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

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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.
 

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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 ...

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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

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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 ...

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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.   

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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.

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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? 

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/democrats/9445120/White-House-officials-caught-out-with-lobbyists.html



Obama bots please defend this ?

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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.

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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.

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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 ...

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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.

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http://www.naturalnews.com/036689_NSA_whistleblowers_spying.html



Just wow. 

And you far leftists attacked cheney and bush?   LMFAo!!!!

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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 ...

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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.

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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

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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
 

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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 ...

[Kazan]

The Chicago way on a national level

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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.

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http://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/WH-1705-Docs.pdf



Obama BUSTED lying on Solyndra

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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.

[Kazan]

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.

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http://dailycaller.com/2012/08/17/bidens-good-friend-donor-receives-20m-federal-loan




Unreal.   

Kudos to Howard for finding this.   

Outrageous 

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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 ...