Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken

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The 8 Most Shameful Moments of Barack Obama's Presidency
 Townhall.com ^ | July 10, 2012 | John Hawkins



"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.

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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.

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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. 

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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 

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 ...

[blacken700]

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 

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let me guess you think he was poisioned 

LOL.    nothing is beyond MurderBa,a.

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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.
 

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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

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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.

[garebear]

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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.

[333386]

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 ...

[333386]

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.

[333386]

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.

[333386]

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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.

[333386]

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

[333386]

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. 

[333386]

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.

© 2012 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.

[tu_holmes]

Jul 25, 4:38 PM EDT

Obama creating African-American education office

Politics Video

Advertisement
 

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1. Who do you know in Morristown that's been arrested? You? Your…

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1. Nope.

2. Sounds like Bullshit.

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[333386]

1. Nope.

2. Sounds like Bullshit.

3. Nah... my shit works well.

.   You made my day w that post.


LOL!!!

[tu_holmes]

.   You made my day w that post.


LOL!!!

I am happy to help!

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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 ...

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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.”