CEO Pascal Noronha claimed that even without stimulus help his company was on track to create 420 new jobs by the end of the year.
 
Norohna was at the White House with Obama to welcome his first round of American “investment” as part of the $787 billion stimulus package. “We are honored that the White House invited us to participate in this event. The president’s commitment to help us a build a clean energy economy further validates the work our employees do every day to harness the power of the sun, and provide its energy in abundance in the form of low-cost solar panels.”
 
Abound Solar was also awarded a $400 million loan guarantee in 2010.
 
During my 8 years in Colorado, I can’t tell you how many times I was informed by highly enlightened and intelligent people that photovoltaic solar panels were the future of energy and an explosion of jobs were right around the corner. Half of the four solar manufacturers that received loan guarantees have failed. The Obama administration’s response? Slap tariffs on Chinese companies to make solar panels more expensive for everyone. Maybe — and this is just a theory — when you flush companies with millions in taxpayer cash for purely ideological reasons you incentivize irresponsible behavior.

[ Invalid YouTube link ]
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 26, 2012, 12:39:42 PM
Audit: Green jobs stimulus program wastes cash
 


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By Stephen Dinan
 
-
 
The Washington Times
 
Updated: 2:29 p.m. on Friday, October 26, 2012




President Obama’s green jobs training program, which was part of his stimulus, has failed on most key jobs measures, according to a new internal audit that found it was training workers who already had jobs that didn’t need green energy skills, and was failing to place new enrollees in jobs once they finished the training.
 
The Energy Department’s inspector general also said grantees who received the green jobs-training money did a poor job of reporting their results.
 
Only 38 percent of those who have completed training got jobs based on it, and only 16 percent kept jobs for at least six months — the key measure of success for the program.
 
“Outcomes for participants were far less than originally proposed,” the auditors said.
 
The government earmarked more than $400 million for green jobs training programs, and $328.5 million has been spent so far.
 
About half were already working in the energy sector and wanted retraining, and half were potential new energy workers.
 
Of those workers who already had energy-sector jobs, the auditors said they were retrained, even though they didn’t need it.
 
“We found no evidence that the incumbent workers in our sample required services or training to keep their job or obtain a new one,” the investigators said in their report.
 
The Energy Department challenged the findings, saying that auditors didn’t consider the full progress of those who got training. The department said some of those who got training found jobs before their training was completed and said they should have been counted.
 
Jane Oates, assistant secretary for employment and training, also said as the rest of the training is completed, they expect the numbers to improve.
 
The audit was released by House oversight committee Chairman Darrell E. Issa, who requested the update.
 
Mr. Issa said in addition to poor performance records, the green jobs money “served as a slush fund” for the Obama administration to dole out payments to allies “like the National Council of La Raza, the Blue Green alliance and the U.S. Steelworkers Union.”


Read more: Audit: Green jobs stimulus program wastes cash - Washington Times http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/oct/26/audit-green-jobs-stimulus-program-wastes-cash/#ixzz2AR4nlteg
 Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 28, 2012, 03:47:03 PM
http://theulstermanreport.com/2012/10/28/report-obama-attempted-to-make-nice-with-worlds-most-dangerous-islamist-state



Disgraceful. 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 01, 2012, 11:54:45 AM
Obama: ‘Some of the Businesses We Encourage Will Fail’
 CNSNews ^


Posted on Thursday, November 01, 2012 2:29:18 PM


Obama: ‘Some of the Businesses We Encourage Will Fail’ By Matt Cover November 1, 2012

(CNSNews.com) – President Obama told a campaign rally that “some of the businesses we encourage will fail” while talking about his plans for increased green energy subsidies in a possible second term.

“Today there are thousands of workers building long-lasting batteries and wind turbines and solar panels all across the country, jobs that weren’t there four years ago,” Obama said, touting his administration’s efforts to subsidize the green energy industry.

Obama then admitted that not everything the government will “bet on” will be successful, admitting that in fact some of the businesses he plans to give taxpayer funds will be sure to fail.

“And sure, not all of the technologies we bet on will pan out. Some of the businesses we encourage will fail, but I promise you this: there is a future for manufacturing here in America,” he said. “There’s a future for clean energy here in America, and I refuse to cede that future to other countries.”

Obama’s signature green energy subsidy program has been plagued by high-profile failures, most notably of solar-panel manufacturer Solyndra, which received $500 million in government loans and became the face of Obama’s green jobs initiative before going bankrupt in 2010, defaulting on its government loans after administration officials took extraordinary measures to save it, even subordinating those loans to those of private investors, making sure that taxpayers were repaid last.

Normally, government loans are required to be senior to those of private investors, ensuring that taxpayers are first in line to get their money back if the company fails.

Other high-profile green energy failures include Abound Solar, electric car maker Fisker, and the much-hyped electric Chevy Volt....


(Excerpt) Read more at cnsnews.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 16, 2012, 10:53:07 AM
White House Gave $1 Million To Battery Maker A123 The Day It Filed For Bankruptcy
Ayesha Rascoe, Reuters|17 minutes ago|118|

 


 
WASHINGTON, Nov 16 (Reuters) - The Obama administration provided struggling battery maker A123 Systems Inc with nearly $1 million on the day it filed for bankruptcy, the company told lawmakers investigating its government grant.
 
The company, which makes lithium ion batteries for electric cars, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last month after a rescue deal with Chinese auto parts supplier Wanxiang Group fell apart.
 
That same day, Oct. 16, A123 received a $946,830 payment as part of its $249 million clean energy grant from the Energy Department, the company said in a letter obtained by Reuters to Republican Senators John Thune and Chuck Grassley.
 
(Reporting by Ayesha Rascoe; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick)
 

Copyright (2012) Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/white-house-gave-1-million-a123-2012-11#ixzz2CPgB211K

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 22, 2012, 04:32:40 AM
http://www.businessinsider.com/obamas-foreclosure-fraud-settlement-2012-11



Lol!!!! 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: The Enigma on November 22, 2012, 08:42:27 AM
http://www.businessinsider.com/obamas-foreclosure-fraud-settlement-2012-11



Lol!!!! 

It's Thanksgiving LOSER, get a life.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 25, 2012, 06:47:26 PM
Obama fires 20,000 Marines, promises billions to Muslim green energy
 examiner.com ^ | 11/25/2012 | Timothy Whiteman

Posted on Sunday, November 25, 2012 9:35:19 PM by massmike

Is Obama Always Faithful to our Marines?

The current political winds in Washington, DC, have dictated that less will be spent on the various Branches of the Armed Forces of the Unites States.

Case in point: the Commander-in-Chief has decided to fire 20,000 of our U.S. Marines.

In an article published by San Diego, California's North County Times, ironically on Thanksgiving Day, Military Affairs reporter Gretel C. Kovach cites;

"The Corps is shrinking by 20,000 Marines, to 182,100."

The North County Times also cited that America's premier fighting force is;

"scraping to repair or replace battle-worn equipment."

In spite of the Nobel Peace Prize award winning Obama ordering a recent surge in combat troops the Afghanistan theater of war, Kovach also pointed out that America's beloved Marine Corps is still to be slashed by roughly 20 percent;

"despite no sign of an enemy collapse."

So What Will The Taxpayers Money Be Spent On?

Earlier this week, Breitbart.com covered the recent agreement Barack Obama has promised billions of Yankee dollars to the oil-rich and overwhelmingly Muslim nations of Indonesia and Brunei.


(Excerpt) Read more at examiner.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 13, 2012, 06:57:29 AM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-k-black/hsbc-settlement_b_2291859.html


Ha ha ha ha ha

Let's see the incompetent leftists spin this mess. 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 07, 2013, 06:08:16 PM
Meet Jack Lew: Tim Geithner's Replacement
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/07/2013 19:58 -0500

After HoursBarack ObamaCongressional Budget OfficeDebt CeilingJamie DimonMedicarenational securityNew York CityNew York TimesNewspaperNomination Obama AdministrationOhioPeter OrszagRahm EmanuelStimulus SpendingTim GeithnerTreasury Borrowing Advisory CommitteeTreasury DepartmentWhite House


Bloomberg is out after hours with news that was expected by many, but which was yet to be formalized, until now: namely that following today's flurry of contntious nomination by Obama, the latest and greatest is about to be unveiled - Jack Lew, Obama's current chief of staff, is likely days away from being announced as Tim Geithner's replacement as the new Treasury Secretary of the United States. In other words, Jack will be the point person whom the people who truly run the Treasury, the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee, chaired by JPM's Matt Zames (who just happens to also now run the notorious JPM Chief Investment Office which uses excess deposits to gamble - yes, you really can't make this up) and Goldman's Ashok Varadhan, global head of dollar-rate products and FX trading for North America (recently buying a $16 million pad at 15 CPW) will demand action from.

President Barack Obama is close to choosing White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew for Treasury secretary with an announcement as soon as this week, according to two people familiar with the matter.

 

Selecting Lew to replace Timothy F. Geithner would also require Obama to install a new chief of staff, the first step in a White House staff shuffle for his second term. Many of the president’s senior aides may be taking new roles as the president recasts his team, said the people, who requested anonymity to discuss personnel matters.

 

While Obama hasn’t made a final decision to pick Lew, his staff has been instructed to prepare for his nomination, said one of the people. Among the leading candidates to replace Lew as Obama’s chief of staff are Denis McDonough, currently a deputy national security adviser, and Ron Klain, who had served as Vice President Joe Biden’s chief of staff.

 

The next Treasury secretary will play a leading role in working with Congress to raise the government’s $16.4 trillion debt ceiling. The U.S. reached the statutory limit on Dec. 31, and the Treasury Department began using extraordinary measures to finance the government. It will exhaust that avenue as early as mid-February, the Congressional Budget Office says.

 

Geithner plans to leave the administration by the end of January even if the debt ceiling issue hasn’t been settled.

Somewhere, Larry Fink, and Jamie Dimon just exhaled (not to mention Mark Zandi whose stomp to the Great Barrier Reef brought him nothing but more seasonally adjusted disappointment).

So who is Jack Lew?

Here is an extended profile by Sam Stein, which however, will likely leave as many open questions as it answers:

White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew has been an unassuming figure during the Obama years. His media appearances are dull; his presentation is a bit bookworm-ish -- as if Harry Potter grew up and replaced his magic wand with Excel spreadsheets. When he speaks, the tone is usually measured and unemotional.

Behind the scenes, however, Lew has proven to be Obama's most skillful consigliere in matters of political trench warfare. Time and again during the debt ceiling debate, as Republicans attempted to get the administration to bend on top domestic priorities, it was Lew who proved to be a stick in the mud. Then serving as Office of Management and Budget Director, his insistence on playing out the practical impact of those cuts irritated Republicans to no end.

"What is infuriating to Republicans is that no one knows the federal government, the budget, these policies, better than Jack Lew," Kenneth Baer, a former senior adviser to Lew, told The Huffington Post. "Just as I imagine it would be frustrating to hit batting practice off Sandy Koufax."

Below are just a few excerpts from Woodward's book, "The Price of Politics":

[Brett] Loper [House Speaker John Boehner's policy director] found Lew obnoxious. The budget director was doing 75 percent of the talking, lecturing everyone not only about what Obama's policy was, but also why it was superior to the Republicans'.

[Barry] Jackson [Boehner's chief of staff] found Lew's tone disrespectful and dismissive.

Lew was incredulous when he considered the Republican proposal as a whole. The changes they were considering sounded simple. But the speaker's office was laying down general principles and looking to apply them to extremely complex programs. The devil was always in the details.

Boehner was sick of the White House meetings. It was still mostly the president lecturing, he reported to his senior staff. The other annoying factor was Jack Lew, who tried to explain why the Democrats' view of the world was right and the Republicans' wrong.

'Always trying to protect the sacred cows of the left,' Barry Jackson said of Lew, going through Medicare and Medicaid almost line by line while Boehner was just trying to reach some top-line agreement.

[Ohio Governor John] Kasich called [economic adviser Gene] Sperling at the White House, suggesting that he meet with Boehner. Lew, he said, did not know how to get to yes.

Sperling realized it was not a compliment that they wanted him. It essentially meant, 'Lew's being too tough. Can we get Sperling?'

Lew's wonky stubbornness during those negotiations didn't make him a progressive hero. In private caucus meetings, congressional Democrats laced into him for keeping them out of the loop and placing sacred cows on the negotiation table. But it did establish Lew as a true hub of power within the administration, and it showed that he, perhaps more than any other top adviser, had Obama's ear.

"I was in many meetings," Sperling recalled in an interview with The Huffington Post, "where Jack would say, clear as a bell, 'Mr. President, I think we can accept this. I’d have to go through all these little tiny cuts and stuff.' And the president would say, 'Jack ... you know my values. I trust your values.'"

For someone in a position of immense power, Lew remains a difficult figure to pin down philosophically. His youth was spent in New York City where -- as a June 2011 Politico profile noted -- he rallied against the Vietnam War and touted the import of immigration and public housing while serving as the editor of his high school newspaper. At Carleton College, his faculty adviser was Paul Wellstone, then a political scientist and later a famously liberal senator. Lew worked with Rep. Bella Abzug (D-N.Y.), another unapologetic progressive, before gravitating towards more moderate, establishment ground. He went to work with Rep. Joe Moakley (D-Mass.) and then took a job with House Speaker Tip O'Neill (D-Mass.).

Along the way, his view on D.C. politics changed. "[T]here’s a space in Washington that is not deeply populated, which is a bridge between the highly technical and the political,” he would tell Politico. "f you could be fluent in both worlds and respected enough in both worlds, you could have an opportunity to be a translator and to make a difference."

Those who worked with him during that time period recall a type of pragmatism that seems antiquated today.

"It was a much different world, with a lot of collegiality amongst the Senate and House, the Republicans and Democratic staff people," said Lynn Sutcliffe, chief executive officer of EnergySolve, LLC, who worked with Lew while general counsel of the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee. "It was the art of the possible, not the art of promoting oneself or your boss' re-election."

Lew's work would prove influential in forging the famed Social Security deal made between O'Neill and Ronald Reagan in 1983. And when he departed the Hill in 1986 to join the lobbying shop that Sutcliffe once helped run, it was an important enough development to merit a small item in The New York Times.

Lew returned to government during the Clinton years, gradually rising to the ranks of OMB Director. He packed in long hours six days a week, taking off every Saturday to observe the Sabbath (he is an Orthodox Jew), honing the type of negotiating acumen that would prove useful for Obama. In talks with House Republicans, Lew would use fluency in economics -- despite not being an economist -- and a mastery of budget details to essentially out-will the president's priorities into legislation.

"What makes him a tough negotiator is not that he can’t get to yes or that he’s some kind of bulldog," Sperling said. "What makes him a tough negotiator is he knows his stuff so well ... He negotiates well by being a master of the detail."

In the Obama administration, Lew has been comfortable working largely in the shadows. His predecessor as OMB Director, Peter Orszag, matched his budget expertise with a sharp media savviness. His two predecessors as chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel and Bill Daley, were veritable celebrities.

Lew stepped into that position after the high-profile budget and debt ceiling fights of 2011 had passed. But aides and friends stress that he's been handed heavy tasks: not just managing a White House with half of its focus on the reelection campaign, but also restoring damaged relations with congressional Democrats.

"[Senate Majority Leader Harry] Reid didn't know much of Jack Lew until he started having to deal with him because he couldn’t trust Daley," said Jim Manley, Reid's former top spokesman. But once he did, a strong relationship was established. In a private meeting shortly after the debt ceiling deal was concluded, it was Lew who helped convince attendees that the final legislation wasn't such a bitter pill.

"Democrats soon became comfortable with it because he outlined the blow back or ping pong effect that would occur," Manley said. "He knew his facts cold. And he knows his stuff better than Boehner and just about anyone else on Capitol Hill."

Still, it's tough to tell what type of ideological imprint Lew has had on the administration. Aides credit him and Sperling with scoring major victories during the government shutdown debate in the spring of 2011 and the debt ceiling debate later that summer. House Republicans left the former thinking they'd secured $100 billion in savings, only to discover, upon closer inspection, that it was $32 billion. The $1 trillion sequester included in the debt ceiling deal included defense cuts, while leaving out top Democratic priorities like Medicaid (in one late-stage phone call with Republican aides, Lew screamed down attempts to make that program part of the trigger).

But in each instance, the broader debate was waged on Republican terms: additional stimulus spending took a backseat to deficit reduction. One Lew confidant said that Lew personally views himself as a progressive, despite having a reputation as a Clinton-era, new Democrat budget hawk. Sperling would only describe him as someone who straddles, if not outright ignores, the labels and lines.

"I’ve worked with Jack a large part of my adult life and I mean, he is what you see," he said. "He is very serious about deficit reduction but he operates from core progressive principles. In other words, he is not the type of person who either lets conservatives pressure him into backing down on basic issues of fairness, but on the other hand, he is never beholden to litmus tests from progressive groups that he does not believe are reasonable from a policy context."

Average:
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 08, 2013, 12:57:02 PM
Obama EPA Regulations Kill 15 Power Plants, 480 Jobs In Georgia
 Washington Examiner ^ | January 8, 2013 | 10:20 am | Beltway Confidential

Posted on Tuesday, January 08, 2013 1:54:35 PM by drewh

Georgia Power asked state regulators for permission to shut down 15 power plants yesterday, claiming new regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) make the plants too expensive to run.

The 15 coal-, oil- and natural gas-fired power plants currently produce 2,061 megawatts (MW) for Georgia energy consumers. Georgia Power plans to close 11 of the plants on the exact day the EPA’s new mercury regulations are set to take effect, April 16, 2015. Georgia Power will seek waivers from the EPA to keep four of the other plants open for a single year, and then shut those down too on April 16, 2016. It is unclear how the Georgia energy sector will make the 2 gigawatts up.

The EPA claims its new mercury regulation will produce $140 billion in annual benefits, but only $6 million of the benefits come from actual mercury reductions. According to Dr. Anne Smith, Senior Vice President of NERA Economic Consulting’s Global Environment Group, effectively all of the EPA’s estimated benefits come from “coincidental reductions” of fine particulate matter. But fine particulate matter is already regulated by a separate section of the Clean Air Act.

The plant closures will cause at least 480 fewer power plant jobs and higher electricity rates for all Georgia energy consumers.


(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 09, 2013, 03:32:05 AM
Arthur Brooks: 80% of the new fiscal cliff revenues will go to Obama’s wealthy cronies
Conservatives4Palin ^ | January 08 2013 | Doug Brady
Posted on January 9, 2013 6:20:33 AM EST by Bratch

In a post yesterday, James chronicled the rampant cronyism which characterized the so-called fiscal cliff deal. This morning Arthur Brooks appeared on CNBC’s Squawk Box and revealed some startling facts on the same topic. Here’s a partial transcript of the interview.

JOE KERNEN: The fiscal cliff fight’s over, a battle that is still looming large. Our guest host today is Arthur Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute, author of “The Road to Freedom.” Arthur, I want to just start just quickly with you. OK, your point — and we were talking about it in welcome, it’s good to see you — out of the $62 billion, we’ve got a trillion dollar deficit, this raises how much in revenue? $62 billion or so?

BROOKS: About $62 billion a year, $620 billion over 10 years.

KERNEN: Your work is that $50 billion out of $62 billion is to corporate cronies?

BROOKS: Yeah, the first two years, $100 billion is going to corporate cronies, payoffs to corporate clients of the government effectively. And all kinds of crazy stuff: algae producers, rum producers.

KERNEN: Renewable crap.

BROOKS: Yeah, yeah. The wind guys that are a big deal with the Obama administration. Effectively what it means is that 80 percent of the new tax revenues are going right into the pocket of corporate cronies.

KERNEN: So people that call him a redistributionist, it just sounds good to him that he’s trying to help the — he always calls them ‘folks’ I think. Rich folks got to pay a little bit more –

BROOKS: To rich folks, to other rich folks.

KERNEN: But the rich folks are actually paying to other rich folks. Redistribution from the 2 percent to the corporate –

BROOKS: The corporate 1 percent. So it’s basically the rich makers are redistributed to the rich takers. That’s basically what Obamanomics is all about in a nutshell. That’s how it works. And he talks about redistributing to poor people and working people and helping people and all that.

Think about that. 80% of the new revenues that the government will collect as a result of the fiscal cliff deal will go to Obama’s wealthy corporate cronies. I wonder what Obama’s low-information voters, to whom I referred yesterday, would think of that. Brooks, Joe Kernen and the rest of the Squawk Box crew discuss a few other things as well, including how meaningless this fiscal cliff exercise was in terms of actual deficit reduction. Click the image below to watch. It’s eye-opening.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: The Enigma on January 09, 2013, 06:15:17 AM
You're obsessed. Get a real life.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 09, 2013, 06:16:24 AM
You're obsessed. Get a real life.

F you - you voted for this commie corrupt piece of shit - eat a dick 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 10, 2013, 10:25:46 AM
Top EPA official used private email account to correspond with environmental groups
 The Daily Caller ^ | 1/10/13 | Michael Bastasch

Posted on Thursday, January 10, 2013 1:25:35 PM by Nachum

A second Environmental Protection Agency official stands accused of using a personal email address to shield communications with environmental activists from public disclosure.

Court documents show that EPA Region 8 Administrator James Martin corresponded with the Environmental Defense Fund — where he previously worked as an attorney — through his private email account.


(Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 14, 2013, 10:14:22 AM
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/01/13/Obama-Missed-More-Budget-Deadlines-Than-Any-President-Since-1920s


What a piece of work.  Total FAIL for O-TWINK
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 14, 2013, 01:24:50 PM
New pay-per-mile scheme would boost taxes 250 percent

January 14, 2013 | 2:15 pm
153Comments

Paul Bedard

Washington Secrets
The Washington Examiner



http://washingtonexaminer.com/new-pay-per-mile-scheme-would-boost-taxes-250-percent/article/2518504#.UPRbEqU1lhQ



An on-again, off-again move by the Obama administration to scrap the federal gas tax in favor of a pay-per-mile fee would boost the tab to Americans as high as 250 percent, raising their current tax of 18.4 cents a gallon to as high as 46 cents, according to a new government study.

But without a tax increase, said the Government Accountability Office study, the government's highway fund is going to go dry. One reason the fund is going broke: President Obama's push for fuel efficient cars has resulted in better mileage, and fewer stops at the pump.
 
The GAO study is just the latest review of federal spending that paints a grim picture of the nation's infrastructure. Just keeping spending at current levels, the GAO said, would require a near doubling of the gas tax to 32 cents a gallon, and that would jump to as high as 46 cents should the federal government add spending to fix crumbling infrastructure and build new roads.
 
The average driver pays about $96 a year in federal gas taxes, said GAO. Should the administration seek to raise the highway trust fund from $34 billion to the $78 billion needed to fix and maintain roads, that could rise to $248. Translated into a pay-per-mile plan, drivers would face a tax of 2.2 cents per mile compared to the 0.9 cents they pay now. Trucks would pay far more.
 
"We modeled the average mileage fee rates that would be needed for passenger vehicles and commercial trucks to meet three illustrative Highway Trust Fund revenue targets ranging from about $34 billion to $78.4 billion per year. To meet these targets, a driver of a passenger vehicle with average fuel efficiency would pay from $108 to $248 per year in mileage fees compared to the $96 they currently pay annually in federal gasoline tax," said GAO.
 
The administration floated that plan in the first term, but scrapped it when it was met with public outrage. However, several states and some in Congress are now eyeing the plan, keeping it alive as a federal option.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 14, 2013, 05:36:23 PM

Report: Obama officials issued $216 billion in regulations last year
 
By Megan R. Wilson - 01/14/13 03:20 PM ET


The Obama administration issued $236 billion worth of new regulations last year, according to a report from a conservative think tank.
 
The analysis from the American Action Forum, led by former Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin, found that the administration added $216 billion in rules and more than $20 billion in regulatory proposals in 2012. Complying with those rules will require an additional 87 million hours of paperwork, the report said.
 
The group put the total price tag from regulations during Obama’s first term at more than $518 billion.
 
American Action Forum credited the administration for erasing $2.5 billion in regulatory costs last year, but said that paled in comparison to $34 billion in regulatory compliance costs reported by top companies since 2009.


The Environmental Protection Agency racked up the most in regulatory costs last year, according to the report, issuing $172 billion worth of rules. Regulations from the healthcare reform law tacked an additional $20.1 billion in costs onto the economy.
 
The Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law, several EPA clean air rules and the Affordable Care Act were the most notable regulatory expenses last year. But prison reform standards and conflict minerals regulation also cost a total of $10 billion in 2012, the report found.
 
Though the study lists the costs of regulations, it does not calculate any benefits that might have resulted from them.
 
The American Action Forum is the policy-focused sister organization of the American Action Network.


Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/regwatch/administration/277039-report-obama-officials-issued-216b-in-new-regulations-last-year#ixzz2I0Ide24s

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 17, 2013, 09:10:52 AM
ObamaMiles Tax Coming Soon
 Townhall.com ^ | January 17, 2013 | Mike Shedlock

Posted on Thursday, January 17, 2013 8:33:48 AM by Kaslin

Yet another "Trust Fund" is broke. This time, discussion involves an alleged "Transportation Trust Fund".

As with Social Security, there is no "Transportation Trust Fund", only a stack of unmarketable IOUs from one branch of government to another.

If there is any trust in the system, there shouldn't be, and soon won't be. Obama will surely see to that.

Grid Chicago reports Charging by the mile, a gas tax alternative, sees serious movement.


Because of vehicles with higher fuel efficiency, slightly less driving, and the gas tax not being changed since 1993, the motor vehicle fuel tax, or “gas tax”, has failed to pay for everything that Congress has legislated that it should pay for. The Highway Trust Fund, which includes the Mass Transit Account, has received several infusions of money from the “general revenue fund” – to the tune of over $60 billion.

But a new report from the Government Accountability Office, the congressional think tank focused on financing, past, present, and future, has made the country take a giant step forward in considering a switch to a fee that more accurately charges usage. The report, like all GAO studies, was commissioned by the House Transportation Appropriations Subcommittee.

The gas tax charges drivers based on their use of petroleum, different vehicles can go different distances on the same amount of petroleum: essentially, some pay less than others for the same use of the road. Additionally, the counts of how much people drive has decreased (called vehicle miles traveled, or VMT), yet our demand for funds to maintain and build new infrastructure outpaces the incoming revenues from the gas tax. Lastly, the federal gas tax hasn’t changed at all, sticking to a cool 18.4 cents per gallon (for non-diesel drivers) since 1993. ”While the gas tax was equal to 17 percent of the cost of a gallon of gas when it was set at its current level in 1993, it is now only 5 percent” (Streetsblog).

The Simpson-Bowles Commission, convened by President Obama to find strategies to improve the country’s fiscal situation in 2010, “called for an immediate 15 cent-per-gallon increase in the gas tax”.

An alternative to the gas tax is to charge people based on how much they drive, a mileage fee. This can be calculated in more than one way, and doesn’t require the use of a GPS system to track where people are going: pay-at-the-pump (or electric vehicle charging station), and prepaid, self-reporting system based on odometer readings.

Mindless Possibilities

Got that? Bureaucrats are actually pondering a system that would require road use prepayment based on self-reporting of miles driven.

It's always important to keep in mind that the bureaucrats have an infinite capacity to do mindless things. How many bureaucrats will it take to manage a self-reporting system? At what cost? Who will comply?

When that proposal does not work, (and obviously it won't), bureaucrats are likely to do something such as mandate devices in cars that will communicate with devices at gas pumps, tracking your every move.

Such devices will no doubt be manufactured by GE who will be the big beneficiary of it all in terms of profit. Meanwhile the actual manufacturing jobs for such devices will go to China.

Gas station owners and car manufacturers will both have to install such devices at great expense.

While pondering the ramifications of mindless possibilities, let's also take a look at proposed costs. Keep in mind things always cost more than proposed.

Scheme to Boost Taxes 250%

The Examiner reports New pay-per-mile scheme would boost taxes 250 percent


An on-again, off-again move by the Obama administration to scrap the federal gas tax in favor of a pay-per-mile fee would boost the tab to Americans as high as 250 percent, raising their current tax of 18.4 cents a gallon to as high as 46 cents, according to a new government study.

But without a tax increase, said the Government Accountability Office study, the government's highway fund is going to go dry. One reason the fund is going broke: President Obama's push for fuel efficient cars has resulted in better mileage, and fewer stops at the pump.

The GAO study is just the latest review of federal spending that paints a grim picture of the nation's infrastructure. Just keeping spending at current levels, the GAO said, would require a near doubling of the gas tax to 32 cents a gallon, and that would jump to as high as 46 cents should the federal government add spending to fix crumbling infrastructure and build new roads.

Obama Mulls Replacing Gas Tax With Hefty Mileage Tax

Political Outcast has some choice comments on the idea in Obama Mulls Replacing Gas Tax With Hefty Mileage Tax.


One reason gas prices are so high is that the Feds impose a tax of 18.4 cents per gallon on gas. It’s 24.4 cents per gallon of diesel. We’ve had federal gas taxes since the 50’s to pay for highways and bridges, but since 1983, they started diverting about 20% of gas taxes to go to a Mass Transit Account that is supposed to pay for public transportation like buses and railways. So, those of us who don’t use mass transit are paying for those that do in the form of gas taxes. That’s socialism for you.

We’ve had the 18.4-cent per gallon tax since 1993 under the Clinton administration. Nowadays, with the further destruction of the dollar, that 18.4 cents just doesn’t buy what it used to. Now, the Highway Trust Fund (which includes the Mass Transit Account) is facing insolvency.

Some credit the loss of revenue to the fact that many are using more fuel-efficient cars and therefore not spending as much on gas. Isn’t that what Obama wanted? For people to use more “green” energy? And now, the Highway Trust Fund is running out of money.

That could be part of it, but billions of the gas tax revenues are used to fund pet mass transit projects, which those who drive cars generally don’t even use.

If states want to have public transportation, they should raise their own revenue and pay for it themselves instead of taking federal highway funds to build it. As for paying for highways and roads, we could cut hundreds of billions of dollars from Obama’s foreign policy expenditures and put those funds toward domestic infrastructure and not have to impose one penny of gas taxes to fund it.


Robbing Peter to Pay Paul (With IOUs of Course)

Political Outcast gets to part of the problem.

However, I am not opposed to the idea that people who use services should pay for them. But why stop at roads?

Why shouldn't people who use libraries pay for that usage, rather than everyone else? Why should Social Security recipients get out more than they paid in? Why shouldn't mass transit users be the ones to pay for mass transit?

Most importantly, why don't people with kids in the public education system pay for the cost of the schools and their kid's education?

If they did, I assure you costs would come down because people would demand more for their money.

Next Set of Questions



•What the hell are taxpayers getting for their money?
•What do pension plans of those working for the Department of Transportation look like compared to the average Joe?
•What do the wages and pension plans of road maintenance workers look like compared to the average Joe?

Before we go about charging people for miles driven, how about making sure taxpayers get their money's worth in services received?

For road maintenance, the way to do that is easy. Scrap Davis Bacon and all prevailing wage laws, then let cities and states put out bids for work at non-union rates.

If the states and federal government would scrap all prevailing wage laws and make recipients in general pay for services received, I will be more than happy to discuss better ways of making drivers (and everyone else) pay for services received.

Camel's Nose in the Tent

As an addendum, I offer reader "Lapdog" comments ... "A miles driven tax is just the camel's nose in the tent. It will ultimately be a GPS/vehicle-based system that will allow charging more based on time of day, type of road taken or where one wishes to go i.e. into downtown business districts."

Precisely. The possibilities for more taxes, and more tracking of everything you do, while under guise of making people pay for services are infinite.

Moreover, both parties want to keep track of everything you do under guise of protecting against terrorists
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 21, 2013, 04:37:07 AM
Obama's ATF Nominee on DOJ's Fast and Furious Design Team
Breitbart ^ | 1-19-13 | Matthew Boyle
Posted on January 21, 2013 7:37:36 AM EST by TurboZamboni

As part of President Barack Obama’s 23-point gun control plan, he nominated Minnesota U.S. Attorney B. Todd Jones–who currently doubles right now as the acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives–to be the ATF director. Jones was personally a part of the high-ranking Department of Justice unit that first met on October 26, 2009, to create the new DOJ policy that was used to justify “gunwalking” in Operation Fast and Furious. In Fast and Furious, the ATF “walked” roughly 2,000 firearms into the hands of the Mexican drug cartels. That means through straw purchasers the agency allowed sales to happen and didn’t stop the guns from being trafficked, even though they had the legal authority to do so and were fully capable of doing so.

Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and hundreds of Mexican citizens–estimates put it around at least 300–were killed with these firearms.

(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 25, 2013, 08:17:20 AM
Appeals court panel rules Obama recess appointments to labor board are unconstitutional
By Associated Press, Updated: Friday, January 25, 11:12 AM
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama violated the Constitution when he bypassed the Senate to fill vacancies on a labor relations panel, a federal appeals court panel ruled Friday.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said that Obama did not have the power to make three recess appointments last year to the National Labor Relations Board.

The unanimous decision is an embarrassing setback for the president, who made the appointments after Senate Republicans spent months blocking his choices for an agency they contended was biased in favor of unions.

The ruling also throws into question Obama’s recess appointment of Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Cordray’s appointment, also made under the recess circumstance, has been challenged in a separate case.

Obama claims he acted properly in the case of the NLRB appointments because the Senate was away for the holidays on a 20-day recess. But the three-judge panel ruled that the Senate technically stayed in session when it was gaveled in and out every few days for so-called “pro forma” sessions.

GOP lawmakers used the tactic — as Democrats have in the past as well — to specifically to prevent the president from using his recess power. GOP lawmakers contend the labor board has been too pro-union in its decisions. They had also vigorously opposed the nomination of Cordray.

The Obama administration is expected to appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, but if it stands, it means hundreds of decisions issued by the board over more than a year are invalid. It also would leave the five-member labor board with just one validly appointed member, effectively shutting it down. The board is allowed to issue decisions only when it has at least three sitting members.

On Jan. 4, 2012, Obama appointed Deputy Labor Secretary Sharon Block, union lawyer Richard Griffin and NLRB counsel Terence Flynn to fill vacancies on the NLRB, giving it a full contingent for the first time in more than a year. Block and Griffin are Democrats, while Flynn is a Republican. Flynn stepped down from the board last year.

Obama also appointed Cordray on the same day.

The court’s decision is a victory for Republicans and business groups that have been attacking the labor board for issuing a series of decisions and rules that make it easier for the nation’s labor unions to organize new members.

___

Follow Sam Hananel on Twitter: http://twitter.com/SamHananelAP

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 26, 2013, 09:11:25 PM


Obama Continues to Violate His Own ‘Stimulus’ Law by Not Releasing Quarterly Reports


10:41 AM, Jan 26, 2013 • By JEFFREY H. ANDERSON




Have you heard much about President Obama’s $787,000,000,000 economic “stimulus” (now estimated to cost $831,000,000,000) lately?  In its last report, published in 2011, the president’s own Council of Economic Advisors released an estimate showing that, for every $317,000 in “stimulus” spending that had by then gone out the door, only one job had been created or saved.  Even in Washington, that’s not considered good bang for the buck.




Moreover, that was the fifth consecutive “stimulus” report that showed this number getting progressively worse.
 
Alas, that was the last report we’ve seen.  Never mind that Section 1513 of the “stimulus” legislation, which Obama spearheaded and signed into law, requires the executive branch to submit a new report every three months.  It reads:
 
“In consultation with the Director of the Office of Management and Budget and the Secretary of the Treasury, the Chairperson of the Council of Economic Advisers shall submit quarterly reports to the Committees on Appropriations of the Senate and House of Representatives that detail the impact of programs funded through covered funds on employment, estimated economic growth, and other key economic indicators.”
 
(The head of the Council of Economic Advisors, currently Alan Krueger, is appointed by the president, confirmed by the Senate, and works in the Executive Office of the President.  He is the president’s chief economic adviser.)



Indeed, the old reports that the administration released begin, “As part of the unprecedented accountability and transparency provisions included in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 [the ‘stimulus’], the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) was charged with providing to Congress quarterly reports on the effects of the Recovery Act on overall economic activity, and on employment in particular.”
 
Section 1513 further specifies, “The first report…shall be submitted not later than 45 days after the end of the first full quarter following the date of enactment of this Act….The last report required to be submitted…shall apply to the quarter in which the [Recovery Accountability and Transparency] Board terminates under section 1530.”  Section 1530 declares, “The Board shall terminate on September 30, 2013.”
 
In other words, the Obama administration is required by law to submit quarterly reports on the “stimulus” through the third quarter of 2013.  By now, it was supposed to have released fourteen such reports.  It has released only eight.  The last one covered the period ending in June 2011.  That’s right — 2011.
 
With only 58.6 percent of Americans currently employed — down 2.4 percent from the time of Obama’s first inauguration — it’s not surprising that the Obama administration doesn’t really want to fulfill it legal responsibilities and release subsequent reports on its failed “stimulus.”  However, it hardly seems fair — to use one of Obama’s favorite words — that the rich and (extremely) powerful think that they can choose whether or not to abide by the laws they spearhead and sign, while the rest of us are forced to obey them.
 
Perhaps it’s time for the rich and powerful to do their fair share and obey the laws that they enforce against others.  And perhaps this is something that the House of Representatives might want to look into.




 





 




Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 28, 2013, 07:59:51 AM
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EPA Email Scandal Is Worse Than Originally Thought
Breitbart ^ | 1/27/13 | George Landrith & Peter Roff
Posted on January 28, 2013, 12:58:34 AM EST by Nachum

President Barack Obama and, for that matter, most of America seem woefully ignorant about a scandal unfolding at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. As hard as it is to believe, outgoing Administrator Lisa Jackson actually appears to have had agency personnel create a fictitious employee by the name of “Richard Windsor” so that Jackson could appropriate the Windsor’s email address for her own purposes.

We’re not talking about some alias to be used for personal correspondence but a totally false identity in whose name official business was allegedly conducted created specifically to avoid federal record-keeping and disclosure requirements. And none of this would ever have been uncovered were it not for the courage of a still anonymous whistleblower and the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Christopher Horner, an attorney with the legal smarts and experience needed to unravel it all.

Earlier this week, thanks to Horner’s good work, the EPA was supposed to produce the first installment of some 12,000 secret, previously undisclosed emails. Not because it wanted to but because a federal court order required it to.

Under the order, the EPA was to provide the first installment of 3,000 e-mails with three additional installments of 3,000 e-mails to follow. Rather than provide the required emails, however, EPA’s cover letter accompanying its production of emails said it “produced more than 2,100 emails received or sent” by Jackson on an official alias e-mail account.

(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 30, 2013, 08:27:52 PM
Complaint: Sebelius' illegal campaign trip for Obama worse than we thought
Washington Examiner ^ | 1/30/13 | Joel Gehrke
Posted on January 30, 2013 9:49:59 PM EST by Nachum

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius violated federal law by campaigning for President Obama on the taxpayers’ dime, but now that initial violation has the Democratic National Committee and an HHS aide in the spotlight for related alleged infractions. A nonprofit government watchdog filed a complaint alleging that the DNC violated campaign finance law by misreporting the money it spent to reimburse HHS for Sebelius’ trip in a way that masked the fact that the Hatch Act, a ban on political campaigning by government employees working in their official capacity,

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 31, 2013, 02:36:40 PM
Some families to be priced out of health overhaul (Obama's hands tied by how law was written)
 WTOP ^ | 01/31/2013 | RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR

Posted on Thursday, January 31, 2013 3:42:49 PM by SeekAndFind

WASHINGTON (AP) - Some families could get priced out of health insurance due to what's being called a glitch in President Barack Obama's overhaul law. IRS regulations issued Wednesday failed to fix the problem as liberal backers of the president's plan had hoped.

As a result, some families that can't afford the employer coverage that they are offered on the job will not be able to get financial assistance from the government to buy private health insurance on their own. How many people will be affected is unclear.

The Obama administration says its hands were tied by the way Congress wrote the law. Officials said the administration tried to mitigate the impact. Families that can't get coverage because of the glitch will not face a tax penalty for remaining uninsured, the IRS rules said.

"This is a very significant problem, and we have urged that it be fixed," said Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, an advocacy group that supported the overhaul from its early days. "It is clear that the only way this can be fixed is through legislation and not the regulatory process."


(Excerpt) Read more at wtop.com ...






PROMISE BROKEN
 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 31, 2013, 02:55:44 PM
IRS: Cheapest Obamacare Plan Will Be $20,000 Per Family

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IRS: Cheapest Obamacare Plan Will Be $20,000 Per Family
 CNS News ^ | January 31, 2013 | Matt Cover

Posted on Thursday, January 31, 2013 5:43:47 PM by rhema

In a final regulation issued Wednesday, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) assumed that under Obamacare the cheapest health insurance plan available in 2016 for a family will cost $20,000 for the year.

Under Obamacare, Americans will be required to buy health insurance or pay a penalty to the IRS.

The IRS's assumption that the cheapest plan for family of five will cost $20,000 per year is found in examples the IRS gives to help people understand how to calculate the penalty they will need to pay the government if they do not buy a mandated health plan.

“The annual national average bronze plan premium for a family of 5 (2 adults, 3 children) is $20,000,” the regulation says.

Bronze will be the lowest tier health-insurance plan available under Obamacare--after Silver, Gold, and Platinum. Under the law, the penalty for not buying health insurance is supposed to be capped at either the annual average Bronze premium, 2.5 percent of taxable income, or $2,085.00 per family in 2016.

In the new final rules published Wednesday, IRS set in law the rules for implementing the penalty Americans must pay if they fail to obey Obamacare's mandate to buy insurance.

To help illustrate these rules, the IRS presented examples of different situations families might find themselves in.

In the examples, the IRS assumes that families of five who are uninsured would need to pay an average of $20,000 per year to purchase a Bronze plan in 2016.

Using the conditions laid out in the regulations, the IRS calculates that a family earning $120,000 per year that did not buy insurance would need to pay a "penalty" (a word the IRS still uses despite the Supreme Court ruling that it is in fact a "tax") of $2,400 in 2016.

For those wondering how clear the IRS's clarifications of this new "penalty" rule are, here is one of the actual examples the IRS gives:

“Example 3. Family without minimum essential coverage.

"(i) In 2016, Taxpayers H and J are married and file a joint return. H and J have three children: K, age 21, L, age 15, and M, age 10. No member of the family has minimum essential coverage for any month in 2016. H and J’s household income is $120,000. H and J’s applicable filing threshold is $24,000. The annual national average bronze plan premium for a family of 5 (2 adults, 3 children) is $20,000.

"(ii) For each month in 2016, under paragraphs (b)(2)(ii) and (b)(2)(iii) of this section, the applicable dollar amount is $2,780 (($695 x 3 adults) + (($695/2) x 2 children)). Under paragraph (b)(2)(i) of this section, the flat dollar amount is $2,085 (the lesser of $2,780 and $2,085 ($695 x 3)). Under paragraph (b)(3) of this section, the excess income amount is $2,400 (($120,000 - $24,000) x 0.025). Therefore, under paragraph (b)(1) of this section, the monthly penalty amount is $200 (the greater of $173.75 ($2,085/12) or $200 ($2,400/12)).

"(iii) The sum of the monthly penalty amounts is $2,400 ($200 x 12). The sum of the monthly national average bronze plan premiums is $20,000 ($20,000/12 x 12). Therefore, under paragraph (a) of this section, the shared responsibility payment imposed on H and J for 2016 is $2,400 (the lesser of $2,400 or $20,000).”
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 31, 2013, 07:42:17 PM
HHS says it ditched ‘exchanges’ because word doesn’t translate into Spanish
The Hill ^ | 1/31/13 | Elise Viebeck
Posted on January 31, 2013 1:38:49 PM EST by Nachum

The Obama administration has stopped using the term “exchanges” to describe part of the healthcare law because the word doesn’t translate into Spanish, an official said Thursday. Anton Gunn, director of External Affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), said the rebranding of the insurance exchanges as "marketplaces" was geared toward Spanish speakers who will use the system. "We´re going to use the word ´marketplace´ because it actually makes sense to people," Gunn said at a conference in Washington, D.C. " ´Exchange´ doesn´t translate to anything in Spanish, but ´marketplace´ does."

(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 01, 2013, 07:47:08 AM
Secret donors back new Obamacare push
By: Kenneth P. Vogel and Jennifer Haberkorn
February 1, 2013 04:41 AM EST
 
Several former White House staffers have found a new way to promote Obamacare: They’re spending millions of dollars in secret corporate and union cash, and they’re harnessing grass-roots tactics to some of the biggest names in the health care industry.

Organizing for Action, the successor to President Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, and Enroll America, a group led by two former Obama staffers that features several insurance company bigwigs on its board, are planning to unleash the same grass-roots mobilization and sophisticated micro-targeting tactics seen in the 2012 campaign.

(Also on POLITICO: President Obama's challenge: Selling ideas, not just himself)

Instead of getting people to vote, they’re trying to get people to buy insurance.

If the coalition is successful, 30 million uninsured Americans will get health coverage and the now-unpopular law that Obama’s team pushed through Congress and defended at the Supreme Court could go down in history alongside lauded national institutions such as Medicare and Social Security.

But if large numbers of younger and healthier Americans don’t sign up for coverage this fall alongside the older and sicker ones, the whole thing won’t work.

The challenge is real: The White House has not been able to penetrate the confusion and skepticism about the law in the nearly three years since its passage. Numerous polls have shown that people still don’t know what’s in the law, or how it could benefit them.

(PHOTOS: Supreme Court upholds health care law)

So it is both fitting and ironic that — for perhaps the most significant battle in the war over Obamacare — the president’s allies are completely setting aside their qualms about the unlimited cash they once railed against. They plan to use it to unleash the 20 million-address strong email list of Organizing for Action, to hire up to 100 people at Enroll America and to flood television, radio and social media with ads this fall. They even hope to go door to door, walking people through the sign-up process.

“This is going to be run like a political campaign,” said Families USA Executive Director Ron Pollack, who helped conceive and fund Enroll America in 2010 and is chairman of the board.

(Also on POLITICO: Obama committees in black, red)

It’s clear Enroll America is a priority for Team Obama. The group received a blessing from Organizing for Action at a private gathering of Democratic donors during Inauguration weekend. Its new president, Anne Filipic, just resigned as the deputy director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, where she had worked under Organizing for Action’s director Jon Carson. Its new managing director, Chris Wyant, led the ground game in Ohio for Obama’s reelection campaign.

The private effort is relying on many of the tools, donors and operatives that were pivotal to Obama’s reelection, but also streams of cash — including secret and corporate money — that Obama once eschewed.


“There is a long list of organizations that want to see this effort be successful, including a whole set of organizations on the progressive side, and also so many entities on the private sector side and local and community-based organizations,” said Filipic.

That long list includes many of the corporate groups who would benefit from millions of people signing up for insurance. Enroll America’s board includes senior officials from Blue Shield of California, Kaiser Permanente and Teva Pharmaceuticals.

Enroll America’s advisory council is a cross-section of the most influential health-related organizations, companies and unions in the country, including: AARP, Aetna, CVS Caremark, the NAACP and the Service Employees International Union.

The money push began Inauguration weekend when hundreds of Obama donors, Democratic operatives and corporate representatives gathered at Washington’s Newseum for a meeting of Obama’s National Finance Committee.

"There is a whole long list of fights we won in the first term that we have to implement now,” Carson, OFA’s director, said. “First among those is the challenge and opportunity to get 40 million Americans on health care insurance through the implementation of the Affordable Care Act.”

Carson called Enroll America the “group that’s going to be leading the charge on health care implementation.”

Filipic, who worked on Obama’s 2008 campaign and then at the Democratic National Committee, praised the assembled donors. It was “due to the incredible work you and many people did” that the Affordable Care Act passed, she said, adding, “Enroll America is going to be a major ACA enrollment campaign.”

Filipic’s appearance at the Newseum meeting seemed to be partly intended to make Obama donors comfortable giving to Enroll America, some attendees told POLITICO. The group saw its budget soar from $1 million when it was founded in 2010 to $3.9 million in 2011, according to tax filings. It would not say how much it raised last year, nor whether it planned to disclose its donors.

But it got nearly $350,000 in seed funding from the California Healthcare Foundation and United Health Foundation, according to tax filings identified by the Capital Research Center.

Families USA, which worked closely with the White House to get the health law passed, also saw its revenue increased dramatically — from $4.3 million in 2010 to $11 million in 2011, according to its tax filings — as it became clear that the fight over Obamacare wasn’t dying down, but continuing in Congress and the courts, and then to the states and the regulators.

Other big money White House allies expected to play major roles in the Obamacare fight include the corporate-funded trade group Business Forward, the think tank Center for American Progress and the liberal donor network Democracy Alliance.


Business Forward, which is run by Democratic operatives and leveraged industry support to help pass the fiscal cliff deal, is planning something similar on Obamacare, including February meetings on the West Coast between business leaders and Obama Health and Human Services officials. It also sponsored the Newseum conference where Filipic pitched Enroll to donors, and at which leaders from CAP and the Democracy Alliance appeared, along with Obama campaign manager Jim Messina and former President Bill Clinton.

But leaders of Enroll, Families USA and Business Forward say their groups will be entirely non-partisan and that they’re only interested in good policy, with Filipic and Families stressing that their goal is simply to get insurance coverage to as many people as possible.

White House spokesman Bradley Carroll declined to comment on whether the White House was directly involved in Enroll, which has been active for a while but with a much lower profile.

“The administration is committed to helping Americans get access to affordable health care, and appreciates the experience, energy and commitment of groups like Enroll America working toward the same goal,” he said.

Organizing for Action did not respond to questions about its list or relationship with Enroll America. But generally, Filipic said her group will lean on “the strength of the Obama organization” and conceded “absolutely there are comparisons there and frankly, we learned a lot of lessons about how to do it well.”

Asked whether the group would be able to access Organizing for Action’s vaunted email list, which POLITICO has learned includes as many as 20 million addresses, Filipic said “that would be a question for OFA more than for us.”

The right isn’t just ceding the battle, either. Despite spending significant resources unsuccessfully trying to kill Obamacare in Congress and then in the Supreme Court, deep-pocketed conservative groups, like the Koch brothers-backed Cato Institute, have been urging states not to implement Obamacare’s health insurance exchanges and Medicaid expansions.

Adversaries have also focused on niche pieces of the legislation, notably through the dozens of suits filed against the contraception coverage requirements. Conservative think tanks and analysts pump out studies and forecasts that insurance premiums will skyrocket, making it more of an “Unaffordable Care Act.” America's Health Insurance Plans, the trade group, has waged a viral campaign arguing that any increases in premiums in 2014 are the fault of the law, not the insurance industry.

But advocates say covering the uninsured will help control rising health care costs. Insured people are more likely to take care of small health problems in a doctor’s office before they become big expensive ones in an emergency room. There won’t be as much inefficient cost shifting to pay for the uninsured.

And once people have a “benefit,” it’s hard for politicians to take it away — or for Republicans to renew efforts to repeal it if they win control of the Senate or the White House.


But to get the benefit, people have to sign up.

Enroll America’s strategy is to advise state leaders and target the uninsured themselves to help them navigate the new system, which includes expanded Medicaid, tax credits to subsidize insurance, and new online marketplaces called health insurance exchanges.

It plans to use microtargeting, just like the Obama campaign did, to identify where the uninsured live, neighborhood by neighborhood. So far, its demographics data shows that the uninsured are typically young adults, male, from communities of color or low-income areas. Some have had bad experiences with insurance companies in the past, finding that the policies were too expensive or hard to understand.

Enroll has also found that the uninsured are more likely to take action if they can talk with a real person. Similar to the Obama campaign, the group hopes to work with volunteers to knock on doors and walk people through the process.

“We certainly know from recent successful electoral campaigns — but also from different successes in the private sector — that we have to really develop a granular list, in this case of the uninsured, and study what motivates them,” Filipic said. “That will be an important part of the work we do.”

They’re dealing with a public that just doesn’t really know what’s in the law. Enroll America focus groups found that 78 percent of the uninsured have no idea that they could be eligible for help obtaining coverage as soon as Oct. 1 of this year.

Business Forward — which is funded by corporate members that have a major stake in implementation, including AT&T, Comcast, Dow, Ford, Google, McDonalds, Microsoft, Verizon and Walmart — intends to bring to bear the cache of the opposite end of the socio-economic spectrum.

“During the health care debate, we brought officials around the country to meet with business leaders,” said Business Forward president Jim Doyle, who worked in the Clinton administration. “We’re interested in doing more on implementation because a lot of the business leaders we work with are interested in it,” he said, but he stressed, “We haven’t spoken to Organizing for Action or Enroll America about joint programming yet. We wouldn’t rule it out.”

Sister Carol Keehan, president and CEO of the Catholic Health Association and a member of Enroll’s board of directors, said having coverage expansion in law won’t do any good if people don’t sign up for it.

“We knew that enrollment was critical if we were going to help the people the act was explicitly targeted to help,” said Keehan, whose organization contributed $100,000 to Enroll.

And she thinks the public will respond. “At heart, the people of this nation are kind and caring and they sympathize with people who have three children and have no insurance for them,” she said.

Byron Tau contributed to this report.

This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 10:28 p.m. on January 31, 2013.
 
© 2013 POLITICO LLC
 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 01, 2013, 08:41:38 AM
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323374504578217720567917856.html


ObamaCare's Broken Promises

Every one of the main claims made for the law is turning out to be false. .

Article
Comments (270)



By DANIEL P. KESSLER

As the federal government moves forward to implement President Obama's Affordable Care Act, the Department of Health and Human Services is slated to spend millions of dollars promoting the unpopular legislation. In the face of this publicity blitz, it is worth remembering that the law was originally sold largely on four grounds—all of which have become increasingly implausible.

• Lower health-care costs. One key talking point for ObamaCare was that it would reduce the cost of insurance, especially for non-group insurance. The president, citing the work of several health-policy experts, claimed that improved care coordination, investments in information technology, and more efficient marketing through exchanges would save the typical family $2,500 per year.

That was then. Now, even advocates for the law acknowledge that premiums are going up. In analyses conducted for the states of Wisconsin, Minnesota and Colorado, Jonathan Gruber of MIT forecasts that premiums in the non-group market will rise by 19% to 30% due to the law. Other estimates are even higher. The actuarial firm Milliman predicts that non-group premiums in Ohio will rise by 55%-85%. Maine, Oregon and Nevada have sponsored their own studies, all of which reach essentially the same conclusion.
 


Some champions of the law argue that this misses the point, because once the law's new subsidies are taken into account, the net price of insurance will be lower. This argument is misleading. It fails to consider that the money for the subsidies has to come from somewhere. Although debt-financed transfer payments may make insurance look cheaper, they do not change its true social cost.
 
• Smaller deficits. Increases in the estimated impact of the law on private insurance premiums, along with increases in the estimated cost of health care more generally, have led the Congressional Budget Office to increase its estimate of the budget cost of the law's coverage expansion. In 2010, CBO estimated the cost per year of expanding coverage at $154 billion; by 2012, the estimated cost grew to $186 billion. Yet CBO still scores the law as reducing the deficit.

How can this be? The positive budget score turns on the fact that the estimated revenues to pay for the law have risen along with its costs. The single largest source of these revenues? Money taken from Medicare in the form of lower Medicare payment rates, mostly in the law's out-years. Since the law's passage, however, Congress and the president have undone various scheduled Medicare cuts—including some prescribed by the law itself.
 
Put aside the absurdity that savings from Medicare—the country's largest unfunded liability—can be used to finance a new entitlement. The argument that health reform decreases the deficit is even worse. It depends on Congress and the president not only imposing Medicare cuts that they have proven unwilling to make but also imposing cuts that they have already specifically undone, most notably to Medicare Advantage, a program that helps millions of seniors pay for private health plans.
 
• Preservation of existing insurance. After the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of health reform in June 2012, President Obama said, "If you're one of the more than 250 million Americans who already have health insurance, you will keep your insurance." This theme ran throughout the selling of ObamaCare: People who have insurance would not have their current arrangements disrupted.
 
This claim is obviously false. Indeed, disruption of people's existing insurance is one of the law's stated goals. On one hand, the law seeks to increase the generosity of policies that it deems too stingy, by limiting deductibles and mandating coverage that the secretary of Health and Human Services thinks is "essential," whether or not the policyholder can afford it. On the other hand, the law seeks to reduce the generosity of policies that it deems too extravagant, by imposing the "Cadillac tax" on costly insurance plans.
 
Employer-sponsored insurance has already begun to change. According to the annual Kaiser/HRET Employer Health Benefits Survey, the share of workers in high-deductible plans rose to 19% in 2012 from 13% in 2010.

That's just the intended consequences. One of the law's unintended consequences is that some employers will drop coverage in response to new regulations and the availability of subsidized insurance in the new exchanges. How many is anybody's guess. In 2010, CBO estimated that employer-sponsored coverage would decline by three million people in 2019; by 2012, CBO's estimate had doubled to six million.

• Increased productivity. In 2009, the president's Council of Economic Advisers concluded that health reform would reduce unemployment, raise labor supply, and improve the functioning of labor markets. According to its reasoning, expanding insurance coverage would reduce absenteeism, disability and mortality, thereby encouraging and enabling work.
 
This reasoning is flawed. The evidence that a broad coverage expansion would improve health is questionable. Some studies have shown that targeted coverage can improve the health of certain groups. But according to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Economic Research Initiative on the Uninsured, "evidence is lacking that health insurance improves the health of non-elderly adults." More recent work by Richard Kronick, a health-policy adviser to former President Bill Clinton, concludes "there is little evidence to suggest that extending insurance coverage to all adults would have a large effect on the number of deaths in the U.S."
 
The White House economic analysis also fails to consider the adverse consequences of income-based subsidies on incentives. The support provided by both the Medicaid expansion and the new exchanges phases out as a family's income rises. But, as I and others have pointed out in these pages, income phaseouts create work disincentives like taxes do, because they reduce the net rewards to work. Further, the law imposes taxes on employers who fail to provide sufficiently generous insurance, with exceptions for part-time workers and small firms. On net, it is hard to see how health reform will make labor markets function better.
 
Some believe that expanding insurance coverage is a moral imperative regardless of its cost. Most supporters of the law, however, use more nuanced arguments that depend on assumptions that are increasingly impossible to defend. If we are ever to have an honest debate about entitlement spending, we will need to distinguish these positions from one another—and see them for what they really are, rather than what we wish they would be.
 
Mr. Kessler is a professor of business and law at Stanford University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.
 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: dario73 on February 01, 2013, 09:03:05 AM
What can be expected from a legislation that needed to be passed first so that then we could find out what was in it?

I blame the entire Democratic party, I blame those Republicans that made deals to allow this sham to go through and I blame the Supreme Court who made the argument for the White House to allow it to stand. Frankly, the White House didn't have any argument as to how their health reform is allowed by the constitution.

Four more years of destruction.

We told you so, suckers!!!!!!!!!!!!
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: chadstallion on February 01, 2013, 12:59:22 PM
What can be expected from a legislation that needed to be passed first so that then we could find out what was in it?
fine. so when the parts come up that dont work repeal / amend / change those parts. fine tune it.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 04, 2013, 08:38:00 AM
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-03/obama-says-u-s-needs-revenue-along-with-spending-cuts.html


LOL - More taxes coming bitches! 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 04, 2013, 10:52:16 AM
http://weaselzippers.us/2013/02/04/obama-misses-legal-deadline-to-submit-a-budget-white-house-says-they-have-no-idea-when-or-if-he-plans-to-release-one


Ridiculous.   Yet he blames blames blames blames everyone else.   Pathetic 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 04, 2013, 12:16:36 PM
Treasury nominee Jack Lew accused of breaking Medicare law by Republicans
 


By Stephen Dinan
 
-
 
The Washington Times
 
Monday, February 4, 2013

Senate Republicans are sending a letter Monday to the White House budget office arguing that President Obama’s nominee to be treasury secretary, Jacob “Jack” Lew, was complicit in breaking a Medicare budget law.

The letter comes the same day that Mr. Obama officially missed another deadline in the budget law by failing to submit his blueprint on the first Monday in February. The president has only met that deadline once in his tenure.

On the Medicare funding issue, federal law requires that if the program’s funding becomes imbalanced, its trustees are required to issue a warning, and the president is required to send Congress a plan to repair the finances.

Then-President George W. Bush did just that during his time in the White House, but Mr. Obama has never filed the submission.

“The administration has failed each of the last four years to response to these funding warnings despite receiving several communications from Congress urging them to comply,” eight Republicans on the Senate Budget Committee said in a letter to the White House.

Mr. Lew was director of the White House budget office in 2010 and 2011 during the time when the Medicare submission was required, and the senators said they want to know whether he was complicit in ignoring the law.

As the head of the Treasury Department the secretary is chairman of the Board of Medicare Trustees.

Sen. Jeff Sessions, the ranking Republican on the Budget Committee, has repeatedly demanded the Obama administration comply with the Medicare law.

He and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul D. Ryan wrote Mr. Obama in 2011 demanding he submit the plan required by law.
 
But budget and notification laws are routinely ignored.
 
Mr. Obama has missed this year’s legal deadline for submitting a budget, blaming the late passage of the tax increase deal early last month.
 
And Congress hasn’t passed a budget since 2009, even though the Budget Act of 1974 requires it to adopt a budget resolution by April 15 every year.


Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/feb/4/treasury-nominee-jack-lew-accused-breaking-medicar/#ixzz2JxldekNV
 Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 05, 2013, 09:10:14 AM
ICE ex-chief: Nondeport rules would’ve spared 9/11 hijackers



By Stephen Dinan
 
-
 
The Washington Times
 
Monday, February 4, 2013


 
The former chief of deportations in the Bush administration will testify to Congress on Tuesday that President Obama's new nondeportation policies would have let the Sept. 11 hijackers remain in the country even if they had been picked up in the months before their deadly attacks.
 
And the current chief of the union that represents Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents will tell the House Judiciary Committee that ICE agents are now required to wait until most illegal immigrants have three misdemeanor convictions before they can be arrested and put in deportation proceedings.
 
"Most Americans would be surprised to know that immigration agents are regularly prohibited from enforcing the two most fundamental sections of United States immigration law," said Chris Crane, president of National Immigration and Customs Enforcement Council. "According to ICE policy, in most cases, immigration agents can no longer arrest persons solely for entering the United States illegally."
 
As momentum builds in the Democrat-controlled Senate to pass a broad bill legalizing illegal immigrants, House Republicans kick off their side of the debate Tuesday with a two-part hearing looking at the need for legal immigration and reviewing Mr. Obama's record on enforcement and border security.
 
Mr. Obama's first four years were characterized by record deportations of aliens with criminal records, but fewer rank-and-file illegal immigrants being deported.
 
His administration has issued several new policies that direct agents to focus on those with serious criminal histories, and it has created a new program for illegal immigrant young adults brought here by their parents to give them official legal status.
 
His moves have won support from immigrant-rights advocates, who say he's blunted the worst abuses of a broken immigration system, but have earned derision from those who want to see a crackdown on illegal immigration.
 
The Judiciary Committee will hear from eight witnesses, including San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro, who delivered the keynote address at Democratic National Convention last year, and former ICE Director Julie Myers Wood, who ran the agency for the last few years of the Bush administration.
 
Mr. Castro will tell the committee that there is bipartisan momentum for getting a bill done, and will defend the Obama administration's record.
 
"In Texas, we know firsthand that this administration has put more boots on the ground along the border than at any time in our history, which has led to unprecedented success in removing dangerous individuals with criminal records," he said in his prepared testimony.
 
But Ms. Wood will tell the committee the focus on criminals "poses a potentially serious threat to our system."
 
"It sends a message to those that seek to cause harm: if they can come in the United States illegally, but not immediately commit any additional crimes, they are likely to be left alone. Left alone to plan, take steps, cause harm," she said.
 
She said the administration policy would have overlooked "individuals like several of the 9/11 hijackers, who 'merely' lied to obtain state identification documents or on their visa applications."
 
The House hearing comes as the Republican Party is struggling with how to handle immigration.
 
Four Republican senators are working with four Democratic senators on legislation to legalize illegal immigrants. But House Republicans have been less open about how far they are willing to go.
 
"Before we rush to judgment, we need to carefully look at the current laws on the books to see what is and isn't working," said Rep. Robert W. Goodlatte, Virginia Republican and the new chairman of the Judiciary Committee. "Reforming our nation's immigration laws is a massive undertaking and is too important to not examine each piece in detail."
 
Frank Sharry, executive director of America's Voice, an advocacy group, said Tuesday's hearing will tell voters something about the Republicans' direction.
 
"Will this be the same old anti-immigrant wine in a new bottle? Or is the GOP finally ready to start fresh on immigration and work to rebuild its relationship with Latinos and other growing parts of the electorate?" he


Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/feb/4/ice-ex-chief-nondeport-rules-wouldve-spared-911-hi/#ixzz2K2slP63J
 Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: dario73 on February 05, 2013, 09:15:23 AM
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-03/obama-says-u-s-needs-revenue-along-with-spending-cuts.html


LOL - More taxes coming bitches! 

But, somehow, it is the Republicans' fault.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 06, 2013, 06:26:02 PM

Obama to Dismantle Small Business Administration, Increase Foreign Aid

Posted: 12/21/2012 1:02 pm

 
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lloyd-chapman/small-business-fiscal-cliff_b_2341324.html

 


Data from the U.S. Census Bureau tells us that small businesses are responsible for more than 90 percent of net new jobs in America. Small businesses generate more than half of the GDP, half of the private sector workforce, and 90 percent of all U.S. exporters are small businesses.

I'm concerned that while America is facing the worst economic downturn of the last 80 years, federal programs assisting small businesses could disappear -- a scenario that could play out as Congress and the president negotiate budget cuts to avoid the fiscal cliff.

President Obama has announced plans to essentially dismantle the Small Business Administration (SBA) by combining it with the Department of Commerce. The Department of Commerce represents the interests of our nation's largest corporate giants, not small businesses.

For more than 30 years, Fortune 500 firms, particularly in the defense and aerospace industries, have pushed to end the federal programs mandating that 23 percent of federal funds be awarded to small businesses. The easiest way to do this is to close the SBA altogether. Those big companies want 100 percent of federal contracts and subcontracts, and they've spent hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying to end federal small business programs. Combining an agency with the Department of Commerce is an easy way to get rid of that agency with minimal resistance from the public.

Small businesses won't have anyone in their corner if the Department of Commerce, with its close ties and loyalties to large corporations, absorbs the SBA. Small businesses stimulate job growth, and without a specific entity supporting them, our economy can't improve.

Following President Obama's proposal to combine the SBA and the Department of Commerce, Joe Lieberman (Ind-CT) put a bill through congress that would allow the president to combine federal agencies. But the agencies that President Obama has proposed combining are some of the smallest in Washington. I think it's quite obvious that combining the proposed agencies would have an insignificant impact on the fiscal deficit. The SBA's 2012 budget, at $985 million, is a drop in the bucket compared to what is allotted to some of the other agencies, like the $530.6 billion given to the Department of Defense for the same year. Cutting funds from bigger agencies would be the smart solution, if the real goal was to save money.

President Obama claims that combining the SBA with the Department of Commerce will save $300 million per year, but that's chump change compared to the $9 billion he wants to add to our foreign aid budget in 2013. If the goal really is to save American taxpayers some money, why is President Obama trying to close the only agency supporting the 28 million small businesses that are our nation's chief job creators, but still trying to increase our foreign aid budget?

To put things in perspective, the proposed $9 billion increase in foreign aid per year could fund the SBA for a decade.

House Speaker John Boehner (Rep-OH) recently acknowledged that small businesses create the majority of net new jobs in America and tax hikes on small businesses could cost the nation about 700,000 jobs. I predict that if President Obama does combine the SBA with the Department of Commerce, within three to five years, federal programs for small businesses will no longer be in place and Fortune 500 companies will have hijacked 100 percent of federal contracts.

President Obama's proposal to save money by combing the SBA and the Department of Commerce is ridiculous. The amount of money that will be saved by combining these small agencies will be statistically insignificant. The damage to our economy and small businesses will cost the nation millions of jobs and cause the economy irreparable harm.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 07, 2013, 01:08:38 AM
If the Food and Drug Administration gets its way, your trip to the grocery store could get a tad pricier.

Supermarket owners argue a pending federal food-labeling rule that stems from the new health care law would overburden thousands of grocers and convenience store owners -- to the tune of $1 billion in the first year alone.

Store owner Tom Heinen said the industry's profit margins already are razor thin. "When you incur a significant cost, there is no way that that doesn't get passed on to the customer in some form," he said.

The rule stems from an ObamaCare mandate that restaurants provide nutrition information on menus. Most in the restaurant industry were supportive of the idea, but when the FDA decided to extend the provision to also affect thousands of supermarkets and convenience stores, the backlash was swift.

The proposed regulation would require store owners to label prepared, unpackaged foods found in salad bars and food bars, soups and bakery items. Erik Lieberman, regulatory counsel at the Food Marketing Institute, said testing foods for nutritional data will require either expensive software or even more costly off-site laboratory assessments.

Lieberman said failure to get it right comes with stiff penalties: "If you get it wrong, it's a federal crime, and you could face jail time and thousands of dollars worth of fines."

The FDA says much of ObamaCare is aimed at helping Americans live healthier lives, and these proposed labeling requirements would help them do just that. In the text of the proposed regulation, the FDA states: "[The information] should help consumers limit excess calorie intake and understand how the foods that they purchase at these establishments fit within their daily caloric and other nutritional needs."

An Executive Order issued by President Obama in 2011 says agencies are supposed to calculate a cost-benefit analysis for each new regulation and attempt to use the least burdensome regulatory methods possible. Critics of the FDA's food labeling proposal say the agency didn't comply.

"They are required to do it, and they didn't," Lieberman said. "They simply said, 'We can't quantify a benefit from this rule,' and that's because they really can't."

The FDA said Wednesday it has received hundreds of public comments on the proposal and will take them into consideration when finalizing the regulation. It is likely to be released later this spring, and the agency says it will "include a final economic analysis."

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2986123/posts

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 07, 2013, 09:05:05 AM
President Barack Obama’s newly-named nominee to run the Department of the Interior, REI CEO Sally Jewell, sought and received a waiver from Obamacare requirements for her outdoor clothing and equipment company in 2011.
 
The Washington Examiner’s Charlie Spiering dug up the revelation Thursday, noting that Obama welcomed Jewell to the White House in 2009 to jointly argue for the passage of Obamacare.
 


Ads by Google
 
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Obama held REI up as a model company.
 
“And then REI, which has to be fit since they’re a fitness company,” Obama joked during the White House meeting on May 12, 2009, “has been doing work that allows them to provide health care coverage, health insurance, not only to their full-time employees but also their part-time employees. Every single employee is covered, but part of the reason they’re able to do it is because they put a big emphasis on prevention and wellness.”
 
Two years later, Jewell secured an exemption from the law for REI.
 
REI received an Obamacare waiver around the same time that nearly 20 percent of the businesses in House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s Northern California district received waivers.
 
Follow Vince on Twitter
 


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Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2013/02/07/obamas-new-interior-secretary-nominee-received-obamacare-waiver-for-her-company/#ixzz2KEYiJqDF
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 08, 2013, 06:48:20 PM
Source NYT

February 8, 2013, 6:21 pmComment

Lew’s Cayman Islands Fund a Likely Issue at Confirmation Hearings
 
By JONATHAN WEISMAN





As recently as 2010, Jack Lew, President Obama‘s nominee to be the next secretary of the Treasury, had $56,000 invested in a CitiGroup venture capital fund based in the Cayman Islands’ notorious Ugland House, a building whose mailboxes are home to nearly 19,000 corporate entities, many of them tax shelters.

The investment has been in public documents for years and drew no attention when Mr. Lew was confirmed to be deputy secretary of state in 2009 and director of the White House Office of Management and Budget in 2010.

But the fund is coming to light as Mr. Obama and Congressional Democrats are zeroing on taxes lost to off-shore entities, including hedge funds, as a way to stave off $1 trillion in across-the-board spending cuts set to begin March 1.

Aides in both parties said it was quite likely to come up during his confirmation hearing Wednesday. Senate Democrats are struggling to come up with a package of spending cuts and tax loophole closings that could stave off the automatic spending cuts — known as sequestration — for at least three months. Tax breaks for hedge fund managers and offshore tax shelters are a prime target.

The Finance Committee held hearings in 2008 burrowing in on Ugland House, a nondescript white building in George Town, Cayman Islands, that shelters a bewildering number of corporate headquarters.

“Today we will take a look at some ostensibly crowded halls, those of the Ugland House in the Cayman Islands,” Senator Max Baucus of Montana, the committee’s chairman, said, opening the hearing. “That is a remarkable five-story building that the G.A.O. tells us has some 18,857 tenants. Today we will examine whether many of those tenants are feasting at America’s taxpayers’ expense.”

Mr. Lew divested himself of the CitiGroup Venture Capital International Growth Partnership in 2010. When confirmed as budget director in 2010, he sold the investment at a loss, for $54,418.

“Jack Lew paid all of his taxes and reported all of the income, gains and losses from the investment on his tax returns,” said Eric Schultz, a White House spokesman. “The existence of Mr. Lew’s investment is not news to the Senate. Mr. Lew disclosed the investment in his prior confirmations, before three separate committees. There are no new facts that provide a basis for senators to reach a different conclusion about Mr. Lew’s nomination than they reached twice before in this administration.”

Mr. Lew did not create, manage or operate the fund, officials said. Republican aides did not suggest any illegality or tax cheating with the disclosure. Indeed, Republicans on the Finance Committee had leaped to the defense of Henry Paulson, President George W. Bush‘s last Treasury secretary, when numerous Cayman Island investments surfaced during his confirmation.

Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, then the Finance Committee’s ranking Republican, accused the president of hypocrisy.

“President Obama has been almost obsessively critical of offshore investments,” Mr. Grassley said. “He called Ugland House ‘either the biggest building or the biggest tax scam on record.’ That makes this Cayman Islands investment of his top official and now Treasury secretary nominee worthy of attention. The irony is thick. Members of the Finance Committee will question Mr. Lew about his foreign investments at the hearing.”
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 11, 2013, 05:56:51 AM
Obama weighing executive actions on housing, gays and other issues
By Zachary A. Goldfarb, Published: February 10
President Obama is considering a series of new executive actions aimed at working around a recalcitrant Congress, including policies that could allow struggling homeowners to refinance their mortgages, provide new protections for gays and lesbians, make buildings more energy-efficient and toughen regulations for coal-fired power plants, according to people outside the White House involved in discussions on the issues.

One of the first orders is expected this week, when the Obama administration will call for the creation of new standards on what critical private-sector companies should do to protect their computer systems from hackers.

The moves underscore Obama’s increasingly aggressive use of executive authority, including 23 administrative actions on gun violence last month and previous orders that delayed deportations of young illegal immigrants and will lower student loan payments.

These and other potential actions suggest that Obama is likely to rely heavily on executive powers to set domestic policy in his second term. One White House official said that while the president does not see the actions as substitutes for more substantial legislation, he also wants to move forward on top priorities.

But the approach risks angering Republican lawmakers in Congress, who say they are leery of granting the executive branch too much power and have already clashed with Obama over the issue. In a ruling last month, a federal appeals court said Obama exceeded his constitutional powers in naming several people to the National Labor Relations Board while the Senate was on a break.

“It is a very dangerous road he’s going down contrary to the spirit of the Constitution,” Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) said in a recent interview. “Just because Congress doesn’t act doesn’t mean the president has a right to act.”

The administration declined to provide details on timing of the possible actions; one White House official said the moves to boost housing, retrofit buildings, offer same-sex protections or issue new environmental rules were not imminent. Obama may touch on some of the actions in broad terms during his State of the Union address Tuesday, but he is unlikely to lay them out in detail.

One of the more significant moves under consideration is in housing. Obama is weighing whether to use his executive authority to give more of the country’s nearly 11 million struggling homeowners a chance to refinance at today’s ultra-low interest rates, according to the Treasury Department and others in talks with the administration on the issue.

Obama already has used his executive powers to make refinancing easier for people with loans backed by government-financed mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. But the new plan could extend the opportunity to people who are underwater on their privately backed mortgages, which have not been eligible for the same relief.

The plan, if adopted, would likely be aimed at homeowners who have otherwise kept up with their mortgage payments but have been unable to refinance because the loan against their home exceeds its depressed value. Many Republicans in Congress have balked at the idea amid concerns over the cost to taxpayers.

Michael A. Stegman, a senior Treasury Department official, said late last month that the administration would “consider non-legislative means at our disposal to help responsible . . . homeowners access these low rates.” But he added, “the legislative route would be preferable.”

The White House is also reviewing whether the president should issue an executive order offering protections to gays and lesbians who work for government contractors. Obama decided against issuing such an order during the presidential campaign last year, disappointing many gay-rights activists.

But two people familiar with White House thinking said the president may reverse that decision and issue the order if Congress does not pass broader legislation offering protection for gays in the workplace.

In trying to slow climate change, Obama is considering acting through the Environmental Protection Agency to issue new rules governing carbon emissions by existing power plants, according to three people familiar with White House discussions. The move would face fierce corporate opposition but is among the top goals of environmentalists.

The executive order calling for new cybersecurity standards would apply to industries such as transportation that are regulated by executive branch agencies. It also would increase the amount of computer threat data that the government shares with companies.

Throughout his first term, Obama turned frequently to the use of executive powers in the national-security arena, pursuing a campaign to overturn Libya’s government and making use of drones to kill suspected terrorists overseas. Lawmakers of both parties have sparred with the administration this week over secretive anti-terrorism programs employing drone strikes and targeted killings.

Obama’s moves on domestic policies began more recently after he concluded that Republicans in Congress were unlikely to pass many of the major items on his agenda.

Under the slogan “We Can’t Wait,” Obama took actions beginning in late 2011 to boost the housing market, lower payments on student loans and delay deportation of young illegal immigrants. He also installed key officials in regulatory agencies without congressional approval, producing loud complaints from Republicans.

In the months ahead, some people close to the White House said Obama must weigh the prospect of making progress on his priorities with the risk that acting aggressively could hurt the chances for more substantial legislation on Capitol Hill.

“That has to be part of an analysis of what are his powers under the Constitution and statutes of the United States,” said John D. Podesta, a former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, who used executive actions in the face of a hostile Congress in his second term. “I think given where he wants to go and where Congress has blocked and stalled and Republicans are recalcitrant to do anything . . . he’s going to move.”

In the realm of economic policy, Obama may expand a program — the Better Buildings Initiative — which seeks to hire workers to rehab federal and private-sector buildings to make them more efficient. Officials say the cost of the program is offset by energy savings.

On climate change, EPA is due this spring to issue final carbon-emission regulations for new power plants, using powers under the Clean Air Act. But Obama is also considering moving beyond that effort toward regulating carbon emissions from existing power plants.

A more ambitious plan to develop a market-based system known as “cap and trade” to control carbon emissions died in his first term, and appears unlikely to resurface soon.

On social policy, Obama is reconsidering whether to issue an executive order prohibiting federal contractors from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. When he decided not to issue such an order last year, the White House said it would prefer to pass a law applying to gays and lesbians in the workplace.

But if Congress seems unlikely to act on the broader legislation — called the Employment Non-Discrimination Act — officials have signaled to people working on the issue outside the administration that the president would likely consider issuing an executive order, which can only affect government contractors.


Ellen Nakashima contributed to this report.





Time to impeach this asshole 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 11, 2013, 02:13:33 PM
Wheels coming off

ObamaCare policies will cost more, cover far fewer than promised
By BETSY MCCAUGHEY
Last Updated: 11:48 PM, February 10, 2013
Posted: 10:29 PM, February 10, 2013


 


Betsy McCaughey

The central parts of ObamaCare don’t roll out until 2014, but the wheels are already falling off this clunker. The latest news from four federal agencies is that 1) insurance will be a lot less affordable than Americans were led to expect, 2) fewer people than promised will get insurance and 3) millions of people who have coverage through a job now will lose it, thanks to the president’s “reforms.” Oh, and children are the biggest victims.

The Affordable Care Act is looking less and less affordable.

Start with the IRS’s new estimate for what the cheapest family plan will cost by 2016: $20,000 a year to cover two adults and three kids. And that will only cover 60 percent of medical bills, so add hefty out-of-pocket costs, too.
 


The next surprise is for parents who thought their kids would be covered by an employer. Sloppy wording in the law left that unclear until last week, when the IRS ruled that kids won’t be covered.

Starting in 2014, the law will require employers with 50 or more full-time employees to offer coverage or pay a penalty. “Affordable” coverage, that is — meaning the employee can’t be told to contribute more than 9.5 percent of his salary. For example, a worker earning $40,000 a year cannot be required to pay more than $3.800.

But the law doesn’t specifically mandate family coverage — and now the administration says that won’t be required.

You can see why: If the lowest-cost family plan (again, two adults and three kids) is to run a whopping $20,000, and if the employee’s contribution is limited to $3,800, the employer’s tab would be $16,200 — adding about $7.40 an hour to the cost of that employee. Wisely, the IRS announced on Jan. 30 that employers won’t have to pay for dependents.

But the Congressional Budget Office’s much-cited prediction that ObamaCare would leave only 30 million people uninsured by 2016 was based on the assumption that kids would be covered by employers. At the very least, employers insuring their workers for the first time to avoid the penalty are unlikely to do that.

So how will the kids be covered? They won’t. The IRS shocked the law’s advocates by announcing that the insurance exchanges won’t provide subsidies for a child whose parent is covered at work.

Nor will these parents be penalized for not insuring their children — the IRS will kindly consider the kids exempt from the mandate.

Also exempt are millions of people who’ll stay uninsured because their state is wisely choosing not to loosen Medicaid eligibility.

Some background: Despite President Obama’s promises to help solve the problem of the uninsured by making private health plans more affordable, the law expands coverage mainly by forcing states to loosen their Medicaid eligibility rules. But the Supreme Court ruled that the feds can’t command states in this way.

At first, the CBO said that ruling would only prevent 4 million people from gaining coverage — but more states than it expected are refusing to go along; it could well be 8 million more without coverage.

Oh, and the CBO last week also doubled its previous estimate on how many people will lose the health coverage they now get through work, upping the figure to 8 million by 2016 and 12 million by 2019. Several top consulting firms put the figures even higher.

Yet the biggest setback is that most states are refusing to set up insurance exchanges. The exchanges are supposed to sell the government-mandated plans and hand out taxpayer-funded subsidies to most enrollees.

Here’s the glitch. The law says that in states that refuse, the federal government can set up an exchange. But the law empowers only state exchanges, not federal ones, to hand out subsidies. The Obama administration says it will disregard the law and offer subsidies in all 50 states anyway, but the case will likely go to the Supreme Court.

If the courts uphold the clear language of the law, then some 8 million people in the affected states won’t be eligible for subsidies to cover that $20,000 (or more) insurance bill. That’s another 8 million without coverage.

All in all, at least 40 million people could be uninsured in 2016, only 9 million fewer than before the law was passed.

Expect the momentum for repealing this law to grow as its flaws, perverse incentives and faulty predictions come to light.

Betsy McCaughey is the author of “Beating ObamaCare.”
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 11, 2013, 02:48:00 PM
Obama’s hypocrisy on Jack Lew
By Marc A. Thiessen, Monday, February 11, 8:01 AM
In a brutal campaign ad last year, Barack Obama showed Mitt Romney warbling “America the Beautiful” while pictures of a sandy beach appeared and the ad declared: “He had millions in a Swiss bank account . . . tax havens like Bermuda … and the Cayman Islands.” It concluded: “Mitt Romney’s not the solution. He’s the problem.”

Well, apparently someone else is part of the “problem”: Obama’s nominee for Treasury secretary, Jack Lew.

It turns out Lew had $56,000 invested in a Citigroup venture capital fund based in . . . wait for it . . . the Cayman Islands. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), a member of the Finance Committee before which Lew will soon appear, declared, “The irony is thick,” pointing out that “President Obama has been almost obsessively critical of offshore investments.”

Grassley is right. Just last week, during a “60 Minutes” interview before the Super Bowl, Obama declared, “When you look at some of these deductions that certain folks are able to take advantage of, the average person can’t take advantage of them. The average person doesn’t have access to Cayman Island accounts.”

It’s a recurring theme for the president. In a 2009 speech, Obama focused his ire on “a building in the Cayman Islands that had over 12,000 businesses claim this building as their headquarters” — a building called Ugland House. Obama said, “And I’ve said before, either this is the largest building in the world or the largest tax scam. And I think the American people know which it is: The kind of tax scam that we need to end.”

Well, guess who was involved in the “largest tax scam” in the world? Jack Lew. According to the New York Times, Lew’s Cayman Islands fund was based in “the notorious Ugland House, a building whose mailboxes are home to nearly 19,000 corporate entities, many of them tax shelters.”

Someone else who was deeply concerned about Ugland House is the man who will consider Lew’s nomination, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.). In a 2008 hearing, Baucus said of Ugland House, “Many of those tenants are feasting at America’s taxpayers’ expense.” Now he must decide whether to confirm one of those tenants as our next secretary of the Treasury.

Lew’s defenders point out that his investment was “only” $56,000. Well, $56,000 may be a small amount in Washington and on Wall Street, but it is more than the annual income of the typical American family. They say that he sold his Cayman holdings for a loss three years ago. But Lew divested himself and sold his investment for a loss only when confirmed as director of the Office of Management and Budget. Before that, even as a senior State Department official, he had no problem parking his money offshore.

Democrats point out that Republican Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson also had investments in the Cayman Islands and that Republicans did not view this as disqualifying. But the ethics of investing in the Cayman islands is not the issue here. The issue is Obama’s hypocrisy.

Obama excoriated his opponent in last year’s election as being unfit for office for having such investments. So by Obama’s own standard, shouldn’t Lew be considered unfit for office as well? Obama specifically called the investment Lew held the world’s biggest “tax scam.” Should the man responsible for U.S. tax policy be someone the president says was involved in a “tax scam”? Someone the Democratic Senate Finance Committee chairman says was “feasting at America’s taxpayers’ expense”?

A White House spokesman, Eric Schultz, pointed out that Lew broke no laws and “paid all of his taxes and reported all of the income, gains and losses from the investment on his tax returns.” But last year Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt said that while Romney had not technically broken any laws by keeping his money in offshore tax havens, “is not technically breaking the law a high-enough standard for someone who wants to be president of the United States?” Well, is not technically breaking the law a high-enough standard for someone who wants to be secretary of the Treasury?

Investing in the Cayman Islands does not make Lew unfit to be Treasury secretary. But it does make him unfit to be Obama’s Treasury secretary.

Read more from Marc Thiessen’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 12, 2013, 05:37:25 AM
NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE          www.nationalreview.com           PRINT







Obama’s Hypocritic Oath


By Victor Davis Hanson

February 12, 2013 4:00 A.M.

 




Barack Obama has a habit of identifying a supposed crisis in collective morality, damning the straw men “them” who engage in such ethical lapses, soaring with rhetorical bromides — and then, to national quiet, doing more or less the exact things he once swore were ruining the country. Washington will always be a city of hypocrisies, as one would expect when astronomical amounts of money and political power collide. What is striking about the recent disclosures about Obama’s tenure is not that his embarrassments are all that different from embarrassments of other administrations, but that they are at odds entirely with almost everything Obama has professed. And that realization is starting to damage his presidency as much as its actual shortcomings.
 
Take the recent drone memo and the context in which it was leaked. When Harold Koh was dean of the Yale Law School, he used to berate the Bush administration for its supposedly criminal anti-terrorism policy. He went so far as to call President Bush “torturer in chief.” But as State Department legal counsel in the Obama administration, a metamorphosed Koh and others gave President Obama the go-ahead to up the Predator-drone kill tally tenfold over the Bush administration’s, and insisted that it was legal to kill American citizens suspected of al-Qaeda affiliations.
 
The centerpiece of Obama’s 2008 campaign was the simultaneous unlawfulness and superfluity of the Bush anti-terrorism protocols. But Obama embraced most of them while failing to implement any of his supposed correctives — such as trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a New York City courtroom, transferring Guantanamo inmates to prisons within the United States, and subjecting CIA agents to scrutiny for their enhanced interrogations. So what are we now left with? Historians will see American anti-terrorism policy post 9/11 as a Bush-Obama continuum — albeit with a vast expansion of targeted assassinations by the civil libertarian and Nobel laureate Obama. Oddly, there has never been any acknowledgment by the administration that Obama adopted the policies of his predecessor that he had once damned, much less that in the case of drone assassinations he far exceeded them, while most of his own innovations were quietly dropped.
 
Obama also promised a radical reform, both legal and spiritual, of the big-money nexus between Wall Street and the federal government. He especially jawboned firms that had taken federal bailout money and then given big bonuses to executives who had overseen losses — while he made frequent promises of implementing fair-share taxation and ending offshore tax avoidance, lobbyists in government, and the revolving door. Obama’s two appointments to the position of secretary of the Treasury scarcely meet his rhetorical flourishes. Timothy Geithner was a confessed tax dodger in a fashion that was both trivial and selfish. Treasury designate Jack Lew took a million-dollar bonus while a grandee at Citigroup, an ailing company that was a recipient of massive infusions of federal cash. Recent disclosures suggest that Lew had Caribbean offshore investments in the very Potemkin building in the Caymans that Obama so dramatically derided as symptomatic of 1-percenter pathology. Former budget director Peter Orszag went from the administration into a six-figure job at Citigroup. By Washington standards, none of this is unusual; but by the standard of Obama’s own sanctimonious rhetoric it is shocking.
 
Until the advent of the Obama administration, Bush was sharply criticized for adding $4 trillion to the national debt over eight years. His defense that he inherited a recession, that 9/11 sent the economy into a tailspin, and that he was funding two wars fell on deaf ears. Likewise, Bush’s explanation that, as a percentage of GDP, his deficits (on average 3.4 percent of GDP) over eight years were smaller than either Reagan’s (4.2 percent) or his father’s (4.3 percent) likewise was ignored. Yet Obama in just four years borrowed a trillion dollars more than Bush had in eight, and set a peacetime record of serial deficits averaging 8.7 percent of GDP. The problem is not just that Obama took a model of reckless spending and doubled it in half the time — Washington is full of wild spenders, both Democratic and Republican — but that Obama was zealous in his castigation of Bush’s much lower spending (“unpatriotic”) and strident in his vows to stop the borrowing, going so far as to vote against the debt ceiling while in the Senate and to promise as president to halve the deficit by the end of his first term.
 
It is hard to blame the president when the huge U.S. economy is showing a weak pulse. But Barack Obama did just that in repeatedly damning Bush for the 2007–09 recession. He is now in his fifth year of governance, and the economy has not seen a single month with the unemployment rate below 7.8 percent, when in the prior eight years there was not one month of unemployment above 7.8 percent. After over $5 trillion borrowed, by the end of Obama’s first term, the economy was contracting and unemployment was higher than when he began his presidency.
 
One of the keystones of Obama’s promised reset foreign policy was the premise that George Bush’s obstinacy had needlessly antagonized our enemies like Iran, North Korea, Syria, and Venezuela — and, in fact, most of the Arab world. But at the beginning of his second term, Iran refuses even to talk with his administration as it presses ahead with its nuclear program. North Korea just issued a video of an envisioned nuclear strike on New York City. And Syria has suffered 60,000 killed in a cruel civil war. Obama campaigned on the bad war in Iraq and the good war in Afghanistan, but when he entered office the war in Iraq was over, in terms of American losses, while the Afghan war was about to explode, costing more American lives since the end of 2008 than it had in the prior seven years since 2001. Add in the Benghazi disaster and the spread of Islamic extremism across North Africa from Egypt to Mali, and one could argue that the world is a more dangerous place than it was when George Bush left office. Presidents cannot be blamed for such events, but they can be called out for their hypocrisy when they have made the case that prior presidents were in fact culpable for chaos abroad.
 
There is a pattern here, and the list could be expanded: the Affordable Care Act, which will send health-insurance premiums skyrocketing; the bragging about new oil and gas development that came despite, not because of, administration action; the moralizing about the selfish and high-living 1 percent amid the president’s vacationing at Martha’s Vineyard, lavish entertaining, and golfing at tony links; and the platitudes about a new civility and a new politics while raising record amounts of money in order to blacken Mitt Romney as a sexist, racist, veritable crook, and near killer.
 
In 2008 Obama was not just a fierce critic but a sanctimonious critic of just the sorts of practices and protocols that he has later embraced. Why? Partly, Senator Obama was inexperienced and really believed that the presidency would be as easy a task as had been his opportunistic brief tenure as a senator. Partly, because during the 2007–08 campaign the media never asked questions of Obama in the manner that they did other candidates, he naturally assumed, quite correctly, that they were so invested in his symbolism that they would never critique him when he was president. And partly, as a man of the Left Obama believed that the means really are justified by the ends — and so the reactionary Bush should be judged by standards that can hardly apply to the egalitarian progressive Obama.
 
Will the abject hypocrisy continue for another four years? There is no reason to believe that Obama has become more circumspect and now understands that he cannot meet the very expectations he demanded of others, or that the media will try to salvage their tattered reputation by applying the same scrutiny to Obama that they did to others. But who knows — in 2016 we may see a young charismatic senator like the Barack Obama of 2007 who creates a messianic persona through hypnotizing the media, insisting that the incumbent is an utter failure, and promising “hope and change.”
 
— NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. His The Savior Generals will appear in the spring from Bloomsbury Books.
 
Permalink
 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 12, 2013, 05:53:02 AM

Obama Called Cayman Island Investments 'The Biggest Tax Scam on Record'


4:02 PM, Feb 11, 2013 • By DANIEL HALPER


In the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama called Cayman Island investments "the biggest tax scam on record." Now, in 2013, President Obama has nominated Jack Lew, who had $56,000 in Cayman Island investments, to be the next secretary of Treasury.
 
Here's Obama making the claim in 2008:
 


And here's the New York Times the other day reporting on Lew's investments:


As recently as 2010, Jack Lew, President Obama‘s nominee to be the next secretary of the Treasury, had $56,000 invested in a CitiGroup venture capital fund based in the Cayman Islands’ notorious Ugland House, a building whose mailboxes are home to nearly 19,000 corporate entities, many of them tax shelters.
 
The investment has been in public documents for years and drew no attention when Mr. Lew was confirmed to be deputy secretary of state in 2009 and director of the White House Office of Management and Budget in 2010.
 
But the fund is coming to light as Mr. Obama and Congressional Democrats are zeroing on taxes lost to off-shore entities, including hedge funds, as a way to stave off $1 trillion in across-the-board spending cuts set to begin March 1.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 12, 2013, 07:51:31 AM
Obama's Mortgage Crisis Working Group Falls Short Of Billing


Posted: 02/12/2013 1:32 am EST  |  Updated: 02/12/2013 8:32 am EST



WASHINGTON -- Hours before last year's State of the Union address, the Obama administration offered The Huffington Post an exclusive. During his speech, President Barack Obama would announce a new law enforcement unit aimed at exposing and prosecuting financial fraud behind the housing crisis. The unit would be co-chaired by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, a progressive champion who'd been pressuring the White House to get tougher on banks.

"This is a big achievement and something the entire progressive advocacy community wanted [with respect to] housing policy," a White House official said back then.

A year later, progressives said they consider the panel a disappointment and, possibly, a diversion to placate Schneiderman and homeowner advocates. The Justice Department said it doesn't know what the fuss is about.

"You described it as a unit that was announced to great fanfare," said Tony West, the number three man in the Justice Department, in an interview. "A lot of people have the misimpression that this is some type of prosecutorial department that was set up. What the working group is is exactly that. It is part of the financial fraud enforcement task force. It doesn't stand alone."

People could be forgiven for the misunderstanding. During his State of the Union address, Obama announced that the "special unit" of federal prosecutors and state attorneys general would investigate "the abusive lending and packaging of risky mortgages." The unit, he added "will hold accountable those who broke the law ... and help turn the page on an era of recklessness that hurt so many Americans."

Schneiderman's working group, critics said, has not lived up to that billing.

"I do not see much of a result," said former Rep. Brad Miller (D-N.C.), a bank critic who was considered by Schneiderman as a possible executive director of the working group. "It certainly has not had the ambition that it was touted as having a year ago. And it's certainly not had the resources that it was touted as having. It has certainly not been the core commission of this financial crisis."




The unit, known officially as the Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group, was not without accomplishment. At the time it was announced, Schneiderman was withholding support for a settlement between the U.S., state attorneys general and banks. The administration offered a deal: If he would drop his opposition to the settlement, he'd be granted additional investigative resources as part of a new unit that the president would unveil during the biggest speech of the year.

The White House said, "'We have to calm down the left. Let's create this thing and have another bite of the apple,'" said a high-level source familiar with the task force's development.

But anyone who has bobbed for apples knows they can be tough to bite. Shortly after the deal was announced, Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller, the lead advocate of the settlement and a Schneiderman rival, said publicly that his New York counterpart had been taken for a ride. Indeed, the deal came with an inherent catch-22: Schneiderman's leverage had come from his resistance to the settlement. Once he agreed to it, he found himself with less power. Top progressives interviewed for this story who know and like Schneiderman offered the same conclusion: He got played.

In its first months, the working group suffered several hiccups. The first was an absence of resources -- money and staff -- to conduct thorough investigations. When staffers eventually arrived, the task force still had to confront a haphazard inter-agency framework and leaders with wildly different approaches. A lack of cohesion between the groups and the absence of a single figure to, as the high-level source put it, "herd cats," made it difficult to build strong cases.

Attitudes towards the working group eventually changed. Early on, it had a reserve of good will.

"There were articles at the time from people who seemed to be in the know -- Mike Lux, Bob Kuttner, R.J. Eskow -- saying let's give this securitization task force a shot," said Miller. "This could be the core commission of this financial crisis, the thorough high profile investigation that never happened."

Today, those liberal champions have soured.

"We all wanted more resources applied to this," said Lux, a Democratic strategist who served as Obama's liaison to the progressive community during the transition. "We all wanted Schneiderman to work with DoJ because DoJ could provide the resources. We all thought it was good that there was this effort. We were demanding a deeper and broader investigation and we thought we got one. It turned out they didn't give that to us."

"I think Schneiderman is an honorable and a strong advocate, so I think he's been enormously frustrated by the barriers put up around him, when clearly this was a policy driven by a Justice Department that wanted to prop up the banks and an attorney general that doesn't have a pulse," said Robert Borosage of the liberal group Campaign for America's Future, who argued at the time of the settlement that the success of the unit would determine how smart a bargain it had been for progressives.

Simon Johnson, a Schneiderman backer and former top economist at the International Monetary Fund, said "it’s hard to see the progress so far as particularly impressive."

For defenders of the task force, these criticisms are taken in stride. It takes time to carry out investigations and critics were making judgements based off a tight calendar. Several cases were launched in the fall of 2012, suggesting that the task force may, indeed, just be revving up.

"Stay tuned," said West. "I think it has been quite a good process. If you could see the investigative matters that I know are underway and which we will see coming to fruition I think in the near term future, and if you could sort of see the talented folks i see ... working on these matters than maybe your view would be what mine is: That it worked out quite well."

In November, for example, Schneiderman's office filed a Martin Act complaint against Credit Suisse Securities LLC, alleging "fraudulent misrepresentations and omissions" to promote the sale of junk mortgage securities to investors. West said 15 Justice Department attorneys helped with the investigation and U.S. attorneys from around the country conducted 40 investigative interviews.

"It has worked out exactly the way, frankly, that we wanted to, which is identify those promising investigations and try to share information and data in a way that would enhance our ability to move those forward," said West.

But Borosage argued that Schneiderman would have filed the case regardless. And Miller said it was largely "copied and pasted" from a separate private lawsuit.

That same month, the SEC brought charges against J.P. Morgan Securities LLC, alleging it misled investors in residential mortgage-backed securities. The Justice Department also pointed to SEC charges against Credit Suisse Securities for misleading investors on residential mortgage-backed securities and another Martin Act lawsuit against J.P. Morgan by Schneiderman's office as evidence of the task force's growing activity.

The accomplishments that West cites may be notable. But for critics, there is always the question of whether more could have been done.

"There was a period of probably about month Schneiderman was pushing to get the task force going, while the statute of limitations were ticking," Miller said. "He seemed to be trying to get the task force to sit down, to pick an executive director, decide on staffing. He even looked at office space himself and he could not get a clear answer from any other members of the task force involved."

When the group did begin to ramp up, it struggled to manage different, often conflicting, objectives. The working group partner agencies include more than 10 state attorneys general offices (in addition to Schneiderman), the Securities and Exchange Commission, Department of Housing and Urban Development, HUD’s Office of Inspector General, the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s Office of Inspector General, the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the Federal Reserve Board’s Office of Inspector General, the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network

According to those involved in putting together cases, officials at the SEC were naturally disposed to striking quick settlements rather than carrying out long-term investigations. The Justice Department, meanwhile, was worried about shaking a recovering housing market and fragile banks.

Lux, in particular, pointed an accusatory finger at working group co-chairman Lanny Breuer, the assistant attorney general for the Justice Department Criminal Division, who has said he will leave his post next month.

"Lanny wanted to go back to a law firm that represented banks after he was done," said Lux. "He didn't want to prosecute the banks." After struggling with whether to be quoted leveling such a personal charge, Lux became comfortable with his gripes. "Come to think of this, this can all be on the record. I don't give a f--k."

Breuer did not respond to an email request for comment. But in a September 2012 speech before the New York bar, he did express worry that "innocent employees" could lose their jobs if indictments caused a bank to fail.

"In reaching every charging decision, we must take into account the effect of an indictment on innocent employees and shareholders," Breuer said "Those are the kinds of considerations in white collar crime cases that literally keep me up at night, and which must play a role in responsible enforcement."

Breuer's sleep notwithstanding, West said that the working group aggressively follows the evidence regardless of where it leads. "We don't hesitate to be aggressive, to be creative, to be careful but resolute in bringing cases against institutions or individuals that we need to hold accountable," he said when asked about Breuer's prosecutorial philosophy. "It's as simple as that."

Or not so simple. After the interview, a Justice Department representative who sat in on the interview, emailed HuffPost a section of the U.S. Attorney's Manual on "collateral consequences." It says, "Prosecutors may consider the collateral consequences of a corporate criminal conviction or indictment in determining whether to charge the corporation with a criminal offense and how to resolve corporate criminal cases."

Whether driven by Breuer's presence or not, the working group suffered from what the high-level source called "leaked leverage." With different actors wanting slightly different outcomes, it closed cases that may have potentially been made bigger. Among those cited include one last month, when the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and Federal Reserve reached a $8.5 settlement with 10 U.S. banks on charges of foreclosure abuses.

West said that members of the working group were aware the OCC settlement was in the works and had "discussions and conversations" about it. He insisted it's too early to judge the working group based on the settlements of the past year. On several occasions, he said he was unable to discuss the cases being currently put together, raising the tantalizing prospect that something impressive is coming. The Justice Department also noted that there are more than 200 lawyers, investigators and analysts now helping the working group do its investigative work, including a coordinating team of 12 based in D.C. that includes criminal prosecutors and FBI investigators.

Perhaps the strongest signal that the working group's best days may be ahead is that Schneiderman stands by the unit announced in his name.

"Our legal actions are part of an unprecedented collaboration to bring accountability for the misconduct that led to the collapse of the housing market. No matter what obstacles or bureaucratic challenges we bump up against, we will continue to press forward aggressively," Schneiderman said in a statement to the Huffington Post.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 13, 2013, 06:04:40 AM
Obama to Pope: 'I have appreciated our work together over these last four years'
 Life Site News ^ | Feb 11, 2013 | Ben Johnson

Posted on Wednesday, February 13, 2013 6:44:10 AM by IbJensen

Obama to Pope: 'I have appreciated our work together over these last four years' President Barack Obama has released a statement on the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI and, as usual, it's all about himself. In three spartan sentences, he manages to use the word “I” four times.

The use of the first-person singular is Obama's own Holy Tradition, a hallmark of both his rhetoric and his governing style. His administration is a Magisterium of one.

Nonetheless, one line is particularly galling: “Michelle and I warmly remember our meeting with the Holy Father in 2009, and I have appreciated our work together over these last four years.”

That mutual work has consisted of:

•Stripping the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops of federal grants to fight sex trafficking, because the USCCB would not refer patients for abortion;

• Forcing Catholic non-profits and laity to violate their faith by financing abortifacients at home and abortion around the world;

• Publicly advocating the redefinition of the family, something the pope said just last month threatens “the future of humanity”;

•Trying to have the government decide who is a “minister,” a ploy with far-reaching implications that the Supreme Court unanimously struck down; • Reducing the “freedom of religion” to a mere “freedom of worship”; and

• Generally trying to shoehorn people of faith into a tiny, hermetically sealed box as far removed from the public square as possible.

In other words, Obama thanked himself for a four-year relationship that has been purely adversarial.

As Bill Clinton might say, that takes a lot of brass.

One is tempted to interpret Obama's strange show of appreciation as a sign of good sportsmanship, rather like opposing teams shaking hands after a basketball game. One could also detect an oblique sense of gloating, as he congratulates himself on outflanking the Church in the United States, often with the active aid and participation of the Catholic laity and hierarchy.

Compare Obama's statement with that of House Speaker John Boehner, who is Catholic:

The prayers and gratitude of American Catholics are with Pope Benedict XVI today. The Holy Father’s decision displays extraordinary humility and love for the Church, two things that have been the hallmarks of his service. Americans were inspired by his visit to the United States in 2008, and by his quiet, steady leadership of the Church in uncertain times. People of all nations have been blessed by the sacrifices he has made to sow the seeds of hope, justice, and compassion throughout the world in the name of Our Lord and Savior.

Note the reverence, the attention to the good the other person has done, the beneficial impact someone else's actions have had, and the reference to a Higher Being.

Obama essentially read the pontiff out of his own statement, indulging him only insofar as the pope happened to coincide with his interests and those of the coalition that elected him.

Note to Speaker Boehner: This is how the conservative grassroots expect you to “work together” with President Obama in his second term
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 13, 2013, 07:10:38 PM
Administration Will Spend $1.8 Billion to Build 20-Mile Railroad on 30-Mile-Wide Island (Oahu)
 Cybercast News Service ^ | February 13, 2013 | Patrick Burke

Posted on Wednesday, February 13, 2013 9:04:40 PM by Olog-hai

The Department of Transportation (DOT) announced that $1.55 billion in new federal tax dollars will be allocated for the first-ever Hawaiian Transit Rail system on the island of Oahu, which will serve downtown Honolulu, at a total federal and state cost of $5.1 billion.

The train circuit will be 20 miles long, with 21 stops on an island that is 30 miles wide. …

An additional $4 million has been obligated from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the “stimulus”), and $209.9 million is coming from other sources within the DOT. Both the $1.55 billion and the $209.9 million are proposed funding plans, and will be contingent upon future appropriations from Congress.

The $3.358 billion of the project’s $5.1 billion total cost will derive from Hawaiian sources that include but are not limited to excise taxes paid by Oahu businesses and residents, as well as tourists. …


(Excerpt) Read more at cnsnews.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 14, 2013, 11:39:31 AM
Business

Fed Audit Reveals Tax-Payer Backed Battery Factory Hasn’t Produced or Sold a Single Battery Since Awarded Fed Grant in 2009

Feb. 14, 2013








 
A taxpayer-backed battery plant in Holland, Mich., made headlines last year after it was discovered its employees were being paid to do nothing.
 
Now LG Chem Michigan Inc., a subsidiary of South Korea’s LG Group, is back in the news after it was revealed Wednesday that it has not produced or sold a single battery since being awarded a $150 million federal grant in 2009, according to a new report by the Energy Department’s Inspector General.
 
Not a single one.
 
“LG Chem Michigan … [is] likely to miss the grant’s May 2013 deadline for completion,” Nextgov reports. “What’s more, the project created fewer than half of the projected 440 new jobs anticipated by proponents.”
 
One of the reasons LG Chem Michigan hasn’t had any success in sales is because it was created with the idea of supplying GM with batteries for what ended up being a unpopular vehicle: The Chevy Volt. Also, GM long ago decided to purchase its battery cells from LG Chem’s facilitates in South Korea instead of the one based Michigan.
 
The plant was also awarded more than $175 million in state and local tax relief.
 

President Barack Obama gives Gov. Jennifer Granholm a hug as LG Chem Ltd. Chairman Bon-Moo Koo, left, watches (AP)
 
LG Chem Michigan used large portions of its federal grant to pay employees who, in turn, watched movies and played cards because there was no work to be done.
 
“We found that work performed under the grant to LG Chem Michigan had not been managed effectively,” writes Gregory Friedman, the DOE inspector general.

 
.
 
“Our review revealed that LG Chem Michigan inappropriately claimed and was reimbursed for labor charges incurred by a variety of supervisory and staff employees for activities that did not benefit the project,” Friedman adds.
 
The Department of Energy reimbursed the company for what it now calls “questionable labor costs incurred” in Q3 2012. The inspector general was unable to “calculate the exact loss to the government because LG Chem Michigan did not track labor activities in detail,” the Detroit Free Press notes.
 
“However, based on LG Chem Michigan employee revelations, we believe it is likely that the total amount of charges that included at least some non-productive work exceeded $1.6 million, about $842,000 of which was reimbursed in accordance with its cost-sharing arrangement for the project,” the report stated.
 
Here are some of the other findings included in the report (via DFP):
 •The plant has not yet made battery cells that could be used in electric vehicles sold to the public.
 •Only about 60% of the capacity agreed to when the grant was received was constructed even though nearly $142 million of $151 million of the Energy Department’s share of the project’s funding had been spent.
 •LG Chem Michigan officials estimated the government would need to spend $22 million more to complete the five production lines called for in the agreement, an amount that would significantly exceed the remaining funds available.
 •LG Chem Michigan had significantly underestimated labor costs.
 •Documentation to support the grant indicated that production of battery cells would transition from LG Chem’s South Korean facility to the Michigan plant beginning in 2012, but that didn’t happen.
 •Less than half of the 440 expected jobs had been created to support the project.
 •The period of performance for the grant runs through May 2013. Yet, the expected benefits of the project are not likely to be realized within the originally anticipated timeframes.
 
Shortly after the federal audit, LG Chem Michigan released a statement saying it would reimburse the government $842,000 for labor costs.
 
“The company says it is taking steps to prevent such actions in the future and to comply with rules for use of federal grant money,” WKZO reports. “LG Chem says it is aware of concerns that the Holland plant has not produced batteries, but it is still committed to the future of the facility.”
 
The U.S. Department of Energy Office of Inspector General declined to comment on the audit, instead citing its status as being independent from the DOE and directed TheBlaze to the DOE’s main office for further comment.
 
Neither the DOE nor LG Chem’s U.S. headquarters immediately responded to a request for comment Thursday afternoon.
 
Attempts to contact the Hollande, Mich., plant were met with busy signals.
 

President Obama greets workers in 2010, at the groundbreaking ceremony at LG Chem Michgan Inc., then known as Compact Power Inc., a battery plant in Holland, Mich. (Susan Walsh/AP)
 
Readers may recall that President Barack Obama in 2010 visited the electric battery plant to promote his administration’s clean energy agenda.
 
“Our goal has never been to create a government program, but rather to unleash private-sector growth,” Obama said. “And we’re seeing results.”
 
“This is a symbol of where Michigan’s going. This is a symbol of where Holland is going. This is a symbol of where America is going,” he added.
 
Take from that what you will.
 
Follow Becket Adams (@BecketAdams) on Twitter
 
Featured image AP.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Dos Equis on February 14, 2013, 11:41:32 AM
Administration Will Spend $1.8 Billion to Build 20-Mile Railroad on 30-Mile-Wide Island (Oahu)
 Cybercast News Service ^ | February 13, 2013 | Patrick Burke

Posted on Wednesday, February 13, 2013 9:04:40 PM by Olog-hai

The Department of Transportation (DOT) announced that $1.55 billion in new federal tax dollars will be allocated for the first-ever Hawaiian Transit Rail system on the island of Oahu, which will serve downtown Honolulu, at a total federal and state cost of $5.1 billion.

The train circuit will be 20 miles long, with 21 stops on an island that is 30 miles wide. …

An additional $4 million has been obligated from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the “stimulus”), and $209.9 million is coming from other sources within the DOT. Both the $1.55 billion and the $209.9 million are proposed funding plans, and will be contingent upon future appropriations from Congress.

The $3.358 billion of the project’s $5.1 billion total cost will derive from Hawaiian sources that include but are not limited to excise taxes paid by Oahu businesses and residents, as well as tourists. …


(Excerpt) Read more at cnsnews.com ...


I support this.   :)  We have about 950 million people on this island. 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: chadstallion on February 15, 2013, 06:27:58 AM
great day for cut/paste.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 20, 2013, 01:37:39 PM
With Election Over, Obama Announces Medicare Cuts to Fund ObamaCare
 
by Dr. Susan Berry

20 Feb 2013, 9:47 AM PDT35post a comment

During the 2012 election campaign, Democrats denied that ObamaCare made $716 billion in cuts to Medicare in order to provide funding toward $1.9 trillion in new entitlement spending over the next ten years.
 
In an announcement on Friday, however, the Obama administration revealed that it would be significantly reducing funding for Medicare, a move that one health insurance analyst said “would turn almost every plan in the industry unprofitable.”
 
Health insurance stocks tumbled following the announcement that a big chunk of the Medicare cuts would come from the popular Medicare Advantage program, a market-oriented system in which participants can choose coverage by a private company that contracts with Medicare to provide all Part A and Part B benefits.

According to health care analyst Carl McDonald, the new rates proposed by the Obama administration will have the net effect of reducing payments to Medicare Advantage plans by seven to eight percent in 2014. McDonald projects:


If implemented, these rates and the program changes CMS [Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services] is suggesting would be enormously disruptive to Medicare Advantage, likely forcing a number of smaller plans out of the business and creating disarray for many seniors.

According to Richard Foster, former chief actuary to the Medicare program, ObamaCare’s cuts to Medicare Advantage will likely force half of its current participants back into the old Medicare program, originated in 1965. It is estimated that this change will cost Medicare enrollees an average of $3,714 in 2017 alone.



Democrats have long been unfriendly toward the Medicare Advantage plan, which was passed as part of the Balanced Budget Amendment of 1997 and has seen tremendous growth over the past 10 years. Today, more than 25 percent of seniors receive their health benefits through Medicare Advantage.

Regarding the cuts, America’s Health Insurance Plans’ (AHIP) president Karen Ignagni said, “Washington cannot tax and cut Medicare Advantage this much and not expect seniors to be harmed."

Last year it was revealed that, while AHIP was openly supporting ObamaCare and working on a deal with the White House, it was also secretly funneling over $100 million to the Chamber of Commerce to be spent on advertising designed to convince Americans that the new legislation should be defeated.

The administration’s proposal is open to outside comments until March 1st, ahead of the final announcement of the cuts on April 1st.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 22, 2013, 09:03:28 AM
Obama ally got $340 million to set up health care co-ops
 The Washington Examiner ^ | February 21, 2013 | Richard Pollock

Posted on Friday, February 22, 2013 11:33:25



A health insurance company headed by an old friend from Obama's days as a community organizer got a $340 million federal loan to establish Obamacare co-ops in New York, New Jersey and Oregon despite having a chronic record of consumer and regulatory complaints.

The New York-based Freelancers Insurance Company has been rated the "worst" insurer for two straight years by state regulators, and data compiled by a national insurance association show an extremely high rate of consumer complaints.

The firm was founded in 2008 by Sara Horowitz, who worked with Obama before his career in elective politics to launch Demos, a left-wing, New York think tank funded in part by George Soros.

Before May 13, 2011, the Demos website described Horowitz and Obama as members of the founding group in 1999 that became "the core of Demos' staff and Board of Trustees."

Sometime between that date and Nov. 6, 2011, the Obama reference was deleted, according to cached versions of the site stored by the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.

...

In 2011, the New York State Insurance Department ranked FIC last among commercial insurers with the most complaints and 49th of 50 among all the state's insurance providers, including health maintenance organizations.

In 2012, the Empire State insurance regulator again ranked Freelancers "worst" in complaints and 51st among 54 rated New York-based insurers.


(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 22, 2013, 09:36:31 AM
Citigroup’s Man Goes to the Treasury Department

By Jonathan Weil Feb 21, 2013 6:30 PM ET




Jack Lew is the nominee for Treasury secretary whose own bonus as an investment banker was bailed out by the Treasury Department when it rescued Citigroup Inc. (C) in 2008. He owes much to America’s taxpayers. He should also be grateful to Citigroup for agreeing to let him rejoin the government without suffering much for it financially.

An intriguing revelation from Lew’s Senate confirmation hearing last week was that he stood to be paid handsomely by Citigroup if he left the company for a top U.S. government job, under his 2006 employment agreement with the bank. The wording of the pay provisions made it seem, at least to me, as if Citigroup might have agreed to pay Lew some sort of a bounty to seek out, and be appointed to, such a position.


 .
Lew didn’t shed much light on the subject after Senator Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican, asked him about it at the hearing. “I’m not familiar with records that were kept, so I don’t have access to things that I don’t know about,” Lew said. It wasn’t clear which records (or even which question) Lew was referring to, and Hatch didn’t press the matter.

READ: Lew Employment Agreement With Citigroup, Excerpts (PDF)

So I did some digging. I wasn’t able to find someone who would show me an entire copy of Lew’s employment agreement with Citigroup. But I did get a look at the first three pages of it, as well as a related addendum from January 2008. Here goes.

Rubin Connection

Lew was director of the Office of Management and Budget during President Bill Clinton’s administration, after which he worked at New York University as an executive and a professor. He joined Citigroup in 2006 as chief operating officer of its global wealth-management division. Lew was recommended by former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, who at the time was chairman of Citigroup’s executive committee. (There seems to be an unwritten rule that every Treasury secretary must have deep ties to Rubin.) He became chief operating officer of the bank’s alternative-investments unit in January 2008.

Lew’s employment agreement with Citigroup said his “guaranteed incentive and retention award” wouldn’t be paid if he quit his job, with limited exceptions. One was if he left Citigroup “as a result of your acceptance of a full-time high level position with the United States government or regulatory body.” This applied if he left “prior to the payment of any incentive and retention award for performance year 2008 or thereafter.” Such an award wasn’t guaranteed but would be consistent with the company’s practice, the document said.

A similar provision concerned his stock-based compensation. If Lew left in 2008 or afterward to accept a high-level U.S. government position, all of his outstanding equity awards, including restricted stock, would vest immediately, the document said. Alternatively, Citigroup had the option of paying Lew the cash equivalent of any shares he forfeited upon leaving. The terms didn’t mention other kinds of public-service work, such as a midlevel U.S. government job, a position in municipal or state government, or working at a nonprofit organization such as a university.

Lew stood to receive $250,001 to $500,000 worth of accelerated restricted Citigroup stock when he left the company, according to a disclosure report he filed in January 2009. The same document listed $1.1 million of “salary and discretionary cash comp” from Citigroup. Lew said at last week’s hearing that his salary for 2008 was $350,000.

Lew was named a deputy secretary of State in 2009, Office of Management and Budget director again in 2010, and then became President Barack Obama’s chief of staff in 2012. Now he’s up for Treasury secretary, where he would play a critical role in overseeing the U.S.’s financial industry and rescuing it should another crisis ensue. Citigroup couldn’t have planned this better if it tried, which raises the natural question: Did it try?

Government Work

When I asked Citigroup what its rationale was for including the government-service exception, a spokeswoman, Danielle Romero-Apsilos, said: “Citi routinely accommodates individuals who wish to leave the firm to pursue a position in government or nonprofit sector.” I pointed out that the contract terms I was asking about didn’t mention anything about a nonprofit, but she declined to elaborate on her statement.

Later I asked Romero-Apsilos if Citigroup had a policy of providing financial incentives to senior executives to encourage them to seek high-level federal jobs. She replied: “We have no such incentives, then or now.” I’m not sure I agree with her after reading the part about government service in Lew’s “incentive and retention award.” A Treasury Department spokeswoman, Natalie Earnest, declined to comment.

It makes sense that Lew would have been thinking ahead to his next career move when he joined Citigroup in 2006. It’s also understandable that Citigroup sought to discourage Lew from joining a competitor. Why no mention of other kinds of public service, say a city hall job or returning to teaching? Why reward him for landing only a high-level U.S. government post, but not jobs such as those, which also are of high social importance?

We don’t know the whole story, except that Lew’s agreement clearly attached unique value to the possibility that he might get a top U.S. government position someday. Should that be of concern to the public? It ought to be.

(Jonathan Weil is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this article: Jonathan Weil in New York at jweil6@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this article: James Greiff at jgreiff@bloomberg.net
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 25, 2013, 08:58:58 AM
Citi Offered Jack Lew A Big Bonus To Secure A 'High-Level' Government Position
 


Matthew Boesler|Feb. 25, 2013, 9:51 AM|1,308|10
 
It's not uncommon for a U.S. Treasury Secretary to have served on Wall Street, but what's interesting about this next one is that his bank gave him a pretty significant financial incentive make the leap.
 
The Senate Finance Committee will vote Tuesday on President Obama's nomination of White House Chief of Staff and former Citi executive Jack Lew for the top job at the U.S. Treasury.
 
Lew left Citi in 2009 to become the Deputy Secretary of State.
 
At Lew's recent confirmation hearing for Treasury Secretary, an interesting detail about his employment contract with Citi emerged: a bonus meant to keep him at Citi – meaning he wouldn't get it if he quit – would still be granted on the condition that he left the bank for a "high level" position in the federal government.
 
Bloomberg News columnist Jonathan Weil, who tracked down a copy of Lew's employment agreement, put it bluntly, writing, "The wording of the pay provisions made it seem, at least to me, as if Citigroup might have agreed to pay Lew some sort of a bounty to seek out, and be appointed to, such a position."
 
At the hearing, Senator Orrin Hatch asked Lew, "Now is this exception consistent with President Obama’s efforts to 'close the revolving door' that carries special interest influence in and out of the government?"
 
Lew basically brushed the Hatch off without answering the question directly.
 
Weil, after seeing a few pages of the contract – which he has made available online – wrote in his column:
 
Lew was named a deputy secretary of State in 2009, Office of Management and Budget director again in 2010, and then became President Barack Obama’s chief of staff in 2012. Now he’s up for Treasury secretary, where he would play a critical role in overseeing the U.S.’s financial industry and rescuing it should another crisis ensue. Citigroup couldn’t have planned this better if it tried, which raises the natural question: Did it try?
 
For its part, the bank told Weil, "Citi routinely accommodates individuals who wish to leave the firm to pursue a position in government or nonprofit sector."
 
Needless to say, this isn't the type of thing that inspires confidence in the Wall Street-Washington D.C. nexus.


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/citis-government-job-bonus-for-jack-lew-2013-2#ixzz2LvmiJp00

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 25, 2013, 02:12:07 PM
Obama's Former Press Secretary Was Told Not To Talk About The Drone Program
 
Jeff Poor, The Daily Caller|36 minutes ago|0|




 On Sunday’s “Up w/Chris Hayes” on MSNBC, former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs revealed the Obama White House’s early public-relations strategy on the drone program:  avoid it if at all possible.
 
Gibbs told show host Chris Hayes that although President Barack Obama has been more forthcoming about the program recently, during his vetting to be the spokesman for the Obama administration, he was told not to acknowledge it at all.
 
“I think you’ve seen recently the president discuss the need and desire to be more forthcoming,” Gibbs said. “I certainly think there are aspects of that program that are and will remain highly sensitive and very secret, but let me give you an example here, Chris.
 
"When I went through the process of becoming press secretary, one of the first things they told me was you’re not even to acknowledge the drone program. You’re not even to discuss that it exists.
 
"And so I would get a question like that, and literally I couldn’t tell you what Major [Garrett] asks, because once I figured out it was about the drone program I realized I’m not supposed to talk about it.”
 
Gibbs said he was in a difficult spot, because the secretive policy risked undermining public confidence in government.
 
“But here’s what’s inherently crazy about that proposition: You’re being asked a question based on reporting of a program that’s secret,” Gibbs continued. “… Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. I think in many ways, and I think what the president has seen — and I have not talked to him about this, I want to be careful.
 
"This is my opinion. But I think what the president has seen is [that] our denial of the existence of the program, when it’s obviously happening,undermines people’s confidence overall in the decisions that their government makes.”
 
According to Gibbs, Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” host Jon Stewart elicited the clearest answer yet from the president on the drone program.
 
“I will say ironically the time in which the president probably talked most about the drone program, interestingly enough, was in an interview on ‘The Daily Show’ with Jon Stewart,” Gibbs added. “Jon Stewart asked a good question, and gave the president the space to give an answer.”
 

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2013/02/24/fmr-obama-press-secretary-robert-gibbs-i-was-told-not-even-to-acknowledge-the-drone-program-exists-video/#ixzz2Lx3VznC6

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 25, 2013, 02:54:43 PM

http://freebeacon.com/chuck-todd-on-ofa-fundraising-this-just-looks-bad





MSNBC’s Chuck Todd criticized Monday the new fundraising efforts of President Obama’s dark money group, Organizing for Action, calling a scheme for high donors to meet regularly with Obama “the definition of selling access.”
 
Todd was describing the quarterly meetings that will be enjoyed by OFA’s $500,000 donors, the New York Times reported over the weekend:
 

But those contributions will also translate into access, according to donors courted by the president’s aides. Next month, Organizing for Action will hold a “founders summit” at a hotel near the White House, where donors paying $50,000 each will mingle with Mr. Obama’s former campaign manager, Jim Messina, and Mr. Carson, who previously led the White House Office of Public Engagement.
 
Giving or raising $500,000 or more puts donors on a national advisory board for Mr. Obama’s group and the privilege of attending quarterly meetings with the president, along with other meetings at the White House. Moreover, the new cash demands on Mr. Obama’s top donors and bundlers come as many of them are angling for appointments to administration jobs or ambassadorships.
 
“This just looks bad–it looks like the White House is selling access,” Todd said Monday. “It’s the definition of selling access. If you believe money has a strangle hold over the entire political system this is ceding the moral high ground.”
 
The perk was first reported by the Los Angeles Times earlier in February after a meeting between OFA leadership and top Los Angeles and Bay Area fundraisers for Obama’s reelection campaign.
 
OFA is a tax-exempt 501(c)(4) and therefore not required to disclose the identities of its donors, nor the amounts they give. In addition to major campaign donors, the organization’s leadership has been courting corporate donors.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 25, 2013, 06:10:09 PM

GOP lawmaker: Obama using fake Twitter messages in fight over gun control

 By Pete Kasperowicz - 02/25/13 12:18 PM ET





A Texas Republican on Monday said President Obama's gun control campaign is a fraud based on fake messages over Twitter.

Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas) accused Obama of trying to make support for his position look stronger than it really is by flooding Twitter with messages from people who don't exist.

 "Obama's anti-gun campaign is a fraud," Stockman said. "Obama's supporters are panicking and willing to do anything to create the appearance of popular support, even if it means trying to defraud Congress," he added. "I call upon the president to denounce this phony spam campaign."

Stockman said that in response to Obama's call for people to tweet their congressman in support of gun control legislation, he received just 16 tweets. But he said all of these messages were identical, and that a closer look at them revealed that only six were from real people.

"The other 10 are fake, computer-generated spambots," his office said in a press release. As evidence, he said these 10 tweets use default graphics and names, and have not engaged in any interaction with other people. Two of the tweets were sent at nearly the same time, and both follow just one person: Brad Schenck, Obama's former digital strategist.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 
Stockman also added that only one of the six tweets from real people is a constituent of his in Texas.

"If you are a real person who contacted us about your support for the president's anti-gun campaign, we are listening," Stockman said. "We do not agree with you, but we appreciate your sincere opinions and encourage you to continue to contact us.

"But the vast majority of the president's supporters have no feelings because they fake profiles from spammers."

Stockman said Obama's anti-gun activists "are trying to defraud Congress using the same scam that sells 'male enhancement pills.'"
 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 26, 2013, 03:05:33 AM
DOJ to Federal Judge: We Can Force Your Wife to Violate Her Religion
CNSNews ^ | February 25, 2013 | Terence P. Jeffrey
Posted on February 25, 2013 7:08:31 PM EST by jazusamo

(CNSNews.com) - While presenting an oral argument in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia last fall, a lawyer for the U.S. Justice Department told a federal judge that the Obama administration believed it could force the judge’s own wife—a physician—to act against her religious faith in the conduct of her medical practice.

The assertion came in the case of Tyndale House Publishers v. Sebelius, a challenge to the Obama administration’s regulation requiring health-care plans to cover sterilizations, contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs.

Tyndale is a for-profit corporation that publishes Bibles, biblical commentaries and other religious works. Tyndale House Foundation, a religious non-profit organization, owns 96.5 percent of the corporation’s stock and receives 96.5 percent of its profits. The foundation’s mission is “to minister to the spiritual needs of people, primarily through grants to other religious charities.”

As a matter of religious principle, the foundation believes that human life begins at conception and that abortion is wrong.

The corporation self-insures, providing its employees with a generous health-care plan. But, in keeping with its religious faith, it does not in any way provide abortions. For this reason, Tyndale sued the Obama administration, arguing that the Obamacare regulation that would force it to provide abortion-inducing drugs and IUDs in its health-care plan violated its right to the free-exercise of religion.

“Consistent with the religious beliefs of Tyndale and its owners, Tyndale’s self-insured plan does not and has never covered abortions or abortifacient drugs or devices such as emergency contraception and intrauterine devices,” Tyndale said in its legal complaint, prepared by the Alliance Defending Freedom.

When Tyndale sought a preliminary injunction to prevent the administration from enforcing the regulation on the company before the federal courts could determine the issue on its merits, Benjamin Berwick, a lawyer for the Civil Division of the Justice Department presented the administration's argument for why Tyndale should be forced to act against the religious faith of its owners. The oral argument over the preliminary injunction occurred Nov. 9 in Judge Walton’s court.

Berwick argued here--as the administration has argued in other cases where private businesses are challenging the sterilization-contraception-abortifacient mandate--that once people form a corporation to conduct business they lose their First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion insofar as their business is concerned.

In the face of this argument, Judge Walton asked an interesting question. His wife, a graduate of Georgetown Medical School, is a physician. She has incorporated her medical practice. Does that mean, according to the Obama administration’s argument, that the federal government can force her to act against her religious faith in the conduct of her medical practice?

Berwick effectively answered: Yes.

Here, from the official court transcript, is the verbatim exchange between this Obama administration lawyer and Judge Walton:

Benjamin Berwick: “Well, your honor, I think, I think there are two distinct ideas here: One is: Is the corporation itself religious such that it can exercise religion? And my, our argument is that it is not. Although again, we admit that it is a closer case than for a lot of other companies. And then the second question is, can the owners--is it a substantial burden on the owners when the requirement falls on the company that is a separate legal entity? I think for that question precisely what their beliefs are doesn't really matter. I mean, they allege that they're religious beliefs are being violated. We don't question that. And we don't question that that is the belief.

Judge Reggie Walton: But considering the closeness of the relationship that the individual owners have to the corporation to require them to fund what they believe amounts to the taking of a life, I don't know what could be more contrary to one's religious belief than that.

Berwick: Well, I don't think the fact this is a closely-held corporation is particularly relevant, your honor. I mean, Mars, for example--

Judge Walton: Well, I mean, my wife has a medical practice. She has a corporation, but she's the sole owner and sole stock owner. If she had strongly-held religious belief and she made that known that she operated her medical practice from that perspective, could she be required to pay for these types of items if she felt that that was causing her to violate her religious beliefs?

Berwick: Well, Your Honor, I think what it comes down to is whether there is a legal separation between the company and—

Judge Walton: It's a legal separation. I mean, she obviously has created the corporation to limit her potential individual liability, but she's the sole owner and everybody associates that medical practice with her as an individual. And if, you know, she was very active in her church and her church had these same type of strong religious-held beliefs, and members of the church and the community became aware of the fact that she is funding something that is totally contrary to what she professes as her belief, why should she have to do that?

Berwick: Well, your honor, again, I think it comes down to the fact that the corporation and the owner truly are separate. They are separate legal entities.

Judge Walton: So, she'd have to give up the limitation that conceivably would befall on her regarding liability in order to exercise her religion? So, she'd have to go as an individual proprietor with no corporation protection in order to assert her religious right? Isn't that as significant burden?

In a series of interviews conducted in 2007 by the Historical Society of the District of Columbia, Judge Walton reported that his wife was a doctor of medicine who had attended Georgetown Medical School.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 26, 2013, 04:32:30 AM
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2013/02/25/obama_removes_press_to_take_questions_from_governors.html


LMFAO!!!!!  Change you can believe in! 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 26, 2013, 11:18:48 AM
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/02/26/dhs-to-release-thousands-illegal-immigrants-blaming-budget-cuts

Isnt this nice - instead of cutting the fat - O-Traitor is releasing thousands of illegals on to the streets in his little meltdown. 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 26, 2013, 11:19:56 AM
The Department of Homeland Security has started releasing hundreds of illegal immigrants held in local jails in anticipation of automatic budget cuts, in a move one Arizona sheriff called politically motivated -- and dangerous.
 
Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu said Tuesday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement released more than 500 detainees in his county alone over the weekend. A spokesman for Babeu told FoxNews.com that ICE officials have said they plan to release a total of nearly 10,000 illegal immigrants.
 
Babeu described the move as a "mass budget pardon" and suggested the administration was going to unnecessary lengths to demonstrate the impact of the so-called sequester.
 
"President Obama would never release 500 criminal illegals to the streets of his hometown, yet he has no problem with releasing them in Arizona. The safety of the public is threatened and the rule of law discarded as a political tactic in this sequester battle," he said.
 
An ICE official confirmed the plans without specifying how many illegal immigrants might be released.   
 
Spokeswoman Gillian Christensen said ICE had directed field offices to make sure the "detained population" is "in line with available funding." She stressed that ICE would continue to prosecute the cases while keeping them under supervision.
 
"Over the last week, ICE has reviewed several hundred cases and placed these individuals on methods of supervision less costly than detention," she said. "All of these individuals remain in removal proceedings. Priority for detention remains on serious criminal offenders and other individuals who pose a significant threat to public safety."
 
The announcement comes after DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano on Monday warned about the potential impact of the cuts. She said the department "would not be able to maintain the 34,000 detention beds as required by Congress."
 
"We're doing our very best to minimize the impacts of sequester. But there's only so much I can do," she said. "I'm supposed to have 34,000 detention beds for immigration. How do I pay for those?"
 
Republicans in Congress, though, have challenged the numerous Obama Cabinet secretaries warning about the devastating impact to their departments. With cuts set to take effect Friday and no deal in sight to avert them, Republicans claim the administration is trying to make the cuts seem worse than they are -- some want to give the administration more leeway so that high-priority agencies don't get hit as hard.
 
In Arizona, Babeu slammed the move, painting his community as a victim of gridlock in Washington.
 
"Clearly, serious criminals are being released to the streets of our local communities by this mass budget pardon. These are illegals that even President Obama wants to deport. This is insane that public safety is sacrificed when it should be the budget priority that's safeguarded," he said.


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/02/26/dhs-to-release-thousands-illegal-immigrants-blaming-budget-cuts/#ixzz2M2ClUwaN

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 26, 2013, 02:06:01 PM
OUTRAGE: DHS Releases 'Thousands' of Illegal Aliens from Prison - Citing 'Budget Cuts'
 Stand With Arizona ^ | 02-26-2013 | John Hill

Posted on Tuesday, February 26, 2013 4:37:41 PM


"Big Sis" betrayed her fellow Arizonans - and all Americans - today by releasing criminal aliens into communities from coast-to-coast

by John Hill
Stand With Arizona



Despite potential budget cuts being 4 days away and Congress and the Administration have been negotiating to avoid them, the Department of Homeland Security has already started releasing hundreds of illegal aliens held in local jails in anticipation of automatic "sequestration" cuts - out of a planned total of more than 10,000 aliens to be released.

Sources tell Stand With Arizona that DHS has "34,000 beds" for illegal aliens, meaning that Secretary Janet Napolitano is releasing nearly 1/3 of all DHS-detained illegal aliens in the United States - despite the fact that no actual cuts have even begun, and despite a record of massive wasteful spending by DHS over the past 3 years.

Napolitano had been warning of potential impact to DHS after impending cuts, but now she has jumped the gun by enacting a "budgetary amnesty" by fiat - releasing thousands of criminal aliens amongst communities and families across the nation.

The New York Times reports that the aliens are being "freed on supervised release while their cases continue in court". But as SWA has reported in the past, many aliens facing deportation or prosecution on immigration holds never show up for those hearings, and remain in the country.

One Arizona Sheriff called the DHS action politically motivated -- and dangerous.

Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu said Tuesday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement released more than 500 detainees in his county alone over the weekend. ICE officials told Babeu that they plan to release a total of nearly 10,000 illegal aliens.

Babeu described the move as a "mass budget pardon" and suggested the administration was going to unnecessary lengths to demonstrate the impact of the so-called sequester.

"President Obama would never release 500 criminal illegals to the streets of his hometown, yet he has no problem with releasing them in Arizona. The safety of the public is threatened and the rule of law discarded as a political tactic in this sequester battle," he said.
 An ICE official confirmed the plans without specifying how many illegal aliens might be released.
Spokeswoman Gillian Christensen said ICE had directed field offices to make sure the "detained population" is "in line with available funding." She stressed that ICE would continue to prosecute the cases while keeping them "under supervision".

The announcement comes after DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano on Monday warned about the potential impact of the cuts. She said the department "would not be able to maintain the detention beds as required by Congress."

"We're doing our very best to minimize the impacts of sequester. But there's only so much I can do," she said. "I'm supposed to have (thousands of) detention beds for immigration. How do I pay for those?"

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., called the move to release illegal immigrants "abhorrent."

"By releasing criminal immigrants onto the streets, the administration is needlessly endangering American lives," he said in a statement.

In Arizona, Babeu slammed the move, painting his community as a victim of gridlock in Washington.

"Clearly, serious criminals are being released to the streets of our local communities by this mass budget pardon. This is insane that public safety is sacrificed when it should be the budget priority that's safeguarded," he said.

As Arizona, and other states brace for the impact of this disgraceful and lawless action, we call on Sheriffs across America to defy this corrupt DHS Secretary, and detain as many illegal aliens as possible. We know that Sheriff Joe and his deputies are on high alert today as these alien criminals are being set loose in our communities.

Just when you think the shameful pandering and legal anarchy of this Administration can't get any worse, it does...in spades.





PLEASE TAKE THE FOLLOWING ACTIONS IMMEDIATELY:



.



(1) Call Your Representative Now: * Find your elected officials HERE DEMAND Your Reps publically reprimand Napolitano for releasing criminal aliens - puttin the public at risk and making a mockery of the rule of law - before any budget cuts have even gone through.



.



(2) Contact Reps. By E-Mail message: * Direct contact your House Rep. HERE



.



(3) By Social Media: Go to SWA's Facebook Page and urge your friends to "LIKE" it. (Or if you use Twitter, share our Twitter Page and use the hashtag "#noamnesty" in your tweet). AND "Like" or "Share" this article everywhere as well.



.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 04, 2013, 11:25:38 AM
There is no "set price" to meet with President Obama, White House press secretary Jay Carney said Monday amid continued outcry over the role of Organizing for Action, the outside group supporting the president's agenda.
 
"Any notion that there is a set price for a meeting with the president of the United States is just wrong," Carney said during his daily briefing.
 
Since OFA is intended to back the president's agenda, it makes sense that Obama would meet with the group, Carney said. "As anyone would expect, the president would likely meet with their representatives to discuss his agenda."
 
"But, again, any notion that there's a price for meeting with the president is simply wrong," he added.
 
Carney's comments followed critical weekend editorials from The New York Times and The Washington Post. Major donors will get spots on an advisory board that will have regular meetings with the president, "behavior that has become all too common in this town and carries more than a whiff of influence-peddling," the Post editorial board said.
 
The Times was more blunt, writing that a spot on the advisory board "is nothing more than a fancy way of setting a price for access to Mr. Obama."
 
Decrying hypocricy from a president once critical of the role of big money in politics, watchdog Common Cause last week called on Obama to ask OFA's leaders to shut down the group. Carney signaled that Obama would be doing no such thing, saying its existence is "perfectly appropriate."

http://www.politico.com/politico44/2013/03/wh-no-set-price-for-meeting-with-obama-158389.html#disqus_thread

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 04, 2013, 01:52:51 PM
Organizing For Action, Obama Outside Group, Raises Pay-For-Access Questions


By KEN THOMAS and JOSH LEDERMAN 03/04/13 08:38 AM ET EST



WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama learned in his first term that he couldn't change Washington from the inside, saying in the heat of his re-election race: "You can only change it from the outside." Months later, his former White House aides and campaign advisers are embracing Obama's words as a call to action.

Obama veterans are building a wide network of deep-pocketed groups and consulting firms independent of government, the Democratic Party and traditional liberal groups, a sweeping – if not unprecedented – effort outside the White House gates aimed at promoting the president's agenda and shaping his legacy.

From campaign strategists to online gurus and policy hands to press agents, Obama loyalists – including many who discovered that a second term yields fewer administration job vacancies – are slicing his agenda into smaller parts and launching highly targeted efforts on subjects including health care, job creation and electoral politics.

The lynchpin of the effort is Organizing for Action, a nonprofit run by former Obama advisers that has essentially transformed his re-election campaign into a grassroots machine to support his initiatives. In its early stages, the group is raising millions from big and small donors alike and whipping up support for issues like gun control and an immigration overhaul.

Known by its initials, OFA is chaired by Jim Messina, a former White House aide who ran Obama's 2012 campaign, and several former Obama aides sit on its board. David Plouffe, who until February served as Obama's senior adviser, is expected to join the board soon.

OFA's close ties to the West Wing and its control over the former campaign's resources has raised questions about where the nonprofit group ends and the White House starts. The group controls Obama's massive email list and also his campaign Twitter handle, which has more than 27 million followers and frequently tweets links to his government website.

As a tax-exempt entity, OFA by law can't intervene in elections and is subject to strict limits on lobbying. The group accepts unlimited donations from individuals and corporations but plans to release the names of its donors. The corporate funding is a shift: many of the same operatives involved with OFA were once loud critics, along with Obama, of big money- and corporate-fueled entities that emerged after a series of court rulings, especially the Citizens United case, loosened restrictions on money and politics.

The arrangement has also opened the White House to criticism that contributors, in exchange for supporting the groups, could receive special access to Obama that the public is denied. White House press secretary Jay Carney fielded repeated questions last week over whether bundlers who raised $500,000 or more for OFA were promised quarterly meetings with the president – a claim that OFA disputed.

"They have created literally a cottage industry solely devoted to access and making money off the access," said Sean Spicer, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee.




As advocacy groups, OFA and the smaller organizations can coordinate with the White House on messaging and tactics. Carney said the administration interacts with a variety of such groups, adding that administration officials may appear at OFA events but won't be raising money.

An OFA "founders' summit" for donors on March 13 at a Washington hotel will include addresses by Messina, Plouffe and others, according to an invitation obtained by The Associated Press. The next day will include briefings on immigration, gun control and climate change, with former Environmental Protection Agency head Lisa Jackson expected to attend.

But when OFA asks supporters to cut a check, it will be competing with a growing list of pro-Obama factions making appeals to a limited pool of Democratic donors.

Business Forward, a 3-year-old trade group that has facilitated meetings between businesses and Obama officials, is ramping up operation as a liberal counterweight to the conservative-leaning U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Business Forward is funded by corporate money that was banished from Obama's campaign coffers in 2008 and 2012.

More than 50 corporate members pay $25,000 or $50,000 a year to be involved in briefings between Obama administration officials and business leaders, small businesses and entrepreneurs. Its members include AT&T and Microsoft, which donated to Obama's inaugural committee, and Citi, Comcast and Facebook, whose executives served on Obama's jobs council.

"The goal is to bring new people into the process and help them tell Washington how to create jobs and accelerate our economic recovery," said Jim Doyle, Business Forward's president.

On health care, former White House official Anne Filipic recently took control of a nonprofit called Enroll America, which plans a massive push to get people to sign up for insurance under Obama's health care law, a key part of his legacy. The group is preparing for the opening of new insurance exchanges in October with on-the-ground organizing, online efforts and paid advertising.

Another team of Obama campaign aides, including field director Jeremy Bird and battleground state director Mitch Stewart, have formed a consulting firm called 270 Strategies that aims to bring grassroots organizing to political and industry clients. One early project, dubbed Battleground Texas, has set a long-term goal to make GOP-heavy Texas competitive for Democrats.

Although there's no one group formally coordinating the efforts, outside organizations allied with Obama hold regular check-in meetings and conference calls. Representatives compare notes about strategy, priorities and budgets.

"Many of us have spent at this point six years or longer together," said Teddy Goff, Obama's 2012 digital director, who is not affiliated with the fledgling bodies. "I have no doubt that people are talking to their old friends and making sure they're efficient as possible."

And while the various groups supporting Obama's agenda operate independently, the overlap in tactics, messaging and staff is tough to miss. For example, Blue State Digital, a firm founded by the campaign's digital strategist, Joe Rospars, is providing the same technology platform the campaign used to both OFA and Battleground Texas.

The blurring of the lines between outside groups, the campaign and the White House has rubbed some the wrong way. Critics say it's a sign that Obama has reversed course since rebuking the role of money in politics during his first campaign and at the start of his presidency.

"Organizing for Action is unlike any entity we have ever seen before tied to a president," said Fred Wertheimer, a campaign finance reform advocate with Democracy 21, a Washington nonprofit. "This group is so tied to Obama himself, that it creates opportunities for corporations and individuals to buy corrupting influence with the administration – and at a minimum, to create the appearance of such influence."

___

Follow Ken Thomas at: and Josh Lederman at:

Links:

http://twitter.com/AP_Ken_Thomas
http://twitter.com/joshledermanAP
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 04, 2013, 07:51:55 PM

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/barackobama/9908260/Barack-Obama-a-dithering-controlling-risk-averse-US-president.html



The insider-account of the damaging divisions between the White House and the State Department comes as diplomats around the world wait to see if John Kerry, the new US secretary of state, can persuade Mr Obama to greater engagement on Syria, Egypt and the wider Middle East.

Vali Nasr, a university professor who was seconded in 2009 to work with Richard Holbrooke, Mr Obama's special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, records his profound disillusion at how a "Berlin Wall" of domestic-focused advisers was erected to protect Mr Obama.

"The president had a truly disturbing habit of funnelling major foreign policy decisions through a small cabal of relatively inexperienced White House advisers whose turf was strictly politics," Mr Nasr writes in The Dispensable Nation: America Foreign policy in Retreat.

The book sets out in detail how Mr Holbrooke, appointed with great fanfare in 2009, was systematically cut out of decision making as both he and Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state, tried to argue the merits of engaging with the Taliban and the dangers caused by the overuse of drones.



"The White House seemed to see an actual benefit in not doing too much," Prof Nasr writes, "The goal was to spare the president the risks that necessarily come with playing the leadership role that America claims to play in this region."

Admiral Mike Mullen, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff until September 2011, is quoted lamenting how little support Mrs Clinton received from the White House, even though she remained on good personal terms with Mr Obama.

"They want to control everything," Admiral Mullen is quoted as saying of a White House that Prof Nasr says was "ravenous" in its desire to manage foreign policy, even by the to-be-expected standards of turf wars between diplomatic and national security teams.

As Mr Kerry prepares to return home from his first trip abroad in his new role, Western diplomats in Washington say they are watching carefully to see whether he will be able to put meat on the bones of his promise yesterday to "empower" Syrian rebels in their fight against the Assad regime.

 John Kerry and Moaz Al Khatib in Rome on Friday (AFP)

Last week Mr Kerry pledged $60m in new support, including medical kits and food aid, which will go direct to rebel fighters for the first time, but still falls far short of British and French ambitions to provide more military materials such as flak jackets and night-vision goggles.

William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, is expected to announce a British aid package this week and has done little to hide his impatience on the issue.

Diplomatic sources in Washington say that Mr Kerry had been "left under no illusion" by his European allies of the desire for greater action, but that it was still very far from clear if the White House was serious about stepping up aid. Rebel groups remain openly sceptical.

Analysts looking for signs that Mr Obama might be prepared to be more engaged on foreign policy in his second term found little to suggest a change of heart in his Second Inaugural speech and last month's State of the Union address.

"American foreign policy has been on a four-year autopilot, which I argue has been excessively risk averse and domestically focused. I don't see any clear decision yet to change that," said Mr Nasr in an interview with The Daily Telegraph.

"I wrote this book to problematise the way Obama has approached this whole region, and that it is dangerous to disengage and confuse a low-level foreign policy with success in foreign policy," he concluded.

"My hope is that Kerry will be able to do more, but it is still early. He's definitely trying to create more US engagement, but there has to be a fundamental, strategic decision in the White House to reorientate our approach."
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 11, 2013, 07:41:07 AM
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 11, 2013, 08:13:15 AM
US citing security to censor more public records
 
Mar 11, 9:51 AM (ET)

By JACK GILLUM and TED BRIDIS



 
(AP) This Tuesday, Feb. 19, 2013 photo shows Cryptome co-founder John Young in New York. "I'm a fierce...
Full Image

 
 
 
 

 

WASHINGTON (AP) - The U.S. government, led by the Pentagon and CIA, censored or withheld for reasons of national security the files that the public requested last year under the Freedom of Information Act more often than at any time since President Barack Obama took office, according to a new analysis by The Associated Press.

Overall, the Obama administration last year answered its highest number of requests so far for copies of government documents, emails, photographs and more, and it slightly reduced its backlog of requests from previous years. But it more often cited legal provisions allowing the government to keep records or parts of its records secret, especially a rule intended to protect national security.

The AP's analysis showed the government released all or portions of the information that citizens, journalists, businesses and others sought at about the same rate as the previous three years. It turned over all or parts of the records in about 65 percent of requests. It fully rejected more than one-third of requests, a slight increase over 2011, including cases when it couldn't find records, a person refused to pay for copies or the request was determined to be improper.

The government's responsiveness under the FOIA is widely viewed as a barometer of the federal offices' transparency. Under the law, citizens and foreigners can compel the government to turn over copies of federal records for zero or little cost. Anyone who seeks information through the law is generally supposed to get it unless disclosure would hurt national security, violate personal privacy or expose business secrets or confidential decision-making in certain areas.

 
(AP) In this Oct. 6, 2010 file photo, Michigan Republican Secretary of State candidate Ruth...
Full Image
 
 
The AP's review comes at the start of the second term for Obama, who promised during his first week in office that the nation's signature open-records law would be "administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails." The review examined figures from the largest federal departments and agencies. Sunday was the start of Sunshine Week, when news organizations promote open government and freedom of information.

White House spokesman Eric Schultz said in a statement that during the past year, the government "processed more requests, decreased the backlog, improved average processing times and disclosed more information pro-actively." Schultz said the improvements "represent the efforts of agencies across the government to meet the president's commitment to openness. While there is more work to be done, this past year demonstrates that agencies are responding to the president's call for greater transparency."

The administration cited exceptions built into the law to avoid turning over materials more than 479,000 times, a roughly 22 percent increase over the previous year. In many cases, more than one of the law's exceptions was cited in each request for information.

In a year of intense public interest over deadly U.S. drones, the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, terror threats and more, the government cited national security to withhold information at least 5,223 times - a jump over 4,243 such cases in 2011 and 3,805 cases in Obama's first year in office. The secretive CIA last year became even more secretive: Nearly 60 percent of 3,586 requests for files were withheld or censored for that reason last year, compared with 49 percent a year earlier.

Other federal agencies that invoked the national security exception included the Pentagon, Director of National Intelligence, NASA, Office of Management and Budget, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Federal Communications Commission and the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Energy, Homeland Security, Justice, State, Transportation, Treasury and Veterans Affairs.

 
(AP) This Tuesday, Feb. 19, 2013 photo shows Cryptome co-founder John Young in New York. The website,...
Full Image
 
 
U.S. courts are loath to overrule the administration whenever it cites national security. A federal judge, Colleen McMahon of New York, in January ruled against The New York Times and the American Civil Liberties Union to see records about the government's legal justification for drone attacks and other methods it has used to kill terrorism suspects overseas, including American citizens. She cited an "Alice in Wonderland" predicament in which she was expected to determine what information should be revealed but unable to challenge the government's secrecy claim. Part of her ruling was sealed and made available only to the government's lawyers.

"I find myself stuck in a paradoxical situation in which I cannot solve a problem because of contradictory constraints and rules - a veritable Catch-22," the judge wrote. "I can find no way around the thicket of laws and precedents that effectively allow the executive branch of our government to proclaim as perfectly lawful certain actions that seem on their face incompatible with our Constitution and laws, while keeping the reasons for their conclusion a secret."

The AP could not determine whether the administration was abusing the national security exemption or whether the public was asking for more documents about sensitive subjects. Nearly half the Pentagon's 2,390 denials last year under that clause came from its National Security Agency, which monitors Internet traffic and phone calls worldwide.

"FOIA is an imperfect law, and I don't think that's changed over the last four years since Obama took office," said Alexander Abdo, an ACLU staff attorney for its national security project. "We've seen a meteoric rise in the number of claims to protect secret law, the government's interpretations of laws or its understanding of its own authority. In some ways, the Obama administration is actually even more aggressive on secrecy than the Bush administration."

The Obama administration also more frequently invoked the law's "deliberative process" exception to withhold records describing decision-making behind the scenes. Obama had directed agencies to use it less often, but the number of such cases had surged after his first year in office to more than 71,000. After back-to-back years when figures steadily declined, as agencies followed the president's instructions, the government cited that reason 66,353 times last year to keep records or parts of records secret.

Even as the Obama administration continued increasing its efforts answering FOIA requests, people submitted more than 590,000 requests for information in fiscal 2012 - an increase of less than 1 percent over the previous year. Including leftover requests from previous years, the government responded to more requests than ever in 2012 - more than 603,000 - a 5 percent increase for the second consecutive year.

The Homeland Security Department, which includes offices that deal with immigration files, received more than twice as many requests for records - 190,589 new requests last year - as any other agency, and it answered significantly more requests than it did in 2011. Other agencies, including the State Department, National Transportation Safety Board and Nuclear Regulatory Commission performed worse last year. The State Department, for example, answered only 57 percent of its requests, down from 75 percent a year earlier.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services drove a dramatic increase in the number of times DHS censored immigration records under exceptions to police files containing personal information and law enforcement techniques. The agency invoked those exemptions more than 136,000 times in 2012, compared with more than 75,000 a year earlier. Even though USCIS is not a law-enforcement agency, officials used the exceptions specifically reserved for law enforcement.

Under the law, a citizen can ask the government to reconsider its decision to censor or withhold materials. In the roughly 11,000 such instances last year where that happened, the government prevailed just under half the time. In about 3,400 cases the government turned over at least some additional information. These administrative appeals took about five months each.

The only recourse after such an appeal is an expensive lawsuit or to ask the government's FOIA mediator, the Office of Government Information Services, to intervene.

The AP's analysis also found that the government generally took longer to answer requests. Some agencies, such as the Health and Human Services Department, took less time than the previous year to turn over files. But at the State Department, for example, even urgent requests submitted under a fast-track system covering breaking news or events when a person's life was at stake took an average two years to wait for files.

Journalists and others who need information quickly to report breaking news, for example, fared worse last year. The rate at which the government granted so-called expedited processing, which moves an urgent request to the front of the line for a speedy answer, fell from 24 percent in 2011 to 17 percent last year. The CIA denied every such request last year.

Under increased budget pressure across the government, agencies more often insisted that people pay search and copying fees. It waived costs in 59 percent of requests, generally when the amount was negligible or the release of the information is in the public interest, a decline from 64 percent of cases a year earlier. At the Treasury Department, which faced questions about its role in auto bailouts and stimulus programs during Obama's first term, only one in five requests were processed at no charge. A year earlier, it granted more than 75 percent of fee waivers. The CIA denied every request last year to waive fees.

The 33 agencies that AP examined were: Agency for International Development, CIA, Agriculture Department, Commerce Department, Consumer Product Safety Commission, Defense Department, Education Department, Energy Department, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Interior Department, Justice Department, Labor Department, State Department, Transportation Department, Treasury Department, Department of Veterans Affairs, Environmental Protection Agency, Federal Communications Commission, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Federal Election Commission, Federal Trade Commission, NASA, National Science Foundation, National Transportation Safety Board, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Office of Management and Budget, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Securities and Exchange Commission, Small Business Administration, the Social Security Administration and the U.S. Postal Service.

Four agencies that were included in AP's previous analysis of FOIA performance did not publicly release their 2012 reports. They included the Office of National Drug Control Policy, the Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Council on Environmental Quality and the Office of Personnel Management.


Title: Re: Obama the Economy Killer & Job Destroyer - Daily examples of harm to the USA
Post by: Option D on March 11, 2013, 08:16:35 AM
I saw that yesterday Biden was again blaming the GOP for the economy. These fucking Democrats refuse to accept responsibility for their actions. 2006 = LONG TIME AGO. Will these cowards ever man up?

Get off it...ive seen 3333 come on here and spout his threories on how Obama is to blame over the gas prices (anyone with any remote background laughs at the notion of a US president controlling oil markets) all the way to twinkie closing down. Never have i seen you come at him when you yourself know this shit to be false. Admit it, youre a partisan hack troll that sees the Republican party as an entity for good and democrats as satan. Or as Coach would say "Satin"

When blame is properly and accuratley placed, we'll move on.. but as long as the "one up" game continues... well this is what you get

"oh oh look at this DEMOCRAT sex scandal"...Really bro? you sound like a 14 year old school girl.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: chadstallion on March 11, 2013, 10:25:27 AM
what a great day for cut/paste!
no ambulances to chase?
slow day at the office?
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 11, 2013, 10:26:12 AM
what a great day for cut/paste!
no ambulances to chase?
slow day at the office?

great day as any for exposing the criminal chooming crackhead in the WH!   
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: chadstallion on March 11, 2013, 03:54:06 PM
great day as any for exposing the criminal chooming crackhead in the WH!   
sorry you'll have a bad rest of the day.
i'm spending some of my capital gains today.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 11, 2013, 03:56:10 PM
sorry you'll have a bad rest of the day.
i'm spending some of my capital gains today.

I'm sure the trucker at the rest stop will appreciate it. 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 12, 2013, 11:02:03 AM
Obama's Budget Abdication Breaks 92 Year Tradition
 Bretibart ^ | 3/12/13 | Mike Flynn

Posted on Tuesday, March 12, 2013 2:00:34 PM by Nachum

Barack Obama certainly enjoys the trappings and perks of the Office of President. The actual job of being President, however, doesn't seem to interest him. His desire to avoid being tied to any specifics of any proposal have caused him to do what no modern President has done. He is the first President since 1921 to abdicate the task of drafting a federal budget to Congress.

Congress established the modern budget process in 1921. Under the terms of the law, the President is required to submit a budget for the federal government no later than the first Monday in February. Obama has only met this statutory deadline once during his Presidency, a record worse than any modern President. Obama has missed the deadline 4 times. Prior to him, all the Presidents back to 1921 together missed the deadline twice.

Pentagon officials recently advised the House Armed Services Committee that the President's budget wouldn't be delivered until April 8th, a 9 week delay that trumps any previous delay. Worse, though, the long delay means that Congress will initiate its own debate on the budget, without input from the Executive Branch.

On Tuesday, Rep. Paul Ryan unveiled the House GOP budget proposal. On Wednesday, Senate Democrats will unveil their first budget proposal in 4 years. By the time Obama gets around to submitted his mandated proposal, Congress will have had almost a month to deliberate on its proposals.

As we've seen throughout his tenure, Obama prefers lofty rhetoric over the day-to-day give-and-take required to enact legislation. He spoke in general, focus-tested, words about ObamaCare, the stimulus, financial services regulation and a host of other issues, while leaving the gritty, horse-trading work to Congress.


(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 13, 2013, 09:24:47 PM
Greenberg: Obama Administration Threatened AIG Over Bailout Lawsuit
Breitbart ^ | 3/13/13 | Joel B. Pollak
Posted on March 14, 2013 12:03:36 AM EDT by Nachum

Former American International Group (AIG) CEO Hank Greenberg accused the Obama administration Wednesday of threatening the company not to join a class action lawsuit that he has brought against the federal government over the terms of the 2008 AIG bailout. Minutes of an AIG Board of Directors' meeting in January 2013 appear to support Greenberg's claim.

Frances Bivens, the lawyer who represents the U.S. Treasury in the case, warned AIG's board that if it joined the lawsuit, the company could face "another wave of congressional investigations" and public embarrassment.

Greenberg, who had left AIG by the time of the 2008 financial crisis but remained an AIG shareholder, has consistently argued against the federal bailout. He brought the lawsuit on behalf of shareholders who were shortchanged when the government forced AIG to accept what he argues were unfavorable terms.

This week, a federal judge certified two classes of investors in the lawsuit, ruling that the case potentially involved "tens of thousands" of investors--including unions, pension funds, and individual investors. The suit seeks $50 billion in damages from the U.S. government, to be paid to AIG's shareholders at the time.

On Wednesday evening, Greenberg appeared on Neil Cavuto's show on the Fox Business Network to discuss the threats. He reminded Cavuto that "many people lost their life savings, including pension funds, including many AIG employees who worked for thirty-five, forty years to build the value of the company."

(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 14, 2013, 12:41:54 PM
Obama Administration Plans to Cut Medicare Advantage Reimbursements

March 14, 2013

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/obama-administration-plans-cut-medicare-advantage-reimbursements



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



By Matt Cover

 


In this June 19, 2012 photo, Dr. Bruce Stowell examines patient Robert Busch at his office in Grants Pass, Ore. (AP Photo/Jeff Barnard)
 
(CNSNews.com) – The Obama administration is planning new cuts to Medicare, a federal regulatory filing reveals, cuts that could mean higher premiums or seniors losing their coverage altogether.
 
The new cuts come in the form of a planned reduction in the reimbursement rates the government pays to insurance companies that operate Medicare Advantage plans, which are services administered by private for-profit or non-profit providers that offer additional services than can be found in traditional Medicare.
 
In a Feb. 15 regulatory filing, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced the surprised rate cuts of 2.3 percent – meaning it would pay health care providers 2.3 percent less for providing services to patients.
 
CMS said it was cutting payments because it foresaw the overall costs of the Medicare Advantage program shrinking by 3.2 percent, despite the fact that health care costs – the driver of all federal health care program costs – are only rising.
 
Medicare Advantage is like traditional Medicare except that its plans are administered by insurance companies, who are paid a per-enrollee reimbursement fee by the government. If insurance companies can provide care to seniors at less than what the government pays them for it, they make a profit.
 
Medicare Advantage provides coverage for approximately 28 percent of all Medicare beneficiaries, offering them higher-quality services and additional benefits, such as vision and dental care, than the traditional government program at slightly higher cost.
 
The Obama administration already plans to cut the Medicare Advantage program by $200 billion as part of Obamacare. However, the proposed reductions it announced in February are new, and will cut the program in addition to the planned $200 billion in Obamacare cuts, most of which are delayed in 2014.
 
The new cuts are also scheduled to go into effect in 2014, but as a function of the normal rate-setting process for that year, not a political effort to delay financial pain for seniors past an important election, as apparently was the case with the original Medicare cuts that Obama signed.
 
In its regulatory announcement, the CMS said it was assuming that reimbursement payments in traditional, government-run Medicare will be cut, and cited that as justification for cutting Medicare Advantage.
 
However, while those cuts to traditional Medicare have been set into law for more than a decade, Congress has never allowed them to happen, instituting what is known as the Doc Fix every year, to keep reimbursement payments the same.
 
Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) wrote to the CMS urging them to consider political reality and reverse their planned Medicare Advantage cuts.
 
“This assumption is highly problematic because – even though it almost certainly will turn out to be wrong – it translates into lower funding to support the health benefits of the 14 million Medicare beneficiaries who are currently enrolled in MA [Medicare Advantage] plans,” Rubio wrote on March 8.
 
In other words, if the Obama administration continues with its proposed new Medicare cuts, some or all of the 14 million seniors who get health care through the MA program could be negatively affected, that is, paying higher premiums or possibly losing coverage.
 
This is because the proposed cut could make the program unprofitable for insurers, who would be forced to either stop offering MA plans or pass the increased costs on to seniors in the form of higher premiums.
 
One health insurance provider told its shareholders that the proposed rate cuts could mean the end of Medicare Advantage all together.
 
“There are going to be some markets that at these rates, if they go the way they’re going, it’s going to be very hard for Medicare Advantage to survive,” Universal American Corp CEO Richard Barasch said in a February 19 conference call with shareholders, the industry publication Health Plan Week reported.
 
“I think it’s going to be sort of a market-by-market, company-by-company exercise,” Barasch said.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 15, 2013, 09:10:56 AM


Obama Will Use Nixon-Era Law to Fight Climate Change

 By Mark Drajem - Mar 15, 2013 11:50 AM ET.
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Daniel Acker/Bloomberg

Similar analyses could be made for the oil sands that would be transported in TransCanada Corp.’s Keystone XL pipeline, and leases to drill for oil, gas and coal on federal lands, such as those for Arch Coal Inc. and Peabody Energy Corp.
 
President Barack Obama is preparing to tell all federal agencies for the first time that they should consider the impact on global warming before approving major projects, from pipelines to highways.

The result could be significant delays for natural gas- export facilities, ports for coal sales to Asia, and even new forest roads, industry lobbyists warn.

“It’s got us very freaked out,” said Ross Eisenberg, vice president of the National Association of Manufacturers, a Washington-based group that represents 11,000 companies such as Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM) and Southern Co. (SO) The standards, which constitute guidance for agencies and not new regulations, are set to be issued in the coming weeks, according to lawyers briefed by administration officials.

In taking the step, Obama would be fulfilling a vow to act alone in the face of a Republican-run House of Representatives unwilling to pass measures limiting greenhouse gases. He’d expand the scope of a Nixon-era law that was first intended to force agencies to assess the effect of projects on air, water and soil pollution.

“If Congress won’t act soon to protect future generations, I will,” Obama said last month during his State of the Union address. He pledged executive actions “to reduce pollution, prepare our communities for the consequences of climate change, and speed the transition to more sustainable sources of energy.”

Illinois Speech

The president is scheduled to deliver a speech on energy today at the Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, Illinois. He is pressing Congress to create a $2 billion clean-energy research fund with fees paid by oil and gas producers.

While some U.S. agencies already take climate change into account when assessing projects, the new guidelines would apply across-the-board to all federal reviews. Industry lobbyists say they worry that projects could be tied up in lawsuits or administrative delays.

For example, Ambre Energy Ltd. is seeking a permit from the Army Corps of Engineers to build a coal-export facility at the Port of Morrow in Oregon. Under existing rules, officials weighing approval would consider whether ships in the port would foul the water or generate air pollution locally. The Environmental Protection Agency and activist groups say that review should be broadened to account for the greenhouse gases emitted when exported coal is burned in power plants in Asia.

Keystone Pipeline

Similar analyses could be made for the oil sands that would be transported in TransCanada Corp. (TRP)’s Keystone XL pipeline, and leases to drill for oil, gas and coal on federal lands, such as those for Arch Coal Inc. (ACI) and Peabody Energy Corp. (BTU)

If the new White House guidance is structured correctly, it will require just those kinds of lifecycle reviews, said Bill Snape, senior counsel at the Center for Biological Diversity in Washington. The environmental group has sued to press for this approach, and Snape says lawsuits along this line are certain if the administration approves the Keystone pipeline, which would transport oil from Canada’s tar sands to the U.S. Gulf Coast.

“The real danger is the delays,” said Eisenberg of the manufacturers’ group. “I don’t think the answer is ever going to be ‘no,’ but it can confound things.”

Lawyers and lobbyists are now waiting for the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality to issue the long bottled-up standards for how agencies should address climate change under the National Environmental Policy Act, signed into law by President Richard Nixon in 1970.

Environmental Impact

NEPA requires federal agencies to consider and publish the environmental impact of their actions before making decisions. Those reviews don’t mandate a specific course of action. They do provide a chance for citizens and environmentalists to weigh in before regulators decide on an action -- and to challenge those reviews in court if it’s cleared.

“Each agency currently differs in how their NEPA reviews consider the climate change impacts of projects, as well as how climate change impacts such as extreme weather will affect projects,” Taryn Tuss, a Council on Environmental Quality spokeswoman, said in an e-mail. “CEQ is working to incorporate the public input we received on the draft guidance, and will release updated guidance when it is completed.”

‘Major Shakeup’

The new standards will be “a major shakeup in how agencies conduct NEPA” reviews, said Brendan Cummings, senior counsel for the Center for Biological Diversity in San Francisco.

The White House is looking at requiring consideration of both the increase in greenhouse gases and a project’s vulnerability to flooding, drought or other extreme weather that might result from global warming, according to an initial proposal it issued in 2010. Those full reports would be required for projects with 25,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions or more per year, the equivalent of burning about 100 rail cars of coal.

The initial draft exempted federal land and resource decisions from the guidance, although CEQ said it was assessing how to handle those cases. Federal lands could be included in the final standards.

The White House guidance itself won’t force any projects to be stopped outright. Instead, it’s likely to prompt lawsuits against federal projects on these grounds, and increase the probability that courts will step in and order extensive reviews as part of the “adequate analysis” required in the law, said George Mannina, an attorney at Nossaman LLP in Washington.

Next Administration

“The question is: Where does this analysis take us?” he said. “Adequate analysis may be much broader than the agency and applicant might consider.”

While the Obama administration’s guidance could be easily rescinded by the next administration, the court rulings that stem from these cases will live on as precedents, Mannina said.

Lobbying groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, American Petroleum Institute and the National Mining Association weighed in with the White House against including climate in NEPA, a law initially aimed at chemical leaks or air pollution.

“Not only will this result in additional delay of the NEPA process, but will result in speculative and inaccurate modeling that will have direct impacts on approval of specific projects,” the National Mining Association in Washington wrote in comments to the White House in 2010.

Leases Challenged

The group represents Arch Coal (ACI) and Peabody, both based in St. Louis. Leases that the Department of Interior issued for those companies to mine for coal in Wyoming are facing lawsuits from environmental groups, arguing that the agency didn’t adequately tally up the effect on global warming from burning that coal.

Given Obama’s pledge to address global warming, “this is a massive contradiction,” said Jeremy Nichols, director of climate at WildEarth Guardians in Denver, which filed lawsuits against the leases.

Arch Coal referred questions to the mining group.

Beth Sutton, a Peabody spokeswoman, said in an e-mail, “We believe the current regulatory approach to surface mine permits is appropriate and protects the environment.”

Since CEQ first announced its proposal, more than three dozen federal approvals were challenged on climate grounds, including a highway project in North Carolina, a methane-venting plan for a coal mine in Colorado, and a research facility in California, according to a chart compiled by the Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University.

Next Target

The next target is TransCanada (TRP)’s application to build the 1,661-mile (2,673-kilometer) Keystone pipeline. The Sierra Club and 350.org drew 35,000 people to Washington last month to urge Obama to reject the pipeline. Meanwhile, the NEPA review by the State Department included an initial analysis of carbon released when the tar sands are refined into gasoline and used in vehicles.

It stopped short, however, of saying the project would result in an increase in greenhouse gas emissions. With or without the pipeline, the oil sands will be mined and used as fuel, the report said. That finding is likely to be disputed in court if the Obama administration clears the project.

“Keystone is ground zero,” said Snape, of the Center for Biological Diversity. “Clearly this will come into play, and it will be litigated.”

Any actions by the administration now on global warming would pick up on a mixed record over the past four years.

Cap-and-Trade

While Obama failed to get Congress to pass cap-and-trade legislation, the EPA reversed course from the previous administration and ruled that carbon-dioxide emissions endanger public health, opening the way for the agency to regulate it.

Using that finding, the agency raised mileage standards for automobiles and proposed rules for new power plants that would essentially outlaw the construction of new coal-fired power plants that don’t have expensive carbon-capture technology.

Environmentalists such as the Natural Resources Defense Council say the most important action next will be the EPA’s rules for existing power plants, the single biggest source of carbon-dioxide emissions. The NEPA standards are separate from those rules, and will affect how the federal government itself is furthering global warming.

“Agencies do a pretty poor job of looking at climate change impacts,” Rebecca Judd, a legislative counsel at the environmental legal group Earthjustice in Washington. “A thorough guidance would help alleviate that.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Mark Drajem in Washington at mdrajem@bloomberg.net
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 17, 2013, 05:53:07 PM
“Well then, if the president does it, it’s legal,” Richard Nixon once said. No one would accuse President Barack Obama of being Nixonian. Mr Obama tends to follow the law, would never approve of burgling the opposition and bears no vengeful traits. Yet he has done more than anyone to bury the campaign reforms that were brought in after Watergate. The latest step may be something Mr Obama will come to regret.
Last week he spoke at a fundraising dinner in Washington. The low-key event was the founders’ summit of Organizing for Action – the 2012 Obama election campaign that has been reborn as the de facto fund-raising arm of the White House. The dinner, which included Eric Schmidt, chief executive of Google, did not appear on most of the evening news shows.
More
ON THIS STORY
Global Insight Obama and opponents talk the talk
Obama’s money in politics stance criticised
The World Rand Paul and Republican soul
Rival budgets sharpen divide over US cuts
EDWARD LUCE
A good engineer who knows his own limits
A taste for mutually assured destruction
Corporate tie binds US to a slow internet
Obama is right to resist the Syria hawks
Yet it marks the moment that America’s permanent campaign was institutionalised. Tickets went for $50,000 a head. Those giving $500,000 or more will get to attend a quarterly meeting with Mr Obama. Not even George W. Bush was this audacious. To govern is to choose, went the saying. Now to campaign is to govern.
In Mr Obama’s defence, Democrats point out that he is doing far less than what corporate groups have done – and are planning to do – to defeat his agenda. Since the 2010 Citizens United ruling, in which the Supreme Court extended free speech rights to corporations by defining them as persons, liberals have worried about a tsunami of special interest money.
So-called “super-pacs” are likely to spend millions in the coming months to defeat Mr Obama’s gun control proposals, any steps to curb global warming and even immigration reform (though most of America’s billionaires tend to be in favour of it). They will also hit the airwaves in opposition to any plan to close tax loopholes for the wealthy. It is only natural that Mr Obama would want to create a level playing field, say OFA’s apologists. In the real world, that takes money.
Unlike Karl Rove, Mr Bush’s former electoral maestro, who runs Crossroads GPS, another “non-partisan” group, Mr Obama also promises a degree of transparency. Following an outcry by Washington’s bedraggled army of campaign finance reform groups, OFA now says it will disclose the names of anyone giving more than $250. It has also banned corporate donations. Moreover, there is scant prospect of an end to Mr Obama’s stand-off with Republicans before next year’s midterm elections. Mr Obama can give as many prime time speeches – and invite Republicans to as many dinners – as he likes. But the White House bully pulpit is not what it was. Putting pressure on lawmakers requires a far wieldier tool.
All of which may look compelling at this point. But OFA’s defenders also underestimate its costs. The first is the lasting damage to Mr Obama’s credibility. The journey from idealist to insider is now complete. Mr Obama started out as an underdog in 2007 railing against the “cynics and special interests who have turned our government into a game”. Many succumbed to Obamamania because of his promise to tear up the Washington playbook.
The young senator pledged to forswear private money in the general election if his opponent did likewise. John McCain, the Republican nominee, accepted the offer. But by then conditions had changed. Mr Obama went on to outspend his opponent by more than two to one. Thus died the post-Nixon era of public financing. In spite of Mr Obama’s promise to replace it, the new has yet to be born.
Not even Mr Obama’s opponents expect him to use OFA as a crude “pay for play” in which donors win lucrative contracts – like Halliburton, the oil services group, did during the Bush years. But he is taking a big risk with appearances of conflict. Things will look worse if Mr Obama appoints Penny Pritzker, his former campaign finance chairwoman, as the next US commerce secretary – as is likely. Ms Pritzker is a billionaire whose immense Rolodex helped raise $750m for Mr Obama in 2008.
Second, Mr Obama now routinely deploys the kind of sophistry he built his brand on opposing. Headed by Jim Messina, who ran the 2012 campaign, it has been set up as a “social welfare” organisation that will be strictly “non-partisan” and unable to co-ordinate with the White House, say officials. In practice, it is registered as a charity to escape ceilings on individual campaign donations.
If a hedge fund manager wanted to give $10m there would be nothing to stop it. “As I understand it, as I’ve read about it, it [OFA] will not take a position in elections,” Jay Carney, the White House spokesman, recently told reporters. Mr Carney could have checked with Michelle Obama, who made a video to accompany its launch in January. The group would be a way of “bringing ordinary people into politics”, she said.
But OFA’s biggest cost is still hidden. It sets a new threshold for elected US officials. If the president can raise unlimited private funds for his “social welfare” causes so can any governor or mayor, let alone the next president. Mr Obama’s ends may be laudable. It is hard to condemn any initiative that aims to counter the might of the gun lobby. However, the means are for keeps. Democrats will find it hard to complain when President Marco Rubio taps, say, defence industry money for his own charitable causes in 2016. “Yes he can,” will be the response.
edward.luce@ft.com

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2013. You may share using our article tools.
Please don't cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 18, 2013, 10:01:32 AM
The More Businesses Learn About Obamacare, The More Reluctant They Are To Hire


http://www.forbes.com/sites/sallypipes/2013/03/18/the-more-businesses-learn-about-obamacare-the-more-reluctant-they-are-to-hire



Wondering why the unemployment rate has been near or above 8 percent for nearly four years? The Federal Reserve has an answer for you: Obamacare.



(Photo credit: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com)


Earlier this month, the Fed released its latest “beige book”  – a monthly report on economic conditions across the country. The book noted that employers across the country have “cited the unknown effects of the Affordable Care Act as reasons for planned layoffs and reluctance to hire more staff.”

The more businesses learn about the president’s health reform law, the more they’re coming to realize that “affordable care” is the last thing it will provide. And that’s in large part due to the multibillion-dollar tax that Obamacare is set to levy on health insurance companies.

Starting next year, insurance companies will have to remit $8 billion to the federal treasury. The tax climbs to $11.3 billion in 2015 and 2016, to $13.9 billion in 2017, and to $14.3 billion thereafter.

Insurance companies will pay based on their share of industry revenues in a given year — the more revenue, the bigger the hit.

And although insurers are responsible for paying it, there’s no question that the tax will “be largely passed through to consumers in the form of higher premiums for private coverage,” as the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office put it.

How much will premiums go up?  The Joint Committee on Taxation figures the tax will add between 2 percent and 2.5 percent to the cost of premiums.

But that estimate is probably too low. Former CBO director Douglas Holtz-Eakin figures that the premium tax will add 3 percent to the cost of family coverage over the next decade. And a study by consulting firm Oliver Wyman figures the tax will boost premium costs by as much as 3.7 percent a decade from now.

That means a family will pay a total of $5,000 more in premiums, and small businesses nearly $7,000, over the next 10 years.

Those are just averages. Individuals and businesses in some states will pay far more, according to Oliver Wyman’s research. Small businesses in West Virginia, for example, will have to deal with  more than $9,000 in added costs for a family plan over the next decade. Those in Nebraska will get hit with almost $8,000 in new costs.

Seniors and state governments will pay the tax, too.

The cost of the private Medicare Advantage plans that about a quarter of seniors currently enjoy is set to rise nearly $3,600 over the next ten years, thanks to the tax. In Florida, for example, seniors will pay an additional $4,000 in premiums.

Costs for the Medicaid managed care plans that cover nearly three-quarters of the program’s beneficiaries will rise by more than $1,500 per enrollee over the next decade.

Obamacare’s premium tax will also distort the insurance market by tilting the playing field heavily against for-profit insurance companies like WellPoint, UnitedHealthcare, and Aetna.

Unlike just about every other tax they pay, for-profit insurers won’t be able to deduct the premium tax from their earnings. So a good chunk of their income will effectively get taxed twice — once to satisfy Obamacare’s premium tax, and then again when they pay the corporate tax. That means they’ll have to raise premiums even higher.

Non-profit insurers like Blue Shield of California don’t pay income taxes, so they won’t face this double whammy when paying the premium tax.

What’s more, the law exempts non-profits that do 80 percent or more of their business with the government from the premium tax altogether. That gives non-profits an even bigger leg up against their for-profit competitors.

And it’s not as if non-profit insurers are barely scraping by. Blue Shield of California, for instance, had reserves of $3.9 billion in the last quarter of 2012.

 Several groups that largely represent small businesses — including the National Federation of Independent Business, the National Retail Federation, the Chamber of Commerce, and the American Farm Bureau Federation — have called for repeal of this tax. And earlier this year, in a rare show of bipartisanship in Washington, Louisiana Republican Charles Boustany and Utah Democrat Jim Matheson introduced a bill in the House that would repeal the tax before it has a chance to take effect.

That’s the right call. Scrapping Obamacare’s burdensome and misguided premium tax would put money back in the pockets of American businesses — money they could use to keep the nation’s unemployment rate a whole lot lower than the 8 percent of the last four years.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: chadstallion on March 18, 2013, 02:58:08 PM
I'm sure the trucker at the rest stop will appreciate it. 
good one, bro; hats off to your developing sense of humor.
And it never gets old or fails me......

walk around the truck stop, see a hot trucker, go over, kick a tire and say...
"you got a heavy load?"

they are muchly appreciative.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 18, 2013, 03:03:06 PM
good one, bro; hats off to your developing sense of humor.
And it never gets old or fails me......

walk around the truck stop, see a hot trucker, go over, kick a tire and say...
"you got a heavy load?"

they are muchly appreciative.

Once people get to know me they appreciate my jokes and sarcastic nature.  Im every bit the sarcastic jokster in person
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 18, 2013, 03:04:26 PM
Skip to comments.
Obama DOD: Use Humor & Dialogue When Confronting Violent Rapists (Video)
 The Gateway Pundit ^ | 3/18/13 | Jim Hoft

Posted on Monday, March 18, 2013 6:01:38 PM by Nachum

A new video released last month by The Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute, an arm of the Defense Department, instructs bystanders on how to react in case of violence, rape or harassment. The video offers a number of actions including using humor and dialogue during an attack. Counter Contempt reported:

The Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute (DEOMI) is an arm of the Department of Defense created in 1971 (and reorganized in 1979 under President Carter). It’s stated mission is to fight “intolerance.” The DEOMI commandant, a political appointee, answers to Obama’s new Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, Jessica L. Wright. Wright, you may recall, recently complained to congress about the “devastating” impact of sequester cuts on the “quality of life” of military personnel.

The latest DEOMI video instructs you to use humor and dialogue during a violent attack.


(Excerpt) Read more at thegatewaypundit.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 18, 2013, 08:17:19 PM
The Obama administration is demanding the nation’s two biggest shipping companies police the contents of Americans’ sealed packages, and a FedEx spokesman is warning that the move “has the potential to threaten the privacy of all customers that send or receive packages.”

FedEx and UPS are in the Justice Department’s cross-hairs for not flagging shipments of illegally prescribed drugs the companies say they had no way of knowing were in their possession.

Criminal charges could be coming against the carriers, even though the government has not alleged any deliberate wrongdoing by the companies.

FedEx spokesman Patrick Fitzgerald said his company has a 40-year history of actively assisting the government crackdown on any criminal conduct, but he told WND this probe was very different from the start.

“What is unusual and really disturbing is it became clear to us along the way that FedEx was being targeted for some level criminal activity as it relates to these medicines that are being shipped from pharmacies, and we find it to be completely absurd because it’s really not our role,” Fitzgerald said. “We have no way of knowing what is legal and not within the packages that we’re picking up and delivering in this situation.”

“At the heart of the investigation are sealed packages that are being sent by, as far as we can tell, licensed pharmacies. These are medicines with legal prescriptions written by licensed physicians. So it’s difficult for us to understand where we would have some role in this. We are a transportation company that picks up and delivers close to 10 million packages every day. They are sealed packages, so we have no way of knowing specifically what’s inside and we have no interest in violating the privacy rights of our customers,” Fitzgerald said.

In addition to the unrealistic expectation that the federal government seems to have for the companies to know what’s in every package, Fitzgerald said protecting the rights of customers is paramount and the issues go hand-in-hand.

“They clearly are attempting to put some responsibility for the legality of the contents of these packages. That’s why for us it goes far beyond even just the online pharmacy situation. This really has a chilling effect. It has the potential to threaten the privacy of all customers that send or receive packages via FedEx because the government is assigning a role on us as law enforcement or taking on their role in a way that is not appropriate,” Fitzgerald said.

FedEx sought to diffuse the standoff by offering to stop doing business with any pharmacies that the government suspected to be involved in illegal activities. The Justice Department declined, citing the potential for the pharmacies to sue over a lack of due process.

“If the government were to come to us and give us the name of a customer that’s engaged in some level of illegal activity, we can immediately stop shipping for that customer. We will not tolerate any illegal activity within our networks,” Fitzgerald said. “What we want here is a solution that will apply for the entire industry and serve the public’s interest. That’s why we find it completely absurd and, to a large degree, stunning that the government is not working with us on that solution as they have with other problems in the past. As long as they’re not doing that, there’s really no solution even if they were to pursue an investigation or criminal charges against a specific company. There needs to be an industry-wide solution that will put a stop to this problem.”

That leaves FedEx and UPS with the task of stopping illegal shipments from sources the government will not divulge.

“The comparison that we’ve made is a no-fly list. It’s as if the government were to go to major commercial airlines and accuse them of some level of criminal activity if they were to allow somebody on the no-fly list onto one of their planes without providing them a no-fly list,” Fitzgerald said. “What we want here is the no-fly list for online pharmacies. If they are aware of some level of illegal activity by some number of pharmacies, simply provide us that list and we will stop providing service. It’s a very simple solution.”

Fitzpatrick said no other private carriers are being targeted by the Justice Department, and he has no evidence to suggest this probe is designed to boost the financially strapped U.S. Postal Service at the expense of private competitors.

UPS is currently negotiating a settlement with the government, but FedEx is fighting this all the way.

“Settlement is not an option for us when there’s no illegal activity on our part,” Fitzpatrick said.






Because you voted for it.   F Obama
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 22, 2013, 09:14:05 PM
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2013/0322/With-US-Russia-relationship-toxic-Moscow-looks-to-strengthen-ties-with-China?nav=87-frontpage-entryNineItem


LOL - Total FAIL   

Obama is a disaster of biblical measure
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 30, 2013, 05:23:22 AM
Lanny Breuer Cashes in After Not Prosecuting Wall Street Execs, Will Receive Approximate Salary of 4 Million Dollars



 
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MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

It's official, and former Department of Justice (DOJ) Criminal Division Chef Lanny Breuer is bragging about it.  He'll return for the third to time the white collar (now expanding its clients internationally) legal defense firm of Covington & Burling, but this time at a whopping salary.

According to the New York Times: "Mr. Breuer is expected to earn about $4 million in his first year at Covington. In addition to representing clients, he will serve as an ambassador of sorts for the firm as it seeks to grow overseas."

As BuzzFlash at Truthout has speculated before, one can argue (and the same holds true for Eric Holder, also a Covington & Burling alumni appointee), Breuer was building his value in the marketplace at the DOJ, while Wall Street executives who nearly destroyed the American economy went unprosecuted.  And his future value to his old white collar defense firm was dependent, in large part, on him not angering the people who would be the clients of Covington & Burling when he left the Department of Justice. The result, one can contend: no prosecutions of banks "too big to fail" execs as publicly stated as a policy by both Breuer and Holder.

This isn't just a revolving door; one can argue it's a dereliction of legal responsibility by an employee of the people of the United States.  One can proffer that it's a cash-in career move by a resume climber who was careful not to bite the hands that will write the checks that will feed him on a lavish scale.

BuzzFlash at Truthout has written more than fifteen commentaries on the failure to prosecute Wall Street execs in recent months. These include: "Consigliere Lanny Breuer, Head of the DOJ Criminal Division, Leaves Without Prosecuting One Made Man on Wall Street" ; and "The Covington & Burling Trio Overseeing the Department of Justice Criminal Division: An Injustice."

Breuer isn't the least bit sheepish about grabbing the brass ring after failing to hold those responsible for nearly sinking the economy criminally accountable. According to the website Main Justice,

Breuer said that he will also maintain his white collar clients, which he hope to grow following his stint as the Criminal Division's longest-serving leader in recent history. Moving forward, he expects to have individual and corporate clients in areas such as foreign bribery, money laundering, export control and securities law and whistle blower cases. 

Breuer has spent a combined total of approximately two decades at Covington & Burling.

According the Corporate Crime Reporter:

At Covington, Breuer will work with a corporate criminal defense team that includes:

Robert Amaee, the former Head of Anti-Corruption and Head of Proceeds of Crime at the UK Serious Fraud Office.

Bruce Baird, former Chief of the Securities and Commodities Fraud Task Force in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.

Tom Barnett and Deborah Garza, both a former Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Antitrust Division.

Michael Chertoff, himself a former Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division before becoming Secretary for Homeland Security.

Steve Fagell, former Deputy Chief of Staff and Counselor in the Criminal Division.

Jim Garland, former Deputy Chief of Staff and Counselor to Attorney General Eric Holder.

Nancy Kestenbaum and Lynn Neils, both former Chiefs of the General Crimes Unit of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.

Ethan Posner and Jean Veta, both former Deputy Associate Attorneys General.

Alan Vinegrad, former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York.

And numerous other former federal prosecutors and enforcement officials, including Stephen Anthony, David Bayless, Casey Cooper, Haywood Gilliam, Geoffrey Hobart, and Simone Ross.

Criticism of Breuer’s exit through the revolving door came quickly from Dennis Kelleher, a former partner at Skadden Arps in Washington, D.C., and currently president of the public interest group Better Markets.

Kelleher told Corporate Crime Reporter that “nothing is more corrosive to the American people’s trust in government than the revolving door where too many officials turn their so-called public service into multi-million dollar riches unimaginable to most Americans.”

“This blatant cashing-in is destroying faith in government and government officials,” Kelleher said.

“Lanny Breuer’s spinning through it is only the latest example: partner at big DC law firm representing corporate clients before the Department, then becomes a senior official at the Department making decisions whether or not to prosecute those same or similar corporate clients, then leaves to go back to private practice representing those same or similar corporate clients with legal issues before, bingo, the Department of Justice,” Kelleher said.

As we noted in one of our previous BuzzFlash at Truthout commentaries deploring the systemic injustice of people who use government service to raise their cash value in DC, this is quite possibly a crime against the American people for personal enrichment.  We are certain Lanny Breuer would deny anything but the purest motives, and that is his right. As he told Main Justice: "So, I love the advocacy system. I'm a zealous advocate, and I look forward to being a zealous advocate for our [Covington & Burling] clients again."

But BuzzFlash at Truthout has a different perspective. At a reported $4 million a year, much of Breuer's salary will have been earned at the expense of not prosecuting justice.

And a lot of perps are riding around in chauffeured limousines because Lanny Breuer didn't lift a finger to take away their keys. Now they are his clients again.

How do you imagine that happened?


Some additional BuzzFlash commentaries of interest on the lack of Wall Street prosecution:

This commentary, "Holder Admits that Department of Justice Believes Big Bankers Are Above the Law," contains hyperlinks to many of the recent BuzzFlash commentaries on the DOJ's negligence in prosecuting Wall Street campaign donors and executives of banks too big to fail.

Also see, "Eric Holder Enables Dishonesty, Fraud and Likely Criminal Activity on Wall Street"; and "In Bank Tax Cut for Job Scheme, Another Bank Gets Immunity by DOJ."

(Photo: Wikipedia)
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 30, 2013, 06:00:57 AM
http://truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/item/17885-lanny-breuer-cashes-in-after-not-prosecuting-wall-street-execs-will-receive-approximate-salary-of-4-million-dollars


Because you voted for it.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 30, 2013, 06:04:11 AM
WASHINGTON, DC, March 28, 2013 - President Barack Obama signed a spending bill, HR 933, into law, the “Monsanto Protection Act,” that strips federal courts of the authority to immediately halt the planting and sale of genetically modified (GMO) seed crop regardless of any consumer health concerns.

“The provision would strip federal courts of the authority to halt the sale and planting of an illegal, potentially hazardous GE crop while the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) assesses those potential hazards,” explains a letter to the House that has been signed by dozens of food businesses and retailers, as well as interest groups and agencies representing family farmers. “Further, it would compel USDA to allow continued planting of that same crop upon request, even if in the course of its assessment the Department finds that it poses previously unrecognized risks.”

Why does Monsanto and other GMO companies need this protection? The corolary question is has there ever been a safe, healthy, non-complicated genetically modified organism?

Genetical engineering is the process of putting genetic material from one species into another in a form that does not exist in nature. In every case of genetic engineered organsims, the product has been less naturally healthy overall than the original host organsims. There may be a single trait that is superior, but the overall health of the organism is less than found in nature. From animals like the sheep Dolly, to the Flavr Savr tomato, to the products you are eating today and don’t even know it, there are inherent problems consuming altered DNA.

In 1994, Dr Joseph Cummins, Emeritus Professor of Genetics at the University of West-Ontario warned that the inclusion in Flavr Savr tomatoes of a genetic sequence from the Cauliflower Mosaic Virus could create virulent new viruses. In October 1991, Dr Edwin Mathews from the Department of Health and Human Services and of the FDA's Toxicology Group wrote to the FDA Biotechnology Working Group saying: “Genetically modified plants could also contain unexpected high concentrations of plant toxicants”.

Modified proteins, new proteins never before eaten by humanity, exist in GE foods. In 1992, Dr. Louis J. Pribyl of the FDA's Microbiology Group warned  that there is "a profound difference between the types of expected effects from traditional breeding and genetic engineering."

There are many explanations of why genetic engineering becomes faulty, but for starters here are two:

DNA does not always fully break down in the alimentary tract. Gut bacteria can take up genes and GM plasmids, opening the possibility of the spread of antibiotic resistance.
Insertion of genes into the genome can also result in unintended effects. Some of the ways the inserted genes express themselves in the host or the way they affect the functioning of the crop’s own genes are unpredictable. This may lead to the development of unknown toxic/allergenic components.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN, "Substantial equivalence is the embodies the concept that if a new food or food component is found to be substantially equivalent to an existing food or food component, it can be treated in the same manner with respect to safety."

Many GM and parental line crops fall short of the definition of “substantial equivalence.” In any case, this crude, poorly defined and unscientific concept outlived its possible previous usefulness and we need novel methods and concepts to probe into the compositional, nutritional/toxicological and metabolic differences between GM and conventional crops and into the safety of the genetic techniques used in developing GM crops if we want to put this technology on a proper scientific foundation and allay the fears of the general public. We need more science, not less.

There are processes that are locking the agricultural farmer into a business relationship with the seed producers.

"Technology Protection," is how they sell it. "Terminator" technology makes plants that would produce sterile seeds after one season. This means, farmers have to buy more seeds for the next harvest.

"Traitor" technology is a trait-specific technology that develops traits which would remain dormant in crops. Farmers can choose to activate this trait by spraying their crops with a proprietary chemical compound. This means, they'll have to buy the proprietary compound to treat their crops in order to activate it. There are even biochemical companies requiring farmers to sign agreements to not save any of their seeds for re-planting. This means that instead of using the seeds for the next planting season, they have to get rid of them and buy more seeds.

Other possible effects might come from the spread of genes from modified plants to unmodified relatives, which might produce species of weeds resistant to herbicides. 

There are numerous problems with the genetically modified fods you eat. 

CORN- Two research studies independently show evidence of allergenic reactions to GM Bt corn, and farm workers exposed to genetically-modified Bt sprays exhibited extensive allergic reactions.

POTATOES - A study showed genetically-modified potatoes expressing cod genes were allergenic.

PEAS - A decade-long study of GM peas was abandoned when it was discovered that they caused allergic lung damage in mice.

SOY - In March 1999, researchers at the York Laboratory discovered that reactions to soy had skyrocketed by 50% over the year before, which corresponded with the introduction of genetically-modified soy from the US. It was the first time in 17 years that soy was tested in the lab among the top ten allergenic foods. 

A four-year study at the University of Jena in Germany conducted by Hans-Hinrich Kaatz revealed that bees ingesting pollen from transgenic rapeseed had bacteria in their gut with modified genes. This is called a "horizontal gene transfer." Commonly found bacteria and microorganisms in the human gut help maintain a healthy intestinal flora. These, however, can be mutated.

Mutations may also be able to travel internally to other cells, tissue systems and organs throughout the human body. Not to be underestimated, the potential domino effect of internal and external genetic pollution can make the substance of science-fiction horror movies become terrible realities in the future. The same is true for the bacteria that maintain the health of our soil - and are vitally necessary for all forms of farming - in fact for human sustenance and survival.

It is a well-know fact that fish proteins happen to be among the most hyper-allergenic, while tomatoes are not. Thus not labeling such genetically modified tomatoes, with hidden alien or allergenic ingredients, is completely unconscionable. The same applies to the typical GMO that has novel bacterial and viral DNA artificially inserted. 

Superviruses: Viruses can mix with genes of other viruses and retroviruses such as HIV. This can give rise to more deadly viruses - and at rates higher than previously thought. One study showed that gene mixing occurred in viruses in just 8 weeks (Kleiner, 1997). This kind of scenario applies to the cauliflower mosaic virus CaMV, the most common virus used in genetic engineering - in Round Up ready soy of Monsanto, Bt-maise of Novaris, and GM cotton and canola. 

The American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM) called on 'Physicians to educate their patients, the medical community, and the public to avoid GM (genetically modified) foods when possible and provide educational materials concerning GM foods and health risks.' They called for a moratorium on GM foods, long-term independent studies, and labeling. AAEM’s position paper stated, 'Several animal studies indicate serious health risks associated with GM food,' including infertility, immune problems, accelerated aging, insulin regulation, and changes in major organs and the gastrointestinal system. They conclude, 'There is more than a casual association between GM foods and adverse health effects. There is causation,'as defined by recognized scientific criteria. 'The strength of association and consistency between GM foods and disease is confirmed in several animal studies.' 

Most countries have banned GMOs. Not the U.S. This happens because of public unawareness and politics. 

If you are concerned ask your grocer which foods they carry are GM foods. If you plant foods, ask the seed manufacturer which seeds are GMO. Stop purchasing known GM foods. Contact your state and national congress representatives and voice your concern on this subject. 

GMO’s have never occurred in the history of the world until the past several decades. The timeframe is far too short to understand their impact on nature and human health. 

 

--

Dr Peter Lind practices metabolic and neurologic chiropractic in his wellness clinic in Salem, Oregon. USA. He is the author of 3 books on health, one novel, and hundreds of wellness articles. His clinical specialty is in physical, nutritional, and emotional stress. 

 

For more health tips go to http://www.wellnessreport.net

 

This article is the copyrighted property of the writer and Communities @ WashingtonTimes.com. Written permission must be obtained before reprint in online or print media. REPRINTING TWTC CONTENT WITHOUT PERMISSION AND/OR PAYMENT IS THEFT AND PUNISHABLE BY LAW.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 31, 2013, 05:53:10 PM
Hillary Clinton snagged in Benghazi cover-up
 WorldNetDaily ^ | Mar 31, 2013 | Aaron Klein

Posted on Sunday, March 31, 2013 6:37:59 PM by wesagain

"New reports prompt questions about perplexing security decisions after attack"

JERUSALEM – As media reports present evidence the U.S. has played a central role in arming Syrian rebels, new questions now emerge about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s involvement in the controversial scheme.

The questions prompt a second look at the perplexing security decisions made by Clinton and other top Obama administration officials the night of the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks on American facilities in Benghazi.

One of those key decisions reportedly delayed an investigative FBI team from arriving at the Benghazi site for 24 days. The site was widely reported to have contained classified documents.

WND raised the Thursday of whether Clinton was telling the truth when she claimed in a Senate hearing that she had no information about whether the U.S. mission in Libya was procuring or transferring weapons to Turkey and other Arab countries.

Her claim appears to contradict a New York Times report that the CIA has been aiding Arab governments and Turkey in obtaining and shipping weapons to the Syrian rebels.

The goal of the alleged weapons shipments was to arm the rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

Any training or arming of the Syrian rebels would be considered highly controversial. A major issue is the inclusion of jihadists, including al-Qaida, among the ranks of the Free Syrian Army and other Syrian opposition groups

Now a closer reading of two separate reports from the New York Times paints a picture of Clinton as the ring leader of the plan to arm Syrian rebels.

Confirming WND’s exclusive reporting for over a year, the New York Times last week reported that since early 2012.........


(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 31, 2013, 07:51:40 PM
CURL: The Obamas live the 1 percent life
 


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By Joseph Curl
 
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The Washington Times
 
Sunday, March 31, 2013





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ANALYSIS/OPINION:
 
Being president of the U.S., the most powerful man in the world, is often most about perception. The man (or, one day, woman) in the job takes actions large and small every day, but it is the perception of the man that seeps into the everyday lives of working Americans.
 
That's why presidential candidates always hit Philadelphia for a cheesesteak during campaigns (Democrats to Pat's, Republicans to Geno's). Sure, they're running billion-dollar operations trying to win the White House, but one picture of them wolfing down a Cheez Whiz-covered glob of meat on a Philly street hits home with millions of voters: "Hey, that guy's just like me! He loves him a Pat's [or Geno's] cheesesteak, too!" (Unless you're John F. Kerry and order Swiss cheese — then everyone hates you.)
 
Sometimes, that perception cuts to the core. Like when President George W. Bush stopped playing golf in 2003, at the height of the Iraq War.
 
"I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal," he said years later. "I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf. I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them."
 
That's also why Mr. Bush did two other things, without fanfare or praise. First, he never headed home to his Texas ranch until after Christmas, instead going to Camp David for a few days. That way, the hundreds of people revolving around him at all times — White House staff, Secret Service agents, reporters, photographers, all the others — could spend the holiday with their families in and around Washington, D.C. No one ever reported that — until this column.
 
Second, he rarely attended sporting events, although he once owned a baseball team and was a self-confessed stats junkie. His thinking there was the same: If he went to a baseball game (right down the street from the White House), his mere presence would mean hours and hours of extra security for fans. He once stopped off at the Daytona 500 and the metal detectors through which every fan had to pass left thousands outside in line when the green flag fell; he didn't attend many sporting events after that.
 
But something remarkable has happened with these occupants of the White House: Neither President Obama nor first lady Michelle appear to give a damn about perception. They won the White House and, by God, they're going to enjoy their time there, no matter the cost. And who cares what you think, anyway?
 
How else to explain the nonstop vacations the pair keep taking during what Mr. Obama calls the "worst financial crisis since the Great Depression"? In 2013, the First Family has already enjoyed three vacations — that's one a month. (Sorry, Joe America, you might have to forget your week at the beach again this year, but make sure you get those taxes in on time!)
 
The Obamas ended 2012 and kicked off 2013 in an $8 million, 6,000-square-foot house in Hawaii (they left well before Dec. 25, by the way). There, the president played five rounds of golf (breaking the 100-rounds-as-president threshold). Scarcely a month into Term 2, Mrs. Obama headed off for Aspen, taking along the couple's daughters. Vice President Joseph R. Biden also hit the Colorado slopes. While the girls (and Joe) were gone, Mr. Obama nipped down to Florida for a four-day boys weekend of golf, teeing it up with his buddies — and Tiger Woods. He hit the links again this weekend, then dropped in for an NCAA tournament game in Washington.
 
Jumpin' Joe, for his part, spent New Year's in the Virgin Islands and popped off over the Easter weekend for a golf outing at the glorious Kiawah Island, S.C. (where rounds of golf on the spectacular Ocean Course run $353 — nearly $20 a hole). His third vacation of the year came the same week as reports that he and his entourage spent $460,000 for a single night in London and $585,000 for a night at a five-star hotel in Paris.
 
Then, last week, reports emerged that the Obama girls were kicking it in the Bahamas for spring break. Days later, a Colorado news station, KMTV, reported that the girls were now skiing in Sun Valley, Idaho. The White House flacks didn't like that one bit.
 
"From the beginning of the administration, the White House has asked news outlets not to report on or photograph the Obama children when they are not with their parents and there is no vital news interest," said Kristina Schake, communications director to the first lady. "We have reminded outlets of this request in order to protect the privacy and security of these girls."
 
At their demand, the station scrubbed the report without explanation. What losers.
 
To be clear, this has nothing to do with the daughters. Never has. They are wonderful girls. The issue is use of taxpayer money, especially since Mr. Obama has shut down the White House to visitors, citing the cost of security. All these trips cost millions for Secret Service protection; couldn't they just skip a few vacations so taxpayers could visit "America's House"?
 
But no, the Obamas don't care a whit about that, or the perception of them living high on the hog while many hardworking Americans are struggling to get by — and hoping to save enough for just one vacation this year.
 
And that perception, juxtaposed with reality, more than nearly anything else, tells you an awful lot about this president.
 
• Joseph Curl covered the White House and politics for a decade for The Washington Times and is now editor of the Drudge Report. He can be reached at josephcurl@gmail.com and @josephcurl.
 
© Copyright 2013 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.


Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/mar/31/curl-the-obamas-live-the-1-percent-life/#ixzz2PAzgrSl9
 Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 01, 2013, 02:25:45 PM
EPA accused of using instant messages to avoid sunshine laws in lawsuit
 


 
Top Environmental Protection Agency officials used computer instant messages to try to circumvent open-records laws, according to a new lawsuit filed late last week by a researcher who has been demanding the agency comply with the law.
 
Christopher C. Horner, the researcher who earlier uncovered that EPA officials were using private email addresses to conduct official business, said that in going over some of those earlier records he discovered the agency was using instant messages, too. He now is suing to get a look at those records, which he said EPA has refused to release.
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

SPECIAL COVERAGE: Energy and Environment
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“It seems we have uncovered yet another major transparency scandal in that either EPA is destroying instant messages against the law, or it is withholding them in defiance of its legal obligations to produce,” Mr. Horner said.
 
The lawsuit says EPA“has never produced an instant message in response either to a request under [the Freedom of Information Act], or in response to a congressional oversight request, despite numerous requests from both for ‘records’ or ‘electronic records.’”
 
The complaint was filed late Thursday and was being served on EPA on Monday by Mr. Horner, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the American Tradition Institute's Environmental Law Center.
 
EPA’s press office didn’t reply to a request for comment, while the lawyer who acknowledged receipt of the FOIA requests said Monday morning that she would look over the complaint.
 
Mr. Horner is trying to get instant-message records of two former EPA officials, one-time Administrator Lisa P. Jackson and former senior climate adviser Lisa Heinzerling, and of current Assistant Administrator Gina McCarthy.
 
President Obama has nominated Ms. McCarthy to be the next administrator, but congressional Republicans have said questions over the email records could hurt her chances for confirmation.
 
Several House committees launched investigations into how EPA is complying with open-records laws after Mr. Horner revealed that Ms. Jackson, the former administrator, used a private email address under the alias “Richard Windsor” for much of her official correspondence. Mr. Horner also revealed that another high-level employee used his private email to conduct agency business — a violation of the law.
 
Monday’s complaint is over fees. Under the Freedom of Information Act, agencies can assess fees for searching and producing records, but those filing the requests can ask for a waiver if it’s in the public interest. Mr. Horner said EPA has waived fees for less important requests in the past.
 
He said the agency’s denials now appear to be retaliation.
 
Mr. Horner also said EPA has missed the deadline to respond to his fee waiver appeal, so he had to go to court.


Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/apr/1/lawsuit-accuses-epa-using-instant-messages-avoid-s/#ixzz2PFW9RmK0
 Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 03, 2013, 05:45:59 AM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/12/state-of-the-union-obama-trade_n_2673259.html


Obama's EU Trade Deal Would Include New Political Powers For Corporations


Posted: 04/03/2013 7:30 am EDT  |  Updated: 04/03/2013 7:56 am EDT










 
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WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration is pursuing a free trade agreement with the European Union that would grant corporations new political power to challenge an array of regulations both at home and abroad, according to an administration official involved in the negotiations.

While the plan is still in its early stages, the effort alarms consumer and environmental advocates who worry it will lead to a roll-back of important rules and put multinational companies on the same political plane as sovereign nations.

If states are unable to pass and enforce laws within their borders, it could change the nature of their community and government, nonprofit groups emphasize. Exactly how broad these corporate political powers will be is undetermined, but one aspect of the agreement, known as "investor-state dispute resolution," would allow a company to appeal a regulatory rule or law to an international court, most likely the World Bank. The international body would be given authority to impose economic sanctions against any country that violated its verdict, including the United States.

A spokesperson for the Office of the United States Trade Representative confirmed to HuffPost that the agency, "will seek the inclusion of procedures for expeditious, fair and transparent investor-state dispute resolution" under a new pact with the E.U., but said that the new legal framework will be "subject to appropriate safeguards and the protection of legitimate government regulatory interests."

The investor-state resolution is opposed by many public interest groups.

"These provisions elevate corporations to the level of nation states and allow them to sue governments over nearly any law or policy which reduces their future profits," said Ilana Solomon, trade specialist for the Sierra Club, an environmental protection group.

She said investor-state resolution is "terribly risky for communities, the environment, and our climate."

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has been advocating for a new trade deal between the U.S. and E.U. for more than a year, and President Barack Obama endorsed the project in his 2013 State of the Union address.

Since E.U. nations and the U.S. are already party to World Trade Organization treaties, there are relatively few tariffs that could be eliminated among the countries. In written reports, the Chamber, a lobbying group representing large corporations, has pushed for increased "regulatory compatibility" and "updated and comprehensive" investment terms to "prevent discrimination against investors" in the trade pact. The Chamber declined to discuss the deal for this article.

Investor-state resolution has been a common component of U.S.-negotiated pacts with individual nations since the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994. But such resolution is not currently permitted in disputes with the U.S. and E.U., which are governed by the WTO. All trade deals feature some kind of international resolution for disputes, but the direct empowerment of corporations to unilaterally bring trade cases against sovereign countries is not part of WTO treaties. Under WTO rules, a company must persuade a sovereign nation that it has been wronged, leaving the decision to bring a trade case before the WTO in the hands of elected governments.

Traditionally, this proposed political empowerment for corporations has been defended as a way to protect companies from arbitrary governments or weakened court systems in developing countries. But the expansion of the practice to first-world relations exposes that rationale as disingenuous. Rule of law in the U.S. and E.U. is considered strong; the court systems are among the most sophisticated and expert in the world. Most cases brought against the United States under NAFTA have been dismissed or abandoned before an international court issued a ruling.

But companies have grown increasingly ambitious in recent years, with major outfits including Exxon Mobil and Dow Chemical challenging Canadian rules that apply to offshore oil drilling, hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") and the use of pesticides. In December, drug giant Eli Lilly brought a NAFTA case against the Canadian government after it invalidated a patent for one of the company's medications.

"The Chapter 11 investor state arbitration mechanism provided for in NAFTA has been used more than 60 times
since the treaty was signed," Eli Lilly spokesman Michael McDougall told HuffPost in a written statement. "Many trade treaties have dispute resolution and compensation mechanisms. We believe the current test for determining whether an invention is 'useful' under the patent statute in Canada has become deeply flawed, inconsistent with international norms and treaties, and needs correction."

Companies have won some of those rulings, but opponents of investor-state rules argue that the mere threat of an international case can be enough to dissuade governments from adopting or enforcing important rules.

"The dirty little secret about [the negotiation] is that it is not mainly about trade, but rather would target for elimination the strongest consumer, health, safety, privacy, environmental and other public interest policies on either side of the Atlantic," said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch. "The starkest evidence ... is the plan for it to include the infamous investor-state system that empowers individual corporations and investors to skirt domestic courts and laws and drag signatory governments to foreign tribunals."

The Obama administration is also pursuing an aggressive investor-state resolution system under the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade deal with several Pacific nations.

Talks with the E.U. are at the earliest stages and will take several months to conclude. A USTR spokesperson told HuffPost that it will consult with public interest groups and Congress before pursuing any specific language for the treaty.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 03, 2013, 06:48:01 AM

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.

 11:28 PM on 02/12/2013
Dear President Obama, We understand you have a busy schedule and have laid out a direction for our nation that is extraordinary in its breadth and scope. Now you have to find a way to get something done. If we don't have jobs there is not much we can do to help you. We used to be middle class, we are now living in poverty. We have heard you talk about jobs, we have even heard the opposition party talk about it.
 
At this point talk may be cheap, we can't afford it so we don't look anymore. We were destroyed financially, literally completely destroyed, many of us. All the talk does not buy food for our children, it does not allow anyone to pay rent, it can't buy health insurance. Talk is talk you can't trade it for anything, well I guess you can if you are a politician, most of us are not.
 
We are looking forward to your actions to improve the possibility we can find a job, we can help but not if the wages we are offered aren't worth the words of a politician.
 
Thank You and God Bless you and your family, and may God Bless those Americans who need it the most.






LMFAO!!!!!!

240 is that you bro? 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 03, 2013, 06:14:38 PM
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2013/04/03/pol-us-ambassador-to-canada-obama.html




Obama picks Goldman Sachs exec for ambassador to Canada
 
If approved, new ambassador would replace David Jacobson
 
CBC News

Posted: Apr 3, 2013 5:20 PM ET

Last Updated: Apr 3, 2013 6:23 PM ET
Read 65 comments65








Bruce Heyman, a partner at Goldman Sachs in Chicago, is U.S. President Barack Obama's pick to be the next ambassador to Canada. Heyman and his wife Vicki are well-known Obama fundraisers. (Daniel Dubois and Kerry Dahlen/vanderbilt.edu)
U.S. President Barack Obama has selected a partner at the investment firm of Goldman Sachs in Chicago to be the new U.S. ambassador to Canada, CBC News has learned.
 
Sources tell CBC News Network's Power & Politics that Bruce Heyman has accepted the job but still has to pass a vetting process in order to be be formally nominated. His confirmation will be up to the U.S. Congress.
 
If he is approved, Heyman would replace David Jacobson, who has held the position since 2009. Jacobson is also from Chicago.
 
Well known as a high-level fundraiser to Barack Obama, Heyman and his wife Vicki, also a fundraiser, raised more than $1 million for Obama and were on his national finance committee.
 
Heyman runs the private wealth fund at Goldman Sachs and his areas of responsibility include parts of Canada.
 
Sources tell CBC News that although Heyman is Obama's top choice he still has to pass a rigorous vetting process.
 
Another powerful Chicago fundraiser for Obama, Penny Pritzker, was reported to be Obama's pick for Commerce secretary four years ago but pulled out during the vetting process. Pritzker is now being mentioned again as Obama's likely nominee for Commerce.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 03, 2013, 06:50:31 PM
http://www.therightscoop.com/i-need-a-gun-to-protect-myself-from-the-govt-obama-mocks-gun-owner-concerns-as-ginned-up-fears

Typical deception from O-Twink
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 03, 2013, 07:01:47 PM
I find it treasonous to tell us that we do not have the right to take up arms against an oppressive government. Isn't that what Obama said was good about Egypt a couple of years ago?


And Libya, Syria, Egypt, and Afghanistan right? 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 03, 2013, 07:05:28 PM
That's what I recall... Yes.

My best buddy is a west point grad who asks the same question daily in regards to obama  and 2nd amendment
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 03, 2013, 07:50:48 PM
GAO Foreclosure Report Finds Bank Regulators Failed To Provide 'Key Oversight'


Posted: 04/03/2013 8:42 pm EDT  |  Updated: 04/03/2013 8:49 pm EDT










 
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Foreclosure Crisis, Independent Foreclosure Review, Gao Foreclosure Audit, Gao Foreclosure Report, Gao Foreclosure Review, Gao Foreclosures, Gao Report Foreclosures, Office Of The Comptroller Of The Currency, Business News
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NEW YORK -- In abruptly ending a case-by-case review of hundreds of thousands of foreclosed home loans early this year, federal regulators said the process had become simply too costly to be worthwhile. But an audit of the program by an independent government agency suggests another likely reason for abandoning the program: the reviews were simply too flawed to be reliable.

The draft report by the Government Accounting Office, an independent arm of Congress, obtained Wednesday by The Huffington Post, describes "ambiguous" guidance by bank regulators to the consultants reviewing the loans. It also cites a failure of "key oversight mechanisms" installed by regulators, led by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. As a result, the report concludes, "regulators risked not achieving the intended goals of identifying as many harmed borrowers as possible."

Even if the reviews had continued to conclusion, there is no guarantee that wronged homeowners would have received any compensation, the report says.

"The report confirms that the Independent Foreclosure Review process was poorly designed and executed," Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) said in a statement Wednesday evening. The "report confirms what I had long suspected -– that the OCC’s oversight of the supposedly independent consultants hired by the servicers was severely deficient. The report should serve as a wake-up call.”

Waters is one of a handful of legislators, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who has called on the OCC and the Federal Reserve to disclose more details about the reviews.

Warren and another legislator, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Maryland), sent those regulators a letter with questions about how the process had broken down. The regulators have not answered those questions, a Cummings spokeswoman said Wednesday.

The OCC did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday evening. In a brief response letter included with the audit, the agency said it would take the report’s recommendations into account when designing programs in the future.




In a more detailed response letter, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, the other regulator involved in the foreclosure review, defended its actions to correct deficiencies. The Fed said it “significantly expanded its planning and monitoring efforts" while the reviews were underway and has taken pained efforts to improve communication since the settlement was announced.

The Independent Foreclosure Review grew out of a legal deal struck in 2011 between bank regulators and 14 mortgage companies, known as servicers, to resolve widespread allegations of foreclosure abuse. The reviews required the companies, which included Wells Fargo and Bank of America, to hire independent consultants to look over the case files of individual home loans and then decide whether a mistake was made that would require the homeowner to be compensated.

The program was troubled from the start. Though any homeowner who received a foreclosure notice in 2009 or 2010 was eligible to apply, few did, and the application deadline was extended repeatedly. Homeowner advocates blamed poor efforts by regulators and banks to effectively communicate with potentially eligible borrowers.

Although the OCC focused on improving its communication strategy after a previous GAO report criticized its lack of outreach to minority communities, in the end, the communication was still poor.

“The absence of timely and useful communications at certain stages of the process -- for individual borrowers as well as the general public -- hindered transparency and undermined public confidence in the processes and results,” the report noted.

 Eventually, about 450,000 borrowers applied. But those who did had little faith in a process that a ProPublica report suggested was neither as independent nor fair as promised. In January, HuffPost reported that contractors hired to review loans were poorly or inconsistently trained and it wasn't always clear whether they were sufficiently independent from bank influence. Many of these former contract employees said that the process was so compromised by mistakes and misconduct that the results of the reviews were not reliable.

In January, the reviews were scrapped in favor of a blanket $9.3 billion settlement between regulators and 11 of the mortgage companies. At the time, the OCC cited the mounting cost, blaming the independent consultants for billing much more than had originally been planned.

“The consultants provided original engagement letters with estimations that were far off” the eventual scope and cost of the project, Bryan Hubbard, the OCC spokesman, said in January. By the time the reviews were stopped, consultants had charged nearly $2 billion -- or roughly $20,000 per loan, according to Warren and Cummings.

Hubbard also contended the settlement was a better deal for borrowers than the foreclosure review and would mean higher payouts. “I can guarantee that the amount paid out would have been much less than the amount of the [current] settlement,” he said.

As part of the settlement, the mortgage companies said they will make $3.6 billion in direct payments to foreclosed borrowers. All of the 4.4 million homeowners in the qualifying period will receive some payout, ranging from $250 to $125,000. Instead of an outside consultant, the banks themselves will determine who gets what -- a process that bank regulators say they will oversee.

The foreclosure reviews were meant to identify specific errors made by the banks, which following the housing crash were swamped with millions of defaulting mortgages they were not equipped to handle. The most common mistakes include failure to process an application for a government-sponsored mortgage modification, which often turned into a nightmare of lost paperwork and unexplained rejections that sometimes led to unnecessary foreclosures.

Mary Diab, a consultant in Mission, Kansas, claimed JPMorgan Chase illegally foreclosed on her in May 2010. After a car accident in 2009 left her temporarily disabled, she said, the bank approved an agreement that forgave her mortgage payments for a few months. But then, Diab said, Chase repeatedly tried to foreclose on her during the "forbearance" period and “never let up.”

 Even before the independent foreclosure review process began, Diab said she logged a complaint with the OCC. When the review process was announced, Diab said the federal regulator rolled her case into her review application.

 “I was really excited. I thought, 'Oh good, at least someone’s doing something about it.' I’m thinking maybe I’m going to get a little bit of justice with this independent foreclosure review.”

 Now, Diab said, “I just view this as one more opportunity to get kicked in the teeth.”

 “Do I have any hopes at this point of getting anything out of it? Not really. Mostly I just want it to be over before it kills me,” she added.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 03, 2013, 07:52:53 PM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/03/gao-foreclosure-report_n_3010360.html


and liberal idiots want single payer health are?  LOL!!!!
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 04, 2013, 06:35:13 AM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/04/obama-san-francisco-fundraiser_n_3011459.html#comments


LOL!!!!!

What a fucking liar.   
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 04, 2013, 09:27:31 AM
I don't see this connection.

I think allowing people to spend very little money and buy into medicare would be a good thing.

The govt has proven itself completely unable to deal w things of this scope and size.  I posted the article to show what a disaster having the govt run anything is in terms of oversite, etc. 

Medicare is broke as it is.

 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 05, 2013, 02:25:35 PM

Obama budget to target wealthy IRAs
 
By Bernie Becker - 04/05/13 11:45 AM ET





President Obama’s budget, to be released next week, will limit how much wealthy individuals – like Mitt Romney – can keep in IRAs and other retirement accounts.

The proposal would save around $9 billion over a decade, a senior administration official said, while also bringing more fairness to the tax code.
 
The senior administration official said that wealthy taxpayers can currently “accumulate many millions of dollars in these accounts, substantially more than is needed to fund reasonable levels of retirement saving.”
 

Under the plan, a taxpayer’s tax-preferred retirement account, like an IRA, could not finance more than $205,000 per year of retirement – or right around $3 million this year.














Romney, Obama’s 2012 opponent, had an IRA several to many times that amount, leading to questions about how the former Massachusetts governor was able to squirrel away so much money in that sort of retirement account.
 
The president’s budget, expected Wednesday, has several revenue-raising proposals that come as Democrats and Republicans continue to spar over whether more tax increases are needed to reduce deficits.
 
Obama’s framework also includes higher taxes on cigarettes, as a way to pay for expanded access to pre-kindergarten. Congressional tax writers in both parties and both chambers are currently examining the code in hopes of a broad tax-reform package.


Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/domestic-taxes/292071-obama-budget-to-target-wealthy-iras#ixzz2PcuKU95X
 Follow us: @thehill on Twitter | TheHill on Facebook
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 05, 2013, 07:53:29 PM

The government-backed electric car company Fisker Automotive laid off about 160 workers Friday, or roughly 75 percent of the automaker's staff, as it has struggled to find financial backing that would allow it to continue building its high concept clean cars.
 
The layoff announcement came as the innovative start up faces a looming repayment on a loan from the U.S. Department of Energy, and as reports have swirled that it could be preparing to file for bankruptcy. As with the failed solar firm Solyndra, the green car company was once an early pick by the Obama Administration to be part of America's clean energy future. The Obama Energy Department had approved Fisker for a government loan up to $529 million.
 
Stunned workers filed out of Fisker's Anaheim headquarters Friday morning with their belongings in boxes. One told ABC News that the employees had no advance notice the layoffs were coming, and they were told they would received no severance.
 
Among Fisker employees, the worker said, there was an overwhelming sense of sadness Friday that even after building a new, environmentally-focused line of gracefully-designed, high-end American cars, they had not been able to find financial success.
 
READ: Is Fisker Headed for a Solyndra-Like Collapse?

An Energy Department spokesman said today that early signs of the company's distress prompted officials there to freeze payments to Fisker after having provided the company with nearly $200 million to produce its first car, the $97,000 Fisker Karma.
 
"The Department of Energy stopped payment on the federal loan in 2011 after Fisker stopped meeting their milestones, and is committed to the best outcome for taxpayers," the Energy Department statement said, before defending other green investments by the Obama administration.
 
"Despite Fisker's difficulties, our overall loan portfolio of more than 30 projects continues to perform very well, and more than 90 percent of the $10 billion loan loss reserve that Congress set aside for these programs remains intact," the department said.
 
Among those laid off by Fisker Friday were the company's team of spokespeople. The head of that team, Roger Ormisher, told ABC News earlier this week that he could not address reports that the automaker had hired a law firm to prepare it for bankruptcy.
 
"We are not offering any official comment on the speculation around bankruptcy at this stage," Ormisher said.
 
Even before the layoffs, the Anaheim, Calif.-based company disclosed that it had furloughed non-essential U.S. workers in March, a move made as the company is "in the process of identifying a strategic partner... [but] continuing to manage its day-to-day operations," Ormisher had said.
 
Fisker Automotive entered the electric car market with hefty support from the U.S. Energy Department and backing from such celebs as Justin Bieber and Leonardo DiCaprio, but the company and its high-priced Fisker Karma have continued to skid financially.
 
If the California-based luxury carmaker goes bust, it will be the most high profile failure of an alternative energy firm backed by the Obama administration since the solar company Solyndra filed for bankruptcy in 2011.
 
ABC News Investigation: The Fall of Solyndra

Financial Deadline Looms
 
In April 2010, Fisker started receiving payments on a loan of up to $529 million from the Department of Energy as part of the Obama administration's push to bolster alternative energy firms. Fisker has been making repayments on the loan interest for several years, but the first sizeable repayment of the principle – an amount the company has not disclosed – is due at the end of April.
 
The loan to Fisker was part of a $1 billion bet the Energy Department made in two politically-connected California-based electric carmakers producing sporty -- and pricey -- cutting-edge autos. Fisker Automotive, backed by a powerhouse venture capital firm whose partners included former Vice President Al Gore, predicted it would eventually be churning out tens of thousands of electric sports sedans at the shuttered General Motors factory it bought in Delaware. The other major recipient of financial support, Tesla Motors, is backed by PayPal mogul Elon Musk.
 
Fisker launched the Karma with great fanfare, showing off prototypes of its sleek, quiet-running sports sedan at major auto shows and opening showrooms around the globe.
 
But in October 2011, ABC News aired reports revealing that the government loan to Fisker raised concerns among industry observers and government auditors, and added to questions about the way billions of dollars in loans for smart cars and green energy companies were being awarded.
 
In a 2011 interview with ABC News, Henrik Fisker, the renowned Danish auto designer who founded the company, issued a promise to U.S. taxpayers that they had no reason to worry about the more than $500 million in federal funds the government was getting set to bet on the company.
 
"No, I don't think they need to worry about it," Fisker said. When asked if Fisker might be the next Solyndra, he said, "Absolutely not."
 
When Henrik Fisker resigned from the company in March, the auto maker released a statement saying, in essence, that nothing had changed: "Mr. Fisker's departure is not expected to impact the company's pursuit of strategic partnerships and financing to support Fisker Automotive's continued progress as a pioneer of low-emission hybrid electric powertrain technology."
 
But the outlook has only appeared to get worse.

In December, the Wall Street Journal reported that Fisker board members had discussed the prospect of filing for bankruptcy, citing unnamed sources. Company executives responded by saying they were seeking larger partners for the small automaker.
 
For weeks following, there were widespread reports of a possible deal involving Chinese automakers. But a major Chinese manufacturer said those talks had fallen through. Last week came word in a report by Reuters that Fisker Automotive had begun consulting with bankruptcy lawyers.
 
That news came with less than a month before Fisker must make a significant payment on its U.S. Energy Department loan, which comes due April 22.
 
Have a tip related to this or another investigation? CLICK HERE to send it in.

CLICK HERE to return to The Investigative Unit homepage.
 Also Read.. . .
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 05, 2013, 07:55:52 PM
White House Fights Catholic Church Subpoena On Birth Control


Reuters  |  By David Ingram Posted: 04/05/2013 8:17 pm EDT



WASHINGTON, April 5 (Reuters) - The Obama administration has gone to court to try to block a subpoena from the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York seeking White House documents about the government's requirement of insurance coverage for birth control.

The subpoena requesting documents from President Barack Obama and his senior advisers would be burdensome to fulfill, the administration said in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

Citing U.S. Supreme Court precedent, the suit also argues that civil subpoenas of the president's executive office are inappropriate except in extraordinary circumstances.

The lawsuit was filed on Thursday and released on a court website on Friday.

Religious organizations, individuals and corporations have filed scores of suits to block a planned mandate that employers generally include coverage of contraception in health insurance plans they offer workers.

Though the mandate has some exceptions for religious employers, the New York archdiocese, one of the largest in the United States, said it expected to incur nearly $200 million each year in penalties if it refuses to comply.

The Catholic Church teaches that artificial birth control is sinful because it violates natural law.




A judge in Brooklyn federal court allowed an archdiocese lawsuit over the mandate to move forward in December, over the administration's argument that it was premature.

A lawyer for the archdiocese declined to comment on Friday on the administration's court action.

Obama has been trying to negotiate a settlement of the highly charged dispute, which pits advocates for women's health against those who say a mandate would violate the religious freedom of employers who oppose birth control.

A version of the mandate released in February would not apply to churches and other places of worship even when they operate schools and social services.

It would apply to others, including religiously affiliated nonprofit groups. But in those cases, it calls on private insurers to cover contraceptives through separate plans for employees, not through the employer's group plan.

The mandate was part of the 2010 healthcare law championed by Obama and congressional Democrats.

The Justice Department is representing the White House in the subpoena fight. A department spokeswoman had no immediate comment. (Additional reporting by Roberta Rampton; Editing by Xavier Briand)
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 08, 2013, 02:04:35 PM
Obama Overrides Congress to Buy $690 Million Worth of Russian Choppers for Afghan Air Force

April 8, 2013 By Daniel Greenfield Comments (3)








25


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Apparently America has too many jobs so Obama will be spending taxpayer money to support Russia’s defense industry on behalf of Afghanistan. And he’s doing so over the bipartisan objections of Congress from both the right and left and a ban on buying them written into the NDAA.

 


The US Department of Defense said Thursday it plans to sidestep a Congressional ban to purchase 30 helicopters from Russian state-owned defense firm Rosoboronexport, despite objections from US lawmakers who allege that the firm has equipped the Syrian government to commit brutal crimes against civilians.
 
The 2013 National Defense Authorization Act, approved by Congress last year, includes an amendment that prohibits financial contracts between the United States and Rosoboronexport, except when the Secretary of Defense determines that such arrangements are in the interest of national security.
 
The contract totals $690 million, most of which would go to the Russian arms maker, he added.
 
Aside from throwing almost $700 million to a company owned by the Russian government at a time when Obama has taken a chainsaw to the United States military, subsidizing the Russian defense industry helps it develop more weapons that will be sold to America’s enemies.
 
That money will help fund R&D for the next generation of weapons that an American military dismantled by Obama will be facing on the battlefield.
 
Rosoboronexport was originally under US sanctions for doing business with Iran until the ban was lifted. Rosoboronexport is still selling advanced weapons to Iran.
 
And oh yeah, this was a no bid contract.
 

The Pentagon didn’t solicit bids from any other company for the helicopters. That “seems just plain stupid,” says Texas Senator John Cornyn, one of nine Republican and eight Democratic senators pressing the U.S. Department of Defense to cancel the deal.

 

John Pike, director of national security think tank GlobalSecurity.org, says Russia sold Mi-17s to other countries during the Cold War, and that companies other than Rosoboronexport should have secondhand models that could be refurbished: “The notion that you can’t come up with a couple dozen of these puppies in the used helicopter market is hard to believe.”
 
Well why bother when Barack is willing to be so flexible for Vladimir.
 

A bipartisan Congressional group wrote a letter to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel last week in which they objected to the ongoing business relationship between the Russian arms company and the Pentagon. “What is the national security justification of continuing business with Rosoboronexport?” they asked in the letter. “Russia continues to transfer weapons through Rosoboronexport to the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria,” they continued. “Since the Syrian uprising began, Russia has continued to serve as the Assad regime’s chief supplier of weapons, enabling the mass murder of Syrian citizens at the hands of their own government.”
 
When you’ve got John Cormyn and Rosa DeLauro on the same side, that’s as close to a consensus that you can imagine.

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/obama-overrides-congress-to-buy-690-mil-worth-of-russian-choppers-for-afghan-air-force
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 08, 2013, 05:35:43 PM
If accurate, the number of fake followers out there is surprising. According to the StatusPeople tool, 71 percent of Lady Gaga’s nearly 29 million followers are “fake” or “inactive.” So are 70 percent of President Obama’s nearly 19 million followers.  

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/23/fashion/twitter-followers-for-sale.html?_r=0

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 08, 2013, 07:33:25 PM
Another Solar Company Can't Take The Heat, Closes Despite $10 Million In Stimulus



 April 8, 2013



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------





By Joe Schoffstall


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 351 203

 

A Pittsburgh, Pa. solar energy company has shut its doors four years after receiving nearly $10.2 million in tax credits from the Obama Administration as part of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act.
 
Flabeg Solar U.S. Corp., a $30 million solar plant located near the Pittsburgh International Airport, opened its doors in 2009 and was said to provide 300 jobs. Now, just four years later, the plant has shut down and laid off more than 60 workers. In addition to this, 10 of its former employees have petitioned a federal judge for severance pay after they lost their jobs last month, according to PA Independent.
 
Robert Lampl, the attorney for Flabeg, said the company would probably seek Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection from the workers who are suing over their severance pay.
 
In addition to the $10 million received in stimulus funds, the state and Allegheny County added an additional $9 million in job creation grants, loans, and other financial aid to help launch the plant, bringing the total to $20 million in assistance to the company.
 
Over the past several years, multiple solar companies have gone bankrupt - the most notable being Solyndra, the California solar firm, which received a $535 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy before going bankrupt in 2011.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 09, 2013, 03:02:57 AM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/08/mary-jo-white-sec-chair_n_3040541.html


Corruption at its best.   Hope n Change you sukers.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 09, 2013, 10:23:54 AM

Another Exclusive Party at W.H.—at Taxpayer Expense

Will White House release guest list?

7:34 AM, Apr 9, 2013 • By DANIEL HALPER




   



Single PagePrintLarger TextSmaller TextAlerts

 

























































On Barack and Michelle Obama's schedule for today, this event is listed:


7:30PM           THE PRESIDENT and THE FIRST LADY host a concert celebrating Memphis Soul music as part of their “In Performance at the White House” series; THE PRESIDENT delivers remarks
 
As the White House has previously announced, Justin Timberlake (who will be making his White House debut), Al Green, Ben Harper, Queen Latifah, Cyndi Lauper, Joshua Ledet, Sam Moore, Charlie Musselwhite, Mavis Staples, and others will be performing at the exclusive event.
 
But while the performers are known, the guest list for the private event has not yet been released.
 
One imagines it's a tough ticket to come by. To attend any event at the White House, one must be invited. (The White House is now closed for public access by members of the general public.) And especially this one, with Hollywood and musical stars--and with remarks by the president of the United States.
 
A White House official did not immediately respond when asked for a guest list of tonight's event.







_____________________



Its not like a country is threatening to set off a nuke tommorow or anything right? 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 11, 2013, 08:03:43 PM
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Libyan weapons going to jihadis in Gaza and Syria
Jihad Watch ^ | 4/11/13 | Robert
Posted on April 11, 2013 10:52:38 PM EDT by Nachum

Where did those arms come from?

"U.S.-approved arms for Libyan rebels went to jihadis" -- Jihad Watch, December 5, 2012

"UN Warns Libyan Weapons Spreading to Gaza, Syria," by Chana Ya'ar for Israel National News, April 10 (thanks to Voice of the Copts):

A United Nations panel says weaponry from Libya is spreading across North Africa to Gaza and Syria “at an alarming rate.”

The five-expert committee said in a 94-page report sent Tuesday to the U.N. Security Council that illegal transfers of arms from Libya to armed groups and terrorists have been proven.

The arms trafficking violations involved more than 12 countries and included light and heavy ordnance, such as portable air defense systems, mines, explosive materials, ammunition and small arms.

The panel made 28 visits to 15 nations in the Middle East, Africa and Europe. Ten of those visits were within Libya alone, The Washington Post reported.

“Libya has over the past two years become a significant and attractive source of weaponry in the region,” since the fall of 41-year Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi in 2011," the report said. “The lack of an effective security system remains one of the primary obstacles to securing military materiel and controlling the borders.”

(Excerpt) Read more at jihadwatch.org ...

TOPICS: Israel; News/Current Events; Click to Add Topic
KEYWORDS: gaza; jihadis; libyan; weapons; Click to Add Keyword
 
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Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 16, 2013, 06:34:10 AM
U.S. Grants Saudis 'Trusted Traveler' Privileges to Help Them Through Airport Security


http://m.cnsnews.com/blog/joe-schoffstall/us-grants-saudis-trusted-traveler-privileges-help-them-through-airport-security



By Joe Schoffstall  March 27, 2013








The Obama Administration is making it easier for Saudis to get through security at airports. In fact, now they will be allowed to bypass custom authorities due to an agreement quietly signed between U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano and Saudi Arabian Interior Minister Prince Mohammed bin Nayef. After the September 11 terrorist attacks, Saudi Arabia acknowledged 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi citizens.
 
On January 16, 2013, Janet Napolitano met with Mohammed bin Nayef and announced the plan. Napolitano stated, "I am proud of the bond between the United States and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and today's meeting marks another major step forward in our partnership. By enhancing collaboration with the Government of Saudi Arabia, we reaffirm our commitment to more effectively secure our two countries against evolving threats while facilitating legitimate trade and travel."
 
During the meeting, the two signed an agreement to begin implementation of U.S. Customs and Border Protection's (CBP) trusted traveler program, Global Entry. Global Entry streamlines the screening process at airports, allowing customs to bypass "trusted travelers" and focus on those they know less about. Those in the program can skip normal Customs and Border protection lines starting next year. Participants may enter the United States by using automated kiosks located at select airports, according to the Global Entry website. They must present passports and fingerprints at kiosks, and make a customs declaration.
 
"Details about how the plan will work with the Saudis have not been released. Nayef's ministry, however, will be responsible for screening which applicants will be considered when the pilot program begins next year. It's not known whether the Saudi ministry will share its raw intelligence about applicants with its American counterparts," writes The Investigative Project on Terrorism. "What is known, based on information provided by a Homeland Security source, is that each individual who makes it into the program will have been vetted by both the CBP and by the Saudi Interior Ministry against various databases."
 
Judicial Watch adds, "It's downright outrageous that the Obama administration is now making it easier for Saudis to enter the United States. Consider that just three years ago the U.S. government actually placed Saudi Arabia on a list of 14 countries whose travelers would face enhanced security when entering the country. Why? Because a Saudi national named Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to blow up a Detroit-bound U.S. commercial airliner on Christmas Day in 2009."
 
Only a select few are currently a part of the Global Entry program including Canada, Mexico, South Korea, and the Netherlands.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 16, 2013, 03:04:45 PM
Obama Whistleblower Prosecutions Lead To Chilling Effect On Press


Posted: 04/16/2013 1:18 pm EDT




NEW YORK -– On April 9, McClatchy’s Jonathan Landay reported that the Obama administration has “targeted and killed hundreds of suspected lower-level Afghan, Pakistani and unidentified ‘other’ militants” in drone strikes, a revelation that contradicts previous administration claims of pursuing only senior-level operatives who pose an imminent threat to the United States.

It was an investigative story clearly in the public interest, shedding new light on the government’s long-running targeted-killing program in Pakistan. But now Landay, a veteran national security reporter for the McClatchy newspaper chain, is concerned that the Obama administration could next investigate him in hopes of finding the sources for “top-secret U.S. intelligence reports” cited in the story. “Do I think that they could come after me?” Landay asked, in an interview with The Huffington Post. “Yes.”

“I can tell you that people who normally would meet with me, sort of in a more relaxed atmosphere, are on pins and needles,” Landay said of the reporting climate during the Obama years, a period of unprecedented whistleblower prosecutions. The crackdown on leaks, he added, seems “deliberately intended to have a chilling effect.”

Landay isn’t alone in that assessment, as several investigative journalists attest in “War on Whistleblowers: Free Press and the National Security State,” a timely documentary directed by Robert Greenwald of Brave New Foundation that premieres this week in New York and Washington. The film details the ordeals of four whistleblowers who turned to the press in order to expose waste or illegality.

“The Obama administration's been extremely aggressive in trying to root out whistleblowers within the government,” NBC News investigative reporter Michael Isikoff says in the film. The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer, describing the secrecy required in her reporting for a profile of whistleblower Thomas Drake amid government prosecution, said the experience didn’t “feel [like] America, land of the free press.”

Drake, a former senior executive of the National Security Agency, says in the film, "it's extremely dangerous in America right now to be right as a whistleblower when the government is so wrong." He adds: "speaking truth to power is now a criminal act."

Drake was charged in 2010 under the Espionage Act, a law passed in 1917 to prosecute spies. Drake was not a spy, but a government employee who tried unsuccessfully to report waste and abuse through official channels before contacting a Baltimore Sun reporter. The government's case eventually collapsed, with Drake only pleading guilty to a misdemeanor of "exceeding the authorized use of a computer."

"He was vindicated in the end, essentially," Daniel Ellsberg, the whistleblower behind the Pentagon Papers, said in the film. "But [Drake] had his life, for the moment, ruined."

Drake’s story is interspersed with those of three other whistleblowers who endured years of hardship as a result of coming forward through the press or directly on YouTube, including Marine Corps officer Franz Gayl, who spoke out about much-needed protection for soldiers against IED attacks in Iraq; former Lockheed Martin project manager Michael DeKort, who posted a video online revealing security flaws in the Coast Guard’s Deepwater project; and former Department of Justice attorney Thomas Tamm, who contacted The New York Times and provided information that helped expose the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program.

Those men have been fired, prosecuted, or shunned because they spoke out. The government accountability advocates who have been forced to defend them, meanwhile, said they were worried the Obama and Bush administrations' aggressive actions against them have chilled future whistle-blowing.

"I've talked to a number of people who've made it clear ... that they are too afraid for their jobs," said Danielle Brian, the executive director of the Project On Government Oversight. "You have a combination of the fear of prosecution and this economy. If they lose this job, they might not be able to pay for groceries."

That might sound like an exaggeration, but not for Drake: he now works in a suburban Washington, D.C., Apple Store.

Advocates were optimistic last year, when Congress was debating a bill to enhance protections for government whistleblowers. A Senate version would have protected national security employees who used official, internal channels to ring the alarm on wrongdoing. The Republican-led House of Representatives, however, stripped out language that would have protected workers at intelligence community agencies like the CIA or NSA.

Just a few days after the House took that step, Obama issued an executive order directing intelligence community agencies to create new rules that would protect their employees from retaliation for speaking out. Whistleblower advocates have identified this as one of the biggest barriers to exposing misdeeds: once a security clearance is revoked, those working in the secretive intelligence world can't find a job even with outside contractors.

Obama's executive order, however, does not have the force of law. Until Congress does act, said Brian, leakers' only recourse will be through journalists, Congress's "worst fear."

"Those national security employees who feel like they have to do something, they go to the press," said Brian. "By not creating a safe channel, [Congress is] actually making things worse."

Meanwhile, the prosecutions continue. John Kiriakou, an ex-CIA officer who passed classified information about the CIA's secret post-9/11 interrogation program along to a reporter, was sentenced to 30 months in prison in January. Obama administration prosecutors said he had "betrayed" his fellow employees.

Kiriakou's status as a whistleblower is disputed. But for his lawyer Jesselyn Raddack, the National Security & Human Rights Director at the Government Accountability Project, the case says all she needs to know about the Obama administration's attitude toward whistleblowers.

Absent a public outcry, she said she saw few signs of improvement in Obama's second term.

"I know that he's tossed a few crumbs in our direction," she said. But "in general we had this secrecy regime put in place by Bush, and instead of rolling it back, Obama has just further expanded it"

Steve Coll, the incoming dean of Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism, profiled Kiriakou for the New Yorker earlier this month. Coll wrote about how "Obama's Justice Department has been unusually aggressive in prosecuting government officials for leaking secrets to the press," with six of the 10 cases over the past century occurring under Attorney General Eric Holder's watch.

“It seems as if the White House has set a kind of snowball rolling by allowing -- as White Houses sort of have to do -- the Attorney General to exercise discretion about which cases to bring forward and which not to," Coll said in an interview with The Huffington Post.

“Once you start to allow prosecutors to bring one case after another," Coll said, "it becomes difficult to stop that momentum."

Mayer said in an email that national security reporting has gotten "increasingly hard" ever since the Bush Administration investigated the Times' sources for its 2005 Pulitzer Prize-winning story on domestic spying.

"I'm not sure I'd say it's worse now than it was then, but starting then, government sources have really felt at legal risk. It's had a classic chilling effect on coverage," Mayer said. "Part of the problem stems from the technology revolution. It's a lot easier now for the government to spy on internet and phone communication than it was in the past. So, all together, I worry that the public may not be getting critical national security information about which it has a right to know.”

Landay and his McClatchy colleagues relied on government sources when producing some of the best reporting during the run-up to the Iraq War, a period where many in the media promoted the Bush administration's flimsy evidence for war. The result of the current administration cracking down on leaks or imposing strict message discipline, Landay said, will be that national security reporters like him "are going to try harder to do our jobs."

"We perform a vital function in a democracy like the United States, the few there are of us, the few whistleblowers," Landay said. "The harder the government tries to control critical information, the more damage it does to the quality of our democracy."


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/16/obama-whistleblower-prosecutions-press_n_3091137.html

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 17, 2013, 09:37:04 AM

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/17/stock-act-change-insider-trading_n_3100115.html?ref=topbar



Who says nothing ever gets done in Washington? Swiftly and without fanfare, Congress and President Obama have made it easier for top federal employees to trade on inside information.

On Monday, Obama signed into a law a change in the Stop Trading On Congressional Knowledge, or STOCK Act, which was passed in 2012. The change, which was approved unanimously by Congress last week, means that top federal employees, including staffers on Capital Hill and in the White House, will not have to publicly disclose their financial holdings online. That requirement was part of the original STOCK Act, but its implementation had been delayed again and again by Congress. And now it's dead.

The STOCK Act change does not apply to the president, vice president, members of Congress or candidates for Congress. Obama and Congress loudly passed the original STOCK Act last year after reports in the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere, along with academic studies, noted that lawmakers with access to market-moving information were suspiciously lucky in the timing of their stock trades. One widely-cited estimate suggests congressional portfolios outperform the broader market by 12 percent annually, though there are reasons to doubt that figure.

The rationale for changing the law was that its disclosure requirements created a national security risk, according to a study ordered by Congress and completed by the National Academy of Public Administration. Federal employees' unions had objected to the law from the start, saying it could put federal staffers at risk.

Still, changing the law creates its own risks. Though the law's disclosure requirements still apply to members of Congress, staffers have been a big part of the insider trading problem all along. As the WSJ reported in 2010, many congressional staffers were actively trading in stocks of companies with business before Congress. And many of those staffers were working on legislation affecting those companies.

But it's not as if the original STOCK Act was likely to fully clamp down on insider trading anyway: It was loaded with loopholes, Yale professor Jonathan Macey noted in 2011.

"On closer examination, it appears that what Congress really wants is to keep making the big bucks that come from trading on inside information but to trick those outside of the Beltway into believing they are doing something about this corruption," Macey wrote.

They're still at it.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 17, 2013, 12:19:38 PM
Foreclosure Settlement Checks Bounce In Latest Setback For Troubled Program


Posted: 04/17/2013 11:58 am EDT  |  Updated: 04/17/2013 12:43 pm EDT










 
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The foreclosure abuse settlement that was intended to speed relief to homeowners is ending as it began: with controversy and complaints that the program isn't working.

On Tuesday, some of the first people to receive payouts under the $9.2 billion deal between federal regulators and the mortgage industry called into a government hotline to report that their bank would not cash their check, the Federal Reserve announced in a press release. Though the unspecified problem was resolved, the Federal Reserve noted, the episode is likely to further erode confidence in a program that has failed to deliver on almost every promise made by federal regulators.

The Independent Foreclosure Review began in 2011 as part of a deal between bank regulators and 14 mortgage companies to resolve widespread accounts of bank mismanagement through all stages of the foreclosure process. After a long years of repeated delays and mounting concerns about both the cost and effectiveness of the case-by-case reviews, the program was abruptly dropped in most instances in favor of a blanket settlement, which included $3.6 billion in cash payments to 4.4 million homeowners who received a foreclosure notice in 2009 or 2010.

Late last week, regulators announced that the first batch of payments were on their way. Most of these checks are small, with payouts averaging less than $1,000. A small number of borrowers, mostly military personnel who were improperly foreclosed on, will receive checks for the maximum amount of $125,000.

Though bank regulators and the mortgage industry likely hoped that the settlement would mark the end of a public relations disaster for all involved, legislators and independent analysts have in recent weeks sharply criticized both the reviews and the deal to replace them as unfair and not sufficiently transparent.

Earlier this month, the Government Accountability Office issued a scathing report on the review process, finding that regulators did not provide proper oversight and that some errors likely went undetected. Regulators also recently released new information suggesting that banks may have made errors in as many as 30 percent of all loans that qualified for a review, a figure far higher than previously reported.

Last week, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren excoriated regulators for not immediately turning over case records of borrowers who may be considering private legal action against their bank.




"You have made a decision to protect the banks but not to help the families who were illegally foreclosed on," Warren said. "Families get pennies on the dollar for being the victims of illegal activities."
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 21, 2013, 09:45:14 PM
‘We can sustain another terrorist attack’ (Obama 2010 Flashback)
The Hill ^ | 9/22/10 | Ron Christie
Posted on April 21, 2013 10:14:39 PM EDT by Nachum

As a patriotic American, I hope the Washington Post über-journalist misquoted President Obama in his upcoming book discussing the president's thinking behind the war on terrorism. Reading advance excerpts earlier today, I came across the following quotation attributed to the president:

"We can absorb a terrorist attack. We'll do everything we can to prevent it, but even a 9/11, even the biggest attack ever ... we absorbed it and we are stronger."

How dare the president opine that "we can absorb a terrorist attack”? This isn't a gravel spill or an overturned apple cart in which no one gets hurt. No, we're talking about an act of terror, an act of murder in which innocent people are killed simply because they woke up one day and decided to drive to work, take their children to school or otherwise go about their daily lives.

On Sept. 11, 2001, 3,000 innocent Americans were murdered, killed, incinerated and fell from the sky due to an act of terrorism.

(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 22, 2013, 04:09:15 AM
Al Arabiya with AFP -
U.S. aid to the Syrian opposition is set to double to $250 million, Secretary of State John Kerry said on Sunday, adding that Washington would also provide new non-lethal military equipment for rebel fighters.
The announcement came after talks among the pro-opposition “Friends of Syria” group in Istanbul.
But despite the new aid package, the U.S. paid no heed to calls for arms supplies or a direct intervention.
Some of the money will be used to “provide an expanded range of support” to rebel fighters battling President Bashar al-Assad, beyond the current provisions of food rations and medical kits, “to include other types of non-lethal supplies,” the statement said, according to AFP news agency.

The non-lethal military equipment might include providing the opposition fighters with protective battlefield equipment such as body armor, armored vehicles and night-vision goggles, as well as communications gear, U.S. media has reported.
Kerry, who spoke to the press after the meeting, stressed the focus was on the mounting death toll in the crisis-torn country.
“The president directed me to step up our efforts,” Kerry told a news conference.

“The stakes in Syria couldn’t be more clear: chemical weapons, the slaughter of people by ballistic missiles and other weapons of huge destruction, the potential of a whole country,” he said.

“This bloodshed needs to stop.”
The head of the main opposition Syrian National Coalition, Ahmed Moaz al-Khatib, offered reassurances after the talks.

“Our revolution is for the entire Syrian people. We are not supporting one group at the price of another and we shall never allow that to happen,” he told the news conference.

The Coalition said in a separate statement that the opposition rejected “all forms of terrorism and any extremist ideology” and promised that “weapons will not fall in the wrong hands”.

The opposition had also voiced frustration earlier at the lack of a strong international response.

“Assad is firing missiles against densely populated areas... without consequences,” said Yaser Tabbara, a spokesman for the opposition’s interim prime minister Ghassan Hitto.

“Throwing money at the problem won’t solve it.”

The opposition has called for “surgical strikes” on regime missile batteries used against civilians.

Top diplomats from the 11-nation core group of the “Friends of Syria” -- including the United States, European nations and Arab countries -- took part in the more than six hours of talks on Saturday.

In a joint statement afterwards, they warned Assad that foreign support for the opposition would grow if he continued to rebuff efforts to find a political solution to Syria’s crisis.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: dario73 on April 22, 2013, 05:29:04 AM
No money for White House tours and no money for the FAA security which might cause delays at airports. But, there is enough to send double the aid to Syrian rebels.

Clown in chief looking to rile up the voters for his own benefit.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 22, 2013, 06:09:53 AM
LM Wind Power Lays Off U.S. Workers Despite Government Loan Guarantee to Back Their Jobs
 August 24th, 2012 |  Author: David Sims




Just days after a mostly foreign-based wind energy equipment manufacturer received a multimillion-dollar federal loan guarantee from the U.S. Export-Import Bank, the company pink-slipped more than 200 American workers. The loan transaction in question involved a Brazilian firm, Wind Power Energia S.A., in Sao Paulo, which required wind blades to complete a 180-megawatt wind farm in the Brazilian state of Bahia and another 211-megawatt farm in the Brazilian state of Ceara, according to company officials.

According to Ex-Im Bank officials, the export credit agency authorized a $32.1 million loan guarantee to Wind Power Energia to buy wind turbine blades manufactured by LM Wind Power Blades Inc., in Little Rock, Ark.

The Little Rock operation is actually a subsidiary of LM Wind Power, which is headquartered in Kolding, Denmark, and is the largest manufacturer of wind turbine blades in the world.

Ex-Im Bank approved the loan guarantee backed by American taxpayer dollars so a Brazilian company could buy wind turbine blades from a Danish company because the deal would “support approximately 250 permanent American jobs at the company’s Little Rock, Ark., and Grand Forks, N.D., manufacturing facilities,” bank officials said.

But as CJ Ciaramella reported in the Washington Free Beacon, LM Wind Power laid off 234 of the Arkansas plant’s roughly 300 workers just two days after its loan was approved.

Obviously, the timing of the layoff raises questions about whether a plan was already in place when the loan, granted expressly to guarantee American jobs, was given.

The Obama administration has not announced any plans to reconsider the loan guarantee.

In May, Bloomberg reported that LM Wind Power Holding A/S saw profits fall 41 percent last year and “expects demand to weaken.” As the report noted, the company’s earnings fell to 73.9 million euros ($92.9 million) in 2011 from 125.1 million euros a year earlier. Sales declined 2.7 percent to 707.5 million euros ($888.9 million). The company counted 5,803 employees at the end of 2011.

In June, as reported in the renewable energy industry journal Recharge, LM Wind Power appointed Leo Schot, a former Siemens Wind Power executive, as its new chief executive officer to replace Roland Sundén.

Ciaramella noted in his Washington Free Beacon article that LM Wind Power hasn’t been the model corporate citizen at its American production facilities, writing that the manufacturer has had numerous citations for workplace safety violations.

The Department Of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration cited the firm 11 times in an investigation beginning October 2010 for exposing workers to unsafe conditions and noted the company had demonstrated a “continued pattern of failing to comply” with OSHA standards.

After the death of a worker at LM Wind Power’s North Dakota production facility in 2010, industry journal Reliable Plant reported that OSHA cited the company with five safety violations for exposing workers to hazards that ultimately took a worker’s life.

OSHA’s Bismarck Area Office reported that an employee working from a scissor lift was crushed to death by a nearby crane and cited LM Wind Power with “one willful, three serious and one other-than-serious citation.” Tom Deutscher, the office’s director, said the death occurred because “the employer failed to identify and eliminate the hazards prior to allowing this employee to perform the work.”

OSHA defines a willful violation as one committed with intentional knowing or voluntary disregard for the law’s requirements, or plain indifference to worker safety and health, according to Reliable Plant. OSHA proposed to fine the company $92,000 over the incident.

Government-Backed Failures Are Mounting
The LM Wind Power debacle continues a litany of failures of government-backed green energy firms across the range of renewable technologies besides wind energy.

Noted columnist Timothy P. Carney wrote that solar panel manufacturer Amonix closed down its 214,000-square-foot Las Vegas factory after receiving various federal subsidies since 1995.

Amonix is unusual in that it has been receiving government grants through three presidential administrations. As Carney explained, during the Clinton administration, the Department of Energy gave Amonix $49,559, while the agency gave the company a “Renewable Energy Research & Development” grant worth approximately $5.5 million during the Bush administration.

Another $10.1 million under this grant was awarded by the Obama administration, in addition to a $9 million federal loan guarantee for manufacturing solar panels for export last year and a $90.6 million loan guarantee to Cogentrix Energy to buy solar panels from Amonix.

In June, the New York Times reported that solar panel manufacturer Abound Solar, which received a $400 million loan guarantee from the federal government, would file for bankruptcy “amid plummeting prices and intense competition from Chinese manufacturers in the solar equipment market.”

The paper noted that the company actually received at least $68 million of the allotted funds. The same article also noted that electric car battery manufacturer A123 Systems received a $249 million grant from the Energy Department “but has laid off some workers and acknowledges that it faces serious challenges.”

In May, in a ThomasNet.com Green & Clean article, I noted that government subsidies allow the American wind power industry to simply exist.

A recent report from the Global Warming Policy Foundation, titled “Why Is Wind Power So Expensive: An Economic Analysis,” authored by Gordon Hughes, professor of economics at the University of Edinburgh, found that in Britain – which is as heavily invested in wind power as any other country — wind farms are “almost entirely subsidized by a complex yet hidden regime of feed-in tariffs, tax cuts and preferential tax credits.”

Hughes’ report found that meeting Britain’s target for renewable energy by 2020 would require a total investment of some £120 billion ($190 billion) in wind turbines and backup. The same amount of electricity could be generated by gas-fired power plants that would only cost £13 billion ($20 billion).

Wind power will most likely always need subsidies, since as Hughes’ report concluded, it is, after all, an inefficient and unreliable method of energy generation. “It is typically much cheaper to transport gas and to rely upon open-cycle gas turbines to match supply and demand than to adopt any of these options,” Hughes wrote, adding that any sizable wind generation installation requires a backup energy-generation system, as well, so the cost is effectively two systems.

As the number of renewable energy casualties continues to climb, it reinforces the thought: Why not just pay for one system that generates electricity less expensively and more consistently and put taxpayer money to better uses?

 
http://news.thomasnet.com/green_clean/2012/08/24/lm-wind-power-lays-off-u-s-workers-despite-government-loan-guarantee-to-back-their-jobs





Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 22, 2013, 06:41:35 AM

Obama Still Not Scheduled to Visit West, Texas
 
by Keith Koffler on April 22, 2013, 8:34 am
 

President Obama is still not scheduled to visit the devastated community of West, Texas, where an explosion at a fertilizer plant five days ago killed 14 – including 11 emergency responders – and wounded approximately 200 people.
 
Up to 75 homes were damaged, as well as an apartment complex that was decimated.
 
Obama so far has sent prayers and money to the town, but not himself.
 
According to Bridget Johnson at  PJ Media, Texas senator Ted Cruz said it is “doubtful” that Obama will visit the town.
 
He will have ample opportunity. The president, along with First Lady Michelle Obama, will be in Texas two days this week, heading to Dallas Wednesday for a Democratic National Committee fundraiser and then remaining in the city overnight.
 
On Thursday, he is scheduled to attend the dedication ceremony for the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas.
 
But he may be on a tight schedule as he is supposed to attend the Planned Parenthood Gala in Washington Thursday evening.

http://www.whitehousedossier.com/2013/04/22/obama-scheduled-visit-west-texas

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 22, 2013, 07:40:37 AM
BUMP BUMP BUMP


U.S. Grants Saudis 'Trusted Traveler' Privileges to Help Them Through Airport Security


http://m.cnsnews.com/blog/joe-schoffstall/us-grants-saudis-trusted-traveler-privileges-help-them-through-airport-security



By Joe Schoffstall  March 27, 2013








The Obama Administration is making it easier for Saudis to get through security at airports. In fact, now they will be allowed to bypass custom authorities due to an agreement quietly signed between U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano and Saudi Arabian Interior Minister Prince Mohammed bin Nayef. After the September 11 terrorist attacks, Saudi Arabia acknowledged 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi citizens.
 
On January 16, 2013, Janet Napolitano met with Mohammed bin Nayef and announced the plan. Napolitano stated, "I am proud of the bond between the United States and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and today's meeting marks another major step forward in our partnership. By enhancing collaboration with the Government of Saudi Arabia, we reaffirm our commitment to more effectively secure our two countries against evolving threats while facilitating legitimate trade and travel."
 
During the meeting, the two signed an agreement to begin implementation of U.S. Customs and Border Protection's (CBP) trusted traveler program, Global Entry. Global Entry streamlines the screening process at airports, allowing customs to bypass "trusted travelers" and focus on those they know less about. Those in the program can skip normal Customs and Border protection lines starting next year. Participants may enter the United States by using automated kiosks located at select airports, according to the Global Entry website. They must present passports and fingerprints at kiosks, and make a customs declaration.
 
"Details about how the plan will work with the Saudis have not been released. Nayef's ministry, however, will be responsible for screening which applicants will be considered when the pilot program begins next year. It's not known whether the Saudi ministry will share its raw intelligence about applicants with its American counterparts," writes The Investigative Project on Terrorism. "What is known, based on information provided by a Homeland Security source, is that each individual who makes it into the program will have been vetted by both the CBP and by the Saudi Interior Ministry against various databases."
 
Judicial Watch adds, "It's downright outrageous that the Obama administration is now making it easier for Saudis to enter the United States. Consider that just three years ago the U.S. government actually placed Saudi Arabia on a list of 14 countries whose travelers would face enhanced security when entering the country. Why? Because a Saudi national named Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to blow up a Detroit-bound U.S. commercial airliner on Christmas Day in 2009."
 
Only a select few are currently a part of the Global Entry program including Canada, Mexico, South Korea, and the Netherlands.

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 22, 2013, 10:26:43 AM

Seniors Get Hung Up In Health Care Scams

Law enforcement agencies are reporting a spike in health insurance scams across the country, many of which are preying on the public's confusion over the massive changes taking place in the nation's health care system.




By Jenny Gold, Kaiser Health News




MONDAY, April 22, 2013 (Kaiser Health News) — One recent morning, 86-year-old Evelyne Lois Such was sitting at her kitchen table in Denver when the phone rang.  She didn’t recognize the phone number or the deep voice on the other end of the line. “He asked if I was a senior, and I said yes, and he said we are sending out all new Medicare cards and I want to make sure I have all of your statistics correct,” Such recounts.

At first, the caller didn’t seem too fishy; he started by running through her address and phone number, just to make sure they were right. But then he read off a series of numbers and asked if it was her bank routing number. “I didn’t know really at the time whether it was or not, but I just said no. He said, well could you give it to me so I’ll have it correctly, and I said, well I’m not so sure about that. And he started to say something and I hung up.”

When the scammer tried calling her a second time, she hung up immediately, scribbled down the number from her caller ID and dialed Medicare to report the scam.

“I kind of thought it was funny at first, and then I thought, you know, how dare they?” says Such. “There are some seniors who aren’t well and don’t think as well as they used to, and it just made me angry that they would be victimized like this.”

Law enforcement agencies are reporting an increase in these sorts of health insurance scams across the country. Many of the fraudsters seem to be preying on the public’s confusion over the massive changes taking place in the nation’s health care system.

Seniors are often targets — they’re more likely to be home to answer the phone, and they tend to have retirement savings that scammers hope to tap.  But they aren’t the only victims: The federal government received nearly 83,000 complaints of “imposter scams” last year — up 12 percent from the year before.

“America’s rife with health scams,” says James Quiggle, communications director at the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud in Washington, D.C. “Crooks are offering fake health coverage, stripped down policies masquerading as real coverage. They’re also selling … fake Obamacare coverage,” he explains.

Recent polls have found that well over half of Americans say they still don’t understand how the new health law will affect them.  “Crooks are playing on that confusion. Confusion is a crook’s best friend,” says Quiggle.

“Fraudsters are as attuned to what’s going on in the news as anybody else,” says Lois Greisman, who runs the division of marketing practices at the Federal Trade Commission. “Before Katrina hit land, websites were up soliciting funds to help victims of Katrina. This is not a surprise; this is par for the course.” A program as vast as the health care overhaul makes for a dangerous twist on the regular scams, she adds.

Greisman and her team are working to take down the scams as quickly as possible, but there is an endless number; scammers range from just your average amateur looking to make a quick buck, to well-organized crime rings that mass-produce fraud.

“The first line of defense is don’t take a call from out of the blue from anyone who’s offering to help you navigate the new health care market,” cautions Greisman. “Those kinds of cold calls just shouldn’t take place, same thing with an unsolicited email, an unsolicited text.”

Many people see through those sorts of simple scams, says Sally Hurme, an elder law attorney at AARP.  “But even if one in a thousand falls for the scam and gives up info or agrees to send information off to who knows where, they’ve made [the scammer’s] day. That’s what their job is,” says Hurme.  As the Affordable Care Act ramps up, the country is likely to see more frequent insurance scams, and they’re likely to get more sophisticated, she adds.

Savvy senior Evelyne Lois Such offers this advice for others who get a suspicious call: “Don’t answer too quickly. Think about the answer you give them and what they’re asking.” And never give up and personal or financial information over the phone.

Better yet? Just hang up.

This article was produced by Kaiser Health News with support from The SCAN Foundation.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 22, 2013, 10:51:13 AM
White House: Obama backs Internet sales tax bill


       

April 22, 2013 01:46 PM EST
|


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



WASHINGTON — The White House says President Barack Obama supports a bill to give states more authority to collect sales tax from Internet retailers.
 
White House spokesman Jay Carney says the Senate bill would level the playing field for small businesses and brick-and-mortal retailers that are undercut by online companies.
 
Carney says that governors and mayors have overwhelmingly told the White House the bill is needed. He says states are losing out on revenue that could go to education, law enforcement, infrastructure investments and health care.
 
Under current law, states collect sales tax from companies that have a physical presence in their state. The Senate bill would expand that to include sales to people in other states.
 
The Senate is expected to hold a procedural vote on the bill on Monday.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 22, 2013, 01:58:09 PM
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/04/22/Obama-Texas-Library-Planned-Parenthood



Unbelievable.  This piece of garbage is still fundraising with everything going on. 

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 22, 2013, 02:00:42 PM
Obama’s blood trail from Benghazi to Boston
 





By Doug Hagmann (Bio and Archives)  Monday, April 22, 2013
Comments | Print friendly | Subscribe | Email Us

 




118
 





What do the murders of four Americans in Benghazi have to do with the murders of three in a terrorist attack in Boston? Plenty, if you understand what you are seeing in the abstract expressionism of the Jackson Pollock painting is actually a blood trail, and the Pollock painting you are closely studying is an exact reproduction of one of his earlier works. It is a reproduction of a reproduction. We’ve seen this picture before, a bloodstained tangle of lies being sold to us as an artistic masterpiece. But you have to step farther back, not closer to the painting, to actually see the blood trail.



 


Does anyone still remember the terror attack and murders of Americans in Benghazi on September 11, 2012? Does anyone still care? How about the indignation shown by Obama’s then Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on January 23, 2013 when being questioned by Senator Johnson about whether the American people were misled about the motive for the attacks? Animated and agitated, Clinton never did answer the question, instead waving her arms and pounding her fist on the table before her in a decidedly undiplomatic like fashion while shedding absolutely no light on what she knew and when she knew it.

Her response was dreadfully shrill yet non-committal, instead rebuking the Senator for seeking the truth with “Was it because of a protest, or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they’d go kill some Americans What difference, at this point, does it make?”



In the wake of the bombings in Boston and amid information the government and media does not want you, the average American citizen to know, motive and causation make a lot of difference. Compare Clinton’s terse response to questions surrounding Benghazi with that of Department of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, whose testosterone levels rose sharply as she decided that she would not even dignify Congressman Jeff Duncan’s questioning last week about the reported involvement of a Saudi national identified as Abdulrahman Ali Isa al-Salami al-Harbi, a/k/a Abdulrahman al Harbi.

The Saudi connections

In the event you don’t recognize that name associated with the Boston bombing, the media initially reported that a Saudi national, later determined to be al Harbi, was under guard at a Boston hospital after being injured in the attack. He was seen running from the explosions and tackled by police a short distance from the bombing site. During the normal investigative process of al Harbi, investigators learned that he was reportedly the subject of an alleged deportation order under Section 212 3B Immigration & Nationality Act regarding “Security and related grounds—Terrorist Activities”, but completely unrelated to Boston. To get on this list requires some pretty substantial evidence. To be removed from this list is practically impossible, short of detention or death.

Amid the flurry of media reports that followed, however, his name and status at the hospital were gradually and methodically being erased from news reports and people’s memories. An intentional government and media brown-out turned into a noticeable blackout, even while federal authorities were searching his fifth floor apartment at 364 Ocean Avenue, Revere, MA and removing various items for forensic analysis.

Before the last items were taken from his apartment, I am told, orders were given to immediately stop any investigation of al Harbi. Suddenly and inexplicably, al Harbi became off limits, and a few federal agents are angry and want to know why.

His status under Section 212 3B was reportedly rescinded about 5:30 p.m. ET Wednesday, and he suddenly enjoyed protective status on orders from the ‘highest levels of our government’,  but not before Congressman Duncan had a copy of the 212 3B status of al Harbi. Additionally, it is reported, not only was the order rescinded, but his file was made to appear as if the order never existed in the first place.

According to sources close to this author, al Harbi became the primary focus of a high level diplomatic meeting between U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al Faisal on Tuesday morning, the day after the marathon bombing and the day before his status suddenly changed. The 10:00 am meeting was abruptly closed to the media with only minutes notice, something that rarely happens. The reason, according to sources with “knowledge” of the matter, is due to the classification of al Harbi as a person of interest in the marathon bombing and his status as a Saudi “elite”.

The aforementioned file alteration and status were changed following this meeting, and arrangements were reportedly made for him to leave the United States. As all of this reportedly took place in such a very short period of time, it is important to understand that the alleged changes had to have the approval at the level of the U.S. Secretary of State, or higher. It was done on behalf of the Saudis, with approval and direction from the highest levels of our own government. Why is this important to the events in Boston and Benghazi?

Benghazi to Boston: the Saudi agenda & shielding the truth

First, don’t get stuck in the minutia of al Harbi, just be aware of it and who is behind it. Instead, look at the larger picture. To be clear, al Harbi himself is not the main story here. It’s bigger than that, and the problem is that people are not thinking big enough. It’s about an agenda to shape the world power structure. The Obama regime is in place to finish what was started long ago. Now, the players under Obama and a complicit press are shielding the truth from the American people. We are not being told the truth about anything, from Benghazi to Boston, and the common factor in all of this is Saudi Arabia.

Our intimate relationship with Saudi Arabia began in earnest (most recently) under George Herbert Walker Bush, and was further expanded by George W. Bush, a/k/a ‘Bandar Bush,’ a name earned for his intimate relationship with Prince Sultan bin Bandar of Saudi Arabia. It should be clear by now that the continuity of this globalist, Pan-Islamic agenda that existed under Bush was further solidified and even expanded by the Obama administration. It is not a political agenda, but a globalist one. We do not have elected leaders who favor the U.S., but internationalists that favor the globalist agenda. Understanding this should explain that the right-left paradigm is a historical artifact, and provide prospective in terms of how the government is pushing this agenda towards completion. We’ve been overtaken and captured from within.

We’ve learned from the 2001 attacks that the Saudis are the largest exporters of terrorism, yet we continue to work for them, providing our military assets and our troops to doing their dirty work. Through the Muslim Brotherhood, they have infiltrated many, if not all levels of our government. As stated, this did not begin under Obama, but was expanded under him. And what better presidential candidate was there to accomplish this objective? Now does his meteoric rise from a community organizer to state senator to President make better sense?

We still cannot even have any intelligent conversation about Obama’s Constitutional legitimacy to hold the Office of President without being marginalized by both sides of the political divide. Why then, would we expect the truth about Benghazi? And yet, Americans believe what they see and hear about everything from Benghazi, Boston, and even to matters of our economy? We are a captured operation.
 
Just as the situation involving al Harbi provides us with a window into this agenda, Benghazi provides us with that same window. Unraveling the truth from the lies in both instances will show just how deep the U.S. is involved with expanding the Saudi Kingdom of power across the Middle East, even at our own national peril. Of critical importance, this relationship is leading us on the path to World War III.

Before the marathon bombings, Russian intelligence officials warned the U.S. about the Islamic terror threat posed by Islamic terrorists in the U.S., including the older brother of the Boston bombing duo. The FBI KNEW the identity of the elder Boston bomber a year ago. Yet, the U.S. DHS, under the Obama regime, deliberately ignored the warnings. We’re spreading and actually sponsoring this radicalization through this Pan-Islamic agenda, yet most people cannot see the bigger picture.

Putin warned us that our policies were the equivalent of playing with dynamite, and continuing to play would result in a direct confrontation with them. During the so-called Arab Spring, Putin also warned the U.S. not to destabilize the Middle East, and warned Obama not to meddle in the affairs of Syria, which he described as their ‘red line in the sand’. Syria holds strategic military and economic importance for Russia and China, and is the backdoor to Iran, another country of importance to both superpowers.

Despite these warnings, the U.S. set up the largest weapons running operation in Benghazi, a location from where weapons were shipped under U.S. operational command to the Islamic terrorists in Syria to topple the Assad regime. The Saudis were the paymasters for this operation, but are duplicitous.

Benghazi was the direct result of this operation, and we now find ourselves in a proxy war with Russia-and soon to be China-with no peaceful end in sight as the U.S. continues to do the dirty work for the Saudis, the internationalists, the international bankers, and the global elite. The terror attacks in Boston were the latest blowback from our foreign policy, and there will be more.

Hillary Clinton, Janet Napolitano, and the entirety of the Obama regime are refusing to provide Americans with any truths about what is actually taking place, whether it is about a sole Saudi citizen or the attacks in Benghazi, and complete Saudi agenda. Meanwhile, clueless Americans cheer as the younger bombing suspect is arrested after one of the most unprecedented manhunts in U.S. history, but fail to see all of the entanglements of the Pollock painting. We are willfully and almost gleefully giving up our rights because of the globalists who are running the foreign and domestic policies.

The path to WW III

Like the Pollock paintings, people must be able to see the connections—the blood trails—that connect the terrorist attacks in Boston to the terrorist attacks in Benghzi. We are emboldening the Muslim terrorists by our foreign policies. We are training them, arming them, and in some cases, siding with one faction over another. We are not exporting peace or freeing people from oppression, but creating a new world order.

Time and again, from the first World Trade Center Bombing to 9/11, from Benghazi to Boston, we see the same template reproductions of the paintings, yet don’t recognize it.

We are not dealing with Americans with an American mentality. No, we are dealing with Americans in name only, driven by an internationalist, global mentality.

The ‘elected’ are the ‘elect’ vying for a future seat at the global table. They are hidden amid the entanglements of the Pollock work. They are the very ones who will lead us into global conflict.

So when you see the next massive manhunt that closes a city, understand that this is of our own doing. This is part of a larger agenda that you must step back from the painting to identify. While we surrender our rights domestically, we advance on the path that takes us into WW III. Boston was an indirect blowback from Benghazi, but the truth of the matter will continue to remain hidden unless we demand and receive answers to the proper questions. That is assuming, of course, there is anyone left to ask such questions.

Step back and look at the larger picture. See the blood trail that extends among the continents.
 
Comments

Copyright © Douglas J. Hagmann and Canada Free Press

Douglas J. Hagmann and his son, Joe Hagmann host The Hagmann & Hagmann Report, a live Internet radio program broadcast each weeknight from 8:00-10:00 p.m. ET.

Douglas Hagmann, founder & director of the Northeast Intelligence Network, and a multi-state licensed private investigative agency. Doug began using his investigative skills and training to fight terrorism and increase public awareness through his website.

Doug can be reached at: director@homelandsecurityus.com

Older articles by Doug Hagmann
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 22, 2013, 08:17:32 PM
Fisker spent $600K for every car it sold, skids toward bankruptcy
Hot Air ^ | April 22, 2013 | MARY KATHARINE HAM
Posted on April 22, 2013 10:13:55 PM EDT by Hojczyk

1.3 billion in venture capital and taxpayer funds, and they spent $600,000 per $100,000 car they sold. What an investment!

Fisker Automotive Inc. spent more than six times as much U.S. taxpayer and investor money to produce each luxury plug-in car it sold than the company received from customers, according to a research report…

The Anaheim, California-based company made about 2,500 of its $103,000 Karmas before halting production last year, disrupting its plans to use a $529 million U.S. loan to restart a shuttered Delaware factory owned by the predecessor of General Motors Co. (GM) The Karma was assembled in Finland.

Fisker was allowed to keep using money from its Energy Department loan after violating its terms multiple times, according to a report released April 17 by PrivCo, a New York- based researcher specializing in closely held companies. It said it based its report on documents, including the loan agreement, obtained through the U.S. Freedom of Information Act.

Fisker has been heading toward bankruptcy for several months, laying off employees, and missing payments to the Department of Energy on its way. The Obama administration seized $21 million from the company this week to satisfy its loan agreement, allowing the Fisker to escape expected bankruptcy for a little while longer.

(Excerpt) Read more at hotair.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 23, 2013, 05:42:30 AM
Luxury hybrid car maker Fisker Automotive has spent $660,000 in taxpayer dollars and venture capital funds for each car it sold — totalling $1.3 billion, according to a report. The company’s Fisker Karma sold for about $103,000 per vehicle, meaning the company took a hit of $557,000 every time it sold its product.
 
The company was also allowed to continue to draw down on a $529 million Department of Energy loan after violating the loan’s term multiple times, according to a report by the New York-based research firm PrivCo.
 
According to the report, the Department of energy knew that Fisker was not meeting goal required to keep receiving taxpayer dollars. The DOE cut off funding to the company in June 2011, allowing taxpayers to lose $193 million.
 
“They made a mistake” in giving Fisker the loan, PrivCo Chief Executive Officer Sam Hamadeh told the Denver Post. “Should they have fought this sooner? Obviously — as soon as it became evident that they had begun to default.”
 
It has been reported that Fisker is circling the bankruptcy drain and has hired the law firm Kirkland & Ellis LLP, which has one of the largest bankruptcy practices in the country, to handle a potential bankruptcy. A crisis PR firm, Sitrick & Co., also reportedly is assisting the beleaguered car maker.
 
The company stopped manufacturing cars last year and has a $20.2 million payment to the Energy Department due on April 22.
 
Consumers purchased 1,600 Fisker Karmas. Another 338 of the luxury hybrid cars — worth more than $33 million — were destroyed in a parking lot during Superstorm Sandy.
 
Hamadeh said that technical defaults began in 2011 in part due to “lower-than-required earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, and failing to meet a production milestone of at least 11,000 vehicles sold to dealers for an average of $87,500 by Sept. 30, 2011,” according to the Denver Post.
 
However, the DOE says it acted responsibly in cutting off the company’s funding and argued that PivCo’s report was flawed and contained errors.
 
“The Department of Energy stopped payment on the federal loan in 2011 after Fisker stopped meeting their milestones, and is committed to the best outcome for taxpayers,” said Bill Gibbons, a DOE spokesman. “Despite Fisker’s difficulties, our overall loan portfolio of more than 30 projects continues to perform very well, and more than 90 percent of the $10 billion loan loss reserve that Congress set aside for these programs remains intact.”
 
“PrivCo’s assertion that Fisker defaulted in December 2010 is simply false,” said Gibbons. “The milestones that PrivCo includes in its report are also wrong. The fact is, the department stopped disbursements on the loan after the company stopped meeting its milestones.”
 
Republicans have already attacked the DOE’s loan program because of other high-profile failures and levied allegations of cronyism.
 
Fisker does not lack for political clout, though. The Fisker Karma has been sported by celebrities such as Al Gore, Justin Bieber, and Leonardo DiCaprio.
 
The venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers — where Gore is a partner — was a seed investor in the company and spent $400,000 in 2009 and 2010 on lobbying. The firm lobbied in favor of the stimulus bill that handed out $90 billion for green energy programs.
 
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Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 23, 2013, 05:43:36 AM
The government-backed electric car company Fisker Automotive laid off about 160 workers Friday, or roughly 75 percent of the automaker's staff, as it has struggled to find financial backing that would allow it to continue building its high concept clean cars.
 
The layoff announcement came as the innovative start up faces a looming repayment on a loan from the U.S. Department of Energy, and as reports have swirled that it could be preparing to file for bankruptcy. As with the failed solar firm Solyndra, the green car company was once an early pick by the Obama Administration to be part of America's clean energy future. The Obama Energy Department had approved Fisker for a government loan up to $529 million.
 
Stunned workers filed out of Fisker's Anaheim headquarters Friday morning with their belongings in boxes. One told ABC News that the employees had no advance notice the layoffs were coming, and they were told they would received no severance.
 
Among Fisker employees, the worker said, there was an overwhelming sense of sadness Friday that even after building a new, environmentally-focused line of gracefully-designed, high-end American cars, they had not been able to find financial success.
 
READ: Is Fisker Headed for a Solyndra-Like Collapse?

An Energy Department spokesman said today that early signs of the company's distress prompted officials there to freeze payments to Fisker after having provided the company with nearly $200 million to produce its first car, the $97,000 Fisker Karma.
 
"The Department of Energy stopped payment on the federal loan in 2011 after Fisker stopped meeting their milestones, and is committed to the best outcome for taxpayers," the Energy Department statement said, before defending other green investments by the Obama administration.
 
"Despite Fisker's difficulties, our overall loan portfolio of more than 30 projects continues to perform very well, and more than 90 percent of the $10 billion loan loss reserve that Congress set aside for these programs remains intact," the department said.
 
Among those laid off by Fisker Friday were the company's team of spokespeople. The head of that team, Roger Ormisher, told ABC News earlier this week that he could not address reports that the automaker had hired a law firm to prepare it for bankruptcy.
 
"We are not offering any official comment on the speculation around bankruptcy at this stage," Ormisher said.
 
Even before the layoffs, the Anaheim, Calif.-based company disclosed that it had furloughed non-essential U.S. workers in March, a move made as the company is "in the process of identifying a strategic partner... [but] continuing to manage its day-to-day operations," Ormisher had said.
 
Fisker Automotive entered the electric car market with hefty support from the U.S. Energy Department and backing from such celebs as Justin Bieber and Leonardo DiCaprio, but the company and its high-priced Fisker Karma have continued to skid financially.
 
If the California-based luxury carmaker goes bust, it will be the most high profile failure of an alternative energy firm backed by the Obama administration since the solar company Solyndra filed for bankruptcy in 2011.
 
ABC News Investigation: The Fall of Solyndra

Financial Deadline Looms
 
In April 2010, Fisker started receiving payments on a loan of up to $529 million from the Department of Energy as part of the Obama administration's push to bolster alternative energy firms. Fisker has been making repayments on the loan interest for several years, but the first sizeable repayment of the principle – an amount the company has not disclosed – is due at the end of April.
 
The loan to Fisker was part of a $1 billion bet the Energy Department made in two politically-connected California-based electric carmakers producing sporty -- and pricey -- cutting-edge autos. Fisker Automotive, backed by a powerhouse venture capital firm whose partners included former Vice President Al Gore, predicted it would eventually be churning out tens of thousands of electric sports sedans at the shuttered General Motors factory it bought in Delaware. The other major recipient of financial support, Tesla Motors, is backed by PayPal mogul Elon Musk.
 
Fisker launched the Karma with great fanfare, showing off prototypes of its sleek, quiet-running sports sedan at major auto shows and opening showrooms around the globe.
 
But in October 2011, ABC News aired reports revealing that the government loan to Fisker raised concerns among industry observers and government auditors, and added to questions about the way billions of dollars in loans for smart cars and green energy companies were being awarded.
 
In a 2011 interview with ABC News, Henrik Fisker, the renowned Danish auto designer who founded the company, issued a promise to U.S. taxpayers that they had no reason to worry about the more than $500 million in federal funds the government was getting set to bet on the company.
 
"No, I don't think they need to worry about it," Fisker said. When asked if Fisker might be the next Solyndra, he said, "Absolutely not."
 
When Henrik Fisker resigned from the company in March, the auto maker released a statement saying, in essence, that nothing had changed: "Mr. Fisker's departure is not expected to impact the company's pursuit of strategic partnerships and financing to support Fisker Automotive's continued progress as a pioneer of low-emission hybrid electric powertrain technology."
 
But the outlook has only appeared to get worse.

In December, the Wall Street Journal reported that Fisker board members had discussed the prospect of filing for bankruptcy, citing unnamed sources. Company executives responded by saying they were seeking larger partners for the small automaker.
 
For weeks following, there were widespread reports of a possible deal involving Chinese automakers. But a major Chinese manufacturer said those talks had fallen through. Last week came word in a report by Reuters that Fisker Automotive had begun consulting with bankruptcy lawyers.
 
That news came with less than a month before Fisker must make a significant payment on its U.S. Energy Department loan, which comes due April 22.
 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 24, 2013, 06:40:59 AM
Obama Administration Had Advance Warning On Electric Car Failure

April 24, 2013 3:31 AM



Newly released documents show that the Obama administration was warned as early as 2010 that electric car maker Fisker Automotive Inc. was not meeting milestones set up for a half-billion dollar government loan, nearly a year before U.S. officials froze the loan after questions were raised about the company’s statements. (Photo by Jeff Fusco/Getty Images)



WASHINGTON (AP) — Newly released documents show that the Obama administration was warned as early as 2010 that electric car maker Fisker Automotive Inc. was not meeting milestones set up for a half-billion dollar government loan, nearly a year before U.S. officials froze the loan after questions were raised about the company’s statements.
 
An Energy Department official said in a June 2010 email that Fisker’s bid to draw on the federal loan may be jeopardized for failure to meet goals established by the Energy Department.
 
Despite that warning, Fisker continued to receive money until June 2011, when the DOE halted further funding. The agency did so after Fisker presented new information that called into question whether key milestones — including launch of the company’s signature, $100,000 Karma hybrid — had been achieved, according to a credit report prepared by the Energy Department.

 

The December 2011 credit report said “DOE staff asked questions about the delays” in the launch of the Karma “and received varied and incomplete explanations,” leading to the suspension of the loan. Fisker had received a total of $192 million of the $529 million loan before it was suspended.
 
In the June 2010 email, Sandra Claghorn, an official in DOE’s loan program office, had written that Fisker “may be in limbo due to a lack of compliance with financial covenants” set up by the Energy Department to protect taxpayers in the event of default. Another document, from April 2010, listed milestones that Fisker had not yet met.
 
Aoife McCarthy, a spokeswoman for the Energy Department, said the June 2010 email was taken out of context.
 
“The document shows that one person at a meeting discussed the possibility that Fisker might not meet a financial commitment” required by the Energy Department, McCarthy said in an email late Tuesday. DOE received the needed certification five days later and subsequently made the loan payment, she said.
 
The Associated Press obtained the Fisker documents ahead of a House hearing scheduled for Wednesday on the federal loan to the troubled car maker, which has laid off three-fourths of its workers amid continuing financial and production problems.

http://washington.cbslocal.com/2013/04/24/obama-administration-had-advance-warning-on-electric-car-failure

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 24, 2013, 07:10:13 AM
Eric Schneiderman Challenges Obama Administration Over Mortgage Investigations


Posted: 04/24/2013 7:34 am EDT  |  Updated: 04/24/2013 9:02 am EDT



WASHINGTON -- New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has privately criticized the Obama administration and the Department of Justice for not aggressively investigating dodgy mortgage deals that helped trigger the financial crisis, according to senators and congressional aides who met with him this month.

New York’s top prosecutor is co-chair of the administration’s year-old Residential Mortgage Backed Securities Working Group, an initiative that President Barack Obama called for in his State of the Union address last year. In a sign of Schneiderman’s importance to the group, the White House seated him behind Michelle Obama during the speech.

Schneiderman, a Democrat who has attempted to investigate Wall Street, expressed his frustrations with the administration earlier this month during private meetings with Democratic senators on Capitol Hill, arguing that he was “naive” when he first entered into the partnership with the Justice Department, lawmakers and their aides said.

Critics of Schneiderman's collaboration, which came in exchange for his assent to a national mortgage settlement, warned at the time that the attorney general was being played. His recent criticisms of the administration may renew allegations that he, too, has compiled a lackluster enforcement record.

Schneiderman has recently directed his attention to working with lawmakers and outside groups to pressure the administration to toughen its approach. He traveled to Washington for meetings with Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Carl Levin (D-Mich.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), among others, according to people who attended the meetings. The four senators have been among the loudest critics of the Obama administration's efforts to hold the financial industry accountable for alleged wrongdoing, charging they have not gone far enough.

Examples of criticized settlements include the Justice Department's decision not to file criminal charges against financial companies accused of manipulating benchmark interest rates, as well as banks alleged to have helped drug cartels launder money through the U.S. financial system. Government panels like the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission and the Levin-chaired Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations that referred cases for potential prosecution have seen their recommendations cast aside.

Schneiderman excoriated Justice Department officials for their approach in targeting wrongdoing by financial institutions in private meetings with lawmakers.

“He expressed similar frustrations that the public has expressed,” Levin said.

Levin said that Schneiderman argued that the Justice Department lacks the “political will” to forge ahead with prosecutions of high-ranking financial executives and large financial groups.

“There's been a real lack of going after the top folks, in general,” Levin said. His subcommittee has aggressively probed potential wrongdoing by leading financial institutions, including alleged money laundering at HSBC and mortgage-related misdeeds at Goldman Sachs.

Another senator, who requested anonymity, said of Schneiderman that it's “very clear he's extremely frustrated."

Schneiderman’s behind-the-scenes criticism may sting administration and enforcement officials, who for years have been dogged by allegations that they have been soft on Wall Street.

The White House attempted to rebut those accusations in part by giving Schneiderman a plum role on a unit launched with great fanfare. He was promised aggressive prosecutors and investigators who through enforcement action would put to rest allegations that the Obama administration has been lax on pre-financial crisis misconduct.

The Justice Department has promoted four cases as having been brought thanks to the securitization task force: two separate settlements reached between the Securities and Exchange Commission and JPMorgan Chase and Credit Suisse, and two civil cases Schneiderman has brought in state court against those same banks.

The SEC’s settlements ended investigations that began long before the formation of the securitization task force.

Critics allege the task force has racked up an unimpressive record. In a sign of its decreased standing at the White House, Obama did not mention it in his State of the Union address earlier this year.

“No one is happy with the pace of the task force at all. It's a travesty,” said Brian Kettenring, a community organizer who runs the advocacy groups Leadership Center for the Common Good and Campaign for a Fair Settlement. “It’s one of the biggest black marks on this administration, in terms of what they promised versus what has happened.”

Michael Bresnick, executive director of the Obama-formed Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force, an oft-criticized collection of regulators that has spent much of its time targeting low-level mortgage brokers and borrowers, said last month the RMBS group is “actively investigating fraud” related to mortgage securities.

More than 200 people from the working group are currently investigating potential misconduct in mortgage securities, the Justice Department said.

“Many more investigations are ongoing,” Bresnick said.

Part of the administration’s embrace of Schneiderman was guided by his appeal to liberal groups, who view him as the new sheriff of Wall Street and have criticized the administration’s approach to alleged misconduct by big banks.

Schneiderman often describes how he is holding Wall Street accountable during private meetings with key interest groups, participants in the meetings have said. His office has demanded various internal bank documents on activity ranging from alleged attempts to manipulate benchmark interest rates to the pre-financial crisis securitizations of home loans that eventually defaulted.

New York’s top law enforcement officer also has the two pending civil cases against Credit Suisse and JPMorgan Chase for allegedly misleading investors in mortgage bonds. Both banks have disputed the allegations.

Schneiderman relied on the Justice Department to bring those two cases, officials said. The agency and several U.S. Attorney’s Offices combined to interview more than 40 people and provided more than a dozen analysts and attorneys to review documents for Schneiderman’s lawsuits, officials said.

“The sharing of information and expertise has been certainly beyond anything I've ever seen or been aware of," Schneiderman said when he announced his JPMorgan lawsuit in October. "It has enabled us to move forward more quickly and more aggressively than we would have.”

Justice spokeswoman Adora Andy Jenkins said the agency “supplied and continues to supply crucial investigative and litigation support, technological resources, and expertise to these cases.”

In the months after Schneiderman took office in 2011, large financial institutions and their lawyers said they feared him. Now, some have said privately in interviews that they view him as a nuisance, given the dearth of cases he has brought in light of his aggressive requests for documents.

Instead, another New York state regulator who is viewed as a rival, Superintendent of Financial Services Benjamin Lawsky, has emerged as the key Wall Street scourge, earning the enmity of some industry executives for his enforcement activities and willingness to buck federal regulators.

In his most notable case, Lawsky secured $340 million from Standard Chartered, a UK bank, to settle accusations the bank hid key details from regulators involving at least $250 billion in illicit transactions with Iran and potentially violated U.S. sanctions policy.

At the time of the settlement, Levin, the powerful chairman of the Senate's investigations panel, said that Lawsky and his team "showed that holding a bank accountable for past misconduct doesn’t need to take years of negotiation over the size of the penalty; it simply requires a regulator with backbone to act.”

Members of advocacy groups who have met with Schneiderman have expressed disappointment in his own efforts to hold financial institutions accountable, and question his criticisms of the administration. Those who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of jeopardizing their relationships with his office described Schneiderman’s rhetoric as far more aggressive than his investigations.

"Millions of households are still reeling from the mortgage crisis, which continues to be a drag on our economic recovery," said Schneiderman spokesman Damien LaVera in response.

“The attorney general ... is working constructively with the Justice Department ... [and] will continue to work on multiple fronts with activists and allies inside and outside the government to find aggressive, creative ways to ensure that struggling homeowners in New York and around the country get the relief they deserve,” LaVera added.

Schneiderman maintains the backing of some liberal groups, in part because of his efforts to convince the White House to fire Edward DeMarco, the government regulator overseeing state-controlled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Some of these groups have been critical of DeMarco, the acting head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, for his refusal to allow the mortgage companies to forgive distressed borrowers’ mortgage debt. Earlier this year Schneiderman prepared a memo outlining a potential way in which the White House could replace DeMarco.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/24/eric-schneiderman-mortgage-settlement_n_3140928.html?utm_hp_ref=politics
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 24, 2013, 08:10:39 AM
$3 Million Retirement Cap in Obama's Budget Would Not Apply to Him

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/04/23/Obama-s-3-Million-Retirement-Cap-Would-Not-Apply-To-Himself


by Wynton Hall23 Apr 2013399post a comment View Discussion
 
President Barack Obama’s 2014 budget puts a $3 million cap on tax-advantaged retirement accounts to crack down on “wealthy individuals” using these investment vehicles to earn “substantially more than is needed to fund reasonable levels of retirement savings.”

But an analysis by Forbes finds that a 20-year old saving for retirement would need to amass a $9.97 million portfolio to fund just a $60,000 lifestyle by age 65. What’s more, writes David John Marotta of Forbes, $3 million today represents just $500,000 in 1970s dollars.
 
Kathleen Pender of the San Francisco Chronicle also notes that Obama’s plan would not apply to himself:
 
The limit would not apply to Obama’s own pension, which is worth at least $5 million, because it is not in a tax-advantaged account, according to Brian Graff, executive director of the American Society of Pension Professionals & Actuaries. Obama’s pension, which guarantees him a Cabinet-level salary for life indexed to inflation, is a “non-qualified deferred compensation plan, similar to what corporate executives get,” he says.
 
“No legislation should inhibit individuals from taking care of their own retirement,” says Marotta. “Government officials know very little about retirement planning. They haven’t even had the foresight to keep Social Security solvent.”
 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 24, 2013, 08:13:34 AM
Washington State May Push Workers Into Health Exchanges, Costing U.S. Government Millions


By MIKE BAKER 04/24/13 04:10 AM ET EDT

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/24/washington-workers-health-exchange_n_3145568.html




OLYMPIA, Wash. -- In a move that would capitalize on provisions under President Barack Obama's health care law but could cost the federal government millions of dollars, Washington state lawmakers have found a creative way to pass a large chunk of their health care expenses along to Washington, D.C. – and analysts say others are likely to follow suit.

The plan threatens to affect the federal budget and the pocketbooks of some part-time workers, as it would push a group of employees out of their current health care plans and into an exchange developed under the Affordable Care Act.

Observers say the shift seems to run counter to the intent of the new health care law. Supporters, however, say it's a viable strategy for governments to pursue as they manage the insurance rules related to part-time staff.

Washington state appears to be the first major government to seriously explore the possibility of pushing workers into the exchange – but it probably won't be the last. Rick Johnson, who advises state and local governments on health care policy at the New York-based consulting firm Segal Company, said he expects it will be an option some governments will look at in the years to come.

"I can see that as one of the solutions out there," Johnson said.

A spokeswoman with the Department of Health and Human Services declined comment, and it's unclear whether the federal government accounted for this possible outcome.

While Democratic lawmakers have expressed concern about the Washington state plan this year, it is drawing growing interest among a bipartisan group of political leaders in the state. Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee, who supported the Obama health care law while in Congress, has reservations about the plan.

But the former congressman said federal rules don't dictate how employers and employees should handle insurance coverage and indicated that he may consider supporting the idea in the future.

"It's one of those ideas that's premature for us to launch this year, but I don't think we should take it off the table," Inslee said Tuesday.




The Washington state proposal has come before lawmakers as governments around the nation are formulating strategies to manage those who don't work 40 hours a week, since the federal law requires employers to provide coverage for those working at least 30 hours.

Virginia, for example, is requiring all part-time employees to work fewer than 30 hours, which will help the state avoid penalties for not providing health coverage. Florida, facing a potential $300 million penalty for not covering workers who have 30 to 39 hours a week, is moving to extend coverage to those employees.

Washington state is in a less common situation, since it already provides coverage for part-timers down to 20 hours a week.

Budget writers in Olympia say their plan would save Washington state $120 million over the next two years. However, it would consequently push more health care costs onto the federal government, since many low-income part-time state employees and education workers would likely qualify for federal subsidies.

Under the proposal, which has been advanced as a way to help deal with a $1.2 billion budget shortfall, Washington state would make policy changes and secure agreements in which staffers who work between 20 and 30 hours a week would get extra compensation but lose state health coverage. They would then be eligible to get health care in the federal plan, without any consequence for the state.

K-12 workers would have to adopt new bargaining agreements to implement the change, though the state would help by offering sweeteners that would be equivalent to as much as a $2 per hour raise.

Rick Chisa, political director at the Public School Employees of Washington, said the union is open to shifting some workers to the exchange but didn't feel that the current proposal – an inducement valued at perhaps $200 a month for someone working 25 hours a week – provided an adequate incentive, especially if it may be taxed as compensation.

He said the change may eventually make sense for cafeteria workers and teacher's assistants who are on the low end of the pay spectrum, but union leaders also want to see what the insurance product will end up looking like in the exchange before making that move.

"We want to make sure that we're not selling workers short and being mesmerized by a shiny $2 bill," Chisa said. He said it was "very unlikely" for such a shift to happen this year.

The shift could be a problem particularly for part-time workers who have larger family incomes.

Steve Hodes, who works 24 hours a week doing policy work for the Employment Security Department, said he would not qualify for insurance subsidies because his wife makes a decent salary working as an attorney.

He suspects he and his family might be on the hook for thousands of dollars in new expenses if he was moved to the exchange, though solid numbers are elusive since the exchange doesn't exist yet.

"They don't have a clue how much it is," said Hodes, 63.

Under the federal law, large employers who don't provide coverage to full-time workers will face penalties, but they won't face penalties for not covering employees who work under 30 hours a week. Thousands of part-time government employees in Washington state work between 20 and 30 hours a week and currently qualify for state medical coverage.

Observers have been concerned about how private employers will handle the new health care law and the possibility that some may shed insurance coverage. The owner of Olive Garden and Red Lobster restaurants, for example, began experimenting last year with putting more workers on part-time status.

Virginia is doing something similar, with Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell directing that all part-time state employees work less than 29 hours weekly. That is creating a financially crippling problem for many of Virginia's 9,100 adjunct faculty members at the state's 23 community colleges on 40 campuses statewide.

"I've never anticipated getting rich off being a teacher," said J. Gabriel Scala, an adjunct English professor at J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College in Richmond.

"But the rent has to be paid. And I have to eat. And gas has to be put in the car – and $17,000 a year isn't going to do it," she added.

The efforts appear to be the beginning stages of governments working to manage their costs under the health care law.

Washington Democratic state Sen. Jim Hargrove, one of the budget writers who helped develop his state's plan, said lawmakers were considering the option as a way to help both employees and the state budget.

"We're looking," Hargrove said, "at what the possibilities are."

___

AP Writer Mike Baker can be reached on Facebook: http://on.fb.me/HiPpEV
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 24, 2013, 11:46:41 AM
In Florida, a food-stamp recruiter deals with wrenching choices
By Eli Saslow, Published: April 23


http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/in-florida-a-food-stamp-recruiter-deals-with-wrenching-choices/2013/04/23/b3d6b41c-a3a4-11e2-9c03-6952ff305f35_print.html



FORT PIERCE, Fla. — A good recruiter needs to be liked, so Dillie Nerios filled gift bags with dog toys for the dog people and cat food for the cat people. She packed crates of cookies, croissants, vegetables and fresh fruit. She curled her hair and painted her nails fluorescent pink. “A happy, it’s-all-good look,” she said, checking her reflection in the rearview mirror. Then she drove along the Florida coast to sign people up for food stamps.

Her destination on a recent morning was a 55-and-over community in central Florida, where single-wide trailers surround a parched golf course. On the drive, Nerios, 56, reviewed techniques she had learned for connecting with some of Florida’s most desperate senior citizens during two years on the job. Touch a shoulder. Hold eye contact. Listen for as long as it takes. “Some seniors haven’t had anyone to talk to in some time,” one of the state-issued training manuals reads. “Make each person feel like the only one who matters.”

In fact, it is Nerios’s job to enroll at least 150 seniors for food stamps each month, a quota she usually exceeds. Alleviate hunger, lessen poverty: These are the primary goals of her work. But the job also has a second and more controversial purpose for cash-strapped Florida, where increasing food-stamp enrollment has become a means of economic growth, bringing almost $6 billion each year into the state. The money helps to sustain communities, grocery stores and food producers. It also adds to rising federal entitlement spending and the U.S. debt.

Nerios prefers to think of her job in more simple terms: “Help is available,” she tells hundreds of seniors each week. “You deserve it. So, yes or no?”

In Florida and everywhere else, the answer in 2013 is almost always yes. A record 47 million Americans now rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), also known as food stamps, available for people with annual incomes below about $15,000. The program grew during the economic collapse because 10 million more Americans dropped into poverty. It has continued to expand four years into the recovery because state governments and their partner organizations have become active promoters, creating official “SNAP outreach plans” and hiring hundreds of recruiters like Nerios.

A decade ago, only about half of eligible Americans chose to sign up for food stamps. Now that number is 75 percent.

Rhode Island hosts SNAP-themed bingo games for the elderly. Alabama hands out fliers that read: “Be a patriot. Bring your food stamp money home.” Three states in the Midwest throw food-stamp parties where new recipients sign up en masse.

On the Treasure Coast of Florida, the official outreach plan is mostly just Nerios, who works for a local food bank that is funded in part by the state. She roams four counties of sandbars and barrier islands in her Ford Escape, with an audio Bible in the CD player and a windshield sticker that reads “Faith, Hope and Love.” She distributes hundreds of fliers each week, giving out her personal cellphone number and helping seniors submit SNAP applications on her laptop.

On this particular morning, Nerios pulled into the Spanish Lakes retirement community near Port St. Lucie, Fla., and set up a display table in front of the senior center. She advertised her visit weeks in advance, but she can never predict how many people will come. Some events draw hundreds; others only a dozen. Her hope was to attract a crowd with giveaways of pet toys and hundreds of pounds of food, which she stacked high on the table. “What person in need doesn’t want food that’s immediate and free?” she said.

She watched as a few golf carts and motorized scooters drove toward her on a road lined with palm trees, passing Spanish Lakes signs that read “We Love Living Here!” and “Great Lifestyle!” The first seniors grabbed giveaway boxes and went home to tell their friends, who told more friends, until a line of 40 people had formed at Nerios’s table.

A husband and wife, just done with nine holes of golf, clubs still on their cart.

An 84-year-old woman on her bicycle, teetering away with one hand on the handlebars and a case of applesauce under her other arm.

A Korean War veteran on oxygen who mostly wanted to talk, so Nerios listened: 32 years in the military, a sergeant major, Germany, Iron Curtain, medals and awards. “A hell of a life,” the veteran said. “So if I signed up, what would I tell my wife?”

“Tell her you’re an American and this is your benefit,” Nerios said, pulling him away from the crowd, so he could write the 26th name of the day on her SNAP sign-up sheet.

She distributed food and SNAP brochures for three hours. “Take what you need,” she said, again and again, until the fruit started to sweat and the vegetables wilted in the late-morning heat. Just as she prepared to leave, a car pulled into the senior center and a man with a gray mustache and a tattered T-shirt opened the driver-side door. He had seen the giveaway boxes earlier in the morning but waited to return until the crowd thinned. He had just moved to Spanish Lakes. He had never taken giveaways. He looked at the boxes but stayed near his car.

“Sir, can I help?” Nerios asked. She brought over some food. She gave him her business card and a few brochures about SNAP.

“I don’t want to be another person depending on the government,” he said.

“How about being another person getting the help you deserve?” she said.


***


Did he deserve it, though? Lonnie Briglia, 60, drove back to his Spanish Lakes mobile home with the recruiter’s pamphlets and thought about that. He wasn’t so sure.

Wasn’t it his fault that he had flushed 40 years of savings into a bad investment, buying a fleet of delivery trucks just as the economy crashed? Wasn’t it his fault that he and his wife, Celeste, had missed mortgage payments on the house where they raised five kids, forcing the bank to foreclose in 2012? Wasn’t it his fault the only place they could afford was an abandoned mobile home in Spanish Lakes, bought for the entirety of their savings, $750 in cash?

“We made horrible mistakes,” he said. “We dug the hole. We should dig ourselves out.”

Now he walked into their mobile home and set the SNAP brochures on the kitchen table. They had moved in three months before, and it had taken all of that time for them to make the place livable. They patched holes in the ceiling. They fixed the plumbing and rewired the electricity. They gave away most of their belongings to the kids — “like we died and executed the will,” he said. They decorated the walls of the mobile home with memories of a different life: photos of Lonnie in his old New Jersey police officer uniform, or in Germany for a manufacturing job that paid $25 an hour, or on vacation in their old pop-up camper.

A few weeks after they moved in, some of their 11 grandchildren had come over to visit. One of them, a 9-year-old girl, had looked around the mobile home and then turned to her grandparents on the verge of tears: “Grampy, this place is junky,” she had said. He had smiled and told her that it was okay, because Spanish Lakes had a community pool, and now he could go swimming whenever he liked.

Only later, alone with Celeste, had he said what he really thought: “A damn sky dive. That’s our life. How does anyone fall this far, this fast?”

And now SNAP brochures were next to him on the table — one more step down, he thought, reading over the bold type on the brochure. “Applying is easy.” “Eat right!” “Every $5 in SNAP generates $9.20 for the local economy.”

He sat in a sweltering home with no air conditioning and a refrigerator bought on layaway, which was mostly empty except for the “experienced” vegetables they sometimes bought at a discount grocery store to cook down and freeze for later. He had known a handful of people who depended on the government: former co-workers who exaggerated injuries to get temporary disability; homeless people in the Fort Pierce park where he had taken the kids each week when they were young to hand out homemade peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches, even though he suspected some of those homeless were drug addicts who spent their Social Security payments on crack.

“Makers and takers,” Lonnie had told the kids then, explaining that the world divided into two categories. The Briglias were makers.

Now three of those kids worked in law enforcement and two were in management. One of them, the oldest, was on his way to visit Spanish Lakes, driving down at this very moment from Valdosta, Ga., with his wife and two kids. Lonnie placed the SNAP brochures in a drawer and turned on a fan to cool the mobile home.

His son arrived, and they went out to dinner. Lonnie tried to pay with a credit card, but his son wouldn’t let him. Then, before leaving for Valdosta, the son gave his parents an air conditioner, bought for $400. Lonnie started to protest.

“Please,” his son said. “You need it. It’s okay to take a little help.”



***


The offer of more help came early the next morning. Nerios reached Lonnie on his cellphone to check on his interest in SNAP.

“Can I help sign you up?” she asked.

“I’m still not sure,” he said. “We have a lot of frozen vegetables in the freezer.”

“Don’t wait until you’re out,” she said.

She was on her way to another outreach event, but she told Lonnie she had plenty of time to talk. She had always preferred working with what her colleagues called the Silent Generation, even though seniors were historically the least likely to enroll in SNAP. Only about 38 percent of eligible seniors choose to participate in the program, half the rate of the general population. In Florida, that means about 300,000 people over 60 are not getting their benefits, and at least $381 million in available federal money isn’t coming into the state. To help enroll more seniors, the government has published an outreach guide that blends compassion with sales techniques, generating some protests in Congress. The guide teaches recruiters how to “overcome the word ‘no,’ ” suggesting answers for likely hesitations.

Welfare stigma: “You worked hard and the taxes you paid helped create SNAP.”

Embarrassment: “Everyone needs help now and then.”

Sense of failure: “Lots of people, young and old, are having financial difficulties.”

Nerios prefers a subtler touch. “It’s about patience, empathy,” she said. While she makes a middle-class salary and had never been on food stamps herself, she knows the emotional exhaustion that comes at the end of each month, after a few hundred conversations about money that didn’t exist. Nowhere had the SNAP program grown as it has in Florida, where enrollment had risen from 1.45 million people in 2008 to 3.35 million last year. And no place in Florida had been reshaped by the recession quite like the Treasure Coast, where middle-class retirees lost their savings in the housing collapse, forcing them to live on less than they expected for longer than they expected. Sometimes, Nerios believes it is more important to protect a client’s sense of self-worth than to meet her quota.

“I’m not going to push you,” she told Lonnie now. “This is your decision.”

“I have high blood pressure, so it’s true that diet is important to us,” he said, which sounded to her like a man arguing with himself.

“I can meet with you today, or tomorrow, or anytime you’d like,” she said.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m really sorry.”

“You don’t have to be,” she said. “Please, just think about it.”



***


She hung up the phone and began setting up her giveaway table at another event.

He hung up the phone and drove a few miles down the highway to his wife’s small knitting store. They had stayed married 41 years because they made decisions together. She was an optimist and he was a realist; they leveled each other out. During the failures of the past three years, they had developed a code language that allowed them to acknowledge their misery without really talking about it.

“How you doing?” he asked.

“Just peachy,” she said, which meant to him that in fact she was exhausted, depressed, barely hanging on.

She opened the knitting store three years earlier, but it turned out her only customers were retirees on fixed incomes, seniors with little money to spend who just wanted an air-conditioned place to spend the day. So Celeste started giving them secondhand yarn and inviting customers to knit with her for charity in the shop. Together they had made 176 hats and scarves for poor families in the last year. The store, meanwhile, had barely made its overhead. Lonnie wanted her to close it, but it was the last place where she could pretend her life had turned out as she’d hoped, knitting to classical music at a wooden table in the center of the store.

Now Lonnie joined her at that table and started to tell her about his week: how he had been driving by the community center and seen boxes of food; how he had decided to take some, grabbing tomatoes and onions that looked fresher than anything they’d had in weeks; how a woman had touched his shoulder and offered to help, leaving him with brochures and a business card.

He pulled the card from his pocket and showed it to Celeste. She leaned in to read the small print. “SNAP Outreach,” it read.

“I think we qualify,” Lonnie said.

There was a pause.

“Might be a good idea,” Celeste said.

“It’s hard to accept,” he said.

Another pause.

“We have to take help when we need it,” she said.

Celeste looked down at her knitting, and Lonnie sat with her in the quiet shop and thought about what happened when he opened a barbershop a few years earlier, as another effort of last resort. His dad, an Italian immigrant, had been a barber in New Jersey, and Lonnie decided to try it for himself after a dozen manufacturing job applications went unanswered in 2010. He enrolled in a local beauty school, graduated with a few dozen teenaged girls, took over the lease for a shop in Port St. Lucie and named it Man Cave. He had gone to work with his scissors and his clippers every day, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturdays and Sundays, standing on the curb and waving a handmade sign to advertise haircuts for $5. He had done a total of 11 cuts in three months. But what tore him up inside had nothing to do with the lonely echo of his feet on the linoleum floor or the empty cash register or the weeks that went by without a single customer. No, what convinced him to close the shop — the memory that stuck with him even now — were the weeks when old friends had come in to get their hair cut twice. He couldn’t stand the idea of being pitied. He hated that his problems had become a burden to anyone else.

He wondered: Sixty years old now, and who was he? A maker? A taker?

“I’m not ready to sign up for this yet,” he said.

“Soon we might have to,” she said.

He tucked Nerios’s business card into his back pocket.

“I know,” he said. “I’m keeping it.”



© The Washington Post Company
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 24, 2013, 12:07:10 PM
Government
Fed-Up Immigration Agents Sue Obama Admin. For Right to Do Their Jobs

Aug. 23, 2012 1:30pm

Jason Howerton255


http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2012/08/23/fed-up-immigration-agents-sue-obama-admin-for-right-to-do-their-jobs




This photo provided by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Wednesday, March 28, 2012, in New Jersey, shows agents taking a person into custody during operation Cross Check III. (Credit: AP)
 
A group of immigration agents filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration Thursday, saying they are sick of being told not to do their jobs, a feeling intensified by the president’s new non-deportation policy and a previous memo directing them not to arrest certain illegal immigrants.
 
A total of 10 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and deportation officers filed the lawsuit in federal court to try to do away with both initiatives, The Washington Times reports.
 
Since taking office, President Obama has taken drastic measures to loosen the nation’s immigration laws. In addition to the president’s new executive order that protects younger illegal aliens from deportation, the Obama administration has shut down numerous Border Patrol stations, ended a crucial ICE program that allowed local law enforcement agencies to enforce federal immigration law and actually instructed Border Patrol agents not to make arrests.
 
The 10 U.S. ICE agents and deportation officers said Obama’s policies have put them between a rock and a hard place. They can either enforce the law and be reprimanded by their superiors, or fail to enforce the law and violate their own oaths of service. In fact, a 1996 law requires the agents to demand proof of legal status from individuals they suspect are in the country illegally.
 
High-profile attorney Kris W. Kobach, who is also secretary of state in Kansas and a staunch promoter of Arizona’s immigration law and other immigration crackdowns, is representing the agents.



 .
 
“ICE is at a point now where agents are being told to break federal law, they’re pretty much told that any illegal alien under age of 31 is going to be let go. You can imagine, these law enforcement officers are being put in a horrible position,” Kobach told The Washington Times.
 
Last week, thousands of illegal immigrants lined up to take part in the Obama administration’s “deferred action” program and began submitting their applications to the Department of Homeland Security. Once again, the program allows illegal aliens who are 30-years of age or younger and have a decently clear criminal record to avoid deportation and acquire work permits.
 
“The Directive commands ICE officers to violate federal law,” the lawsuit states, “as detailed below, commands ICE officers to violate their oaths to uphold and support federal law, violates the Administrative Procedure Act, unconstitutionally usurps and encroaches upon the legislative powers of Congress, as defined in Article I of the United States Constitution, and violates the obligation of the executive branch to faithfully execute the law, as required by Article II, Section 3, of the United States Constitution.
 
Not surprisingly, ICE wouldn’t comment on the lawsuit. But don’t expect President Obama or his administration to back down at all — they have continually defended the legality of his new immigration policies.
 
More from The Washington Times:
 

At a House Judiciary Committee hearing in July, Rep. Steve King warned of the possibility of a lawsuit and asked Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano if she would rescind the order before it came to that.
 
“Representative, I will not rescind it,” she replied. “It’s right on the law. It’s the right policy. It fits within our prosecutorial priorities. And although it came out of the Department of Homeland Security, let me say that president is four square behind it, embraces this policy as the right thing to do.”
 
She said the administration doesn’t have the ability to issue a stay of action for a broad category of people, but said the new policy is different because it invests decisions on a case-by-case basis with agents and officers, who are instructed not to pursue cases for those who meet the guidelines she laid out.
 
Ms. Napolitano said she’s acting in accordance with Supreme Court rulings that have established a wide latitude for discretion by the executive branch, and said federal law directs the administration to establish immigration enforcement priorities.
 But in their 22-page complaint, the agents say they’ve been told in broad terms to ignore a whole class of illegal immigrants. They said they have been instructed not to bother asking for proof, but to take an illegal immigrant’s word that he would qualify for the president’s policy.
 
One of the instances included in the agents’ lawsuit is the case of ICE Agent Samuel Martin, who picked up an illegal alien from an El Paso County jail and was assaulted as the man tried to escape. The illegal alien also reportedly assaulted a second agent.
 
Here’s the kicker. When they brought the man to ICE’s processing center, so-called “supervisors” told Martin that the illegal alien had to be released to comply with the Obama administration’s new policies — not the president’s “DREAM Act” but a previous memo from ICE Director John Morton who instructed agents only to give priority to criminals and repeat offenders. Keep in mind, assaulting a federal officer is a federal crime, punishable by up to 8 years in prison.
 
Another veteran ICE agent was recently threatened with suspension for arresting and illegal alien and refusing to let him walk — against the orders of his superiors.
 
It is because of instances like this that Chris Crane, the president of the National ICE Council, says morale is in the toilet among ICE agents.
 
“They feel like they’ve become the enemy because literally we have this situation where individuals that have broken U.S. immigration law as well as often times criminal law at the state or local level — they’re being released, no questions asked, but our own officers are being threatened with their careers being taken away if they go out and enforce the laws on the books,” Crane last month.
 
Additionally, Roy Beck, executive director of NumbersUSA, the group funding the lawsuit, said the current administration’s amnesty-style policies could also affect the U.S. job market.
 
“Without immigration enforcement, the labor market would be filled until wages fell either to the global average or the federal minimum wage,” he said. “These agents are protecting every working American’s level of income and wages.”
 
The Washington Times points out, “The lawsuit, filed in federal court in the Northern District of Texas, argues the administration policies fail to pass muster on three grounds: they infringe on Congress’s right to set immigration policy; they force ICE agents to disregard the law; and the Homeland Security Department didn’t follow the federal Administrative Procedure Act, which requires agencies to write regulations and put them out for public comment before taking big steps.”
 
Read the entire lawsuit here.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 24, 2013, 12:10:58 PM
Cost of Food Stamp Fraud More Than Doubles In Three Years
 April 1, 2013


 http://cnsnews.com/blog/joe-schoffstall/cost-food-stamp-fraud-more-doubles-three-years



In 2012, a U.S. Department of Agriculture official said that food stamp fraud totals $750 million each year - a number that more than doubles the cost of trafficking reported in a 2006- 2008 USDA study.
 
Kevin Concannon, U.S. Department of Agriculture undersecretary for food, nutrition and consumer services, told the Huffington Post last year that food stamp fraud totals around $750 million each year.
 
The $750 million number is more than double the amount in total dollars of fraud detected annually in a 2006-2008 study on trafficking - a type of fraud that involves selling Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits to food retailers for cents on the dollar.
 
"This is $750 million that isn't being used to provide food to individuals and families and that issue isn't lost on us. We want to maintain the confidence of American taxpayers because everyone is challenged in this economy - the payers as well as the folks who are benefiting from the program," Concannon said.
 
CNSNews.com reached out to the USDA to verify this number. A spokesperson stated via email, "In 2011, program costs totaled $75.7 billion. Using the most recent data on trafficking available, USDA estimated that trafficking would be 1 percent of $75 billion, or approximately $750 million."
 
This number is $420 million more per year than a report released in March of 2011 that wrote on fraud within the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) from 2006-2008.
 
"Trafficking diverted an estimated $330 million annually from SNAP benefits – or about one cent of each SNAP dollar – between 2006 and 2008. About 8.2 percent of all stores trafficked," states the Extent of Trafficking in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (2006-2008).
 
That's an increase from $330 million annually in 2008 to $750 million in 2011. The "USDA doesn't tolerate fraud which is why we are aggressively strengthening our anti-fraud policies and tactics," said the USDA, noting the rate of fraud is at 1 percent of total expenditures.
 
CNSNews.com previously reported that in January 2009 there were 31,939,110 Americans receiving food stamps.  As of November 2012, there were 47,692,896 Americans enrolled, an increase of 49.3 percent.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 24, 2013, 12:45:01 PM
No furloughs for ObamaCare officials

By Sam Baker - 04/24/13 01:35 PM ET





The office implementing most of President Obama's healthcare law is not furloughing its workers as a result of sequestration, its director said Wednesday.
 
Gary Cohen, director of the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight, said Wednesday that his office has not cut its workers' hours and pay as a result of the automatic budget cuts that went into effect in March.
 
Republicans have accused the Obama administration of politicizing the sequester by targeting highly visible programs like airport security and White House tours.
 
The fact that ObamaCare officials haven't been furloughed shows that the cuts are political, Rep. Greg Harper (R-Miss.) said Wednesday.
 
"We're talking about at least a 15 percent furlough of current air-traffic controllers, resulting in delays and perhaps safety concerns, but yet this has been a selective political item by the administration," Harper said.
 
Agencies across the federal workforce have furloughed their workers, cutting their hours and pay, as a result of the automatic budget cuts known as sequestration. Furloughs have caused airport delays, and extend all the way up to the White House budget office and the West Wing.

 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Cohen said the implementation office has still been affected by the sequester because it is under a hiring freeze.
 
"We have been working very hard to avoid the necessity for furloughs," Cohen said. "We are under a hiring freeze, so I can't hire, I can't replace people who leave, which is a serious issue for me in terms of trying to run a program."
 
A hiring freeze is "not the same" as cutting the pay of existing employees, Harper said.
 
"Are you telling me, then, that this administration is furloughing air traffic controllers vital to public safety in this country, and yet you're not furloughing anybody in your agency?" Harper asked during a hearing of the Energy and Commerce oversight subcommittee.
 
"Well, in effect we are, because we can't replace people who leave," Cohen replied.


Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/health-reform-implementation/295877-official-no-furloughs-for-office-implementing-obamacare#ixzz2RPab57HM



 Follow us: @thehill on Twitter | TheHill on Facebook
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 24, 2013, 08:14:10 PM
Congressional leaders in both parties are engaged in high-level, confidential talks about exempting lawmakers and Capitol Hill aides from the insurance exchanges they are mandated to join as part of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul, sources in both parties said.

The talks — which involve Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), the Obama administration and other top lawmakers — are extraordinarily sensitive, with both sides acutely aware of the potential for political fallout from giving carve-outs from the hugely controversial law to 535 lawmakers and thousands of their aides. Discussions have stretched out for months, sources said.

A source close to the talks says: “Everyone has to hold hands on this and jump, or nothing is going to get done.”

Yet if Capitol Hill leaders move forward with the plan, they risk being dubbed hypocrites by their political rivals and the American public. By removing themselves from a key Obamacare component, lawmakers and aides would be held to a different standard than the people who put them in office.

(Also on POLITICO: GOP pulls contentious Obamacare bill)

Democrats, in particular, would take a public hammering as the traditional boosters of Obamacare. Republicans would undoubtedly attempt to shred them over any attempt to escape coverage by it, unless Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) give Democrats cover by backing it.

There is concern in some quarters that the provision requiring lawmakers and staffers to join the exchanges, if it isn’t revised, could lead to a “brain drain” on Capitol Hill, as several sources close to the talks put it.

The problem stems from whether members and aides set to enter the exchanges would have their health insurance premiums subsidized by their employer — in this case, the federal government. If not, aides and lawmakers in both parties fear that staffers — especially low-paid junior aides — could be hit with thousands of dollars in new health care costs, prompting them to seek jobs elsewhere. Older, more senior staffers could also retire or jump to the private sector rather than face a big financial penalty.

(Also on POLITICO: Baucus will continue ACA push)

Plus, lawmakers — especially those with long careers in public service and smaller bank accounts — are also concerned about the hit to their own wallets.

House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) is worried about the provision. The No. 2 House Democrat has personally raised the issue with Boehner and other party leaders, sources said.

“Mr. Hoyer is looking at this policy, like all other policies in the Affordable Care Act, to ensure they’re being implemented in a way that’s workable for everyone, including members and staff,” said Katie Grant, Hoyer’s communications director.

Several proposals have been submitted to the Office of Personnel Management, which will administer the benefits. One proposal exempts lawmakers and aides; the other exempts aides alone.

When asked about the high-level bipartisan talks, Michael Steel, a Boehner spokesman, said: “The speaker’s objective is to spare the entire country from the ravages of the president’s health care law. He is approached daily by American citizens, including members of Congress and staff, who want to be freed from its mandates. If the speaker has the opportunity to save anyone from Obamacare, he will.”

Reid’s office declined to comment about the bipartisan talks.

However, the idea of exempting lawmakers and aides from the exchanges has its detractors, including Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), a key Obamacare architect. Waxman thinks there is confusion about the content of the law. The Affordable Care Act, he said, mandates that the federal government will still subsidize and provide health plans obtained in the exchange. There will be no additional cost to lawmakers and Hill aides, he contends.


“I think the law is pretty clear,” Waxman told POLITICO. “Members and their staffs should get their health insurance through the exchange; the federal government will offer them health insurance coverage that they obtained through the exchanges because we want to get the same health care coverage everybody else has available to them.”

Waxman has been working on this issue with congressional colleagues and the Obama administration.

Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) said if OPM decides that the federal government doesn’t pick up “the 75 percent that they have been, then put yourself in the position of a lot of entry-level staff people who make $25,000 a year, and all of a sudden, they have a $7,000 a year health care tab? That would be devastating.”

Burr added: “And that makes up probably about 30 percent of the folks that work on the Senate side. Probably a larger portion on the House side. It would drastically change whether kids would have the ability to come up here out of college.”

Yet Burr, a vocal Obamacare opponent, is also flat-out opposed to exempting Congress from the exchange provision.

“I have no problems with Congress being under the same guidelines,” Burr said. “I think if this is going to be a disaster — which I think it’s going to be — we ought to enjoy it together with our constituents.”

The developing narrative is potentially brutal for congressional Democrats and the White House. The health care law, controversial since it was passed in 2010, has been a target of the right and, increasingly, the left. There are concerns about its cost, implementation and impact on small businesses. If the two sides agree on a fix, leadership is discussing attaching it to a must-pass bill, like the government-funding resolution or legislation to hike the nation’s debt limit.

Republicans, though, haven’t been able to coalesce around a legislative health care plan of their own, either. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) pushed a bill this week that would shift funds from a health care prevention fund to create a high-risk pool for sick Americans. That bill couldn’t even get a vote on the House floor as conservatives revolted, embarrassing Cantor and his leadership team. GOP leadership pulled the bill.

But the secret talks about exempting Capitol Hill hands from the exchanges has the potential to be even more politically risky. During the 2009-10 battle over what’s now dubbed Obamacare, Republicans insisted that Capitol Hill hands must have the same health care as the rest of the American people. The measure was introduced by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who spent months negotiating the details of the health care law but later became a major Obamacare critic.

The mandate on health exchanges doesn’t cover everyone. Aides in lawmakers’ personal offices must obtain health care through the exchanges but not committee staff. Lawmakers and aides older than 65 are covered by Medicare.

OPM also has to decide where the members and staffers would be covered. According to several people who have spoken with OPM officials, lawmakers would probably be in the exchange of the state they represent. But staffers would sign up in the state where they usually live — that means district office employees would join home state exchanges, and Capitol Hill staffers would mostly be in Washington, Virginia or Maryland.

Jennifer Haberkorn contributed to this report.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 25, 2013, 06:44:27 AM
Hostages on the tarmac!

You're ignoring the sequester. The president isn't happy.



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Jets taxi into takeoff position at Los Angeles International Airport. Flight delays have been reported throughout the nation because of the furloughing of air traffic controllers. (David McNew, Getty Images / April 22, 2013)
 





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April 24, 2013



Hours before the federal spending sequester began on March 1, when President Barack Obama predicted that "People are going to be hurt," he did not add, Trust me, I'll make sure of it. But he might as well have, as this week's furloughs of air traffic controllers make obvious.

The furloughs reflect panic: Having exaggerated their early predictions that the sequester's small reduction in spending growth would seriously affect Americans, many Democrats are hell-bent to pre-empt those Americans from drawing two logical conclusions: If one level of cuts is this painless, then maybe we should make ... more cuts to expenditures. And while we're at it, maybe we should ignore the politicians who told us that if Washington lowered the spending growth curve ... the Earth will fly into the sun.

Earlier this month, then, you could anticipate a White House effort to enrage the public when that same public preached blasphemy to McClatchy-Marist pollsters: The percentage of Americans who didn't think the sequester cuts are affecting the economy rose by 13 points over the prior month (from 27 to 40 percent), while the percentage who did think the cuts harm the economy fell by 11 points (from 47 to 36 percent).

The president and his allies in Congress hadn't anticipated that. They've spent March and April listening for fury from citizens who are, um, ignoring the sequester. Some of those citizens instead are marveling that the stock market (as measured by the S&P 500 Index) has shot up 10.7 percent in not-exactly-sequester-ravaged 2013.

So, what could the administration do to make a reduction of barely 1 percent of actual federal outlays — less than $45 billion of this year's roughly $3.8 trillion — turn citizens against Republicans who oppose more tax increases? Easy, or so the president's men and women figured: Cue the air controller furloughs! Let's stall some flights on the tarmac!

Sure enough, travel delays have followed. We're less certain, though, that this hostage-taking will cut the way the White House expects: The scheme relies on citizens being — how to put this delicately? — stupid enough to think that the Federal Aviation Administration can't find a more flier-friendly way to save $600 million.

To believe that, though:

• Americans would have to ignore the plan that U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., delivered in early March to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, detailing how LaHood's FAA could save twice that amount — $1.2 billion.

• Americans would have to ignore House Republicans who note that LaHood's supposedly destitute FAA is spending some $500 million on consultants — and $300 million on travel and supplies.

• And Americans would have to ignore Democrats' refusal to accept congressional Republicans' offer to give the administration more flexibility in sequester cuts — an offer House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., reiterated during a meeting Monday with the Tribune editorial board. No, the White House doesn't want flexibility. The White House wants what the president predicted March 1.

Who knows, maybe congressional Republicans will wind up wearing the jacket for this latest mess; they usually do. Although voters have such a poor opinion of them that it's doubtful their approval rating can fall lower. The notion that, having agreed to tax hikes to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff, they'll surrender to the White House — Yes, yes, more tax hikes, and please, let's end the sequester's real-life curbs on spending growth — at the moment looks fanciful.

A different scenario: The longer this intentionally imposed air traffic slowdown drags on, the more incompetent LaHood and other administration officials look. They've had a year and a half to prepare for a sequester that the White House proposed, and that the president signed into law. Yet their idea of good management is to subject thousands of civilian air controllers to rolling furloughs? These officials' plan for winning Americans' hearts and minds is to toy not only with flight schedules, but also with a moribund economy that relies on the efficiency of U.S. air travel?

We note that, except for some party leaders who have no choice but to back their president, not many Democrats are, pardon the phrase, flying to his side.

Some of them may think this game of chicken is politically dangerous.

Or they may be thinking about another kind of danger: the first air scare that occurs because an understaffed, overworked control tower makes a mistake.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 25, 2013, 09:35:29 AM
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obama-uses-bush-speech-push-immigration-reform_719124.html


Obama really is the worst piece of garbage ever to hold public office.   He just cant fucking help himself being such a ghetto street thug
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 25, 2013, 03:03:01 PM
Obama resists Republican bid to see gun smuggling operation documents
 Reuters ^ | April 24, 2013 | by David Ingram

Posted on Wednesday, April 24, 2013 7:42:31 PM by Oldeconomybuyer

President Barack Obama is resisting a congressional subpoena for documents related to how the administration responded to the revelation of the failed operation known as "Fast and Furious" on the U.S.- Mexican border.

Justice Department lawyer Ian Gershengorn told a hearing the matter was best left to the give-and-take of the U.S. government's two elected branches, the president and Congress, and should not be a matter for the courts.

"That is how it has worked for 225 years," said Gershengorn, referring to the ratification of the U.S. Constitution in 1788.

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson was skeptical and told Gershengorn, "There are three branches here, not just two." She did not say how she would rule, but questioned Gershengorn for more than twice as long as she did House of Representatives lawyer Kerry Kircher.


(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 25, 2013, 06:20:23 PM
'Climate of Fear'? Obama's ATF pick facing probe over retaliation claim
 fox ^ | 4/25/13 | Barnini Chakraborty

Posted on Thursday, April 25, 2013 8:34:49 PM by Nachum

WASHINGTON – An independent government watchdog agency is investigating allegations that President Obama's nominee to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives retaliated against employees for whistle-blowing, FoxNews.com has learned.

The allegations against B. Todd Jones, a Minnesota federal prosecutor who also is serving as acting director of the ATF while his nomination is pending, include claims that he mismanaged the prosecutor's office and presided over a "climate of fear." Specifically, he was accused of retaliating against whistle-blowing with "a suspension and a lowered performance appraisal."

In a letter dated July 20, 2012 to the Office of Special Counsel, employees at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minnesota first claimed that they were being mistreated and that the office had turned into a “hostile work environment.”


(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 26, 2013, 09:00:13 AM
President's pick for French ambassador folded over ties to poker ring: sources
By KAJA WHITEHOUSE and JENNIFER GOULD KEIL
Last Updated: 7:45 AM, April 26, 2013
Posted: 5:05 AM, April 26, 2013


http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/ring_bets_off_bam_diplo_pick_folded_tHxkdAt1iQIxc6GWZ7X7jJ

 

EXCLUSIVE

The Manhattan billionaire President Obama wanted to appoint ambassador to France turned down the prestigious position over ties to an alleged Russian mob-run poker ring that was laundered through a Carlyle hotel art gallery, sources told The Post.

Marc Lasry, who runs the $12 billion investment firm Avenue Capital in Midtown, withdrew on Tuesday because of his close friendship with Illya Trincher, 27, who was busted last week with 30 others, including Trincher’s pro-poker-playing father, Vadim, and brother Eugene.

The feds last week accused Illya Trincher of running the New York arm of the $100 million betting and money-laundering racket with world-renowned Manhattan art dealer Hillel “Helly” Nahmad.
 


Robert Miller

HIGH STAKES: Investor Marc Lasry, outside his Upper East Side mansion yesterday, was President Obama’s pick for French ambassador, but is said to have declined over a pal’s alleged role as head of a poker ring with art dealer Helly Nahmad.


Dan Brinzac

“Marc Lasry is a big-time gambler, in golf and poker,” a source told The Post. “He’s a ‘master of the universe’ type, and he was friends with the kid Trincher.”

Lasry, 53, turned down the post only days after the White House asked the FBI to probe whether he was tied to anyone involved in the criminal enterprise, sources said.

His name surfaced in FBI tapes probing the matter as a person who likes to play in exclusive high-stakes poker games, sources said.

Because ambassadorships require Senate approval — normally a pro-forma step — Lasry faced the prospect of being grilled about the ring.

“It’s not that he committed a crime, but it opens a can of worms,” a source said.

In mid-March, Bill Clinton, a close friend of Lasry, said at a fund-raiser that Lasry was Obama’s pick for the ambassadorship. Once a big Clinton donor, Lasry was one of the few Wall Street honchos to stick by the Democrats in 2012, raising nearly $1 million for Obama’s re-election campaign.

 The hedge-fund king and other high-rollers can wager up to $2 million in the poker games, which were held in apartments worth $20 million or more, sources said.

The ring took bets “from celebrities, professional poker players and very wealthy individuals working in the financial industry,” the criminal complaint says.

 Among the defendants is a Russian national, still at large, who also is accused of trying to fix the 2002 Winter Olympics skating competition.

Others arrested included “Poker Princess” Molly Bloom, who has organized poker games for celebs including Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire.

Nahmad, himself a high-stakes gambler, allegedly helped launder “tens of millions of dollars” from the bookmaking ring through his Carlyle hotel gallery.

Nahmad controlled his family’s $3 billion art collection.

Lasry has been known to play in informal games with other wealthy investors, including Boaz Weinstein, founder of hedge fund Saba Capital Management, and David Bonderman, head of private-equity giant TPG Capital.

“I have a rule. Never play cards with Marc for money,” Bonderman told the trade publication Institutional Investor in 2007.

The publication reported that Lasry often hosts winner-take-all card games in his Upper East Side mansion, where the stakes can get as high as $20,000 per hand.

Last year, Lasry spoke on Bloomberg TV of his love for poker.

“Poker is math, so I enjoy playing it because I think there’s a lot of math involved,” he said. “And it’s fun. It’s fun to play with others.”

The White House had no immediate comment on the Lasry gambling allegations.

Lasry said “no comment” when asked about the gambling yesterday as he rushed into his home on East 74th Street.

A spokesman for Avenue Capital said, “Marc withdrew because it was becoming difficult to receive a waiver of the ‘key man’ provision from Avenue Capital’s investors, and he would have had to divest himself of his Avenue Capital business holdings.”

Lasry told Avenue Capital investors on Tuesday that he was staying put at the hedge fund, which invests in distressed debt.

In a letter, the Moroccan-born financier cited “recent speculations regarding the possibility that I might be asked to serve as the next US ambassador to France.

 “I am very grateful to have been considered, but I would like to put the speculation to rest and let you know that I will be remaining at Avenue,” he wrote.

Lasry’s withdrawal raised eyebrows because he was known to badly want the ambassadorship. Before he withdrew, Lasry was planning to move his family to France and turn over management of Avenue to others.

In March, Avenue appointed its first chief investment officer since Lasry founded the firm with his sister, Sonia Gardner, in 1995.

A source close to Clinton said, “Lasry loves playing cards. He played in a celebrity poker tournament for Clinton’s foundation.

“I can’t believe that Obama admits in a book that he snorted cocaine and yet Marc Lasry can’t be named ambassador to France because he played cards.”

Additional reporting by Geoff Earle, Bruce Golding and Lia Eustachewich

dan.mangan@nypost.com
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 26, 2013, 06:13:09 PM
Blogs: New York Times vindicates Andrew Breitbart


'I wish to God that Andrew Breitbart were alive to see this,' one person wrote. | Reuters
Close
By KEVIN ROBILLARD | 4/26/13 12:14 PM EDT Updated: 4/26/13 6:42 PM EDT



 
Lee Stranahan, a Breitbart disciple who also investigated the Pigford case, was jubilant.
 
“I wish to God that Andrew Breitbart were alive to see this,” Stranahan wrote. “He fought this fight for years, was totally right and never got credit for it.”
 
“NYTimes Confirms: Massive Fraud at USDA in Pigford; Breitbart Vindicated,” blared the headline on Breitbart’s eponymous website.
 
(Also on POLITICO: 'This Town': A Washington takedown)
 
The Times’ A1, above-the-fold story — which involved Freedom of Information Act requests, interviews with former administration officials and database work — shows how political appointees in the Obama administration’s Justice and Agriculture Departments turned a potential government court victory into $1.3 billion settlement for Hispanic and female farmers — some of whom never even claimed discrimination in court. The story also detailed how the feds relied on a flawed payout system for black farmers that was ripe with fraud and revealed that career officials in the Agriculture Department had opposed the program.
 
The original black farmers’ case, called Pigford v. Glickman, and the unfair treatment of many of the original plaintiffs in the lawsuit became a personal cause for Breitbart, who died in 2012 of a heart attack. The conservative provocateur published a December 2010 report about the case, entitled “The Pigford Shakedown,” and also spoke about the program at CPAC and other events.
 
(Also on POLITICO: Turbulence at The Times)
 
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who the Times portrays as a driving force behind the settlement, said the payments were justified and fraud was minimal. “We weren’t just writing checks for the heck of it,” Vilsack told the paper. “People were not treated fairly and, in fact, even today there are damages as a result of folks who weren’t treated fairly.”
 
Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey noted the ultimate vindication is still out of reach.
 
“Perhaps now that The New York Times has exposed this, a few lawmakers might get shamed into doing something about it,” he wrote. “That would really put a smile on Andrew’s face.”


Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/04/new-york-times-andrew-breitbart-90681.html#ixzz2RccU17tf
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 28, 2013, 08:37:09 PM

Noam Chomsky: Obama’s Inexplicable ‘Attack’ On Civil Liberties ‘Goes Well Beyond Anything’ Imagined
by Andrew Kirell | 1:51 pm, April 28th, 2013» 43 comments



In an interview with AlterNet this past week, America’s most well-known left-wing intellectual slammed President Obama for his inexplicable “attacks” on civil liberties in the forms of various laws expanding upon the executive powers set forth by President George W. Bush.
 
Speaking with the liberal blog’s Mike Stivers, Chomsky expressed dissatisfaction with the current president’s record on civil liberties: “I personally never expected anything of Obama, and wrote about it before the 2008 primaries. I thought it was smoke and mirrors. The one thing that did surprise me is his attack on civil liberties. They go well beyond anything I would have anticipated, and they don’t seem easy to explain.”
 
For an example of Obama’s civil liberties abuses, Chomsky cited Holder vs. Humanitarian Law Project, in which the administration petitioned the Supreme Court to put an end to legal groups giving any “material assistance” — including advice to turn nonviolent — to terrorist organizations.
 
“The case in question was a law group that was giving legal advice to groups on the terrorist list, which in itself has no moral or legal justification; it’s an abomination,” Chomsky said. “But if you look at the way it’s been used, it becomes even more abhorrent … And the wording of the colloquy is broad enough that it could very well mean that if, say, you meet with someone in a terrorist group and advise them to turn to nonviolent means, then that’s material assistance to terrorism…. Obama wants to criminalize that, which is a plain attack on freedom of speech. I just don’t understand why he’s doing it.”
 
He called that and the 2011 NDAA bill’s “indefinite detention” provision part of the president’s “very serious attack on civil liberties.”
 
On the fact that President Obama has prosecuted six whistleblowers under the Espionage Act, Chomsky lamented that “I don’t know what base he’s appealing to. If he thinks he’s appealing to the nationalist base, well, they’re not going to vote for him anyway. That’s why I don’t understand it. I don’t think he’s doing anything besides alienating his own natural base.”
 
He then likened the president to a previous gang of executive officials who were widely criticized as abusive on civil liberties policy:
 

“What it is is the same kind of commitment to expanding executive power that Cheney and Rumsfeld had. He kind of puts it in mellifluous terms and there’s a little difference in his tone. It’s not as crude and brutal as they were, but it’s pretty hard to see much of a difference.”
 
Read the full interview here.
 
– –
 >> Follow Andrew Kirell (@AndrewKirell) on Twitter

http://www.mediaite.com/online/noam-chomsky-obamas-inexplicable-attack-on-civil-liberties-goes-well-beyond-anything-imagined

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 29, 2013, 05:16:31 AM



The More Illegal Immigrants That Go On Food Stamps The More Money JP Morgan Makes

 By Michael, on April 28th, 2013

 
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/the-more-illegal-immigrantsthat-go-on-food-stamps-the-more-money-jp-morgan-makes

 

Recently uncovered documents prove that the Obama administration has been working with the Mexican government to increase the number of illegal immigrants on food stamps, and when more illegal immigrants go on food stamps JP Morgan makes more money.  As you will read about below, JP Morgan has made at least 560 million dollars processing Electronic Benefits Transfer cards.  Each month, JP Morgan makes between $.31 and $2.30 for every single person on food stamps (and that does not even include things like ATM fees, etc).  So JP Morgan has a vested interest in seeing poverty grow and the number of people on food stamps increase.  Meanwhile, the Obama administration has been aggressively seeking to expand participation in the food stamp program.  Under Obama, the number of people on food stamps has grown from 32 million to more than 47 million.  And even though poverty in America is absolutely exploding, that apparently is not good enough for the Obama administration.  It has now come out that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has provided the Mexican government with literature that actively encourages illegal immigrants to enroll in food stamps.  One flyer contains the following statement in Spanish: "You need not divulge information regarding your immigration status in seeking this benefit for your children."  The bold and the underlining are in the original document in case you were wondering.  Overall, federal spending on food stamps increased from 18 billion dollars in 2000 to 85 billion dollars in 2012, and at this point one out of every five U.S. households in now enrolled in the food stamp program.  When people illegally or fraudulently enroll in the food stamp program, it makes it harder for those that desperately need the help to be able to get it.
 
It is certainly a good thing to help fellow Americans that are suffering.  It is a crying shame that more than a million public school students in America are homeless.  That should not be happening in the "wealthiest nation on earth".
 
But today we have a system that has turned poverty into big business.  According to an article posted on Breitbart.com, JP Morgan has made at least 560 million dollars (and probably much more) processing EBT cards...
 

A new report by the Government Accountability Institute finds that JP Morgan has made at least $560,492,596 since 2004 processing the Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) cards of 18 of the 24 states it has under contract for the food stamp program.
 
A Daily Beast article provided some more specifics about the monster profits that JP Morgan is making...
 

Just how lucrative JP Morgan’s EBT state contracts are is hard to say, because total national data on EBT contracts are not reported. But thanks to a combination of public-records requests and contracts that are available online, here’s what we do know: 18 of the 24 states JP Morgan handles have been contracted to pay the bank up to $560,492,596.02 since 2004. Since 2007, Florida has been contracted to pay JP Morgan $90,351,202.22. Pennsylvania’s seven-year contract totaled $112,541,823.27. New York’s seven-year contract totaled $126,394,917.
 
These contracts are transactional contracts, meaning they are amendable based on changes in program participation. Each month, the three companies that administer EBT receive a small fee that can range from $.31 to $2.30 (or higher depending upon the number of welfare services on an EBT card and state contractual requirements) for each SNAP recipient.
 
So the more people that are out of work and that need to turn to the government for food, the bigger profits that JP Morgan makes.
 
What makes all of this even more insulting is that many of the jobs that JP Morgan could be providing to Americans to help alleviate this poverty are being shipped overseas instead.  As I noted in a previous article, many EBT card customer service calls are being routed to call centers in India by JP Morgan.
 
So why doesn't anyone do anything about this?
 
Well, it turns out that JP Morgan has the politicians that oversee the food stamp program in their back pocket.  The following is from a recent Money Morning article...
 

And the bank has taken steps to make sure the SNAP program remains a growing source of revenue. JPMorgan's political donations to the members of House and Senate agricultural committees, the ones with legislative responsibility for the program, soared from just over $82,000 in 2002 to nearly $333,000 as of 2010.
 
What a wonderful system we have, eh?
 
And surely JP Morgan just loves the fact that the Obama administration is actively encouraging illegal immigrants to apply for food stamps.
 
What you are about to read should absolutely shock you.  At a time when the U.S. government is absolutely drowning in debt, the Obama administration is making it abundantly clear to illegal immigrants that their immigration status will not be checked when they apply for food stamps.  The following is from a recent Judicial Watch press release...
 

Judicial Watch today released documents detailing how the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is working with the Mexican government to promote participation by illegal aliens in the U.S. food stamp program.
 
The promotion of the food stamp program, now known as “SNAP” (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), includes a Spanish-language flyer provided to the Mexican Embassy by the USDA with a statement advising Mexicans in the U.S. that they do not need to declare their immigration status in order to receive financial assistance.  Emphasized in bold and underlined, the statement reads, “You need not divulge information regarding your immigration status in seeking this benefit for your children.”
 
The documents came in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request made to USDA on July 20, 2012.  The FOIA request sought: “Any and all records of communication relating to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to Mexican Americans, Mexican nationals, and migrant communities, including but not limited to, communications with the Mexican government.”
 
The documents obtained by Judicial Watch show that USDA officials are working closely with their counterparts at the Mexican Embassy to widely broaden the SNAP program in the Mexican immigrant community, with no effort to restrict aid to, identify, or apprehend illegal immigrants who may be on the food stamp rolls.
 
You can see a copy of the flyer right here.
 
So who pays for all of this?
 
You do of course.
 
The Obama administration is doing all that it can to promote illegal immigration, and big banks such as JP Morgan just make bigger profits the more illegal immigration that we see, but it is you and I that end up with the bill.  This was put beautifully in a recent article by Mike Adams of NaturalNews.com...
 

Nearly $75 billion of taxpayer money is spent each year on federal food stamps, and it turns out some of that is alarmingly being handed out to illegal immigrants -- people who contribute nothing to the federal tax base in America but who seem to be experts on collecting social welfare benefits of all kinds. If you are working for a living, you are buying food for illegals who are being actively recruited by Obama and the democratic party so that they will vote more democrats into office.
 
When we reward illegal immigration, what happens?
 
That's right - we are just going to get even more illegal immigration.
 
According to WND, we have already started seeing a huge increase in illegal immigrants coming across the border since Congress began debating the amnesty bill...
 

Illegal border crossings have doubled, and possibly even tripled, since the latest congressional push began toward comprehensive immigration reform.
 
In reporting first published by Townhall.com’s Katie Pavlich, border patrol agents in the Tucson/Nogales sector claim illegals are coming here in much higher numbers in just the past few months.
 
“We’ve seen the number of illegal aliens double, maybe even triple since amnesty talk started happening,” an unnamed border agent said to Townhall. The data from Customs and Border Protection cited in the report shows 504 illegals were detected crossing in that sector between Feb. 5 and March 1. Only 189 were caught on camera, and just 174 of the 504 were apprehended. Of those spotted on camera, 32 were carrying huge packs believed to contain drugs and several were heavily armed.
 
If that bill is passed, it is being projected that it will bring 33 million more people into this country...
 

The pending Senate immigration bill would bring a minimum of 33 million people into the country during its first decade of operation, according to an analysis by NumbersUSA, a group that wants to slow the current immigration rate.
 
By 2024, the inflow would include an estimated 9.2 million illegal immigrants, plus 2.5 million illegals who arrived as children — dubbed ‘Dreamers’ — plus roughly 3.4 million company-sponsored employees with university degrees, said the unreleased analysis.
 
The majority of the inflow, or roughly 17 million people, would consist of family members of illegals, recent immigrants and of company-sponsored workers, according to the NumbersUSA analysis provided to The Daily Caller.
 
We have made legal immigration a complete and total nightmare while leaving the back door completely wide open at the same time.
 
We greatly punish those who are trying to do things legally while at the same time we are greatly rewarding those that are cheating the system.
 
What kind of sense does that make?
 
Shouldn't we insist that everyone come in through the front door?
 
Those that are coming over our borders illegally know what the score is...
 

Linda Vickers, who owns a ranch in Brooks County, which is Ground Zero for the immigration debate, pins the blame directly on talk of 'amnesty' and a 'path to citizenship' for people who entered the U.S. illegally.
 
She recalls one man being arrested on her ranch not long ago.
 
"The Border Patrol agent was loading one man up, and he told the officer in Spanish, 'Obama's gonna let me go'."
 
Border Patrol agents report that immigrants are crossing the border, and in some cases surrendering while asking, “Where do I go for my amnesty?”
 
We are already becoming a poverty-stricken nation.  We simply can't afford to feed millions upon millions of illegal immigrants as well.
 
As I write this, the U.S. national debt is $16,758,107,082,298.63.
 
We now have a debt to GDP ratio of about 105 percent.
 
In the United States today, the amount of money that is deposited in our banks is about 9.3 trillion dollars.  If we took every penny of that and used it to pay off the national debt, we would still owe more than 7 trillion dollars.
 
We are stealing more than 100 million dollars from future generations of Americans every single hour of every single day to pay our bills, and yet everyone seems to think that this is "normal" somehow.
 
The truth is that what we are doing is absolutely criminal, and we should all be ashamed.
 
For much more on our exploding national debt, please see the following article: "55 Facts About The Debt And U.S. Government Finances That Every American Voter Should Know".
 
In the end, it should be apparent to everyone that our system is failing.  Our government is corrupt, our big banks are consumed with greed and most average Americans are so addicted to entertainment that they have absolutely no idea what is going on.
 
What would those that bled and died for this country think about what we have become today?
 






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April 28th, 2013 | Tags: Benefits, Electronic Benefit Transfer, Federal Spending, Food Stamps, Illegal Immigrants, JP Morgan, Mexican, Money, Obama, Poverty, Spanish, The Obama Administration | Category: Banksters, Government Debt


 

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Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 29, 2013, 06:54:26 AM
It’s official: Obama spends more time on recreation than economy
 BIZPACReview.com ^ | 4/29/2013 | Cheryl Carpenter Klimek

Posted on Monday, April 29, 2013 9:05:55 AM


A report released by the Government Accountability Institute (GAI), has concluded that President Barack Obama has spent twice as much time on vacation and golf as he has in economic meetings throughout his entire term in office.

That may come as no surprise to some, but the nonpartisan GAI actually conducted an analysis which found Obama spent ...read more here.


(Excerpt) Read more at bizpacreview.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 29, 2013, 07:23:05 AM
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-04-28/chief-advisor-us-treasury-set-become-jpmorgans-second-most-important-man


LOL - HOPE AND CHANGE SUCKAS
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 01, 2013, 05:30:57 AM
Mel Watt Picked For FHFA Post By White House To Replace Ed DeMarco


Posted: 05/01/2013 1:43 am EDT


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/01/mel-watt-fhfa-ed-demarco_n_3190105.html




BOSTON -- President Barack Obama will nominate Mel Watt, a longtime Democratic congressman from North Carolina, to oversee government-controlled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in a move that may give the White House greater control over housing policy.

Obama will announce his nomination of Watt to lead the Federal Housing Finance Agency on Wednesday, people familiar with the matter said. The nomination, subject to Senate approval, would thrust the Yale-educated lawyer into the center of U.S. economic policy as the government weighs how best to maintain the housing recovery while reducing the government’s role in propping up home prices and providing loans.

FHFA regulates Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the bailed-out mortgage financiers that together own or guarantee about half of all outstanding U.S. home loans. The federal government backstops more than nine of every 10 new mortgages.

Watt was first elected to the House of Representatives in 1992, where he has served on the chamber’s financial services committee. On the banking panel, he perhaps is best known for trying to stamp out predatory lending. He’s also championed access to home loans for low-income borrowers and those with spotty credit.

If confirmed by the Senate, Watt would replace Edward DeMarco, a career civil servant who has supervised Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on an acting basis since 2009. Top White House officials had promised consumer advocates before November’s presidential election that they would oust DeMarco early this year.

A low-key and unassuming economist, DeMarco has been vilified by some members of Congress, liberal groups and state attorneys general for a variety of alleged sins, most notably his continued refusal to allow Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to forgive distressed borrowers’ housing debts.

Watt would be the second person Obama has nominated to replace DeMarco. A previous nominee, Joseph Smith, at the time North Carolina’s banking regulator, failed to win Senate confirmation after Republicans questioned his independence from the White House. One called him a “lapdog".




A White House spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Over the past three years, DeMarco has worked to return Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to profitability while also reducing their balance sheets and influence over the property sector and setting the stage for an overhaul of how the U.S. economy funds home mortgages.

Since their government rescue during the height of the financial crisis in September 2008, the companies have cost taxpayers about $122 billion. The U.S. Treasury has provided them nearly $188 billion to keep them afloat, but Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have returned about $65 billion in dividends.

In 2012, the twin housing giants reported record profits as rising home prices and fewer delinquencies spurred about $28 billion in combined earnings. Virtually all of the companies’ profits flow to the Treasury. The White House recently projected that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will over the next 10 years help to reduce the federal government’s debt as they pay off taxpayers and return excess profits to government coffers.

While some advocates attempt to lobby policymakers to keep the companies in conservatorship so they can help pay down the debt and be used to spur greater access to credit, DeMarco has been shrinking their portfolio of loans and securities and trying to bring private capital back into housing finance.

Private investors, funds and lenders fled the housing market in the wake of the financial crisis. Securitization of non-government guaranteed mortgages ground to a halt. Only the federal government enabled borrowers to continue purchasing or refinancing their home loans at historically-low rates.

An abrupt end to the government’s backstop of the housing market would send interest rates soaring. A continuation of the current situation may take taxpayer resources away from other, more economically productive sectors.

DeMarco has instituted a variety of schemes to get investors and lenders comfortable with owning non-taxpayer backed mortgages. He’s also tried to lay the groundwork for a future without Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, whose dominance over the housing market extends from their balance sheets to the basic plumbing of how loans are made, securitized and sold to investors.

DeMarco at times has butted heads with the Obama administration, which has tried to convince him to adopt policies aimed at aiding borrowers and reducing foreclosures. DeMarco has argued that he is mandated by law to “preserve and converse” Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s assets, rather than look out for the entire housing market.

Some officials in the Obama administration have expressed displeasure at the DeMarco-approved lawsuits targeting more than a dozen of the world’s largest financial institutions for selling hundreds of billions of dollars of allegedly dodgy mortgages to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The lawsuits and demands have helped chill lending, officials have said.

Many Democrats have argued that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should be used to advance policies that would aid the broader housing market, and by extension the economy. Republicans are opposed to using the mortgage financiers as tools for economic or social policy.

Industry executives and Washington lobbyists view Watt as a potential FHFA chief who would go along with Obama administration requests.

For that reason alone, Watt may face an uphill climb to confirmation due to potential Republican opposition. Since its creation in 2008 the FHFA has never had a Senate-confirmed director.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 01, 2013, 08:45:40 AM
Obama to Pick Wheeler for FCC, Watt for FHFA
 Text Size   Published: Wednesday, 1 May 2013 | 7:47 AM ETBy: Reuters with AP




President Barack ObamaPresident Barack Obama will nominate venture capitalist and former wireless and cable lobbyist [/color] Tom Wheeler on Wednesday to head the Federal Communications Commission, and Rep. Melvin Watt to head the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The planned nominations were disclosed by a White House official.

After decades in and around Washington telecom circles, Wheeler would take the reins of the FCC as the industry prepares for a major reshuffling of ownership of radio airwaves and as the agency tries to catch up to rapidly changing technology.


He has the rare support of both industry groups and a number of consumer advocates.

Wheeler has served as an informal adviser to Obama in recent years and has been a big fundraiser for his political campaigns. He went into the venture investing business after years at the helm of the National Cable Television Association and then the wireless industry group CTIA.

Wheeler did not respond to a request for comment. He will succeed current FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, who plans to leave for the Aspen Institute think tank in coming weeks.


"Tom Wheeler is an experienced leader in the communications technology field who shares the president's commitment to protecting consumers, promoting innovation, enhancing competition and encouraging investment," the White House official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said on Tuesday in disclosing Wheeler's nomination.

Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, a Democrat, will take over as acting chairwoman until the Senate confirms the nomination, the official said. She will preside over a commission that includes one other Democrat and one Republican because Obama has yet to fill another open Republican seat on the usually five-member commission.

Wheeler's lobbying past has concerned some public interest groups as well as Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, a Democrat who wanted his former staffer and now junior FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel to get the post.

But overall, consumer advocates have embraced Wheeler's candidacy, noting that he joined both trade groups while the industries they represented were young and competing against established technologies.


"He's interested in competition and promoting new technologies," said Andrew Schwartzman, a prominent Washington public interest advocate, who said Wheeler understands the need to challenge market leaders. "His mind-set is of somebody who favors the little guy."

At the same time, many in the telecommunications industry have touted Wheeler's private-sector experience, noting that he founded and invested in many tech-based companies and expressing hope that his lobbying experience will make him more sympathetic to letting markets, not the government, set the industry's pace.

In a 2011 blog, Wheeler hinted that he favored a controversial and ultimately shelved merger deal between AT&T and T-Mobile, sparking speculation that he may be open to more consolidation in the wireless industry.

However, the blog post also suggested the FCC would have been able to levy heavier regulation over the newly merged company because of monopoly concerns.

On Tuesday, few industry groups or companies commented on Wheeler's upcoming nomination before it was formally announced.

The National Association of Broadcasters, whose relationship with the FCC has cooled as Genachowski shifted the agency's focus to expanding broadband access, simply said Wheeler had "the experience and temperament to serve the agency with distinction."

Watt's nomination for the FHFA also was expected to be announced Wednesday.

If confirmed by the Senate, the 20-year veteran of the House would replace Edward DeMarco, an appointee of President George W. Bush who has been a target of housing advocates, liberal groups and Democratic lawmakers.

The North Carolina Democrat's nomination comes at a crucial time for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two government sponsored mortgage-finance enterprises that the government rescued at the height of the financial crisis in September 2008 as they teetered neared collapse from losses on soured mortgage loans.


Taxpayers have spent about $170 billion to rescue the companies. So far, they have repaid a combined $55.2 billion.

Fannie and Freddie together own or guarantee about half of all U.S. mortgages, or nearly 31 million home loans. Those loans are worth more than $5 trillion. Along with other federal agencies, they back roughly 90 percent of new mortgages.

The nomination also comes as the housing industry is making a comeback. Home prices are up, foreclosures are down and housing construction is on the rise. Moreover, Fannie Mae had its biggest yearly profit last year, earning $17.2 billion.

Watt, a senior member of the House Financial Services Committee and former chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, played an influential role in the passage of a financial regulatory overhaul in 2010. That legislation, however, did not address the fate of the major mortgage lenders, an issue likely to come up during Obama's second term.

Watt represents the Charlotte area, home base of behemoth Bank of America. He becomes yet another high-profile African-American and the second North Carolinian nominated by Obama in three days to a top government post. On Monday, Obama nominated Anthony Foxx, mayor of Charlotte, to head the Transportation Department.

Watt, who has a consistently liberal voting record, is expected to face Republican opposition to his confirmation. The White House was already lining up supporters who might hold some sway with GOP senators.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 01, 2013, 11:02:45 AM
Obama's $2.5M Hotel and 'Vehicle Rental' Tab on Last Mexico Trip


1:35 PM, May 1, 2013• By JERYL BIER




   
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As the White House first announced in March, Barack Obama is scheduled to visit Mexico and Costa Rica later this week. The trip is billed as "an important opportunity to reinforce the deep cultural, familial, and economic ties that so many Americans share with Mexico and Central America." And at yesterday’s White House press conference, the president stated that he is "very much looking forward to taking the trip down to Mexico" this week.
 
But the trip won’t exactly be cheap for taxpayers, assuming the costs mirror those incurred by the American taxpayers for President Obama's last trip to Mexico, for the G-20 summit in June 2012. According to recently discovered documents relating to the costs of that trip, taxpayers paid nearly $2.5 million for hotel and “vehicle rental.”
 
The first government document is a contract with a travel agent for the hotels required for the president's delegation and entourage for the conference:
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 02, 2013, 06:31:44 AM
 ::)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/02/penny-pritzker-mike-froman_n_3199377.html



LOL!!!!  Talk about culture of corruption from the Chicago street thug
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 02, 2013, 01:46:22 PM
Commerce nominee tangled in massive bank collapse that cost depositors millions


By Judson Berger
 
Published May 02, 2013
 
FoxNews.com



May 2, 2013: President Obama speaks in the Rose Garden of the White House, where he announced his pick for Commerce secretary, Penny Pritzker, right. (AP)


President Obama's nominee for Commerce secretary was embroiled in a massive bank failure more than a decade ago, in a collapse that cost depositors and federal insurers millions of dollars.
 
The 2001 collapse of Superior Bank FSB now appears likely to re-emerge, more than a decade later, as Commerce nominee Penny Pritzker prepares for a confirmation hearing and Republicans already draw attention to the bank implosion.   
 
Pritzker's family, which founded Hyatt and is one of the wealthiest in the country, co-owned Superior Bank at the time of its collapse. The lawyer who represented depositors in the case told FoxNews.com on Thursday that the Pritzker family enjoyed a "special deal" while the "little guys" ended up "footing the bill."
 
"The message of our Cabinet members should be people who do the right thing," attorney Clint Krislov said Thursday. "And it should not be a message of, if you're very wealthy you get a special deal and you get to sit on the Cabinet, too."
 
Uninsured depositors at the Illinois bank are still owed roughly $10 million, according to federal records -- after a court challenge was rejected in 2007, those savings may never be recovered. The collapse also cost the FDIC, which insures banks, nearly $300 million.
 
The failure, according to federal regulators, was triggered by a pattern of risky lending.
 
The Office of Thrift Supervision took the rare step of shuttering the Hinsdale, Ill., bank on July 27, 2001. The office said at the time the bank "suffered as a result of its former high-risk business strategy," including "significant volumes of subprime" mortgage and auto loans.
 
What happened after the collapse, though, is what triggered the lawsuit involving Krislov.
 
The Pritzker family, as part of a settlement to shield itself from liability, agreed to pay $460 million to the federal government. But the family was subsequently able to claim part of a separate $125 million settlement from the bank's accounting firm.
 
Krislov said the family was first in line for the money, followed by the depositors.
 
"That is what is fundamentally troubling," he said. "They got a priority ahead of depositors while depositors were still short."
 
An FDIC representative, though, suggested to the Chicago Tribune in 2004 that the sheer size of the $460 million settlement justified the trade-off.
 
"If it means $30 million is turned over to the Pritzkers, I think it's hard to dispute that it's not advantageous for creditors of that failed institution," the spokesman said.
 
Pritzker's involvement with the bank's questionable lending practices is unclear. She served as chairwoman of the bank from 1991 to 1994, after her uncle Jay went in with another wealthy family to buy Superior in the late '80s.
 
A spokeswoman told The Washington Times last year that Penny herself was never accused of wrongdoing -- though there were concerns with the bank's operation dating back to the early '90s.
 
Krislov said he wrote to Penny Pritzker after his clients lost their suit asking her to pay the remaining $10 million to the uninsured depositors.
 
"I just figured it was the right thing to do," he said, adding that he never heard back.
 
The Pritzker family also reportedly struck a deal in 2011 that allowed them to enjoy a discount off the $460 million settlement.
 
The FDIC insures depositors for up to $100,000. In the case of Superior, those with accounts above that amount were still repaid part of their uninsured savings.
 
The history of the bank was glossed over in Thursday's announcement at the White House, though the Republican National Committee blasted out old news clippings from the saga.
 
Obama, during the nomination ceremony, cited Pritzker's "extraordinary experience."
 
"Penny is one of our countries' most distinguished business leaders. She's got more than 25 years of management experience in industries, including real estate, finance, and hospitality. She's built companies from the ground up," Obama said.
 
Pritzker is on the board with Hyatt Hotels Corp., which was co-founded by her dad. She's also chairwoman of Pritzker Realty Group. She previously served on Obama's jobs council, and helped raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for the president's 2008 and 2012 campaigns -- she held positions with both campaigns.
 
Pritzker is also one of the wealthiest people in the country. Forbes pegs her net worth at $1.85 billion, and lists her as the 277th wealthiest person in the U.S.
 
Krislov acknowledged the family has done some "very terrific things" in philanthropy, but said: "She would not be my first pick" for Commerce.
 
The White House did not return a request for comment.


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/05/02/commerce-nominee-tangled-in-massive-bank-collapse-that-cost-depositors-millions/#ixzz2SAZBAQVx

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 04, 2013, 08:35:24 AM
Obama: The fall
By Charles Krauthammer, Published: May 2
Fate is fickle, power cyclical, and nothing is new under the sun. Especially in Washington, where after every election the losing party is sagely instructed to confess sin, rend garments and rethink its principles lest it go the way of the Whigs. And where the victor is hailed as the new Caesar, facing an open road to domination.

And where Barack Obama, already naturally inclined to believe his own loftiness, graciously accepted the kingly crown and proceeded to ride his reelection success to a crushing victory over the GOP at the fiscal cliff, leaving a humiliated John Boehner & Co. with nothing but naked tax hikes.

Thus emboldened, Obama turned his inaugural and State of the Union addresses into a left-wing dream factory, from his declaration of war on global warming (on a planet where temperatures are the same as 16 years ago and in a country whose CO2 emissions are at a 20-year low) to the invention of new entitlements — e.g., universal preschool for 5-year-olds— for a country already drowning in debt.

To realize his dreams, Obama sought to fracture and neutralize the congressional GOP as a prelude to reclaiming the House in 2014. This would enable him to fully enact his agenda in the final two years of his presidency, usually a time of lame-duck paralysis. Hail the Obama juggernaut.

Well, that story — excuse me, narrative — lasted exactly six months. The Big Mo is gone.

It began with the sequester. Obama never believed the Republicans would call his bluff and let it go into effect. They did.

Taken by surprise, Obama cried wolf, predicting the end of everything we hold dear if the sequester was not stopped. It wasn’t. Nothing happened.

Highly embarrassed, and determined to indeed make (bad) things happen, the White House refused Republican offers to give it more discretion in making cuts. Bureaucrats were instructed to inflict maximum pain from minimal cuts, as revealed by one memo from the Agriculture Department demanding agency cuts that the public would feel.

Things began with the near-comical cancellation of White House tours and ended with not-so-comical airline delays. Obama thought furious passengers would blame the GOP. But isn’t the executive branch in charge of these agencies? Who thinks that a government spending $3.6 trillion a year can’t cut 2 percent without furloughing air-traffic controllers?

Looking not just incompetent at managing budgets but cynical for deliberately injuring the public welfare, the administration relented. Congress quickly passed a bill giving Obama reallocation authority to restore air traffic control. Having previously threatened to veto any such bill, Obama caved. He signed.

Not exactly Appomattox, but coming immediately after Obama’s spectacular defeat on gun control, it marked an administration that had lost its “juice,” to paraphrase a charming question at the president’s Tuesday news conference.

For Obama, gun control was a political disaster. He invested capital. He went on a multi-city tour. He paraded grieving relatives. And got nothing. An assault-weapons ban — a similar measure had passed the Congress 20 years ago — lost 60 to 40in a Senate where Democrats control 55 seats. Obama failed even to get mere background checks.

All this while appearing passive, if not helpless, on the world stage. On Syria, Obama is nervously trying to erase the WMD red line he had so publicly established. On Benghazi, he stonewalled accusations that State Department officials wishing to testify are being blocked.

He is even taking heat for the Boston bombings. Every day brings another revelation of signals missed beforehand. And his post-bombing pledge to hunt down those responsible was mocked by the scandalous Mirandizing of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, gratuitously shutting down information from the one person who knows more than anyone about possible still-existent explosives, associates, trainers, future plans, etc.

Now, the screw will undoubtedly turn again. If immigration reform passes, Obama will be hailed as the comeback kid, and a new “Obama rising” narrative proclaimed.

This will overlook the fact that immigration reform has little to do with Obama and everything to do with GOP panic about the Hispanic vote. In fact, Obama has been asked by congressional negotiators to stay away, so polarizing a figure has he become.

Nonetheless, whatever happens, the screw will surely turn again, if only because of media boredom. But that’s the one constant of Washington political life: There are no straight-line graphs. We live from inflection point to inflection point.

And we’ve just experienced one. From king of the world to dead in the water in six months. Quite a ride.


Read more from Charles Krauthammer’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.

Read more: Jamelle Bouie: Why Obama struggles to ‘beat’ the GOP E.J. Dionne Jr.: Obama needs to hope again Dana Milbank: A presidential bystander Greg Sargent: No, Obama can’t bend Congress to his will Jonathan Capehart: Obama’s real ‘leadership’ problem Jennifer Rubin: Obama’s condescending press conference


© The Washington Post Company
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 07, 2013, 06:12:08 AM
NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE          www.nationalreview.com           PRINT

How Obama Betrayed America
Obama’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood belongs at the forefront of our political debate.
By David Horowitz
“If we have to use force, it is because we are America. We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see farther into the future.â€
— Madeleine Albright, secretary of state (1997–2001), Clinton administration

It is a judgment on Barack Obama’s timorous, apologetic, and irresponsible conduct of foreign affairs that Madeleine Albright’s words, spoken little more than 15 years ago, now sound as antique as a pronouncement by Harry Truman at the onset of the Cold War, the great challenge America confronted bravely and without equivocation generations ago. Obama has set in motion policies meant to make America far from indispensable — a diminished nation that “leads from behind,†if at all; a nation with a downsized military, chronically uncertain about its meaning and its mission as it skulks in the wings of the world stage.

Albright made her statement about Iraq when Democrats were still supporting their country’s confrontation with the sadistic dictator Saddam Hussein, and before they defected from the war, shortly after its battles were under way. Obama opposed America’s war with Iraq and then opposed the military surge that finally brought victory. As president, Obama presided over the withdrawal of all American forces from Iraq, against the wishes of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who wanted a continuing military presence — withdrawal paid for in the blood of thousands of American men and women in arms. Obama thus turned that benighted nation over to the malign influences of America’s chief enemy in the Middle East, Iran.

Far from shouldering his responsibility as the commander-in-chief of America’s global War on Terror and embracing it as this generation’s equivalent of the Cold War, Obama showed his distaste for the entire enterprise by dropping the term “War on Terror†and replacing it with an Orwellian phrase — “overseas contingency operations.†Minimizing the Islamist threat to the United States is not an oversight of the Obama administration; that is its policy.


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It should not have been difficult for Obama to make the nation’s defense a priority when he became America’s commander-in-chief in January 2009. The American homeland had already experienced a devastating attack, which terrorists have been constantly trying to repeat. The number of foreign states openly supporting terror has steadily risen during Obama’s tenure. The most dangerous Islamist regime, Iran, is building nuclear weapons, while Washington dithers over pointless negotiations. As secular governments give way to Islamist regimes in Turkey, Egypt, and Iraq, and with the Taliban on the rise in Afghanistan and an American withdrawal imminent, the parallels to the early Cold War are eerie, the implications equally dire. Yet instead of policies that put U.S. national security first and are pursued without hesitation or apology, Obama’s time in office has been marked by retreat and accommodation and even support of Islamist foes — most ominously of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, which swept aside an American ally with Obama’s help and is busily creating a totalitarian state.
Obama’s Foreign-Policy Disasters
In the four years since Obama’s first inauguration, almost three times as many Americans have been killed in Afghanistan as in the eight years of the Bush administration. Withdrawal, not victory, has been Obama’s goal from the outset, and now it is the only outcome possible. During the Obama years, there have been more than 8,000 Islamic terrorist attacks on “infidels†across the globe, a 25 percent increase over the number when the fighting in Iraq was at its height. In the face of this bloody and intensifying Islamist offensive, Obama has tried to convince the American people that the war against al-Qaeda has been essentially “won†— by him — and that the terrorist threat is subsiding. Denial of the war that Islamists have declared on us, and of the threat it represents, is the heart of the Obama doctrine and has guided this nation’s policies for more than four years.

Obama’s desire for rapprochement with the Islamist regime in Iran has prompted the administration to drag its feet on the sanctions designed to halt Tehran’s nuclear program. For the same reason, the president and his administration were silent when hundreds of thousands of Iranians poured into the streets of Tehran to call for an end to the dictatorship and were met by an orgy of violence from the mullahs’ thugs. Because of the White House’s moral and political timidity, its denial of the Islamist threat, and its conviction that America (presumably an even greater predator) has no right to condemn another nation, Iran reached its tipping point and went the wrong way.

The administration’s denial was glaring also in its response to the massacre of 13 unarmed soldiers at Fort Hood by an Islamic fanatic and terrorist, Nidal Malik Hasan, who three and a half years later still has not been brought to trial. Hasan infiltrated the American military and, despite open expressions of hatred for the West, was promoted to the rank of U.S. Army major. The Obama administration’s Kafkaesque response to an obvious case of Islamist violence against the U.S. was to classify the terrorist attack as an incident of “workplace violence,†and thus to hide the fact that Hasan was a Muslim soldier in a war against the infidels of the West.

#page#This inability to name our enemies was on display again on the eleventh anniversary of 9/11, as jihadists staged demonstrations and launched attacks against American embassies in Egypt and other Islamic countries. In Libya, al-Qaeda terrorists overran an American consular compound and murdered the U.S. ambassador and three brave staffers. The attack took place in a country that had recently been destabilized by Obama’s own intervention to oust its dictator. Again, Obama had denounced a military intervention in Iraq as senator; that intervention, unlike his Libyan adventure, had been authorized by both houses of Congress and a unanimous U.N. Security Council resolution. As president, Obama had invoked the principle of non-intervention to justify his passivity in the face of atrocities in Syria and Iran. But in Libya he conducted an unauthorized invasion of a country that posed no threat to the United States and was not, as Syria is, in alliance with the mullahs of Iran and the terrorists of Hezbollah. The chaos that followed Obama’s Libyan intervention led directly to the rise of the local al-Qaeda, which planted its flag atop the same American outpost in Benghazi it later destroyed.

The events in Benghazi were a stark revelation of the consequences of a foreign policy without a moral compass. The battle over the embassy lasted seven hours. Although the Obama learned about the attack shortly after it began, and although the embattled Americans inside the compound begged the White House for help, and although U.S. fighter jets were stationed in Italy only an hour away, the president, in one of the most shameful acts in the history of that office, denied help by leaving his post, so that only silence answered their desperate calls. The president and his administration then went into cover-up mode, lying to Congress and the American people, pretending for weeks afterward that the attack was the result of a spontaneous demonstration over an anti-Mohammed video, whose director they then threw in jail.

Before his overthrow, the dictator Moammar Qaddafi warned that his demise would unleash the forces of the Islamic jihad not only in his own country but throughout North Africa. This was a prophecy quickly realized. In the aftermath of Obama’s intervention, al-Qaeda in Mali took control of an area twice the size of Germany. In Tunisia and Egypt, jihadists emerged as the ruling parties, with the acquiescence and even assistance of the Obama administration. In Syria, a savage civil war metastasized unimpeded, killing tens of thousands and eventually pitting a fascist regime allied with Iran against rebel forces largely aligned with al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood.


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As these disasters unfolded, the White House not only did not oppose the Islamists but armed and enabled them. Obama had previously intervened in Egypt, the largest and most important country in the Middle East, to force the removal of its pro-American leader, Hosni Mubarak. He then promoted the Brotherhood’s ascension to power by portraying it as a “moderate†actor in the democratic process. As the Middle East situation deteriorated, the Muslim Brotherhood became the chief beneficiary of America’s financial, diplomatic, and military support. This same Brotherhood was the driving force behind the Islamist surge, the mentor of Osama bin Laden and the leaders of al-Qaeda, and the creator of Hamas. Rather than being quarantined, the Brotherhood-dominated government in Cairo has received hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid and F-16 bomber jets from the Obama administration that had facilitated its rise to power.
Appeasement of Islamist Enemies
To allay concerns about the emergence of the Brotherhood, Obama’s secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, uttered this justification for its acceptance by the White House: “We believe . . . that it is in the interests of the United States to engage with all parties that are peaceful and committed to non-violence, that intend to compete for the parliament and the presidency.†In these words, Clinton was referring to an organization whose spiritual leader, Yusef al-Qaradawi, had recently called for a second Holocaust of the Jews, “Allah willing, at the hands of the believers,†and to a party that was calling for the establishment of a Muslim caliphate in Jerusalem and for the destruction of the Jewish state. Soon after Clinton’s endorsement, the Muslim Brotherhood’s presidential candidate, Mohamed Morsi, was elected Egypt’s new leader and was referring to Jews as apes and pigs. Secure in the support of the American administration, he wasted no time in abolishing the constitution and instituting a dictatorship with no serious protest from the United States. Senator John Kerry, shortly to be Hillary Clinton’s successor as secretary of state, had visited the new dictator only months before this destruction of Egypt’s civic space. Kerry assured the world that the new Muslim Brotherhood regime was “committed to protecting fundamental freedoms.â€

As in Egypt, so in Syria. Both Clinton and Kerry promoted the ruthless dictator Assad as a political reformer and friend of democracy just as he was preparing to launch a war against his own people. (Meeting with Assad, Kerry called Syria “an essential player in bringing peace and stability to the region.â€) Shortly thereafter, the dictator began a series of massacres of his own population. Obama ignored the resulting tens of thousands of fatalities and the international calls for a humanitarian intervention — just as he had ignored the desperate struggle of the Green Revolution in the streets of Tehran three years earlier. The chaos in Syria has now led to the emergence of al-Qaeda as a leading actor among the rebel forces, under the revealing name “the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant.†The very name indicates the potential scope of the disaster that the Obama administration is presiding over in the Middle East.#page#

Republican Retreat On National Security
Until the “new politics†presidency of Jimmy Carter, the Democratic party during the Cold War would never have tolerated such abject capitulations to totalitarian forces. And when Carter showed such doubt and denial, the Republican party could be counted on to defend the morality of American power and carry the fight to the enemy. The Republicans did so with the conviction that they were expressing the deepest convictions of the American people.

In domestic politics, the American people preferred Democratic promoters of the welfare state to Republican proponents of fiscal restraint. The same electorate switched its vote, however, when the issue was protecting the American homeland. While voters made Democrats the majority party in the people’s House for 38 of the 42 years of America’s Cold War with the Soviet Union, in 28 of those years they elected a Republican to be their commander-in-chief. Moreover, three of the four Democrats who did make it to the White House — Truman, Kennedy, and Johnson — were militant anti-Communists and military hawks who on national-security issues held views indistinguishable from those of Republicans.

Given that the most durable lesson of postwar electoral history was that Democrats win national elections on domestic policy and that Republicans win on national security, it seems incomprehensible that the Obama administration has been able to degrade American power virtually without Republican opposition. At the Republican party’s 2012 convention in Tampa, its nominee, Mitt Romney, failed to mention the Islamic jihad and devoted only one sentence to the fact that, in order to appease America’s enemies, Obama had thrown Israel, America’s only dependable ally in the region, “under the bus.†Romney did not mention Obama’s role as enabler of the Muslim Brotherhood or the millions of dollars his administration had given to the Palestinian jihadists on the West Bank and in Gaza, whose official goal was the destruction of Israel and its Jews. He did not mention the calls by the Islamist leaders of Egypt and Iran for the destruction of the Jewish state and the completion of the job that Hitler started.

Romney devoted exactly two sentences to Obama’s appeasement of the Russians and his abandonment of America’s Eastern European allies, which were harmed by the president’s reneging on America’s commitments to their missile defense. About the Korean peninsula, a flashpoint in national security and a theater for the current administration’s diplomatic dithering, Romney said nothing.

While Romney failed to confront a vulnerable Obama on national-security issues and gave Obama a pass on his shameful betrayal of his embassy in Benghazi, no other Republican campaign was likely to make the holy war that Islamists are waging against us, and Obama’s feckless national-security policies, a focal point of their attack. At one time or another, there were ten Republican candidates for the nomination that Romney won. Each of them participated in at least three of 20 public debates; two of the candidates participated in all of them. There were candidates for social conservatism, candidates for fiscal responsibility and job creation, candidates for libertarian principles and moderate values. But there was not one Republican candidate whose campaign was an aggressive assault on Obama’s disastrous national-security decisions and how they had imperiled America’s interests and its basic safety.

The extent of the Republican retreat on national security was dramatized by an incident that took place a few months before the election. In a letter to the Justice Department’s inspector general, Representative Michele Bachmann and four other Republican House members asked him to look into the possibility of Islamist influence in the Obama administration. The letter expressed concern about State Department policies that “appear to be a result of influence operations conducted by individuals and organizations associated with the Muslim Brotherhood.†The letter then listed five specific ways in which Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had actively assisted the Muslim Brotherhood’s ascent to power in Egypt, producing in the Middle East a decisive shift toward the jihadist enemies of the United States.

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 07, 2013, 06:21:11 AM
The letter specifically asked for an inquiry into the activities of Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton’s deputy chief of staff and principal adviser on Muslim affairs. It was a reasonable, indeed a necessary, request. Members of Abedin’s family — her late father, her mother, and her brother — were all identifiable leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood. For twelve years prior to being hired by Hillary Clinton, Abedin herself had worked for an organization founded by Abdullah Omar Naseef — a major Brotherhood figure, a close associate of Abedin’s mother — one of the three principal financiers of Osama bin Laden, and a man dedicated to promoting Islamic-supremacist doctrines. A second figure with Muslim Brotherhood ties occupying a high place in the Obama administration was Rashad Hussain, deputy associate White House counsel, who had responsibilities in the areas of national security and Muslim affairs. And there were others.

#page#In other words, people with high-level Muslim Brotherhood connections occupy positions of influence in the Obama administration on matters related to national security and Muslim affairs — at the same time Obama’s policies have encouraged the dramatic rise of the previously outlawed Muslim Brotherhood in the Middle East. Yet when the congressional letter surfaced, Bachmann and her colleagues came under savage attack as McCarthyites and “Islamophobes,†whose request for an inquiry was itself deemed un-American. These attacks came not only from the Washington Post, leading Democrats, and such well-known apologists for Islamists as Georgetown’s John Esposito, but also from Republicans John McCain and John Boehner. Without bothering to address the facts the Bachmann letter presented, McCain said, “When anyone, not least a member of Congress, launches vicious and degrading attacks against fellow Americans on the basis of nothing more than fear of who they are, in ignorance of what they stand for, it defames the spirit of our nation, and we all grow poor because of it.†In other words, Bachmann and her colleagues were bigots. Said Boehner: “I don’t know Huma, but from everything that I do know of her she has a sterling character. Accusations like this being thrown around are pretty dangerous.†In other words, asking reasonable questions about a woman with undeniable ties to the Muslim Brotherhood who stands at the center of American policy was more dangerous than allowing those ties to remain unexamined.


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In the hands of today’s leftists, the terms “McCarthyite,†“Islamophobe,†and their equivalents are not descriptions of a political pathology but rather bludgeons wielded to shut down inquiry into behavior that may be harmful to the United States. Instead of rejecting these slurs as they are used to invoke a brutal cloture on a matter of national security, Republican leaders participated in the successful effort to suppress the debate.
The Betrayal of Iraq
Why this lack of conviction on a matter combining internal security and foreign policy, traditional pillars of Republican strength? The answer can be found in the way the Republicans allowed themselves to be intimidated and then silenced as the Left put forth its version of “the lessons of Iraq.†The moment when Republicans lost the national-security narrative — and abandoned their role as defenders of the homeland — came in June 2003, just six weeks after the Saddam regime fell. That month, the Democratic party launched a national television campaign claiming that Bush lied to the American people to lure them into a war that was “unnecessary,†“immoral,†and “illegal.â€

Until that moment, the war in Iraq had been supported by both parties and was regarded by both as a strategic necessity in the larger War on Terror. Removing Saddam’s regime by force, moreover, had been a specific goal of U.S. policy since October 1998, when Bill Clinton, a Democratic president, signed the Iraqi Liberation Act.

In his time on center stage, Saddam launched two aggressive wars, murdered 300,000 Iraqis, used chemical weapons on his own citizens, and put in place an active nuclear-weapons program. He was thwarted only by his defeat in the first Gulf War. As of 2002, his regime had defied 16 U.N. Security Council resolutions designed to enforce the Gulf War truce and stop Iraq from pursuing its ambition to possess weapons of mass destruction. In September 2002, the U.N. Security Council added a new resolution, which gave the regime until December 17 to comply with its terms or face consequences. When Iraq failed to comply, Bush made the only decision compatible with the preservation of international law and the security of the United States: He prepared an invasion to remove the regime and the weapons of mass destruction it was reasonably presumed to possess. The Iraqi dictator was provided the option of leaving the country and averting war. He rejected the offer and the U.S.-led coalition entered the country on March 19, 2003. (I recounted the story in Unholy Alliance.)

The use of force in Iraq had been authorized by both houses of Congress, including a majority of Democrats in the Senate. It was supported in eloquent speeches by John Kerry, John Edwards, Al Gore, and other Democratic leaders. But just three months into the war, Democrats turned against an action that they had authorized and began a five-year campaign to delegitimize it, casting America as its villain. It was a fundamental break with the post–World War II bipartisan foreign policy that had survived even Vietnam.

With the support and protection of Democratic legislators, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the major TV networks now undertook a relentless five-year propaganda campaign against the war, taking relatively minor incidents like the misbehavior of guards at the Abu Ghraib prison and blowing them up into international scandals, damaging their country’s prestige and weakening its morale. Left-leaning news media leaked classified national-security secrets, destroying three major national-security programs designed to protect Americans from terrorist attacks. (For more on this, see my work with Ben Johnson, Party of Defeat, and Douglas Feith’s War and Decision.) Every day, the New York Times and other left-leaning media provided front-page coverage of America’s body counts in Iraq and Afghanistan and helped to fuel a massive “anti-war†movement, which attacked America’s fundamental purposes along with its conduct of the war. The goal of these campaigns was to indict America and its leaders as war criminals who posed a threat to the world.

#page#The principal justification offered by the Democrats for their campaign against the Iraq War was that “Bush lied†in order to persuade them to support an invasion that was unnecessary, illegal, and immoral. This claim was the only way Democrats could explain the otherwise inexplicable and unconscionable fact that, for domestic political reasons, they turned against a war they had supported, following the lead of an anti-war primary candidate, Howard Dean, who appeared to be on his way to winning their presidential nomination. It was only then that Kerry and Edwards, the eventual nominees, reversed themselves on the war; they were followed by the entire party, which saw a partisan advantage in attacking Bush over an increasingly difficult situation on the battlefield.

The claim that Bush lied was false. Bush could not have lied to Kerry or the congressional Democrats about WMDs in Iraq, because Kerry and other Democrats sat on the Senate and House Intelligence Committees and had access to the same intelligence data that Bush relied on to make his case for the war. When the Democrats authorized and supported the war, they knew everything that Bush knew. The claim that he lied to get their support was itself the biggest lie of the war. Its only purpose was to hide the Democrats’ own perfidy in abandoning the nation’s mission for partisan gain, and to discredit the president and turn the country against him, at whatever cost, in the hope of winning the 2004 election.


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Republicans didn’t lose control of the national-security narrative simply because Democrats betrayed a war they had authorized, however. Republicans had the option of standing fast, as they had done since the attack on Pearl Harbor. They lost control of the narrative because they never held the Democrats accountable for their betrayal. They never suggested that the Democrats’ attacks on the war were deceitful and unpatriotic, aiding our enemies and risking the lives of our troops in the field. The Bush White House failed to defend itself from the attacks, and the Republicans as a whole failed to expose the Democrats’ lie and to describe their reckless accusations as the disloyal propaganda it clearly was. “Betrayal†and “sabotage†— the appropriate terms for Democratic attacks on the motives of the war — were never employed. Republicans did not accuse Democrats of conducting a campaign to demoralize America’s troops in the field, even when Kerry during a presidential debate called it “the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time.†(How did that sound to a 19-year-old Marine facing down Islamic terrorists in Fallujah?)
The Republican Failure and the American Future
The Republicans’ failure to defend their president and the war turned a good war into a bad one. It turned a disloyal opposition into a patriotic movement. It crippled America’s ability to protect other people’s freedom and defend its own. If the war against a dictator like Saddam Hussein was illegitimate and immoral, then American resistance to any outlaw states could be portrayed — and opposed — as reckless and unjustifiable aggression.

In failing to fight the political war over Iraq, Republicans lost their legitimacy as the party that had always taken the hard, sometimes unpopular steps to protect national security, as they did in the mid 1980s when they held the line against Soviet efforts to support Sandinista subversion and subject El Salvador to a bloody Marxist guerilla war. Losing — and to some degree failing to fight — the war over the war in Iraq is why Republicans are mute today in matters of foreign policy and why they have not challenged Barack Obama’s dangerous course of appeasement and drift, particularly in the Middle East.

The Joint Chiefs had suggested that a military presence of 20,000 troops in Iraq was necessary to keep it free of Iran’s control, but the demand for such a presence became problematic when the Republicans allowed the Democrats’ narrative of “Bush lied, people died†to succeed. When 2008 presidential candidate John McCain suggested that maintaining troops in a postwar Iraq was a prudent measure, candidate Obama attacked him as a warmonger. “You know,†Obama said, “John McCain wants to continue a war in Iraq perhaps as long as 100 years.†This refrain became a constant theme of the winning Obama campaign — Republicans are warmongers, and dangerous.

That is why three years later, when Obama withdrew from Iraq, no Republican dared accuse him of betraying the Americans who gave their lives to make Iraq independent, even though Iraq as a consequence fell under the sway of Iran and was providing air space for Iranian weapons headed for Syria..

How far America has fallen since Madeleine Albright called us the indispensable nation that stands taller and sees farther becomes ever more apparent with each new international crisis. We are not only losing the war with enemies whose stated goal is our destruction, we are led by a political party that constantly finds excuses not to take these enemies seriously, and never has to account for its disgraceful conduct because its potential opposition is mute. The only way to reverse this trend is to mount a campaign to put Obama’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood at the forefront of the political debate, and to educate Americans about the real dangers we face. Americans need to become aware of the Islamic-supremacist threat, of the malignant designs of the Muslim Brotherhood, and of the disasters that may lie ahead because of the Obama administration’s policies of appeasing and enabling our enemies’ evil ambitions.

— David Horowitz is author of Radicals: Portaits of a Destructive Passion.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 07, 2013, 06:43:24 AM
The ObamaCare Train Wreck Is Already Here




 Posted 05/06/2013 07:18 PM ET
 



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Medical Overhaul: Democrats fret about a "train wreck" when ObamaCare goes into effect next year. But the law is already a disaster for workers who've seen their hours and benefits cut as employers try to avoid its costs.
 
As IBD's Jed Graham reported late last week, government data clearly show that businesses are already cutting worker hours and benefits in advance of ObamaCare's employer mandate, under which every business with 50 or more full-time workers will have to provide government-approved insurance.
 
Graham found that overall benefits climbed just 0.1% in Q1, the smallest gain since 2001. Benefits in the service sector dropped 0.3%, the first quarterly decline in more than a decade.
 
As the IBD story notes, benefits climbed steadily even through the recession and the first years of the very weak Obama recovery. So the only real explanation for the cutbacks now is that employers are trying to make room for ObamaCare costs.
 
In addition, Graham found that retailers are cutting worker hours "at a rate not seen in more than three decades." Again, the culprit is clearly ObamaCare.
 
The average workweek in April was 2% shorter than it was a year ago, marking the "steepest sustained decline since 1980."
 
Even the liberal press is starting to take notice of ObamaCare's ill effects on the workforce.
 
The New York Times recently reported on a family-owned bakery that figures ObamaCare will eat up more than half its annual profits. The owners are looking at "outsourcing certain jobs to reduce the staff."
 
A Los Angeles Times story last week noted that companies are cutting back on part-time hours so they can avoid the ObamaCare mandate, which kicks in for employees working 30 hours or more.
 
"Not only will these workers earn less money," the Times noted, "but they'll also miss out on health insurance at work."
 
The story pointed to research from UC Berkeley, which found that some 2.3 million workers risk seeing their hours cut back thanks to ObamaCare.
 
Meanwhile, publicly traded companies are starting to explain to shareholders the impact ObamaCare will have on their businesses and how they'll respond.
 
A recent Krispy Kreme filing, for example, notes that unless it cuts back on the number of workers subject to the law, it will get hit with up to $5 million in new health care costs.
 
AAA Parking says it will likely switch half its full-time workers over to part time because of ObamaCare.
 
And the Federal Reserve's recent Beige Book reports that employers across the country are citing the uncertainties surrounding ObamaCare "as reasons for planned layoffs and reluctance to hire more staff."
 
Businesses are right to worry. Despite its official name — the Affordable Care Act — the law is likely to drive small business premiums up.
 
How far up remains to be seen, but insurers in Maryland and Rhode Island are already pushing for double-digit increases.
 
And if too few businesses agree to buy ObamaCare insurance, rates could go even higher, causing further damage to jobs, work hours and benefits.
 
A couple years ago, a reporter asked Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius whether ObamaCare's employer mandate would hurt job growth, particularly among small firms close to the 50-worker threshold.
 
"I think that this will actually be a great incentive" to increase jobs, was her response. "I don't hear anything from people who say, 'Oh, I would never grow my business past this threshold,' but are very enthusiastic about the notion that this is a competitive issue."
 
We seriously doubt any business actually told Sebelius they were enthusiastic about ObamaCare's employer mandate back in 2011.
 
And even if there were a few, they've likely lost their enthusiasm now that they face the imminent reality of this disaster.


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Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 07, 2013, 07:54:13 AM

 
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-scheer/obama-penny-pritzker-commerce-secretary_b_3227356.html?utm_hp_ref=politics



The love fest between Barack Obama and his top fundraiser Penny Pritzker that has led to her being nominated as Commerce secretary would not be so unseemly if they both just confessed that they did it for the money. Her money, not his, financed his rise to the White House from less promising days back in Chicago.

"Without Penny Pritzker, it is unlikely that Barack Obama ever would have been elected to the United States Senate or the presidency," according to a gushing New York Times report last year that read like the soaring jacket copy of a steamy romance novel. "When she first backed him during his 2004 Senate run, she was No. 152 on the Forbes list of the wealthiest Americans. He was a long-shot candidate who needed her support and imprimatur. Mr. Obama and Ms. Pritzker grew close, sometimes spending weekends with their families at her summer home."

But don't sell the lady short; she wasn't swept along on some kind of celebrity joyride. Pritzker, the billionaire heir to part of the Hyatt Hotels fortune, has long been first off an avaricious capitalist, and if she backed Obama, it wasn't for his looks. Never one to rest on the laurels of her immense inherited wealth, Pritzker has always wanted more. That's what drove her to run Superior Bank into the subprime housing swamp that drowned the institution's homeowners and depositors alike before she emerged richer than before.

Pritzker and her family had acquired the savings and loan with the help of $600 million in tax credits. She became the new bank's chairwoman and ended up as a director of the holding company that owned it. Under her leadership, Superior specialized in subprime lending, hustling folks with meager means and poor credit into high interest loans that were bundled into the toxic securities that wrecked the U.S. economy.

As federal regulators began to move in on her bank after it had dangerously inflated the value of its toxic assets, Pritzker assured its employees: "Our commitment to subprime has never been stronger." Two months later, the bank was pronounced insolvent. At the time, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.'s inspector general report concluded, "The failure of Superior Bank was directly attributable to the board of directors and executive management ignoring sound risk diversification principles, as evidenced by excessive concentration in residual assets related to subprime lending. ..."

No biggie. In announcing her appointment, Obama joked, "For your birthday present, you get to go through confirmation. It's going to be great." It's the same sort of joke he could have cracked in appointing Citigroup alum Jack Lew to be Treasury secretary.

It is deeply revealing that in the midst of the continuing cycle of misery brought on by the chicanery of the financial community two key Cabinet positions dealing with business practices will likely be occupied by people who specialized in those financial rip-offs.

For Pritzker, as with the confirmation of Lew, the fix is in. The Republicans don't dare push back too hard on shady business practices that their deregulation legislation endorsed, and Democrats will go along with anything the president wants.

The same restraint will be exhibited in exploring the offshore tax havens that have protected the Pritzker family's immense wealth. Back in 2008, when she had been rumored for this same Cabinet post, Pritzker was queried about avoiding the sort of taxes most ordinary folks are obligated to pay, and she replied in writing: "I am a beneficiary of some non-U.S. situs trusts which were established about 50 years ago (when I was a child) and are administered by a non-U.S.-based financial institution as trustee. I do not control how those assets are administered." If the Republicans challenge that canard, the Democrats will smugly remind them of Mitt Romney's tax havens, as if that excuses tax avoidance within their own ranks.

Certainly the Republicans will not raise questions about the anti-union practices that helped create the Hyatt fortune in the first place and continue to this day. Nor will the Democrats, who embrace unions only at national convention time.

"There is a huge unresolved set of issues in the Democratic Party between people of wealth and people who work," noted Andy Stern, former president of the Service Employees International Union, which attempts to organize the miserably paid workers that produced Pritzker's wealth. "Penny is a living example of that issue."

But it's payback time, and even normally progressive Democrats like Pritzker's home state Sen. Dick Durbin are prepared to roll over. Treating the appointment of billionaire Pritzker as a victory for women everywhere, the senator said she'd "broken through the glass ceiling with her extraordinary intelligence and business acumen."

Right, Pritzker will be a fine role model for those women working at the Asian factories that she'll be touring as Commerce secretary extolling the virtues of the American business model.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 07, 2013, 12:43:35 PM

There's no party like a White House party
 
By Emily Goodin - 05/07/13 05:00 AM ET






Bill and Hillary Clinton, actress Kerry Washington, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and producer Harvey Weinstein were among those who joined the Obamas at the White House’s secret post-inauguration bash.
 
President Obama and Michelle Obama held the hush-hush, swanky, ultra-A-list party to celebrate his second term the night he took the oath of office. The party was not announced or listed on his official schedule, but a few of the guests tweeted about the event, which is what publicly revealed its existence.
 








The guest list that reveals who attended was never released though the White House visitors log from January, which came out at the end of April and was examined by The Hill: a mix of rock stars, actors, top campaign donors, White House aides, Obama friends and leading Democratic politicians.
 
Some of the names include actor Jamie Foxx; Obama adviser David Axelrod; Rep. Joaquín Castro (D-Texas) and his twin brother, San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro; singer Kelly Clarkson; Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.); actress Eva Longoria; singer James Taylor; former NBA player Alonzo Mourning; Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D); and former White House spokesman Robert Gibbs. Clinton aide Huma Abedin was on the list, but her husband, former New York Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner, was not.
 
Obama has a voluntary visitors records release policy, and more than 3.2 million entries have been made public. There is typically a three-month delay in the release of names.
 

 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The visitors log doesn’t give a detailed reason a guest is at the White House, but it does say who the person is there to see and where the meeting took place.
 
The names The Hill used to compile the guest list for the post-inaugural party were under a grouping of visitors who were at the White House to meet with “POTUS/FLOTUS” in the “residence” on Jan. 21.
 
Actress Ashley Judd and Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) were among the list of names under that grouping, and both tweeted about the event.
 



RELATED ARTICLES
 •Who's who at the White House
 
Judd wrote, “How to arrive at the White House in style? Bum a ride from a kind citizen who happens to be off duty Secret Service!”
 

She later wrote, “It was elegant, warm, fun, & then an amazingly joyful house party. We had such a magical night.”
 
McCaskill tweeted, “Now we are rocking at the WH. Happy Inauguration. #2013inaug,” along with a blurry photo of a singer. The names of singers Usher and John Mayer were also on the list.
 
White House officials have previously said that visitors records have limitations and were never designed for public disclosure by the Secret Service. Names are listed without titles or additional identifying information.
 
There were some discrepancies in the most recent list of visitors released. The release date was labeled April 26, 2012, instead of 2013, though the records clearly state the appointments were in January 2013. A White House aide told The Hill the discrepancy was likely attributable to a typo.
 
Other names in the grouping include Commerce Secretary nominee Penny Pritzker; longtime Obama friends Eric and Cheryl Whitaker; Obama aides/advisers Ben Rhodes, Jim Messina, Julianna Smoot and Jeremy Bird; actress Whoopi Goldberg; Gayle King; actress Jennifer Hudson; and Attorney General Eric Holder.
 
And the list might not be complete.
 
There were some prominent names missing, such as Obama adviser and longtime friend Valerie Jarrett. She may, however, have a clearance level that does not require her to be listed as visitor to the residence. White House aides Dan Pfeiffer and Jay Carney were listed, however.
 
Also, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was not listed, but her husband, Paul Pelosi, was. Pelosi was cleared for White House access earlier in the day when Obama met with congressional leaders.
 
Kevin Bogardus, Justin Sink, and Amie Parnes contributed.


Read more: http://thehill.com/capital-living/cover-stories/298069-theres-no-party-like-a-white-house-party#ixzz2SdbN5xmy


 Follow us: @thehill on Twitter | TheHill on Facebook
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 08, 2013, 08:24:39 AM
http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2013/05/coast-guard-ordered-to-stay-in-port-and-allow-infiltration-2640320.html


Worst Admn EVER!

Fuck obama
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 08, 2013, 01:31:09 PM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/08/enron-ceo-released_n_3238948.html


LOL!!!!!


HOPE AND CHANGE SUCKERS!
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 08, 2013, 08:12:53 PM
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/05/08/Report-Obama-Spent-11-45-Million-Per-Green-Job-Created


unreal 

F Obama
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 08, 2013, 09:08:48 PM
http://www.twincities.com/national/ci_23202009/us-discussing-giving-russia-missile-defense-data


WOW.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 09, 2013, 08:21:35 AM
Watchdog says government has tried to silence him on Afghanistan
By: Stephanie Gaskell
May 8, 2013 09:17 PM EDT

http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=A9EC85F1-16F0-4FE7-8EE0-3EA68EB00F25


 
The watchdog who tracks the billions of taxpayer dollars spent to rebuild Afghanistan says government officials have tried to silence him because they think he's embarrassing the White House and Afghan President Hamid Karzai by pointing out the waste and fraud.

John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, used a speech at the New America Foundation on Wednesday to blast government “bureaucrats”' who have told him to stop publicizing damning audits that detail case after case of waste, corruption and mismanagement of rebuilding efforts in Afghanistan. Some government officials have even complained that they aren't allowed to pre-screen or edit his reports, he said.

“Since my appointment by the president last summer, I have been surprised to learn how many people both in and out of the government do not understand the role of an independent inspector general,” Sopko said.

(PHOTOS: Obama in Afghanistan)

The Pentagon did not address Sopko’s remarks about pre-screening, but it endorsed his role keeping watch over the Afghanistan effort.

“We value inputs from independent oversight, including from inspectors-general, who play a key role in advancing the missions of the Department of Defense,” said press secretary George Little.

Even so, Sopko slammed the government for what he called a hostile attitude toward his work.

“Over the last 10 months, I have been criticized by some bureaucrats for not pre-clearing my press releases with them, for not letting them edit the titles of my audits, for talking too much to Congress, for talking too much to the press … and, basically, for not being a 'team player' and undermining 'our country’s mission in Afghanistan,'” he said.

(PHOTOS: 10 quotes about Hillary Clinton and Benghazi)

“Many in our government, even some surprisingly senior officials you think would know better, seem to believe that an inspector general should be their partner — or, more correctly, their silent partner,” he said. “In their opinion, my reports should be slipped in a sealed envelope in the dead of night under the door — never to see the light of day — because those reports could embarrass the administration, embarrass President Karzai, embarrass Afghanistan.”

Sopko said he wanted to make it clear that he wants Afghanistan to succeed and his work isn't meant to embarrass anyone.

“I support the mission in Afghanistan,” he said. “That is why I accepted the appointment. We must defeat the terrorists hiding in Afghanistan and build up an Afghan government capable of ensuring that Afghanistan will never again become a safe haven for those who want to harm the United States.”

Since taking office last July, Sopko has increased the number of audits and investigations threefold. His office has made 73 recommendations to government agencies that he says would save at least $450 million if enacted.

(PHOTOS: Chuck Hagel in Afghanistan)

Sopko defended his aggressive oversight of billions of taxpayer dollars being spent in Afghanistan, saying he's just trying to do the right thing.

“I am not a cheerleader. I’m a watchdog — it is my job to point out what isn’t working, so it can be fixed. To do it any other way is to just muddle along and then nothing will change,” he said.

This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 6:41 p.m. on May 8, 2013.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 09, 2013, 01:49:32 PM
Green energy triumph: $11,000,000.00 spent per job created

via Politico

By: John Hayward 
5/9/2013 10:14 AM



“Without much fanfare, the Department of Energy (DOE) recently updated the list of loan guarantee projects on its website,” the Institute for Energy Research noticed on Wednesday.  ”Unlike in 2008, when Barack Obama pledged to create 5 million jobs over 10 years by directing taxpayer funds toward renewable energy projects, there were no press conferences or stump speeches.”
 
Uh-oh.  Why weren’t there any celebrations?  President Obama loves a good celebration.  Why, we just found out about the super-secret star-studded bash he held after his inauguration.
 
Maybe it’s because the IER divided the $26 billion spent on “green jobs” by the Energy Department since 2009, divided it by the 2,298 permanent jobs created, and came up with a cost of $11.45 million per job.
 
Ah, the miracle of Obamanomics!  At those prices, we could easily restore the 5 million jobs blown out of the economy since 2009 by spending a mere $57 trillion.
 
The IER provides a list of projects, loan amounts, and jobs created.  Your calculator will melt if you try to compute the per-job cost of famed boondoggles like Solyndra or Abound Soler, where the DOE handed out $535 million and $400 million respectively to create zero permanent jobs, because it turned out the companies were temporary.  But don’t overlook still-functional triumphs like Granite Reliable, a wind-power company that took $168.9 million in Energy Department loan money to create 6 permanent jobs.
 
“As the astronomical cost of the DOE’s loan guarantee program indicates, subsidizing renewable energy is not a good deal for taxpayers,” the IER observes dryly.  And that’s not the only raw deal we’re getting:
 

But loan guarantees are just one of the ways the federal government bankrolls risky green energy projects. Energy-related tax preferences cost taxpayers about $13.5 billion in FY 2012, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation. But solar and wind power, for which the majority of the tax preferences for renewable energy were directed,produced only 3.6 percent of the nation’s generation in 2012. In addition, the Treasury Department’s 1603 grant program, which offers cash payments to renewable energy companies, cost taxpayers $5.8 billion in 2012. Many states also subsidize green energy through tax preferences as well as requiring renewable electricity mandates that require a specified amount of electricity to be generated from qualified renewable sources like wind and solar.
 
Clearly, in terms of “bang for the buck,” government programs that coddle renewable energy are losers. In terms of jobs, the losers are the American workers who would otherwise be gainfully employed but for the tremendous waste of taxpayer dollars on the administration’s obsession with “green energy.” As the economy continues to suffer and dollars for federal programs get harder to come by, it is getting increasingly difficult to defend a program that costs so much and produces so little.
 
Just imagine what the actual market – not the imaginary green one dreamed up by Obama and his billionaire cronies, who very much appreciate your support, even if they never seem to get around to thanking you for it – could have done with all those billions!  Let’s see, $26 billion in loan guarantees, plus $13.5 billion in tax preferences, plus $5.8 billion in cash grants for “renewable energy”… that’s $45.3 billion that could have been returned to the people who earned it, through pro-growth tax cuts. Would anyone like to wager that the private sector couldn’t create more than 2,298 permanent jobs with that kind of dough?
 
Not to mention all the marketplace confusion that could have been avoided by allowing the people who earned all that money to spend it, creating healthy and sustainable demand.  Quite a few suppliers and local service companies made the mistake of thinking Solyndra was a real company, and designed long-term business plans accordingly.  It’s hard to see real opportunities through all that taxpayer-subsidized static.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: blacken700 on May 09, 2013, 05:10:18 PM
McDonald's cuts Angus burgers from menu          obamaaaaaaaaaaaaa  :D :D :D :D :D
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Skip8282 on May 09, 2013, 05:34:08 PM
McDonald's cuts Angus burgers from menu          obamaaaaaaaaaaaaa  :D :D :D :D :D




Don't worry, your shift manager will keep a couple on the side just for you.  And I've got some Skip juice you can fry 'em in.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: blacken700 on May 09, 2013, 05:41:56 PM



Don't worry, your shift manager will keep a couple on the side just for you.  And I've got some Skip juice you can fry 'em in.

you will, thanks  :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 11, 2013, 10:35:49 AM
Stephanie Cutter, Former Obama Adviser, To Help Bank Of America Elude Regulation
 

Posted: 05/10/2013 5:53 pm EDT  |  Updated: 05/10/2013 6:11 pm EDT


"Big Banks Push Against Tighter Rules," says the headline in this piece from the Wall Street Journal. 'Twas ever thus, but now, "big banks" are doing so more overtly, and with more gusto, and with all kinds of interesting people helping them out. Per the WSJ:

The banks have hired longtime, influential Washington hands to deflect regulatory and political pressure to strengthen their finances and to sell assets. Regulators and some lawmakers have raised concern that large banks remain "too big to fail" and could require another government bailout in the event of a new financial meltdown.
 The effort by banks marks a lobbying turning point for the industry, which adopted a mostly low-profile stance to new regulations in the wake of the financial crisis.


Of course, most of us are nominally invested in the idea that the Obama administration is working to keep the excesses of these banks in check. I mean, just today, Bloomberg reminded everyone that President Barack Obama greeted the passage of the Dodd-Frank Act thusly: “Because of this reform, the American people will never again be asked to foot the bill for Wall Street’s mistakes...There will be no more taxpayer-funded bailouts -- period.”

So, it would be quite reasonable to extract the notion, from that statement, that the Obama White House is fully on board with keeping tight rules on banks in place. Interestingly enough, however, someone who worked very hard to ensure Obama would be reelected to a second term does not appear to agree. Let's go back to that Wall Street Journal piece:

Regulators and lawmakers increasingly are signaling that more work is needed to lessen the risk posed by large, complex banks, including bigger capital cushions and minimum amounts of expensive long-term debt.
 The moves by banks include pushing back against bipartisan legislation sponsored by Sens. David Vitter, a Louisiana Republican, and Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, that would sharply increase capital cushions at large banks to the point where most analysts expect firms would be forced to shrink.

Stephanie Cutter, a former adviser to President Barack Obama, and Ed Gillespie, a former Bush administration official, are providing strategic advice to Bank of America on several issues, including efforts to break up the banks. Morgan Stanley recently hired Michele Davis, a top aide to former Bush administration Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, to help bolster the firm's credibility in Washington.


So, Stephanie Cutter (who I guess may also soon be repping Bank Of America's point of view on a rebooted "Crossfire" for CNN?) is working to undermine "tight rules" on banks? That seems like an odd thing for someone who supported Obama's reelection to do. Or does it? Is the implication here that Obama would not sign Brown-Vitter? Or that he contends that "bigger capital cushions" are not required?

It could mean that the White House isn't all that sincere about reining in the banks, maybe. It could also mean that the Obama White House will be battling its own adviser in the parking lot with tridents. I've not heard back from Cutter since I emailed her to ask, "HUH WHAT NOW?" But the day is young.

By the way, here is a fun fact that pertains to why tighter rules on banks, specifically those designed to prevent "Too Big To Fail" failures, might be of pertinent interest to normal human Americans. Per Bloomberg, today:

The firms that rate the creditworthiness of banks say the likelihood of a government rescue hasn’t gone away. Because of the implicit promise of bailouts, Moody’s Investors Service, the second-largest U.S. ratings company, has boosted the scores for the six banks. Each increase in credit grade makes borrowing less expensive.
 In a March 27 report, Moody’s displays a bar chart of its credit ratings for the banks in blue. In green bars, it shows Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo would be rated two grades lower if the taxpayer backstop didn’t exist. Moody’s boosted Morgan Stanley’s score by two grades for the same reason, even though it had downgraded that bank in June 2012.

The scores for Bank of America, Citigroup and JPMorgan (JPM) are three grades lower in the green bars.

Debt sold by the holding companies of Bank of America and Citigroup (C), the second- and third-biggest U.S. banks by assets, would fall to junk status without the implicit government guarantee, Moody’s Senior Vice President David Fanger says.

“They have a high probability of government support,” Fanger says.


"Government guarantee" means "taxpayer guarantee," in the above construction. Taxpayer wealth is, to the banks' perspective, an implied asset on their balance sheet. So it's no wonder they don't worry about being overleveraged, and want to resist further regulations.

[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not?]


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/10/stephanie-cutter-bank-of-america_n_3255326.html?ref=topbar

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 11, 2013, 11:33:32 AM
Obama Pushes Funds for Islamists —- Trashes Their Christian Victims

Posted By Faith J. H. McDonnell On May 10, 2013 @ 12:39 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 10 Comments


The “Islamist apologist choir” described in Cinnamon Stillwell’s recent story “Profs on Boston Bombing” doesn’t sing solely on behalf of Chechnya and Cambridge. Some of that choir’s most dreadful caterwauling today is in support of Nigeria’s yet-undesignated terrorists, Boko Haram. The choir stalls are located in the U.S. State Department, which not only refuses to designate the jihadists as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), but maligns and defames Boko Haram’s Christian victims, as well.
 
Boko Haram’s latest attack, killing at least 42, took place on Tuesday, May 7, in the already battle-worn town of Bama, in Nigeria’s northeast Borno State. Borno, one of 12 states under Sharia, has suffered heavy losses under the Islamists. Some believe that Boko Haram has taken over northern Borno State much as Islamists took over northern Mali. At least 277 had been killed by Boko Haram in Borno State in 2013 before this attack.  According to an AP story the Tuesday event involved “coordinated attacks by Islamic extremists armed with heavy machine guns” in multiple locations around Bama. The jihadists also raided a federal prison, freeing 105 inmates.
 
Military spokesman Lt. Colonel Sagir Musa told AP that “some 200 fighters in buses and pickup trucks mounted with machine guns attacked the barracks of the 202 Battalion of Nigeria’s beleaguered army.” Musa, who said two soldiers and 10 insurgents died in the attack, revealed that the attackers “came in army uniform pretending to be soldiers.” The Islamists killed 14 prison guards. They also attacked and razed a police station, a police barracks, a magistrate’s court, and local government offices, according to Lt. Col. Musa. Bama police commander Sagir Abubakar reported that at least 22 police officers, three children and a woman were killed in the attacks.
 
Boko Haram frequently attacks Nigeria’s police and military forces. In 2012 as documented by the Facts on Nigeria Violence website, there were at least 67 attacks, almost exclusively by Boko Haram, against military barracks, police stations, prisons, and other government facilities, as well as against individual soldiers, policemen, and civil servants. But Boko Haram’s main targets are northern Nigeria’s Christians and churches.
 
The official name of Boko Haram, Jamā’a Ahl al-sunnah li-da’wa wa al-jihād, can be translated “People Committed to the Propagation of the Prophet’s Teachings and Jihad.” Its goal is to establish a pure Islamic state in northern Nigeria, removing the Christian presence – either by conversion, expulsion, or extermination. Boko Haram appears to prefer the third option. According to the World Watch Monitor (WWM) report on global Christian persecution, Nigeria had a higher death toll from anti-Christian persecution and violence than the rest of the world combined. WWM concluded that Nigeria is “the most violent place on earth for Christians.”
 
In a recent Front Page Magazine article, Daniel Greenfield exposed the unfortunate moral equivalence found in the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom’s (USCIRF) 2013 report on Nigeria. While much of the report is very good and condemns Boko Haram, impunity, and the forced imposition of Sharia, USCIRF appears to have developed the same pathological impulse that afflicts the rest of the federal government, to never blame Islam. As a result, portions of the report mischaracterize certain acts of violence by both Boko Haram and other Islamists targeting Christians, and criticize northern Nigerian Christian leaders for calling the situation what it is: persecution.
 
USCIRF’s egregious observations and recommendations are actually State Department policy. For instance, USCIRF parrots former Asst. Sec. of State for Africa, Johnnie Carson, who declared in a congressional hearing, “It is important to note that religion is not the primary driver behind extremist violence in Nigeria” and that “the Nigerian government must effectively engage communities vulnerable to extremist violence by addressing the underlying political and socio-economic problems in the North.” USCIRF reports that “The U.S. government consistently has urged the Nigerian government to expand its strategy against Boko Haram from solely a military solution to addressing problems of economic and political marginalization in the north,” says USCIRF, “arguing that Boko Haram’s motivations are not religious but socio-economic.”
 
Responding to Carson’s testimony at a House Subcommittee on Africa hearing in July 2012, Subcommittee Chairman, U.S. Rep. Christopher Smith (R-NJ), remonstrated that poverty alone does not drive people to violence. And in any case, Boko Haram is well funded by outside Islamists. “Heavy machine guns” and “buses and pickup trucks mounted with machine guns” are just the latest examples to show that Boko Haram is not just a motley crew of impoverished, marginalized local Muslims. In February 2013 it was revealed that hundreds of Boko Haram members had trained for months in terrorist camps in northern Mali with the local “Ansar Dine” al Qaeda of Mali. Their former chef, explained that he cooked for over 200 Nigerians who had “arrived in Timbuktu in April 2012 in about 300 cars, after al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) swept into the city.”
 
In its 2013 Nigeria briefing, human rights group Justice for Jos +, a project of Jubilee Campaign USA, remarked, “Ironically, in northern Nigeria, it is Christians who are totally disenfranchised politically, economically, and socially in their own states and by their own ethnic groups due to their religious identity.” This is worse than just “political marginalization,” Mr. Carson! Justice for Jos + continues, “Christians are regarded as inferior to Muslims and suffer ongoing, systematic and comprehensive discrimination even by local and (Sharia) state governments.”
 
As in many Islam-dominated regions, the northern Nigerian Sharia state governments require permits to construct new churches or repair old ones. But churches are disappearing from the northern Nigerian landscape because the permits are not granted and the existing churches are being demolished or burned in anti-Christian riots and Boko Haram attacks. “The Muslim community is so determined to prevent Christians from having churches to meet in, that when selling land to Christians they commonly include the proviso ‘Not to be used for a bar, a brothel, or a church’ on official deeds,” Justice for Jos + reveals.
 
Thanks to pressure from the U.S. State Department, Nigeria’s Christian President appears more concerned with demonstrating that he is not biased in favor of his fellow Christians than seeing justice done for those who have suffered (even to the point of considering offering amnesty to Boko Haram). The State Department has pressured President Jonathan to give more federal resources and create a special ministry for “northern affairs.” Justice for Jos+ reports that at the same time that federal resources have provided the northern states with “millions in public funds on forced mass weddings for widows, pilgrimages to Mecca, rams for sacrifice at Islamic celebrations, and payments to terrorists’ families,” there has been no compensation to the families of Christian victims.
 
In their many publicly released statements and videos, Boko Haram has never declared poverty and marginalization to be a motive for their actions. On the contrary, they state clearly that their actions are a “jihad (Holy War).” They said that “Christians in Nigeria should accept Islam, that is true religion, or they will never have peace,” and that they “do not have any agenda” other than working to establish an Islamic Kingdom like during the time of Prophet Mohammed.”
 
Could this be the reason why, in the disapproving words of the USCIRF report, “a number of prominent Nigerian Christian leaders . . . believe that Boko Haram has a significant sectarian dimension, and in particular, seeks to eradicate Christian communities in central and northern Nigeria”? USCIRF, again echoing the State Department policy worries, “This chasm in perspective is a serious concern. If Nigeria’s most prominent Christian leaders view the ongoing violence as sectarian, the faithful communities who follow their lead may also embrace this view, adversely affecting tolerance and respect across religions.” This is offensive not just in casting the Christian community as the villain of the piece, but in its lack of acknowledgement of the unbelievable restraint that Christians have shown in the face of the slaughter of their family, friends, and co-religionists.
 
In April 2012, former Asst. Secretary Carson told an audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies that the US would soon open a consulate in Kano, one of the full-Sharia northern states, to join the U.S. Embassy in Abuja and the existing consulate in Lagos. Three months earlier, Boko Haram had carried out numerous simultaneous attacks on the security agencies in Kano – police stations, army barracks, intelligence headquarters – leaving some 200 dead. What a great place to build a new U.S. consulate. Kano is about 200 miles from Abuja. About half as far as Benghazi is from Tripoli.
 
Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: Click here.
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Article printed from FrontPage Magazine: http://frontpagemag.com

URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2013/faith-j-h-mcdonnell/obama-pushes-funds-for-islamists-trashes-their-christian-victims/
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 11, 2013, 01:20:11 PM
IRS Knew Tea Party Was Being Targeted In 2011: Report


By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER 05/11/13 03:18 PM ET EDT




WASHINGTON — A federal watchdog's upcoming report says senior Internal Revenue Service officials knew agents were targeting tea party groups in 2011.

The disclosure contradicts public statements by former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman, who repeatedly assured Congress that conservative groups were not targeted.

On Friday, the IRS apologized for what it acknowledged was "inappropriate" targeting of conservative political groups during the 2012 election to see if those groups were violating their tax-exempt status.

The Treasury's inspector general for tax administration is expected to release the results of a nearly yearlong investigation in the coming week.

The Associated Press obtained part of the draft report.

That report says the head of the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt groups learned that groups were being targeted in June 2011. It does not say whether Shulman was notified.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 12, 2013, 07:59:19 PM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/11/irs-tea-party_n_3260286.html

Nixon was impeached for far less
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 12, 2013, 08:55:23 PM
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/iraqi-mp-obama-has-handed-iraq-over-to-iran-and-said-do-what-you-like


F obama and those who voted for him 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 13, 2013, 03:36:45 AM
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obama-attend-3-democratic-fundraisers-monday_722435.html


Unreal.   He needs to resign.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 13, 2013, 03:50:47 AM
President Obama refuses to fire IRS employees who illegally targeted conservative groups

In May 2013, the Washington Post reported that the IRS had illegally targeted conservative groups for additional reviews. Organizations with the words “tea party” or “patriot” were singled out for harassment, such as requiring them to provide a list of donors, details about their internet postings on social networking websites, and information about their family members.

When this was first reported by the media in May 2013, Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that had conducted these illegal activities, claimed that only low level employees had known about it, and that no high level IRS officials had known about it. However, soon afterward, NPR reported that an Inspector General report showed that Lerner had been lying, and that she herself had actually been aware of it since June 29, 2011.

During Congressional testimony that had taken place in March 2012, IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman falsely said that the IRS had not targeted conservative groups.

Michael Macleod-Ball, chief of staff at the ACLU’s Washington Legislative Office, said of this:

“Even the appearance of playing partisan politics with the tax code is about as constitutionally troubling as it gets. With the recent push to grant federal agencies broad new powers to mandate donor disclosure for advocacy groups on both the left and the right, there must be clear checks in place to prevent this from ever happening again.”

The Washington Post reported that President Obama had not done anything to investigate or fire the IRS employees who had engaged in this illegal harassment.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: dario73 on May 13, 2013, 09:47:32 AM
Spinning Benghazi
Posted by Alex Koppelman8031Print More
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It’s a cliché, of course, but it really is true: in Washington, every scandal has a crime and a coverup. The ongoing debate about the attack on the United States facility in Benghazi where four Americans were killed, and the Obama Administration’s response to it, is no exception. For a long time, it seemed like the idea of a coverup was just a Republican obsession. But now there is something to it.

On Friday, ABC News’s Jonathan Karl revealed the details of the editing process for the C.I.A.’s talking points about the attack, including the edits themselves and some of the reasons a State Department spokeswoman gave for requesting those edits. It’s striking to see the twelve different iterations that the talking points went through before they were released to Congress and to United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice, who used them in Sunday show appearances that became a central focus of Republicans’ criticism of the Administration’s public response to the attacks. Over the course of about twenty-four hours, the remarks evolved from something specific and fairly detailed into a bland, vague mush.

From the very beginning of the editing process, the talking points contained the erroneous assertion that the attack was “spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and evolved.” That’s an important fact, because the right has always criticized the Administration based on the suggestion that the C.I.A. and the State Department, contrary to what they said, knew that the attack was not spontaneous and not an outgrowth of a demonstration. But everything else about the changes that were made is problematic. The initial draft revealed by Karl mentions “at least five other attacks against foreign interests in Benghazi” before the one in which four Americans were killed. That’s not in the final version. Nor is this: “[W]e do know that Islamic extremists with ties to al-Qa’ida participated in the attack.” That was replaced by the more tepid “There are indications that extremists participated in the violent demonstrations.” (Even if we accept the argument that State wanted to be sure that extremists were involved, and that they could be linked to Al Qaeda, before saying so with any level of certainty—which is reasonable and supported by evidence from Karl’s reporting—that doesn’t fully explain these changes away.)

Democrats will argue that the editing process wasn’t motivated by a desire to protect Obama’s record on fighting Al Qaeda in the run-up to the 2012 election. They have a point; based on what we’ve seen from Karl’s report, the process that went into creating and then changing the talking points seems to have been driven in large measure by two parts of the government—C.I.A. and State—trying to make sure the blame for the attacks and the failure to protect American personnel in Benghazi fell on the other guy.

But the mere existence of the edits—whatever the motivation for them—seriously undermines the White House’s credibility on this issue. This past November (after Election Day), White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters that “The White House and the State Department have made clear that the single adjustment that was made to those talking points by either of those two institutions were changing the word ‘consulate’ to ‘diplomatic facility’ because ‘consulate’ was inaccurate.”

Remarkably, Carney is sticking with that line even now. In his regular press briefing on Friday afternoon (a briefing that was delayed several times, presumably in part so the White House could get its spin in order, but also so that it could hold a secretive pre-briefing briefing with select members of the White House press corps), he said:

The only edit made by the White House or the State Department to those talking points generated by the C.I.A. was a change from referring to the facility that was attacked in Benghazi from “consulate,” because it was not a consulate, to “diplomatic post”… it was a matter of non-substantive factual correction. But there was a process leading up to that that involved inputs from a lot of agencies, as is always the case in a situation like this and is always appropriate.
This is an incredible thing for Carney to be saying. He’s playing semantic games, telling a roomful of journalists that the definition of editing we’ve all been using is wrong, that the only thing that matters is who’s actually working the keyboard. It’s not quite re-defining the word “is,” or the phrase “sexual relations,” but it’s not all that far off, either.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/05/benghazi-cia-talking-point-edits-white-house.html?mobify=0

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 13, 2013, 03:21:32 PM
Benghazi is no ‘sideshow’
By: David Harsanyi 
5/13/2013

Notwithstanding the passionate protestations of President Barack Obama, it is possible that an issue can be both “politicized” and have merit.

And as we now know, it was the White House and State Department that had politics on their mind during the initial attacks. Why else would they edit CIA Benghazi talking points 12 times – eliminating all references to terrorism – before allowing the American people to hear them? And why else would White House spokesperson Jay Carney claim that there was only a single “stylistic” edit to the document? We know this is untrue.  An untrue statement  triggered by political considerations.

And here is what President Barack Obama had to say on that Benghazi talking-point issue this afternoon in a joint press conference with UK Prime Minister David Cameron.

The whole issue of talking point, frankly, throughout this process, has been a sideshow. We have been very clear about throughout that immediately after this event happened we were not clear who exactly had carried it out, how it had occurred, what the motivations were. It happened at the same time as we had seen attacks on U.S. embassies in Cairo as a consequence of this film and nobody understood exactly what was taking place during the course of those first few days. And the e-mails that you allude to were provided by us to congressional committees. They reviewed them several months ago, concluded that in fact there was nothing awful in terms of the process that we had used. And suddenly, three days ago, this gets spun up as if there is something new to the story. There is no there there.

Almost all of this is untrue or misleading.

Perhaps there is no “there there,” as the president asserts, but there are a few things for certain: The administration, and Obama, took forever to make it “very clear” that the murders in Benghazi were the work of terrorists. Both implicitly and explicitly, they spent most of their media time trying to pin the blame on that preposterous Islam-bashing YouTube video. The administration asked YouTube to take the offending video down.

Despite knowing full well that the Arab Street hadn’t had one of its routine “spontaneous eruptions” of rage, but rather that a concerted terror attack had been to blame, Hillary stood in front of the families of the deceased and said: “We’ve seen rage and violence directed at American embassies over an awful internet video that we had nothing to do with. It is hard for the American people to make sense of that, because it is senseless and totally unacceptable.”

Katie Pavelich has an excellent timeline here of various administration officials cynically blaming the video for the death of Americans. An attack on reality (not unusual) and the First Amendment (becoming less unusual). As you know, Hillary doesn’t think it matters very much why the carnage went down.

As a political matter, the administration has done its best to conflate two distinct issues: The attack and the cover-up.

Yes, we should do all we can to find ways to protect foreign service members abroad. Did we do all we could to save them? It seems that’s a legitimate question that hasn’t been fully answered.

Then there is the accusation of a “politicization” of the event. To this charge, Democrats argue: ‘Why would we do it? There is no reason to cover up anything.’ Which is demonstrable false. There are two very good reasons.

1 –  There is the political implication of appearing weak during an election. Obama has told is that the ‘Man-Caused Disaster’ problem is almost licked. To have to pop up, and to make Obama engage in a defense of the Libya  adventure and revisit the War on Terror. This, weeks preceding an election, would have been bad politics. There was every reason to deflect attention from the root cause.

2 –  Then, to a lesser extent  perhaps, is the  ideological need to blame Islamic terror on our own “hateful” speech, or supposed Islamaphobia. For weeks, the Obama and friends fed that very perception.

http://www.humanevents.com/2013/05/13/the-benghazi-sideshow/
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 13, 2013, 03:26:38 PM






DOJ Secretly Obtains Months Of AP Phone Records; AP Condemns 'Unprecedented Intrusion'


AP  |  By By MARK SHERMAN Posted: 05/13/2013 4:20 pm EDT  |  Updated: 05/13/2013 6:00 pm EDT










 
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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative's top executive called a "massive and unprecedented intrusion" into how news organizations gather the news.

The records obtained by the Justice Department listed outgoing calls for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., and the main number for AP reporters in the House of Representatives press gallery, according to attorneys for the AP. It was not clear if the records also included incoming calls or the duration of calls.

In all, the government seized the records for more than 20 separate telephone lines assigned to AP and its journalists in April and May of 2012. The exact number of journalists who used the phone lines during that period is unknown but more than 100 journalists work in the offices where phone records were targeted, on a wide array of stories about government and other matters.

In a letter of protest sent to Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday, AP President and Chief Executive Officer Gary Pruitt said the government sought and obtained information far beyond anything that could be justified by any specific investigation. He demanded the return of the phone records and destruction of all copies.

"There can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of the telephone communications of The Associated Press and its reporters. These records potentially reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the newsgathering activities undertaken by the AP during a two-month period, provide a road map to AP's newsgathering operations, and disclose information about AP's activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right to know," Pruitt said.

The government would not say why it sought the records. U.S. officials have previously said in public testimony that the U.S. attorney in Washington is conducting a criminal investigation into who may have provided information contained in a May 7, 2012, AP story about a foiled terror plot. The story disclosed details of a CIA operation in Yemen that stopped an al-Qaida plot in the spring of 2012 to detonate a bomb on an airplane bound for the United States.

In testimony in February, CIA Director John Brennan noted that the FBI had questioned him about whether he was AP's source, which he denied. He called the release of the information to the media about the terror plot an "unauthorized and dangerous disclosure of classified information."

Prosecutors have sought phone records from reporters before, but the seizure of records from such a wide array of AP offices, including general AP switchboards numbers and an office-wide shared fax line, is unusual.

In the letter notifying the AP received Friday, the Justice Department offered no explanation for the seizure, according to Pruitt's letter and attorneys for the AP. The records were presumably obtained from phone companies earlier this year although the government letter did not explain that. None of the information provided by the government to the AP suggested the actual phone conversations were monitored.

Among those whose phone numbers were obtained were five reporters and an editor who were involved in the May 7, 2012 story.

The Obama administration has aggressively investigated disclosures of classified information to the media and has brought six cases against people suspected of providing classified information, more than under all previous presidents combined.

Justice Department published rules require that subpoenas of records from news organizations must be personally approved by the attorney general but it was not known if that happened in this case. The letter notifying AP that its phone records had been obtained though subpoenas was sent Friday by Ronald Machen, the U.S. attorney in Washington.

William Miller, a spokesman for Machen, said Monday that in general the U.S. attorney follows "all applicable laws, federal regulations, and Department of Justice policies when issuing subpoenas for phone records of media organizations" but he would not address questions about the specifics of the AP records. "We do not comment on ongoing criminal investigations," Miller said in an e-mail.

The Justice Department lays out strict rules for efforts to get phone records from news organizations. A subpoena can only be considered after "all reasonable attempts" have been made to get the same information from other sources, the rules say. It was unclear what other steps, in total, the Justice Department has taken to get information in the case.

A subpoena to the media must be "as narrowly drawn as possible" and "should be directed at relevant information regarding a limited subject matter and should cover a reasonably limited time period," according to the rules.

The reason for these constraints, the department says, is to avoid actions that "might impair the news gathering function" because the government recognizes that "freedom of the press can be no broader than the freedom of reporters to investigate and report the news."

News organizations normally are notified in advance that the government wants phone records and enter into negotiations over the desired information. In this case, however, the government, in its letter to the AP, cited an exemption to those rules that holds that prior notification can be waived if such notice, in the exemption's wording, might "pose a substantial threat to the integrity of the investigation."

It is unknown whether a judge or a grand jury signed off on the subpoenas.

The May 7, 2012, AP story that disclosed details of the CIA operation in Yemen to stop an airliner bomb plot occurred around the one-year anniversary of the May 2, 2011, killing of Osama bin Laden.

The plot was significant both because of its seriousness and also because the White House previously had told the public it had "no credible information that terrorist organizations, including al-Qaida, are plotting attacks in the U.S. to coincide with the (May 2) anniversary of bin Laden's death."

The AP delayed reporting the story at the request of government officials who said it would jeopardize national security. Once government officials said those concerns were allayed, the AP disclosed the plot because officials said it no longer endangered national security. The Obama administration, however, continued to request that the story be held until the administration could make an official announcement.

The May 7 story was written by reporters Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman with contributions from reporters Kimberly Dozier, Eileen Sullivan and Alan Fram. They and their editor, Ted Bridis, were among the journalists whose April-May 2012 phone records were seized by the government.

Brennan talked about the AP story and investigation in written testimony to the Senate. "The irresponsible and damaging leak of classified information was made ... when someone informed the Associated Press that the U.S. Government had intercepted an IED (improvised explosive device) that was supposed to be used in an attack and that the U.S. Government currently had that IED in its possession and was analyzing it," he said.

He also defended the White House's plan to discuss the plot immediately afterward. "Once someone leaked information about interdiction of the IED and that the IED was actually in our possession, it was imperative to inform the American people consistent with Government policy that there was never any danger to the American people associated with this al-Qa'ida plot," Brennan told senators.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/13/ap-phone-records-government-intrusion-unprecedented_n_3268569.html

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 13, 2013, 04:20:20 PM
http://www.businessinsider.com/aclu-fbi-warrantless-foia-redacted-2013-5


Unbelievable.   Time to jail holder too
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 13, 2013, 06:12:54 PM
Scandal politics sweep Capitol Hill
By: Jake Sherman and Lauren French
May 13, 2013 07:15 PM EDT
 
Scandal politics are sweeping Capitol Hill.

Just days after news broke that the IRS targeted conservative nonprofits, Speaker John Boehner’s House committees will morph into mock courtrooms where the White House will be the defendant in what amounts to a number of high-stakes political trials.

The most recent scandal to grip the Obama administration came Monday evening, when The Associated Press disclosed that the Justice Department sought its reporters’ phone records — including those of correspondents who sit in the Capitol. Within hours, House Republicans vowed to investigate. To make things worse for President Barack Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder is scheduled to be on Capitol Hill Wednesday for a House Judiciary Committee hearing.

(Also on POLITICO: Journalists fume over DOJ raid on AP)

That’s hardly the president’s only problem.

Two separate committees — Oversight and Government Reform, and Ways and Means — will probe whether the IRS was treating right-leaning groups unfairly. Republicans moved swiftly to secure the IRS acting director for a Friday hearing, just a week after the news broke. GOP aides hinted Monday afternoon that widespread calls for the director’s resignation could come shortly.

The panels will probe whether the targeting of right-leaning groups is systematic, or isolated. Ways and Means Republicans say they are interested in when top IRS officials, specifically former Commissioner Douglas Shulman was told about search terms used to single out conservative groups. Shulman told Ways and Means members in March 2012 that the IRS was not engaged in any manner of political targeting.

(Also on POLITICO: 5 key players in IRS mess)

Top GOP sources acknowledge that it’s highly unlikely the White House was directly involved in the IRS mess, but the probe is sure to add to the Republican-spun narrative of Democratic, Big Government overreach.

The IRS probes might be new to the public, but they’re not to House Republicans, who have long worried about politicization at the agency. The hot-button topic has come up in several committee hearings since the GOP took the majority.

The inquest into the IRS is just the latest in a string of GOP-led investigations suddenly gaining steam on Capitol Hill. Instead of negotiating with the White House, GOP lawmakers are now investigating it.

(Also on POLITICO: Obama fires back against Benghazi attacks)

There are currently five separate committee investigations into the attack on a U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, and a probe into Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius raising millions of dollars to promote Obamacare. Ways and Means is demanding answers to seven questions on this matter, as well.

All together, roughly one-third of House committees are engaged in investigating some aspect of the Obama administration.

“The speaker and other House leaders have been clear: Effective, responsible oversight is a key constitutional responsibility of Congress,” said Michael Steel, Boehner’s spokesman. “Whether the topic is the truth about Benghazi, thuggish political attacks from the IRS or the ‘train wreck’ of the president’s health care law, we will keeping fighting to make sure the American people know the truth.”

As Obama tries to jump-start immigration reform and a deficit deal and raise the debt ceiling, it’s becoming clear it could be a long, hot summer for the White House.

Republicans are having an “I told you so” moment, as well. For months, the party’s lawmakers have breathlessly proclaimed the IRS was unfairly targeting conservative outside groups, and swore the Obama administration was covering something up in the wake of the attack in Benghazi. Now, others seem to agree.

The uptick in oversight opens a new chapter in Boehner’s tumultuous relationship with Obama, and ensures that the president and House GOP’s political fortunes will be determined in the unpredictable committee hearing process.

 


Focusing on scandals that play well with its base ahead of the 2014 midterms is great politics for the House GOP leadership. Republicans have little to do legislatively, as this week it will pass for the 37th time a repeal of Obama’s health care law. It’s commonplace these days to see bills that could be completed in one day take most of the week.

The decision to engage in a multipronged attack against the Obama administration poses both risks and rewards for the Republican leadership. The party has yet to fully coalesce around a legislative agenda, a plan to raise the debt ceiling or a broad-based governing strategy. Republicans, who have tried to soften their image, now risk being defined by shouting matches. Their job-creating message is in danger of being overshadowed by scandal.

Perhaps the best thing about this spate of investigations is that it has unity without having to scrounge 218 votes for any legislation.

But the risks for Obama could not be greater. He has just 3½ years to cement a legacy, hardly an easy task when Congress is at war with him. Imagine cutting an immigration deal with Issa — who is involved in that debate — when he’s dragging administration officials in front of his committee all summer. Same goes for Camp, who is yearning to rewrite the Tax Code in his last year as chairman.

“Our frustration with the broken Tax Code will remain our focus, but it’s just troubling what this IRS targeting means in a larger sense in the way the IRS operates and the Treasury operates,” Ways and Means Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas) told POLITICO.

A top Boehner aide reminded Capitol Hill staff in a meeting that they must keep their message tightly focused on economic recovery, despite the spate of TV-friendly investigations. Senior GOP aides acknowledge they are keeping a close eye on Issa’s oversight panel, which is filled with rock-ribbed conservatives. It was less than a year and a half ago when the same committee held a hearing on contraception without a single female witness. GOP leadership aides say they’ve been impressed with Issa in recent weeks.


Still, Republicans plan to work to keep scandal front and center over the next few weeks.

On Benghazi, GOP sources expect that former Ambassador Thomas Pickering and former Adm. Mike Mullen will testify before Issa’s committee about the State Department’s decision making after terrorists attacked a diplomatic post there.

The Energy and Commerce Committee — chaired by veteran Michigan Rep. Fred Upton — announced a hearing into reports that Sebelius was raising millions of dollars in corporate and foundation money to promote the Affordable Care Act.

The IRS ground is the most fertile, Republicans say. Prior to news of the report leaked, the House Republican Conference had already relayed complaints to leadership about the IRS targeting conservative groups. Louisiana Rep. Charles Boustany and Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan have been involved in probing the topic. Senior IRS officials have already testified to both Appropriations and Ways and Means that the agency never targeted conservative groups.

Details of when Shulman was told are expected to be included in a Treasury Inspector General of Tax Administration report expected to be released this week. That report — which senior members of the House Ways and Means Committee have yet to see in full — has been in the works for nearly a year. Early reports obtained by POLITICO show that senior IRS official Lois Lerner knew about the program in June 2011.

Brady said it was “troubling” that the report has been leaked before lawmakers had the chance to review it.

Florida Republican Rep. Vern Buchanan, a member of the Ways and Means Committee, said he expects the investigation into what happened at the IRS to take months.

“This is serious enough that it needs go to the full committee. There is nothing that is more important than this issue. I know we’re talking about Benghazi and a number of other issues that are out there, but this is an issue that goes to the heart of who we are — our Constitution and our Founding Fathers,” Buchanan told POLITICO.
 
© 2013 POLITICO LLC
 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 13, 2013, 07:11:40 PM
..

After Benghazi, IRS tea party probe: Govt seized AP phone records


..By Olivier Knox, Yahoo! News | The Ticket – 3 hrs ago.. .

.

 
President Barack Obama welcomes British Prime Minister David Cameron in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, …Exactly ten days ago, President Barack Obama was piously telling reporters who cover him that free speech and an independent press are “essential pillars of our democracy.” On Monday, the Associated Press accused his administration of undermining that very pillar by secretly obtaining two months’ worth of telephone records of AP reporters and editors.
 
“We regard this action by the Department of Justice as a serious interference with AP’s constitutional rights to gather and report the news,” AP President and Chief Executive Officer Gary Pruitt wrote in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder.
 
The latest revelations are sure to pour fuel on the fire of Republican-driven Richard Nixon comparisons. They come in the wake of revelations that the IRS may have improperly scrutinized the tax-exempt status of conservative, tea party-linked groups. This might, in order words, not be a great time to announce a groundbreaking trip to China.
 
And the news threatens to pile fresh political woes on a second term already burdened by a painful gun-control defeat, a seemingly stalled economic agenda, and Republican rage at the botched response to the Sept. 12, 2012 terrorist attack that killed four Americans in Benghazi, Libya.
 
The revelations that the Justice Department may have sought AP phone records drew an angry response from Republican House Speaker John Boehner's office. “The First Amendment is first for a reason. If the Obama Administration is going after reporters’ phone records, they better have a damned good explanation," said Boehner spokesman Michael Steel.
 
And Laura Murphy, a top American Civil Liberties Union official in Washington, D.C., condemned "unwarranted surveillance" of the press and urged Holder to explain what transpired "so that we can make sure this kind of press intimidation does not happen again.”
 
Holder was expected to face questions on the issue when he appears Wednesday before the House Judiciary Committee.
 
A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia did not answer a question from Yahoo News on whether other news outlets had been targeted. The spokesman, Bill Miller, did not confirm the AP allegations, but insisted in a statement that "we take seriously our obligations to follow all applicable laws, federal regulations, and Department of Justice policies when issuing subpoenas for phone records of media organizations."
 
Pruitt, in his letter to Holder, fiercely disagreed.
 


He said that the Justice Department had obtained telephone records for more than 20 separate phone lines assigned to the AP -- the world's largest wire service -- and its journalists. The records cover a two-month span in early 2012 and cover phones lines for AP in New York City, Washington D.C., Hartford, Conn., and one line at the AP workspace in the House of Representatives.
 
"This action was taken without advance notice to AP or to any of the affected journalists, and even after the fact no notice has been sent to individual journalists whose home phones and cell phone records were seized by the Department," Pruitt wrote.
 
"There can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of the telephone communications of The Associated Press and its reporters," Pruitt wrote. "These records potentially reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the newsgathering activities undertaken by the AP during a two-month period, provide a road map to AP’s newsgathering operations, and disclose information about AP’s activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right to know."
 
Pruitt called it "particularly troubling" that the Justice Department "undertook this unprecedented step without providing any notice to the AP, and without taking any steps to narrow the scope of its subpoenas to matters actually relevant to an ongoing investigation."
 
In his statement, Miller said DoJ regulations "require us to make every reasonable effort to obtain information through alternative means before even considering a subpoena for the phone records of a member of the media."
 
And "we must notify the media organization in advance unless doing so would pose a substantial threat to the integrity of the investigation," he said. "Because we value the freedom of the press, we are always careful and deliberative in seeking to strike the right balance between the public interest in the free flow of information and the public interest in the fair and effective administration of our criminal laws."
 
An Associated Press news story on the Justice Department's actions noted:
 

The government would not say why it sought the records. U.S. officials have previously said in public testimony that the U.S. attorney in Washington is conducting a criminal investigation into who may have leaked information contained in a May 7, 2012, AP story about a foiled terror plot. The story disclosed details of a CIA operation in Yemen that stopped an al-Qaida plot in the spring of 2012 to detonate a bomb on an airplane bound for the United States.
 
A former spokesman for Holder's Justice Department, Matthew Miller, took to Twitter to rebuke journalists and underlined that Republicans called for investigations into the leaks.
 


Ever since the days of his history-making 2008 presidential campaign, Obama has repeatedly cast himself as a champion of open government and reform. Aides are fond of praising "the most transparent administration in history" -- a moniker that might be accurate, but mostly because of poor standards set by his predecessors. It's like being the most powerful cricket team in Alaska.
 
And the Obama administration has not been shy about taking steps to deny Freedom of Information Act requests on national security grounds.
 
Just ten days ago, on May 3, Obama noted during a visit to Costa Rica that it was "World Press Freedom Day."
 
"So everybody from the American press corps, you should thank the people of Costa Rica for celebrating free speech and an independent press as essential pillars of our democracy," he said.
 
On Monday, Obama was scooping up cash for Democrats in New York City. His spokesman, Jay Carney, referred questions about the AP letter to the Justice Department.
 
"We are not involved in decisions made in connection with criminal investigations, as those matters are handled independently by the Justice Department," Carney said.
..
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 13, 2013, 07:12:51 PM
IRS officials in Washington were involved in investigation of conservative groups
By Juliet Eilperin and Zachary A. Goldfarb, Updated: Monday, May 13, 8:09 PM
Internal Revenue Service officials in Washington and at least two other offices were involved with investigating conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, making clear that the effort reached well beyond the branch in Cincinnati that was initially blamed, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.

IRS officials at the agency’s Washington headquarters sent queries to conservative groups asking about their donors and other aspects of their operations, while officials in the El Monte and Laguna Niguel offices in California sent similar questionnaires to tea party-affiliated groups.

IRS employees in Cincinnati also told conservatives seeking the status of “social welfare” groups that a task force in Washington was overseeing their applications, according to interviews with the activists.

Lois G. Lerner, who oversees tax-exempt groups for the IRS, told reporters on Friday that the “absolutely inappropriate” actions were undertaken by “front-line people” working in Cincinnati to target groups with “tea party,” “patriot” or “9/12” in their names.

In one instance, however, Ron Bell, an IRS employee, informed an attorney representing a conservative group focused on voter fraud that the application was under review in Washington. On several other occasions, IRS officials in Washington and California sent conservative groups detailed questionnaires about their voter outreach and other activities, according to the documents.

“For the IRS to say it was some low-level group in Cincinnati is simply false,” said Cleta Mitchell, a partner in the law firm Foley & Lardner LLP who sought to communicate with IRS headquarters about the delay in granting tax-exempt status to True the Vote.

Moreover, details of the IRS’s efforts to target conservative groups reached the highest levels of the agency in May 2012, far earlier than has been disclosed, according to Republican congressional aides briefed by the IRS and the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) on the details of their reviews.

Then commissioner, Douglas Shulman, a George W. Bush appointee who stepped down in November, received a briefing from the TIGTA about what was happening in the Cincinnati office in May 2012, the aides said. His deputy and the agency’s current acting commissioner, Steven T. Miller, also learned about the matter that month, the aides said.

The officials did not share details with Republican lawmakers who had been demanding to know whether the IRS was targeting conservative groups, Republicans said.

“I wrote to the IRS three times last year after hearing concerns that conservative groups were being targeted,” Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, said in a statement Monday. “In response to the first letter I sent with some of my colleagues, Steven Miller, the current Acting IRS Commissioner, responded that these groups weren’t being targeted.”

“Knowing what we know now,” he added, “the IRS was at best being far from forth coming, or at worst, being deliberately dishonest with Congress.”

As new details emerged Monday, Democrats and Republicans alike decried the agency’s actions as an unacceptable abuse of power.

In a news conference on Monday, Obama said he learned of it in media reports on Friday and has “no patience with it.”

“If in fact IRS personnel engaged in the kind of practices that have been reported on, and were intentionally targeting conservative groups, then that’s outrageous,” Obama said. “And there’s no place for it. And they have to be held fully accountable.”

White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters Monday that the White House counsel’s office learned of an upcoming IRS inspector’s general report on April 22 as part of a routine notification, but had not received access to the report.

On Capitol Hill, two Senate panels — the Finance Committee and the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations — announced Monday that they will investigate. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the Ways and Means Committee have been looking into IRS attempts to single out organizations on the right for heightened scrutiny. Ways and Means has called IRS officials to testify Friday.

“These actions by the IRS are an outrageous abuse of power and a breach of the public’s trust,” said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.). “The IRS will now be the ones put under additional scrutiny.”

Separately, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) introduced companion bills Monday that would require the IRS to fire any employee found “willfully” violating “the constitutional rights of a taxpayer,” according to statements by both lawmakers. The bills also would make them criminally liable for their actions.

Even as Obama vowed that his administration “will make sure that we find out exactly what happened on this,” however, the IRS offered no new information on how it selected which groups to single out for scrutiny.

The White House is legally prohibited from contacting the IRS about a tax matter, under a prohibition adopted after the Watergate scandal. And although it can contact the Treasury Department about tax issues, neither Treasury nor the IRS can disclose specific taxpayer information. The IRS can release information only about a petition for tax-exempt status once it has been approved.

Obama is not in a position to remove Lerner, a career official who can be terminated for cause only under normal civil service proceedings. The IRS has two political appointees: the commissioner, who serves a five-year term, and the chief counsel.

As the IRS came under broader political attack Monday, more details surfaced on how the tax-exempt organizations division struggled to determine which nonprofits should receive “social welfare” status after the 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling. That decision, which allowed corporations and unions to raise and spend unlimited amounts of money on elections, opened the door for groups to accept undisclosed contributions as long as their “primary purpose” was not politics.

In a Jan. 9, 2012, letter to the Richmond Tea Party, IRS specialist Stephen Seok asked questions including “the names of the donors, contributors and grantors,” as well as the size of the contributions and grants, and when they were given.


Richmond Tea Party President Larry Nordvig, whose group applied for tax-exempt status in December 2009 and received it in July 2012, said the extended inquiry had “a very chilling effect” on how much money the group could raise because its donors preferred anonymity.

The Wetumpka Tea Party of Alabama experienced a two-year delay after submitting its initial application.

Becky Gerritson, a 44-year-old stay-at-home mother and the group’s president, said the IRS sent a questionnaire asking for the names of all volunteers, donor identification and contribution amounts, the names of any legislators its members had communicated with directly or indirectly, and the contents of all speeches its members had made, among a long list of other details.

“I was outraged,” Gerritson said. “Being an election year, I felt like it was intimidation.”

The group did not provide the information. Approval came only after the group sought help from the American Center for Law and Justice, which threatened a lawsuit against the IRS, Gerritson said.

Although some of the groups were explicitly labeled “tea party” or “patriot,” others that came under intense scrutiny were focused on challenging the Affordable Care Act — known by many as Obamacare — or the integrity of federal elections.

In a June 3, 2011, letter to the IRS, Mitchell questioned the agency’s motivations for delaying recognition of one of her clients who had filed nearly two years earlier, writing, “Is the [group’s] opposition to Obamacare and the takeover of America’s healthcare system by the government the reason that this application has been held up and not approved?”

Catherine Engelbrecht, president of the Houston-based True the Vote, first filed for tax-exempt status in July 2010. At one point, Engelbrecht — who is still awaiting a determination from the IRS regarding her voting rights organization and a separate tea party group, King Street Patriots — said an IRS employee informed her: “I’m just doing what Washington is telling me to do. I’m just asking what they want me to ask.”

The IRS did not respond to requests for comment Monday.



Josh Hicks and Julie Tate contributed to this report.

Discuss this topic and other political issues in the politics discussion forums.


© The Washington Post Company
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 13, 2013, 07:19:52 PM
http://washingtonexaminer.com/article/2529523


Insurers saying obamacare going to spike premiums 100 - 400% 


FORWARD!!!!!
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 14, 2013, 03:01:04 AM

Printed from: Boston Herald (http://bostonherald.com)
Obama knee-deep in Nixon-esque scandal

Monday, May 13, 2013 -- Anonymous (not verified)
Sections: 
Joe Battenfeld
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
Author(s): 
Joe Battenfeld
President Obama’s second-term campaign slogan was “Forward,” but instead we’ve got cover-ups, congressional investigations and the government persecution of political opponents and reporters.

That sounds like “backward” to me. All the way to, say, 1972.

Who would have guessed that just a few months into his second term, President Obama would be compared to Tricky Dick. And by a liberal Massachusetts Democrat — U.S. Rep. Michael Capuano.

Republicans could not even have scripted this one. The agency most hated by voters, the Internal Revenue Service, admits to going on a Nixonian witch hunt against Tea Party and conservative groups during the re-election campaign.

This is a story even the most partisan Massachusetts liberal cannot defend. It’s so bad that even Ed Markey is calling for heads to roll.

Now we learn that the Justice Department has secretly obtained the phone records of Associated Press reporters and editors in what appears to be an investigation of an AP story that disclosed details of a CIA operation that stopped a terrorist attack.

Going after the Tea Party is one thing, but the media? What an outrage. Who knows, the press may get so mad they won’t laugh at Obama’s jokes during the next White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

This does not bode well for Obama’s second-term agenda. He already had lost a vote over gun control, and the Benghazi hearings didn’t go so well, either.

The focus for the next few months will be on the investigation and likely cover-up of the IRS effort to get dirt on Obama’s political opponents. The initial explanation — that it was the handiwork of just a few rogue IRS workers — sounds about as plausible as blaming the Benghazi attacks on an anti-Muslim video.

Voters should demand to know who was responsible for the IRS witch hunt. If anyone in the White House or Obama campaign was aware of it, then the Richard Nixon and Watergate comparisons will be eerily accurate. It was Nixon, after all, who invented the “enemies list,” and it looks as if someone in the Obama administration’s IRS came up with one.

The disclosures might even trigger a resurgence for the Tea Party movement, which suffered some setbacks in the last election. U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), one of the Tea Party candidates who won, could get a boost all the way to the GOP presidential nomination.

So enjoy the next few months, President Obama. It’s not time yet to get Marine One revved up on the White House lawn, but if you start talking to portraits of dead presidents, then it’s time to get worried.

Source URL: http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/columnists/joe_battenfeld/2013/05/obama_knee_deep_in_nixon_esque_scandal
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 14, 2013, 11:17:20 AM
Obama's New Scandals Could Be Disastrous For Democrats
 


Harry J, The Guardian|May 14, 2013, 4:44 AM|8,134|54

The Justice Department has "secretly obtained" two months of conversations between Associated Press (AP) officials in a move called "unprecedented". The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Cincinnati office singled out new conservative groups for extra scrutiny over the past couple of years. One of these controversies alone would have caused a headache for the Obama administration, but the two of them together could spell big trouble for the Democrats in the 2014 midterm elections.
 
Historically speaking, trust in government has been tied very closely to how people view the state of the economy. When consumer sentiment is up, trust in government goes up. When consumer confidence goes down, trust in government goes down. Pew Research has a very nice chart that illustrates this relationship.
 
You can see how the two lines generally flow together. This especially the case after 1970 – before which time trust in government was higher than it's been over the past 40 years. Right now consumer confidence is 76.4. That's down from earlier this year, but it's up significantly since 2010.
 
Trust in government isn't, however, always linked to the consumer sentiment. After the Watergate scandal, trust in government remained in a relatively low stable position through 1977, even as the economy improved. Trust in government fell in response to the House banking scandal in 1992 and Whitewater controversy of 1993 and 1994, as consumer confidence climbed. Finally, the economy was improving, but trust in government fell off its post-9/11 highs through the early part of the first decade of this century as Americans angered over the Iraq War and Hurricane Katrina that pounded the Gulf Coast.
 
Put another way, scandal can negatively impact how much Americans trust. It has to be a big scandal though. Benghazi, for instance, is likely not going to do it. Most Americans aren't paying attention to it, and as many Americans think the Republicans have gone too far as handled it appropriately.
 
The tax scandal, however, can play that role. My friends at NBC's First Read note
 

"The IRS story packs a bigger political punch... [and] will trigger new congressional hearings and new questions for the president and his team. More significantly, the IRS news is a political gift to a Republican Party whose base was strained on immigration."
 
The idea that the IRS would go after conservative groups, who hate the IRS, specifically seems to make a lot more sense than a president not wanting to create a foreign policy crisis in which be could benefit from a rally around the flag effect.
 
The obtaining of AP records likewise probably makes more sense in the voters' eyes. Obama has been critiqued for not doing enough press conferences or interviews with White House reporters. As one Democratic strategist put it, the "AP phone records thing just sealed the deal for what the newest narrative around Obama administration is going to be".
 
Indeed, these stories are coming at the perfect time for peak scandal coverages. Brendan Nyhan notes that scandals more often happen when the president is detested by members of the other party, as Obama is. Likewise, they are more likely to become big news when there aren't other news stories like the Boston bombings. Finally, scandals are more likely to take place in the beginning of the second term.
 
Therefore, the question is whether declining trust in the government has historically played a major factor in midterm elections. It turns out that it does. When trust in government falls, the party in the White House tends to do worse in midterm elections.
 
This 2010 graph from Pew Research illustrates the point well.
 
Trust fell dramatically in the lead up to the 1974 midterms thanks to Watergate, and the Republicans lost nearly 50 seats. Trust absolutely tumbled in the lead-up to the 1994 midterms, and Bill Clinton's Democratic Party lost over 50 seats. Democrats took back the house in 2006 as Americans trust in the Bush administration dropped. And although it isn't on the bottom chart, Americans trust in government, as seen in the top chart, was bad in 2010. Republicans gained 63 house seats.
 
On the reverse, there was minimal change in the composition in 1986, 1990, 1998, or 2002 when trust in government was relatively high.
 
So what does this mean for 2014? There are reasons to believe that Democrats shouldn't see major losses. The economy is doing better, and an incumbent president's party rarely loses big twice in midterms. Still, if trust falls, it may trump these structural factors. The thing to watch over the next days, weeks, and months is how big the scandals become. If they become big news, and that seems quite possible, Obama's Democratic party may be heading for major losses in 2014.
 
This article originally appeared on guardian.co.uk


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/obama-irs-ap-scandal-midterm-2014-2013-5#ixzz2TIBLhW9b
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 14, 2013, 12:46:18 PM
Skip to comments.

NBC Investigative Reporter: Admin Has History Of Intimidating Press
Breitbart ^ | May 14, 2013 | Staff
Posted on May 14, 2013, 3:41:29 PM EDT by LucianOfSamasota

Lisa Myers, NBC's investigative journalist, told "Morning Joe" that the administration has a "history" of "coming down hard" on those who talk to the press that don't "tow the line" of the Obama administration's desired narrative.

Video @ link

(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 14, 2013, 01:16:34 PM

The Day the Obama Administration Went All Nixon On Us

Posted: 05/14/2013 8:46 am

 

Spoiler alert: That day was May 7, 2012... but first a quick history lesson.

Okay, I'm one of those folks who obsesses about the late 1960s and early 1970s, but this time it's really important. Because today that is the rallying cry for any presidential scandal, that this one is "worse than Watergate." But the Watergate break-in happened 41 years ago, which means that more than half of all Americans weren't even born yet, so you can't blame a lot of voters if they don't know much about what Watergate and the related scandals of Richard Milhous Nixon were all about.

One of the biggest drivers of Watergate was the seemingly unending war in Vietnam. As opposition increased to a foreign war that ultimately killed 58,000 Americans, for goals that were murky at best, so did government paranoia. At the core of Watergate was a team of shady operatives that were nicknamed "the White House Plumbers" -- because they went after news leaks... get it? In May 1969, after news reports about U.S. bombing activities in Cambodia, Nixon and his then-national security adviser Henry Kissinger enlisted J. Edgar Hoover's FBI to wiretap journalists and national security aides.

Later, one of the worst governmental abuses occurred after whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg leaked the massive Pentagon Papers that exposed governmental lies about the conduct of the war in Vietnam. Nixon's "Plumbers" broke into the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist to dig up dirt to discredit him. Here is what one of Nixon's former aides, Egil Krogh, wrote about it in 2007:

The premise of our action was the strongly held view within certain precincts of the White House that the president and those functioning on his behalf could carry out illegal acts with impunity if they were convinced that the nation's security demanded it. As President Nixon himself said to David Frost during an interview six years later, "When the president does it, that means it is not illegal." To this day the implications of this statement are staggering.

No doubt. Luckily for America, not everyone agreed. Over the next couple of years, criminal charges against Ellsberg were tossed because of the government's misconduct, and Nixon resigned facing certain impeachment over the activities of his Plumbers and the ensuing, elaborate cover-up. The nation mostly rejoiced. The system worked... for a while.

Flash forward to 2012. America had at that point been in an undefined "war on terror" for 11 years -- the same amount of time from the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident that greatly expanded the Vietnam War to the 1975 fall of Saigon. Just as during the 1960s and early 1970s, this terror war had provided government with an excuse to greatly expand its domestic spying on American citizens -- some of that through a law called the Patriot Act and some of it even more dubious, constitutionally.

Then, on May 7, 2012, the Associated Press published an article about the Obama administration's conduct of its war in a country that we'd never declared war on (it was Cambodia in 1969, but Yemen in 2012) and Obama's Justice Department -- for reasons not yet fully known -- went crazy over the leak. This, then, is a reminder of why history matters so much.

Because if we're not careful... it repeats:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative's top executive called a "massive and unprecedented intrusion" into how news organizations gather the news.
 The records obtained by the Justice Department listed outgoing calls for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, for general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., and for the main number for the AP in the House of Representatives press gallery, according to attorneys for the AP. It was not clear if the records also included incoming calls or the duration of the calls.

In all, the government seized the records for more than 20 separate telephone lines assigned to AP and its journalists in April and May of 2012. The exact number of journalists who used the phone lines during that period is unknown, but more than 100 journalists work in the offices where phone records were targeted, on a wide array of stories about government and other matters.



 The AP's CEO said last night that "[t]here can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of the telephone communications of The Associated Press and its reporters" -- and I could not agree with him more. This revelation is deeply troubling -- and has the makings of a major scandal. Sure, you could try to mitigate it by noting, fairly, that accessing these phone records isn't as bad as wiretapping. But that is small solace, indeed. There's every reason to believe that Attorney General Eric Holder signed off on this unwarranted assault on the First Amendment, and if so, he ought to be canned (hasn't he overstayed his welcome, anyway?). Also, you might try to excuse this as a one-off, an ill-advised but isolated incident.

Except that it's not.

Since the day he took office, the Obama administration has undertaken an assault on government whistleblowers -- people informing citizens of what their government doesn't want them to know -- that surpasses anything that Nixon or any other president has done. Since 2009, the Obama administration has brought espionage charges against six whistleblowers. And most of these whistleblowers have been criticizing that way that America conducts its neverending war of the 21st century. One, Thomas Drake, blew the whistle on the illegal warrantless wiretapping that began under George W. Bush. John Kiriakou dropped the dime on illegal U.S. torture -- and was sent away to prison, even as the perpetrators of torture from Dick Cheney to John Yoo continue to walk freely among us.

Nixon had Daniel Ellsberg, and Obama has Bradley Manning of Wikileaks. Okay, so they didn't break into the office of Manning's psychiatrist, but they have detained Manning in a solitary confinement that a UN torture expert called "cruel, inhuman and degrading." Do you feel better about that? Because I don't. The war on whistleblowers, the treatment of Manning, and now this investigation of journalists are all hallmarks of a White House that promised transparency but has been one of the most secretive -- all to the detriment of the public's right to know.

Let's be clear -- this is about Obama... and it is about much, much more than Obama. It is yet another example of how the national security state that has dominated our political life since World War II has corrupted the American soul. It is exactly what Philadelphia's own Benjamin Franklin tried to warn us about -- trading liberty for security, and geting neither. To the conservatives reading this, who warn so much about big government running amok...here it is. To the liberals reading this, who thought that one man named Barack Obama could change the system, he couldn't. Only we, the citizens, can truly change things.

Let's work together. Let's start by repealing the 2001 Authorization of the Use of Force, declare victory in what was formerly known as the war on terror, and resolve that never again will this nation enter into a perpetual and constitutionally dubious war. Let's repeal the most egregious aspects of the USA Patriot Act, hold public hearings on the true extent that the U.S. government has spied on citizens without warrants -- and then bring those practices to an end. And as today's events made crystal clear, let's make America a nation where journalists and other truth-tellers can write stories or reveal information that the government might not like...without fear of intrusion or reprisal. Ironically, many of those type of changes were supposed to happen after Nixon, after Vietnam But they either didn't last, or they didn't come at all.

If greater liberty comes from the latest revelations, Obama's sins -- however bad or not bad they may turn out to be -- will not make things worse than Watergate. This time, it -- the aftermath, anyway -- will be better than Watergate.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/will-bunch/ap-phone-records-whistleblowers_b_3271637.html

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 14, 2013, 08:40:12 PM
http://www.westernjournalism.com/rand-paul-obama-is-drunk-on-power

Rand Paul - Obama drunk on Power
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 14, 2013, 08:42:45 PM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/14/jay-carney-doj-associated-press-phone-records-scandal_n_3273578.html?utm_hp_ref=media


LOL - Jay Carney has nothing left to say to explain away the scandals
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 15, 2013, 04:13:12 AM
The Bogus Obama Administration "Low-Level" Employees Argument
Townhall.com ^ | May 15, 2013 | Katie Pavlich
Posted on May 15, 2013 7:10:50 AM EDT by Kaslin



Throughout Barack Obama's tenure as President of the United States and throughout every major scandal during that time period, nobody important has known anything important about anything...important. Every time a new scandal breaks, the White House comment is "we found out about this through news reports," "we need to wait for all the facts," and of course, "this was just a few low-level employees in X-state or X-city, nobody in Washington was involved."

 Operation Fast and Furious

After it was discovered in early 2011 the Department of Justice [DOJ] had knowingly and willingly trafficked 2500 semi-automatic Ak-47 style rifles, or what President Obama would call "military grade assault rifles," to Mexican drug cartels, DOJ officials in Washington D.C. immediately blamed a "few low-level, rogue ATF agents working in Phoenix." It turned out, not only did senior DOJ officials know about Fast and Furious from the beginning, which started in September 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder received regular memos about the operation. 

Benghazi

In the aftermath of the 9/11 Benghazi terror attack, the entire Obama administration, including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, President Obama, Press Secretary Jay Carney and UN Ambassador Susan Rice, all blamed a rogue and irrelevant YouTube video for the violence. After investigation by the House Oversight Committee, a handful of investigative press reports and whistleblower testimony from acting Libyan Ambassador Greg Hicks last week, we now know Clinton knew the 9/11 attack was in fact a terrorist attack on the day it happened.

"At 2 a.m. Secretary of State Clinton called me along with her senior staff were all on the phone and she asked me what was going on and I briefed her on developments. Most of the conversation was about the search for Ambassador Stevens. It was also about what we were going to do with our personnel in Benghazi and I told her that we would need to evacuate," Hicks said. "The only report that our mission made through every channel was that there had been an attack."

Now that the White House and Clinton have been caught in their lie about a YouTube video, they're blaming the "intelligence community" for bad information.

In addition, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton claimed not to know anything about requests for more security at the consulate in Benghazi. Those requests, of course, were handled by the people below her.

“The specific security requests pertaining to Benghazi, you know were handled by the security professionals in the department,” Clinton told Congress in January. “I didn’t see those requests, they didn’t come to me, I didn’t approve them, I didn’t deny them.”

It turns out, Clinton did in fact receive at least one cable requesting more security.

The House report suggests that Clinton received and signed a request for more security from Gene Cretz, who preceded Christopher Stevens as ambassador to Libya.

“On April 19, 2012, the response cable from the Department of State to Embassy Tripoli, bearing Secretary Clinton’s signature, acknowledges Ambassador Cretz’s request for additional security but instead articulates a plan to scale back security assets for the U.S. Mission in Libya, including the Benghazi Mission,” the House report says.


IRS Targeting Tea Party Groups

As the IRS scandal continues to unfold, so does the story of IRS officials. Initially when this story broke, senior IRS officials denied Washington D.C. had anything to do with the specific and inappropriate targeting of tea party and conservative groups. We were told this was the work a few "low-level" IRS agents working in Cincinnati. Turns out, that isn't true. Senior IRS officials in Washington D.C. knew about, and participated in, the targeting of conservative groups as early as 2011. So much for those "low-level" employees.
We Get Our Information From the News

Another argument repeatedly used by senior Obama administration officials when taking cover in the wake of scandal is, "We only found out about this through news reports."Operation Fast and Furious

President Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano all claimed they found out about Operation Fast and Furious through "news reports."

IRS Targeting Tea Party Groups

Yesterday during a joint press conference with Prime Minister David Cameron, President Obama said, "I first learned about it from the same news reports I think most people learned about this. I think it was on Friday."

Department of Justice Secretly Monitoring the Personal Phones of AP Reporters and Editors

Asked about when exactly the White House knew of the Department of Justice secretly monitoring the personal phones of Associated Press reporters and editors, Press Secretary Jay Carney said the administration found out through "press reports."

“Other than press reports, we have no knowledge of any attempt by the Justice Department to seek phone records of the AP,” he said. “We are not involved in decisions made in connection with criminal investigations, as those matters are handled independently by the Justice Department. Any questions about an ongoing criminal investigation should be directed to the Department of Justice.”

President Obama and his administration have claimed not to know anything about Fast and Furious, Benghazi, the IRS scandal or DOJ targeting the private phones of reporters and editors, but they sure know a whole lot about about openly gay NBA player Jason Collins, feminist activist Sandra Fluke, March Madness, Golf, Whitney Houston, Justin Timberlake, Rush Limbaugh and others.

This is the typical Obama administration scandal playbook: question the "facts," blame those at the bottom, cite press reports for information and repeatedly deny any responsibility.

 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 15, 2013, 05:33:07 AM
IRS official Lerner speedily approved exemption for Obama brother’s ‘charity’

Posted By Charles C. Johnson On 5:06 PM 05/14/2013 In Politics | No Comments



Lois Lerner, the senior IRS official at the center of the decision to target tea party groups for burdensome tax scrutiny, signed paperwork granting tax-exempt status to the Barack H. Obama Foundation, a shady charity headed by the president’s half-brother that operated illegally for years.
 
According to the organization’s filings, Lerner approved the foundation’s tax status within a month of filing, an unprecedented timeline that stands in stark contrast to conservative organizations that have been waiting for more than three years, in some cases, for approval.
 
Lerner also appears to have broken with the norms of tax-exemption approval by granting retroactive tax-exempt status to Malik Obama’s organization.
 
The National Legal and Policy Center filed an official complaint with the IRS in May 2011 asking why the foundation was being allowed to solicit tax-deductible contributions when it had not even applied for an IRS determination. In a New York Post article dated May 8, 2011, an officer of the foundation admitted, “We haven’t been able to find someone with the expertise” to apply for tax-exempt status.
 
Nevertheless, a month later, the Barack H. Obama Foundation had flown through the grueling application process. Lerner granted the organization a 501(c) determination and even gave it a retroactive tax exemption dating back to December 2008.
 
The group’s available paperwork suggests an extremely hurried application and approval process. For example, the group’s 990 filings for 2008 and 2009 were submitted to the IRS on May 30, 2011, and its 2010 filing was submitted on May 23, 2011.
 
Lerner signed the group’s approval [pdf] on June 26, 2011.
 
It is illegal to operate for longer than 27 months without an IRS determination and solicit tax-deductible contributions.
 
The ostensibly Arlington, Va.-based charity was not even registered in Virginia despite the foundation’s website including a donation button that claimed tax-exempt status.
 
Its president and founder, Abon’go “Roy’ Malik Obama, is Barack Obama’s half-brother and was the best man at his wedding, but he has a checkered past. In addition to running his charity, Malik Obama ran unsuccessfully to be the governor of Siaya County in Kenya. He was accused of being a wife beater and seducing the newest of his twelve wives while she was a 17-year-old school girl.
 
Sensing something wrong when he and a group of Missouri State students visited Kenya in 2009, Ken Rutherford, winner of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize for his work on banning landmines, determined that Malik Obama was an “operator” and elected to give a donation of 400 pounds of medical supplies to a local clinic instead.
 
“We didn’t know what he was going to do with them,” Rutherford told the New York Post in 2011.
 
It is also not clear what the Barack H. Obama Foundation actually does. Its website claims the organization has built a madrassa and was building a imam’s house but there is no other evidence that the nonprofit was actually helping poor Kenyan children.
 
“The Obama Foundation raised money on its web page by falsely claiming to be a tax deductible. This bogus charity run by Malik had not even applied and yet subsequently got retroactive tax-deductible status,” Ken Boehm, chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center, told The Daily Caller. Boehm described Malik Obama’s attempt to raise money as constituting “common law fraud and potentially even federal mail fraud.”
 
Boehm doubted that the charity is doing what it says it’s doing and wondered why the charity was given tax-exempt status so quickly after the evidence of wrongdoing came to light.
 
“How do you get retroactive tax-exempt status when you haven’t even applied to get it in the first place?” Boehm said.
 
Lerner continues to draw fire for her handling of the IRS targeting of conservative and citizen groups, but her colleagues have started to defend her, alleging that she behaves “apolitically.”
 
Larry Noble, who served as general counsel at the FEC from 1987 to 2000, hired and promoted Lerner. “I worked with Lois for a number of years and she is really one of the more apolitical people I’ve met,” Noble told The Daily Beast. “That doesn’t mean she doesn’t have political views, but she really focuses on the job and what the rules are. She doesn’t have an agenda.”
 
Lerner could not be reached for comment. Calls to the Barack H. Obama Foundation went directly to the organization’s voicemail and were not returned.
 
Follow Charles on Twitter
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Article printed from The Daily Caller: http://dailycaller.com

URL to article: http://dailycaller.com/2013/05/14/irs-official-lerner-approved-exemption-for-obama-brothers-charity


Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 15, 2013, 05:48:17 AM

IRS approved liberal groups while Tea Party in limbo





Brendan Smialowski, AFP/Getty Images

File photo: Tea Party activists gather on Capitol Hill April 6, 2011 in Washington, DC.

by Gregory Korte, USA TODAY


Published: 05/14/2013 11:26pm




WASHINGTON -- In February 2010, the Champaign Tea Party in Illinois received approval of its tax-exempt status from the IRS in 90 days, no questions asked.

That was the month before the Internal Revenue Service started singling out Tea Party groups for special treatment. There wouldn't be another Tea Party application approved for 27 months.

In that time, the IRS approved perhaps dozens of applications from similar liberal and progressive groups, a USA TODAY review of IRS data shows.

As applications from conservative groups sat in limbo, groups with liberal-sounding names had their applications approved in as little as nine months. With names including words like "Progress" or "Progressive," the liberal groups applied for the same tax status and were engaged in the same kinds of activities as the conservative groups. They included:

• Bus for Progress, a New Jersey non-profit that uses a red, white and blue bus to "drive the progressive change." According to its website, its mission includes "support (for) progressive politicians with the courage to serve the people's interests and make tough choices." It got an IRS approval as a social welfare group in April 2011.

• Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment says it fights against corporate welfare and for increasing the minimum wage. "It would be fair to say we're on the progressive end of the spectrum," said executive director Jeff Ordower. He said the group got tax-exempt status in September 2011 in just nine months after "a pretty simple, straightforward process."



• Progress Florida, granted tax-exempt status in January 2011, is lobbying the Florida Legislature to expand Medicaid under a provision of the Affordable Care Act, one of President Obama's signature accomplishments. The group did not return phone calls. "We're busy fighting to build a more progressive Florida and cannot take your call right now," the group's voice mail said.

Like the Tea Party groups, the liberal groups sought recognition as social welfare groups under Section 501(c)(4) of the tax code, based on activities like "citizen participation" or "voter education and registration."

In a conference call with reporters last week, the IRS official responsible for granting tax-exempt status said that it was a mistake to subject Tea Party groups to additional scrutiny based solely on the organization's name. But she said ideology played no part in the process.

"The selection of these cases where they used the names was not a partisan selection," said Lois Lerner, director of exempt organizations. She said progressive groups were also selected for greater scrutiny based on their names, but did not provide details. "I don't have them off the top of my head," she said.

The IRS did not respond to follow-up questions Tuesday.

Congressional critics say the IRS's actions suggest a political motives: "This administration seems to have a culture of politics above all else," said Rep. Bill Flores, R-Texas. "A lot of the actions they take have a political side first, and put government second."

Flores complained to the IRS last year after the Waco Tea Party's tax-exempt application was mired in red tape. The IRS asked the group for information that was "overreaching and impossible to comply with," Flores said: Transcripts of radio interviews, copies of social media posts and details on "close relationships" with political candidates.

When Flores complained last year -- asking pointed questions about the IRS treatment of Tea Party groups -- the IRS response didn't acknowledge that it had treated conservative groups differently. "They did more than sidestep the issue," he said. "They flipped me the finger."

Before the IRS started separating out Tea Party applications, getting tax-exempt status was routine -- even for conservative groups. The Champaign Tea Party's treasurer, Karen Olsen, said the process was smooth, with no follow-up questions from the IRS.

Olsen, a retired IRS revenue agent, defended the agency.

"If you suddenly see a great increase in some kind of activity, and you don't understand why, then it might be reasonable to look more closely at what's happening with those applications," she said. "I'm not certain that there was an error on the part of the IRS at all. I know that's not a popular opinion."

Some liberal groups did get additional scrutiny, although they still got their tax-exempt status while the Tea Party moratorium was in effect. For the "independent progressive" group Action for a Progressive Future, which runs the Rootsaction.org web site, the tax-exempt process took 18 months and also involved intrusive questions.

Co-founder Jeff Cohen said tax-exempt status is a privilege, so he didn't mind answering the intrusive questions, as long as those questions were consistent and fair.

"From my perspective, if the IRS can hold up legitimate Tea Party applications today and get away with it, then who knows if progressive groups will be held up and specially scrutinized in a few years. It's utterly unacceptable, if that's what happened," he said.

Follow @gregorykorte on Twitter.


Copyright 2013 USATODAY.com
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 15, 2013, 07:13:19 AM
Obama's Scandals Stem from His Lawless Presidency


Posted 05/14/2013 07:05 PM ET





President Obama answers questions ranging from Benghazi to the IRS during a joint press conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron at the... View Enlarged Image

Last Friday, after the Associated Press learned about the Justice Department's sweeping seizure of its phone records, AP CEO Gary Pruitt said "there can be no possible justification" for the action.
 
No doubt that's true. But there also seems to be no possible justification for the many other scandals now swamping the Obama administration — from Benghazi, to the IRS scandal to the White House's attempt to shake down health companies for ObamaCare money.
 
Except that they all stem from a common root — President Obama's callous disregard for the rule of law.
 
When not grousing about "this big, messy, tough democracy," or joking about having the IRS audit groups that don't do his bidding, or talking about how "we're gonna punish our enemies" (meaning his political opponents), Obama has repeatedly and casually flouted legal roadblocks whenever they got in the way of his agenda.
 
Last year, for example, his Health and Human Services department said it would allow waivers to work requirements for welfare benefits, despite the welfare reform law's clear prohibition against such waivers.
 
His National Labor Relations Board put out a "snap elections" rule meant to achieve the same goal as a union-backed "card check" law that Congress defeated. And he unilaterally gutted No Child Left Behind by offering blanket waivers to states.
 
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor issued a scathing report on the Obama administration last October, titled "The Imperial Presidency," in which he documented these and dozens of other examples of "breakdowns in the rule of law" under Obama.
 
Even the New York Times took notice of the "increasingly deliberate pattern by the administration to circumvent lawmakers."
 
And on at least two occasions, courts have ruled that Obama's actions violated the law.
 
In January, a federal court said Obama improperly made several "recess" appointments, despite the fact that the Senate was still in session.
 
In April, a judge ruled against Obama's effort to enact parts of the controversial DREAM immigration law by executive order, saying the Department of Homeland Security "does not have discretion to refuse to initiate removal proceedings" of illegal immigrants.
 
So it should come as no surprise that other government officials have been following Obama's lead, brushing aside legal niceties when they got in the way of their political agendas.
 
In its attempt to determine the source of a leak about a foiled terrorist attack that AP reported on, for example, the Justice Department seized records of 20 phone lines that more than 100 journalists had access to.
 
That's despite a legal requirement that such seizures be a last resort and tightly focused.
 
AP's Pruitt called the DOJ's action an "overboard collection" of information that could "reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the news gathering activities undertaken by the AP."
 
The DOJ's seizure looks less like an attempt to ferret out one whistle-blower and more like an extra-legal attempt to intimidate future whistle-blowers and the press.
 
The IRS scandal fits this same pattern. As it turns out, the agency had been systematically targeting conservative groups during Obama's first term — a clear, blatant and deeply troubling violation of law — which it then conveniently failed to disclose to lawmakers when asked about complaints of IRS intimidation by conservative groups.
 
In addition, one news outlet — ProPublica — now admits that IRS officials leaked confidential tax-exempt application documents submitted by several conservative groups.
 
Meanwhile, one conservative organization credibly claims that the IRS disclosed its donor list to an opposing liberal group.
 
Given the standards set by Obama, it's no wonder IRS officials felt comfortable taking advantage of this gold mine of information to help advance the liberal cause.
 
With Benghazi, administration officials clearly felt that it was acceptable to mislead the American public about the nature of the attacks on the consulate simply to help Obama politically.
 
And that it was OK to intimidate whistle-blowers who could unravel this scandal if they had the chance to talk.
 
As Ron Fournier, editorial director of National Journal, put it this week, "This is now clear: The Obama administration let political considerations cloud the public record."
 
Then there's the emerging scandal involving Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who has been strong-arming health care companies to donate money to a private group closely tied to the White House and charged with helping to implement ObamaCare.
 
The Campaign Legal Center's Meredith McGehee told the Washington Post recently that Sebelius seemed to be "using the power of government to compel giving or insinuate that giving is going to be looked at favorably by the government."
 
Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., compared Sebelius' actions to Iran-Contra, because, like the Reagan administration, she is trying to raise private funds to finance something for which Congress refused to appropriate money.
 
"Such private fundraising circumvents the constitutional requirement that only Congress may appropriate funds," Alexander explained.
 
In the lawless culture Obama has cultivated over the years, Sebelius no doubt feels justified in doing "whatever it takes" to get ObamaCare off the ground.
 
But as Cantor put it in his report, and the press and the public at large are only now beginning to understand, "this is no way to govern."
 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 15, 2013, 07:50:56 PM
Obamacare to penalize nearly half a million Native Americans



Get short URL
 Published time: May 15, 2013 20:43



Reuters / Rebecca Cook

Native Americans are entitled to free and subsidized medical care at some federally-funded health clinics, but 'Obamacare' will soon force many of them to buy insurance or else face hefty fines if they are not “Indian enough”.

“A lot of folks are going to get stuck with the bill,” Jay Stiener of the National Council of Urban Indian Health told the Associated Press.

Members of federally-recognized American Indian tribes have received government-funded health services since 1787. Throughout the US, there are 33 hospitals and 59 health centers that provide services including prenatal care, baby well-checks, dentistry and eye glasses to Native Americans.

The US government has treaty obligations to care for the well-being of Native Americans, but may soon abandon many of its legal responsibilities. President Obama’s health care reform will force thousands of Native Americans to purchase their own health insurance or pay a minimum fine of $695 to the Internal Revenue Service. Indian health advocacy groups estimate up to 480,000 people will be affected, AP reports.

Only those who can prove that they are “Indian enough” will be exempt from the mandate. Native Americans will have to show documentation that they belong to one out of 560 tribes that are federally recognized by the US Bureau of Indian Affairs.

There are more than 100 US tribes that are recognized by states, but not the federal government. Members of these tribes would no longer receive the free or subsidized healthcare that they are guaranteed by the Indian Health Service (IHS), which is a division within the US Department of Health and Human Services.

“This could lead to some tribal citizens being required to purchase insurance or face penalties even though they are covered by the HIS,” Rep. Tom Cole, a Republican congressman and member of the Chickasaw Nation tribe, told AP.

Additionally, Native Americans who do not have documentation of their tribe membership will be forced to purchase insurance or pay a fine. This becomes particularly troublesome for Native Americans under the age of 18, since many tribes only provide official membership to adults. Even if both parents of the minors are members, their healthcare coverage may not apply to their children unless they also have the proper documentation.

The health care reform would also complicate the situation for Native Americans who live in metropolitan areas or suburbs. Some tribal governments require members to live on the reservation to gain documentation, which few people do. Nearly two-thirds of American Indians and Alaska Natives currently live in cities, which hinders their ability to receive membership cards from their tribes.

News of the restrictions that Obamacare will impose upon American Indians has sparked outrage, particularly among those who will face financial consequences due to something that is out of their control.

“I’m no less Indian than I was yesterday, and just because the definition of who is Indian got changed in the law doesn’t mean that it’s fair for people to be penalized,” Liz DeRouen, a Native American who usually receives healthcare at a government-funded clinic in North Carolina, told AP. “If I suddenly have to pay for my own health insurance to avoid the fine, I won’t be able to afford it.”

DeRouen is a former tribal administrator for the Dry Creek Rancheria Band of Pomo Indians, but she lost her membership due to an argument with other members. But even though she lost documentation as a tribe member, she is still genetically considered a Native American.

The Obama administration currently has no solution to the hardships the Affordable Care Act will inflict upon the Native American population, but the IRS and the US Treasury have jointly scheduled a public hearing forMay 29to discuss establishment of who qualifies for the exemption from the insurance coverage requirement.

Nearly 30 percent of all Native Americans live below the poverty line, and forcing them to pay fines or purchase insurance would likely just increase this number.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 15, 2013, 08:00:08 PM
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/epa-waives-fees-for-92-of-liberal-groups-applies-them-to-conservative-groups


New scandal emerging. 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 17, 2013, 09:52:07 AM
Amid sequester and scandal in Washington, the White House announced Friday that the president and first lady will be hosting another concert as part of their “In Performance at the White House” later this month.
 
The event will be held in the East Room of the White House and honor singer and song writer Carole King, who will be awarded the 2013 Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. King will be the first woman to receive the award, the White House noted in their announcement.
 
The program — to be streamed on the White House website and broadcast on PBS stations the evening of May 28 — will also feature performances by Gloria Estefan, Billy Joel, Jesse McCartney, Emeli Sandé, James Taylor, Trisha Yearwood and King herself.
 


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In 2002, Carole King sang “You’ve Got a Friend” for Cuban dictator Fidel Castro at a warming-relations dinner in Havana.
 
“The Gershwin Prize commemorates George and Ira Gershwin, the legendary American songwriting team whose extensive manuscript collections reside in the Library of Congress,” the press announcement explains. “The prize is awarded to musicians whose lifetime contributions in the field of popular song exemplify the standard of excellence associated with the Gershwins.”
 
Past winners of the Gershwin award have included Stevie Wonder in 2009, Sir Paul McCartney in 2010, and Burt Bacharach and Hal David in 2012.
 
“Carole King: The Library of Congress Gershwin Prize In Performance at the White House” will be the eleventh “In Performance at the White House” program that the Barack and Michelle Obama have hosted.
 
“Starting in February 2009, these events have honored the musical genius of Stevie Wonder, Sir Paul McCartney, Burt Bacharach and Hal David; celebrated Hispanic musical heritage during Hispanic Heritage Month; marked Black History Month with events featuring music from the Civil Rights Movement, Motown, Memphis Soul and the Blues; spotlighted Broadway and the unique spirit of the American musical; and explored the rich roots and resiliency of Country Music,” the press announcement reads.
 


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In recent days, the administration has come under fire for the Internal Revenue Service targeting of conservative groups, the administration’s handling of the terror attack in Benghazi, Libya, and the Department of Justice’s secret gathering of Associated Press phone records.
 
Follow Caroline on Twitter


Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2013/05/17/amid-scandals-white-house-announces-star-studded-concert-at-white-house/#ixzz2TZNR8LUu
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 18, 2013, 11:31:57 AM
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2013/05/18/Joe-Scarborough-Piers-Morgan-Concede-gun-rights-activists-not-crazy



Walls are caving in
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 18, 2013, 03:27:17 PM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/18/obama-whistleblowers_n_3294417.html?ref=topbar


LMFAO - even the libs are slamming O-TWINK
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 18, 2013, 03:31:11 PM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/17/huma-abedin-state-department-consulting_n_3294677.html?utm_source=concierge&utm_medium=onsite&utm_campaign=sailthru%2Bslider%2B



LMFAO - the entire Obama Admn is one big Whore House
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 18, 2013, 03:33:50 PM
http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/05/17/while-the-irs-abused-the-tea-party-was-it-giving-muslim-groups-easier-treatment

Rank fraud abuse and corruption
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 18, 2013, 04:23:08 PM
Obama’s Defenders: He’s Not Corrupt, Just Dishonest and Incompetent


Seth Mandel | @SethAMandel 05.17.2013 - 12:40 PM


http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2013/05/17/obamas-defenders-hes-not-corrupt-just-dishonest-and-incompetent



There was a running joke in the fall of 2008 that John McCain should simply re-air Hillary Clinton’s “3 a.m. phone call” ad, which highlighted Barack Obama’s lack of experience and meager knowledge of world affairs, and just tack on “I’m John McCain, and I approve this message” at the end of the ad. The point was that thanks to the bitter primary battle between the Clintons and Obama, Democrats had already developed the most effective lines of attack against Obama, and Republicans needed only to nod their heads in agreement.
 
Something similar is taking place amid the several Obama administration scandals that have surfaced almost simultaneously. (There has been new information on Benghazi, but the issue itself isn’t new; the IRS and AP phone records scandals, in contrast, hit less than a week apart.) Both Democrats and Republicans are raising the prospect that the GOP could get carried away or bungle their response to the scandals–surely a possibility. One way to prevent that, however, would be to simply echo the way Obama’s supporters have tried to defend him.
 
As I wrote on Monday, one clear lesson from this is the danger of ever-expanding, unelected, unaccountable bureaucracy at the center of an increasingly powerful central government. That also happens to be the crux of President Obama’s governing strategy. Indeed, the IRS’s reach and power is expanded as part of ObamaCare–itself an expansion of government along demonstrably failed strategic lines. So it’s no surprise that after the IRS systematically targeted conservative and pro-Israel groups in order to eviscerate the First Amendment rights of those who disagreed with President Obama (and at the direction of high-ranking elected Democrats), the IRS official responsible for overseeing tax-exempt groups has since been moved over to run the IRS office responsible for ObamaCare.
 
Because this critique of big government is so difficult to deny without appearing foolish, many on the left have tried another tack to minimize the scandals. They argue that President Obama is not corrupt, but rather that he is dishonest and incompetent. This was the defense (such as it was) of Obama and Clinton with regard to Benghazi. The Accountability Review Board, which sought to exonerate Clinton as much as possible, noted that the State Department was a complete mess under Clinton. Security requests were ignored, because Clinton didn’t take the time to understand what was going on in Libya. And the chain of command was difficult to discern, leading to total chaos within the department. In other words, Clinton, who seems to be planning a run for the presidency, is a dangerously poor executive with a shallow grasp of geopolitical realities.
 
And a similar defense has arisen from the left of Obama on the issue. Here is Jackson Diehl of the Washington Post claiming that Benghazi was brought about by incompetence and carelessness. And here is the New York Times editorial board trying to shift the conversation from Obama’s initial failure in Libya to his ongoing failure in Libya. Liberal “defenses” of Obama and Clinton paint a picture of two hopelessly unqualified leaders.
 
It doesn’t get much better from there. As Pete noted this morning, Obama’s former chief strategist David Axelrod defended his former boss by saying that the government has become so vast and unwieldy that Obama couldn’t possibly know what his own government was doing or why it was doing it. The fact that Democrats can acknowledge this while still planning to make the government larger and less accountable shows the ideological nature of their obsession with expanding the state at the expense of the people.
 
And Jeffrey Rosen utilizes this explanation for the Obama administration’s seizure of the Associated Press phone records. Obama isn’t Nixon, Rosen argues, nor George W. Bush. According to Rosen he’s more like the maniacally antidemocratic Woodrow Wilson (again, this is a defense of Obama):
 

Unlike Obama, George W. Bush never ran for president by touting his praise of government transparency and whistleblowing. As a result, while Bush never pretended to be a defender of whistleblowers, he was sensitive, at least in his first term, to avoiding subpoenas that might threaten press freedom…. Obama has no similar self-doubts about his own credentials as a First Amendment advocate: Didn’t he defend the American free speech tradition at the U.N. even as he put pressure on YouTube to reconsider its decision not to remove the Innocence of the Muslims video?
 
[…]
 
And that law points to a better historic comparison. Obama’s rediscovery of the 1917 Espionage Act is grimly appropriate, since the president whose behavior on civil liberties he is most directly channeling isn’t, in fact, Richard Nixon or George W. Bush. It’s Woodrow Wilson.
 
Rosen, who calls this “technocratic arrogance,” is making two separate points here. One point is the inevitability of abuse when the president locks out criticism and empowers unelected bureaucrats to put his worldview into practice. The other point is that Rosen makes Obama out to be a fundamentally dishonest person. Obama gave grand addresses praising free speech while acting to undermine it. Obama offered self-righteous blather about the supposed evils conducted by his predecessors, and therefore he was entitled to expand on those supposed evils.
 
Conservatives are probably thinking they couldn’t have said it better themselves. And liberals seem determined to save them the trouble.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 18, 2013, 09:23:34 PM
http://www.salon.com/2013/05/02/the_foreclosure_fraud_settlement_was_a_big_dud


Lmfao. 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 19, 2013, 10:35:38 AM
Report: US apologizes to Israel for disclosing that Israel was behind Damscus strikes
 Israel Matzav ^ | 5/19/13 | Carl in Jerusalem

Posted on Sunday, May 19, 2013 1:07:07 PM

Israel Radio reported this morning (Sunday) that the United States has apologized to Israel for disclosing that Israel was behind the strikes on Damascus two weeks ago. According to the report, the decision to disclose that Israel was behind the strikes was made at a low level in the Pentagon, and the US Department of Defense is investigating how that happened. According to the report, Israel believes that it is now facing much stronger threats from Bashar al-Assad as a result of the disclosure.


(Excerpt) Read more at israelmatzav.blogspot.co m ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 19, 2013, 06:34:41 PM
Report: Obama Administration Apologizes for Another National Security Leak

May. 19, 2013



http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/05/19/report-obama-administration-apologizes-for-another-national-security-leak




Israel Channel 2 broadcast this satellite image showing a Damascus airport warehouse before and after the airstrike (Screenshot: Channel 2 News)
 
The Justice Department’s seizure of Associated Press reporters’ phone records was reportedly one element of a “sweeping” federal investigation to find out who leaked classified information about a failed Al-Qaeda plot to bomb an American airliner.
 
Now, the Obama administration has reportedly apologized to Israel for another leak of classified information to the media, one that occurred earlier this month and which Israeli officials are concerned could place Israeli lives at risk.
 
Israel Radio’s diplomatic correspondent Chico Menashe reported Sunday morning (via the Jerusalem Post):
 

American officials apologized to their Israeli counterparts for confirming that Israel was behind the airstrikes on the Damascus airport earlier this month, Israel Radio reported on Sunday.
 
The confirmation reportedly came from the lower ranks at the Pentagon, and the reasons for the leak are being investigated.
 
Menashe tweeted: “The U.S. has apologized to Israel for leaking details of the attack in Syria. Senior administration officials said to their [Israeli] counterparts that they are examining the issue and that low-level [officials] were responsible for the leak.”
 
Menashe also wrote, “US officials told that they [will] review the matter. The leak forced Assad to react harshly.”
 




U.S. apologized for leaking details of Israel. US officials told that they review the matter.The leak forced assad to react harshly.
 about 19 hours ago via TweetCaster for AndroidReplyRetweetFavor ite


The New York Times attributed its report about the bombing on May 3 to an Obama administration official: “Israel aircraft bombed a target in Syria overnight Thursday, an Obama administration official said Friday night, as United States officials said they were considering military options, including carrying out their own airstrikes.”
 
CNN, which broke the story first on May 3, quoted two unnamed U.S. officials:
 

The United States believes Israel has conducted an airstrike into Syria, two U.S. officials first told CNN.
 
U.S. and Western intelligence agencies are reviewing classified data showing Israel most likely conducted a strike in the Thursday-Friday time frame, according to both officials. This is the same time frame that the U.S. collected additional data showing Israel was flying a high number of warplanes over Lebanon.
 
One official said the United States had limited information so far and could not yet confirm those are the specific warplanes that conducted a strike. Based on initial indications, the U.S. does not believe Israeli warplanes entered Syrian airspace to conduct the strikes.
 
Two weeks later, Israel still has not officially taken responsibility for the bombings, which allegedly targeted Iranian Fateh-110 missiles intended to bolster Hezbollah’s arsenal.
 
Israeli security analysts suggest that confirmation of Israel Defense Forces involvement – even if leaked via American sources – not only could potentially endanger any agents still on the ground in Syria, but would also put pressure on embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad to retaliate against the Jewish state.
 
Barry Rubin, director of the Global Research in International Affairs Center, told TheBlaze, “It requires the Syrians to react officially rather than deny that it happened or that it was an accident. It forces Syria and Hezbollah and Iran to react officially and say they want to seek revenge, which makes things more dangerous for Israel.”
 
“Can you imagine if things were reversed and somebody did that to the U.S.?” he added.
 
Assad may already be responding. Britain’s Sunday Times reported that the Syrian military has placed advanced weapons on standby to strike Israel, in the event Israel strikes targets again in Syria.
 
The report said that reconnaissance satellite images show Syria has surface-to-surface Tishreen missiles ready for use and aimed at Tel Aviv. Each can carry a half ton payload, according to the paper.
 
In an interview with CNN shortly after the airstrikes, Syria’s Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal al Mekdad called the attack a “declaration of war,” adding that Syria would retaliate in its own time and way.
 
At the opening of the weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu referred to the tumult facing the Middle East, calling it “one of its most sensitive periods in decades with the escalating upheaval in Syria at its center.”
 
“We are closely monitoring the developments and changes there and we are prepared for any scenario. The government of Israel is working responsibly and with determination and sagacity, in order to ensure the supreme interest of the state of Israel – the security of Israeli citizens in keeping with the policy that we have set, to – as much as possible – prevent the transfer of advanced weapons to Hezbollah and to [other] terrorist elements,” he said.
 
“We will work to ensure Israelis’ security interest in the future as well,” Netanyahu added.
 
Last week, Russia said it would move forward with a sale of S-300 anti-aircraft missile systems to Syria, after Netanyahu made a visit to Moscow in person to try to convince the Russians to halt the deal. Once deployed, the advanced system will make future Israeli sorties over Syria more difficult, as well as rendering any notion of a U.S. or European-led no-fly zone much more complicated to implement.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 20, 2013, 05:13:27 AM
A rare peek into a Justice Department leak probe
By Ann E. Marimow, Published: May 19
When the Justice Department began investigating possible leaks of classified information about North Korea in 2009, investigators did more than obtain telephone records of a working journalist suspected of receiving the secret material.

They used security badge access records to track the reporter’s comings and goings from the State Department, according to a newly obtained court affidavit. They traced the timing of his calls with a State Department security adviser suspected of sharing the classified report. They obtained a search warrant for the reporter’s personal e-mails.

The case of Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, the government adviser, and James Rosen, the chief Washington correspondent for Fox News, bears striking similarities to a sweeping leaks investigation disclosed last week in which federal investigators obtained records over two months of more than 20 telephone lines assigned to the Associated Press.

At a time when President Obama’s administration is under renewed scrutiny for an unprecedented number of leak investigations, the Kim case provides a rare glimpse into the inner workings of one such probe.

Court documents in the Kim case reveal how deeply investigators explored the private communications of a working journalist — and raise the question of how often journalists have been investigated as closely as Rosen was in 2010. The case also raises new concerns among critics of government secrecy about the possible stifling effect of these investigations on a critical element of press freedom: the exchange of information between reporters and their sources.

“Search warrants like these have a severe chilling effect on the free flow of important information to the public,” said First Amendment lawyer Charles Tobin, who has represented the Associated Press, but not in the current case. “That’s a very dangerous road to go down.”

Obama last week defended the Justice Department’s handling of the investigation involving the AP, which is focused on who leaked information to the news organization about a foiled plot involving the al-Qaeda affiliate in Yemen. AP executives and First Amendment watchdogs have criticized the Justice Department in part for the broad scope of the phone records it secretly subpoenaed from AP offices in Washington, Hartford, Conn., and New York.

“The latest events show an expansion of this law enforcement technique,” said attorney Abbe Lowell, who is defending Kim on federal charges filed in 2010 that he disclosed national defense information. A trial is possible as soon as 2014. “Individual reporters or small time periods have turned into 20 [telephone] lines and months of records with no obvious attempt to be targeted or narrow.”

The president said press freedoms must be balanced against the protection of U.S. personnel overseas. According to the office of Ronald Machen Jr., the U.S. attorney for the District, its prosecutors followed federal regulations by first seeking the information through other means before subpoenaing media phone records. Machen’s office is investigating both the Kim and AP cases. The Justice Department said in a statement that in both cases it had abided by “all applicable laws, regulations, and longstanding Department of Justice policies intended to safeguard the First Amendment interests of the press in reporting the news and the public in receiving it.”

The Obama administration has pursued more such cases than all previous administrations combined, including one against a former CIA official charged with leaking U.S. intelligence on Iran and another against a former FBI contract linguist who pleaded guilty to leaking to a blogger.

The Kim case began in June 2009, when Rosen reported that U.S. intelligence officials were warning that North Korea was likely to respond to United Nations sanctions with more nuclear tests. The CIA had learned the information, Rosen wrote, from sources inside North Korea.

The story was published online the same day that a top-secret report was made available to a small circle within the intelligence community — including Kim, who at the time was a State Department arms expert with security clearance.

FBI investigators used the security-badge data, phone records and e-mail exchanges to build a case that Kim shared the report with Rosen soon after receiving it, court records show.

In the documents, FBI agent Reginald Reyes described in detail how Kim and Rosen moved in and out of the State Department headquarters at 2201 C St. NW a few hours before the story was published on June 11, 2009.

“Mr. Kim departed DoS at or around 12:02 p.m. followed shortly thereafter by the reporter at or around 12:03 p.m.,” Reyes wrote. Next, the agent said, “Mr. Kim returned to DoS at or around 12:26 p.m. followed shortly thereafter by the reporter at or around 12:30 p.m.”

The activity, Reyes wrote in an affidavit, suggested a “face-to-face” meeting between the two men. “Within a few hours after those nearly simultaneous exits and entries at DoS, the June 2009 article was published on the Internet,” he wrote.

The court documents don’t name Rosen, but his identity was confirmed by several officials, and he is the author of the article at the center of the investigation. Rosen and a spokeswoman for Fox News did not return phone and e-mail messages seeking comment.

Reyes wrote that there was evidence Rosen had broken the law, “at the very least, either as an aider, abettor and/or co-conspirator.” That fact distinguishes his case from the probe of the AP, in which the news organization is not the likely target.

Using italics for emphasis, Reyes explained how Rosen allegedly used a “covert communications plan” and quoted from an e-mail exchange between Rosen and Kim that seems to describe a secret system for passing along information.

In the exchange, Rosen used the alias “Leo” to address Kim and called himself “Alex,” an apparent reference to Alexander Butterfield, the man best known for running the secret recording system in the Nixon White House, according to the affidavit.

Rosen instructed Kim to send him coded signals on his Google account, according to a quote from his e-mail in the affidavit: “One asterisk means to contact them, or that previously suggested plans for communication are to proceed as agreed; two asterisks means the opposite.”

He also wrote, according to the affidavit: “What I am interested in, as you might expect, is breaking news ahead of my competitors” including “what intelligence is picking up.” And: “I’d love to see some internal State Department analyses.”

Court documents show abundant evidence gathered from Kim’s office computer and phone records, but investigators said they needed to go a step further to build their case, seizing two days’ worth of Rosen’s personal e-mails — and all of his e-mail exchanges with Kim.

Privacy protections limit searching or seizing a reporter’s work, but not when there is evidence that the journalist broke the law against unauthorized leaks. A federal judge signed off on the search warrant — agreeing that there was probable cause that Rosen was a co-conspirator.

Machen’s office said in a statement that it is limited in commenting on an open case, but that the government “exhausted all reasonable non-media alternatives for collecting the evidence” before seeking a search warrant.

However, it remains an open question whether it’s ever illegal, given the First Amendment’s protection of press freedom, for a reporter to solicit information. No reporter, including Rosen, has been prosecuted for doing so.

In the hours before Rosen’s story was published, Kim was one of more than 95 people who saw the intelligence report through a classified database, according to court documents.

Kim’s phone records showed that seven calls lasting from 18 seconds to more than 11 minutes were placed between Kim’s desk telephone and Rosen’s cellphone and desk phone at the State Department, according to the court documents. Investigators pulled at least two months of phone records from Kim’s desk and found 36 calls with numbers associated with Rosen.

Investigators also scrutinized computer records and found that someone who had logged in with Kim’s user profile viewed the classified report “at or around” the same time two calls were placed from his desk phone to Rosen, according to the documents.

Two months later on an August evening, diplomatic security secretly entered Kim’s office and found a copy of Rosen’s article next to his computer. Kim, who worked in a secure facility, was subject to daily office inspections. The Fox News article was also in “plain view” during follow-up visits in late September.

Kim initially told the FBI in an interview that month that he had met the reporter in March but had not had contact since. Later, Kim admitted to additional contacts, according to the affidavit.



© The Washington Post Company
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 20, 2013, 07:56:00 AM
Chief IRS Counsel Got Jeremiah Wright's Church out of IRS Probe Before Joining Agency



http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/05/19/Chief-IRS-counsel-bailed-Jeremiah-Wright-s-church-out-of-IRS-probe-in-2008


------------------------------------------------------------------------------

by Matthew Boyle

20 May 2013

 


News reports from the time indicate the now-chief counsel of the IRS, William Wilkins, helped a church connected to President Barack Obama’s friend Rev. Jeremiah Wright get out of an IRS probe in 2008 while working as a private attorney.
 
“Lawyers from Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr have won the dismissal of an IRS case against United Church of Christ, Sen. Barack Obama's denomination,” The American Lawyer’s Zach Lowe wrote on May 22, 2008.
 
The IRS initiated an investigation early this year after a speech by Obama at a 50th anniversary celebration of the church last June. It was a reference by Obama to his presidential candidacy in a talk otherwise focused on faith that caught the agency's attention. Tax laws prohibit non-profits--including churches--from engaging in political speech or promoting candidates. The IRS can withdraw an organization's tax-free status if the organization is found to violate the rule.
 
Lowe noted that Obama had been a “member of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago--a UCC congregation--for more than 20 years. The church has been in the headlines for several months now as the congregation lead by the controversial Reverend Jeremiah Wright.”
 
William Wilkins, then a WilmerHale law firm partner, said, “We were so interested in the case we offered to do it pro bono."
 
Lowe wrote that Wilkins and other firm lawyers worked with the church’s national counsel, Donald Clark, and proved they had invited Obama to the event before he announced his candidacy for president. “Evidence presented in a letter sent to the IRS in late March pointed to ground rules the organization had established for Obama's visit; the church even cautioned churchgoers against engaging in any political activity,” Lowe wrote. “Had the IRS pursued the matter, it would have raised serious questions about the First Amendment's application to church activities, Wilkins says.”
 
When President Obama nominated Wilkins to be the IRS’s chief counsel on April 17, 2009, his White House cited Wilkins’ experience as an attorney on issues relating to tax-exempt status organization. “He has a broad tax practice that includes counseling nonprofit organizations, business entities, and investment funds on tax compliance, business transactions, and government investigations,” according to the White House release announcing Wilkins' nomination.
 
Prior to joining WilmerHale, Wilkins was Staff Director and Chief Counsel of the United States Senate Committee on Finance. Wilkins joined the Democratic staff of the Committee in 1981 and served as tax counsel before becoming Staff Director and Chief Counsel in 1987.
 
In the release, which included the announcement of a second Treasury Department nominee, President Obama himself said he was "confident in the abilities of these two fine public servants as we work to turn our economy around and give American families the relief they need during these difficult times. Under the leadership of Secretary Geithner, they will work to serve the American people and bring their unique areas of expertise to the job as we work to put America on the path to prosperity."

Upon the resignation of Steven Miller, several news outlets have pointed out that Wilkins will likely become a public target of congressional investigators digging into the scandal surrounding the IRS’s targeting of conservative and Tea Party organizations.
 
Reuters wrote that GOP lawmakers’ aides said their bosses will soon “focus” on Wilkins as they “seek to determine whether the White House acted improperly.”
 
“Wilkins' office was made aware of the targeting of conservative groups as early as August 2011, according to the inspector general report,” Reuters wrote. “The report does not make clear whether Wilkins - who reports to the Treasury Department's general counsel - himself knew of the targeting in 2011, or when he first learned of it.”
 
“Another question is whether Wilkins, whose office employs about 1,600 lawyers, might have taken the matter elsewhere within the Obama administration,” Reuters added. “The IRS issued a statement saying Wilkins did not participate in the August 2011 meeting, which the agency said involved ‘staff attorneys several layers below Wilkins.’”
 
As Town Hall magazine highlighted recently, White House spokesman Jay Carney has already been pressured by reporters on Wilkins' role in this scandal. 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 23, 2013, 08:36:36 AM
Too-Big-To-Jail Dogs Obama's Justice Department As Government Documents Raise Questions


Posted: 05/22/2013 10:04 pm EDT  |  Updated: 05/23/2013 9:15 am EDT




The U.S. Department of Justice appears to have neither conducted nor received any analyses that would show whether criminal charges against large financial institutions would harm the economy, potentially undermining a key DOJ argument for why the world’s biggest banks have escaped indictment.

Testimony by a top Justice official and fresh documents made public on Wednesday during a House financial services committee hearing revealed that financial regulators and the Treasury Department did not provide warnings to prosecutors weighing the economic consequences or fallout in the financial system of criminal indictments against large financial groups. DOJ also could find no records that would substantiate its previous claims that it weighed potentially negative economic or financial impacts when considering criminal charges, said Mythili Raman, acting assistant attorney general for the criminal division.

Wednesday’s revelations are likely to increase criticism of the Obama administration, which has been accused of a lackluster enforcement record against big banks in the financial crisis and other matters.

It also may put further pressure on the Justice Department to strengthen future prosecutions. Recently, instead of filing criminal charges against large financial groups, federal prosecutors have begun to file criminal cases against subsidiaries. Observers including lawyers at Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, a top defense firm, have warned that Justice may expand its limited use of criminal indictments in part due to public pressure.

Leading Democratic and Republican lawmakers, including Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), have pilloried the administration for its approach, which they allege has been focused on settlements at the expense of justice.

The lawmakers, and others, may be encouraged to apply even more public pressure on efforts to crack down on big banks. Past missteps by the Obama administration and by big banks have added momentum to efforts to forcibly break up large financial groups.

The hearing comes as DOJ, Treasury and financial regulators battle perceptions that they consider some large financial institutions are either too big or too important to the economy to fail. Congressional Republicans and some leading current and former regulators have claimed that the 2010 law overhauling financial regulation known as Dodd-Frank failed to end “too-big-to-fail.” The Obama administration and most regulators insist that if the problem has not yet been solved, it soon will be.




Attorney General Eric Holder told Congress in March that some banks were “too large,” impeding attempts to bring criminal prosecutions. Holder's comment is perhaps the most explicit public admission of concern by a senior Obama administration official regarding big banks.

Though Holder has since attempted to walk back those comments, at the time he said that the size of large financial institutions “has an inhibiting influence -- impact on our ability to bring resolutions that I think would be more appropriate.” He further told lawmakers: “And I think that is something that we -- you all -- need to consider.”

DOJ officials have previously defended the lack of criminal charges against banks suspected of wrongdoing in large part by pointing to the so-called “collateral consequences” associated with filing a criminal indictment against a leading financial institution.

Two examples occurred in December, when HSBC, the U.K. banking giant, settled allegations that it violated U.S. sanctions and facilitated the movement across the U.S. financial system of tainted money by Mexican drug cartels, and UBS, the Swiss bank, settled claims it manipulated world interest rates.

At the Justice Department’s news conference to announce the HSBC settlement, Lanny Breuer, then-assistant attorney general for the criminal division, was asked why the agency did not pursue a criminal indictment.

“If you think that by doing a certain thing you risk either a charter being revoked, you think that counterparties in a massive financial institution may go away, you think that there is a risk that many, many innocent people will be harmed from a resolution,” Breuer said, “and by another resolution you think you can mitigate the risk of innocent people suffering, the economy being affected, and you can hone in on those and the institutions and address the issues underlying. To the Department of Justice, that's a very real factor, and so it is a factor you consider.”

Asked whether jobs were a factor in DOJ’s decision, Breuer replied: “Collateral consequences were absolutely a factor.”

Criminal charges in the financial services industry can be the equivalent of a corporate death sentence. The failure of Arthur Andersen, one of the five largest accounting firms in the U.S., was due to a criminal indictment related to accounting fraud at Enron.

During a separate news conference to announce the UBS settlement, Breuer said: “In the world today of large institutions where much of the financial world is based on confidence, one of the things we want to ensure as we come forward to a right resolution is to ensure that counterparties don't flee an institution, that jobs are not lost, that there is not some world economic event that is disproportionate to the resolution we want.”

Holder then stepped in and quickly added: "The impact on the stability of the financial markets around the world is something we take into consideration. We reach out to experts outside of the Justice Department to talk about what are the consequences of actions that we might take, what would be the impact of those actions if we want to make particular prosecutive decisions or determinations with regards to a particular institution."

In letters to Congress from the Treasury Department, Federal Reserve and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, made public by McHenry, top financial policymakers said they could find no records of such analyses that had been shared with DOJ.

In one letter, Tom Curry, OCC chief, said that Breuer had contacted him prior to the agency’s settlement with HSBC, but all he did was explain to Breuer during a single phone call how the agency revoked banks’ charters, or their legal license to operate.

In another, Ben Bernanke, Federal Reserve chairman, said that in the HSBC case, all that the Fed and DOJ discussed was how to “better coordinate information sharing”.

“This meeting did not include discussion of the views of the Federal Reserve on collateral consequences of prosecuting any institution, either specifically or as a general matter,” Bernanke added.

Alastair Fitzpayne, Treasury assistant secretary for legislative affairs, told Congress: “We have not identified any analyses prepared by the Department of the Treasury for the DOJ regarding the potential prosecution of large, complex financial institutions.”

During a March hearing, David Cohen, Treasury undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said that DOJ had asked Treasury for “guidance” on the potential impact a criminal charge against HSBC could have on the financial system.

Cohen said Treasury told DOJ it was “not in a position to offer any meaningful guidance.”

Treasury documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by Public Citizen, an advocacy group, appear to show that the agency made no attempt to conduct any such examination internally.

The letters, testimony and documents obtained by Public Citizen and shared with The Huffington Post, appear to undermine a separate May letter to McHenry from Peter Kadzik, Justice principal deputy assistant attorney general, in which he told McHenry that DOJ has “contacted relevant government agencies to discuss such issues.”

“Those government agencies include domestic regulators, as well as foreign regulators where the financial institution is multi-national or is otherwise based,” Kadzik wrote.

DOJ's Raman said Wednesday that the agency had not found any internal records concerning threats to the economy or the financial system when weighing criminal indictments against big banks in past cases. She also said the agency could not locate any such documents from U.S. or foreign regulators.

Breuer did not return a call seeking comment.

DOJ representatives declined to comment beyond Raman’s testimony.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Option D on May 23, 2013, 08:40:07 AM
sooooo....whats up with that bet you laid out a couple of days ago?

is thats thing a go?
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 24, 2013, 07:03:18 PM
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/05/24/Obama-s-Commerce-Secretary-Didn-t-Report-80-Million-In-Income



lmfao!!!!    Obama for the little guy!   ::)
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 26, 2013, 04:58:59 AM
http://shoebat.com/2013/05/24/obamas-brother-works-with-man-who-attacked-us-embassy


Nice.   Obamas brother works with radical muslims.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 28, 2013, 03:23:12 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/political-intelligence-firms-set-up-investor-meetings-at-white-house/2013/05/26/73b06528-bccb-11e2-9b09-1638acc3942e_story.html


Corruption the Obama way
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 29, 2013, 09:04:47 AM
Lisa Jackson To Join Apple After Serving As EPA Chief


The Huffington Post  |  By James Gerken Posted: 05/29/2013 10:56 am EDT  |  Updated: 05/29/2013 11:03 am EDT

Former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson (Photo By Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call)


Former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson will be joining Apple, CEO Tim Cook announced Tuesday. The news came at All Things Digital's D11 conference in Southern Calif.

Jackson will coordinate environmental practices for the company, All Things D reported. “Apple has shown how innovation can drive real progress by removing toxics from its products, incorporating renewable energy in its data center plans, and continually raising the bar for energy efficiency in the electronics industry,” she told Politico in an email.

Apple's 2012 environmental report showed all of the company's data centers, and 75 percent of all facilities, were powered by renewable energy. Yet Apple's overall estimated greenhouse gas emissions rose 34 percent between 2011 and 2012. Apple explains 98 percent of its carbon footprint comes from "the manufacturing, transportation, use and recycling," of its products.

Politico notes the company left the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in 2009 after comments from the group "opposing the EPA's effort to limit greenhouse gases," according to Apple's resignation letter.

Jackson stepped down from her role as EPA chief in February, after serving for four years. Her replacement at the EPA, Gina McCarthy, is currently awaiting confirmation from the full Senate. McCarthy's nomination was approved by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on May 16 after an initial boycott from Republicans.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 30, 2013, 08:45:16 AM


Capital Flows, Contributor

 Select commentary curated by the Opinions editors


Op/Ed

|

 5/30/2013 @ 6:00AM |16,392 views

Obamacare's Slush Fund Fuels A Broader Lobbying Controversy















Barack Obama signing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act at the White House (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By Stuart Taylor

A little-noticed part of President Obama’s Affordable Care Act channels some $12.5 billion into a vaguely defined “Prevention and Public Health Fund” over the next decade–and some of that money is going for everything from massage therapists who offer “calming techniques,” to groups advocating higher state and local taxes on tobacco and soda, and stricter zoning restrictions on fast-food restaurants.

The program, which is run by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), has raised alarms among congressional critics, who call it a “slush fund,” because the department can spend the money as it sees fit and without going through the congressional appropriations process. The sums involved are vast. By 2022, the department will be able to spend $2 billion per year at its sole discretion. In perpetuity.

What makes the Prevention and Public Health Fund controversial is its multibillion-dollar size, its unending nature (the fund never expires), and its vague spending mandate: any program designed “to improve health and help restrain the rate of, growth” of health-care costs.  That can include anything from “pickleball” (a racquet sport) in Carteret County, N.C. to Zumba (a dance fitness program), kayaking and kickboxing in Waco, TX.

“It’s totally crazy to give the executive branch $2 billion a year ad infinitum to spend as they wish,” said budget expert Jim Capretta of the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center. “Congress has the power of the purse, the purpose of which is to insure that the Executive branch is using taxpayer resources as Congress specified.”

The concerns are as diverse as the critics. The HHS Inspector General, in a 2012 “alert,” was concerned that the payments to third-party groups came dangerously close to taxpayer-funded lobbying. While current law bars lobbying with federal money, Obama administration officials and Republican lawmakers differ on where lawful “education” ends and illicit “lobbying” begins.  Nor have federal courts defined “lobbying” for the purposes of this fund. A health and Human Services (HHS) department spokesman denies that any laws were broken and the inspector general is continuing to investigate.

Republicans in both the House of Representatives and Senate have complained that much of the spending seems politically motivated and are alarmed that some of the federal money went to groups who described their own activities as contacting state, city and county lawmakers to urge higher taxes on high-calorie sodas and tobacco, or to call for bans on fast-food restaurants within 1,000-feet of a school, or total bans on smoking in outdoor venues, such as beaches or parks. In a May 9 letter to HHS Secretary Sebelius, Rep. Fred Upton (R,Mich) wrote that HHS grants “appear to fund lobbying activities contrary to the laws, regulations, and guidance governing the use of federal funds.” His letter included the latest in a series of requests for more documents and complaints about responses to previous requests.

Some Democrats, including Obamacare champion Sen. Tom Harkin (D, Iowa), are extremely unhappy with another use of Prevention Fund money. The Obama Administration plans to divert $453.8 million this year from that fund to use for administrative and promotional efforts to enroll millions of people in health insurance exchanges that are said to be vital to Obamacare’s success. Harkin calls this shift, which has not been authorized by Congress, “an outrageous attack on an investment fund that is saving lives.”

This extraordinary fund transfer coincides with HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’s much-criticized solicitation of health industry officials for large “voluntary” corporate donations — on top of hefty tax increases — to help implement Obamacare. Together, they give the appearance of a desperate Administration effort to avoid the kind of “train wreck” that Senator Max Baucus (D, Montana), a principal architect of Obamacare, recently said he fears. That’s also one reason why Republicans who want to kill Obamacare refuse to provide additional funding for the exchanges.

An HHS spokesperson responded to an inquiry about the “lobbying” complaints by saying that “HHS is committed to proper oversight and monitoring of appropriated funds, and to awardees’ compliance with all applicable regulations and statutes related to lobbying activities.” As to the shifting of the $453.8 million, the spokesman said that it was necessary “because Congress did not provide the resources requested” and it would help individuals “sign up for affordable health coverage by supporting . . . call centers that provide customer service, consumer education and outreach.”

The lobbying controversy is akin to conservative complaints about the 2009 “stimulus” legislation, in which HHS directed some $373 million to a “Communities Putting Prevention to Work” fund to states, counties and cities and then onto to health advocacy organizations described in a Wall Street Journal editorial as “liberal pressure groups lobbying for fast-food taxes.”

With those stimulus grants largely spent, the Administration has used Prevention Fund money — dispensing more than $290 million in fiscal 2012 and 2013 combined — for very similar “Community Transformation Grants.”  As in the case of the earlier grants, HHS made the grants through the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Public documents, including CDC descriptions of grants’ goals as well as the reports that grantees must file, are honeycombed with references to seeking state and local policy changes, such as tax hikes on sugary beverages and tobacco and zoning restrictions on fast-food establishments.

Congressional investigators point to documents and federal websites, which detail the spending that critics call “illegal lobbying.” A few of the more than 100 examples cited by critics:
•In Washington state, the Prevention Alliance, a coalition of health-focused groups, reported in notes of a June 22, 2012 meeting that the funding for its initial work came from a $3.3 million Obamacare grant to the state Department of Health. It listed a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB), “tobacco taxes,” and increasing “types of outdoor venues where tobacco use is prohibited” as among “the areas of greatest interest and potential for progress.”
•The Sierra Health Foundation, in Sacramento, which received a $500,000 grant. in March 2013, described its plans to “seek local zoning changes to disallow fast food establishments within 1,000 feet of a school and to limit the number of fast food outlets,” along with restrictions on fast food advertising. A $3 million grant to New York City was used to “educate leaders and decision makers about, and promote the effective implementation of. . . a tax to substantially increase the price of beverages containing caloric sweetener.”
•A Cook County, Ill. report says that part of a $16 million grant “educated policymakers on link between SSBs [sugar-sweetened beverages] and obesity, economic impact of an SSB tax, and importance of investing revenue into prevention.” More than $12 million in similar grants went to groups in King County, Wash. to push for changes in “zoning policies to locate fast-food retailers farther from . . . schools.” And Jefferson County, Ala., spent part of a $7 million federal grant promoting the passage of a tobacco excise tax by the state legislature.

Among those who have expressed concern about questionable and possibly illegal use of Obamacare Prevention Fund money to lobby — an ambiguous term that the Administration interprets narrowly and its critics broadly — are HHS Inspector General Daniel Levinson; Sen. Susan Collins (R, Maine); and Chairmen Darrell Issa (R, CA) of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and Fred Upton (R, MI) of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Inspector General Levinson, a respected and veteran independent investigator, was first appointed to his position overseeing the vast HHS bureaucracy by President George W. Bush. He was retained in that job by President Obama, who also named him to the Government Accountability and Transparency Board. Last June 29, Levinson sent CDC Director Thomas Frieden an “EARLY ALERT.”

 It warned that reports posted by CDC grantees “contain numerous examples of activities that, on their face, may violate anti-lobbying provisions,” and that “some of the CDC information, as well as the non-CDC resource materials posted to the CDC web site, appear to authorize, or even encourage grantees to use grant funds for impermissible lobbying.” The “alert” said that the IG would continue to “evaluate more broadly” compliance with lobbying restrictions. A Levinson spokesman declined recently to elaborate.

Collins, a leading Senate moderate, cited copious evidence in a May 1, 2012 letter to Sebelius that CDC has provided “official guidance to grantees that appears to include an expectation that federal funds are to be used for strategies that result in changes to state and local policies and laws.”

While stressing strong support for “the wellness and prevention mission of the CDC,” Collins cited examples including a report to the agency by the Pennsylvania Department of Health, which received a $1.5 million CPPW anti-tobacco grant in 2010. Thanks to the federal money, the Health Department reported, “210 policy makers were contacted . . . 31 ordinances were passed . . . there were 26 community presentations made to local governments .. . and 16 additional ordinances were passed this quarter, for a cumulative total of 47.”

HHS and CDC say that not only have they heeded these complaints, but as HHS stressed in an April 1 letter to Upton, they have been committed all along to “proper oversight and management of appropriated funds, and to awardees’ compliance with all applicable regulations and statutes related to lobbying activities.”

Spending to influence state and local legislation, critics claim, violates a web of overlapping federal laws, beginning with the federal Anti-Lobbying Act of 1919, as amended in 2002, which says: “No part of the money appropriated by . . . Congress shall . . . be used directly or indirectly to pay for any personal service, . . . telephone, letter, printed or written matter, or other device, intended . . . to influence in any manner a member of Congress, a jurisdiction, or an official of any government, to favor, adopt, or oppose, by vote or otherwise, any legislation, law, ratification, policy, or appropriation.”

This language is clear, unambiguous, and much broader than the HHS regulations on lobbying. To be sure, these restrictions have long been interpreted narrowly by the executive branch, a bipartisan tradition that goes back at least to the administration of President George H.W. Bush. And the Justice Department has never enforced the law against anyone.

Still, the Sebelius interpretation of the Anti-Lobbying Act takes narrow interpretation to extremes, flying in the face of the statute’s very specific language. Sebelius testified on March 1, 2012 that the statute’s lobbying provisions don’t apply to “local lobbying” or lobbying by grantees, while acknowledging that a 2012 appropriation provision — which unlike the Anti-Lobbying Act provides no penalties for violators — barred such forms of lobbying.

HHS Assistant Secretary for Legislation Jim Esquea made a more detailed argument to the same effect in an April 1, 2013 letter to Rep. Upton, asserting that the statute prohibits “only large-scale, high-expenditure, ‘grass roots’ lobbying campaigns conducted by federal agencies that expressly encourage members of the public to contact their elected representatives with respect to legislative matters.”  But Esquea relied on strained interpretations of obsolete precedents predating major amendments that, in 2002, explicitly broadened the Anti-Lobbying Act to cover for the first time lobbying of state and local officials.

CDC guidelines permit the state and city agencies that it funds “to work directly on policy-related matters across their equivalent branches of state or local government.” That sounds reasonable enough. But to critics it sounds like the guidelines would allow, if not encourage, a city health department to spend federal money on lobbying (in the fullest sense of that word) state and local lawmakers to raise taxes on tobacco and sugary beverages.

Some grants seem to fit this interpretation. A $7.6 million CPPW grant to the County of St. Louis to fund an anti-smoking “Community Action Plan” for local activists. Under that plan, “the Leadership Team will meet with the Governor and state legislators to advocate for the repeal of [the state law] that prohibits municipalities from levying their own cigarette excise taxes.” In quarterly reports to CDC for late 2010 through mid-2012 on how it had spent the federal grant, St. Louis County said: “Leadership Team members . . . met with officials from two municipalities about adopting a comprehensive smoke-free ordinance. . . . Coalition members met with two County Council members and the County Executive about strengthening the County’s new smoke-free ordinance. . .. Several people, including restaurant owners, testified at three consecutive County Council meetings in support of removing exemptions from the County’s smoke-free ordinance.”

Finally, St. Louis County used almost $2 million of its federal grant to pay the public relations-lobbying firm Fleischman Hillard for a media campaign to strengthen an anti-smoking ordinance  and push related agendas.

Many grantees and the federal bureaucrats who finance them maintain that they can legally engage in efforts to “educate” both the public and officials about, say, the public health benefits of taxing tobacco and sugary beverages so as to reduce consumption. Chairman Upton, on the other hand, rejected in an August 2012 letter what he called “the improper distinction made by CDC between lobbying and ‘education campaigns.’ ”


 Enlisting other levels of government to do things [the federal government] can’t do openly on its own is the latest example of propaganda and politicizing efforts that only pretend to represent policy reform,” said Tom Miller, an expert in health policy and law at the American Enterprise Institute.

Other conservative health care policy advocates, such as Dr. Eric Novack, an orthopedic surgeon in Phoenix, complain that using federal dollars to lobby for more taxes and other liberal causes at the state and local levels is an abuse of power that skews the natural balance of state and local political forces. “With the hundreds of millions of state and federal dollars annually flowing their way, [health care advocates] are engaging in the lobbying equivalent of  ‘shock and awe’ to get ever more money for themselves and to thwart efforts at real reform”, said Dr. Novack.

Critics have also suggested that Sebelius (and Obama) “lack the legal authority,” as Rep. Issa put it in his April 19 letter to Sebelius, to divert $453.8 million in Prevention Fund dollars to help pay for the establishment and operation of health insurance exchanges. Argues Grace-Marie Turner, president of the Galen Institute, an Alexandria, Virginia-based health-care think tank:


“The Obama administration is being very creative in devising programs it says fit within the definitions of ‘prevention’ and ‘public health.’ The reality is that this is a slush fund.  The administration is using taxpayer dollars to further its political goals, without any congressional input.  That is an open invitation to misuse and abuse of taxpayer dollars.”
 
But short of an unlikely bipartisan agreement, there’s not much that anyone in Congress can do about such complaints.

Strikingly, the most passionate denunciations of the $453.8 million diversion have come from a senior Democrat, Sen. Tom Harkin, self-described author of the Prevention and Public Health title of the Affordable Care Act. Harkin succeeded the late Ted Kennedy, (D, MA) as Chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee and has vowed to carry on Kennedy’s legacy of seeking universal access to health care and, especially, full funding of prevention programs.

 “It is ill-advised and short-sighted to raid the Prevention Fund, which is making absolutely critical investments in preventing disease, saving lives, and keeping women and their families healthy,” Harkin said in his May 7 floor speech. “When it comes to Prevention, this Administration just doesn’t get it. . . . To slash money from this fund . . . is to cannibalize the Affordable Care Act in ways that will cost both money and lives. It is a violation of both the letter and spirit of this landmark law.”

In other words, the Democratic Chairman of the Health Committee is calling the Democratic President’s “raid” on the Prevention Fund illegal. But an HHS spokesperson counters that “this short term investment will result in a long-term public health gain by helping millions of people get access to care and improve our nation’s health.” Other officials stress that with an October 1 Obamacare deadline to start enrolling millions of individuals online, finding the money to create and implement the insurance exchanges is a major challenge to the success of Obamacare.

And money for setting up the exchanges is very, very short, despite an overall Obamacare price tag of trillions over coming years. One reason is that the Administration underestimated the cost, in part because contrary to its expectation, only 17 states have chosen to operate their own insurance exchanges. Another reason is Congress’s refusal to appropriate more money for such administrative expenses.

Meanwhile, it may not be easy to convince young or healthy people without employer-based insurance — especially men, and especially with incomes too high to qualify for Obamacare subsidies — that it would be a rational economic choice to buy a government-approved insurance policy costing (the Congressional Budget Office estimated in 2010) over $4,500 a year for an individual. By contrast, the Obamacare fine will be far smaller for some individuals.

The alternative choice of paying a relatively inexpensive Obamacare penalty for refusing to buy insurance may seem more attractive to many, especially after the Supreme Court stressed last June that such a choice carries no stigma of law-breaking. The Affordable Care Act set the penalty (which varies depending on income and the year) at only a fraction of what the insurance would cost people who don’t qualify for subsidies. At the same time, it guarantees a healthy person who chooses the penalty rather than the insurance the right to reverse course and buy the insurance at no extra cost not too long after he gets sick or injured.

So, as the Administration sets out to recruit enough young, healthy people to keep premiums from soaring, it may need every dollar it can find for advertising and outreach.

What some critics call a “slush fund,” may well turn out to be Obamacare’s own insurance policy.

Stuart Taylor, Jr. is a Nonresident Senior Fellow of the Brookings Institution.  The American Media Institute, a non-profit that promotes investigative journalism, contributed to this report.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 This article is available online at:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2013/05/30/obamacares-slush-fund-fuels-a-broader-lobbying-controversy/
 


 

 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 03, 2013, 09:12:54 PM
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/06/03/192895/us-publishes-details-of-missile.html#.Ua1p-qN5mSN


Nice.   Obama loves to leak info when it benefits him personally.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 04, 2013, 04:37:10 AM
Emails of top Obama appointees remain a mystery


Jun 4, 3:31 AM (ET)

By JACK GILLUM

 

WASHINGTON (AP) - Some of President Barack Obama's political appointees, including the Cabinet secretary for the Health and Human Services Department, are using secret government email accounts they say are necessary to prevent their inboxes from being overwhelmed with unwanted messages, according to a review by The Associated Press.

The scope of using the secret accounts across government remains a mystery: Most U.S. agencies have failed to turn over lists of political appointees' email addresses, which the AP sought under the Freedom of Information Act more than three months ago. The Labor Department initially asked the AP to pay more than $1 million for its email addresses.

The AP asked for the addresses following last year's disclosures that the former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency had used separate email accounts at work. The practice is separate from officials who use personal, non-government email accounts for work, which generally is discouraged - but often happens anyway - due to laws requiring that most federal records be preserved.

The secret email accounts complicate an agency's legal responsibilities to find and turn over emails in response to congressional or internal investigations, civil lawsuits or public records requests because employees assigned to compile such responses would necessarily need to know about the accounts to search them. Secret accounts also drive perceptions that government officials are trying to hide actions or decisions.

"What happens when that person doesn't work there anymore? He leaves and someone makes a request (to review emails) in two years," said Kel McClanahan, executive director of National Security Counselors, an open government group. "Who's going to know to search the other accounts? You would hope that agencies doing this would keep a list of aliases in a desk drawer, but you know that isn't happening."

Agencies where the AP so far has identified secret addresses, including the Labor Department and HHS, said maintaining non-public email accounts allows senior officials to keep separate their internal messages with agency employees from emails they exchange with the public. They also said public and non-public accounts are always searched in response to official requests and the records are provided as necessary.

The AP couldn't independently verify the practice. It searched hundreds of pages of government emails previously released under the open records law and found only one instance of a published email with a secret address: an email from Labor Department spokesman Carl Fillichio to 34 coworkers in 2010 was turned over to an advocacy group, Americans for Limited Government. It included as one recipient the non-public address for Seth D. Harris, currently the acting labor secretary, who maintains at least three separate email accounts.

Google can't find any reference on the Internet to the secret address for HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. Congressional oversight committees told the AP they were unfamiliar with the non-public government addresses identified so far by the AP.

Ten agencies have not yet turned over lists of email addresses, including the Environmental Protection Agency; the Pentagon; and the departments of Veterans Affairs, Transportation, Treasury, Justice, Housing and Urban Development, Homeland Security, Commerce and Agriculture. All have said they are working on a response to the AP.

White House spokesman Eric Schultz declined to comment.

A Treasury Department spokeswoman, Marissa Hopkins Secreto, referred inquiries to the agency's FOIA office, which said its technology department was still searching for the email addresses. Other departments, including Homeland Security, did not respond to questions from the AP about the delays of nearly three months. The Pentagon said it may have an answer by later this summer.

The Health and Human Services Department initially turned over to the AP the email addresses for roughly 240 appointees - except none of the email accounts for Sebelius, even one for her already published on its website. After the AP objected, it turned over three of Sebelius' email addresses, including a secret one. It asked the AP not to publish the address, which it said she used to conduct day-to-day business at the department. Most of the 240 political appointees at HHS appeared to be using only public government accounts.

The AP decided to publish the secret address for Sebelius - KGS2(at)hhs.gov - over the government's objections because the secretary is a high-ranking civil servant who oversees not only major agencies like the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services but also the implementation of Obama's signature health care law. Her public email address is Kathleen.Sebelius(at)hhs.gov.

At least two other senior HHS officials - including Donald Berwick, former head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and Gary Cohen, a deputy administrator in charge of implementing health insurance reform - also have secret government email addresses, according to the records obtained by the AP.

The Interior Department gave the AP a list of about 100 government email addresses for political appointees who work there but none for the interior secretary at the time, Ken Salazar, who has since resigned. Spokeswoman Jessica Kershaw said Salazar maintained only one email address while serving as secretary but she would not disclose it. She said the AP should ask for it under the Freedom of Information Act, which would take months longer.

The Labor Department initially asked the AP to pay just over $1.03 million when the AP asked for email addresses of political appointees there. It said it needed pull 2,236 computer backup tapes from its archives and pay 50 people to pore over old records. Those costs included three weeks to identify tapes and ship them to a vendor, and pay each person $2,500 for nearly a month's work. But under the department's own FOIA rules - which it cited in its letter to the AP - it is prohibited from charging news organizations any costs except for photocopies after the first 100 pages. The department said it would take 14 weeks to find the emails if the AP had paid the money.

Fillichio later acknowledged that the $1.03 million bill was a mistake and provided the AP with email addresses for the agency's Senate-confirmed appointees, including three addresses for Harris, the acting secretary. His secret address was harris.sd(at)dol.gov. His other accounts were one for use with labor employees and the public, and another to send mass emails to the entire Labor Department, outside groups and the public. The Labor Department said it did not object to the AP publishing any of Harris' email addresses.

In addition to the email addresses, the AP also sought records government-wide about decisions to create separate email accounts. But the FOIA director at HHS, Robert Eckert, said the agency couldn't provide such emails without undergoing "an extensive and elongated department-wide search." He also said there were "no mechanisms in place to determine if such requests for the creation of secondary email accounts were submitted by the approximately 242 political appointees within HHS."

Late last year, the EPA's critics - including Republicans in Congress - accused former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson of using an email account under the name "Richard Windsor" to sidestep disclosure rules. The EPA said emails Jackson sent using her Windsor alias were turned over under open records requests. The agency's inspector general is investigating the use of such accounts, after being asked to do so by Congress.

An EPA spokeswoman described Jackson's alternate email address as "an everyday, working email account of the administrator to communicate with staff and other government officials." It was later determined that Jackson also used the email address to correspond sometimes with environmentalists outside government and at least in some cases did not correct a misperception among outsiders they were corresponding with a government employee named Richard Windsor.

Although the EPA's inspector general is investigating the agency's use of secret email accounts, it is not reviewing whether emails from Jackson's secret account were released as required under the Freedom of Information Act.

The EPA's secret email accounts were revealed last fall by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington think tank that was tipped off about Jackson's alias by an insider and later noticed it in documents it obtained the FOIA. The EPA said its policy was to disclose in such documents that "Richard Windsor" was actually the EPA administrator.

Courts have consistently set a high bar for the government to withhold public officials' records under the federal privacy rules. A federal judge, Marilyn Hall Patel of California, said in August 2010 that "persons who have placed themselves in the public light" - such as through politics or voluntarily participation in the public arena - have a "significantly diminished privacy interest than others." Her ruling was part of a case in which a journalist sought FBI records, but was denied.

"We're talking about an email address, and an email address given to an individual by the government to conduct official business is not private," said Aaron Mackey, a FOIA attorney with the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. He said that's different than, for example, confidential information, such as a Social Security number.

Under the law, citizens and foreigners may use the FOIA to compel the government to turn over copies of federal records for zero or little cost. Anyone who seeks information through the law is generally supposed to get it unless disclosure would hurt national security, violate personal privacy or expose business secrets or confidential decision-making in certain areas.

Obama pledged during his first week in office to make government more transparent and open. The nation's signature open-records law, he said in a memo to his Cabinet, would be "administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails."

---

Contact the Washington investigative team at DCinvestigations(at)ap.org. Follow Jack Gillum on Twitter at http://twitter.com/jackgillum


Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: dario73 on June 04, 2013, 05:37:27 AM
So much for transparency.

And before any of you libtards claims that Bush or other cabinets did the same thing, let me cut you off by telling you that none of the previous presidents constantly claimed that they would have the most transparent administration ever. Obama stated as much. So is he living up to his own standard?

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: whork on June 04, 2013, 06:44:20 AM
So much for transparency.

And before any of you libtards claims that Bush or other cabinets did the same thing, let me cut you off by telling you that none of the previous presidents constantly claimed that they would have the most transparent administration ever. Obama stated as much. So is he living up to his own standard?



Nope.

Obama is full of shit on this issue.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 04, 2013, 06:48:23 AM
Obama Political Appointees Using Secret Email Accounts


By JACK GILLUM 06/04/13 08:03 AM ET EDT AP



 

WASHINGTON -- Some of President Barack Obama's political appointees, including the secretary for Health and Human Services, are using secret government email accounts they say are necessary to prevent their inboxes from being overwhelmed with unwanted messages, according to a review by The Associated Press.

The scope of using the secret accounts across government remains a mystery: Most U.S. agencies have failed to turn over lists of political appointees' email addresses, which the AP sought under the Freedom of Information Act more than three months ago. The Labor Department initially asked the AP to pay more than $1 million for its email addresses.

The AP asked for the addresses following last year's disclosures that the former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency had used separate email accounts at work. The practice is separate from officials who use personal, non-government email accounts for work, which generally is discouraged – but often happens anyway – due to laws requiring that most federal records be preserved.

The secret email accounts complicate an agency's legal responsibilities to find and turn over emails in response to congressional or internal investigations, civil lawsuits or public records requests because employees assigned to compile such responses would necessarily need to know about the accounts to search them. Secret accounts also drive perceptions that government officials are trying to hide actions or decisions.

"What happens when that person doesn't work there anymore? He leaves and someone makes a request (to review emails) in two years," said Kel McClanahan, executive director of National Security Counselors, an open government group. "Who's going to know to search the other accounts? You would hope that agencies doing this would keep a list of aliases in a desk drawer, but you know that isn't happening."

Agencies where the AP so far has identified secret addresses, including the Labor Department and HHS, said maintaining non-public email accounts allows senior officials to keep separate their internal messages with agency employees from emails they exchange with the public. They also said public and non-public accounts are always searched in response to official requests and the records are provided as necessary.

The AP couldn't independently verify the practice. It searched hundreds of pages of government emails previously released under the open records law and found only one instance of a published email with a secret address: an email from Labor Department spokesman Carl Fillichio to 34 coworkers in 2010 was turned over to an advocacy group, Americans for Limited Government. It included as one recipient the non-public address for Seth D. Harris, currently the acting labor secretary, who maintains at least three separate email accounts.

Google can't find any reference on the Internet to the secret address for HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. Congressional oversight committees told the AP they were unfamiliar with the non-public government addresses identified so far by the AP.

Ten agencies have not yet turned over lists of email addresses, including the Environmental Protection Agency; the Pentagon; and the departments of Veterans Affairs, Transportation, Treasury, Justice, Housing and Urban Development, Homeland Security, Commerce and Agriculture. All have said they are working on a response to the AP.


White House spokesman Eric Schultz declined to comment.

A Treasury Department spokeswoman, Marissa Hopkins Secreto, referred inquiries to the agency's FOIA office, which said its technology department was still searching for the email addresses. Other departments, including Homeland Security, did not respond to questions from the AP about the delays of nearly three months. The Pentagon said it may have an answer by later this summer.

The Health and Human Services Department initially turned over to the AP the email addresses for roughly 240 appointees – except none of the email accounts for Sebelius, even one for her already published on its website. After the AP objected, it turned over three of Sebelius' email addresses, including a secret one. It asked the AP not to publish the address, which it said she used to conduct day-to-day business at the department. Most of the 240 political appointees at HHS appeared to be using only public government accounts.

The AP decided to publish the secret address for Sebelius – KGS2(at)hhs.gov – over the government's objections because the secretary is a high-ranking civil servant who oversees not only major agencies like the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services but also the implementation of Obama's signature health care law. Her public email address is Kathleen.Sebelius(at)hhs.gov.

At least two other senior HHS officials – including Donald Berwick, former head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and Gary Cohen, a deputy administrator in charge of implementing health insurance reform – also have secret government email addresses, according to the records obtained by the AP.

The Interior Department gave the AP a list of about 100 government email addresses for political appointees who work there but none for the interior secretary at the time, Ken Salazar, who has since resigned. Spokeswoman Jessica Kershaw said Salazar maintained only one email address while serving as secretary but she would not disclose it. She said the AP should ask for it under the Freedom of Information Act, which would take months longer.

The Labor Department initially asked the AP to pay just over $1.03 million when the AP asked for email addresses of political appointees there. It said it needed pull 2,236 computer backup tapes from its archives and pay 50 people to pore over old records. Those costs included three weeks to identify tapes and ship them to a vendor, and pay each person $2,500 for nearly a month's work. But under the department's own FOIA rules – which it cited in its letter to the AP – it is prohibited from charging news organizations any costs except for photocopies after the first 100 pages. The department said it would take 14 weeks to find the emails if the AP had paid the money.

Fillichio later acknowledged that the $1.03 million bill was a mistake and provided the AP with email addresses for the agency's Senate-confirmed appointees, including three addresses for Harris, the acting secretary. His secret address was harris.sd(at)dol.gov. His other accounts were one for use with labor employees and the public, and another to send mass emails to the entire Labor Department, outside groups and the public. The Labor Department said it did not object to the AP publishing any of Harris' email addresses.

In addition to the email addresses, the AP also sought records government-wide about decisions to create separate email accounts. But the FOIA director at HHS, Robert Eckert, said the agency couldn't provide such emails without undergoing "an extensive and elongated department-wide search." He also said there were "no mechanisms in place to determine if such requests for the creation of secondary email accounts were submitted by the approximately 242 political appointees within HHS."

Late last year, the EPA's critics – including Republicans in Congress – accused former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson of using an email account under the name "Richard Windsor" to sidestep disclosure rules. The EPA said emails Jackson sent using her Windsor alias were turned over under open records requests. The agency's inspector general is investigating the use of such accounts, after being asked to do so by Congress.

An EPA spokeswoman described Jackson's alternate email address as "an everyday, working email account of the administrator to communicate with staff and other government officials." It was later determined that Jackson also used the email address to correspond sometimes with environmentalists outside government and at least in some cases did not correct a misperception among outsiders they were corresponding with a government employee named Richard Windsor.

Although the EPA's inspector general is investigating the agency's use of secret email accounts, it is not reviewing whether emails from Jackson's secret account were released as required under the Freedom of Information Act.

The EPA's secret email accounts were revealed last fall by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington think tank that was tipped off about Jackson's alias by an insider and later noticed it in documents it obtained the FOIA. The EPA said its policy was to disclose in such documents that "Richard Windsor" was actually the EPA administrator.

Courts have consistently set a high bar for the government to withhold public officials' records under the federal privacy rules. A federal judge, Marilyn Hall Patel of California, said in August 2010 that "persons who have placed themselves in the public light" – such as through politics or voluntarily participation in the public arena – have a "significantly diminished privacy interest than others." Her ruling was part of a case in which a journalist sought FBI records, but was denied.

"We're talking about an email address, and an email address given to an individual by the government to conduct official business is not private," said Aaron Mackey, a FOIA attorney with the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. He said that's different than, for example, confidential information, such as a Social Security number.

Under the law, citizens and foreigners may use the FOIA to compel the government to turn over copies of federal records for zero or little cost. Anyone who seeks information through the law is generally supposed to get it unless disclosure would hurt national security, violate personal privacy or expose business secrets or confidential decision-making in certain areas.

Obama pledged during his first week in office to make government more transparent and open. The nation's signature open-records law, he said in a memo to his Cabinet, would be "administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails."

___

Contact the Washington investigative team at DCinvestigations(at)ap.org. Follow Jack Gillum on Twitter at http://twitter.com/jackgillum
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 04, 2013, 06:54:06 AM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/04/obama-email_n_3382900.html

LOL - Most transparent ever. 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 04, 2013, 08:23:14 AM
The Obama Administration’s secret email network

Via Human Events   


By: John Hayward   
6/4/2013 09:03 AM


We had a few laughs yesterday when it was discovered that the phony Environmental Protection Agency employee created by disgraced administrator Lisa Jackson to conceal some of her email correspondence was treated like a real person by the bureaucracy, winning awards for his job performance and ethical conduct.  But today we have an Associated Press report that is no laughing matter, because it turns out the use of secret email addresses to skirt federal records law is a widespread practice among the Most Transparent Administration In History:


Some of President Barack Obama’s political appointees, including the Cabinet secretary for the Health and Human Services Department, are using secret government email accounts they say are necessary to prevent their inboxes from being overwhelmed with unwanted messages, according to a review by The Associated Press.

The scope of using the secret accounts across government remains a mystery: Most U.S. agencies have failed to turn over lists of political appointees’ email addresses, which the AP sought under the Freedom of Information Act more than three months ago. The Labor Department initially asked the AP to pay more than $1 million for its email addresses.

Oh, they just want to keep their inboxes clean, do they?  These tech-savvy disciples of our hip Internet-era President – beloved by a generation of young people who grew up in a sea of social media – have never heard of spam filters, labeling, priority inboxes, etc?  Their huge armies of assistants can’t help them set those things up?

If only Ambassador Chris Stevens had known one of Hillary Clinton’s special regime email addresses!  Then he could have bypassed her overflowing State Department inbox to tell her about the dangerous security situation in Benghazi and request more protection!

The true purpose of these secret email addresses is blatantly obvious, coming as it does from a scandal-plagued Administration where top figures – including the President himself – routinely claim they’re out of the loop:


The secret email accounts complicate an agency’s legal responsibilities to find and turn over emails in response to congressional or internal investigations, civil lawsuits or public records requests because employees assigned to compile such responses would necessarily need to know about the accounts to search them. Secret accounts also drive perceptions that government officials are trying to hide actions or decisions.

“What happens when that person doesn’t work there anymore? He leaves and someone makes a request (to review emails) in two years,” said Kel McClanahan, executive director of National Security Counselors, an open government group. “Who’s going to know to search the other accounts? You would hope that agencies doing this would keep a list of aliases in a desk drawer, but you know that isn’t happening.”

Remember, the only reason Attorney General Eric Holder wasn’t convicted of perjury in the Fast and Furious outrage is that he claimed he never reads his email, and has no idea what his subordinates are doing.  A network of secret, untraceable email addresses is just the thing for preserving that kind of deniability.  And of course, this secret correspondence is flying around an Administration that has proven very eager to snoop on the emails of people like reporter James Rosen of Fox News.

Another scandal defense commonly offered by top Obama Administration officials is that nobody talks to anyone else – there’s no coordination between various agencies, even when they’re supposed to be working under an operation like the Department of Homeland Security, which was specifically created to foster efficient inter-agency communication.  Well, maybe one reason for that poor communication is that nobody’s reading their official, public email.  They think everything important will be coming into those special concealed inboxes, but they have so many alternate addresses that they can’t keep them all straight.

The Administration claimed these secret email accounts “are always searched in response to official requests and the records are provided as necessary,” but the AP knocked that lie down immediately:


The AP couldn’t independently verify the practice. It searched hundreds of pages of government emails previously released under the open records law and found only one instance of a published email with a secret address: an email from Labor Department spokesman Carl Fillichio to 34 coworkers in 2010 was turned over to an advocacy group, Americans for Limited Government. It included as one recipient the non-public address for Seth D. Harris, currently the acting labor secretary, who maintains at least three separate email accounts.

Google can’t find any reference on the Internet to the secret address for HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. Congressional oversight committees told the AP they were unfamiliar with the non-public government addresses identified so far by the AP.

The Obama regime handled the Associated Press inquiry with its customary level of honesty and efficiency:


Ten agencies have not yet turned over lists of email addresses, including the Environmental Protection Agency; the Pentagon; and the departments of Veterans Affairs, Transportation, Treasury, Justice, Housing and Urban Development, Homeland Security, Commerce and Agriculture. All have said they are working on a response to the AP.

White House spokesman Eric Schultz declined to comment.

A Treasury Department spokeswoman, Marissa Hopkins Secreto, referred inquiries to the agency’s FOIA office, which said its technology department was still searching for the email addresses. Other departments, including Homeland Security, did not respond to questions from the AP about the delays of nearly three months. The Pentagon said it may have an answer by later this summer.

The Health and Human Services Department initially turned over to the AP the email addresses for roughly 240 appointees – except none of the email accounts for Sebelius, even one for her already published on its website. After the AP objected, it turned over three of Sebelius’ email addresses, including a secret one. It asked the AP not to publish the address, which it said she used to conduct day-to-day business at the department. Most of the 240 political appointees at HHS appeared to be using only public government accounts.

OK, let me see if I have this right: the Administration says all this secret email correspondence is routinely searched in response to FOIA requests… but their IT nerds can’t even cough up a list of alternate email addresses after three months of effort?  The reason Labor tried to charge the AP a million bucks for that list of email addresses – even though its FOIA rules prevent it from charging such fees – is that it would have to “pull 2,236 computer backup tapes from its archives and pay 50 people to pore over old records.  Labor said it would take three weeks just to find these tapes, and 14 weeks to find all the emails.  But these same bureaucrats claim they scan all the secret email correspondence every time anyone files a FOIA request for anything.

I have an idea: instead of paying a huge team of technicians to pull thousands of backup tapes, why don’t we just compel the President and his top people to hand over their digital address books?  A lot of them know each other’s secret email addresses, right?

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius – currently under investigation for leaning on the health insurance companies she regulates for extra ObamaCare cash – turns out to have at least three email addresses, including a secret one.  Her department comically tried to hide one of the other addresses from the AP inquiry, even though it was published on the HHS website.  Then they asked the AP not to publish the secret address, but they did it anyway.

We know former EPA Administration Lisa Jackson was using her secret email address to communicate with special interests – namely the environmentalist groups that hate being referred to as “special interests,” a term they believe should be reserved for their political adversaries.  Was Sebelius also using secret channels to make corrupt arrangements with special interests?  How about the rest of Obama’s team at the agency that became the most powerful bureaucracy on the planet, thanks to ObamaCare?  We may never know, because the FOIA director for the agency claims there are “no mechanisms in place to determine if such requests for the creation of secondary email accounts were submitted by the approximately 242 political appointees within HHS.”

Say, does everyone remember liberals have a nuclear meltdown over Sarah Palin’s emails?  Remember how the media crowd-sourced a gigantic fishing expedition through her correspondence when she released it?  What do you think about the Obama Administration’s huge network of secret email addresses and untraceable correspondence, guys?  I’ll understand if you want to avoid the question.  Maybe you could change the subject by running another series of White House-coordinated stories about how the Republicans are “overreaching” by making a big deal about all these scandals.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 12, 2013, 01:10:10 PM
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-12/tougher-regulations-seen-from-obama-change-in-carbon-cost.html


 :(  :(  :(
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 18, 2013, 09:44:50 AM
Alan Grayson On Trans-Pacific Partnership: Obama Secrecy Is 'Assault On Democratic Government'


 Posted: 06/18/2013 11:24 am EDT  |  Updated: 06/18/2013 11:32 am EDT 

Via HP
 

WASHINGTON -- Progressive Democrats in Congress are ramping up pressure on the Obama administration to release the text of Trans-Pacific Partnership, a secretive free trade agreement with 10 other nations, amid intensifying controversy over the administration's transparency record and its treatment of classified information.

The only publicly available information on the terms of the deal has come from leaks, some of which have alarmed public health experts, environmentalist groups and consumer advocates. According to a document leaked in the summer of 2012, the deal would allow corporations to directly challenge government laws and regulations in international courts.

Members of Congress have been provided with only limited access to the negotiation documents. Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) told HuffPost on Monday that he viewed an edited version of the negotiation texts last week, but that secrecy policies at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative created scheduling difficulties that delayed his access for nearly six weeks. The Obama administration has barred any Congressional staffers from reviewing the text and prohibited members of Congress from discussing the specific terms of the text with trade experts and reporters.


"This, more than anything, shows the abuse of the classified information system," Grayson told HuffPost. "They maintain that the text is classified information. And I get clearance because I'm a member of Congress, but now they tell me that they don't want me to talk to anybody about it because if I did, I'd be releasing classified information."

How and why the administration decides to make information classified has come under intense scrutiny in recent months, after the Associated Press learned that the Department of Justice had been monitoring the records of more than 20 phone numbers -- including the personal phones of reporters and editors -- as part of a government leak investigation. Edward Snowden's recent disclosures of two broad National Security Agency surveillance programs to The Guardian and The Washington Post have sparked a heated debate over what kinds of leaks should be prosecuted as criminal.

"What I saw was nothing that could possibly justify the secrecy that surrounds it," Grayson said, referring to the draft Trans-Pacific deal. "It is ironic in a way that the government thinks it's alright to have a record of every single call that an American makes, but not alright for an American citizen to know what sovereign powers the government is negotiating away."

The Trans-Pacific deal would be one of the largest trade deals in U.S. history, with 11 nations including Japan, Mexico, Vietnam and Australia involved in the talks. The Obama administration has been leading negotiations on the deal for roughly three years.

When the intellectual property chapter of the deal leaked online more than a year ago, internet freedom advocates criticized the provisions as problematic for tech companies and free speech, while public health experts said it would dramatically restrict access to lifesaving medicines in poor countries. It is not clear if those terms have changed over time.

"Having seen what I've seen, I would characterize this as a gross abrogation of American sovereignty," Grayson told HuffPost. "And I would further characterize it as a punch in the face to the middle class of America. I think that's fair to say from what I've seen so far. But I'm not allowed to tell you why!"

Unelected corporate officials are given access to negotiation documents by virtue of their positions on U.S. Trade Representative advisory panels. On Thursday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) sent a letter to Michael Froman, Obama's nominee to head USTR, asking the agency to release negotiation documents to the public.

USTR spokeswoman Carol Guthrie told The Huffington Post that her office is discussing Warren's request with the senator.

Guthrie said that the text reviewed by such members of Congress, "does not indicate which countries have proposed which text" a process that is "consistent with negotiating practice."

"When Members view text, USTR officials, often negotiators themselves, have always been provided to discuss the details and to answer their questions," she said in a statement to The Huffington Post. "Our bottom line is to negotiate the best deal for American workers and businesses. As with virtually any negotiation, a certain degree of confidentiality is necessary in order to allow frank, substantive, and productive conversations with other countries on sensitive issues and to work strategically to advance U.S. interests."

Grayson told HuffPost that the agreement would be very appealing to multinational corporations, but had very negative implications for the public interest on a variety of fronts.

"It's all about tying the hands of democratically elected governments, and shunting authority over to the nonelected for the benefit of multinational corporations," Grayson said. "It's an assault on democratic government."
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 20, 2013, 07:51:05 AM
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/06/19/ap-boss-blasts-justice-over-records-grab-says-move-gives-cover-to-dictatorships/?test=latestnews


no kidding - Obama sees himself as a mini-Mugabe so this is not surprising in the least bit 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 20, 2013, 10:24:20 AM
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/06/20/Obama-catholic-AMericans-religious-freedom

Unreal.  Wonder if this assface would say this to muuuuuusssslims
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 22, 2013, 03:26:12 PM
Obama Administration Sues Dollar General for Using Background Checks on Job Applicants
Gateway Pundit ^  | June 22, 2013 | Jim Hoft

Posted on Saturday, June 22, 2013 5:35:08 PM by Hojczyk

The Obama Administration sued Dollar General for using background checks on job applications because it’s racist. It’s now unlawful to discriminate against applicants who have committed a crime.

The Obama administration is suing Dollar General and a BMW facility in South Carolina for the alleged unfair use of criminal background checks for job applicants, months after warning companies about how such screenings can discriminate against African Americas.

The suits were filed June 11 by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which last year issued new guidelines that cautioned against rejecting minority applicants who have committed a crime and recommended businesses eliminate policies that “exclude people from employment based on a criminal record.”

The suits have re-ignited concerns over such issues as potential federal overreach, the overlap of state and federal law and companies losing their rights to protect customers, workers and assets while trying to adhere to fair hiring practices.


(Excerpt) Read more at thegatewaypundit.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 07, 2013, 10:57:07 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2013/07/06/the-insiders-whos-in-charge-at-the-white-house-the-clear-eyed-realists-or-the-delusional-obamaphiles


 ;D
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 08, 2013, 11:20:07 AM
http://dailycaller.com/2013/07/07/u-s-embassy-official-in-guyana-removed-in-alleged-sex-for-visas-swindle/#ixzz2YTK5ExiL


WTF!!!!

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 08, 2013, 08:46:34 PM
http://dailycaller.com/2013/07/08/krauthammer-on-obamacare-entire-enterprise-was-a-gigantic-bait-and-switch/?fb_action_ids=10151549075577424&fb_action_types=og.recommends&fb_source=other_multiline&action_object_map=%7B%2210151549075577424%22%3A162306017285963%7D&action_type_map=%7B%2210151549075577424%22%3A%22og.recommends%22%7D&action_ref_map=%5B%5D


SUCKERS!!!
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 09, 2013, 07:08:50 AM
http://www.nationaljournal.com/domesticpolicy/white-house-has-known-for-months-obamacare-implementation-wouldn-t-work-20130709


Knew months ago OTWINKCARE does not work. 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 09, 2013, 08:07:19 AM
Obama Is Embarrassed by Obamacare
Townhall.com ^  | July 9, 2013 | Phyllis Schlafly

Posted on Tuesday, July 09, 2013 11:04:15 AM by Kaslin



Barack Obama assured us that, after his signature legislation Obamacare went into effect, we would surely like it. Now Obama has decided he doesn't want us to find out how it affects us until after the 2014 elections.

Obamacare is designed to force employers of 50 or more full-time employees to provide comprehensive health insurance that includes a mandate to pay for an abortion-inducing drug. The penalty for non-compliance is a tax of $2,000 per fulltime employee per year (beyond the first 30), and the Internal Revenue Service was supposed to start collecting the penalties on Jan. 1.

Obama apparently thinks he can conceal the mess he created, which even the Democrats who voted for it now call a "train wreck," by simply postponing the effective date of the employer mandate one year. But the Obamacare law, as upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, unambiguously states: "EFFECTIVE DATE ... The amendments made by this section shall apply to months beginning after December 31, 2013."

Obama has no authority to alter the timetable of the law's implementation. Maybe he should actually read the 2,700 pages of text in the Obamacare law and its 20,000 pages of regulations.

Obama doesn't seem to care whether his order to delay Obamacare is lawful or not. He wants to avoid the trouble the destructive employer mandate would cause for Democratic candidates before the next election of the House of Representatives, an election he deems critical to his plan to "fundamentally transform the United States."

The postponement of the employer mandate is not the first setback to the Obamacare timeline. A few months ago, the Obama administration quietly announced that the federally run state-level exchanges will not offer a choice of plans to employees of small businesses until after the 2014 elections.

The one-year extension for employers will create havoc in the exchanges where individuals are supposed to buy next year's health insurance. The government admitted July 5 that it won't be able to verify whether applicants qualify for the subsidies that are supposed to make the required coverage "affordable" but plans to give out the subsidies anyway.

Meanwhile, Obamacare's expansion of Medicaid is being rejected by the states. After the Supreme Court's June 2012 decision in NFIB v. Sebelius gave states the OK to reject this expansion, 27 of 50 states did not implement Obamacare's Medicaid plan.

States were wise to reject this very expensive Medicaid expansion.

Obamacare required that anyone with income below 133 percent of the poverty level would be eligible for Medicaid and sought to expand eligibility to able-bodied, non-elderly, childless adults, that is, to people without dependents who were able but perhaps unwilling to support themselves.

In addition to having sections of Obamacare postponed and rejected outright, Obamacare is also failing to fulfill Obama's promise that it would decrease the deficit. The funds that were supposed to pay down the deficit included the money anticipated to flow from the penalty payments made by employers who refused to obey the mandate to provide comprehensive healthcare to their employees.

Now that employers will not be required to pay those fines in 2014 for violating the mandate, and indeed will not even be required to report whether they are complying, it is obvious that Obamacare will not produce the promised deficit reduction.

This isn't the first time Obama has taken actions that are clearly in violation of our laws. For example, two federal courts have ruled against him for making recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board while the Senate was not in recess.

Obama unlawfully removed the work requirement from the 1996 welfare reform law signed by President Bill Clinton, even though the law explicitly prohibits waivers to the work requirement. That reform required most welfare recipients to actually work or be in job training in order to receive welfare.

Obama simply used executive orders to pretend to legislate the DREAM Act, which Congress has repeatedly refused to pass. His bypassing of the law was so out of line that even his former economic adviser remarked, "I don't totally get how the president can do this through executive order."

Obama had the Department of Homeland Security implement key measures of the DREAM Act in order to essentially grant amnesty to many illegal aliens. Because of the large number of applications for amnesty, background checks were given up in favor of so-called "lean and lite" procedures.

By the way, that is exactly what will happen to background checks for the 11 million illegal aliens who hope to be granted U.S. residency by the amnesty bill now awaiting action in the House. If the background check of the Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev couldn't discover his obvious terrorist plans, what hope do we have for background checks of the 11 million?
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 09, 2013, 03:14:06 PM
Obama fundraiser tapped as ambassador to Britain

 
stumbleupon: Obama fundraiser tapped as ambassador to Britain    digg: US Works With Sudan Government Suspected Of Aiding Genocide    reddit: Obama fundraiser tapped as ambassador to Britain    del.icio.us: Obama fundraiser tapped as ambassador to Britain 
 
July 9, 2013 06:06 PM EST | AP


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



WASHINGTON — The White House says President Barack Obama has picked the finance chairman for his re-election campaign to be the U.S. ambassador to Britain.

Matthew Barzun, a business executive, has been confirmed by the Senate once before. He served as U.S. ambassador to Sweden until 2011, when he took the position as Obama's finance chairman.

The White House says Obama is also nominating John Phillips, an attorney who raised more than $500,000 for Obama's 2012 campaign, to be the U.S. envoy to Italy and the Republic of San Marino. He's currently the chairman of Obama's commission that selects candidates to be White House Fellows.

John Hoover, a veteran U.S. diplomat who served in Africa, Asia and Europe, is Obama's pick for Sierra Leone.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 10, 2013, 05:10:19 AM
Experts: Obama’s plan to predict future leakers unproven, unlikely to work

      
Insider Threats

     

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More on this Story
Story | Obama’s crackdown views leaks as aiding enemies of U.S.
Graphic | The changing profile of a spy
On the Web | Mass Surveillance
On the Web | Reply to McClatchy from the Peace Corps
On the Web | Reply to McClatchy from the Army
On the Web | Reply to McClatchy from the NSC
On the Web | Reply to McClatchy from the National Security Council
   
The changing profile of a spy
View larger image
      
By Jonathan S. Landay and Marisa Taylor | McClatchy Washington Bureau




WASHINGTON —  In an initiative aimed at rooting out future leakers and other security violators, President Barack Obama has ordered federal employees to report suspicious actions of their colleagues based on behavioral profiling techniques that are not scientifically proven to work, according to experts and government documents.

The techniques are a key pillar of the Insider Threat Program, an unprecedented government-wide crackdown under which millions of federal bureaucrats and contractors must watch out for “high-risk persons or behaviors” among co-workers. Those who fail to report them could face penalties, including criminal charges.

Obama mandated the program in an October 2011 executive order after Army Pfc. Bradley Manning downloaded hundreds of thousands of documents from a classified computer network and gave them to WikiLeaks, the anti-government secrecy group. The order covers virtually every federal department and agency, including the Peace Corps, the Department of Education and others not directly involved in national security.
      
Under the program, which is being implemented with little public attention, security investigations can be launched when government employees showing “indicators of insider threat behavior” are reported by co-workers, according to previously undisclosed administration documents obtained by McClatchy. Investigations also can be triggered when “suspicious user behavior” is detected by computer network monitoring and reported to “insider threat personnel.”

Federal employees and contractors are asked to pay particular attention to the lifestyles, attitudes and behaviors – like financial troubles, odd working hours or unexplained travel – of co-workers as a way to predict whether they might do “harm to the United States.” Managers of special insider threat offices will have “regular, timely, and, if possible, electronic, access” to employees’ personnel, payroll, disciplinary and “personal contact” files, as well as records of their use of classified and unclassified computer networks, polygraph results, travel reports and financial disclosure forms.

Over the years, numerous studies of public and private workers who’ve been caught spying, leaking classified information, stealing corporate secrets or engaging in sabotage have identified psychological profiles that could offer clues to possible threats. Administration officials want government workers trained to look for such indicators and report them so the next violation can be stopped before it happens.

“In past espionage cases, we find people saw things that may have helped identify a spy, but never reported it,” said Gene Barlow, a spokesman for the Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive, which oversees government efforts to detect threats like spies and computer hackers and is helping implement the Insider Threat Program. “That is why the awareness effort of the program is to teach people not only what types of activity to report, but how to report it and why it is so important to report it.”

But even the government’s top scientific advisers have questioned these techniques. Those experts say that trying to predict future acts through behavioral monitoring is unproven and could result in illegal ethnic and racial profiling and privacy violations.

“There is no consensus in the relevant scientific community nor on the committee regarding whether any behavioral surveillance or physiological monitoring techniques are ready for use at all,” concluded a 2008 National Research Council report on detecting terrorists.

 

 TSA officers watch for suspicious behavior at airports (Carey Wagner/Sun Sentinel/MCT)

“Doing something similar about predicting future leakers seems even more speculative,” Stephen Fienberg, a professor of statistics and social science at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and a member of the committee that wrote the report, told McClatchy.

The emphasis on individual lifestyles, attitudes and behaviors comes at a time when growing numbers of Americans must submit to extensive background checks, polygraph tests and security investigations to be hired or to keep government or federal contracting jobs. The U.S. government is one of the world’s largest employers, overseeing an ever-expanding ocean of information.

While the Insider Threat Program mandates that the nearly 5 million federal workers and contractors with clearances undergo training in recognizing suspicious behavior indicators, it allows individual departments and agencies to extend the requirement to their entire workforces, something the Army already has done.

Training should address “current and potential threats in the work and personal environment” and focus on “the importance of detecting potential insider threats by cleared employees and reporting suspected activity to insider threat personnel and other designated officials,” says one of the documents obtained by McClatchy.

The White House, the Justice Department, the Peace Corps and the departments of Health and Human Services, Homeland Security and Education refused to answer questions about the program’s implementation. Instead, they issued virtually identical email statements directing inquiries to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, declined to comment or didn’t respond.

Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the White House National Security Council, said in her statement that the Insider Threat Program includes extra safeguards for “civil rights, civil liberties and privacy,” but she didn’t elaborate. Manning’s leaks to WikiLeaks, she added, showed that at the time protections of classified materials were “inadequate and put our nation’s security at risk.”

Reply from the National Security Council

Even so, the new effort failed to prevent former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden from taking top-secret documents detailing the agency’s domestic and international communications monitoring programs and leaking them to The Guardian and The Washington Post newspapers.

The initiative goes beyond classified information leaks. It includes as insider threats “damage to the United States through espionage, terrorism, unauthorized disclosure of national security information or through the loss or degradation of departmental resources or capabilities,” according to a document setting “Minimum Standards for Executive Branch Insider Threat Programs.”

McClatchy obtained a copy of the document, which was produced by an Insider Threat Task Force that was set up under Obama’s order and is headed by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Attorney General Eric Holder. McClatchy also obtained the group’s final policy guidance. The White House, the Justice Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined requests for both documents, neither of which is classified.

Although agencies and departments are still setting up their programs, some employees already are being urged to watch co-workers for “indicators” that include stress, divorce and financial problems.

When asked about the ineffectiveness of behavior profiling, Barlow said the policy “does not mandate” that employees report behavior indicators.

“It simply educates employees about basic activities or behavior that might suggest a person is up to improper activity,” he said.

“These do not require special talents. If you see someone reading classified documents they should not be reading, especially if this happens multiple times and the person appears nervous that you saw him, that is activity that is suspicious and should be reported,” Barlow said. “The insider threat team then looks at the surrounding facts and draws the conclusions about the activity.”

Departments and agencies, however, are given leeway to go beyond the White House’s basic requirements, prompting the Defense Department in its strategy to mandate that workers with clearances “must recognize the potential harm caused by unauthorized disclosures and be aware of the penalties they could face.” It equates unauthorized disclosures of classified information to “aiding the enemies of the United States.”



All departments and agencies involved in the program must closely track their employees’ online activities. The information gathered by monitoring, the administration documents say, “could be used against them in criminal, security, or administrative proceedings.” Experts who research such efforts say suspicious behaviors include accessing information that someone doesn’t need or isn’t authorized to see or downloading materials onto removable storage devices like thumb drives when such devices are restricted or prohibited.

“If you normally print 20 documents a week, well, what happens if the next week or the following week you have to print 50 documents or 100 documents? That could be at variance from your normal activity that could be identified and might be investigated,” said Randy Trzeciak, acting manager of the Computer Emergency Response Team Insider Threat Center at Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute.

“We’ve come up with patterns that we believe organizations might be able to consider when determining when someone might be progressing down the path to harm the organization,” said Trzeciak, whose organization has analyzed more than 800 cases and works with the government and private sector on cyber security.

But research and other programs that rely on profiling show it remains unproven, could make employees more resistant to reporting violations and might lead to spurious allegations.

The Pentagon, U.S. intelligence agencies and the Department of Homeland Security have spent tens of millions of dollars on an array of research projects. Yet after several decades, they still haven’t developed a list of behaviors they can use to definitively identify the tiny fraction of workers who might some day violate national security laws.

“We are back to the needle-in-a-haystack problem,” said Fienberg, the Carnegie Mellon professor.

“We have not found any silver bullets,” said Deana Caputo, the lead behavioral scientist at MITRE Corp., a nonprofit company working on insider threat efforts for U.S. defense, intelligence and law enforcement agencies. “We don’t have actually any really good profiles or pictures of a bad guy, a good guy gone bad or even the bad guy walking in to do bad things from the very beginning.”



Different agencies and departments have different lists of behavior indicators. Most have adopted the traditional red flags for espionage. They include financial stress, disregard for security practices, unexplained foreign travel, unusual work hours and unexplained or sudden wealth.

But agencies and their consultants have added their own indicators.

For instance, an FBI insider threat detection guide warns private security personnel and managers to watch for “a desire to help the ‘underdog’ or a particular cause,” a “James Bond Wannabe” and a “divided loyalty: allegiance to another person or company or to a country besides the United States.”

A report by the Deloitte consulting firm identifies “several key trends that are making all organizations particularly susceptible to insider threat today.” These trends include an increasingly disgruntled, post-Great Recession workforce and the entry of younger, “Gen Y” employees who were “raised on the Internet” and are “highly involved in social networking.”

Report from Deloitte

Some government programs that have embraced behavioral indicators have been condemned as failures. Perhaps the most heavily criticized is the Transportation Security Administration’s Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques, or SPOT, program.

The program, which has cost $878 million and employs 2,800 people, uses “behavior detection officers” to identify potential terrorists by scrutinizing airline passengers for signs of “stress, fear or deception.”

DHS’ inspector general excoriated the program, saying in a May 2013 report, “TSA cannot ensure that passengers at United States airports are screened objectively, show that the program is cost-effective or reasonably justify the program’s expansion.”

Interviews and internal complaints obtained by The New York Times quoted TSA officers as saying SPOT has led to ethnic and racial profiling by emphasizing certain profiles. They include Middle Easterners, Hispanics traveling to Miami and African-Americans wearing baseball caps backward.

Another problem with having employees report co-workers’ suspicious behaviors: They aren’t sure which ones represent security threats.

“Employees in the field are not averse to reporting genuine security infractions. In fact, under appropriate conditions they are quite willing to act as eyes and ears for the government,” said a 2005 study by the Pentagon’s Defense Personnel Security Research Center. “They are simply confused about precisely what is important enough to report. Many government workers anguish over reporting gray-area behaviors.”

Even so, the Pentagon is forging ahead with training Defense Department and contractor managers and security officials to set up insider threat offices, with one company emphasizing how its course is designed for novices.

“The Establishing an Insider Threat Program for Your Organization Course will take no more than 90 minutes to complete,” says the proposal.

Officials with the Army, the only government department contacted by McClatchy that agreed to discuss the issue, acknowledged that identifying potential insider threats is more complicated than relying on a list of behaviors.

Response from the Army

“What we really point out is if you’re in doubt, report, because that’s what the investigative personnel are there to do, is to get the bottom of ‘is this just noise or is this something that is really going on?’” said Larry Gillis, a senior Army counterintelligence and security official.

The Army implemented a tough program a year before Obama’s executive order after Maj. Nidal Hasan, a U.S.-born Muslim, allegedly killed 13 people in a 2009 rampage at Fort Hood, Texas. Hasan, who has not gone on trial, has said he was defending the Afghan Taliban.

Gillis said the Army didn’t want a program that would “get people to snitch on each other,” nor did it want to encourage stereotyping.

“We don’t have the luxury to make up reasons to throw soldiers out,” Gillis said. “It’s a big deal to remove a soldier from service over some minor issue. We don’t want to ruin a career over some false accusation.”

But some current and former U.S. officials and experts worry that Obama’s Insider Threat Program could lead to false or retaliatory accusations across the entire government, in part because security officials are granted access to information outside their usual purview.

These current and former U.S. officials and experts also ridiculed as overly zealous and simplistic the idea of using reports of suspicious behavior to predict potential insider threats. It takes years for professional spy-hunters to learn their craft, and relying on the observations of inexperienced people could lead to baseless and discriminatory investigations, they said.

“Anyone is an amateur looking at behavior here,” said Thomas Fingar, a former State Department intelligence chief who chaired the National Intelligence Council, which prepares top-secret intelligence analyses for the president, from 2005 to 2008.

Co-workers, Fingar said, should “be attentive” to colleagues’ personal problems in order to refer them to counseling, not to report them as potential security violators. “It’s simply because they are colleagues, fellow human beings,” he said.

Eric Feldman, a former inspector general of the National Reconnaissance Office, the super-secret agency that oversees U.S. spy satellites, expressed concern that relying on workers to report colleagues’ suspicious behaviors to security officials could create “a repressive kind of culture.”

“The answer to it is not to have a Stasi-like response,” said Feldman, referring to the feared secret police of communist East Germany. “You’ve removed that firewall between employees seeking help and the threat that any employee who seeks help could be immediately retaliated against by this insider threat office.”
 

   
Email: jlanday@mcclatchydc.com or mtaylor@mcclatchydc.com

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/07/09/196211/linchpin-for-obamas-plan-to-predict.html#storylink=cpy
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 10, 2013, 06:15:27 AM
Privacy fears grow as Obama weighs expanded gun-buyer database

Tue, Jun 18 2013



http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/09/us-usa-guns-privacy-idUSBRE96815820130709

 

Analysis & Opinion

By Roberta Rampton

WASHINGTON | Tue Jul 9, 2013 4:43pm EDT

(Reuters) - Mental health advocates are worried that the privacy of people who have received treatment for their illnesses could be jeopardized by a White House push to expand a database used to run background checks on gun buyers.

President Barack Obama said he wants to see state governments contribute more names of people barred from buying guns to the database, part of a sweeping set of executive actions he announced after a gunman killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in December.

The database, called the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS, is used by gun dealers to check whether a potential buyer is prohibited from owning a gun.

States are encouraged to report to the database the names of people who are not allowed to buy guns because they have been involuntarily committed to a mental hospital, or have been found to have serious mental illnesses by courts.

Many states do not participate. So the administration is looking at changing a health privacy rule - part of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) - to remove one potential barrier.

The Health and Human Services Department has not released a detailed proposal outlining possible changes to HIPAA. When it asked for comments on the idea, it was flooded with more than 2,000 letters and e-mails.

Many of the comments were from gun rights advocates, but a surprising number were from mental health professionals and advocates.

Health care professionals are sympathetic to Obama's goal of reducing gun violence, but worry that the privacy rule proposal could discourage people with mental illness from seeking treatment.

"I think it's a bad idea. It would really put a chill on people getting services," said Daniel Fisher, who was treated for schizophrenia decades ago, recovered, and became a well-known psychiatrist and mental health advocate in Massachusetts.

"They find it very scary, the idea of a national database that the government will keep," Fisher said.

MODEST PROPOSALS

After Newtown, addressing gun violence became one of Obama's top priorities, but Congress rejected his proposals to restrict certain types of guns and a measure that would have closed a loophole and required checks of the NICS database for more types of sales, such as those that take place at gun shows.

Those measures were fought by gun rights lobbying groups, which said they would infringe on their constitutional rights.

So the administration has been left with a series of smaller steps it can take without congressional approval, such as tweaking the health privacy law to make sure it does not prevent states from reporting names to the NICS database.

In some states, mental health data is stored by hospitals or health-related boards that are covered by the HIPAA law. The administration is looking at amending the privacy rule to give those agencies permission to disclose names to the database.

"This action would eliminate the excuse which is used by legislators and other officials for not reporting information to NICS," said Lindsay Nichols, an attorney with the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, which advocates for tougher gun laws.

Nichols said privacy concerns are unfounded because only a limited amount of information would be disclosed to the database, and would be used only if someone with a severe mental illness who is not allowed to own a gun tried to buy one.

The Obama administration is conscious of the risk of scaring away people from treatment.

"Our actions will be carefully tailored to ensure patient confidentiality as well as public health and safety," Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in April when she asked for comments.

The department is weighing the comments to determine its next steps, said Rachel Seeger, a spokeswoman.

The changes likely will take months to propose and finalize.

FEARS OF DISCLOSURE

The idea of expanding the database comes at a time when the government's collection of citizens' phone and internet data is in the headlines, after a former CIA contractor revealed top secret information about surveillance programs.

Mental health advocates worry that somehow, whether intentionally by a hacker or unintentionally through bureaucratic bungling, mental health data in the background check system could be made public.

"I don't think of myself as at all paranoid about this, but I do think that a lot of people worry that information may not be as secure as we all want to be reassured that it is," said James Jackson, executive director of Disability Rights New Mexico.

Advocates also argue that the inclusion of mental health data in a criminal database is unfair. Having the data included in the database infers that people with mental illnesses are dangerous and violent, even though the vast majority are not.

"The constant chronic coupling of gun violence with mental illness is just devastating," said Marilyn Martin, a policy analyst with Access Living, a group that works with people with disabilities in Chicago.

GUN SHOW LOOPHOLE REMAINS
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 10, 2013, 12:27:24 PM
Op/Ed
 

 7/10/2013 @ 12:35PM |28 views
 
Forget The Rule Of Law, President Obama Presumes To Rule By 'Royal Decree'
 


By Ken Hoagland

We kicked kings, royal decrees and secret courts out of America long ago–or did we?



   Did 'Consent Of The Governed' Deliver Us Obamacare And Bell, CA?  Capital FlowsCapital Flows Contributor

   Why The White House Is Panicking About ObamaCare  John GoodmanJohn Goodman Contributor

   Obamacare's California Insurance Premiums Are Soaring - This Is Fact  Peter FerraraPeter Ferrara Contributor

   Coming Soon To America: A Two-Tiered, Canadian-Style Health Care System  John GoodmanJohn Goodman Contributor

Now we have a President who declares which laws will be enforced and which citizens will be subject to those laws. Now, we have secret courts issuing rulings without public notice or argument. Now we have powerful federal agencies going after citizens who object.

In the imperial Presidency of Barack Obama, the government takeover of healthcare was enacted over the objections of a majority of citizens–even before repeated and solemn promises of no new taxes on the middle class were ruled false by the Supreme Court. And it gets worse.

Now the Administration has decreed that hundreds of billions of dollars in healthcare subsidies will be paid out in states that embrace ObamaCare–with no questions asked about eligibility. Neither income nor existing insurance coverage will be certified before taxpayer money is paid out. It is an open invitation to commit fraud.

In a similar announcement last week, big businesses, like four million citizens (most in pro-ObamaCare unions) are to receive one-year “waivers” by royal decree. There is no legal authority for this decision but that is not stopping him.

Even Congressional staffers and their bosses are now lobbying for their own exemptions. Why not? The committee staffers who wrote Obamacare exempted themselves along with Congressional leadership, the White House and Cabinet officers.

Gone is the very concept of the “Rule of Law” that holds that all citizens are equally subject to federal statutes enacted by representatives of the people. Gone is the concept that those who govern are subject to “consent of the governed”.

When past Presidents tried to seize unconstitutional power we relied on the judicial branch of government to assert the needed “checks and balances”. But this President is now simply ignoring two federal courts who have ruled illegal his appointments to the National Labor Relations Board.

Worse, secret courts are making rulings allowing spying on law-abiding citizens with no possible connection to international terrorism. King George had secret courts that rounded up suspects and condemned them without defense or public notice. It is why our Founding Fathers wrote the Fourth Amendment. And how can the governed give consent to such secret decisions? Until Mr. Snowden, they were unknown. .

Frustrated with a divided government and a divided people, Barack Obama has made war on those who disagree. Rogue IRS agents hardly explain how one citizen, Catherine Englebrecht (who started a group investigating voter fraud) found herself the subject of multiple FBI visits and surprise audits from a range of federal agencies, including the IRS. It is simply not believable that this abuse was not directed by powerful figures within this Administration–but the FBI has still not investigated.

Mr. Obama’s treatment of existing federal laws is equally contemptuous. He recently decreed that 800,000 illegal immigrants are no longer subject to applicable federal statutes. And, unwilling to fight for changes to the No Child Left Behind Act, he decided that the law could be ignored. Now, more than half the states have been granted waivers.

Welfare work rules? It was a monumentally successful policy reform embraced by both parties and strong majorities in both the House and Senate, representing widespread public belief that unrestricted welfare payments were actually increasing poverty and dependency. This President has decided that this law, like others, is optional, shifting the entire concept of the Rule of Law and the will of the people to his discretion. All hail the King.

This President has shown through his many actions that he believes that consent of the governed is an outmoded idea that can be ignored. Congress can be ignored. The courts can be ignored. The Constitution that he is sworn to uphold and the Attorney General is sworn to enforce is optional.

We kicked royalty out of our country long ago but royal decrees are here again. Our grand experiment in personal liberty is in danger of being erased from within.

Ken Hoagland is chairman of “Restore America’s Voice Foundation.” His group has delivered two million petitions and hundreds of thousands of phone calls to the House and Senate demanding a new Senate vote on ObamaCare that honestly describes both the taxes levied for the program and the performance promises that have proven false.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 10, 2013, 01:19:09 PM
Obama's Violating Oath, Constitution in Implementing Obamacare
Townhall.com ^  | July 10, 2013 | Terry Jeffrey

Posted on Wednesday, July 10, 2013 3:24:03 PM by Kaslin



The Constitution requires the president to take an oath or affirmation that says: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Article II, Section 3 says, "He shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed."

In his unequal and discriminatory implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare), President Barack Obama is now violating both his constitutional oath of office and his constitutional duty to faithfully execute the laws.

The Obamacare law mandates that individuals must maintain health-insurance coverage for themselves and their dependents or pay a penalty. Similarly, it requires employers with 50 or more full-time workers to provide those workers with health-insurance coverage or pay a penalty.

The separate sections of the law spelling out these two mandates conclude with identical language: "The amendments made by this section shall apply to periods beginning after December 31, 2013."

For Obama to fulfill his constitutional oath of office and faithfully execute the Obamacare law, he would need to take care that his administration enforced this statutory Dec. 31, 2013, health-insurance deadline on both individuals and employers.

But Obama is not going to do that.

On July 2 -- while Congress was out of town for the July 4 holiday -- a Treasury Department bureaucrat posted a blog on the department's website announcing that the administration was not going to enforce the legal deadline on employers. It said nothing about suspending the deadline for individuals.

In other words, the administration would not apply the law equally on individuals and businesses.

"The administration is announcing that it will provide an additional year before the ACA mandatory employer and insurer reporting requirements begin," wrote Assistant Treasury Secretary for Tax Policy Mark J. Mazur.

Again, the law says: "The amendments made by this section shall apply to periods beginning after December 31, 2013." But the bureaucrat declared: "The administration is announcing that it will provide an additional year ..."

Which trumps which: the law or the assistant secretary's blog posting? Clearly, the Obama administration believes its bureaucratic dictates can overrule the law.

It is not difficult to discern Obama's political rationale for declining to faithfully enforce his own health care plan. Enforcing the legally mandated Dec. 31 health-insurance deadline on businesses could be disastrous for the president's allies in the 2014 midterm elections. That, in turn, could set back Obama's efforts to keep Obamacare from being repealed.

To save his law, he must not fully enforce it -- now. He must only fully enforce it when the chance that the people could achieve its repeal through the processes of representative government has been attenuated as much as possible. That is why Obama and his allies originally wrote the deadlines of Dec. 31, 2013, directly into the black letters of the law. They thought that was safely after the 2012 elections.

But December 2013 turned out not to be as safe as they originally calculated.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports that the national unemployment rate was 7.6 percent in June -- the same as it was in May. That makes 54 straight months -- beginning in January 2009, when Obama first took his oath of office -- that unemployment has remained at 7.5 percent or higher.

That is by far the longest stretch of 7.5-percent-plus unemployment since the BLS started keeping unemployment statistics in 1948. The second-longest period was only 32 months. Obama has already beaten that by almost two years.

Indisputably, Obama has the worst unemployment record of any president in the post-World War II era -- and his signature legislative achievement was about to make his record even worse.

The mandate that businesses must provide health insurance or pay a penalty if they hire a 50th full-time workers is like a Berlin Wall keeping Americans from jobs.

The National Federation of Independent Business has calculated that the minimum fine a business would pay for hiring its 50th full-time employee would be $40,000 per year -- unless it was capable of paying far more than that for Obamacare-approved health insurance for all its full-time employees.

If a business did not insure its employees, it would pay an additional $2,000 fine, on top of the first $40,000 in fines, for each additional full-time worker it hired beyond 50.

The fine on individuals for not buying government-approved health insurance is a penalty on individual liberty. The fine on employers is a penalty on job creation.

Obama figured his allies in Congress could get away with imposing a penalty on individual liberty. But, with unemployment still at 7.6 percent, he figured they could not get away with imposing a penalty on job creation.

So he violated his oath to preserve the Constitution, flouted his duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, and decided not to provide equal protection of the law to individuals and businesses.

Obama's edict: Businesses do not have to comply with the Dec. 31 deadline he signed into law. You do.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 11, 2013, 01:24:54 PM

'Signature Strikes' and the President's Empty Rhetoric on Drones

Posted: 07/10/2013 5:56 pm
 

 
On March 17, 2011, four Hellfire missiles, fired from a U.S. drone, slammed into a bus depot in the town of Datta Khel in Pakistan's Waziristan border region. An estimated 42 people were killed. It was just another day in America's so-called war on terror. To most Americans the strike was likely only a one-line blip on the evening news, if they even heard about it at all.

But what really happened that day? Who were those 42 people who were killed, and what were they doing? And what effect did the strike have? Did it make us safer? These are the questions raised, and answered, in a must-watch new video just released by Robert Greenwald's Brave New Foundation.

The attack was what has come to be called a "signature strike." This is when the CIA or the military makes the decision to fire based not on who the targets are but on whether they are exhibiting suspicious patterns of behavior thought to be "signatures" of terrorists (as seen on video from the drone). Given that the CIA is killing people it's never identified based on their behavior, one would assume a certain rigor has gone into defining the criteria for the kinds of behavior that get one killed.

So what's a signature behavior? "The definition is a male between the ages of 20 and 40," former ambassador to Pakistan Cameron Munter told the Daily Beast's Tara McKelvey. "My feeling is one man's combatant is another man's -- well, a chump who went to a meeting." The New York Times quoted a senior State Department official as saying that when the CIA sees "three guys doing jumping jacks," the agency thinks it is a terrorist training camp.

That day in Datta Khel, the signature behavior was a meeting, or "jirga," which is an assembly of tribal elders who convene to settle a local dispute. In this case, a conflict over a chromite mine was being resolved. And, in fact, the elders had informed the Pakistani army about the meeting 10 days in advance. "So this was an open, public event that pretty much everyone in the community and surrounding area knew about," says Stanford law professor James Cavallaro in the video.

Pretty much everyone in the community and surrounding area. But not U.S. intelligence. Or the head of the CIA. Or the president. Or the guy in Virginia or Nevada or some other undisclosed location pressing the button on the drone controller.

And so, almost all the tribal elders of the area were killed by the drone missiles. Akbar Ahmed is a retired Pakistani ambassador to the UK and now a professor at American University. "It's feeding into the sense that no one is safe, nowhere is safe, nothing is safe," he says in the video. "Even a jirga, the most cherished, the most treasured institution of the tribal areas. So we cannot even sit down and resolve an issue -- that is not safe anymore." As professor Cavallaro put it, "the loss of 40 leaders on a single day is devastating for that community."

And far from building stability in places like Pakistan, something the administration talks a lot about, in fact the strike actually removed, in one fell swoop, the most stabilizing forces in an entire community.

Jalal Manzar Khail was at his nearby home that day and remembers the attack, which also claimed four of his cousins. Khail's six-year-old son was later afraid -- not unreasonably -- to sleep in their house. "We cannot go home," Khail recounts his son saying. "We have to spend the night in the tree." Khail adds, "Convey my message to Americans: The CIA and America have to stop ... they're just creating more enemies and this will last for hundreds of years."

Khail's message is not uncommon. "At the end of almost every interview I did," Greenwald told me, "the person would say, 'Please tell President Obama I am not a terrorist and he should stop killing my family.'"

There was a time when President Obama might have been more receptive to that message. In the book Kill or Capture: The War on Terror and the Soul of the Obama Presidency, Daniel Klaidman recounts another drone strike just days after President Obama had been inaugurated. Among those killed were a pro-government tribal elder and two of his children. Obama "was not a happy man," an official told Klaidman.

The concept of the signature strike was then explained to him. "Mr. President," said CIA deputy director Steve Kappes, "we can see that there are a lot of military-age males down there, men associated with terrorist activity, but we don't always know who they are." Obama responded, "That's not good enough for me."

It would appear that he has since warmed to the concept. It's unknown how many have died -- combatants or civilians -- in signature strikes, since the administration still doesn't acknowledge that they happen. In February, Robert Gibbs told MSNBC's Chris Hayes that when Gibbs became Obama's press secretary he was told not to acknowledge the drone program at all. "You're not even to discuss that it exists," Gibbs remembers being told.

Of course, since then, given how increasingly ludicrous -- and insulting to the country -- this stance appeared, the administration has acknowledged the drone strikes, though not much more. But estimated numbers have been compiled by other sources. As Klaidman points out, by the time Obama accepted his Nobel Peace Prize 11 months into his presidency, he'd already ordered more drone strikes than George W. Bush had in his entire presidency. By the end of 2012, he'd ordered six times as many strikes in Pakistan as Bush had. One study, conducted by professors from Stanford (including Cavallaro) and NYU, found that from 2004 to 2012, between 474 and 881 civilians were killed in Pakistan drone strikes. This includes 176 children -- the subject of another Greenwald video, which I encourage you to watch. For fiscal year 2013, the administration has requested $26.16 billion for the drone program -- at least that's the portion that we know about.

In a speech in May at the National Defense University, President Obama gave what was billed as a major national security address meant to clarify his policy on drones, surveillance, and Guantanamo. It seemed to signal a transition in his approach. "With a decade of experience to draw from," he said in the hour-long address, "now is the time to ask ourselves hard questions -- about the nature of today's threats, and how we should confront them." In parts of the speech he even made a good case against the use of drones:

... force alone cannot make us safe. We cannot use force everywhere that a radical ideology takes root; and in the absence of a strategy that reduces the well-spring of extremism, a perpetual war -- through drones or Special Forces or troop deployments -- will prove self-defeating, and alter our country in troubling ways.

He also admitted that "U.S. strikes have resulted in civilian casualties." This was a far cry from the claim made in 2011 by John Brennan, at the time the president's chief counterterrorism advisor, that "there hasn't been a single collateral death" from the strikes. He later amended this to say there's been no "credible evidence of collateral deaths." This ridiculous claim was demolished in an article in Foreign Policy by Micah Zenko, who concluded that Brennan either doesn't get the same briefings given to other administration officials or he doesn't have Internet access. Or "he was lying." In any case, it didn't stop his confirmation as director of the CIA.

In his speech, President Obama also allowed that "America cannot take strikes wherever we choose -- our actions are bound by consultations with partners, and respect for state sovereignty." Pakistan might differ on that one. After the Datta Khel strike, some of the victims' families filed suit, resulting in a ruling by the Pakistan court that the strikes are illegal.

In fact, the president opened his speech by proclaiming that "our alliances are strong, and so is our standing in the world." Well, the world's a big place. And there are some places where our standing has larger implications for our national security than others. In Pakistan, for instance, according to a recent Pew Foundation poll, 74 percent consider the U.S. to be an enemy. In the last year of the Bush administration, the U.S. was regarded favorably by 19 percent of the Pakistan people. By 2012, that had fallen to 12 percent. Bruce Riedel, a former CIA official and now a scholar at Brookings, says the strikes are "deadly to any hope of reversing the downward slide in ties with the fastest growing nuclear weapons state in the world."

The president also claimed that "conventional airpower or missiles are far less precise than drones, and likely to cause more civilian casualties and local outrage." Wrong again. In the Guardian last week, Spencer Ackerman reports on a study by Larry Lewis, of the Center for Naval Analysis, that found that drones strikes in Afghanistan were 10 times more likely to cause civilian casualties than strikes from manned fighters. "Drones aren't magically better at avoiding civilians than fighter jets," said study co-author Sarah Holewinski. "When pilots flying jets were given clear directives and training on civilian protection, they were able to lower civilian casualty rates."

In his speech, President Obama also said that "we must make decisions based not on fear, but hard-earned wisdom." The hard-earned wisdom the drone study was based on -- data in Afghanistan from 2010 to 2011 -- was presumably available to the administration. Had the White House been interested in finding out which method was safer, they could have. But they chose not to and instead just repeated the self-serving, conventional -- and demonstrably wrong -- "wisdom." It's hard to grant the mantle of actual wisdom to that kind of decision-making.

But the president also said that he was going to explore "other options for increased oversight," and that he'd signed "clear guidelines" for "oversight and accountability" just the day before. "Before any strike is taken," he declared, "there must be near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured -- the highest standard we can set."

Though signature strikes were not mentioned, some assumed language like "near certainty" and "highest standard" meant they were no longer going to be used. That assumption was proven wrong as just days later an administration official told the New York Times that signature strikes will continue in Pakistan, a statement the Times' Andrew Rosenthal wrote "seem[ed] to contradict the entire tenor of Mr. Obama's speech."

Two weeks later, on June 9, a drone struck a vehicle in Yemen, killing not only several supposed militants, but also a boy named Abdulaziz. He was 10 years old. "Near certainty" and those new "clear guidelines" apparently weren't enough for Abdulaziz. The administration refused to comment on the boy's death, or the strike itself. So much for accountability and transparency. And just last week, a strike in Waziristan killed 16 people and wounded five others.

In addition to asking some of those "hard questions" about the war on terror, it's time to start admitting some clearly obvious hard truths. And one of those is that the assumption that drone strikes make us safer -- even when they're on target and used with a threshold of absolute certainty -- just isn't true. So, it's not a choice, as the administration would have us believe, between safety and compassion. "As Commander-in-Chief, I must weigh these heartbreaking tragedies against the alternatives," said Obama in his speech. "To do nothing in the face of terrorist networks would invite far more civilian casualties." As if those are our only choices -- killing boys like Abdulaziz or doing nothing.

The president continued: "Let us remember that the terrorists we are after target civilians, and the death toll from their acts of terrorism against Muslims dwarfs any estimate of civilian casualties from drone strikes."

But he says that as if "the terrorists" are some set pool of people, and all we have to do is find them and kill them. Yes, given that terrorists target civilians, how about policies that don't create more terrorists in the first place? After that strike in Datta Khel, what do you suppose happened to the support of any moderate or pro-American or pro-democracy leaders in the community? (I'm speaking of the ones who weren't killed, of course.) Was their standing enhanced? Did the strike help them make their case?

Sure, we killed some people. Some of them were undoubtedly "bad guys" -- but has this made us safer? In the video, Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, says it's not about casualty numbers. "The Vietnam body count as a metric was flawed," he says, "and the drone strikes are the same way ... Tell me how we are winning if every time we kill one, we create 10? That's not a metric that tells you if you're winning. What tells you if you're winning is if Muslims decide not to support the radical fringe." David Kilcullen, former senior advisor to General David Petraeus, agrees: "[T]he blowback and the aspect of political destabilization -- those things ultimately do make us less safe."

It seems clear that the White House doesn't want debate on this issue any more than it welcomed debate, as the president claimed, on the NSA's surveillance program after the Snowden revelations. What the administration seems to want is to make speeches in which they claim good intentions, high standards, and a commitment to transparency -- and then declare everything else classified and off-limits.

That's why Greenwald's new video is so valuable. It gives us a glimpse, even if the White House won't, of what's being done in our name. "We are working," Greenwald told me, "to use the video to get Congress to introduce legislation to ban signature strikes." So watch it, and then start the debate the president claims to want. The missiles from the drones might be exploding in Pakistan and Afghanistan and Yemen, but the fallout will impact us here at home for years to come.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 11, 2013, 01:37:28 PM
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/18-and-counting-plum-ambassador-posts-go-obama-campaign-bundlers


 >:(
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 11, 2013, 01:38:33 PM


http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/07/11/dominicans_rage_against_obamas_gay_ambassador_pick


Dominicans Freak Out Over Obama's Gay Ambassador Pick

 Posted By John Hudson   Thursday, July 11, 2013 - 1:55 PM   Share
 

 
Opposition to President Obama's nominee for U.S. ambassador to the Dominican Republic reached a fever pitch this week as religious organizers stage a "Lunes Negro" or Black Monday protest against James "Wally" Brewster.

If confirmed, Brewster will be the first openly gay ambassador to the country, a prospect that is not going over well with some segments of this conservative Christian country of 9 million people. Local reports indicate that church leaders are pressuring the government to reject Brewster's nomination and calling on the faithful to dress in black on Monday in solidarity against him.

Praise Christian Church Pastor Sauford Medrano is quoted in Diario Libre as saying that Brewster could cause "the U.S. promotion of gender beliefs in the country." That supposedly violates a general education law in the country that "all the Dominican education system is based on Christian principles."

The report was flagged by Cable reader and Dominican expat Will Williams, an architect in New York City. He said he witnessed the animosity toward the ambassador in a visit last weekend. "I could confirm myself that the opposition has been even worse from what have been reflected in the news," he said. "As a Dominican, I feel ashamed this is happening in my country ... The evangelical church is convoking the general public to reject this ambassador ... [It's] asking the public to show a black band, black banner or ribbon on cars or dress showing rejection."

In a statement to The Cable, Monica Trasandes, director of Spanish Language Media at GLAAD, defended the president's pick. "We stand with LGBT advocates in the Dominican Republic, who are calling on leaders to quit categorizing their country's population as homophobic," she said. "We hope that James Brewster will help educate those still adversely affected by homophobia and applaud the work of LGBT advocates in the Dominican Republic."

When news of opposition to Brewster first began, the Dominican embassy in Washington told The Cable that the country supports the president's pick. "The Dominican Republic is a democracy with a vibrant media and a wide diversity of opinions on every conceivable topic," the statement read. "However, it is the position of the Government of the Dominican Republic that a person´s sexual preference is strictly a personal matter and it looks forward to working constructively with Mr. Brewster in his official capacity once his nomination is approved by the U.S. Senate."

In June, the AP spoke with Catholic and evangelical church leaders who opposed the nomination. "If he arrives, he'll suffer and will be forced to leave," Vicar Pablo Cedano, told the AP. He said the pick showed "a lack of respect, of consideration, that they send us that kind of person as ambassador." Rev. Cristobal Cardozo, leader of the Dominican Evangelical Fraternity, said the appointment was offensive. "It's an insult to good Dominican customs," he said.

Brewster was a fundraiser for Obama and currently works at the Chicago consulting firm SB&K. 


 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 11, 2013, 02:26:50 PM
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/10/obama-donors-top-embassy-jobs-rewards


Corruption Defined
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 16, 2013, 06:55:21 AM

Obamacare contractor under investigation in Britain


By Sarah Kliff, Published: July 15 at 10:21 pmE-mail the writer
   
 





















submit to reddit



The British government has launched an investigation of Serco Group, parent company of the firm recently awarded $1.2 billion to manage key elements of the U.S. health-care law’s rollout.

(Photo by Jessica Rinaldi/Reuters)
(Photo by Jessica Rinaldi/Reuters)
 
That contract, announced in late June, is among the largest Affordable Care Act grants made so far, expected to cover the hiring of 1,500 workers who will process a wave of health coverage applications.

In the United Kingdom, Serco Group reportedly overbilled the government by “tens of millions of pounds” under a contract to monitor offenders on parole and individuals released on bail, according to an audit conducted by the country’s Justice Ministry.

The British government plans to review all of its contracts with the U.K.-based firm and put on hold a separate contract Serco had secured with the country’s prison system.

“They do not believe that anything dishonest has taken place,” Chris Grayling, the British justice minister, told Parliament regarding Serco. “But we have agreed that if the audit does show dishonest action, we will jointly call in the relevant authorities to address it.”

The audit will not affect Serco Inc., the Reston-based branch of the global firm that won the health-law contract, according to spokesman Alan Hill. The global Serco Group has said it will comply with the British investigation.



 

“We’re moving forward with the contract,” Hill said. “We’ve got a tight deadline to get everybody trained and do all the testing.”

Hill said there is a “firewall” between the American arm of the company, which often handles sensitive government information, and its overseas parent. “When a foreign entity is involved, I think that means that U.S. interests are protected,” he said.

Serco’s $1.2 billion contract with the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services is the firm’s first health law award, Hill said. The company does, however, have experience handling large U.S. government jobs through contracts with the State Department to process visa applications and with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, where it oversees patent requests.

Serco has already begun recruiting workers for offices that will be in Arkansas, Alabama and Kentucky. Workers will handle applications for health coverage that come in through the state insurance marketplaces, which launch Oct. 1.

“Serco is a highly skilled company that has a proven track record in providing cost-effective services to numerous other federal agencies,” Medicare spokesman Brian Cook said. “The company has provided exceptional records management and processing support to other federal agencies, similar to work they will do for the marketplace.”

The British investigation centers on Serco and another contractor, G4S, which provide the prison system with services to track individuals outside correctional facilities.

An audit found the two companies to have charged the British government “for people who were back in prison and had had their tags removed, people who had left the country, and those who had never been tagged in the first place but who had instead been returned to court,” Justice Secretary Chris Grayling told the British Parliament.

In a small number of cases, he said, the companies continued charging the government for its monitoring services after the individual had died.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Rhino on July 16, 2013, 11:49:39 PM
I know you already knew this numbers man... but a black president didn't change a damn thing! Or a white black as they say nowadays :) I mean what the hell do they want? The most powerful country in the world :(
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 19, 2013, 05:32:45 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/on-the-health-care-mandate-obama-reaches-beyond-the-law/2013/07/18/d442aefc-efb4-11e2-a1f9-ea873b7e0424_story.html

Con Law scholar, a real one, says Obama is going beyond Nixon in his crimes
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 26, 2013, 10:46:32 AM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/26/obama-whistleblower-website_n_3658815.html

More lies and deceptions
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 26, 2013, 12:20:59 PM
Obama Promises Disappear from Web
Sunlight Foundation ^  | 26Jul 2013 | John Wonderlich

Posted on Friday, July 26, 2013 2:56:56 PM



Change.gov, the website created by the Obama transition team in 2008, has effectively disappeared sometime over the last month.

While the front splash page for Change.gov has linked to the main White House website for years, until recently, you could still continue on to see the materials and agenda laid out by the administration. This was a particularly helpful resource for those looking to compare Obama's performance in office against his vision for reform, laid out in detail on Change.gov.

According to the Internet Archive, the last time that content (beyond the splash page) was available was June 8th -- last month.

Why the change?

Here's one possibility, from the administration's ethics agenda:

Protect Whistleblowers: Often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government is an existing government employee committed to public integrity and willing to speak out. Such acts of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives and often save taxpayer dollars, should be encouraged rather than stifled. We need to empower federal employees as watchdogs of wrongdoing and partners in performance. Barack Obama will strengthen whistleblower laws to protect federal workers who expose waste, fraud, and abuse of authority in government. Obama will ensure that federal agencies expedite the process for reviewing whistleblower claims and whistleblowers have full access to courts and due process. It may be that Obama's description of the importance of whistleblowers went from being an artifact of his campaign to a political liability. It wouldn't be the first time administration positions disappear from the internet when they become inconvenient descriptions of their assurances.


(Excerpt) Read more at sunlightfoundation.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 26, 2013, 07:46:36 PM
http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2013/07/26/assange-journalism-doomed-if-manning-convicted-of-aiding-enemy

 >:(
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 31, 2013, 05:20:19 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2013/07/30/the-insiders-does-the-white-house-think-no-one-will-notice-the-obamacare-hypocrisy



Great article - slammed into the mat for his lies
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 31, 2013, 10:06:10 AM
Report: Obama 'hot, rude and snarky" to House Dems in Closed Door Meeting
 Wednesday, July 31, 2013 | Kristinn

Posted on Wednesday, July 31, 2013 12:38:38 PM by kristinn

CNN's Dana Bash reports via Twitter that Barack Obama was incredibly arrogant in a private meeting on Capitol Hill with Congressional Democrats today:

apparently POTUS got hot with dem ed perlmutter for asking about karry summers (sic) for fed chief. POTUS went off about wash game & "huff post"

ALso told POTUS was snarky w/ member asking about jobs in his district. Dem told me "he cant get thru a meeting of dems w/out chastising us"

Dem source tells me POTUS was "rude and dismissive" to freshman dem maloney who asked about a loan guarantee program/jobs for ny district






LOL!!!!!   FAIL FAIL FAIL you Kenyan piece of trash
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 01, 2013, 07:14:12 PM
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/08/01/Obama-Promises-to-Look-Into-Giving-Congressional-Staffers-a-Break-on-Obamacare


Obama deserves to rot in hell for his crimes.  Worthless communist traitor
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 12, 2013, 11:29:59 AM
http://www.infowars.com/official-embassy-attack-threat-had-no-basis-in-fact


Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Option D on August 12, 2013, 12:12:01 PM
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/08/01/Obama-Promises-to-Look-Into-Giving-Congressional-Staffers-a-Break-on-Obamacare


Obama deserves to rot in hell for his crimes.  Worthless communist traitor
what about Ronald Reagon. Does he need to rot in hell for his crimes?
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 15, 2013, 01:38:54 PM
http://www.cnbc.com/id/100963714


Figures - anything Obama ever touches turns to absolute shit
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 20, 2013, 07:38:05 PM
http://www.ijreview.com/2013/08/73971-mindblowing-252-well-cited-examples-of-obama-corruption-cronyism-lying-lawbreaking


 :(
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 25, 2013, 11:04:24 AM
http://www.westernjournalism.com/obama-supporters-will-go-hysterical-over-this-well-sourced-list-of-252-examples-of-his-lying-lawbreaking-corruption-cronyism-etc

 ;)
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 27, 2013, 01:52:21 PM

5 Deceptions From Obama About NSA Surveillance

Ed Krayewski|Aug. 27, 2013 4:30 pm



http://reason.com/archives/2013/08/27/5-deceptions-from-obama-about-nsa-survei/print



to the rescue!OFAEdward Snowden's  disclosures about the National Security Agency have put President Barack Obama and his subordinates in the White House and the intelligence community on the defensive. And to defend the program, they've relied on intentionally misleading or outright untrue claims. Here are 5 examples:

the olden days when we didn't have controversyWhite House1. “I welcome this debate, and I think it’s healthy for our Democracy. I think it’s a sign of maturity because probably five years ago, six years ago, we might not have been having this debate.” —Obama press conference, June 7, 2013.

On June 7, the revelation that the NSA was collecting Verizon phone records was a major disclosure. But the story was very similar to a 2006 disclosure that the NSA was collecting phone records from Verizon and other telecom companies. That news, naturally, also fostered a debate about the NSA’s program. Indeed, the revelation helped illustrate how President George W. Bush and his administration overstepped constitutional boundaries in the aftermath of 9/11 and the course of the “war on terror.” In the 2008 campaign, Obama  cultivated the perception that his stance toward the “balance” between security and liberty leaned heavily toward liberty. His 2008 rhetoric would be impossible if we were unable to be “having this debate” then.

they just can't!NSA2. “[T]he NSA cannot target your emails...and have not. They cannot and have not, by law and by rule.” — Obama to Charlie Rose, June 17, 2013.

The drip feed manner of reporting that Glenn Greenwald and The Guardian have adopted has made liars out of the administration again and again. Information about the PRISM program, available by June 17, had already made Obama’s statement to Rose highly suspect. Revelations in recent weeks show the NSA’s efforts have indeed gone well beyond the ambitious PRISM program; the NSA  can reach up to 75 percent of U.S. internet traffic. A pair of U.S. email providers shut down rather than abetting the feds in spying on e-mail account holders; one is now being threatened for shutting down instead of cooperating.

ebcaks?C-SPAN3. “This latest revelation that was made, what was learned was that NSA had inadvertently, accidentally pulled the emails of some Americans in violation of their own rules because of technical problems that they didn't realize.” —Obama on CNN, August 23, 2013.

The same day the president made this statement, The Guardian  reported the exact opposite. The agency’s own inspector general, in fact, found NSA operatives had willfully (an antonym for inadvertently) broken rules that prevented them from spying on Americans. The inspector general insisted the violations were “rare” and that inadvertent violations of Americans’ privacy was far more common (but also rare!). Small comfort.

youWhite House4. “[In a May speech] I called for a review of our surveillance programs. Unfortunately, rather than an orderly and lawful process to debate these issues and come up with appropriate reforms, repeated leaks of classified information have initiated the debate in a very passionate but not always fully informed way.” —Obama at a White House press conference, August 9, 2013.

The May speech in question referred to the president’s “Privacy and Civil Liberties Board” helping to “review” instances when “counterterrorism efforts and our values may come into tension,” hardly a solid foundation for a healthy debate. The “repeated leaks of classified information” were, in fact, one of the only reasons any kind of “informed” debate on the matter is possible. Meanwhile, even the president’s privacy board has  pointed out that regulations of domestic surveillance haven’t been changed in 30 years.

journalist jay leno asked some toughiesNBC5. “We don't have a domestic spying program.” —Obama on Jay Leno, August 7, 2013.

Obama made this laughable statement on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, but it wasn’t intended to be funny. The New York Times debunked it the very next day. The NSA, and other federal agencies, are spying on Americans, with warrants and without, and with warrants that cover essentially the whole country. None of those agencies have domestic spying as their primary mission the way, say, the East German Stasi did. But as one Stasi veteran has said, the U.S. government's surveillance abilities "would have been a dream come true."
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 01, 2013, 02:23:46 PM
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/08/31/liberal-small-business-owner-once-an-obamacare-supporter-now-rips-program-costs-its-gigantically-troublesome-to-me/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=story&utm_campaign=Share%20Buttons




boooooommmmmmmmm
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 09, 2013, 01:38:43 PM
http://thehill.com/blogs/defcon-hill/operations/321103-white-house-insists-it-may-strike-syria-without-congressional-approval


 :(
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 23, 2013, 07:19:09 AM
http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/09/23/its-official-obamacare-will-increase-health-spending-by-7450-for-a-typical-family-of-four


 >:(
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 25, 2013, 07:27:41 AM
http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/09/25/double-down-obamacare-will-increase-avg-individual-market-insurance-premiums-by-99-for-men-62-for-women/?partner=yahootix


 >:(
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 25, 2013, 12:22:51 PM
http://www.atr.org/obama-obamacare-raise-taxes-things-a7883

Obama lied
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 27, 2013, 11:14:24 AM
http://www.theguardian.com/media/media-blog/2013/sep/27/seymour-hersh-obama-nsa-american-media


Boooommmm - -   Its only the leftist media and sycophants like Straw Ass , AndreRyc, Andre is a TwINK, blacken , et all who still support this mess
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 27, 2013, 01:58:31 PM
http://washingtonexaminer.com/seiu-unionists-strike-over-obamacare-related-cuts/article/2536458


LOL - PROMISE BROKEN 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 27, 2013, 03:06:01 PM
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9242648/H_1B_workers_in_line_for_Obamacare_work

More deceptions by Obama
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 30, 2013, 07:24:34 PM
http://dailycaller.com/2013/09/30/company-with-1-2-billion-obamacare-contract-under-investigation-for-serious-fraud
 :(

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 02, 2013, 01:56:06 PM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/02/patrick-leahy-nsa_n_4030514.html


nice - Senator saying he learns more from the newspaper than breiefings by Obama admn on NSa spying scandal
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 09, 2013, 12:26:12 PM
http://dailycaller.com/2013/10/09/white-house-irs-exchanged-confidential-taxpayer-info


Boooommmmmmm


More lies from that worthless poverty pimp
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 09, 2013, 12:50:56 PM
http://townhall.com/columnists/terryjeffrey/2013/10/09/obama-administration-prohibits-kennedy-family-from-practicing-catholicism-n1719831



What a THUG
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 10, 2013, 07:21:38 AM
Report: Obama brings chilling effect on journalism

By BRETT ZONGKER
Associated Press
 
 
Report: Obama brings chilling effect on journalism
 Obama: Complaints about fed workers 'destructive'

Boehner sending small group to Obama meeting

Obama nominates Yellen to succeed Bernanke at Fed

For Obama, little to say that hasn't been said


 
 
   
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. government's aggressive prosecution of leaks and efforts to control information are having a chilling effect on journalists and government whistle-blowers, according to a report released Thursday on U.S. press freedoms under the Obama administration.

The Committee to Protect Journalists conducted its first examination of U.S. press freedoms amid the Obama administration's unprecedented number of prosecutions of government sources and seizures of journalists' records. Usually the group focuses on advocating for press freedoms abroad.

Leonard Downie Jr., a former executive editor of The Washington Post, wrote the 30-page analysis entitled "The Obama Administration and the Press." The report notes President Barack Obama came into office pledging an open, transparent government after criticizing the Bush administration's secrecy, "but he has fallen short of his promise."

"In the Obama administration's Washington, government officials are increasingly afraid to talk to the press," wrote Downie, now a journalism professor at Arizona State University. "The administration's war on leaks and other efforts to control information are the most aggressive I've seen since the Nixon administration, when I was one of the editors involved in The Washington Post's investigation of Watergate."

Downie interviewed numerous reporters and editors, including a top editor at The Associated Press, following revelations this year that the government secretly seized records for telephone lines and switchboards used by more than 100 AP journalists. Downie also interviewed journalists whose sources have been prosecuted on felony charges

Those suspected of discussing classified information are increasingly subject to investigation, lie-detector tests, scrutiny of telephone and email records and now surveillance by co-workers under a new "Insider Threat Program" that has been implemented in every agency.

"There's no question that sources are looking over their shoulders," Michael Oreskes, the AP's senior managing editor, told Downie. "Sources are more jittery and more standoffish, not just in national security reporting. A lot of skittishness is at the more routine level. The Obama administration has been extremely controlling and extremely resistant to journalistic intervention."

To bypass journalists, the White House developed its own network of websites, social media and even created an online newscast to dispense favorable information and images. In some cases, the White House produces videos of the president's meetings with major figures that were never listed on his public schedule. Instead, they were kept secret - a departure from past administrations, the report noted.

Frank Sesno, a former CNN Washington bureau chief who is now director of George Washington University's School of Media and Public Affairs, told Downie the combined efforts of the Obama administration are "squeezing the flow of information."

"Open dialogue with the public without filters is good, but if used for propaganda and to avoid contact with journalists, it's a slippery slope," Sesno said.

In the report, White House officials objected to findings that the administration has limited transparency or information. Press Secretary Jay Carney said such complaints are part of the "natural tension" between the White House and the press.

"The idea that people are shutting up and not leaking to reporters is belied by the facts," Carney told Downie.

National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes said there is still investigative reporting about national security issues with information from "nonsanctioned sources with lots of unclassified information and some sensitive information."

Downie found the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks were a "watershed moment," leading to increased secrecy, surveillance and control of information. There is little direct comparison between the Bush and Obama administrations, though some journalists told Downie the Obama administration exercises more control.

"Every administration learns from the previous administration," said CBS Chief Washington Correspondent Bob Schieffer. "They become more secretive and put tighter clamps on information."

Shortly after Obama entered office, the White House was under pressure from intelligence agencies and Congress to stop leaks of national security information. The administration's first prosecution for leaking information came in April 2009 after a Hebrew linguist working for the FBI gave a blogger classified information about Israel.

Other prosecutions followed, targeting some government employees who believed they were whistle-blowers. The administration has rejected whistle-blower claims if they do not involve "waste, fraud or abuse," according to report. So sources exposing questionable or illegal practices are considered leaks.

To date, six government employees and two contractors have been targeted for prosecution under the 1917 Espionage Act for accusations that they leaked classified information to the press. There were just three such prosecutions under all previous U.S. presidents.

By 2012, an AP report about the CIA's success in foiling a bomb plot in Yemen further escalated the Obama administration's efforts, even as the White House congratulated the CIA on the operation, Downie wrote. The disclosure in May that the government had secretly subpoenaed and seized AP phone records drew sharp criticism from many news organizations and civil rights advocates.

In September, the Justice Department announced AP's phone records led investigators to a former FBI bomb technician who pleaded guilty to disclosing the operation to a reporter.

"This prosecution demonstrates our deep resolve to hold accountable anyone who would violate their solemn duty to protect our nation's secrets and to prevent future, potentially devastating leaks by those who would wantonly ignore their obligations to safeguard classified information," the Justice Department said last month.

Kathleen Carroll, AP's executive editor, said the report highlights the growing threats to independent journalism in a country that has upheld press freedom as a measure of democratic society for two centuries.

"We find we must fight for those freedoms every day as the fog of secrecy descends on every level of government activity," she said in a statement. "That fight is worthwhile, as we learned when the outcry over the Justice Department's secret seizure of AP phone records led to proposed revisions intended to protect journalists from overly broad investigative techniques. Implementation of those revisions is an important next step."

In its report, the Committee to Protect Journalists recommends several reforms, including ending the practice of charging people who leak information to journalists with espionage and preventing secret subpoenas of journalists' records.

---

Committee to Protect Journalists: https://www.cpj.org/
 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 21, 2013, 09:45:29 AM
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2013/10/21/john_dickerson_obama_headed_toward_credibility_death_spiral_over_obamacare.html


Not surprising. 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 23, 2013, 07:04:55 AM
http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2013/10/obama-pals-crafted-disastrous-fed-health-exchange-website

 >:(
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 23, 2013, 01:34:03 PM
http://freebeacon.com/obamacare-causes-thousands-to-lose-health-insurance-in-san-diego


Promise broken
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 25, 2013, 05:30:22 AM
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50157815n


Wow - they knew before the election what a train wreck it was
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 25, 2013, 06:59:18 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/10/25/9-senate-democrats-sign-shaheen-letter-pushing-for-open-enrollment-extension/


LOL
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 25, 2013, 07:11:08 AM
http://www.bizpacreview.com/2013/10/24/cnn-anchor-obamas-people-can-be-quite-nasty-85811#.UmlOsaeWJ5M.twitter


Thugocracy
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 25, 2013, 07:33:45 PM
http://dailycaller.com/2013/10/25/michelle-obamas-princeton-classmate-is-executive-at-company-that-built-obamacare-website


Like a African 3rd world Junta
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 25, 2013, 08:46:21 PM
http://freepatriot.org/2013/10/25/new-obamacare-site-administrator-central-figure-irs-scandal

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 31, 2013, 09:31:38 AM
http://www.businessinsider.com/bloomberg-businessweek-obamacare-cover-healthcare-gov-obama-2013-10


LMFAO!!!!  Look at that pic.  FAIL
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 31, 2013, 09:39:44 AM
Five Reasons You May Not Get To Keep Your Health Plan, Even If You Like It


 

Josh Barro   Oct. 31, 2013, 9:12 AM       1,809    25 
 


The White House remains committed to defending President Obama's promise that "If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan." Obama devoted a significant section of his Wednesday speech in Boston to the proposition. On Monday, his top adviser Valerie Jarrett tweeted this:




Valerie Jarrett tweet
Twitter/@VJ44



The administration's conceit is as follows: The law allows people to stay on any insurance plan they were already on as of March 23, 2010. These are the "grandfathered" plans. Only plans that changed their terms after that date have to be canceled if they don't meet various Obamacare requirements.

This is a very thin defense. Here are several ways Obamacare is (entirely foreseeably) changing people's health coverage in ways they might not like:
1.Plans can lose their grandfathered status because they had modest changes to co-payments, deductibles or other provisions after March 23, 2010. Individuals also can't keep non-compliant plans they signed up for after that date. These two phenomena are the reason so many people with individual market health plans are getting cancellation notices. It was not obvious that the president's promise included a "so long as you were on that plan as of March 2010 and its terms didn't change" caveat.
2.Insurers are allowed to continue to offer grandfathered health plans, but that doesn't mean they have to. Under Obamacare, they may not want to. Kaiser Health News reported earlier this month that some insurers are canceling "guaranteed issue" plans that were marketed to people with higher health costs. Insurers will be better off financially moving these participants into plans in the Obamacare exchanges, where they will be pooled with healthier, lower-cost insureds.
3.The ACA is inducing firms to drop group health coverage for some people. For example, Trader Joe's is ending coverage for part-time workers, and IBM is ending coverage for retirees. They're making these moves because their workers and retirees now have access to coverage through the Obamacare exchanges. These people aren't necessarily getting screwed (some will be better off financially, especially if they have low incomes) but they can't keep their existing health coverage, even if they like it.
4.Starting in 2018, the ACA will impose a "Cadillac Tax" on employer-provided health plans that cost more than $27,500 for family coverage, such as the Goldman Sachs plan that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) gets through his investment banker wife. This provision is designed to induce firms to reduce the generosity of high-cost plans; people like Cruz with high-end plans may not be able to keep them.
5.The ACA cuts funding for Medicare Advantage, a program that provides private insurance plans to people over 65. The generosity of these plans is widely expected to decline, though effects so far have been modest.

Most of these changes are not happening because of direct government action. The ACA doesn't tell employers they have to drop coverage for part-time workers or slim down their high-cost health plans. It just gives them strong financial incentives to do so.

In general, liberals tend to understand that direct state power is not the only kind of coercive power. In general, they would not find, "I didn't do that to you, I just changed the law in a way that gave a company a strong incentive to do that to you" to be a convincing argument. So I'm not sure why at least some people on the left seem to be buying the White House line on this.

Stepping back, not only was, "If you like your health plan, you can keep it" a lie, it would have been insane if it were true. There is no good way to reform the U.S. health care system without making anybody change health plans.

Our health care system is characterized by astronomical costs, average outcomes, and spotty coverage. Some people have health plans that obscure the real cost of care and drive them to overconsume. Others have plans with big gaps in coverage that could leave them untreated or bankrupt in the case of illness. How could you possibly design health reform around letting people keep both of these kinds of plans?

Obamacare does a good job at getting rid of the too-skimpy plans and does a little bit to discourage overly generous ones. A better reform would have forced more people off the plans they have now. For now, some people will lose health plans they wanted to keep, but not as many as I'd like.
 

SEE ALSO:  Here's The Truth About Your 'Private' Health Insurance: It's Already A Big Government Program»


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/why-you-may-not-keep-your-health-plan-even-if-you-like-it-2013-10#ixzz2jJo54b9i
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 31, 2013, 09:41:11 AM
http://nation.foxnews.com/2013/10/28/obama-admin-knew-millions-could-not-keep-their-health-insurance?cmpid=NL_foxnation


Obama lied
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 31, 2013, 10:20:12 AM
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-obamacare-health-insurance-rates-increase-too-expensive-20131029,0,1645290.story#axzz2j6lco3nP


Now they realize this? 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 31, 2013, 10:28:02 AM
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2013/10/obamacare_and_republican_criticism_the_health_care_law_s_early_missteps.html



HA HA HA HA HA!!!!! 

Comparing Obama to North Korean missle launches. 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 31, 2013, 10:50:18 AM
93 Million to lose insurance due to ThugBAMACARE

http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/10/31/obama-officials-in-2010-93-million-americans-will-be-unable-to-keep-their-health-plans-under-obamacare


Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 31, 2013, 11:37:02 AM
http://washingtonexaminer.com/top-democrat-says-those-arent-cancellation-notices-theyre-transitions-into-obamacare/article/2538122?utm_source=New%20Top%205%20-%2010/31/2013&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Washington%20Examiner:%20Top%205%20Headlines

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 31, 2013, 11:48:53 AM
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/362737/melchior-astonishing-serco-got-obamacare-contracts-despite-numerous-allegations-nro?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter



Just wow - corrupt beyond words
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 31, 2013, 02:08:48 PM
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2013/10/31/health-insurance-losses-to-get-worse-with-employer-mandate-looming-n1733796


lies
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 31, 2013, 02:25:27 PM
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304200804579163541180312658


He lied
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 31, 2013, 06:53:54 PM
http://www.glennbeck.com/2013/10/31/how-many-times-did-president-obama-promise-you-could-keep-your-plan


Just wow - WATCH
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 31, 2013, 08:23:01 PM
Spoiled, greedy, indifferent boomers infest Obama’s self-indulgent White House
Washington Times ^ | 10-31-2013 | Wesley Pruden - Commentary
Posted on October 31, 2013 10:35:11 PM EDT by smoothsailing

October 31, 2013

Spoiled, greedy, indifferent boomers infest Obama’s self-indulgent White House

Wesley Pruden
The Obama White House suffers from “the ‘60s disease.” The affliction seems to be terminal. The president’s men — and women — are mostly boomers, spoiled, greedy and self-centered, nurtured and indulged in the decade of the 1960s, when the culture first began to rot.

The boomers taught each other many things, how to turn up the volume on their “music,” where to find the best pot and where to crash to smoke themselves into mellow stupefaction, how to avoid taking responsibility for their blunders, and above all contempt for the nation’s institutions and in particular for the men and women who wear the uniform.....

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 01, 2013, 04:48:41 AM
http://dailycaller.com/2013/11/01/ap-editors-obama-relies-on-staged-propaganda-photos


No different than any other communist dictator
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 01, 2013, 09:30:03 AM
OBAMA: (June 23, 2009) If you have your plan and you like it, and you like your doctor, then you don't have to change plans. The government is not going to make you change plans.

 OBAMA: (June 5, 2008) You're going to have a plan that lowers premiums by $2,500!

 OBAMA: (January 31, 2008) I am actually not interested in just capping premiums. I want to lower premiums by $2,500 per family!

 OBAMA: (October 4, 2008) We will start by reducing premiums by as much as $2,500 per family.

 OBAMA: (October 15, 2008) You can keep your choice of doctor; keep your plan. The only thing we're going to do is lower costs. Cut a average family's premium by about $2,500 per year.

 OBAMA: (June 27, 2008) It's time to bring down the typical family premium by $2,500, and to bring down the costs.

 OBAMA: (October 29, 2009) The first thing I want to make clear is that if you are happy with the insurance plan, nobody will make you change it.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 01, 2013, 09:31:50 AM
http://nypost.com/2013/11/01/obama-donors-firm-hired-to-fix-web-mess-it-helped-make



just wow 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 03, 2013, 08:05:48 PM
http://www.westernjournalism.com/psychiatrist-obama-ruining-americas-kids


Obama SUCKS!!!

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 04, 2013, 10:20:50 AM
(CBS News) CBS News is learning the Obama administration knew of the risks associated with the Obamacare rollout well before last month.


Three years ago, a trusted Obama health care adviser warned the White House it was losing control of Obamacare. A memo obtained by CBS News said strong leadership was missing and the law's successful implementation was in jeopardy. The warnings were specific and dire -- and ignored.


In depth: Obamacare kicks off


David Cutler
Harvard University economics professor David Cutler speaks at the annual meeting of the National Governors Association, Friday, July 9, 2010, in Boston.
 /  AP Photo/Michael Dwyer 
David Cutler, who worked on the Obama 2008 campaign and was a valued outside health care consultant wrote this blunt memo to top White House economic adviser Larry Summers in May 2010: "I do not believe the relevant members of the administration understand the president's vision or have the capability to carry it out."


Cutler wrote no one was in charge who had any experience in complex business start-ups. He also worried basic regulations, technology and policy coordination would fail.


"You need to have people who have understanding of the political process, people who understand how to work within an administration and people who understand how to start and build a business, and unfortunately, they just didn't get all of those people together," Cutler said.


The White House dismissed these and other warnings. It relied on appointed bureaucrats and senior White House health care advisers. Fearful of constant attacks from congressional Republicans, the White House became secretive about the law's complexity and regulatory reach.


Cutler said: "It is frustrating any time you really want to see something succeed because you believe it's good for people, and it doesn't get off on the right foot."


One month after its launch, the federal health care website remains hobbled. Dan Pfeiffer, senior White House adviser, said Sunday: "The website failures are absolutely inexcusable, and we own that."

Some Democrats have proposed dramatic action, including Sen. Dianne Feinstein, of Calif., who said on "Face the Nation" Sunday, "I said this direct to the president's chief of staff, that they ought to take down the website until it was right."


Republicans doubt White House promises to fix the health care site by month's end. Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., said on "Face the Nation: "They're trying to change a tire on a car going 70 miles an hour down the expressway."


Some Democrats, like Mass. Democratic Gov. Deval Patrick, say the website troubles are actually a good thing because they force the president to go out and sell the law again to the country. The president will do just that Wednesday when he will travel to Dallas to visit an enrollment center and thank volunteers for signing people up.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 04, 2013, 10:53:33 AM
http://chicksontheright.com/posts/item/24921-behold-an-obama-voter-facing-reality

Waking up to the ugly reality that the ghetto thug she voted for fucked her in the ass
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 04, 2013, 11:44:18 AM
http://dailycaller.com/2013/08/08/obamacare-installs-new-scrutiny-fines-for-charitable-hospitals-that-treat-uninsured-people/#ixzz2iHHXyIPt


Only a communist would do this
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 04, 2013, 12:05:03 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/marc-thiessen-obamas-dishonest-presidency/2013/11/04/841947c6-4561-11e3-b6f8-3782ff6cb769_story.html

A dishonest Preisdency
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 04, 2013, 08:00:22 PM
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2013/11/04/obama_what_we_said_was_you_can_keep_it_if_it_hasnt_changed_since_the_law_passed.html#.UnhBzabJp0Q.twitter


just wow
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 04, 2013, 08:24:34 PM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/04/obama-health-care-problems_n_4215289.html


LOL - the scum of the earth who voted for this should be proud
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 04, 2013, 09:01:55 PM
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 05, 2013, 01:55:48 PM
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/11/05/revealed-obama-campaign-bundler-helping-fund-libertarian-in-tight-va-gubernatorial-race



Unreal.  Typical leftist communist tacticts
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 06, 2013, 06:50:30 PM
http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/08/30/white-house-considers-awarding-obamacare-subsidies-intended-for-the-uninsured-to-labor-unions


LOL - corrupt as shit
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 07, 2013, 06:51:53 AM
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 07, 2013, 07:03:49 AM
http://nation.foxnews.com/2013/11/07/busted-obama-caught-re-writing-rule-let-unions-avoid-obamacare-tax


More corruotiob deception and dishonesty from THUG in Chief
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 07, 2013, 07:10:34 AM
http://variety.com/2013/biz/news/colleen-bell-nominated-by-obama-as-ambassador-to-hungary-1200802945



Unbelievable.   Can we send this asshole back to Kenya already? 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 07, 2013, 11:28:52 AM
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-05/obamacare-shouldn-t-have-been-managed-like-a-campaign.html


 >:(
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 08, 2013, 11:03:38 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2013/11/08/the-lowest-low-of-the-obama-presidency/?tid=pm_politics_pop


 ;D
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 09, 2013, 08:17:06 AM
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2013/11/09/chuck-todd-obama-does-not-believe-he-lied


Unbelievable
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 09, 2013, 09:56:24 AM
http://www.bizpacreview.com/2013/11/09/obamas-doctor-cousin-blasts-obamacare-not-a-word-of-it-is-true-86828


Obama is a 100% deceit an lies
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 09, 2013, 02:10:18 PM
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/2013/11/barack-obama-loner-self-reliant-closed-off


LOL - finally these fools are waking up
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 10, 2013, 06:18:52 AM
http://p.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/nov/9/obama-threatens-gop-executive-orders-drawer-full-i


Lmfao.  Like a child
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 11, 2013, 08:58:10 AM
http://dailycaller.com/2013/11/11/obamas-second-term-ambassador-nominees-raised-more-than-16-million-for-him


 >:(
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 12, 2013, 05:36:33 AM
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/11/11/affordable-care-act-scams/3501595

ObamaCare is one gigantic fraud
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 12, 2013, 08:58:05 AM
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/dem-rep-i-think-president-was-grossly-misleading-american-public_766938.html


Obama is a fucking liar and a pos
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 18, 2013, 08:01:29 PM
http://nypost.com/2013/11/18/census-faked-2012-election-jobs-report


Wow
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 18, 2013, 08:47:19 PM
http://www.nationaljournal.com/white-house/president-obama-and-his-gang-that-still-isn-t-shooting-straight-20131118


Obama still lying.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 20, 2013, 06:59:36 AM
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/20/us/politics/for-lawmakers-a-gold-plated-insurance-exchange.html#commentsContainer


Just fucking nice
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 20, 2013, 07:06:43 AM
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/exclusive-al-qaeda-kentucky-prompts-terror-fears-20948892



Unbelievable - Obama let terrorists into the country. 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 21, 2013, 06:35:52 AM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/20/obama-medal-of-freedom-dinner_n_4313094.html?utm_hp_ref=politics


He is really working hard huh you Obama shitstains?
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 22, 2013, 03:43:55 AM
http://www.nationaljournal.com/pictures-video/obama-s-image-machine-monopolistic-propaganda-funded-by-you-20131121


Its all a giant cult of personality
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: dario73 on November 22, 2013, 05:00:14 AM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/20/obama-medal-of-freedom-dinner_n_4313094.html?utm_hp_ref=politics


He is really working hard huh you Obama shitstains?

He couldn't go to Gettysburg but he had time for this and golf.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 22, 2013, 05:33:04 AM
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/11/21/209352/white-house-blocks-access-to-obama.html


 >:(
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 22, 2013, 10:45:03 AM
http://www.reviewjournal.com/opinion/editorial-campaign-save-obamacare-full-fibs


 >:(
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 24, 2013, 09:45:05 AM
http://conservativevideos.com/2013/11/best-obamacare-deconstruction-video-will-ever-find/#2Z14WSLfoo0PC6W1.01


Just wow.   
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 27, 2013, 06:50:51 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dana-milbank-obamas-white-house-takes-image-control-to-a-new-level/2013/11/26/13b95c20-56da-11e3-835d-e7173847c7cc_story.html


Potemkin Village
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 01, 2013, 06:45:44 AM
Obama: 'The Taliban are Not Our Enemies and We Don't Want to Fight Them.'
front page ^ | 11/30/2009 | Daniel Greenfield
Posted on December 1, 2013 12:59:52 AM EST by Nachum

It’s one compulsive liar who hates America and supports terrorists quoting another one. But it seem plausible enough.

' Karzai confirmed that the Obama Administration actually told him that the Taliban, which provided al Qaeda its base of support for September 11, was not an enemy of the U.S. He said:

Last year, during my visit to Washington, in a very important briefing a day before I met U.S. President [Barack Obama], his national security adviser Tom Donilon, and senior White House officials, generals, and intelligence officials, the national security adviser met with me. He told me: “The Taliban are not our enemies and we don’t want to fight them.”

If Obama really believes that, and certainly his willingness to negotiate with the Taliban and to release high-ranking Taliban prisoners, without at least exchanging them for Sgt Bowe Bergdahl still being held in captivity, suggests he does, why are we still there?

(Excerpt) Read more at frontpagemag.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 02, 2013, 12:17:54 AM
Obamacare website-maker runs failed ["tragicomic") Army Human Terrain System program
Daily Caller ^ | Patrick Howley
Posted on December 2, 2013 2:54:44 AM EST by Cincinatus' Wife

The company that earned the no-bid contract to build the failed Obamacare website also runs the Army’s disastrous Human Terrain System in Iraq and Afghanistan, which has been accused of fraud, sexual harassment and racism.

The much-maligned Human Terrain System (HTS), launched in 2007, sends academics from social science fields like anthropology and linguistics into war zones to help soldiers understand the local population. The Army spent $58 million on the program in 2013, down from $114 million in 2011.

CGI Federal, the U.S. arm of the Canadian CGI Group and the designer of the failed Obamacare website, attempted a failed turnaround in HTS during the Obama administration. The young company, which employs Michelle Obama’s former Princeton classmate and Christmas guest Toni Townes-Whitley as a top executive, received eight figures from the Army in 2013 for the project, records reveal.

Oberon Associates, a CGI Federal subsidiary that joined the CGI portfolio in 2010, earned the $227 million contract to run HTS in 2011 in a deal that insiders said reeked of cronyism due to former HTS director Colonel Sharon Hamilton’s rumored friendship with an Oberon co-founder.

The HTS contract was one of CGI’s first big gets in the United States, as CGI Federal was only formed to bring the CGI Group into the federal contracting business in 2009.

CGI Federal received a more than $45.5 million modification this year to continue work on the Federal Terrain System.

“They took over in 2011. There were high hopes that CGI Federal could turn it around, but there’s a hearing going on now into fraud, waste and abuse,” John Stanton, author of “General David Petraeus’ Favorite Mushroom: Inside the US Army’s Human Terrain System,” told The Daily Caller.

“Many troops were injured defending Human Terrain system academics,” Stanton said. ”I was just kind of stunned to see CGI Federal running that [Obamacare] website. To me, it’s an example of bad contracting and bad government oversight.”

HTS team members were found to have engaged in instances of fraud, sexual harassment and racism in 2009 and 2010, prior to CGI’s takeover, according to recently released documents. An Army internal investigation found program supervisors inflating overtime and comp time pay, and members even admitted to filing for hours that they didn’t work.

“My supervisor is the laziest, most incompetent human being I have ever met,” according to one internal Army complaint from a member of the program.

“Sexual harassment is prevalent and sexist behavior is an everyday occurrence; I was sexually harassed in the field repeatedly; sexual comments and jokes are rampant; nearly every female in the program faces some form of sexual harassment,” according to another complaint.

CGI’s management of the program failed to sufficiently turn things around, with Stanton noting that the problematic behavior continued.

The program’s failures have not escaped notice on Capitol Hill.

“The HTS reduction is long overdue and it’s good to see the Army take this initial action to downsize the program,” said Rep. Duncan Hunter of the House Armed Services Committee in 2013. “The program definitely requires an even closer look for reasons pertaining to both past performance and future necessity.”

“Who wants to keep the Human Terrain System around? Who in the Pentagon? Nobody else can figure it out,” Stanton said. ”It’s a tragicomic program.”

CGI Federal did not return a request for comment.

TOPICS: Business/Economy; Crime/Corruption; Extended News; Government; Click to Add Topic
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: 240 is Back on December 02, 2013, 12:31:02 AM
Obama: 'The Taliban are Not Our Enemies and We Don't Want to Fight Them.'

Obama and Reagan not all that far apart on this issue lol.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 14, 2014, 09:22:38 AM
http://news.yahoo.com/obama-won-39-t-wait-legislation-advance-2014-162325560.html;_ylt=AwrSyCVvcNVS.nUAMdLQtDMD


 :(
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 03, 2014, 06:29:46 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/labor-union-officials-say-obama-betrayed-them-in-health-care-rollout/2014/01/31/2cda6afc-8789-11e3-833c-33098f9e5267_allComments.html?ctab=all_&




FAIL


F the Unions
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: dario73 on February 03, 2014, 06:46:21 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/labor-union-officials-say-obama-betrayed-them-in-health-care-rollout/2014/01/31/2cda6afc-8789-11e3-833c-33098f9e5267_allComments.html?ctab=all_&
FAIL


F the Unions

Their complaints reflect a broad sense of disappointment among many labor leaders, who say the Affordable Care Act has subjected union health plans to new taxes and mandates while not allowing them to share in the subsidies that have gone to private insurance companies competing on the newly created exchanges.

FOX did it.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 03, 2014, 07:25:59 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/healthcaregov-cant-handle-appeals-of-enrollment-errors/2014/02/02/bbf5280c-89e2-11e3-916e-e01534b1e132_story.html



Nice.   More Obama lies
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 08, 2014, 08:48:19 AM
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2553682/Obama-nominee-ambassador-Argentina-1-million-campaign-cash-bundler-says-hes-NEVER-Argentina.html


LMFAO
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 10, 2014, 06:46:43 AM
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/obama-lied-with-every-word


There is not a truthful thing that comes from this pos mouth. 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 10, 2014, 08:22:25 AM
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/02/10/obama-far-outpaces-predecessors-in-appointing-donors-to-foreign-posts



Congrats dummies - you voted for this
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 12, 2014, 07:34:52 PM
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2013/12/04/turley_obamas_become_the_very_danger_the_constitution_was_designed_to_avoid.html




 >:(
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 12, 2014, 07:39:16 PM
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2014/02/12/krauthammer_obamacare_exists_in_obamas_head_its_whatever_he_thinks.html



 >:(
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 13, 2014, 09:42:27 AM
http://rare.us/story/daily-show-rips-obama-and-democrats-for-being-so-corrupt


 >:(
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 14, 2014, 07:21:44 AM

WATCH: Jon Stewart Calls Out Obama For Corrupt Ambassador Choices


Ericka Andersen

February 13, 2014 at 12:33 pm

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President Obama’s most recent appointees to international ambassadorships were criticized last night on Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show.”

At least three of Obama’s ambassador selections have never actually traveled to the countries they were chosen for.

Stewart began the program by referring to an argument he had last week with Democrat House Leader Nancy Pelosi about whether or not money had corrupted politicians in Washington. Pelosi said that it had corrupted Republicans.

In last night’s show, Stewart’s monologue magnified ways in which Democrats may also fit the bill. According to the Washington Times, “two of Obama’s former campaign ‘bundlers’ — who each raised over $500,000 for his elections,” are among those nominated as ambassadors. Noah Bryson Mamet and George Tsunis were selected for Argentina and Norway, respectively.

After playing video of three of the nominees admitting they’d never traveled to their chosen countries, Stewart noted one possible reason they’d been appointed despite their lack of experience:


“It definitely couldn’t be because the new Norway nominee raised $850,000 for Obama’s re-election campaign, or the Argentinian one raised $500,000 or the Icelandic one bundled $1.6 million, that would mean that not only would Democrats be seen as corrupt (but Nancy Pelosi told me personally only Republicans are) that Iceland costs like three times more than Argentina.”
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 14, 2014, 08:59:18 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/on-small-business/california-takes-down-online-health-insurance-exchange-for-small-businesses/2014/02/13/a8a351ae-94ee-11e3-83b9-1f024193bb84_story.html



 :(
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 14, 2014, 12:36:29 PM
http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/198394-obama-to-announce-1b-climate-change-resilience-fund


Billion Dollars right down the toilet?   F Obama  - worthless asshat
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 14, 2014, 02:06:00 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-ambassador-nominees-prompt-an-uproar-with-bungled-answers-lack-of-ties/2014/02/14/20fb0fe4-94b2-11e3-83b9-1f024193bb84_story.html

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 17, 2014, 06:37:03 AM
http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_25157716/obama-tees-off-larry-ellisons-private-course


Oh those evil billionaires!!!! 

F Obama
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 18, 2014, 05:20:46 AM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/17/obama-trade-banks_n_4805544.html#comments



Go figure . . . . . .
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 18, 2014, 06:07:40 AM
Censusgate: When and what did Labor know?

By John Crudele

February 17, 2014 | 9:45pm

www.nypost.com



Censusgate: When and what did Labor know?

January's market decline points to a down 2014




A tipster tried to warn the Labor Department in 2011 that its unemployment statistics were being fabricated by the people at the Census Bureau who compile the data.

But the warning was either missed or ignored by Labor.

That allegedly allowed the data falsification to go on for years.

As I’ve been telling you, the falsification is now the subject of a number of investigations, including one by the House Oversight Committee and Congress’ Joint Economic Committee.

Also investigating is the Office of the Inspector General at the Commerce Department, which is in charge of Census. And I’m hearing that the US Attorney in the Philadelphia region is also poking around the matter, although a spokeswoman wouldn’t confirm that.

And, of course, I am also investigating. I’m waiting for the Commerce Department to comply with my Freedom of Information Act request for e-mails and text messages between people in the Philadelphia Census office.

So far, all I’ve heard is that the FOIA request is being worked on.

At the core of all these investigations is solid evidence that at least one surveyor — a guy named Julius Buckmon, working out of the Philadelphia Census office but polling in Washington, DC — submitted fake household surveys that were used in compiling the Labor Department’s unemployment rate.

Because of the scientific nature of the Labor Department survey, Buckmon’s actions alone would have affected the responses of some 500,000 households.

But as I’ve been reporting, the scam was allegedly much larger than that and included other surveyors (or enumerators as they are called) over many years. And supervisors at least two levels up are said to have known about — and covered up — the scandal.

So far Congress has mainly been asking questions about the Buckmon incident and his supervisors’ actions. But the inquiry is likely to get broader, especially if correspondences between people in the Philadelphia office show a conspiracy to make the unemployment rate look better than it really was.

The brass ring for the Republicans who control the Oversight Committee, of course, would be if they find evidence that the national unemployment rate was rigged right before the 2012 presidential election.

I previously reported that there were whispers inside the Philadelphia office that people high up wanted the jobless rate to come down before President Obama was up for re-election. And, in fact, it did drop sharply two months before the vote.

Up until now, the focus has mainly been on the Census Bureau, which, besides the unemployment rate, conducts surveys for a lot of government agencies and private concerns.

The Labor Department and its Bureau of Labor Statistics division have been largely left out of this controversy and viewed simply as the victims of the Census Bureau’s deceit.

My next few paragraphs may change that.

In late August 2011, a manila envelope containing evidence of falsified data was sent to Keith Hall, who was then in charge of the BLS. “The Philadelphia Regional office [of Census] … engaged in a cover-up after it was reported that members of its staff falsified data in an effort to meet goals,” said the anonymous letter, a copy of which I have in front of me.

The letter identified the two supervisors who arranged the cover-up.

“In an effort to satisfy the sponsor [the BLS] … the numbers were literally made up,” said the tipster.

The BLS never acted on the letter. And that’s ironic because Hall, who was pushed out of the Labor Department in 2012, had been skeptical of the truthfulness of the BLS’s jobless numbers.

I interviewed Hall last July for this column, and he said at the time that the unemployment rate was “misleadingly low.” However, back then Hall — who is now at George Mason University — was attributing the misrepresentation to statistical anomalies in the way the unemployment rate is calculated and not outright fraud.

I asked Hall Monday if he remembers receiving an envelope containing evidence that data was being falsified. He didn’t. “I would have remembered that,” he said.

Did the envelope get lost in the mail? The tipster had a tracer on it through the Postal Service. Did someone else read the note, which, admittedly, was a little confusing, and choose to ignore it?

Hall said he would have investigated had he known. “We couldn’t not take that seriously and look into it,” he said.

So what does this all mean?

My readers already know that the nation’s jobless rate is a screwed-up and worthless indicator. By definition, it declines — as it now is doing — when workers get discouraged and stop looking for jobs.

And it will rise if the day ever comes when jobs are plentiful and people start looking again.

On top of that, we now know that the unemployment rate can be rigged by a very few cheats — aided by the inability of bureaucrats to root out fraud even when it’s laid in front of them in a letter.

I find the fact that the Federal Reserve says it still makes policy based on the unemployment rate mind-boggling.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 18, 2014, 07:48:39 AM
http://www.republicreport.org/2014/big-banks-tpp


Unreal.   and yet liberal cultists still support this pos
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 18, 2014, 02:41:47 PM
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/106-obama-has-more-doubled-marketable-us-debt





typical ghetto nog behavior
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 19, 2014, 05:23:29 AM
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/19/us/politics/obama-to-request-new-rules-for-cutting-truck-pollution.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=1



WTF is this a dictatorship? 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: dario73 on February 19, 2014, 05:29:37 AM
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/106-obama-has-more-doubled-marketable-us-debt

typical ghetto nog behavior

Oh but he cut annual budget deficit. ::)

That is what libtards point to, but yet forget that for the first the first 3 years he spent over a trillion and even at the lower amounts of the annual budget, around $500 to $600 billion, is still higher than any other president.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 13, 2014, 10:53:14 AM
Health Insurers Say They Have Given Data To White House About How Many People Paid For Their Plans, True Number of Obamacare Enrollees Just 3.3 Million…




Yesterday the White House boldly proclaimed 4.2 million have “enrolled” in Obamacare, in reality those are people who simply chose a plan through the exchange. If we subtract out the 20 percent that means just 3.3 million people have fully enrolled in Obamacare. Their original goal was 7 million by the end of March so they are at less than 50% of their stated goal.

To make matters worse, the insurance companies say they HAVE given this data to the White House, which means Sebelius lied yesterday before Congress (along with countless other times) when she told them they don’t know how many people paid for their plans.

Via Politico:


The White House insists it doesn’t know how many people are fully enrolled in Obamacare, but insurers say they’ve handed over enough data to show that the sign-up numbers are not as rosy as federal officials say.

The latest administration figures show that 4.2 million people have selected health plans in the new insurance markets. Insurance industry officials at four of the big national health plans tell POLITICO that about 15 to 20 percent of people who have signed up have not yet paid their first monthly premium — the final step to get coverage.

And they’ve told the White House that, too, insurance industry officials say.

“They have a lot more information than they’re letting on,” one industry source said of the Obama administration. “They have real hard data about the percent that have paid … If they have not processed those yet and compiled the data, that is a choice they are making. But they have that data now.”

Federal officials say they count sign-ups — people who select plans on HealthCare.gov or in state exchanges — because they can’t yet rely on the insurers’ figures. They say the industry reports are not comprehensive, and they change month to month.

“I can’t tell you because I don’t know that,” Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said Wednesday when Republicans asked about the number of paying Obamacare customers during a hearing on Capitol Hill. “We don’t collect it.”

The dispute emerges as the administration is trying to convey a sense of enthusiasm and momentum ahead of a March 31 deadline to enroll in Affordable Care Act exchanges. But unless the current pace doubles, the administration won’t hit its target of 6 million people — a goal that was already scaled back from 7 million after last October’s messy rollout of HealthCare.gov.

Never mind the fact that the number of  young enrollees is far less than what they projected, and they are the key to making this thing work from a financial standpoint.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 13, 2014, 06:47:50 PM
http://dailycaller.com/2014/03/13/4-of-5-companies-may-hike-deductibles-due-to-obamacare



 >:(
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 14, 2014, 08:23:30 PM
DEA, U.S ATTORNEYS SECRETLY MET WITH DRUG CARTELS IN MEXICO TO OBTAIN INFO ON RIVALS
Breitbart ^ | 1/2014 | Edwin Mora
Posted on March 14, 2014 12:40:22 PM EDT by mgist

U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) agents and U.S Attorneys held secret meetings with drug trafficking organizations, especially the Sinaloa cartel, on Mexican soil, revealed Mexico-based newspaper El Universal. The DEA and the U.S. Attorney's office are both components of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). Official and court documents from the U.S and Mexican governments were cited as the source in the Jan. 6 news report. Court documents show that the U.S. government knew and authorized those meetings, which resulted in drug seizures, arrests, and an increase in drug cartel violence in Mexico. The paper published excerpts from U.S. court documents to support their claims. Breitbart News confirmed the validity of the court papers. El Universal alleges that the DEA operations were carried out without the knowledge of the Mexican government. The paper reported that it obtained the court and official documents in the course of a year. During that time, it also conducted interviews with “more than a hundred” active and retired officials from both countries. In an effort to obtain information on their rivals, DEA agents and U.S. attorneys met with leaders of Mexican drug trafficking organizations, especially the notoriously violent Sinaloa cartel. That is the same trafficking organization that received the bulk of the firearms intentionally dispensed to drug cartels in Mexico under ATF’s 2009 “Fast and Furious" operation according to a congressional investigation. ATF is a DOJ component as well. In December 2011, CNSNews.com reported that the gun-walking operation was linked to a drug-trafficking immunity deal between the U.S. government and the Sinaloa cartel by a defendant who was awaiting trial in a Chicago federal court at the time. (snip)tons of illicit drugs continued to be smuggled into Chicago and other parts of the United States and consumption continued virtually unabated…

(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 01, 2014, 02:10:22 PM
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/01/nsa-surveillance-loophole-americans-data


Obama lied
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 14, 2014, 11:05:54 AM
http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2014/04/14/how-obamas-justice-department-selectively-blocks-mergers-by-republican-ceos


Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 20, 2014, 08:38:55 PM
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/6077675c-c4c4-11e3-8dd4-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2zUPGtXGG



Wowv- FT slams otwink
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 22, 2014, 02:08:00 PM
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2610431/Obama-burn-35-000-gallons-fuel-Earth-Day-emitting-375-TONS-carbon-dioxide.html

phoney two bit con man
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 23, 2014, 05:24:22 AM
http://nypost.com/2014/04/23/obamas-lies-have-led-to-global-mistrust


Lies lies and more lies from the Liar and Thief of the US
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 23, 2014, 05:47:04 AM
http://www.spin.com/articles/obama-frankie-knuckles-condolence-letter/?utm_source=spinfacebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=spinfacebook


Who the F is Frankie Knuckles
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 29, 2014, 10:12:08 AM
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/peter-roff/2014/04/26/why-is-the-obama-administration-keeping-the-iran-nuclear-deal-secret


Disgusting
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on April 29, 2014, 12:45:10 PM
Judicial Watch: Benghazi Documents Point to White House on Misleading Talking Points

APRIL 29, 2014



(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that on April 18, 2014, it obtained 41 new Benghazi-related State Department documents. They include a newly declassified email showing then-White House Deputy Strategic Communications Adviser Ben Rhodes and other Obama administration public relations officials attempting to orchestrate a campaign to “reinforce” President Obama and to portray the Benghazi consulate terrorist attack as being “rooted in an Internet video, and not a failure of policy.”  Other documents show that State Department officials initially described the incident as an “attack” a possible kidnap attempt.

The documents were released Friday as result of a June 21, 2013, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed against the Department of State (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:13-cv-00951)) to gain access to documents about the controversial talking points used by then-UN Ambassador Susan Rice for a series of appearances on television Sunday news programs on September 16, 2012.  Judicial Watch had been seeking these documents since October 18, 2012.

The Rhodes email was sent on sent on Friday, September 14, 2012, at 8:09 p.m. with the subject line:  “RE: PREP CALL with Susan, Saturday at 4:00 pm ET.”  The documents show that the “prep” was for Amb. Rice’s Sunday news show appearances to discuss the Benghazi attack.

The document lists as a “Goal”: “To underscore that these protests are rooted in and Internet video, and not a broader failure or policy.”

Rhodes returns to the “Internet video” scenario later in the email, the first point in a section labeled “Top-lines”:

[W]e’ve made our views on this video crystal clear. The United States government had nothing to do with it. We reject its message and its contents. We find it disgusting and reprehensible. But there is absolutely no justification at all for responding to this movie with violence. And we are working to make sure that people around the globe hear that message.

Among the top administration PR personnel who received the Rhodes memo were White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, Deputy Press Secretary Joshua Earnest, then-White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer, then-White House Deputy Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri, then-National Security Council Director of Communications Erin Pelton, Special Assistant to the Press Secretary Howli Ledbetter, and then-White House Senior Advisor and political strategist Davie Plouffe.

The Rhodes communications strategy email also instructs recipients to portray Obama as “steady and statesmanlike” throughout the crisis. Another of the “Goals” of the PR offensive, Rhodes says, is “[T]o reinforce the President and Administration’s strength and steadiness in dealing with difficult challenges.” He later includes as a PR “Top-line” talking point:

I think that people have come to trust that President Obama provides leadership that is steady and statesmanlike. There are always going to be challenges that emerge around the world, and time and again, he has shown that we can meet them.

The documents Judicial Watch obtained also include a September 12, 2012, email from former DeputySpokesman at U.S. Mission to the United Nations Payton Knopf to Susan Rice, noting that at a press briefing earlier that day, State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland explicitly stated that the attack on the consulate had been well planned.  The email sent by Knopf to Rice at 5:42 pm said:

Responding to a question about whether it was an organized terror attack, Toria said that she couldn’t speak to the identity of the perpetrators but that it was clearly a complex attack.

In the days following the Knopf email, Rice appeared on ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox News and CNN still claiming the assaults occurred “spontaneously” in response to the “hateful video.” On Sunday, September 16 Rice told CBS’s “Face the Nation:”

But based on the best information we have to date, what our assessment is as of the present is in fact what began spontaneously in Benghazi as a reaction to what had transpired some hours earlier in Cairo where, of course, as you know, there was a violent protest outside of our embassy–sparked by this hateful video.

The Judicial Watch documents confirm that CIA talking points, that were prepared for Congress and may have been used by Rice on “Face the Nation” and four additional Sunday talk shows on September 16, had been heavily edited by then-CIA deputy director Mike Morell. According to one email:

The first draft apparently seemed unsuitable….because they seemed to encourage the reader to infer incorrectly that the CIA had warned about a specific attack on our embassy.  On the SVTS, Morell noted that these points were not good and he had taken a heavy hand to editing them. He noted that he would be happy to work with [then deputy chief of staff to Hillary Clinton]] Jake Sullivan and Rhodes to develop appropriate talking points.

The documents obtained by Judicial Watch also contain numerous emails sent during the assault on the Benghazi diplomatic facility.  The contemporaneous and dramatic emails describe the assault as an “attack”:
•September 11, 2012, 6:41 PM – Senior Advisor Eric Pelofsky, to Susan Rice:

As reported, the Benghazi compound came under attack and it took a bit of time for the ‘Annex’ colleagues and Libyan February 17 brigade to secure it. One of our colleagues was killed – IMO Sean Smith. Amb Chris Stevens, who was visiting Benghazi this week is missing.  U.S. and Libyan colleagues are looking for him…

At 8:51 pm, Pelofsky tells Rice and others that “Post received a call from a person using an [sic] RSO phone that Chris was given saying the caller was with a person matching Chris’s description at a hospital and that he was alive and well.  Of course, if the he were alive and well, one could ask why he didn’t make the call himself.”

Later that evening, Pelofsky emailed Rice that he was “very, very worried.  In particular that he [Stevens] is either dead or this was a concerted effort to kidnap him.”  Rice replied, “God forbid.”
•September 11, 2012, 4:49 PM – State Department press officer John Fogarty reporting on “Libya update from Beth Jones”:

Beth Jones [Acting Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs] just spoke with DCM Tripoli Greg Hicks, who advised a Libyan militia (we now know this is the 17th Feb brigade, as requested by Emb office) is responding to the attackon the diplomatic mission in Benghazi.”

Material is blacked out (or redacted) in many emails.

“Now we know the Obama White House’s chief concern about the Benghazi attack was making sure that President Obama looked good,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “And these documents undermine the Obama administration’s narrative that it thought the Benghazi attack had something to do with protests or an Internet video.  Given the explosive material in these documents, it is no surprise that we had to go to federal court to pry them loose from the Obama State Department.”
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 01, 2014, 12:30:02 PM
http://fusion.net/leadership/story/obama-net-neutrality-campaign-video-surfaces-643645


More broken promises
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 05, 2014, 09:13:24 AM
http://washingtonexaminer.com/another-obama-backed-green-company-smith-electric-vehicles-leaves-trail-of-unpaid-bills-and-broken-promises/article/2548035?fb_action_ids=10152136631217424&fb_action_types=og.likes&fb_ref=.U2ejaak2yTA.like&fb_source=other_multiline&action_object_map=%5B745314465499560%5D&action_type_map=%5B%22og.likes%22%5D&action_ref_map=%5B%22.U2ejaak2yTA.like%22%5D



Another failed backed Obama solar firm - 32 million down the rat hole
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 12, 2014, 09:06:18 AM
http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2014/05/dhs-emails-reveal-u-s-may-terrorist-hands-list/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter


The Obama administration appears to have a terrorist “hands off” list that permits individuals with extremist ties to enter the country, according to internal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) documents obtained by a United States Senator.

It’s unimaginable that any government would do this, but it seems like the Obama administration is constantly breaking new ground. The disturbing details of this secret initiative were made public this week by Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, who has obtained DHS electronic mail discussing what could be a terrorist “hands off” list. The exchange includes a 2012 email chain between U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) asking whether to admit an individual with ties to various terrorist groups. The individual had scheduled an upcoming flight into the U.S., according to an announcement issued by the senator.

The person was believed to be a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and a close associate and supporter Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, according to the mail exchange obtained by Grassley’s office. The terrorist suspect had also been in secondary inspection “several dozen times of the past several years,” the agency emails reveal, but had not undergone a secondary inspection since 2010. This seems to imply that the suspect has been on the U.S. government’s radar for some time.

It gets better. The DHS emails also reveal that this particular terrorism suspect has actually taken legal action against the U.S., presumably because authorities violated the hands off policy. The subject “has sued CBP twice in the past and that he’s one of the several hands off passengers nationwide,” according to the DHS emails obtained by Senator Grassley’s office. The documents go on to say that the terrorist’s records were removed and that the DHS Secretary (at the time Janet Napolitano) was involved in the matter.

This is pure insanity and the senator has tried for months to get answers from DHS. In February he wrote a letter to DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson saying this: “I’m puzzled how someone could be a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial, be an associate of [redacted], say that the US is staging car bombings in Iraq and that [it] is ok for men to beat their wives, question who was behind the 9/11 attacks, and be afforded the luxury of a visitor visa and de-watchlisted. It doesn’t appear that we’ll be successful with denying him entry tomorrow but maybe we could re-evaluate the matter in the future since the decision to de-watchlist him was made 17 months ago.”

The agency’s response, dated April 10, apparently frustrated the senator enough to make the whole thing public this week. DHS let CBP Commissioner Gil Kerlikowske get back to Grassley. His letter says the agency does not have the authority to ignore information that renders an individual alien inadmissible because CBP does not have the discretionary authority to admit an inadmissible alien. “Accordingly, CBP does not have any list or other mechanism which would render an individual free of the grounds of inadmissibility or from any other inspection requirements, including secondary inspections,” Kerlikowske writes.

He goes on to pass the buck to another agency, the Department of Justice (DOJ). “The Terrorist Watchlist is maintained by the Terrorist Screening Center, which was created by the Attorney General and is administered by the Federal Bureau of Investigations,” the CBP commissioner writes. “All questions related to the watchlist should therefore be referred to the Department of Justice for response.” Kerlikowske also offers to provide the senator with a “more detailed briefing on the particular case cited in your letter, in the appropriate setting.” That means nothing will be put in writing so as to avoid any sort of future incrimination in the event the scandal blows wide open.

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 12, 2014, 12:33:33 PM
Not surprisingly, they don’t take it that seriously at all. Here’s how Geithner describes the lying process:


“I remember during one Roosevelt Room prep session before I appeared on the Sunday shows, I objected when Dan Pfeiffer wanted me to say Social Security didn’t contribute to the deficit. It wasn’t a main driver of our future deficits, but it did contribute. Pfeiffer said the line was a ‘dog whistle’ to the left, a phrase I had never heard before. He had to explain that the phrase was code to the Democratic base, signaling that we intended to protect Social Security.”


http://www.bizpacreview.com/2014/05/12/ex-treasury-sec-geithner-white-house-told-me-to-lie-for-sunday-news-shows-118478

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 15, 2014, 06:35:34 AM
 ;)
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 15, 2014, 02:14:36 PM
"I am in this race to tell the corporate lobbyists that their days of setting the agenda in Washington are over. I have done more than any other candidate in this race to take on lobbyists — and won. They have not funded my campaign, they will not run my White House, and they will not drown out the voices of the American people when I am president."
 
- Barack Obama, Speech in Des Moines, IA 
November 10, 2007 
 
Tom Wheeler, ex-lobbyist for cable and wireless industry, and the current Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission was appointed by Barack Obama in November 2013. During Barack Obama's presidential campaign Wheeler spent six weeks in Iowa aiding his campaign efforts and went on to raise over $500,000 USD for both of Obama's campaigns.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 19, 2014, 07:37:58 PM
http://freebeacon.com/politics/did-the-president-take-a-pay-cut-like-he-promised-white-house-wont-say


 :D
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 19, 2014, 09:07:52 PM
http://www.businessinsider.com/obama-motorcade-traffic-jam-play-catch-2014-5
 >:(

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 20, 2014, 05:28:19 AM

Obama Administration Health Agencies Accused Of Ethical Misconduct
 

 Posted:  05/20/2014 12:13 am EDT    Updated:  05/20/2014 12:59 am EDT   


 
WASHINGTON -- High-level government officials at the top federal health agencies placed inappropriate pressure on their own watchdog agency, a new report alleges.

The report by the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, released Tuesday, accuses the Department of Health and Human Services and the National Institutes of Health of breaching ethical boundaries by working too closely with their oversight group, the Office for Human Research Protections. In doing so, Public Citizen alleges, officials at the two agencies helped soften the watchdog's critical assessment of the conduct of NIH-funded researchers studying the optimal oxygen levels for prematurely born infants. The first version of the watchdog's report criticized researchers for failing to adequately inform the babies' parents of study risks.

Public Citizen's findings, based on internal government emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, were serious enough that at least one member of Congress -- a major NIH supporter -- is calling for a formal investigation "to prevent such improper and unethical interference" from reoccurring.

 "What appears to have happened here is that NIH, despite substantial conflicts of interest, was allowed to interfere and, in my view, improperly influence the investigation," said Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) in an interview.

At the heart of the allegations are the often gray lines of research ethics, specifically to what extent and in what fashion an agency can plead its case to its own watchdog committee. In a statement hours before the Public Citizen report was officially released, Tait Sye, an HHS spokesperson, argued that the NIH merely worked to correct incomplete information in the first report issued by Office for Human Research Protections, or OHRP, and that such communication was not uncommon.

"OHRP regularly works with entities such as NIH, [Institutional Review Boards] and others to ensure the protection of human subjects in research," said Sye.

 The case dates to 2004, when NIH started funding a $20 million-plus study to look into how much oxygen a prematurely born baby should be given during the early stages of life.

The study, called SUPPORT, involved tests on more than 1,300 infants. The research ended in 2009, with findings showing "that babies who got supplementary oxygen in the higher end of the acceptable range had no more blindness, but greater survival, than babies that got slightly less oxygen," according to The Washington Post.

 The SUPPORT study, however, was clouded by criticism over the conduct of those doing the investigation. In March 2013, OHRP -- part of HHS -- said 23 research sites had not given parents of infants in the trial a proper warning about the risks of the study, which included blindness, brain damage, even death. In addition, OHRP, told the University of Alabama at Birmingham -– the main institution conducting the research -- that it would begin screening university consent forms for compliance with HHS regulations. A class-action lawsuit has since been filed against University of Alabama at Birmingham providers over the Support study.

 The study's authors and members of the scientific research community, meanwhile spoke out against the OHRP ruling. There was no basis to predict that infants in one group or the other would be more at risk of death from participating in the trial, they argued, adding that all levels of oxygen given to the infants fell within the standard range, just at different ends of the spectrum. They also warned the compliance actions demanded of future research could have a chilling effect.

 Two months later, OHRP produced a second letter on the SUPPORT study, maintaining that more warnings about experimental risk should have been offered. But it also acknowledged the general guidelines for researchers in the field needed more clarification and pledged to hold a public meeting to discuss the issue further. In a reversal, OHRP also said it was dropping its compliance enforcement against University of Alabama at Birmingham for the time being, and that it wouldn't enforce disciplinary action against other studies until clearer guidance was finalized.

 "The OHRP has said, 'You're guilty, but we're not going to do anything about it," Alice Dreger, a professor of clinical medical humanities and bioethics at Northwestern University, said at the time.

Seeking an explanation for the reversal, Public Citizen filed a Freedom of Information Act request for communications between OHRP and the NIH, as well as officials in the HHS Office of the Secretary, from March 2013 to early June. The records that were produced, Public Citizen argues, show an unprecedented amount of coordination between the agencies to sand down the rough parts of the first report.



 
According to the 439 pages of emails, during the period between the two reports, officials at the NIH reached out to senior HHS officials to "chat about" the SUPPORT study. On May 1, 2013, the director of the NIH, Dr. Francis Collins, wrote to Bill Corr, the deputy secretary at HHS, explaining that his staff had been working with top HHS officials "to develop a consensus set of statements that OHRP could put forward to clarify the situation with the SUPPORT study."

 Subsequent emails show continued discussions between HHS, NIH and OHRP. In mid-May, Jerry Menikoff, the director of OHRP, exchanged correspondence with NIH officials in which they appeared to be going over potential edits to the second letter. The day after that second letter was issued, a group of bioethicists published a piece in the New England Journal of Medicine defending the SUPPORT study. That same say, Collins co-authored a piece in the same publication titled "In Support of SUPPORT –- A View from the NIH." In it, he wrote that OHRP had put its compliance actions on hold.

Dr. Michael Carome, director of Public Citizen’s Health Research Group, said he found the timing more than suspicious, though emails in the FOIA tranche show the Collins' piece had been in the works well before the OHRP letter was released.

Concerns over OHRP's independence date back many years. In 2000, agency was moved from NIH to HHS after outcries about conflicts of interest and inappropriate pressure being placed on its oversight officials. With respect to SUPPORT, the documents uncovered by Public Citizens do not show instances of overt pressure being applied by NIH officials to get OHRP to amend initial conclusions. Rather, the emails suggest a collaborative process in which the two groups managed to find a middle ground.

"In the wake of extensive scientific and public discussions since OHRP’s March 2013 determination letter related to the SUPPORT study, OHRP became aware of different understandings of what is meant by 'standard of care' and risks that must be disclosed to potential subjects in the research context," said Sye.

Because some of the emails are heavily redacted, the view of what was actually said between NIH and OHRP is incomplete. And even then, the question being raised by DeLauro and Public Citizen is why that wall of demarcation between watchdog and agency was breached in the first place.

 "This type of interference is simply unprecedented and simply disturbing," said Carome. "This is like the Department of Justice preparing an indictment against some criminal and allowing the criminal to view the indictment and edit it before it moves forward. ... It is like the FDA investigating a drug trial and the FDA commissioner allowing a draft warning letter to be shared with the drug company before it was issued and lettering them review and suggest edits to the letter."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/20/support-study-public-citizen_n_5355346.html


Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: 240 is Back on May 20, 2014, 07:57:57 AM
t
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 20, 2014, 12:26:41 PM
t

Straw twink? 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 21, 2014, 07:24:40 AM
When a President Learns Everything on TV



Jonathan S. Tobin | @tobincommentary
 05.20.2014 - 2:45 PM 


 
     


 
 


Today, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney sought to partially walk back his statement yesterday in which he said President Obama learned about the growing scandal at the Veterans Administration by watching a report on the topic on CNN. After realizing just how bad that sounded, Carney returned to the daily briefing with the White House press corps today to say that his statement was being misinterpreted. According to Carney, what he really meant to say was that the president had only heard of the “specific allegations” about misconduct at VA hospitals by watching television. But, he insisted, the president was aware of problems at the VA, as proved by statements he had made during his 2008 presidential campaign when he promised to fix the agency.

Which is to say that, yes, Barack Obama had heard of the VA and had some vague intention to improve it as part of an effort to pose as someone who cares about our nation’s veterans. But between his arrival in the Oval Office and his subsequent appointment of retired Army General Eric Shinseki to head the VA in 2009 and the moment when he stumbled into awareness about the scandal during the course of spending some quality time with his remote control, he hadn’t given the topic much, if any, thought.



The administration’s problem here is not just that the VA scandal is far more serious than even Carney is currently willing to admit and that any action it is currently taking to address the plague of mismanagement and corruption that may have cost the lives of at least 40 veterans while they awaited treatment is too little and too late. As I noted last week, having an absentee president is bad for both the health of veterans and the nation. The president may have gotten away with treating the IRS scandal as no big deal and questions about Benghazi as merely a Republican witch hunt. But the spectacle of widespread corruption at the heart of a government health-care system that led to the deaths of veterans is not one you can pass off as a product of the fevered imaginations of his opponents. That’s especially true when you consider that Rep. Jeff Miller, the chair of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, wrote specifically to the president a year ago to bring to his attention what was already believed to be a widespread problem involving inefficiency and deceptive practices.

The fact that the White House resorted to what has become its standard second-term excuse for government scandal with a line about the president hearing about it on TV or by reading the newspapers raises serious questions about both his leadership and the intelligence of his staff. After all, surely it must have occurred to someone at the White House that using the same excuse about hearing of it in the media wasn’t likely to work after it had been employed with little success to distance him from the IRS and other scandals. Such intellectual laziness speaks to a West Wing that is both collapsing from intellectual fatigue as well as having acquired an almost complete contempt for both the press and public opinion.

The consequences here aren’t limited to the growing credibility gap that this administration continues to build. It’s bad enough that no one—not even his most ardent supporters—really believe that the president is on top of these issues. But what really stings is that Carney and the rest of the inhabitants of the Obama echo chamber have really come to believe that no one cares whether they are telling the truth or not.

Just as important is the reality of a government that is out of the control of its leader. A year ago Miller noted that one of the chief problems at the VA was a lack of accountability. That’s still true of the agency, as the deaths of veterans has provoked a low-key administration response that has left Secretary Shinseki in charge of a problem that grew worse on his watch. But it is also true of President Obama.

While no president can micromanage every Cabinet department, if Obama really did care about veterans, how is it that in the years between his first use of the issue as a campaign tactic and the moment when it exploded in the media he managed never to do a thing about the issue, even when specifically warned about the “allegations” that Carney claims he didn’t know about?

The lack of confidence in government is a natural response to events like the VA scandal, but it is compounded by a presidential response that makes it clear that Obama doesn’t pay much attention to the issues he raised in his own campaigns and that he is slow to act even after learning about such disasters on television. This scandal makes it clear, if it hadn’t already been so, that the Obama administration has run out of steam, ideas, or even a willingness to pretend that it cares about public opinion. It’s going to be a long slog until January 2017.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 21, 2014, 07:31:02 AM
http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2014/05/fbi_issues_subpoena_to_cover_o.html#incart_m-rpt-1


Unbelievable., 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 21, 2014, 01:43:16 PM


Great clip - F Obama.   
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 22, 2014, 07:39:41 AM
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/may/21/obama-transition-team-told-about-3-audits-showing-

Warned 3 times and he didn't do shit
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 22, 2014, 08:10:01 AM
http://reason.com/archives/2014/05/21/anatomy-of-an-obama-administration-scand


 ;)
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 22, 2014, 08:17:07 AM
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2014/05/22/bill_oreilly_obama_gives_power_to_incompetent_people.html


 ;)
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 22, 2014, 09:15:07 AM
May 22, 2014 12:00 AM
The Obama Administration’s Ethics Problem 
 The executive branch continues to be plagued by scandal after scandal. 

By Victor Davis Hanson


Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki cannot get a handle on the recent scandalous treatment of veterans in VA hospitals, where more than 40 sick men were allowed to die without proper follow-up treatment. A cover-up allegedly followed. When the Walter Reed Army Medical Center scandal broke under the George W. Bush administration, heads rolled. So far, Shinseki seems immune from similar accountability.

Almost nothing that former secretary of health and human services Kathleen Sebelius promised before, during, or after the implementation of the ill-starred Affordable Care Act came true. She was also cited by the U.S. Office of Special Counsel for violating the Hatch Act, as she improperly campaigned for Obama’s reelection while serving as a cabinet secretary.

Former IRS official Lois Lerner used the federal tax-collection agency to go after groups deemed too conservative. She invoked the Fifth Amendment to avoid telling Congress the whole truth.

Susan Rice, former U.N. ambassador and now national-security adviser, flat-out deceived the public in five television appearances about the Benghazi catastrophe. She insisted that the deaths of four Americans were due to a spontaneous riot induced by a reactionary video maker — even though she had access to intelligence fingering al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorists as the culprits who planned the attack on the anniversary of 9/11.





Rice recently blamed Obama foreign-policy failures on domestic political polarization. But that is best described as the give and take of democracy and was once thought to be our foreign-policy strength.

Rice also knows little history. In 2007, in the midst of the surge, when Americans were fighting for their lives to stabilize Iraq, then-senator Hillary Clinton implied that the commanding general in Iraq, General David Petraeus, was a veritable liar. Senate majority leader Harry Reid agreed and declared that the war was already lost. Then–presidential candidate Barack Obama prematurely wrote off the politically inconvenient surge as a failure. Was Rice then shocked that “polarization” affected foreign policy?

Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton left office with American foreign policy in shambles. She has been unable to make the argument that a single initiative — reset with Russia, lead from behind in Libya, red lines on Syria, deadlines to Iran, complete withdrawal from Iraq, pressure on the Israelis, outreach to radical Islam and Latin American Communist dictatorships — had met with success.

Clinton infamously dismissed the lingering mysteries surrounding the Benghazi deaths with “What difference at this point does it make?” She also refused, despite numerous entreaties, to place the now-infamous Nigerian terrorist group Boko Haram on a State Department terrorist watch list.

Eric Holder is the first attorney general to have been held in contempt of Congress. Aside from his divisive language (he called America “a nation of cowards” and referred to African Americans as “my people”), Holder always seems to find himself at the center of scandals. He permitted the federal monitoring of Associated Press journalists. He green-lighted the “Fast and Furious” gun-running scam. He has failed to bring to account rogue IRS officials. Holder is the most morally compromised attorney general since Nixon appointee John Mitchell.

Do we remember former EPA administrator Lisa Jackson? Her case was as unprofessional as it was surreal. Jackson fabricated for herself an alternate identity as a mid-level EPA employee. In communications, she used a fake e-mail address and name, and then unethically honored her own alter ego (“Richard Windsor”) as a “scholar of ethical behavior.” Who could have dreamed up such an unethical caper?

What has happened to NASA? We are currently trying to isolate Vladimir Putin for his territorial aggressions and yet beseeching the Russians to send our astronauts into space. Perhaps NASA administrator Charles Bolden should not have boasted that one of NASA’s “foremost” goals was “to reach out to the Muslim world” and “to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering.” Americans might have preferred Bolden to stick with rockets.

Former secretary of energy Steven Chu left under a cloud of controversy involving crony capitalists’ getting millions of dollars in green loans that produced nothing but failed companies. Former labor secretary Hilda Solis slipped out of office, battling accusations of Hatch Act violations and freebie rides on private jets from insider union friends. Former top officials such as Timothy Geithner, Peter Orszag, and Larry Summers have given new meaning to the revolving door between Wall Street and the White House.

The common denominator?

In all of these cases, politics trumped ethics. Because Obama professed that he was on the side of the proverbial people, administrators assumed that they had a blank check to do or say what they wished without much media audit. The mystery is not whether some administration officials were incompetent or unethical or both, but whether there are any left who are not.

— Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author, most recently, of The Savior Generals. You can reach him by e-mailing author@victorhanson.com. © 2014 Tribune Media Services, Inc.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 23, 2014, 07:27:40 PM
http://allenbwest.com/2014/05/exclusive-confidential-source-reveals-really-happened-benghazi



 ;)
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 06, 2014, 08:33:23 PM
Skip to comments.

Uh oh: Feinstein says she’s seen no evidence that Taliban would've killed Bergdahl had deal leaked
Hot Air ^ | June 6, 2014 | Allahpundit
Posted on June 6, 2014 at 9:09:40 PM EDT by 2ndDivisionVet

Not sure how else to read this except as Feinstein accusing the White House of lying flat-out about its reasons for keeping Congress in the dark before the swap.

When asked whether there was a “credible threat” on Bergdahl’s life if word had gotten out, the California Democrat responded: “No, I don’t think there was a credible threat, but I don’t know. I have no information that there was.”

Feinstein’s comments, part of an interview with Bloomberg Television’s Political Capital with Al Hunt airing Friday evening, put her at odds with White House officials. At a briefing Wednesday, administration officials told lawmakers that they couldn’t give Congress advance notice on the Bergdahl deal because the Taliban vowed to kill him if any details about the prisoner exchange came out.

Just to make sure we’re all on the same page here, Feinstein’s no random member of Congress. She’s the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, routinely privy to all sorts of tightly held info that the White House shares with her and other committee members in the name of keeping the legislature apprised of threats. Nor is this the first time a member of the Intel Committee has claimed that information about Bergdahl was withheld from them. Saxby Chambliss says it was news to him to read in the New York Times that Bergdahl may (or may not) have left a note before he disappeared. That info wasn’t in his classified file.

Two possibilities here. One: It’s all true — the Taliban was set to kill Bergdahl if anyone blabbed — but the White House couldn’t share that info with Feinstein because she’s got a big mouth and would have spilled the beans. Any evidence to support that theory? Actually, yeah.

[A]t least in Feinstein’s case, the administration may have had a reason to keep her out of the loop. In March 2012 with Josh Rogin—then with Foreign Policy magazine—Feinstein accidentally acknowledged the negotiations, appearing to disclose classified information about a potential Bergdahl deal (Rogin also reported that the White House briefed eight senators, including Feinstein, on a potential deal in Jan. 2012).

They kept Congress in the dark about a potential Bergdahl exchange ever since. Even if it’s true that Feinstein was careless with information previously, though, that’s no defense to the White House breaking the law in refusing to notify Congress. They could have simply huddled with her, impressed upon her how high the stakes were — “you talk, he dies” — and then trusted her to be quiet. She’s known all sorts of things that she hasn’t disclosed. There’s no reason to think she couldn’t have been trusted to keep this a secret too, provided they gave her some reason to believe Bergdahl would be in jeopardy if she said anything. Why didn’t they? Or is this all a big lie and the Taliban never intended to kill him over a leak?

Second possibility: This is all a big lie and the Taliban never intended to kill him over a leak. You already know the arguments on this one if you read Ed’s post yesterday. It simply makes no sense to believe the Taliban would have cared much if anyone leaked. For one thing, the prospect of a Bergdahl/Taliban swap has been reported in papers like the NYT for at least two years. The Taliban themselves chattered about it to the AP last year. Plus, if you think about it, having the deal leak in advance would only enhance the propaganda victory for them. If news of an impending swap had broken a week earlier, American media had erupted over it, and then a battered Obama had bowed to the Taliban and done the deal anyway, it would have been a supreme humiliation. The only reason to think the Taliban was skittish about leaks was because they were afraid that news breaking in advance would cow Obama into scuttling the deal — but in that case, with Obama’s course of action uncertain, why would they have gone ahead and killed Bergdahl before O had made a final decision? It may be that they told the White House that they’d kill BB if Obama backed out at the last minute, but that’s not the same as saying they’d kill him if it leaked. And it’s certainly no justification for O to withhold notice from Congress.

Feinstein’s not the only big-name Democrat causing trouble for the administration about Bergdahl today, either. Remember that the next time Obama dismisses this as a phony scandal cooked up by Republican psycho-partisans. Exit question via Guy Benson: Remember when Jay Carney said that Bergdahl was a “prisoner,” not a “hostage”? How can that be true if the White House’s story is correct, that the Taliban were ready to murder him in captivity if the deal leaked? Legitimate armies don’t threaten to kill POWs; they hold them until the end of hostilities and then release them to the enemy. The word for a group that would slaughter a prisoner over a scuttled exchange is something different. It starts with a “T,” I believe.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 09, 2014, 10:38:28 AM
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brent-baker/2014/06/07/turley-obama-really-president-richard-nixon-always-wanted-be
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 09, 2014, 11:31:42 AM
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jun/8/holder-seeks-legal-team-for-children-on-border


 >:(
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 09, 2014, 02:12:06 PM
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-06-08/obama-s-destructive-war-on-the-media


Obama can rot in hell
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 10, 2014, 05:05:38 AM

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Obama Lied, Americans in Afghanistan Died
Frontpage ^ | 6/10/2014 | Daniel Greenfield
Posted on June 10, 2014 at 6:55:01 AM EDT by markomalley

After presiding for six years over a war in which over 1,600 Americans were killed fighting the Taliban, Obama did not mention the enemy during his West Point Commencement Address.

That wasn’t unusual. Obama has a curious habit of avoiding the “T-word” in his official speeches. Even when delivering his Rose Garden speech about Bergdahl’s return, the Taliban were never mentioned.

Obama’s mentions of the Taliban vary by context. When speaking to the military he might say that the United States is at war with the Taliban. In international diplomatic settings however he emphasizes that the conflict is really a civil war between the Taliban and the Afghan government with the United States there to act as a stabilizing force.

The President of Afghanistan claimed that Obama had told him, “The Taliban are not our enemies and we don’t want to fight them.”

Joe Biden had expressed similar thoughts, stating, “The Taliban per se is not our enemy. That’s critical.” White House spokesman Jay Carney awkwardly defended Biden by arguing that the United States was fighting the Taliban, but was there to defeat Al Qaeda.

Al Qaeda in Afghanistan however had already been defeated by Bush.

During the campaign and once in office, Obama had proposed outreach to the “moderate” Taliban. Biden estimated that only 5% of the Taliban were incorrigible while 70% and then another 25% could be reasoned with.

According to Biden, these Taliban were expected to end all ties with Al Qaeda, accept the Afghan constitution and offer equal treatment to women. Obama issued the same demand last year. The Taliban who hold strict religious beliefs about the evils of democracy and the inferiority of women did not rush to take Obama and Biden up on their offer.

Obama’s dual views of the Taliban made for an incompatible policy. When playing the role of commander, he delivers applause lines about “pushing the Taliban back” and large numbers of American soldiers were sent to Afghanistan. But the rest of the time he views the Taliban not as an enemy, but like Boko Haram or Hamas, as a group that is acting violently only because their legitimate political needs are not being met.

Some might say that it was as a commander that Obama sent Bowe Bergdahl to Afghanistan, but that it was as an appeaser that he brought him back. And yet both Obamas are the same man. Obama sent Bowe Bergdahl to Afghanistan for the same reason that he brought him back.

This is the discontinuity that bedevils modern liberal foreign policy which fights wars it does not believe in, rejecting war, while still attempting to use force as an instrument of diplomacy.

When Bush sent American soldiers off to war it was because he believed that there was a real enemy to fight. Obama, as we have seen, never believed that the Taliban were our enemy and his own intelligence people had told him that Al Qaeda only had a handful of fighters in Afghanistan.

Then why did he send thousands of American soldiers to die or be maimed fighting the Taliban?

The Afghan Surge had never been meant to defeat the Taliban. The American soldiers were there for political leverage while Hillary and Obama figured out how to seduce the Taliban into political participation. The military would batter away at the incorrigible 5% of the Taliban while a deal would be cut with the other 95%.

But the numbers didn’t hold up.

Obama had claimed that withdrawing from Iraq would force the Iraqis to work out their differences. It didn’t work in Iraq. By putting clear deadlines on the US presence in Afghanistan he hoped to pressure the Afghan government into becoming desperate enough to cut a deal with the Taliban. Instead he only made the Taliban aware that they had no reason to cut a deal because they could wait him out.

Like many peace initiatives with terrorists, the pressure used to convince another government to negotiate with the terrorists only succeeded in convincing the terrorists not to negotiate. Obama was recreating the Israeli-PLO Peace Process disaster, except that he was doing it using American, instead of Israeli, lives.

Obama and Hillary’s talk of an Afghan-led approach to reconciling with the Taliban completed the breach between the Afghan government and the US. By trying to play the middle man in a deal that no one wanted, Obama alienated the rest of the country. The US no longer had allies in Afghanistan. It only had enemies. The Green-on-Blue attacks increased dramatically. Even the people we were fighting alongside now saw Americans as the enemy.

Not only had Obama failed to turn the Taliban into friends, but he had turned friends into enemies.

Despite all the setbacks, Obama’s people continued to cling to the idea that trading Bowe Bergdahl for top Taliban commanders would open up the peace process. The idea was floated in 2011 and 2012 and set aside because of Republican opposition. Proponents of Taliban appeasement blamed the GOP for sabotaging the Qatar talks. They even suggested that Republicans wanted the war to drag on to damage Obama’s popularity rating.

Now that Obama has firmly embraced unilateral governance at home, the deal went through. He is determined to shut down the War on Terror, close Gitmo and end the War in Afghanistan before his term ends, but his policies have put the initiative into the hands of a rising network of Islamist groups, some openly associated with Al Qaeda, others more loosely aligned with its ideas.

Meanwhile the American people have been lied to about the war and the Bergdahl deal threatens to unravel some of those lies. Obama did not recommit to Afghanistan to defeat Al Qaeda, as he has claimed, but to engage the Taliban. The Bergdahl deal was a last ditch effort to revive a Taliban peace process that Obama believes will finally disprove the Bush approach to terrorism.

When Obama authorized the Bin Laden operation, he did so to arrest him and put him through a civilian trial in order to dismantle Gitmo. This perverse duality characterizes his entire approach to the War on Terror. A military tactic is joined to an anti-war aim. Force is used to prove that violence doesn’t work nearly as well as diplomacy and appeasement.

This is the disastrous policy that led to everything from the Bergdahl deal to the collapse of the US effort in Afghanistan.

Obama has spent far more time thinking how to win over the Taliban than how to beat them. It’s no wonder that the Taliban have beaten him instead.

TOPICS: Editorial; Government; Click to Add Topic
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1 posted on June 10, 2014 at 6:55:01 AM EDT by markomalley
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To: markomalley
Obama the Undocumented and the EXEMPT Congress
recognize ONLY conservative, especially white,
Americans as the ENEMY.

They sic the DO”J”, DH”S”, IR”S”, and N”S”A
on them, while ignoring every phone call,
and every salient event made by REAL terrorists,
including those they warned
about (like the murderers in the Boston Atrocity).


2 posted on June 10, 2014 at 7:02:26 AM EDT by Diogenesis
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To: markomalley
I don't know I agree that the Taliban has beaten Obama, more accurate is that the Taliban and Obama have beaten the US. Obama bonds with his brethren the Islamists and he advances their transnational causes wherever he can.
3 posted on June 10, 2014 at 7:03:21 AM EDT by Truth29
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To: markomalley
Our entire goal when the war if Afghanistan started was to remove the Taliban from power, because they were harboring al Qaeda. And now they don’t matter? Someone thinks we’re all stupid.


4 posted on June 10, 2014 at 7:05:19 AM EDT by Telepathic Intruder (The only thing the Left has learned from the failures of socialism is not to call it that)
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To: markomalley
As ex-president Cheney said in 2009:
We developed a new policy in Afghanistan
We let Obama look at it
Obama adopted our policy
Now he is dithering

Criticize him dithering, then criticize for not dithering

5 posted on June 10, 2014 at 7:07:04 AM EDT by Ben Ficklin
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To: Truth29
...more accurate is that the Taliban and Obama have beaten the US…
From, “The Quranic Concept of War”…

The universalism of Islam, in its all-embracing creed, is imposed on the be- lievers as a continuous process of warfare, psychological and political, if not strictly military. . . . The Jihad, accordingly, may be stated as a doctrine of a permanent state of war, not continuous fighting.”— Majid Khadduri
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 12, 2014, 11:19:31 AM
http://www.forbes.com/fdc/welcome_mjx.shtml


ObamaCare = FAIL
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 12, 2014, 12:31:31 PM
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/209167-poll-obama-just-as-unpopular-as-bush-43#ixzz34S1EKhmB
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 13, 2014, 06:01:23 AM
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/380193/obama-our-future-rests-success-dream-kids-joel-gehrke


Unreal - he needs to be impeached
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 13, 2014, 06:20:08 AM
A targeting memo sent to the State Department by the Defense Department’s Africa Command two days after the Benghazi attack listed 11 suspects with ties to Al Qaeda and other groups, counter-terrorism and congressional sources confirmed to Fox News.

This is significant because it arrived two days before then-UN ambassador Susan Rice appeared on television shows blaming the assault on an inflammatory video. It also came nearly a day before presidential aide Ben Rhodes sent an email also suggesting the video – and not a policy failure – was to blame for the Sep, 11, 2012 attack that claimed four American lives.










The memo, which was referred to in passing during recent congressional testimony, was drawn up by the Defense Department's Africa command, known as Africom, and was sent to the State Department as the best available intelligence in the early morning hours of September 14, 2012.

It included the names of 11 suspects, four connected to the Al Qaeda affiliate in North Africa known as AQIM, and seven connected to Ansar al-Sharia, a group with ties to the terrorist network.

"They knew from the get-go that Al Qaeda was involved in the attack so the idea that the Obama administration didn't know that early on or they suspected it was something else entirely basically is willful blindness,"said counter-terrorism analyst Thomas Joscelyn of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

"You have to look at the facts and what the intelligence says and that intelligence was clear that known Al Qaeda personalities were involved in this attack."

In her new book, “Hard Choices,” then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton claimed the administration made new information available as soon as it was received.

"Every step of the way, whenever something new was learned, it was quickly shared with Congress and the American people,” she wrote. “There is a difference between getting something wrong, and committing wrong."

While the contents of the email are stamped classified, an attachment including a flow chart showing the relationship among the suspects, is not classified, according to a leading Republican on the House Government Oversight Committee who has seen the memo and wants the administration to release it.

"This is a document from military intelligence widely distributed to the State Department, the White House, the Pentagon, the intelligence community,"said Rep.Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah.

"This was not buried in the bowels of some email chain. This was a widely distributed document. It demonstrated that Ansar al-Sharia and specifically Al Qaeda were involved in this attack. It should have been something that was put out immediately, not nearly two years after the fact."

The memo was among some 3,000 documents recently released by the State Department to the oversight committee. With the House Speaker establishing a select committee to investigate Benghazi, all documents from the relevant House committee investigations were handed over.

Asked about the memo, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said she was not familiar with it, adding "We described the perpetrators as terrorists from the beginning, we've discussed this fact over and over again of course from the podium and again that hasn't changed."

But a review of the State Department transcripts in the first week after the attack shows then-spokeswoman Victoria Nuland resisted the terrorism description, instead telling reporters on Sep.17, 2012 that the government was still investigating.

Asked by a reporter if the administration regarded the attack as “an act of terrorism,” Nuland replied, "I don’t think we know enough. I don’t think we know enough. And we’re going to continue to assess… We’re going to have a full investigation now, and then we’ll be in a better position to put labels on things, okay?"



Catherine Herridge is an award-winning Chief Intelligence correspondent for FOX News Channel (FNC) based in Washington, D.C. She covers intelligence, the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security. Herridge joined FNC in 1996 as a London-based correspondent.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 13, 2014, 06:50:05 PM
IRS: So… Our Computer Crashed And Erased All Of Lois Lerner’s Emails
The Daily Caller ^ | 13 Jun 2014 | Patrick Howley
Posted on June 13, 2014 at 8:53:53 PM EDT by mandaladon

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) claimed Friday that it cannot produce Lois Lerner’s emails to and from the White House and other administration departments due to a supposed computer crash.

The IRS previously agreed to hand over all of the ex-IRS official’s emails from 2009 to 2011 to the House Ways and Means Committee, chaired by Rep. Dave Camp. But the IRS claimed Friday that it has Lerner’s emails to and from other IRS officials but it cannot produce emails to and from the Treasury and Justice Departments, the Federal Election Commission, or Democratic offices.

The IRS’ computer crash may go down in history next to the eighteen and a half minute gap in the Watergate tapes, which was supposedly caused by a mistake by Richard Nixon’s secretary Rose Mary Woods.

“The fact that I am just learning about this, over a year into the investigation, is completely unacceptable and now calls into question the credibility of the IRS’s response to Congressional inquiries,” Camp said in a statement. “There needs to be an immediate investigation and forensic audit by Department of Justice as well as the Inspector General.”

“Just a short time ago, Commissioner Koskinen promised to produce all Lerner documents,” Camp continued. “It appears now that was an empty promise.

(Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 20, 2014, 09:23:48 AM
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/al-qaeda-hits-baghdad-obama-hits-the-beach/
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 24, 2014, 08:43:19 AM
Fun fact: Guess where the current IRS commissioner used to work
Washington Examiner ^ | 6/24/14 | T. Becket Adams
Posted on June 24, 2014 11:37:26 AM EDT by Nachum

Current IRS Commissioner John Koskinen testified Friday on the scandal involving the targeting of conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.

And although the hearing was filled with many memorable and tense moments, particularly between the commissioner and Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., one detail that went unmentioned Friday is Koskinen's former employer.

In case you didn't know, the man who currently heads the IRS was at one point with the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp., known more commonly as Freddie Mac.

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 24, 2014, 02:36:20 PM


IRS Admits Wrongdoing, to Pay $50,000 in Leaking of Marriage Group’s Tax Return

 Ken McIntyre  / @KenMac55 / June 24, 2014 / 57 comments
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Two years after activists for same-sex marriage obtained the confidential tax return and donor list of a national group opposed to redefining marriage, the Internal Revenue Service has admitted wrongdoing and agreed to settle the resulting lawsuit.

The Daily Signal has learned that, under a consent judgment today, the IRS agreed to pay $50,000 in damages to the National Organization for Marriage as a result of the unlawful release of the confidential information to a gay rights group, the Human Rights Campaign, that is NOM’s chief political rival.

“Congress made the disclosure of confidential tax return information a serious matter for a reason,” NOM Chairman John D. Eastman told The Daily Signal. “We’re delighted that the IRS has now been held accountable for the illegal disclosure of our list of major donors from our tax return.”

The Daily Signal is seeking comment on the settlement  from the IRS and Justice Department.

Update: At 5:28 p.m, IRS spokesman Bruce I. Friedland emailed: “Privacy law, specifically Section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code, prohibits us from commenting.”

In his order entered this morning, District Judge James C. Cacheris granted the settlement of NOM’s suit against the IRS, which was represented by the Department of Justice.

>>> Commentary: Why We March for Marriage

In February 2012, the Human Rights Campaign posted on its web site NOM’s 2008 tax return and the names and contact information of the marriage group’s major donors, including soon-to-be Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney. That information then was published by the Huffington Post and other liberal-leaning news sites.

HRC’s president at the time, Joe Solmonese, was tapped that same month as a national co-chairman of President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign.

Eastman said an investigation in the civil lawsuit determined that someone gave NOM’s tax return and list of major donors to Boston-based gay rights activist Matthew Meisel. Email correspondence from Meisel revealed that he told a colleague of “a conduit” to obtain the marriage group’s confidential information.

Testifying under oath in a deposition as part of the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Meisel invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself and declined to disclose the identity of his “conduit.”

To get at that fact, Eastman said, the National Organization for Marriage  has asked Attorney General Eric Holder to grant immunity from prosecution to Meisel.

The $50,000 to be paid by the IRS represents actual damages NOM incurred responding to the illegal disclosure, not punitive damages,  since the marriage group was unable to prove disclosure of the confidential records was deliberate after Meisel took the Fifth.

Meisel provided the marriage group’s tax data to the Human Rights Campaign, documents found as part of the investigation show. HRC is among organizations and activists advocating same-sex marriage that routinely describe NOM as a “hate group” or “anti-gay” for making the case for preserving marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

>>> Commentary:  The Bullies’ America

“We urge other groups that have suffered similar problems with the IRS to keep pressing until they, too, are fully vindicated,” Eastman said.

Eastman was referring to ongoing congressional probes and lawsuits over IRS targeting of tea party and other conservative groups that sought tax-exempt status.

In a draft press release on the settlement and admission by the IRS of wrongdoing, Eastman said:


It has been a long and arduous process to hold the IRS accountable for their illegal release of our confidential tax return and donor list, which was ultimately given to our chief political rival by the recipient. In the beginning, the government claimed that the IRS had done nothing wrong and that NOM itself must have released our confidential information. Thanks to a lot of hard work, we’ve forced the IRS to admit that they in fact were the ones to break the law and wrongfully released this confidential information.

Eastman, a lawyer and law professor, also is a member of the ActRight Legal Foundation team that brought the lawsuit against the federal government and the IRS on NOM’s behalf in October 2013. He said at the time that the Human Rights Campaign removed “redaction layers” from the electronic documents showing they originated at the IRS.

In May 2012, Eastman and NOM President Brian Brown asked the Department of Justice to investigate and prosecute the case. Eastman appeared last June before the House Committee on Ways and Means to testify about the illegal disclosure o the marriage group’s donors.

Unauthorized disclosure of confidential tax information is a felony offense that can result in five years in prison, but the Department of Justice did not bring criminal charges.

“We urge the Congress to explore this issue with the appropriate government officials,” Eastman said. “It’s imperative that all those who have engaged in corrupt practices and illegal acts in the IRS be identified and held accountable.”

>>> Watch Recap of March for Marriage
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 27, 2014, 12:50:26 PM
Obama Is Not Finished
Townhall.com ^  | June 27, 2014 | David Limbaugh

Posted on ‎6‎/‎27‎/‎2014‎ ‎2‎:‎45‎:‎34‎ ‎PM by Kaslin

More and more people are finally coming to the realization that President Obama is presiding over America's decline, though there are differences of opinion as to whether he's deliberately or even directly causing it.

You have to admit that it's outright bizarre and alarming that people are even having this discussion, yet many of us have been warning about it for years now. It is gratifying that others -- albeit belatedly -- are waking up.

There are two separate issues: Is Obama trying to bring America down, and is his presidency falling apart (and what does that mean)?

As for the first, many get hung up on the semantics of whether Obama is trying to destroy America. Few are willing to believe anything so sinister of a twice-elected president. It's an easier sell to say that he doesn't believe in American exceptionalism or decries the very idea of nationalism and prefers to consider us all citizens of the world. He believes that capitalism yields unfair results, which leads him to desire a redistribution of our resources within the United States -- and from the United States to the rest of the world. So he is pursuing an agenda that will bring America into line with the rest of the world, which is to say, he is making us weaker and less prosperous.

I also happen to believe he has a grudge against America and wants to bring us down to size. But in his bizarro world, that's not destroying America; it's making it fairer and more just.

Concerning the second issue -- whether Obama's presidency is falling apart -- it's important that we are clear on what we mean by this. Most seem to agree that Obama's honeymoon with the American people has degenerated into serious marital difficulties, as evidenced by his nose dive in approval polls. Some consider this data, along with his multitudinous scandals, and conclude, "His presidency is imploding."

I believe that's correct only in the limited sense that he has lost the good will to accomplish much more of his agenda through proper constitutional channels. But I don't believe that it means he will be unable to accomplish anything for the remainder of this term. He has already proved that he is fully able and willing to act unilaterally on a wide range of issues, both domestic and foreign, with or without constitutional authority or congressional approval.

He wasn't just bluffing when he smugly declared, "I've got a pen, and I've got a phone." He was expressing his frustration with his political opponents' sometimes refusal to roll over to his dictates and his resolve to circumvent them every time he gets a chance.

This was nothing new. He and his advisers had said many times that he intended to liberally use executive orders and other tricks to advance his agenda at every opportunity. He's also made clear his willingness to act lawlessly and encouraged his administrative agencies to do likewise. Nor will anything deter his enabling Democrats in Congress to assist and provide him cover every chance they get. Just watch the congressional hearings involving the Internal Revenue Service scandal if you want to understand how national Democrats invariably place their party's interests above those of the nation -- and above the law.

As for his propensity for lawless unilateral action, remember when he admitted he didn't have the authority to pass the DREAM Act on his own and then two weeks later went ahead and issued an executive order implementing important provisions of it? Everyone has watched his whimsical, arbitrary and capricious granting of Obamacare exemptions. He intervened militarily in Libya without even consulting Congress, much less obtaining its approval. His Environmental Protection Agency, doing his bidding, has issued far-reaching emissions standards. The IRS was fulfilling his aims in criminally targeting conservative groups for punitive treatment under the tax code. His subordinates Hillary Clinton and Susan Rice were carrying out his direct orders in falsely blaming an Internet video for the attack on our consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Oh, yes, and he abused his recess appointment power to appoint a National Labor Relations Board president when the Senate wasn't in recess, for which the Supreme Court surprisingly slapped his hand. I could continue.

So if you choose to believe that Obama's presidency is imploding, I hope you understand that this doesn't mean he no longer represents a threat to America as founded or is impotent to do any further damage.

It's silly to write this all off with a wave of a hand, saying, "This is America. One man can't do that much damage." If you don't believe enormous damage has already been done in the past six years, we are on different planets. Look at the latest quarterly economic report, which shows a 2.9 percent shrinkage in the gross domestic product, with no end in sight. The number of people on food stamps and dependent on other government programs. The labor participation rate. The debt. The explosive costs and abominable failures of Obamacare. The state of the Middle East and the explosive rise in Islamic jihad.

Regardless of whether Obama has the political clout to pass major legislation now or in the remaining 2 1/2 years, his executive powers alone -- including those he has usurped -- are enough to keep us on this downward spiral. Even without any further executive power usurpations, we are already on autopilot to spend ourselves into bankruptcy.

Whatever you do, people, please don't get complacent.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on June 27, 2014, 12:52:19 PM
Obama: GOP Pushing 'Phony Scandals' to Gin Up the Base
Fox News Insider ^  | June 27, 2014 | Staff

Posted on ‎6‎/‎27‎/‎2014‎ ‎3‎:‎20‎:‎50‎ ‎PM by lbryce

Amid the IRS scandal, the VA mismanagement, and other D.C. scandals, President Obama declared Thursday that government is not the problem and once again accused Republicans of trying to promote "phony scandals" for political gain.

O'Reilly: 'President Obama Is Basically MIA'

FLASHBACK: Obama Tells O'Reilly 'Not a Smidgen of Corruption' at IRS

At a town hall in Minnesota (clip above), Obama admitted screw-ups and "bone-headed" actions within the federal government.

"Are there some federal workers who do bone-headed things? Absolutely," he said, recalling former Defense Secretary Robert Gates once telling him "at any given moment, on any given day, somebody in the federal government is screwing up."

"They're phony scandals that are generated. It's all geared towards the next election or ginning up a base -- it's not on the level. And that must feel frustrating, and it makes people cynical and it makes people turned off from the idea that anything can get done," said Obama, though it was not clear which specific scandal he was talking about.


(Excerpt) Read more at foxnewsinsider.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 07, 2014, 12:43:17 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/marc-thiessen-obamas-legacy-of-failure/2014/07/07/9148acf8-05e0-11e4-a0dd-f2b22a257353_story.html


 :D
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 08, 2014, 06:19:51 AM
http://www.nationaljournal.com/white-house/why-isn-t-obama-going-to-the-border-20140707



worthless pos
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 17, 2014, 06:47:01 AM
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/tim-brown/252-examples-of-obamas-lying-lawbreaking-corruption/#.U8QvBuS4yYw.facebook


 :D
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 23, 2014, 09:22:33 AM
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-22/obama-campaign-donor-wins-fcc-waiver-from-auction-rules.html

 ;)
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 23, 2014, 10:03:25 AM
http://www.nationaljournal.com/health-care/the-gao-launched-an-obamacare-sting-operation-and-almost-all-fake-insurance-applications-were-approved-20140723


 >:(
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 24, 2014, 06:21:30 AM
http://dailysignal.com/2014/07/23/obamacare-official-given-government-ethics-waiver-former-company-faces-scrutiny

 >:(
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on July 30, 2014, 06:34:25 AM
http://danfromsquirrelhill.wordpress.com/2013/08/15/obama-252

800 examples of deception
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 07, 2014, 06:51:58 AM
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-06/obama-let-delphi-avoid-taxes-in-tactic-president-assails.html


Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 08, 2014, 06:21:53 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/08/07/in-2014-obama-has-been-late-by-more-than-35-hours


Lazy chooming worthless slug
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 08, 2014, 08:22:42 AM

« on: Today at 08:21:55 AM »
Reply with quoteQuote 


http://dailycaller.com/2014/08/07/obama-official-deleted-obamacare-emails-sought-by-congress/#!


The administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) deleted some of her emails and may not be able to cooperate with a congressional investigation into the flawed Obamacare rollout, CMS has warned Congress.

Marilyn Tavenner, who was appointed by President Obama to take over CMS within the Department of Health and human Services in 2013 — prior to the Obamacare rollout — deleted some of her emails and did not save hard copies as the Federal Records Act requires her to do, MSNBC reported Thursday.

Though Tavenner’s computer did not crash like ex-IRS official Lois Lerner’s computer allegedly did, Tavenner may be unable to cooperate with House Oversight and Government Reform Committee subpoenas.

“During her entire tenure at CMS, Ms. Tavenner’s CMS email address, which is accessible to both colleagues and the public, has been subject to write-in campaigns involving thousands of emails from the public,” according to a letter CMS sent Wednesday to the National Archives and Records Administration. “Therefore, she receives an extremely high volume of emails that she manages daily. To keep an orderly email box and to stay within the agency’s email system capacity limits, the Administrator generally copied or forwarded emails to immediate staff for retention and retrieval, and did not maintain her own copies.”

CMS noted that this practice of not keeping emails “continued until November 2013,” just one month after the Obamacare website launched.

“It is possible that some emails may not be available to HHS,” the letter stated.



Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2014/08/07/obama-official-deleted-obamacare-emails-sought-by-congress/#ixzz39oYIOGcJ
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 08, 2014, 08:37:14 AM
ttp://www.nationalreview.com/corner/384912/congress-isnt-alone-struggling-obtain-obamacare-records-jillian-kay-melchior?

Congress Isn’t Alone in Struggling to Obtain Obamacare Records

As news breaks about the Department of Health and Human Services’ missing HealthCare.gov e-mails, it’s pertinent to note how difficult it has been to obtain records in general about Obamacare, as I’ve learned personally over the past many months.

In Nevada, National Review had to sue the state health exchange before we were able to obtain records about how many Obamacare navigators had criminal backgrounds, despite the fact that they were handling consumers’ private information. (As it turned out, at least eight did.)

We faced similar struggles in California, where the health exchange employed some twisted logic to explain why it could not release the full records regarding navigators’ criminal backgrounds:

“All of these documents are nondisclosable because ‘the public interest served by not disclosing the record clearly outweighs the public interest served by disclosure of the record,’” a lawyer for the insurance exchange wrote, citing California Government Code §6255. “Disclosing the names and criminal records of individuals applying to assist in Covered California’s push to enroll vast numbers in health insurance by March 31, 2014, is likely to discourage participation in this critical program and thus harm the people of California.”

In the end, we discovered that at least 43 convicted criminals were working as Obamacare navigators in California, including individuals who had committed serious financial crimes.

And those are the states where we even managed to get an answer. Though the state-by-state back-and-forth is a long story, we were denied public records even after appeal in the District of Columbia, and we’ve struggled to get clear answers elsewhere, too.

In Hawaii, the legislators saw it fit to totally exempt the health exchange from the state’s sunshine laws, creating what one reporter described to me as “a huge accountability problem.”

It’s not just records dealing with navigators, either. We recently filed several requests looking into the tech security of the state and federal health exchanges, and coaxing them to produce records has already proven difficult.

Then again, there’s a lot for the government to be embarrassed about. The limited records we have managed to obtain have revealed that a Romanian hacker was able to gain access to a Vermont health exchange development server for an entire month before detection; that a federal audit found “high and critical issues” in the New Mexico health exchange; and that Covered California had potentially jeopardized the personal information of at least 378 Obamacare enrollees.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 12, 2014, 01:01:39 PM
http://dailysignal.com/2014/08/12/obama-administration-released-600-illegal-immigrants-criminal-convictions



 >:(
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on August 13, 2014, 03:37:46 AM
Skip to comments.

Obama Administration Loosens Ban on Lobbyists in Government
NY TIMES ^ | 8/12/14 | Julie H Davis
Posted on August 13, 2014 at 6:16:12 AM EDT by SoFloFreeper

The Obama administration on Tuesday rolled back part of its ban on lobbyists serving in government, narrowing one of the president’s signature policies in the face of a legal challenge.

Under a new rule, registered lobbyists whom Mr. Obama had previously barred from serving on government advisory boards may now participate if they are representing companies or groups and not acting on their own behalf.

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on September 10, 2014, 05:15:38 AM



















































































































































































































































Topics: Syria Labor force Susan Rice Harry Reid


September 10, 2014


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Watchdog: Accountability
IG says Justice Department caused 'significant delays' in investigations

 By Mark Tapscott  | September 9, 2014 | 1:41 pm



Topics: Watchdog FBI Terrorism Inspectors General Waste and Fraud Accountability Justice Department Law Law Enforcement
 


Photo - Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that "a number of our reviews have been significantly impeded" by a lack of access to crucial documents. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty images)
Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz told the House Committee on Oversight and...

Department of Justice senior officials have barred or delayed the inspector general there from gaining access to documents crucial to high-visibility investigations.

"The FBI and some other department components ... have refused our requests for various types of documents. As a result, a number of our reviews have been significantly impeded," IG Michael Horowitz told the House Committee on the Judiciary Tuesday.

Horowitz said DOJ officials caused "significant delays in gaining access to important documents" in the IG's review of Operation Fast and Furious.

Operation Fast and Furious was a DOJ program that allowed gun-running into Mexico in an effort to generate evidence to be used against drug cartels.
   


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U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed in 2010 with one of an estimated 1,400 guns shipped to Mexico as a result of the program.

Horowitz also said FBI objections delayed an investigation of DOJ's use of the federal material witness statute in international terrorism, as well as an investigation of the FBI's use of national security letters.

The Inspector General Act of 1978 grants IGs "access to all records, reports, audits, reviews, documents, papers, recommendations or other material" within a federal department or agency.

Horowitz said he appreciated efforts by Attorney General Eric Holder and Deputy Attorney General James Cole to intervene on behalf of IG requests.

But Horowitz said having to rely upon DOJ's senior leaders to gain access to documents Congress clearly intends to be given to IGs on request is inconsistent with the law.

In addition, such dependence "compromises our independence. The IG Act expressly provides that an independent inspector general should decide whether documents are relevant to an IG's work; however, the current process at the department instead places that decision and authority in the leadership of the agency that is being subjected to our oversight."

Having to seek permission to gain access to documents also "results in delays to our audits and reviews, consumes an inordinate amount of OIG staff time and my time, as well as time from the attorney general's and deputy attorney general's busy schedules."

Horowitz' testimony came in a hearing by the committee concerning a recent letter to Congress signed by Horowitz and 46 other IGs describing multiple instances of obstruction by executive branch officials.

In an apparent allusion to the Justice Department's bungled prosecution of former Sen. Ted Stevens, Horowitz noted that Holder's policy also requires IG investigators to ask for documents concerning allegations of official misconduct by government lawyers.

No such limits are placed, however, on DOJ's Office of Professional Responsibility, which also investigates such allegations.

"This disparate treatment ... is unjustifiable and results in the department being less willing to provide materials to the IG, presumably because the IG is statutorily independent, while OPR is not," Horowitz said.

Two prosecutors in the 2008 case against Stevens failed to turn over to defense lawyers exculpatory evidence concerning allegations that the then-Alaska senator benefitted personally from his relationship with an oil company.

The prosecutors were disciplined but not fired following an investigation by the OPR. Stevens, who lost his re-election effort because of the case, died in a plane crash two years later.

Horowitz called on Congress to grant specific authority to his office to investigate allegations of misconduct by government attorneys.

Legislation now pending — the Inspector General Empowerment Act of 2014 — would grant that authority, he noted.

The bill was endorsed earlier this year by the Project on Government Oversight, a non-partisan non-profit that investigates waste and fraud in government.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 13, 2014, 11:46:53 AM


Opinions

Obama’s ‘blizzard of lies’






 


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By Marc A. Thiessen  October 13 at 11:12 AM


In 1996, the late, great New York Times columnist William Safire published a column, “Blizzard of lies,” in which he laid out a series of falsehoods by Hillary Rodham Clinton and declared “Americans of all political persuasions are coming to the sad realization that our First Lady — a woman of undoubted talents who was a role model for many in her generation — is a congenital liar.”

Today, Americans of all political stripes are coming to a similar, sad realization about our president. A recent Fox News poll asked Americans “How often does Barack Obama lie to the country on important matters?” Thirty-seven percent said “most of the time,” 24 percent said “some of the time,” and 20 percent said “only now and then.” Just 15% said “never.”

Think about that: 81 percent of Americans believe that Obama lies to them at least “now and then” on “important matters.”

That is simply stunning.

These Americans are right. The latest evidence came when The Post revealed that on Friday, April 20, 2012, Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan came to White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler with a specific, credible allegation of misconduct by a member of the White House advance team in Cartegena, Colombia.


According to The Post, he informed Ruemmler that there was evidence that Jonathan Dach registered a prostitute into his room at the Hilton Cartagena Hotel shortly after midnight on April 4. That is specific. And he told Ruemmler that Secret Service agents on the ground had information suggesting the same. That is credible.

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Yet three days later, on Monday, April 24, then-presidential press secretary Jay Carney told the American people from the White House podium: “There have been no specific, credible allegations of misconduct by anyone on the White House advance team.”

Carney’s statement was flat untrue.

Carney further declared that “out of due diligence, the White House counsel’s office has conducted a review of the White House advance team and . . . came to the conclusion that there’s no indication that any member of the White House advance team engaged in any improper conduct or behavior.”

Really? Between Friday and Monday they examined all the evidence, interviewed all the witnesses and confirmed that those allegations were completely untrue? Did that weekend review include the actual copies of the Hilton hotel records, which, The Post reported, showed that a prostitute had registered into Dach’s room at 12:02 a.m. April 4? The records even included a photocopy of a woman’s ID card.

So why did Carney tell the American people there were “no specific, credible allegations” when he knew there were? And why did he say that the White House initiated its own investigation “out of due diligence” when he knew it was in response to evidence brought forward by the Secret Service?

Because there is a culture of deceit in the Obama White House — a serial willingness to say things that are untrue to protect the president.


Think about some of the falsehoods this White House has told the country:

They told Americans that no one at the White House edited the Benghazi talking points to blame the attack on an Internet video — until it came out that Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes had urged Susan Rice “to underscore that these protests are rooted in and Internet video, and not a broader failure or policy.”

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The president repeatedly told Americans that no one would lose his or her doctor or health-care plan — until it later emerged that White House policy advisers had urged him to drop the line but “were overruled by political aides.”

Obama told Americans that there was “not even a smidgen” of corruption at the Internal Revenue Service (while the investigation was still underway) — but then it was revealed that there had been a spontaneous combustion of hard drives among IRS officials under investigation.

Add to that White House spokesman Josh Earnest’s false claim that Obama “wasn’t specifically referring to” Islamic State when he called them JV terrorists . . . or Obama’s false assertion that the sequester was “not something that I’ve proposed. It is something that Congress has proposed” . . . or his false claim that “7 million Americans . . . have access to health care for the first time because of Medicaid expansion.”

The list goes on and on.

One falsehood can be a mistake. Two are troubling. But three, four, five or more in a row? That is a pattern of deceit. Or, in the immortal words of William Safire, a “blizzard of lies.”

Read more from Marc Thiessen’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 15, 2014, 09:41:22 AM
Obama Is Risking a U.S. Ebola Outbreak for His Own Ambitions
The Fiscal Times ^  | 10/15/2014 | Liz Peek

Posted on ‎10‎/‎15‎/‎2014‎ ‎12‎:‎27‎:‎18‎ ‎PM by Rusty0604

Six years ago he put his legacy-building healthcare legislation ahead of the need to create jobs and reboot our fragile economy. Today, his ambition to be a hero to Africa is undermining common sense approaches to protecting Americans from the Ebola virus.

At issue is the enormous popularity of George W. Bush in Africa, a love affair that highlights how little, by comparison, Mr. Obama has done for that continent. As The New York Times reported in 2013, Bush “is seen as a lifesaver who as president helped arrest a deadly epidemic [AIDS] and promoted development of impoverished lands.” As The Times noted, “During a final trip as president in early 2008, Mr. Bush was warmly greeted by huge crowds of the sort he never saw at home anymore.”

That’s a bitter pill for Mr. Obama, who makes little secret of his dislike for his predecessor and who, as our nation’s first black president, was expected to make great contributions to Africa. It must gall him that U.S. approval ratings in numerous important African countries have tumbled under his leadership.

The president, who opened his 2013 speech at the University of Cape Town by saying, “Some of you may be aware of this, but I actually took my first step into political life because of South Africa,” is desperate to rebuilding his standing. He is trying to do so in foolish and dangerous ways.

Sending 4,000 American troops to the epicenter of the viral outbreak, to help build medical facilities and generally contribute manpower to the stricken and chaotic nations, can only end in tragedy. This is not what our troops signed up for.

At the same time, President Obama is refusing to cancel flights to the United States from the most stricken nations.


(Excerpt) Read more at thefiscaltimes.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 17, 2014, 01:35:27 PM
Meet America's New Ebola Czar
Zero Hedge ^  | 10/17/2014 | Tyler Durden

Posted on ‎10‎/‎17‎/‎2014‎ ‎2‎:‎00‎:‎05‎ ‎PM by tired&retired

Forget medical experience, what the USA needs to combat the worst Ebola pandemic ever is "an American lawyer and political operative best known for serving as Chief of Staff to two Vice Presidents - Al Gore (1995–1999) and Joseph Biden (2009–2011)."

Ronald A. "Ron" Klain is an American lawyer and political operative best known for serving as Chief of Staff to two Vice Presidents - Al Gore (1995–1999) and Joseph Biden (2009–2011). He is an influential Democratic Party insider. Earlier in his career, he was a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Byron White during the Court's 1987 and 1988 Terms and worked on Capitol Hill, where he was Chief Counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee during the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court nomination. He was portrayed by Kevin Spacey in the HBO film Recount depicting the tumult of the 2000 presidential election.

Lobbying Klain helped Fannie Mae overcome "regulatory issues".

Klain apparently signed off on President Obama's support of a $535 million loan guarantee for now-defunct solar-panel company Solyndra.

Clinton administration Klain joined the Clinton-Gore campaign in 1992. He ultimately was involved in both of Bill Clinton's campaigns, oversaw Clinton's judicial nominations, and was General Counsel to Al Gore's recount committee in the 2000 election aftermath. Some published reports have given him credit for Clinton's "100,000 cops" proposal during the 1992 campaign; at a minimum, he worked closely with Clinton aide Bruce Reed in formulating it. In the White House, he was Associate Counsel to the President, directing judicial selection efforts, and led the team that won confirmation of Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.


(Excerpt) Read more at zerohedge.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 20, 2014, 07:39:23 AM
Ron Klain and Solyndra: The administration’s point man on a solar fraud is now in charge of Ebola.
National Review ^  | 10/20/2014 | Andrew McCarthy

Posted on ‎10‎/‎20‎/‎2014‎ ‎10‎:‎36‎:‎07‎ ‎AM by SeekAndFind



Ron Klain is a sharp-elbowed Democratic political operative with no medical expertise. Tapping him as “Ebola czar” may not be the president’s best move when, as it is, no one can believe a word the Obama administration says. And that’s not just because Mr. Klain is yet another lobbyist recruited despite Mr. Obama’s vow that his administration would shun lobbyists.



Klain was also a central player in the president’s Solyndra fraud, which soaked taxpayers for over half a billion dollars for the benefit of Obama cronies.



In Faithless Execution, I recount the Solyndra fraud. It never got the attention it deserved — involving, as it did, potential felony fraud violations of federal law. Even for people who did give it attention at the time, Solyndra is so many Obama scandals ago that its unseemly details are tough to recall. The story is thus worth retelling. As our nerves fray over the Ebola crisis, it is a valuable window into the administration’s priorities and an indicator of the level of trust we can put in the new czar’s assurances.



Solyndra was a solar-energy company backed by the family foundation of George Kaiser, an Oklahoma oil magnate and major Obama fundraiser. Prior to Obama’s coming to power, Solyndra had sought government funding under the economically absurd 2005 Energy Policy Act. That law lets the government play venture capitalist, investing taxpayer money in private “green energy” boondoggles that cannot attract adequate market financing.



Notwithstanding the Bush administration’s zeal to hop on this politically correct bandwagon, it declined Solyndra’s application. As one private analyst later put it, the company was “an absolute complete disaster,” with operating expenses, including supply costs, nearly doubling its revenue



(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 20, 2014, 08:05:50 AM
Obama's immigration plan worse than we think: Green Cards being printed for up to 11M illegals
American Thinker ^  | 10/20/2014 | Rick Moran

Posted on ‎10‎/‎20‎/‎2014‎ ‎10‎:‎41‎:‎55‎ ‎AM by SeekAndFind



Just how many illegal aliens is President Obama planning to amnesty and grant work permits to after the election?



An announcement to federal contractors that the government is seeking to print millions of Green Cards and Work Permits gives us an idea of what the president has in mind.




Daily Caller:




President Barack Obama deputies are secretly preparing to print work permits for up to 11 million illegal immigrants over the next two years, despite the nation’s high unemployment, stalled wages and increasing automation.



If Obama actually goes ahead with the plan that is sketched in a federal contract document, he would provide employers with the ability to legally hire 13 million foreign workers even as 12 million Americans turn 18 in 2015, 2016 and 2017.



The plan to print millions of work permits and green cards — dubbed “permanent resident cards” — is outlined in Oct. 3 and Oct. 6 federal announcements to contractors.



The contract plan was discovered by the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors a lower level of immigration.



“The objective of this procurement is … to produce Permanent Resident Cards (PRC) and Employment Authorization Documentation (EAD) cards,” said the Oct. 6 official announcement at FedBizOpps.gov.



“The requirement is for an estimated 4 million cards annually with the potential to buy as many as 34 million cards total,” the document says.



But the proposed five-year contract includes a so-called “surge” capability to produce an additional five million work-permit cards in one year.





(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 21, 2014, 05:38:27 AM
The Blood on Obama’s Hands
FrontPage Magazine ^  | October 21, 2014 | David Horowitz

Posted on ‎10‎/‎21‎/‎2014‎ ‎8‎:‎10‎:‎48‎ ‎AM by SJackson

Reprinted from RedState.com.

When conservatives consider the casualties of Obama’s national security policies, their attention is drawn quite naturally to Benghazi. In this shameful episode, the Obama Administration sacrificed an ambassador and three American heroes to protect a deceptive presidential campaign message in which Obama claimed that the war against al-Qaeda was over and won (“Osama bin Laden is dead, and al-Qaeda is on the run”). The facts are these: Ambassador Chris Stevens and three American heroes were sent into an al-Qaeda stomping ground that the British and other diplomatic consulates had already evacuated; they were denied the security they had requested; they were then left to die during a seven hour fire fight when their compound was attacked, and finally betrayed in death, when Obama and his representatives lied to the world about what had taken place and when he failed to bring their killers to justice as he had mendaciously promised he would.

Benghazi can be seen as the collateral damage caused by presidential lies – and worse – presidential denial that there is in fact a war that Islamists have declared on America. Instead Obama insists – in the official language he authorized and that is still in place – that America’s responses to acts of Islamic terror should be described as “overseas contingency operations.” If Islamic murders and beheadings take place in the homeland, Obama calls them “workplace violence.” Benghazi is also the most shameful presidential abandonment of Americans in the field in our history – a disgrace compounded when Obama justified his trade of five Taliban Generals for one American deserter by saying Americans don’t leave their countrymen on the battlefield, which is precisely what he did in Benghazi. All of which justifies the conservative focus on this terrible event.

But the casualties of Obama’s reign in Benghazi are dwarfed by the hundreds of thousands of deaths his policies have led to in Syria and Iraq, and the millions of Iraqis, Syrians and Lybians that those same policies have caused to flee their homes and become homeless in Turkey, Tunisia and other places of refuge. Obama’s legacy is defined by his ideological aversion to American power, his rule as the most anti-military president in our history, and his deeds as an “anti-war” activist, opposed to the “war on terror” because he believes that America’s (and Israel’s) policies are the cause of terrorism and the hatred that Islamic fanatics direct against our country.

Because of his ideological opposition to American power, Obama deliberately and openly surrendered America’s gains in Iraq, which had been won through the sacrifice of thousands of American lives and tens of thousands of American casualties. By deliberately handing over America’s massive military base in Iraq – a country that borders Syria, Afghanistan and Iran – Obama turned that country over to the terrorists and Iran, as his generals and intelligence chief and secretary of defense warned it would. Obama disregarded the warnings from his national security advisers – as no other American president would have – because he regarded America rather than the terrorists as the threat. In abandoning Iraq and deliberately losing the peace, he betrayed every American and every Iraqi who gave their lives to keep Iraq out of the hands of the terrorists and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Obama’s stubborn refusal to use America’s military might – ground forces backed by air power – when Assad crossed the “red line” Obama had drawn in Syria created a second power vacuum that the terrorists filled, thus leading to the emergence of ISIS or ISIL – the Islamic State in Syria and the Levant. Defenders of Obama will claim that the American public would not have supported a military intervention in Syria even if Obama had ordered one. But why is that? It is because for eleven years, beginning with their assault on “Bush’s war” in Iraq, the Democrats have sabotaged the war on terror, claiming that America’s use of power for anything but “humanitarian” purposes is illegitimate, dangerous and the root cause of the terrorist problem.

Because it was “humanitarian” Obama felt justified in conducting an unauthorized, illegal intervention in Libya to overthrow an anti-al Qaeda dictator, saying it was to prevent an invisible threat to civilians there. The result? Al-Qaeda is now a dominant force in Libya, and 1.8 million Libyans – a third of the population – have fled to Tunisia. Another brutal Obama legacy. Yet, how firm is Obama’s commitment to humanitarian interventions? In Iraq he stood by while more than half a million Christians were either slaughtered or driven into exile by ISIS murderers on their mission to cleanse the earth of infidels. This was the oldest Christian community in the world, going back to the time of Christ, and Obama let it be systematically destroyed before bad press and pressure from his own party caused him to intervene to save Yazvidis and a Christian remnant trapped on a mountain top.

The Obama presidency has been an unmitigated disaster for Iraqis, Syrians, and Libyans. Now that ISIS is in control of territory the size of a state, has access to hundreds of millions of petrol dollars and advanced U.S. ordnance, not to mention chemical weapons that Saddam left behind, it is an impending disaster for the American homeland as well.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 23, 2014, 10:46:19 AM
Skip to comments.
Obama Asserts Fast and Furious Executive Privilege Claim for Holder’s Wife
Judicial Watch ^  | OCTOBER 23, 2014

Posted on ‎10‎/‎23‎/‎2014‎ ‎1‎:‎19‎:‎50‎ ‎PM by Red Steel

Judicial Watch announced today that it received from the Obama Department of Justice (DOJ) a “Vaughn index” detailing records about the Operation Fast and Furious scandal. The index was forced out of the Obama administration thanks to JW’s June 2012 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request and subsequent September 2012 FOIA lawsuit (Judicial Watch v. Department of Justice (No. 1:12-cv-01510)). A federal court had ordered the production over the objections of the Obama Justice Department.

The document details the Attorney General Holder’s personal involvement in managing the Justice Department’s strategy on media and Congressional investigations into the Fast and Furious scandal. Notably, the document discloses that emails between Attorney General Holder and his wife Sharon Malone – as well as his mother – are being withheld under an extraordinary claim of executive privilege as well as a dubious claim of deliberative process privilege under the Freedom of Information Act. The “First Lady of the Justice Department” is a physician and not a government employee.

This is the first time that the Obama administration has provided a detailed listing of all records being withheld from Congress and the American people about the deadly Fast and Furious gun running scandal. The 1307-page “draft” Vaughn index was emailed to Judicial Watch at 8:34 p.m. last night, a few hours before a federal court-ordered deadline. In its cover letter, the Department of Justice asserts that all of the responsive records described in the index are “subject to the assertion of executive privilege.”

The Vaughn index explains 15,662 documents. Typically, a Vaughn index must: (1) identify each record withheld; (2) state the statutory exemption claimed; and (3) explain how disclosure would damage the interests protected by the claimed exemption. The Vaughn index arguably fails to provide all of this required information but does provide plenty of interesting information for a public kept in the dark for years about the Fast and Furious scandal.

Based on a preliminary review of the massive document, Judicial Watch can disclose that the Vaughn index reveals:

- Numerous emails that detail Attorney General Holder’s direct involvement in crafting talking points, the timing of public disclosures, and handling Congressional inquiries in the Fast and Furious matter.

- President Obama has asserted executive privilege over nearly 20 email communications between Holder and his spouse Sharon Malone. The administration also claims that the records are also subject to withholding under the “deliberative process” exemption. This exemption ordinarily exempts from public disclosure records that could chill internal government deliberations.

- Numerous entries detail DOJ’s communications (including those of Eric Holder) concerning the White House about Fast and Furious.

- The scandal required the attention of virtually every top official of the DOJ and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF). Communications to and from the United States Ambassador to Mexico about the Fast and Furious matter are also described.

- Many of the records are already publicly available such as letters from Congress, press clips, and typical agency communications. Ordinarily, these records would, in whole or part, be subject to disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act. Few of the records seem to even implicate presidential decision-making and advice that might be subject to President Obama’s broad and unprecedented executive privilege claim.

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton criticized President Obama and his disgraced Attorney General in a statement today:

This document provides key information about the cover-up of Fast and Furious by Attorney General Eric Holder and other high-level officials of the Obama administration. Obama’s executive privilege claims over these records are a fraud and an abuse of his office. There is no precedent for President Obama’s Nixonian assertion of executive privilege over these ordinary government agency records. Americans will be astonished that Obama asserted executive privilege over Eric Holder’s emails to his wife about Fast and Furious.

Once again, Judicial Watch has proven itself more effective than Congress and the establishment media in providing basic oversight of this out-of-control Administration. This Fast and Furious document provides dozens of leads for further congressional, media, and even criminal investigations.

On June 28, 2012, Attorney General Eric Holder was held in contempt by the House of Representatives over his refusal to turn over records explaining why the Obama administration may have lied to Congress and refused for months to disclose the truth about the gun running operation. It marked the first time in U.S. history that a sitting Attorney General was held in contempt of Congress.

A week before the contempt finding, to protect Holder from criminal prosecution and stave off the contempt vote, President Obama asserted executive privilege over the Fast and Furious records the House Oversight Committee had subpoenaed eight months earlier. Judicial Watch filed its FOIA request two days later. Holder’s Justice Department wouldn’t budge (or follow the law), so JW filed a FOIA lawsuit on September 12, 2012.

But then the Justice Department convinced U.S. District Court Judge John D. Bates to stay our lawsuit, in part to allow ongoing settlement discussions between the Holder’s government lawyers and the House Committee to continue. Unsurprisingly, the “negotiations” between politicians running the House and the Justice Department went nowhere.

Fed up with the interminable delay caused Holder’s gamesmanship and stonewalling, JW renewed its request to the Court to allow our transparency lawsuit to continue. Thankfully, this past July, Judge John D. Bates ended the 16-month delay and ordered the Obama administration to produce a Vaughn index of the alleged “executive privilege” records by October 1. Judge Bates noted that no court has ever “expressly recognized” President Obama’s unprecedented executive privilege claims in the Fast and Furious matter.

Unhappy with having to produce the records prior to the elections, Justice lawyers asked the judge to give them one extra month, until November 3 (the day before Election Day!) to produce the info. Judge Bates rejected this gambit, suggested that the Holder’s agency did not take court order seriously. Rather than a month, Judge Bates gave Justice until yesterday to cough up the Vaughn index. Judge Bates issued his smack down on September 23.

Attorney General Eric Holder announced his resignation two days later.

Many share our opinion it was “no coincidence” that Holder’s resignation came “on the heels of another court ruling that the Justice Department must finally cough up information about how Holder’s Justice Department lied to Congress and the American people about the Operation Fast and Furious scandal, for which Eric Holder was held in contempt by the House of Representatives.”

The House had been separately litigating to obtain the records but had gotten nowhere until after Judge Bates ruled that the DOJ finally had to disclose information to Judicial Watch.

On September 9, U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson, citing Judicial Watch’s success, ordered the Justice Department to produce information to Congress by November 3.

Fast and Furious was a DOJ/Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) “gun running” operation in which the Obama administration reportedly allowed guns to go to Mexican drug cartels hoping they would end up at crime scenes, advancing gun-control policies. Fast and Furious weapons have been implicated in the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and hundreds of other innocents in Mexico. Guns from the Fast and Furious scandal are expected to be used in criminal activity on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border for years to come.

Guns from the Fast and Furious scandal continue to be used in crimes. Just last week, Judicial Watch disclosed that a Fast and Furious gun was used in gang -style assault on a Phoenix apartment building that left two people wounded. We figured this out from information we uncovered through another public records lawsuit against the City of Phoenix.

Congress officially confirmed the AK-47 was used in the assault that terrorized residents in Phoenix. In an October 16 letter sent from Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) and Rep. Darryl Issa (R-CA) to Deputy Attorney General James Cole discloses that “we have learned of another crime gun connected to Fast and Furious. The [Justice] Department did not provide any notice to the Congress or the public about this gun….This lack of transparency about the consequences of Fast and Furious undermines public confidence in law enforcement and gives the impression that the Department is seeking to suppress information and limit its exposure to public scrutiny.”

We have many other active lawsuits over the Fast and Furious scandal:

On October 11, 2011, Judicial Watch sued the DOJ and the ATF to obtain all Fast and Furious records submitted to the House Committee on Oversight.

On June 6, 2012, Judicial Watch sued the ATF seeking access to records detailing communications between ATF officials and Kevin O’Reilly, former Obama White House Director of North American Affairs at the U.S. National Security Council.

On September 5, 2013, Judicial Watch sued the DOJ seeking access to all records of communications between DOJ and the Oversight Committee relating to settlement discussions in the Committee’s 2012 contempt of Congress lawsuit against Holder. The contempt citation stemmed from Holder’s refusal to turn over documents to Congress related to the Fast and Furious gunrunning scandal.

On May 28, 2014, Judicial Watch sued the DOJ on behalf of ATF Special Agent John Dodson, who blew the whistle on Operation Fast and Furious and was then subjected to an alleged smear campaign designed to destroy his reputation.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 23, 2014, 11:31:17 AM
The Obama Administration lied last year when they informed Congress and the public that the 2,200 people that the Administration released from incarceration to save money had only minor criminal records.

USA TODAY, gaining the data from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) through the Freedom of information Act, reports that some of the illegal immigrants had been charged with kidnapping, sexual assault, drug trafficking, and homicide.







GOP members were furious when the data was released. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had told Congress that the inmates who were released were “low-risk offenders who do not have serious criminal records.” Records reveal that ICE was readying itself for budget cuts in February 2013 when it released the immigrants, only two-thirds of whom had no criminal records.







After the new information was released, ICE spokeswoman Gillian Christensen protested, "Discretionary releases made by ICE were of low-level offenders. However, the releases involving individuals with more significant criminal histories were, by and large, dictated by special circumstances outside of the agency's control."







Sen. John McCain, R-AZ., weighed in that it was "deeply troubling that ICE would knowingly release thousands of undocumented immigrant detainees – many with prior criminal records – into our streets, while publicly downplaying the danger they posed."







Normally, ICE releases immigrants with serious criminal records only if their legal status has changed or if they cannot be deported. Every illegal immigrant held in jail costs ICE an average of $122 a day. Last year, GOP members asked ICE Director John Morton for specifics about the immigrants the agency had released. Rep. J. Randy Forbes, R-VA, asked Morton, "No one on that list has been charged or convicted with murder, rape or sexual abuse of a minor, were they?" Morton responded, "They were not." He added that none of the released immigrants had been charged with child pornography charges. White House spokesman Jay Carney echoed that the prisoners who were released were "low-risk, non-criminal detainees."







Yet an ICE spreadsheet reveals one immigrant from Texas had been charged with aggravated kidnapping and sexually assaulting a child, and others had charges including armed assaults or assaulting police officers. One immigrant had been charged with conspiracy to commit homicide. Two more had charges of aggravated assault using a weapon, amd another had been charged with sexual assault.







ICE will not confirm whether the charges resulted in convictions.



Morton had informed Congress that of the over 2,200 immigrants ICE released, 629 had criminal records, all of them misdemeanors "or other criminals whose prior conviction did not pose a violent threat to public safety."







Of course, Morton did not mention the 144 other released immigrants who were filed under "special issues." They were largely released because ICE had six months to jail them legally if the agency could not deport them.







Homeland Security’s inspector general went to great lengths to ensure the Administration would escape culpability, writing in August that ICE was so hurried from the budget cuts that neither the White House or then-Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano knew what was going on. The report went further than that, insisting that ICE officials acted "appropriately."







Gary Mead, who headed ICE's detention operation, claimed that if the wrong data had been fed to Congress or the public, it was just a mistake. He added, "We had been asking for some time whether we would have enough money to sustain the level of detention we had, and we didn't get an answer. When we did get an answer, it was that we had to start releasing people today."

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 29, 2014, 12:03:44 PM
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/30/world/middleeast/mounting-crises-raise-questions-on-capacity-of-obamas-team.html?_r=0
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 29, 2014, 02:43:35 PM
Posted on October 29, 2014 at 5:18:10 PM EDT by Oldeconomybuyer

The Bay State’s former Obamacare czar is taking an executive job at the company that was awarded a no-bid state contract to fix the disastrous website, the Herald has learned.

Sarah Iselin — hired by the Patrick Administration in February to rescue the malfunctioning website — will become an executive-in-residence at Optum, which currently holds a lucrative state contract to re-launch the Health Connector on Nov. 15.

Iselin, who took a leave of absence from Blue Cross Blue Shield to oversee the Massachusetts Health Connector from February to May, told the Herald today she is leaving the insurer for a position that reports directly to Optum CEO Larry Renfro.

“I will not be working on Massachusetts-related work,” Iselin told the Herald.

Gov. Deval Patrick announced both the hiring of Iselin and of Optum to repair the broken site in February.

However, in a controversial Health Connector board vote in May while Iselin was still czar, Optum was granted a additional no-bid contract to develop a new site set to launch next month.

(Excerpt) Read more at bostonherald.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on October 29, 2014, 07:18:55 PM
Posted on October 29, 2014 at 9:27:54 PM EDT by Nachum

(CNSNews.com) -- As U.S. Marines withdraw from Operation Enduring Freedom (the Afghanistan war), CNSNews.com's database on casualties shows that 418 Marines gave their lives in the conflict and that 92% of those casualties, 385 deaths, occurred since President Barack Obama took office in 2009.

“U.S. Marines and service members from the United Kingdom left Regional Command Southwest in Afghanistan’s Helmand province today, turning their facilities over to the Afghan security forces,” reported the Department of Defense on Oct. 27.

“We lift off confident in the Afghans’ ability to secure the region,” said Army Lieutenant General Joseph Anderson, commander of the ISAF Joint Command. “The mission has been complex, difficult and dangerous. Everyone has made tremendous sacrifices, but those sacrifices have not been in vain.”

In the more than 12 years that have passed since U.S. troops first entered Afghanistan with the aim of removing al Qaeda from its sanctuary there, 2,226 U.S. service personnel have given their lives in and around Afghanistan in support of U.S. military activities in that country. Among those, 418 soldiers, or 18.8 percent of those service personnel were U.S. Marines.

(Excerpt) Read more at cnsnews.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 04, 2014, 05:12:58 AM


New emails show White House role in Sherrod ouster

By MARY CLARE JALONICK
Associated Press
 

 
 
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WASHINGTON (AP) -- A 2010 email from Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack says his department was "waiting for the go-ahead" from the White House before accepting the resignation of employee Shirley Sherrod, according to newly released documents, despite Obama administration assertions that her ouster was Vilsack's decision alone.

The email, which was made public Friday in an ongoing federal court case over the matter, shed more light on the evening of July 19, 2010, when the USDA hastily asked Sherrod to resign after a video showing her making supposed racist remarks surfaced on a conservative website. Her dismissal turned into a racial firestorm after it became clear that the video had been edited and her remarks were meant to tell a story of reconciliation.

Both the White House and Vilsack have repeatedly said the agriculture secretary made the decision to ask for Sherrod's resignation without White House input. The emails, along with earlier emails obtained by The Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act in 2010 and 2012, make it apparent that Vilsack wanted Sherrod to leave the department and ordered her resignation. But a newly-released email sent by Vilsack himself suggests he was awaiting a decision from White House officials on how to proceed.

"She has offered her resignation which is appropriate," reads an email from the initials "TJV" to Dallas Tonsager, then the USDA undersecretary of rural development and Sherrod's boss. "The WH is involved and we are waiting for the go-ahead to accept her resignation. I suspect some direction from WH soon."

The USDA would not comment on the email and a spokesman, when asked, did not dispute that Vilsack wrote it. The email, sent at 5:37 p.m. on July 19, is in reply to an earlier email from Tonsager addressed to "Mr. Secretary." Vilsack's middle name is James.

The correspondence is evidence in a federal defamation case that Sherrod filed in 2011 against the late blogger Andrew Breitbart, who posted the video, and his colleague Larry O'Connor. The Justice Department has been pushing to keep the emails sealed, but lost Friday afternoon when U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon ruled they did not have to be kept private.

Vilsack's email was brought up at a court status hearing earlier last week. According to a transcript, a lawyer for Breitbart's wife, who was substituted as defendant after the blogger died unexpectedly in 2012, said the email was "extremely telling" and "contains a statement that is arguably inconsistent with the public statements."

Justice Department lawyer David Glass replied to the judge that "when there is a reference to the White House was involved, what it means is the White House liaison was involved."

USDA's White House liaison, Kevin Washo, was in touch with the White House through the night, according to the documents. In another newly released email, a White House aide writes to Valerie Green of the White House presidential personnel office, saying "USDA is looking for direction - can someone contact Washo?" Green replies that she is "reaching out now."

Green writes Washo asking him to loop her in, "Please. Please. Please."

The department that night accepted Sherrod's resignation as a USDA rural development official in Georgia. When her full speech came to light the next day, it became clear that Sherrod, who is black, was speaking about overcoming her initial reluctance to help a white farmer decades ago.

As the administration came under fire, Vilsack reversed course, apologizing and asking her to return to the department - an offer she declined. President Barack Obama also offered Sherrod an apology.

White House officials acknowledged weeks later they had been more involved than they initially let on and had stayed in close touch with USDA that night. They still maintained, however, that the decision to seek Sherrod's resignation was Vilsack's alone.

The newly released emails also reveal for the first time missives between White House officials that night. By law, members of the public and the press cannot request internal White House documents directly from the White House.

In one email, then-White House Director of Presidential Personnel Nancy Hogan writes to other White House officials that Sherrod has offered to resign and says they will "need to determine what we say about resignation."

After the full video came out the next day, frustrated White House officials vented to one another through emails. Senior adviser Valerie Jarrett wrote then-White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs that "I would not have fired her for it. We just don't need any of it."

"Agreed," Gibbs replied.

In another e-mail to Gibbs that next day, Jarrett notes that then NAACP President Ben Jealous had apologized for condemning Sherrod before knowing the whole story. "We need to do the same and this will do (sic) away. Even Fox said we railroaded Shirley." In another copy of the same email released by the court, Jarrett's same words are redacted, citing a FOIA exemption for "deliberative process."

Lawyers for Breitbart colleague O'Connor filed the emails in court to bolster their argument that government decisions were the reason for Sherrod's dismissal, not the blog post. The emails show that the officials were made aware there might be a longer video, and that they were concerned about political fallout from her comments. O'Connor's lawyers argue that the "deliberative process" exemptions prove their point.

"The government cannot assert a privilege to shield the production of decision-making communications, while simultaneously claiming to have had no role in a decision," the lawyers wrote in their filing.

---

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Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 04, 2014, 11:43:48 AM
US considering a nuclear deal with Iran reliant on Russia
Jerusalem Post ^  | 11/4/2014 | Michael Wilner

Posted on ‎11‎/‎4‎/‎2014‎ ‎2‎:‎34‎:‎01‎ ‎PM by Uncle Miltie

Iran might be willing to ship much of its uranium stockpile out of country to Russia as part of a comprehensive agreement with world powers over its nuclear program, US officials said this week.

Quoted in The New York Times, officials said that much of the 28,000 pound stockpile would be converted to fuel rods by the Russians for peaceful use in Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant.

Russia is engaged in talks with Iran alongside the US, United Kingdom, France, China and Germany, working toward a November 24 deadline for a final agreement.

"There's no doubt that the talks have benefited from constructive Russian involvement," White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said on Tuesday during his daily briefing with reporters, noting that, "obviously, a lot more work needs to be done" in the negotiations.

Earnest's response came amid questions over Russia's role in US diplomatic efforts, a cause of strain ever since Moscow's annexation of Crimea led to harsh sanctions from Washington and Brussels.

Nevertheless, the US and Russia continue to collaborate on issues of mutual concern, including the Iranian program, Earnest said.

"The Russians have engaged in the international community to achieve important progress," Earnest added.

The Times report, citing "officials and diplomats involved in the negotiations," claimed the tentative agreement marked a significant development towards a comprehensive nuclear deal.

"If the Iran-Russia deal works, it could be the cornerstone of something much larger," according to one such official quoted.

Once converted, such rods would be virtually useless in a weaponization program. The current stockpile is enough for Iran to produce several nuclear warheads, should Tehran's leaders choose to further enrich the material to weapons-grade.

Russia would be compensated generously for its participation, the report claims, during a difficult financial period for the country. And Russian President Vladimir Putin would benefit politically, expanding his long-held argument that Moscow is an indispensable force on the world stage.

Wendy Sherman, chief negotiator at the table with Iran, has stepped in as acting deputy secretary of state—second in command at the State Department—after the retirement of William J Burns.

Continuing her role in the talks, Sherman will be in Vienna on Friday for a meeting of the political directors leading the negotiations. From that point, efforts will continue straight until the deadline on November 24.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 10, 2014, 10:04:11 AM
Obamacare Architect: Yeah, We Lied to The "Stupid" American People to Get It Passed
Townhall.com ^  | November 10, 2014 | Katie Pavlich

Posted on ‎11‎/‎10‎/‎2014‎ ‎12‎:‎31‎:‎37‎ ‎PM by Kaslin



Meet Jonathan Gruber, a professor at MIT and an architect of Obamacare. During panel event last year about how the legislation passed, turning over a sixth of the U.S. economy to the government, Gruber admitted that the Obama administration went through "tortuous" measures to keep the facts about the legislation from the American people, including covering up the redistribution of wealth from the healthy to the sick in the legislation that Obamacare is in fact a tax. The video of his comments just recently surfaced ahead of the second open enrollment period for Obamacare at Healthcare.gov.

"You can't do it political, you just literally cannot do it. Transparent financing and also transparent spending. I mean, this bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO scored the mandate as taxes the bill dies. Okay? So it’s written to do that," Gruber said. "In terms of risk rated subsidies, if you had a law which said that healthy people are going to pay in, you made explicit healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed. Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really really critical to get for the thing to pass. Look, I wish Mark was right that we could make it all transparent, but I’d rather have this law than not."

GRUBER: "Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage."

A few points. 1.Notice how lying to the American people is completely justified by Obama administration standards so long as the ends justify the means. Gruber would "rather have this law than not," and therefore purposely lying about what the law actually is in order to get it passed is completely acceptable. regardless of the negative effects it has on the lives of Americans. 2. Lack of transparency might be a huge political advantage in the short term, but long term there are consequences from voters, which is exactly what we saw last week during the Democrat blood bath at every level of government across the country. 3. Insulting Americans as stupid and deceiving them is a really good way to lose your power on Capitol Hill, which is again exactly what we saw last week in the 2014 midterms. Twenty-eight Senators who voted for Obamacare are now out of the Senate for one reason or another. 4. Obamacare in its entirely was "sold" on lies. From the promise to keep your doctor to claims insurance rates would go down, not up -- to hiding that the legislation was in fact a tax until of course it was necessary to argue it was a tax to save the legislation at the Supreme Court. Government bureaucrats promising an expansion of care knowing care under Obamacare would be limited, etc. Hell, even the official name for Obamacare, "The Affordable Care Act," is a lie. Obamacare isn't affordable. 5. The process through which Obamacare was shoved through and down the throats of the American people happened as a result of Harry Reid changing Senate rules and without the support of voters. The legislation didn't receive a single Republican vote in the House or the Senate. Also, remember this?

Nancy Pelosi - What she is willing to do to pass Healthcare

Or this?



"Absolutely not a tax increase."

Obama in 2009: "Absolutely Not a Tax Increase"

Obamacare is a sham and the American people have been lied to and deceived every step of the way. Further, Obamacare has never been popular with the American people. Not when it passed and not now. It should also be noted that since before Obamacare was passed conservatives have been rightly screaming about its true contents and impact on American families and the economy. They've been right all along and were called racists for sounding the alarm.

Overall, a lack of transparency has been key to the Obama administration's existence on a whole range of topics, which is why it is one of the least transparent administrations in history despite President Obama's promises.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 10, 2014, 10:11:50 AM
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2014/11/10/obamacare-architect-yeah-we-lied-to-the-stupid-american-people-n1916605
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 10, 2014, 12:02:45 PM
Government slashes 2015 Obamacare sign-up forecast by 30%
cnbc.com ^  | November 10, 2014 | Dan Mangan

Posted on ‎11‎/‎10‎/‎2014‎ ‎1‎:‎03‎:‎26‎ ‎PM by John W

So the number "13" apparently is bad luck for Obamacare, too.

Federal officials on Monday sought to lower expectations for upcoming enrollment in Obamacare, announcing that they now believe that only between 9 million and 9.9 million people will be enrolled in Affordable Care Act health insurance plans by the end of 2015.

That is well below the 13 million people that the Congressional Budget Office has projected for Obamacare enrollment by the end of 2015. Open enrollment for 2015 plans resumes Saturday.

The new projection, more than 30 percent reduced from the CBO estimate, comes from the Health and Human Services Department, which oversees the Obamacare health reform program.


(Excerpt) Read more at cnbc.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 14, 2014, 06:01:53 AM
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/nov/14/barack-obama-to-pledge-at-least-25bn-to-help-poor-countries-fight-climate-change



 >:(
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 14, 2014, 08:27:46 AM
President Obama: Where Are Your Manners?
FrontPage Magazine ^  | November 14, 2014 | Ronn Torossian

Posted on ‎11‎/‎14‎/‎2014‎ ‎10‎:‎09‎:‎24‎ ‎AM by SJackson



President Obama: Where Are Your Manners?

Posted By Ronn Torossian On November 14, 2014 @ 12:10 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 13 Comments


President Barack Obama has continually made terrible decisions – domestically and internationally – and has left America in a worse place than when he started.  In China, Obama chewed gum and outraged Chinese citizens with his behavior.  This has been a constant throughout his administration.  Some meaningful quotes on the absolute failures of Obama when it has come to diplomacy:
•“As far as is known, Obama became the first President, the first Commander-in-Chief, not to salute the living recipient of the Medal of Honor after presenting the medal.” — Rees Lloyd
•“Obama is inexperienced and lacks a proper understanding of how he should handle himself as President.” — Casey Carmical
•“Who can forget the moment last year when Obama took a selfie during a memorial service for anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela?” — Amie Parnes
•“However one feels politically, it is questionable to salute Marines while holding a coffee cup – Could not someone have held it for him?” — Eric Vainer
•The GOP is taking the public outrage over Obama’s salute to Marines while holding a coffee cup and running with it.” — Lisa Fine
•“In an unprecedented breach of diplomatic etiquette, President Obama once again sandbagged Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.” — Isi Leibler
• “President Obama was the most liberal and most incompetent president in my lifetime ever since Jimmy Carter.” — Bobby Jindal
•“It was seen as a slap in the face when Obama got out of his U.S. supplied transportation chewing gum.” — Roz Zurko
•“To see a leader like Bibi Netanyahu treated so shabbily by someone [Obama] who treats us the same way was too much to bear.” — William A. Jacobson
•“Obama’s awkward encounter with Akihito – bows are not meant to accompany physical contact – is not the first time the president has been criticized for his greeting of a foreign leader: Critics accused him of genuflecting to Saudi King Abdullah at a world economic summit this year.” — Foster Klug
• “Yes, President Obama has just gifted the queen an iPod.” — Chris Matyszczyk
•“Obama presented former Prime Minister Gordon Brown with DVDs of American films that couldn’t be played on British machines. Our classy president gave the queen an iPod loaded with his speeches.” — Robert Hanusa
•“Instead of rendering the traditional salute, after fumbling as if all-thumbs in trying to affix the blue-ribboned Medal of Honor, Obama, equally awkwardly, tried to ‘hug’ the Sergeant. Yes, a ‘hug’ for the soldier who remained at attention with eyes front in military bearing.” — Rees Lloyd
•“Mr. Obama’s manners at the event were on a par with those of Clark Griswold’s cousin Eddie from the 1989 movie Christmas Vacation.” — Larry Clifton
• “Barack Obama makes us look patronizing, rude, and condescending.” — Doug Wead
•“Gordon Brown has been snubbed repeatedly by Barack Obama during his trip to the United States, as the fall-out from the release of the Lockerbie bomber appeared to have left ‘the special relationship’ at its lowest ebb for nearly 20 years.” — Andrew Porter
•“What is also more consistent with the Limbaugh and D’Souza thesis are such personal quirks as Obama’s gross rudeness to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the White House and his otherwise inexplicable public debasement of himself and the United States by bowing low to other foreign leaders.” — Thomas Sowell
•“One of the important considerations for the leader of the free world has to be inter-personnel relations.” — Jonah Engler
•“We made this meeting so luxurious, with singing and dancing, but see Obama, stepping out of his car chewing gum like an idler.” — Yin Hong
•“He [Obama] made the mistake of both shaking hands and bowing at the same time, a big breach of etiquette. The truth was that he was supposed to choose one or the other.” — David E. Sanger
•“President Obama has very poor personal relations with most world leaders.” — Ed Lasky
•“But the quintessential dissing of our mother country had to be Obama’s return of a bust of Winston Churchill bestowed on the U.S. by former Prime Minister Tony Blair after 9/11.” — Robert Hanusa
•“Benjamin Netanyahu was left to stew in a White House meeting room for over an hour after President Barack Obama abruptly walked out of tense talks to have supper with his family.” — Adrian Blomfield

This NY PR firm owner has said it before and shall say it again – Obama’s legacy is one of disaster.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 16, 2014, 07:09:50 AM
http://nypost.com/2014/11/16/the-lies-that-are-central-to-obamas-agenda


Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 17, 2014, 05:03:51 AM
Another ObamaCare Deception

As Jonathan Gruber knows, the health-care law is a tax machine. The ‘Cadillac’ levy will hit the middle class.
 By
Tevi Troy
 
Nov. 16, 2014 6:12 p.m. ET
 
 www.wsj.com


   
 
Jonathan Gruber, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist, is making himself a household name, and not in a good way. A series of videos have emerged in recent days showing Mr. Gruber—an architect of the Affordable Care Act—telling college audiences that major parts of the law were designed purposely to mask its true cost to individual Americans.

As Mr. Gruber put it, speaking last year at a conference at the University of Pennsylvania: “Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, you know, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical to getting the thing to pass.”

One example cited by Mr. Gruber is the so-called Cadillac tax, as the ObamaCare excise tax on high-value employer health plans is known. The tax, which he helped devise and will take effect in 2018, imposes a 40% levy on individual health plans worth more than $10,200, and on family plans worth more than $27,500. As Mr. Gruber’s remarks were unearthed last week, economist Mark Wilson and I released a study of the excise tax that shows he is right about its deceptive design. The tax is likely to hit many people who don’t have high-end coverage.

Mr. Gruber says in one video that his real aim was to reduce the tax break available to those who get employer-sponsored insurance, about 170 million Americans. He lamented that it would be hard to persuade Congress to reduce people’s tax breaks: “You just can’t get through. It’s politically impossible.” True enough—the excise tax does the job instead. It is a stealthy way to reduce the tax preference for health care without taking it away from employers.

Mr. Gruber also noted that the real impact of the tax would fall on individual Americans: “We just tax the insurance companies, they pass on higher prices that offsets the tax break we get, it ends up being the same thing. It’s a very clever, you know, basic exploitation of the lack of economic understanding of the American voter.” In another video that surfaced on Friday, he explained that the only way to get rid of the tax preference for employer-sponsored insurance was “by mislabeling it, calling it a tax on insurance plans rather than a tax on people, when we all know it’s a tax on people who hold those insurance plans.”

Our study bears this out. While the tax is designed to be paid by companies, employees or consumers will see significant increases in costs. These cost increases will be passed on in several ways. Large employers who are subject to the excise tax in 2018 will pay an average of more than $2,700 per employee a year from 2018 to 2024. As Mr. Gruber admits, and basic economics confirms, this cost will be passed on to consumers or to employees in higher prices and lower compensation.

Employers, being rational actors, will not want to pay these taxes and will reduce their health-care benefits to limit their potential exposure to the tax. Doing this will cause employees to be hit by the excise tax in at least two other ways. If employers increase taxable wages to compensate for reducing the value of their plans, then employees will be paying more in taxes for the same compensation levels, and more after-tax out-of-pocket expenses for their health care.

From 2018 to 2024, the excise tax could cost 12.1 million employees an average $1,050 in higher payroll and income taxes a year, if employers increase their taxable wages as they reduce the cost of health-care benefits. Alternatively, if employers only reduce the value of their offerings without increasing wages and salaries, these employees could see up to a $6,150 reduction in their health-care benefits and little or no increase in pay.

Mr. Gruber also implicitly acknowledged that calling the excise tax a “Cadillac” tax is misleading, as the tax’s reach will expand. “Over time it’s gonna apply to more and more health-insurance plans,” he said, elaborating in a separate speech that the “tax that starts out hitting only 8% of the insurance plans essentially amounts over the next 20 years [to] essentially getting rid of the exclusion for employer-sponsored plans.”

This means that eventually the excise tax will affect an increasing number of workers who don’t have top-flight health insurance. By 2031 the cost of the average family health-care plan is expected to hit the excise-tax threshold. The tax’s creeping reach is reminiscent of the Alternative Minimum Tax, which was originally designed to hit only the wealthiest taxpayers but now nails the middle class.

The all-too-candid MIT economist is not likely to have a hard time paying for his own health care—Mr. Gruber reportedly received $400,000 for advising the Obama administration on the Affordable Care Act. But he is having a hard time explaining his unguarded comments about the law. His views may be obnoxious, but Mr. Gruber has performed a public service by finally telling the truth about ObamaCare and providing a glimpse of the mind-set of those who foisted it on the country. The American people are smart enough to see Mr. Gruber and the Affordable Care Act for what they are.

Mr. Troy is the president of the American Health Policy Institute and a former deputy secretary of Health and Human Services.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 17, 2014, 06:02:44 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/obama-dismisses-renewed-criticism-of-health-care-law/2014/11/16/78ecd912-6d65-11e4-9fb4-a622dae742a2_story.html




Unreal - again - Ofagget read about it in the news. 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 17, 2014, 12:28:06 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/marc-thiessen-thanks-to-jonathan-gruber-for-revealing-obamacare-deception/2014/11/17/356514b2-6e72-11e4-893f-86bd390a3340_story.html
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 19, 2014, 04:10:27 AM
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/under-obama-u.s.-personal-freedom-ranking-slips-below-france/article/2556322



Just fng great.     F you obama
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 19, 2014, 04:44:32 AM
http://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/judicial-watch-air-force-documents-show-president-obama-ran-1539402-10-flight-expenses-alone-labor-day-2014-weekend-trips


Insane
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 19, 2014, 05:10:02 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2014/11/18/obamas-flip-flop-on-using-executive-action-on-illegal-immigration



Fng liar
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 21, 2014, 07:29:00 AM
http://freebeacon.com/politics/jay-carney-obama-literally-doing-what-he-said-was-unconstitutional-in-2011/
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 22, 2014, 05:05:24 AM
Losing Streak: WH Admits Improperly Inflating Obamacare Enrollment Figures
Townhall.com ^ | November 21, 2014 | Guy Benson
Posted on November 21, 2014 5:55:07 PM EST by Kaslin



Last spring, Obamacare supporters were ebullient when the Obama administration announced a milestone "victory:" Despite a truly disastrous roll-out, they'd enrolled eight million Americans in the program. The Obamacare debate, the president said, was officially over. We expressed skepticism over the White House's stats almost immediately, noting that the official numbers didn't account for duplicates, non-paying "customers," and consumer attrition -- not to mention the high percentage of "new" enrollees who previously had insurance, but were forced to use Obamacare's exchanges to obtain plans after their existing arrangements were cancelled under the new law.  The last two weeks have witnessed two more blows for the "it's working!" crowd.  First came the sharply revised 2015 enrollment projections:

Fewer than 10 million people are expected to enroll in "Obamacare 2.0" for 2015, the Obama administration said Monday. That's a significant drop from the original goal. The Congressional Budget Office had projected 13 million, but officials said they expect the ramp up to be slower than the CBO originally thought. The revised goal is 9 to 9.9 million. It raises questions about whether Obamacare enrollment will reach projections down the road. The CBO had projected enrollment would hit 25 million by 2017, but now the administration says it will probably take at least one or two more years to reach that threshold. Officials are realizing it will find it tougher to convince the remaining uninsured to enroll. Many who opted not to sign up this year said the cost was too high.

It's almost as if many people aren't too excited about purchasing less-than-affordable coverage that saddles them with high out-of-pocket costs and sparse provider networks.  One thing the administration has going for it this year is that the individual mandate tax designed to punish shirkers is rising considerably, although those penalties are still much lower than the costs associated with buying Obamacare health plans.  Now we have this embarrassing admission from administration officials, who've been forced to reveal how Team Obama inflated its top line enrollment figure:

The Obama administration said it erroneously calculated the number of people with health coverage under the Affordable Care Act, incorrectly adding 380,000 dental subscribers to raise the total above 7 million. The accurate number with full health-care plans is 6.7 million as of Oct. 15, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services confirmed today, saying the U.S. won’t include dental plans in future reports. “The mistake we made is unacceptable,” Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell said on her verified Twitter account. “I will be communicating that clearly throughout the department.” The error was brought to light by Republican investigators for the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, using data they obtained from the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services….The new count puts enrollment short of a 2013 estimate by the Congressional Budget Office, adopted last year as a goal by the Obama administration, that 7 million people would be enrolled this year. Federal officials said in September they had 7.3 million people enrolled in coverage through new government-run insurance exchanges. They didn’t distinguish between medical and dental plans, breaking from previous practice without notice.

Oh yes, this was surely a good-faith "mistake," which just happened to depart from "previous practice" in order to push the White House's prized total "enrollment" number above its nominal goal.  A remarkable coincidence, no? Even top Obamacare cheerleader Ezra Klein can't spin this, even as he credulously swallows the "error" line:

This is such a dumb, unforced error by the Obama administration: http://t.co/N1VuxJjUu6— Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) November 20, 2014


So setting aside the previously insured population, which shouldn't count towards new enrollments in my view, the administration still fell short of its initial projections, and they've since publicly downgraded their expectations for this year.  Comprehensive data from the Census Bureau and the CDC confirms that Obamacare is falling dramatically short of enrollment expectations.  Between Jonathan Gruber's slow-motion implosion, the Supreme Court taking up the federal subsidies case, and these enrollment black eyes, it's been a rough month for Obamacare.  And the losing streak is being reflected in public polling:
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 23, 2014, 04:38:12 PM
Obama: ‘Absolutely Not’ Legitimate for Future Presidents to Apply My Logic on Executive Actions
nationalreview.com ^  | November 23, 2014 | Katherine Connell

Posted on ‎11‎/‎23‎/‎2014‎ ‎3‎:‎32‎:‎42‎ ‎PM by Tailgunner Joe

President Obama rejected the idea that his executive action on immigration sets a precedent for future presidents to enact their preferred policies without Congress, at least if the policy were tax reform.

George Stephanopoulos asked Obama in an interview airing on This Week about an analogy that many of the president’s critics have drawn: “How do you respond to the argument, a future president comes in, wants lower taxes. Doesn’t happen. Congress won’t do it — he says I’m not going to prosecute those who don’t pay capital gains tax.”

Obama didn’t respond to the question and continued with his talking points, prompting Stephanopoulos to press him again: “So you don’t think it’d be legitimate for a future president to make that argument?

“With respect to taxes? Absolutely not,” the president replied.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: tonymctones on November 23, 2014, 05:09:09 PM
Obama: ‘Absolutely Not’ Legitimate for Future Presidents to Apply My Logic on Executive Actions
nationalreview.com ^  | November 23, 2014 | Katherine Connell

Posted on ‎11‎/‎23‎/‎2014‎ ‎3‎:‎32‎:‎42‎ ‎PM by Tailgunner Joe

President Obama rejected the idea that his executive action on immigration sets a precedent for future presidents to enact their preferred policies without Congress, at least if the policy were tax reform.

George Stephanopoulos asked Obama in an interview airing on This Week about an analogy that many of the president’s critics have drawn: “How do you respond to the argument, a future president comes in, wants lower taxes. Doesn’t happen. Congress won’t do it — he says I’m not going to prosecute those who don’t pay capital gains tax.”

Obama didn’t respond to the question and continued with his talking points, prompting Stephanopoulos to press him again: “So you don’t think it’d be legitimate for a future president to make that argument?

“With respect to taxes? Absolutely not,” the president replied.

LMFAO of course this arrongant prick thinks his actions are different.

just remember libtards who are cheering this on, sooner or later the shoe will be on the other foot and you better keep your fucking mouths shut
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 24, 2014, 06:22:40 AM
Obama: "Absolutely Not" Legitimate For Future Presidents To Use Executive Actions For Taxes








       
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GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, THIS WEEK: How do you respond to the argument, a future president comes in, wants lower taxes. Doesn’t happen. Congress won’t do it – he says I’m not going to prosecute those who don’t pay capital gains tax.

 PRESIDENTOBAMA: Well, the truth of the matter is, George, that the reason that we have to do prosecutorial discretion in immigration is that we know we are not even close to being able to deal with the folks who have been here a long time. The vast majority of folks understand that they need to pay taxes, and when we conduct an audit, for example, we are selecting those folks who are most likely to be cheating. We’re not going after millions and millions of people who everybody knows are here and were taking advantage of low wages as they’re mowing lawns or cleaning out bedpans, and looking the other way – but then you got politicians suddenly going out there saying, suggesting somehow that we should be deporting all of them. Everybody knows, including Republicans, that we’re not going to deport 11 million people.

 STEPHANOPOULOS: So you don’t think it’d be legitimate for a future president to make that argument?

 OBAMA: With respect to taxes? Absolutely not. But what is true – what is true today is we don’t audit every single person, but we still expect that people are going to go ahead and follow the law. And we have limited resources, we have to make sure that we prioritize those folks who are most dangerous and we should acknowledge what everybody has already acknowledged through their actions – and Congress acknowledges through their budget – which is we’re not in the business of deporting millions of people or breaking up families.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 24, 2014, 06:24:12 AM
Obama backer, Democratic fundraiser Terry Bean charged in sexual abuse case
cnn ^  | 11/23/2014 | Alexandra Jaffe

Posted on ‎11‎/‎23‎/‎2014‎ ‎8‎:‎12‎:‎03‎ ‎PM by tobyhill

A prominent supporter of President Barack Obama and co-founder of the Human Rights Campaign was arrested last week on charges of sodomy and sexual abuse related to what authorities said was an encounter with a juvenile male.

Terrence Bean, 66, a major Democratic donor and a celebrated gay-rights activist, was indicted on two felony charges of sodomy and a misdemeanor count of sexual abuse by a grand jury and arrested in Oregon Wednesday, according to a statement from the Portland Police Bureau. Bean was released later that day on bail, pending a court hearing.

Kiah Lawson, a 25-year-old identified by multiple news outlets as Bean's ex-boyfriend, was arrested on Thursday on related charges, Portland Police confirmed. He's also been released from jail, and pleaded not guilty on Friday, according to The Oregonian newspaper.

The charges relate to an alleged encounter the two had with a 15-year-old boy in Oregon last year, The Oregonian reported. Bean's attorney has denied the charges and said in a statement that Bean is the "victim of an extortion ring." CNN is not naming the alleged victim because the network does not identify minors or victims of sexual assaults.


(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 24, 2014, 11:38:31 AM
Lawless DOJ Targeted Attkisson Over Fast And Furious
Investor's Business Daily ^  | November 24, 2014 | IBD editorials

Posted on ‎11‎/‎24‎/‎2014‎ ‎2‎:‎12‎:‎43‎ ‎PM by raptor22

Corruption: Smoking-gun emails show how the administration sought to derail a CBS reporter's investigation of its "gun-waking" operation — a reporter whose computers were mysteriously and mercilessly hacked.

Fast and Furious, along with Benghazi, is one of the two "phony" administration scandals that produced body bags, and former CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson is responsible for much of the truth-telling about both. That fact is enough to put her high atop the administration's enemies list.

Attkisson, a casualty of liberal media bias, resigned from CBS in March after a series of clashes between her and her bosses over her exposes of administration wrongdoing and its subsequent cover-ups. An email thread obtained by government watchdog Judicial Watch show just how upset Eric Holder's Justice Department and the White House were over Attkisson's reporting and how hard they tried to undermine her.

The email thread's topic was concern over news reports linking Holder directly to the Fast and Furious program that had resulted in the deaths of agents Brian Terry and Jaime Zapata at the hands of Mexican drug cartels. The killers used weapons funneled south of the border under the administration's program.

The first email in the thread between Tracy Schmaler, who headed Holder's Office of Public Affairs, and White House Deputy Press Secretary Eric Shultz, timed at 7:46 a.m. on Oct. 4, 2011, titled "No stories," noted that media outlets such as the New York Times, Associated Press, Washington Post, Reuters and Bloomberg were ignoring Fast and Furious. There was one notable exception — Attkisson of CBS News.


(Excerpt) Read more at news.investors.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 24, 2014, 12:14:09 PM
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/kristine-marsh/2014/11/24/network-silence-obama-ally-gay-activist-arrested-child-sex-abuse?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=marketing&utm_term=facebook&utm_content=facebook&utm_campaign=obama-donor-sex-abuse
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 25, 2014, 06:53:35 AM
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/nov/24/jonathan-gruber-warned-of-obamacare-premium-spike-/
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 26, 2014, 05:03:06 AM
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/nov/25/gay-rights-activist-charged-with-sex-abuse-of-boy-



Geez - this animal was on AF1
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 28, 2014, 06:24:16 AM

Exclusive: Obama plan to 'Power Africa' gets off to a dim start

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Reuters
By Joe Brock
3 hours ago
 

 










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U.S. President Barack Obama delivers remarks at the University of Cape Town
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U.S. President Barack Obama delivers remarks at the University of Cape Town, June 30, 2013. REUTERS/Jason …

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By Joe Brock





JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Barack Obama last year told a cheering crowd in Cape Town that a $7 billion plan to "Power Africa" would double electricity output on the world's poorest continent and bring "light where currently there is darkness".

A year later, the U.S. president's flagship project for Africa has already achieved 25 percent of its goal to deliver 10,000 megawatts of electricity and bring light to 20 million households and businesses, according to its annual report.

But the five-year plan has not yet delivered the power.

Power Africa has not measured its progress by counting actual megawatts added to the grid but promises of additional power made in deals it says it helped negotiate, according to sources inside the project and documents seen by Reuters.

Some projects facilitated by Power Africa -- a program operated by the U.S. aid agency USAID -- were under way years before the scheme's inception, others are still in the planning stage.

It is unclear how much of the $7 billion Obama pledged has actually been spent or if a further $20 billion in private sector investment commitments will materialize.

"Saying you've met targets on projects that might never happen or taking the credit for projects that have been worked on for years makes me uncomfortable," a source working on Power Africa told Reuters. "It's misleading."

Obama's pledge to double power generation in Africa within five years looked highly ambitious from the start. Per capita electricity output in Sub-Saharan Africa has been flat for three decades because most promised power plants never get built.

"We're dealing with megawatts on paper, rather than on the grid," a second source working on the project said.

"Is that really what Obama promised?"

The first African-American U.S. president, the son of a Kenyan father, Obama has often been criticized for a lukewarm engagement in Africa, consisting more of words than deeds.

"WE'RE LIKE A PHARMACIST"

The 48 countries of Sub-Saharan Africa, with a combined population of 800 million, produce roughly the same amount of power as Spain, a country of just 46 million. This constrains Africa's growth and keeps hundreds of millions in poverty.

Power Africa coordinator Andrew Herscowitz told Reuters there had been some confusion about the role of the program. He said it was always intended to "expedite transactions", facilitating private investment rather than handing out aid.

Herscowitz said Power Africa was there to help the private sector deliver electricity and it had already negotiated commitments from companies worth $20 billion, although he did not know how much of this money had been spent.

"We’re like a pharmacist, where people come to us, we reach out to people and figure out what is needed," he said.

"In some projects we may have a lot of involvement and in some we have very little involvement."

Foreign companies sign billions of dollars of agreements with African governments to build infrastructure every year, although a large number never get built.

In April 2011, the U.S. Millennium Challenge Corp., a government aid agency involved in Power Africa, signed a $350 million deal to "revitalize" Malawi's power sector.

More than three years on, 1.7 percent of that money has been spent, according to the programmer's website, which gives no detail on progress on the ground.

Memoranda of understanding Power Africa signed this year with its six focus countries -- Tanzania, Nigeria, Kenya, Ethiopia, Liberia and Ghana -- contain less than $100 million of financial commitments targeted at specific countries, most of which is for consultants.

U.S. consultancy Tetra Tech won a $64 million contract and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair's Africa Governance Initiative was given a $3 million deal.

As with many African aid projects, rights groups have criticized Power Africa as mostly being a vehicle to subsidize U.S. companies.

Documents show $5 billion out of the $7 billion pledged is for loans for U.S. exports from the government's Export-Import Bank (EXIM) and Overseas Private Investment Corp. (OPIC).

TURN ON THE LIGHTS

"It’s absolutely not true. Power Africa is an opportunity to turn on the lights for millions of Africans by taking investment from all over the world," Herscowitz said.

Herscowitz rejected suggestions Power Africa merely tapped into existing projects, highlighting a 5 megawatt "NextGen" solar project in Tanzania and a 30 megawatt biomass scheme in Kenya which he said "didn't exist before Power Africa".

The NextGen project website, however, says a power purchase agreement for the solar project was signed in January 2013, six months before Power Africa was launched.

It is by no means guaranteed that the Power Africa program, which has an initial five-year mandate, will continue or be seen as a priority when Obama's final term ends in two years, U.S. government sources told Reuters.

In addition, the investment banks EXIM and OPIC are fighting for their survival in Congress, where Obama's Democratic Party was severely weakened in mid-term elections this month.

In a change of tack, the U.S. government said this month it wants to partner with China on improving power in Africa.

Meanwhile, corruption in the countries that Power Africa operates in remains a problem.

Nigeria's state oil company was accused last year by the then central bank governor of withholding $20 billion in oil funds due to the government, while Tanzania's parliament is currently reviewing a report on graft in its energy sector.

(Editing by Pascal Fletcher and Robin Pomeroy)
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on November 29, 2014, 08:23:11 AM
http://dailycaller.com/2014/11/28/gallup-peak-number-of-americans-delaying-medical-care-over-costs



This mofo is a real pos
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 03, 2014, 05:13:27 AM
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/wh-cant-explain-why-soap-opera-producer-just-became-ambassador-hungry_820521.html
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 04, 2014, 12:41:45 PM
Obama on Garner: 'My Tradition is Not to Remark on Cases'
Breitbart ^  | December 3, 2014 | Joel B. Pollak

Posted on ‎12‎/‎4‎/‎2014‎ ‎2‎:‎02‎:‎16‎ ‎PM by upbeat5

In his remarks Wednesday on the non-indictment of the New York police officer who allegedly choked Eric Garner to death during a routine arrest, President Barack Obama claimed that he does not involve himself in such controversies. "My tradition is not to remark on cases where there may still be an investigation," he said.

The opposite is true: from Skip Gates to Trayvon Martin to Michael Brown, Obama nearly always weighs in.

Even more bizarre was the fact that Obama upstaged New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. The news networks had all been awaiting the mayor's press conference at 4:45 p.m. ET. Yet Obama broke in with his own remarks at about 4:43 p.m., interrupting his own pre-scheduled address to a gathering of Native American leaders at the White House to offer his take on the grand jury decision before local officials had their chance to react.


(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 08, 2014, 04:57:55 AM

Review & Outlook

Professor Tribe Takes Obama to School

The liberal lion blasts the EPA’s climate rule as an illegal power grab.
 


 




  President Obama during a cabinet meeting at the White House in July. ENLARGE   
President Obama during a cabinet meeting at the White House in July.  Getty Images 
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Dec. 5, 2014 7:01 p.m. ET
 
 515 COMMENTS   
 
In his Harvard days,  Barack Obama  studied under law professor Laurence Tribe. Perhaps the future President spent too much time at the law review and missed the part about limited powers. We say that because Professor Tribe delivered a constitutional rebuke this week to the Obama Administration that is remarkable coming from a titan of the liberal professoriate.

Mr. Tribe joined with the world’s largest private coal company,  Peabody Energy , to criticize the “executive overreach” of the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed rule to regulate carbon emissions from existing power plants. In joint comments filed with the EPA, the professor accuses the agency of abusing statutory law, violating the Constitution’s Article I, Article II, the separation of powers, the Tenth and Fifth Amendments, and in general displaying contempt for the law.

The Clean Air Act doesn’t give the Administration the authority the EPA claims to impose its climate crackdown on existing power plants by effectively eradicating coal power. The EPA instead uses—in Mr. Tribe’s words—“a hitherto obscure provision” of the Clean Air Act, known as Section 111, to justify its actions. Such legal scavenging is a characteristic of this Administration, and rarely has it been so thoroughly dismantled.

“The Proposed rule rests on a fatally flawed interpretation of Section 111. According to EPA . . . Congress effectively created two different versions of Section 111, and the agency should be allowed to pick and choose which version it wishes to enforce,” writes Mr. Tribe. “According to EPA, since 1990 the U.S. Code has reflected the wrong version of Section 111, and EPA has discovered a mistake [made by Congress]. According to EPA, both the D.C. Circuit and the U.S. Supreme Court have previously misinterpreted Section 111. According to EPA, the two different versions of Section 111 have created ‘ambiguity’ triggering deference to the agency’s [interpretation]. Every part of this narrative is flawed.”

We quote Mr. Tribe at length because the Administration likes to dismiss concerns about its extralegal exertions as partisan or political. But Mr. Tribe shows that there are genuine issues about the law and democratic process at stake.

He writes that even if EPA’s theory of two versions of Section 111 were correct, the agency’s “claim that it is entitled to pick and choose which version it prefers represents an attempt to seize lawmaking power that belongs to Congress. Under Article I, Article II, and the separation of powers, EPA lacks the ability to make law.” Mr. Tribe adds, icily, that a “presidential speech” is insufficient to claim such authority.

The liberal icon also explains how the EPA rule likely violates the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause with its “palpable unfairness of imposing all the costs on a small subset of entities [coal] within the agency’s cross-hairs. The Proposed Rule represents a radical shift in federal policy that upsets settled, investment-backed expectations, with no attempt by EPA to quantify the climate or environmental benefits from the Proposed Rule.” Mr. Tribe urges Democrats and Republicans to resist the rule and “stand in strong support of the rule of law.”

None of this is likely to deter the EPA, which is determined to impose its climate agenda without having passed a single new act of Congress. But once the agency issues its final rule, the courts will get their say—and they may pay more attention to Professor Tribe than to his wayward student.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 09, 2014, 06:42:12 AM



Obama pal Whitaker ruled 'hostile witness'—suggests racial bias



Mon, 12/08/2014 - 8:31pm

Chris Fusco

@FuscoChris | Email
















SPRINGFIELD — Dr. Eric E. Whitaker, one of President Barack Obama’s closest friends, was declared a “hostile witness” in the multimillion-dollar fraud trial of a Chicago couple Monday — after an explosive hearing in which Whitaker suggested prosecutors were biased against African-Americans.

U.S. District Judge Richard Mills declared Whitaker “hostile” just minutes after Whitaker testified in his Springfield courtroom in the trial of businessman Leon Dingle Jr. and his wife, Karin Dingle.

On the witness stand for more than two hours, Whitaker voiced concerns that the Justice Department’s pursuit of state grant-fraud cases in the Central District of Illinois has been racially motivated.






Prosecutors have charged the Dingles and eight other people in six different cases, most of which involve no-bid grants and contracts that began being doled out when Whitaker headed the Illinois Department of Public Health for former Gov. Rod Blagojevich between 2003 and 2007.

Of those 10 people, only one of them — Karin Dingle — is white, while the rest are black.

“Almost everybody who’s been indicted or scrutinized has been African-American. That’s what I mentioned to you,” Whitaker, who also is black, told Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy A. Bass. “What I don’t support is a selective investigation.”

Seven of the 10 people have pleaded guilty to crimes including bribery and theft. They include Whitaker’s former health department chief of staff, Quinshaunta R. Golden, 46, and his former health department human resources director, Roxanne B. Jackson, 49.

The White House and Justice Department didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Whitaker — who met Obama when they attended Harvard together and often is photographed golfing and playing basketball with the president — became a figure in the federal investigation in 2009, when he was named in a subpoena to the health department.

He’s not been charged with any crime, though he testified Monday that he felt he was being asked “target-ish” questions when prosecutors interviewed him under a cooperation agreement in December 2012. Whitaker’s lawyer cut short the 2012 interview after prosecutors asked the 49-year-old Chicago physician if he’d had a “personal relationship” with Golden.

Whitaker’s refusal to answer questions ever since — combined with emails and photographs that prosecutors say show Whitaker had a close relationship with Dingle when he ran the health department — prompted the prosecution to file its hostile-witness motion last week.

“Personally, I’m upset about this process and how I’ve been made to look like I’m on trial,” Whitaker said. “My not answering a question was really about an affair. . . . I’ve been made to seem like I’m somehow corrupt. I’m angry about that.”

But Whitaker also said he didn’t see himself as a hostile witness.

“I’m angry — but not hostile,” he said. “I would testify truthfully . . . and let the chips fall where they may.”

Mills, though, didn’t flinch in ruling Whitaker “hostile,” which means prosecutors — should they summon him as a witness before the jury hearing the Dingles’ case — would have the leeway to ask him leading questions that normally wouldn’t be allowed. They could, for instance, lay out broad statements and ask Whitaker whether he agrees or disagrees with them.


RELATED:
Obama pal Eric Whitaker stonewalls feds in grant-fraud case
Justice Dept. labels Obama pal Eric Whitaker a 'hostile witness'

The questioning of Whitaker Monday came outside the jury’s presence. Prosecutors said they would tell the judge Tuesday morning whether they intend to call Whitaker as a witness.

The hostile-witness issue has been simmering since Oct. 1, when Dingle attorney Blaire C. Dalton noted in a pretrial hearing that Whitaker had “answered every single question posed to him by the government other than the question of whether or not he had, in fact, this sexual relationship with Quin Golden.”

But prosecutors on Monday didn’t ask that question of Whitaker, who with his wife and family often vacation with the Obamas. The closest they got was asking Whitaker if his relationship with Golden was “more than professional.”

“That’s fair to say,” Whitaker replied, not elaborating.

Asked about the scheme between Jackson and Golden — in which they’ve admitted stealing about $400,000 from taxpayers — Whitaker replied, “I had no idea. . . .I didn’t participate. I had no knowledge.”

Prosecutors also introduced emails in which one of Whitaker’s brothers, Larry Whitaker, apparently had been communicating with him about obtaining business for his printing company from Dingle and state government.

“Tell Vic to kick me some low-dollar, no-bid stuff, just to keep me open for now,” one of the emails from Larry Whitaker to Eric Whitaker read.

“I don’t recall this, and I don’t know who Vic is,” Whitaker told Bass.

Bass also questioned Whitaker about a 2007 bird flu summit trip to Las Vegas in which Dingle paid a $1,471 bill for Whitaker, Golden and others to attend a dinner and Toni Braxton concert at the Flamingo hotel. Whitaker told Bass he believed he reported the outing in accordance with state gift rules.

Whitaker also testified that he and Golden called Dingle shortly after Dingle’s indictment.

“It’s been my experience that, if I know them, I call people and give them a good word,” he said.

Whitaker and Golden oversaw the awarding of about $4 million in state grants to Dingle between April 2003 and September 2007. Dingle got another $7 million under Whitaker’s successor, Dr. Damon Arnold.

Dingle, 77, is accused of spending more than $3 million from those grants — intended for AIDS-awareness and other health programs — on vacation homes, luxury cars and other items for himself and his wife. He's charged with conspiracy, mail fraud and money laundering.

Karin Dingle, 75, is charged with conspiracy and mail fraud for allegedly aiding in the scheme.

Judge Mills grew testy with Whitaker after Bass asked him about Tony Rezko, a former fund-raiser for Blagojevich and Obama. Rezko, like Blagojevich, is now in prison after being convicted on public corruption charges.

Obama has said that in 2003, when he was an Illinois state senator, he gave a “glowing” reference for Whitaker to Rezko, who helped Blagojevich fill vacancies heading state agencies.

Dalton, Dingle’s lawyer, objected to the Rezko question, prompting Whitaker himself to ask if an objection is warranted.

The judge was taken aback, telling Whitaker “Who’s running the show here?” and denying the objection.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 10, 2014, 10:55:54 AM
Obama administration claims a right to hide evidence before Supreme Court
washingtonexaminer.com ^  | 12/10/14 | Kyndra Miller Rotunda and Rear Admiral James Carey (Ret.) and Bob Carey and Joshua Flynn-Brown

Posted on ‎12‎/‎10‎/‎2014‎ ‎1‎:‎32‎:‎48‎ ‎PM by ColdOne

Today, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in United States v. June, a case that has received little attention, but will have far-reaching implications. The case boils down to this: Can the federal government actively conceal material evidence in order to escape liability? Common sense says no. The Obama administration says yes.

June involves the Federal Torts Claims Act (FTCA) and a doctrine called “equitable tolling.” Prior to 1946, the doctrine of sovereign immunity prohibited citizens from filing suit against the government. That all changed in 1946, when a military plane crashed into the Empire State Building, killing and injuring many civilians. Congress responded by enacting the FTCA, which waives sovereign immunity and allows citizens to sue the government in instances.

However, claimants must file a claim within two years of injury. Equitable tolling freezes those two years under certain considerations, like government officials hiding pertinent facts. Courts across the country have consistently applied the doctrine of equitable tolling to FTCA claims.


(Excerpt) Read more at m.washingtonexaminer.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 14, 2014, 05:41:25 AM
nst Non-Profits
Townhall.com ^ | December 14, 2014 | Bruce Bialosky
Posted on December 14, 2014 at 5:04:48 AM PST by Kaslin

With the attempt to limit the deductibility of contributions to charities by high-earners, the Obama Administration has opened a multi-front attack against the American tradition of “neighbor helping neighbor” and financially successful people turning large portions of their wealth over to charities that improve the American culture in august manners. The governmental power grab competes with the attempts to control the financial sector for its significance and may exceed it in the long-term effect upon our culture.

One first has to marvel at how liberals can twist logic to rationalize a tax increase. It happens regularly from the local government level up to the national level. Does anyone really believe that the cameras at intersections are for driver safety? The politicians preach about how lives are being saved while what they are really doing is extorting more monies for their various projects.

In the same manner, the Obama team worked hard to define their argument to limit the benefit deduction. They outlined three main points. The first is that high-income people should not get greater tax benefit than people taxed at the lower rate of 28 percent. They then argue the tax-benefit would be the same that was provided during the Reagan era when the top rate for everyone was 28 percent. These are marvelous twists of semantics that would delight any Orwellian scholar. These assertions beg the question of a lower top rate or a flat tax. The last point they make is just totally bogus and must have derived from some obscure study by a misguided PhD. The President stating with a straight face that tax benefits have little influence upon charitable decisions displays either his naiveté or his disingenuousness.

Republicans fell for a similar argument during the Bush 41 Administration. The Democrats argued for the income tax rate at 31 percent stating that the phasing out of deductions created a bubble and that certain people were getting an advantage. This new rate would bring everyone to a true 28 percent; thus equalizing taxes. The Republicans foolishly bought that argument – merely a precursor for the next argument. Not long after, the second step of raising the rate to 31 percent was argued for because now the top earners were paying a 28 percent on their top income, and it would only be fair to raise the top rate to 31 percent for all income. This same convoluted logic will be used as the first step toward eliminating the charitable contribution for everyone.

One might conclude, upon reading the left-leaning press, that a tax-benefited gift to charity is a nefarious scheme. This press and its followers revolt against the fact that religious organizations benefit from these gifts. An assertion is made that the tax benefit constitutes stealing money from the government even though the money is used for deeds that actually help people.

American volunteerism has been assaulted by the establishment of AmeriCorps and the recent passage of the Serve America Act of 2009. No longer will Americans work to improve their community through the United Appeal, Red Cross or hundreds of other noble organizations. Now young and old Americans are being paid to “volunteer” for projects that charities did more efficiently. With the ever growing involvement of government in charities the omnipotent control will follow.

During the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, a prime example of the difference between how the government and a non-profit operates was obvious. A convoy of Red Cross trucks sat waiting to help the citizens at the Superdome, while Michael Brown, the then-FEMA director, sought authorization from the government of Louisiana. He could not contact his counterpart at the state level since that person was in prison on corruption charges, and no one filled that position for making emergency management decisions. He contacted then-Governor Blanco, who dithered while the people suffered, and finally decided against sending in the Red Cross. Left to its own devices, the Red Cross, experts on crisis management, would have immediately aided the people and avoided one of the blackest marks in American history.

We have seen people time and again tackle problems through charitable operations that government would allow to languish in political debate while elected officials worry about their next election. Does anyone really believe that we would have made the heroic efforts Jerry Lewis has achieved to eradicate muscular dystrophy if left up to the government? Or if Nancy Brinker’s sister had not contracted breast cancer, does anyone believe the Susan G. Komen Foundation would have been equaled by the government in the saving of women’s lives.

Stories like this abound in America because our past political leaders realized government could not do all. Encouragement of Americans to conquer problems from education deficiency to drug-abuse to cures for disease could be accomplished through the vital efforts of average people who created a passion to help.

Paying people to do good while limiting people’s tax benefit to do good leads us down the wrong path. Instead of expanding governmental control and limiting charities, President Obama should set an example by working with charities to solve problems the government will never solve. His onslaught against independent entities helping fellow Americans needs to stop. This centralizing of money and control in the federal government will lead our country down the bleakest road imaginable. It will destroy the essence of America that was defined ages ago by de Tocqueville, thus reducing us to merely an ordinary rather than extraordinary country.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 14, 2014, 03:33:46 PM
Our poor president is misunderstood by an increasingly large portion of the population, as his second shellacking last month showed.

Yet his unpopularity is not because of his policies (which were all on the ballot), but because, as MIT professor and multi-million-dollar government consultant Jonathan Gruber has said many times, Americans are just too stupid to understand the nuance that is Obama.

Dinesh D’Souza, in his new book, America, says, “America’s suicide, it turns out, is the result of a plan. The plan is not simply one of destruction but also one of reconstruction—it seeks the rebuilding of a different type of country, what President Obama terms ‘the work of remaking America.’

“ “While Obama acknowledges the existence of the plan, he is not responsible for the plan; it would be more accurate to say that it is responsible for him. The plan preceded Obama, and it will outlast him. Obama is simply part of a fifty-year scheme for the undoing and remaking of America, and when he is gone there are others who are ready to continue the job. What makes the plan especially chilling is that most Americans are simply unaware of what’s going on. Their ignorance, as we shall see, is part of the plan. It should be emphasized at the outset that the domestic champions of American decline are not traitors or America-haters. They are bringing down America because they genuinely believe that America deserves to be brought down.”

That’s one theory; I have a different one: Obama hates America. If one starts with that hideous premise, all his actions make sense. Let’s look at a few.

As-yet unfulfilled, but perhaps the greatest tactical injury this president has wrought on America is in the Bowe Bergdahl swap. Obama, under cover of secrecy, traded a screwed up sergeant to the enemy, for five of their top strategists and tacticians.

Bergdahl is of no strategic value to the nation, but the exchange was of immeasurable value to our enemy. The president didn’t even try to get a bundle of concessions; he just wanted to help the murderous fanatics.

Bergdahl was nothing to Obama but a cover, as he (Obama) aided and abetted the future mayhem

Whatever his reasons, he is working to destroy our nation. And whoever his successors or predecessors, he is the current point of the spear and he is the one who needs, today, to be stopped.

Obamacare is both a political and economic example of his plan. It is not health care; it is insurance, and an examination of the very concept of insurance reveals that its purpose is to reduce the risk of the riskiest as the least at-risk pay for it.

Insurance companies prosper, not by paying for coverage, but for collecting premiums.

Politically, Obamacare divides the population against itself, pitting women against men, young against old, union against free workers, and active against sedentary; he can play each segment to his advantage.

Worse, in Obama’s version of “faithfully executing the laws,” Obamacare’s blatantly unlawful manipulation by the president, unopposed by not just the Republican leadership but by the zombies who vote, established a tyrannical precedent.

Which is biting all of us in Obama’s deliberate dilution of the American electorate. From the beginning of his reign, he has worked, often through his henchman and Attorney General Eric Holder, to lessen the value of the peoples’ votes.

From non-prosecution of obvious voter fraud and intimidation, through non-subtle demands that voters not be vetted, through the planned importation and dispersal of hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants (many with serious criminal backgrounds), to his illegal amnesty for millions, President Obama has done everything in the book to make Americans’ votes irrelevant.

Obama’s promise to destroy mining, and particularly coal mining and use, is coming to fruition, not lawfully, but by administrative action at his Environmental Protection Agency.

The EPA is a law unto itself, targeting the economies of red states particularly, as it assumes the authority to put thousands out of work and increase energy costs on the nation, raising prices on everything and leaving our infrastructure vulnerable to unproven technology – or technology which is already proven to be inferior.

And speaking of administrative law – something not allowed by the Constitution but encouraged by lazy and cowardly legislators – Obama has weaponized the IRS, using it as Bill Clinton did, but on a much broader and nastier scale.

Though candidate Obama railed against the fraud and corruption in the VA system, as president, he has done nothing about it, except for replacing some of his top pawns and savaging some good people who sold out and did what he wanted.

Through TARP (passed during G.W. Bush’s term with Obama’s support and spent in its greatest part by Obama) and a series of “Quantitative Easing” programs at the Federal Reserve, Obama has encouraged the devaluation of the dollar, robbing savers, investors, and those on fixed incomes as he pumps up Wall Street, readying it for another bubble that’s timed to hit as soon as he’s near the end of his second term – and thus putting blame on minor players.

And the destruction of American incentive that’s due to a doubling of the National Debt during his reign cannot yet be measured. But the idea that the U.S. is “the richest nation in the world” is exactly, 180 degrees wrong: the United States of America is the most-indebted nation today, and in the history of the world, owing over $18 trillion dollars on the books, and facing another perhaps $200 trillion in unfunded obligations in the future.

Though Obama himself didn’t spend all the money, he enjoyed spending it, and he certainly did nothing to slow down the hemorrhage.

Obama’s foreign policy has consistently appeased and even encouraged enemies, even as he has made the U.S. an increasingly unreliable ally, from the Kurds in Iraq to the corrupt regimes there and in Afghanistan, to the selling-out of allies in the Middle East and the encouragement and support of radical rebel governments, to the deliberate undermining of efforts to contain Iran’s nuclear program, to opening the door to everyone, including criminals, along the border.

Lastly (last only in this column, not in reality; there are many more examples), Obama has taken on the military might of the United States and done everything he can to destroy not just the war fighting budget, but the structure and morale of the fighting units.

His caprice, based on a lack of understanding of the military and an ambiguous foreign mission for the U.S., has made a joke out of the greatest fighting force in history.

Our president wants to ruin America. He is too consistent to be merely stupid; it’s his plan, his dearest wish. No?

Why else would anyone who loves this nation work so hard to weaken its military, weaken its military, confuse its mission, divide its populace, and destroy its morale?
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 16, 2014, 11:56:24 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/12/16/district-court-declares-obama-immigration-action-unconstitutional/
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 16, 2014, 05:19:36 PM
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/12/16/obama-presidential-memoranda-executive-orders/20191805


Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 16, 2014, 08:26:52 PM
http://viral.buzz/breaking-obama-may-be-linked-to-massacre-in-pakistan



Disgusting
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: 240 is Back on December 16, 2014, 08:30:50 PM
http://viral.buzz/breaking-obama-may-be-linked-to-massacre-in-pakistan



Disgusting

This would be the story of the year, if obama releases him, and a week later he blows up 120+ kids.

Link to it on brietbart or FOX news?   The story has been out for a week now - I'm refreshing but they have nothing yet.  1130pm EST.
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 17, 2014, 05:10:38 AM
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/17/world/americas/ecuador-isaias-obama-campaign-robert-menendez-hillary-clinton.html?_r=0


Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 17, 2014, 05:23:48 AM
MIAMI — The Obama administration overturned a ban preventing a wealthy, politically connected Ecuadorean woman from entering the United States after her family gave tens of thousands of dollars to Democratic campaigns, according to finance records and government officials.

The woman, Estefanía Isaías, had been barred from coming to the United States after being caught fraudulently obtaining visas for her maids. But the ban was lifted at the request of the State Department under former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton so that Ms. Isaías could work for an Obama fund-raiser with close ties to the administration.

It was one of several favorable decisions the Obama administration made in recent years involving the Isaías family, which the government of Ecuador accuses of buying protection from Washington and living comfortably in Miami off the profits of a looted bank in Ecuador.

The family, which has been investigated by federal law enforcement agencies on suspicion of money laundering and immigration fraud, has made hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions to American political campaigns in recent years. During that time, it has repeatedly received favorable treatment from the highest levels of the American government, including from New Jersey’s senior senator and the State Department.

Photo

 
 
Estefanía Isaías had been banned from entering the United States for visa fraud. The ban was later waived. Credit Expresiones 

The Obama administration has allowed the family’s patriarchs, Roberto and William Isaías, to remain in the United States, refusing to extradite them to Ecuador. The two brothers were sentenced in absentia in 2012 to eight years in prison, accused of running their bank into the ground and then presenting false balance sheets to profit from bailout funds. In a highly politicized case, Ecuador says the fraud cost the country $400 million.

The family’s affairs have rankled Ecuador and strained relations with the United States at a time when the two nations are also at odds over another international fugitive: Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, who has taken refuge in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London.

But while scrutiny has typically focused on whether the family’s generous campaign donations have helped its patriarchs avoid extradition, the unorthodox help given to Ms. Isaías, the daughter of Roberto, has received little attention.

In the spring of 2011, Ms. Isaías, a television executive, was in a difficult situation.

Her father and uncle were Ecuadorean fugitives living in Miami, but she was barred from entering the United States after she brought maids into the country under false visa pretenses and left them at her parents’ Miami home while she traveled.

“Alien smuggling” is what American consular officials in Ecuador called it.

American diplomats began enforcing the ban against Ms. Isaías, blocking her from coming to Miami for a job with a communications strategist who had raised up to $500,000 for President Obama.

What happened next illustrates the kind of access and influence available to people with vast amounts of money.

 A Senator’s Assistance

Continue reading the main story

For more than a year, Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, and his staff engaged in a relentless effort to help Ms. Isaías, urging senior government officials, including Mrs. Clinton’s chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, to waive the ban. The senator’s assistance came even though Ms. Isaías’s family, a major donor to him and other American politicians, does not live in his state.

The Obama administration then reversed its decision and gave Ms. Isaías the waiver she needed to come to the United States — just as tens of thousands of dollars in donations from the family poured into Mr. Obama’s campaign coffers.

Photo

 
 
Roberto A. Isaías has been living in Miami after leaving Ecuador where he is wanted in connection with a failed bank. Credit Angel Valentin for The New York Times 

An email from Mr. Menendez’s office sharing the good news was dated May 15, 2012, one day after, campaign finance records show, Ms. Isaías’s mother gave $40,000 to the Obama Victory Fund, which provided donations to the president and other Democrats.

“In my old profession as a prosecutor, timelines mean a lot,” said Ken Boehm, a former Pennsylvania prosecutor who is chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center, a government watchdog. “When a donation happens and then something else happens, like the favor, as long as they are very, very close, that really paints a story.”

In 2012, the Isaías family donated about $100,000 to the Obama Victory Fund. Campaign finance records show that their most generous donations came just before a request to the administration.

Ms. Isaías’s mother, María Mercedes, had recently donated $30,000 to the Senate campaign committee that Mr. Menendez led when she turned to him for help in her daughter’s case. At least two members of Mr. Menendez’s staff worked with Ms. Isaías and her father, as well as lawyers and other congressional offices, to argue that she had been unfairly denied entry into the United States.

Over the course of the next year, as various members of the Isaías family donated to Mr. Menendez’s re-election campaign, the senator and his staff repeatedly made calls, sent emails and wrote letters about Ms. Isaías’s case to Mrs. Clinton, Ms. Mills, the consulate in Ecuador, and the departments of State and Homeland Security.

After months of resistance from State Department offices in Ecuador and Washington, the senator lobbied Ms. Mills himself, and the ban against Ms. Isaías was eventually overturned.

Mr. Menendez’s office acknowledged going to bat for Ms. Isaías, but insisted that the advocacy was not motivated by money.

“Our office handled this case no differently than we have thousands of other immigration-related requests over the years, and to suggest that somehow the senator’s longstanding and principled beliefs on immigration have been compromised is just plain absurd,” said Patricia Enright, the senator’s spokeswoman.

Ms. Enright said Mr. Menendez’s office worked on the case because Ms. Isaías had previously been allowed to travel to the United States six times despite the ban, and the decision to suddenly enforce it seemed arbitrary and wrong. She said the senator routinely acted on cases he got from across the nation.

Continue reading the main story

Mr. Menendez is currently under investigation by the Justice Department for his advocacy on behalf of another out-of-state campaign donor, Dr. Salomon E. Melgen, who ran afoul of federal health officials for unorthodox Medicare billing.

In the Isaías case, the senator wrote seven letters for various members of the family, including four on April 2, 2012, alone.

Photo

 
 
Senator Robert Menendez, a Democrat from New Jersey, lobbied on behalf of Estefanía Isaías, though she is not a constituent. Credit Mel Evans/Associated Press 

A month after succeeding in Ms. Isaías’s case, Mr. Menendez sent another letter to the head of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services to waive a ban on her sister, María — who had also been deemed an immigrant smuggler because she had brought maids into the United States and left them with her parents while she traveled abroad.



As that letter went out, their mother gave $20,000 more to the Obama Victory Fund.

Immigration officials forwarded the senator’s inquiries to Homeland Security Investigations, the immigration bureau’s investigative arm. Officials there noticed that the Isaías family had made several donations to the senator, and informed the F.B.I. in Miami.

Agents with Homeland Security Investigations are working to have the Isaías brothers deported. The Ecuadorean government has repeatedly requested that the men be extradited, but Washington has declined, saying that the extradition request was poorly prepared and did not meet legal standards. The criminal case in Ecuador was also marred by irregularities.

 Support on Capitol Hill

The Isaías brothers consider themselves political exiles unfairly attacked by the Ecuadorean government and have garnered support on Capitol Hill, where sentiment against Ecuador’s leftist president runs strong.

But the case involving Estefanía could prove awkward for Mrs. Clinton, who was in charge of the State Department at the time high-ranking officials overruled the agency’s ban on Ms. Isaías for immigration fraud, and whose office made calls on the matter.

Continue reading the main story

Recent Comments




Ecobuilder
 10 minutes ago
Negotiations dictate local, state, federal, and global politics - just as they are key to any business.



peddler832
 10 minutes ago
What a concept, flat out bribery, who would have guessed it! Now we can all wait with bated breath as we watch the current Justice...



ms wanderlust
 11 minutes ago
And we as a nation think we are better than countries where bribery is a way/cost of doing business!Someone please tell me what value the...
 
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Alfredo J. Balsera, the Obama fund-raiser whose firm, Balsera Communications, sponsored Ms. Isaías’s visa, was featured recently in USA Today as a prominent Latino fund-raiser backing Mrs. Clinton for president in 2016.

Mr. Balsera declined repeated requests to explain what work Ms. Isaías had done for his company, which has close ties to the Obama administration. To stay in the country under her three-year visa, Ms. Isaías would have to remain employed by Balsera Communications, request a change of immigration status or get another employer to sponsor her.

The company website does not list her as one of its 12 employees, though it has biographies and photos of even junior account executives, and news releases were issued when others were hired. Ms. Isaías’s name has not been mentioned on the company’s blog, Facebook page or Twitter timeline, and she is not present in any of the dozens of photographs posted on social media sites of company outings, parties, and professional and social events.

David A. Duckenfield, a partner at the company who is now on leave for a position as deputy assistant secretary of public affairs at the State Department, said Ms. Isaías worked for the firm but declined to comment further. Another senior executive at the firm said she must work outside the office because he had never heard of her.

Photo

 
 
Cheryl Mills, who was former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s chief of staff. Credit Michael Buckner/Getty Images for J/P Haitian Relief Organization and Cinema for Peace 

Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story

Continue reading the main story

A spokesman for Mrs. Clinton and her chief of staff, Ms. Mills, denied any special treatment for Ms. Isaías. Although Ms. Mills is unlikely to serve in any official capacity on a potential 2016 presidential campaign, she would undoubtedly be a strong behind-the-scenes presence and one of a small number of longtime advisers whom Mrs. Clinton would rely on for advice.

“There are rigorous processes in place for matters such as these, and they were followed,” said the spokesman, Nick Merrill. “Nothing more, nothing less.”

A White House spokesman, Eric Schultz, declined to comment, saying that visas are issued free from political interference by other federal agencies.

‘Not His Constituents’

Linda Jewell, the American ambassador in Quito, Ecuador, from 2005 to 2008, when Ms. Isaías’s immigration fraud was detected, said the intervention in Ms. Isaías’s case was far from routine.

“Such close and detailed involvement by a congressional office in an individual visa case would be quite unusual, especially for an applicant who is not a constituent of the member of Congress,” Ms. Jewell said after reviewing emails and documents related to the case. “This example of inquiry is substantially beyond the usual level of interest.”

Others have expressed concern. When Mr. Menendez’s office reached out to Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat of Florida, to get him to write a letter on Ms. Isaías’s behalf, his office refused.

The office “discovered from the State Department that there were some red flags associated with the individual in question, and we took no further action,” said Mr. Nelson’s spokesman, Dan McLaughlin.

Mr. Boehm, the former Pennsylvania prosecutor, said Senate ethics rules allowed members of Congress to reach out to the administration on behalf of a constituent. “Members of Congress do a lot for their constituents,” Mr. Boehm said.

“These folks are not his constituents,” he added, referring to Mr. Menendez.
Continue reading the main story 
55

Comments

The Isaías family did not return several requests for comment. Ms. Isaías did not respond to emails and messages left at her home in Miami. Her lawyer, Roy J. Barquet, did not respond to phone and email messages.

In an interview this year, Roberto Isaías said the family’s donations were targeted to members of Congress who fight for human rights and freedom of speech in Latin America. He said he had met Mr. Menendez once or twice. “If you go to his website,” Mr. Isaías said, “it says, ‘If you have an immigration problem, call me.’ ”

The senator’s website does offer such casework assistance, under a category titled “Services for New Jerseyans.”
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 18, 2014, 12:40:16 PM
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obama-quietly-grants-12-pardons-and-8-commutations_821808.html?guy=1
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 20, 2014, 05:33:10 AM
http://therightscoop.com/sony-ceo-says-obama-lied-about-not-being-contacted-by-studio-before-folding-to-norks


Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: 240 is Back on December 20, 2014, 08:39:56 AM
http://therightscoop.com/sony-ceo-says-obama-lied-about-not-being-contacted-by-studio-before-folding-to-norks

Eh, you have to be careful dragging obama into this.

Just because obama was unwilling to publicly share any discussions he had - on a topic that had nothing to do with him - doesn't mean he deserves criticism.

This is a private company deciding not to release a film.  Obama has conversations with all sorts of people, but unless he's making the decision and affecting all of us, he has no obligation to share it.  It would have been equally fair for obama, when asked about it, to say "None of your business".

So while obama is, in my opinion, a corrupt ass illegal alien, enabled only by the repubs that keep feeding him $1.1 trillion lunches... I can't hate on a prez not sharing conversations when HE isn't the one making the decisions.   Private company making it.  Maybe they ask his advice, maybe not, but the public doesn't deserve to get the 411 every time the prez has a convo. 
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 20, 2014, 10:04:00 AM
NK is the next group Gaybama will suck cock for

Eh, you have to be careful dragging obama into this.

Just because obama was unwilling to publicly share any discussions he had - on a topic that had nothing to do with him - doesn't mean he deserves criticism.

This is a private company deciding not to release a film.  Obama has conversations with all sorts of people, but unless he's making the decision and affecting all of us, he has no obligation to share it.  It would have been equally fair for obama, when asked about it, to say "None of your business".

So while obama is, in my opinion, a corrupt ass illegal alien, enabled only by the repubs that keep feeding him $1.1 trillion lunches... I can't hate on a prez not sharing conversations when HE isn't the one making the decisions.   Private company making it.  Maybe they ask his advice, maybe not, but the public doesn't deserve to get the 411 every time the prez has a convo. 

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on December 23, 2014, 06:16:33 PM
Obama community policing effort falls short as funds mishandled, diverted
The Washington Times ^ | December 23, 2014 | Jeffrey Scott Shapiro
Posted on December 23, 2014 8:52:15 PM EST by 2ndDivisionVet

Federal cash for Justice Department’s COPS program used for drones.

President Obama has used the Ferguson and NYPD controversies to campaign for increased community policing tactics. But on his watch, federal funding for such initiatives has plummeted and money has been mishandled or diverted to such things as drones that have done little to further the cause, a Washington Times review of federal documents shows.

The declining reach of the Justice Department’s Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program is laid bare by the results of its 2014 efforts: it managed to spend only $124 million to fund 944 community policing officers inside 215 departments, according to the department’s final statistics.

The agency’s goal was to have nearly 10 times the impact: 8,069 officers with more than $1.8 billion, according to the department’s own fact sheet. But since the 2011 budget crisis, the White House and congressional leaders have been unable to agree on the arc of the program, leaving it woefully underfunded when compared to its hey-day under former President Bill Clinton when as much as $1 billion annually was allocated to the effort....

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 13, 2015, 09:30:11 AM
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obama-decides-not-sit-his-star-attends-spurs-event-instead-biden_823695.html
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 18, 2015, 06:39:56 PM
Bump.   
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on January 28, 2015, 07:30:02 PM
http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2015/01/27/watch-obama-refer-to-himself-133-times-in-a-33-minute-speech

Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 10, 2015, 10:01:12 AM
http://www.businessinsider.com/axelrod-obama-lied-about-his-support-for-gay-marriage-2015-2


Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 16, 2015, 05:04:09 PM

In 2009, Obama stole money from retired teachers and police officers in Indiana

During the Chrysler bankruptcy, Obama violated the Fifth Amendment and more than 150 years of bankruptcy law by illegally treating secured creditors worse than unsecured creditors. Some of these secured creditors were retired teachers and police officers from Indiana.

Richard A. Epstein, a law professor at New York University School of Law, wrote of this:

“Upsetting this fixed hierarchy among creditors is just an illegal taking of property from one group of creditors for the benefit of another, which should be struck down on both statutory and constitutional grounds.”

Todd Zywicki, Professor of Law at George Mason University School of Law, wrote that Obama’s treatment of secured creditors was…

“… dangerous to the rule of law.”

The Economist wrote that Obama’s actions could…

“… establish a terrible precedent. Bankruptcy exists to sort legal claims on assets. If it becomes a tool of social policy, who will then lend to struggling firms in which the government has a political interest?”

Francis Cianfrocca, the CEO of Bayshore Networks, wrote that Obama’s actions were…

“… an astonishingly reckless abrogation of contract law that will introduce a new level of uncertainty into business transactions at all levels, and make wealth generation more difficult going forward… An extraordinary uncertainty has been created when the most powerful man in the world can rewrite contracts and choose winners and losers in private negotiations as he sees fit. Since this is an unquantifiable uncertainty, and not a quantifiable risk, its effect on business and investor confidence will be large and unpredictable. As in the 1930s, a time when government also cavalierly rewrote private contracts, the prudent approach for business will be to invest minimally and wait for another administration.”
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 21, 2015, 04:48:11 AM
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2015/02/20/obama_just_spin_that_republicans_want_to_help_middle_class.html


F him
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 25, 2015, 06:13:50 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-limits-of-wishful-thinking/2015/02/22/0bbcf162-b845-11e4-aa05-1ce812b3fdd2_story.html
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 27, 2015, 07:05:16 AM
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/feb/26/irs-watchdog-reveals-lois-lerner-missing-emails-no/
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on February 27, 2015, 08:29:14 AM
Someone seriously needs to go to jail over this...I mean WTF?!?!?

The U.S. Treasury Department has rebuffed a request by House Ways and Means Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan, R- Wis., to explain $3 billion in payments that were made to health insurers even though Congress never authorized the spending through annual appropriations.

At issue are payments to insurers known as cost-sharing subsidies. These payments come about because President Obama’s healthcare law forces insurers to limit out-of-pocket costs for certain low income individuals by capping consumer expenses, such as deductibles and co-payments, in insurance policies. In exchange for capping these charges, insurers are supposed to receive compensation.

What’s tricky is that Congress never authorized any money to make such payments to insurers in its annual appropriations, but the Department of Health and Human Services, with the cooperation of the U.S. Treasury, made them anyway...

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/treasury-wont-explain-decision-to-make-3-billion-in-obamacare-payments/article/2560739
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 02, 2015, 08:43:44 AM
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/obama-hit-for-filling-embassies-with-political-allies-highest-in-27-years/article/2560904
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 07, 2015, 06:19:55 PM
Obama Says Clinton's Private Email Account Was News to Him
ABC News ^ | 03/07/2015
Posted on March 7, 2015 7:57:16 PM EST by E. Pluribus Unum

President Barack Obama says it was through news reports that he first learned that Hillary Rodham Clinton used a private, nongovernment email account while serving as his secretary of state.

In an interview Saturday with CBS News, Obama says he's glad that Clinton has instructed that those emails about official business be disclosed. He also maintains that his administration remains the most transparent administration ever.

(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 10, 2015, 05:22:27 AM
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/03/obama-hillary-clinton-personal-email-115899.html


Obama lied as usual
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: blacken700 on March 10, 2015, 06:12:02 AM
 :D :D :D :D :D the fake scandal lives
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on March 10, 2015, 12:23:45 PM
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/03/10/obama-on-clinton-emails-irs-va-fast-and-furious-heard-about-it-on-news/?intcmp=trending
Title: Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
Post by: Soul Crusher on May 16, 2023, 10:46:59 AM