FAILED GOVERNMENT PROGRAMS THAT DESTROY INCENTIVES AND WASTE MONEY

DUMBEST PRESIDENT EVER, BARACK OBAMA MAKES HIS STATE OF THE UNION SPEECH CLEAR THAT HE IS A MORON BY ANNOUNCING MORE BUSINESS TAXES AND REGULATIONS

2012-01-25T15:37:00.006-06:00

I always listen to the STATE OF THE UNION SPEECH no matter who makes it just to see what the President is thinking.

Obama, is a moron, that is my conclusion after listening to his rambling.

Among his many convoluted crazy ideas/remarks, he said something about wanting businesses to hire more employees...of course he does not understand the basic principle that hiring occurs when business picks up and employees are necessary.

He then followed up by castigating "multi-national" companies ( in other words all the large US companies that employ lots of Americans here in America) by announcing that notwithstanding the existing tax treaties he was going to increase their tax burden and then he wanted them to hire more people in America.

Can there be anything more stupid ever said?

Mr. President, do you understand that the reason that there are well paid employees in America working for these multi-national companies is that they also make a profit in other countries that support the workforce here?

Apple and Microsoft is a good example...well paid employees in the USA supplemented by low cost production and other engineering personnel in foreign locations. So these two need to be punished for being successful overseas??

That is why we can get a $99 hi tech phone...because it is made by apple overseas....!

He also does not understand ( since he never bought a stock) that when a person, anyone, gets paid, taxes are paid at the time of earning a salary. Then, whatever is left to be able to be saved and invested by that person, after all taxes are paid, if he buys a stock, and it makes money he pays again another tax, the capital gain tax of 15% on those earnings from the investment.

So, if you consider the rich and the super rich as he likes to say paying their taxes at the top individual rate of say 35% first, plus Social Security at 6.5%, then added to 15%, the tax rate is 56.5%!!!!!

The government gets more money than you do!!!!!!

This guy wants to get more of it to pay for constant overspending!!!!

His plan is to pay for every type of crazy plans that he announced.,..more alternative energy at high cost to consumers instead of low cost oil and gas!!!!

More waste, more cost, less hope, all change.

Please let this be the last time we have to listen...oh he also announced another inquiry into the problems caused by the banks related to housing.....again!

USPS FINANCIAL FAILURE IS DUE TO INADEQUATE POSTAL FEES BEING CHARGED: LOWEST IN THE WORLD NOW...STUPID IS AS STUPID DOES

2012-01-24T11:00:00.005-06:00

THE U.S. POSTAL SERVICE will deliver though rain, snow, etc., and has done a pretty good job delivering to every address in the United States for a measly 45 cents (new rate effective 1-22-12) a one ounce first class letter.

As a result, it lost billions and billions due to lack of revenues sufficient to cover its costs, the largest of which is now its bloated pension program which allows for other government employment, such as military service to count toward retirement.

It is an easy fix....charge the right amount to cover the costs!!!!!

Other countries have figured this out...it costs the equivalent of $1.65 to mail a similar letter in Australia; $.075 in Germany; $.60 in Canada; $.76 in Japan and $.73 in the United Kingdom...so that is what they charge!

Problem fixed...raise the rates and quit asking the rest of us to pony up the difference.

Every business enterprise operated on the simple principle of taking in more than its expenses so as to operate at a profit, otherwise it fails.

True to its typical government mandated incompetence, instead of modernizing its operations, streamlining, and making it possible to deliver mail faster, the morons running the USPS have announced that they will close down regional sorting centers so that the mail will now move even SLOWER!!!!

As usual, your government at work, wasting your money and being inefficient.

SEARS MISMANAGEMENT SHOWN IN LACKLUSTER RETAILING EXPERIENCE AT CHRISTMAS-TAKEOVER CANDIDATE NOW?

2011-12-28T10:04:00.006-06:00

After 6 years of "management" by a hedge fund manager, and after their holding value has declined by some $10 billion,it may be time for Mr. Lampert to hire someone to run the stores like they should be.

My own shopping experience tells the whole story.

I needed to get a replacement filter for my Kenmore (SEARS Brand) winter air humidifier that needs new filters every 30 days. These humidifiers are sold by SEARS however, nobody has figured out that since they are sold there, they also need to sell the filters with the models that are sold!

So, I have to call 2, 3 or 4 stores to see if they have the filters in stock, and of course they have but not for that model...I call some more and find a "close" one that I have to then buy since the filter is needed to disperse the humidity in the house.

I drive to the store that has the "close" filter in stock, and there I discover that the store looks like it is out of the 80's....same merchandise, and almost empty except for the people exchanging screwdriver sets, and surly cashiers.

I wonder why their sales are not growing???

Sears Holdings Corp will close as many as 120 of its Kmart and Sears discount and department stores after its holiday sales slumped, sending its shares sliding more than 27 percent to their lowest level in three years.

The retailer, which is controlled by its chairman, the hedge fund manager Edward Lampert, has seen sales decline every year since the $11 billion merger of the two chains in 2005, and likely faces further closings to cut expenses, preserve cash and push back against rivals such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc and Amazon.com Inc, analysts said.

Sears also disclosed on Tuesday that it tapped its credit line to borrow cash and forecast that fourth-quarter earnings would fall by more than half.

Under Lampert, the company, once one of the most successful U.S. retailers with a history going back to 1886, has let stores deteriorate, said analysts, who also faulted poor locations and ho-hum merchandise for its ongoing problems.

"They've neglected this business for so long," independent retail analyst Brian Sozzi said, adding that he expects more closings. "They are letting Kmart and Sears die on the vine."

In a memo to staff obtained by Reuters, Chief Executive Lou D'Ambrosio, who took the job in February, blamed the economy for some of Sears' problems but acknowledged "we also did not execute with the consistency or speed necessary" in areas under Sears' control. "We will do better," he continued.

But Credit Suisse analyst Gary Balter is not so sure. "We do not see how they dig out of these problems," he wrote in a client note.

Same-store sales at Kmart were down 4.4 percent in the eight weeks that ended Christmas Day, and down 6 percent at Sears' U.S. stores. Overall, they were down 5.2 percent compared with the same period a year ago.

The closings follow Sears' announcement last quarter it would shut 10 stores. Kmart and Sears have a combined 2,177 big-box locations.

A list of stores affected will be available at www.searsmedia.com once the retailer decides on the locations.

The declines at Kmart were led by drops in electronics and clothing sales as the low-price chain, founded in 1962, faced stiff competition from a resurgent Wal-Mart which resumed its layaway program this year to make it easier for low income shoppers to make purchases by paying in installments.

Kmart has found itself squeezed between Wal-Mart's low prices and Target's trendier offerings, while Sears has faced more intense competition for electronics and lower prices, and less demand for household appliances.

Sears blamed electronics sales for more than half of the decline in its namesake chain's domestic same-store holiday sales.

Sears' shares finished the day down 27.2 percent at $33.38, their lowest level since December 2008, and have fallen 65 percent since a 52-week high in February.

At the current stock price, Sears Holdings -- home to brands including Craftsman tools and Kenmore appliances -- has a value of $3.57 billion.

The value of Lampert and his hedge fund's stake in the company has plunged nearly 75 percent to $2.25 billion since 2005, when his holdings were worth around $8.5 billion. The stake was worth as much as $12.7 billion in April 2007.

The drop in shares is also a big blow for fund manager Bruce Berkowitz's Fairholme Capital, Sears' second-biggest shareholder with 15.2 percent. Fairholme's stake was worth about $570 million on Tuesday, a potential loss of almost $180 million since the end of the third quarter.

Sears' problems also hit shares of appliance maker Whirlpool Corp, which last year derived 8 percent of sales through the retailer. Whirlpool shares fell 8.9 percent to close at $46.62.

FALLING FURTHER BEHIND

Sears' empire was once so sprawling that it owned everything from a radio station (WLS in Chicago) to Allstate Insurance Co and Coldwell Banker Real Estate Group.

But now the chain, founded in Chicago 125 years ago, acknowledges it has to downsize. Its standard practice in the past would have been to give weak stores time to improve, but the economy is too tough to do that this time, Sears said.

Sozzi, the analyst, went to a Sears in Bayshore, New York, on Monday, one of the busiest days of the retail season, and said it was "deserted." At the northern end of the state, in Plattsburgh, a Sears was similarly quiet.

Wall Street analysts have long faulted Sears for letting its stores become stale, even as rivals ranging from Macy's Inc and J.C. Penney Co Inc to Target Corp and Wal-Mart remodeled and spruced up their stores.

Last fiscal year, Macy's spent $505 million to improve its namesake and Bloomingdale's stores, while Sears spent $441 million despite having more than three times as many stores.

Sears is "effectively asking customers to pay for a poorer shopping environment", Credit Suisse's Balter said.

Balter was also surprised that Sears would borrow money during the holidays, which are typically a peak cash flow period. Sears had $483 million of borrowings outstanding as of December 23, compared with zero a year earlier.

As of October 29, Sears had cash and cash equivalents of $624 million, down from $790 million a year earlier.

Sears Holdings said the lower sales and margin pressure would lead to adjusted fourth-quarter earnings before interest, debt and amortization of less than half of the year-ago quarter's $933 million figure.

The retailer expects to earn $140 million to $170 million by selling off inventory in affected stores and selling or subleasing store space.

TIME TO MERGE, SELL OR CREATE VALUE,,,AT THIS PRESENT VALUE THE STORES PRESENT A BETTER VALUE AS A LIQUIDATION THAN AS A GOING CONCERN....FOR STOCKHOLDERS.

POST OFFICE ANNOUNCES THAT IS IS REALLY, REALLY INCOMPETENT AND STUPID TOO-SLOWS DELIVERY OF FIRST CLASS MAIL TO "SAVE MONEY"

2011-12-05T12:52:00.003-06:00

THE NEVER ENDING JOKES ABOUT THE INCOMPETENCE OF THE POSTAL SERVICE HAVE NOW BECOME A REALITY INSTEAD OF JUST A JOKE.

The competition by other services, the burly clerks and delivery personnel, the overpaid postmasters, and the whole range of bad practices in running a business that is supposed to deliver service....is now on its last leg as a going business.

U.S. Postal Service Faces Bankruptcy, Plans Cuts To Slow Delivery Of First Class Mail
Postal Service Cuts

Facing bankruptcy, the U.S. Postal Service is pushing ahead with unprecedented cuts to first-class mail next spring that will slow delivery and, for the first time in 40 years, eliminate the chance for stamped letters to arrive the next day.

The estimated $3 billion in reductions, to be announced in broader detail on Monday, are part of a wide-ranging effort by the cash-strapped Postal Service to quickly trim costs, seeing no immediate help from Congress.

The changes would provide short-term relief, but ultimately could prove counterproductive, pushing more of America's business onto the Internet. They could slow everything from check payments to Netflix's DVDs-by-mail, add costs to mail-order prescription drugs, and threaten the existence of newspapers and time-sensitive magazines delivered by postal carrier to far-flung suburban and rural communities.

That birthday card mailed first-class to Mom also could arrive a day or two late, if people don't plan ahead.

"It's a potentially major change, but I don't think consumers are focused on it and it won't register until the service goes away," said Jim Corridore, analyst with S&P Capital IQ, who tracks the shipping industry. "Over time, to the extent the customer service experience gets worse, it will only increase the shift away from mail to alternatives. There's almost nothing you can't do online that you can do by mail."

The cuts, now being finalized, would close roughly 250 of the nearly 500 mail processing centers across the country as early as next March. Because the consolidations typically would lengthen the distance mail travels from post office to processing center, the agency also would lower delivery standards for first-class mail that have been in place since 1971.

Currently, first-class mail is supposed to be delivered to homes and businesses within the continental U.S. in one day to three days. That will lengthen to two days to three days, meaning mailers no longer could expect next-day delivery in surrounding communities. Periodicals could take between two days and nine days.

About 42 percent of first-class mail is now delivered the following day. An additional 27 percent arrives in two days, about 31 percent in three days and less than 1 percent in four days to five days. Following the change next spring, about 51 percent of all first-class mail is expected to arrive in two days, with most of the remainder delivered in three days.

The consolidation of mail processing centers is in addition to the planned closing of about 3,700 local post offices. In all, roughly 100,000 postal employees could be cut as a result of the various closures, resulting in savings of up to $6.5 billion a year.

Expressing urgency to reduce costs, Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe said in an interview that the agency has to act while waiting for Congress to grant it authority to reduce delivery to five days a week, raise stamp prices and reduce health care and other labor costs.

The Postal Service, an independent agency of government, does not receive tax money, but is subject to congressional control on large aspects of its operations. The changes in first-class mail delivery can go into place without permission from Congress.

After five years in the red, the post office faces imminent default this month on a $5.5 billion annual payment to the Treasury for retiree health benefits. It is projected to have a record loss of $14.1 billion next year amid steady declines in first-class mail volume. Donahoe has said the agency must make cuts of $20 billion by 2015 to be profitable.

It already has announced a 1-cent increase in first-class mail to 45 cents beginning Jan. 22.

"We have a business model that is failing. You can't continue to run red ink and not make changes," Donahoe said. "We know our business, and we listen to our customers. Customers are looking for affordable and consistent mail service, and they do not want us to take tax money."

Separate bills that have passed House and Senate committees would give the Postal Service more authority and liquidity to stave off immediate bankruptcy. But prospects are somewhat dim for final congressional action on those bills anytime soon, especially if the measures are seen in an election year as promoting layoffs and cuts to neighborhood post offices.

Technically, the Postal Service must await an advisory opinion from the independent Postal Regulatory Commission before it can begin closing local post offices and processing centers. But such opinions are nonbinding, and Donahoe is making clear the agency will proceed with reductions once the opinion is released next March.

"The things I have control over here at the Postal Service, we have to do," he said, describing the cuts as a necessary business decision. "If we do nothing, we will have a death spiral."

The Postal Service initially announced in September it was studying the possibility of closing the processing centers and published a notice in the Federal Register seeking comments. Within 30 days, the plan elicited nearly 4,400 public comments, mostly in opposition.

Among them:

_Small-town mayors and legislators in states including Illinois, Missouri, Ohio and Pennsylvania cited the economic harm if postal offices were to close, eliminating jobs and reducing service. Small-business owners in many other states also were worried.

"It's kind of a lifeline," said William C. Snodgrass, who owns a USave Pharmacy in North Platte, Neb., referring to next-day first-class delivery. His store mails hundreds of prescriptions a week to residents in mostly rural areas of the state that lack local pharmacies. If first-class delivery were lengthened to three days and Saturday mail service also were suspended, a resident might not get a shipment mailed on Wednesday until the following week.

"A lot of people in these communities are 65 or 70 years old, and transportation is an issue for them," said Snodgrass, who hasn't decided whether he will have to switch to a private carrier such as UPS for one-day delivery. That would mean passing along higher shipping costs to customers. "It's impossible for many of my customers to drive 100 miles, especially in the winter, to get the medications they need."

_ESPN The Magazine and Crain Communications, which prints some 27 trade and consumer publications, said delays to first-class delivery could ruin the value of their news. Their magazines are typically printed at week's end with mail arrival timed for weekend sports events or the Monday start of the work week. Newspapers, already struggling in the Internet age, also could suffer.

"No one wants to receive Tuesday's issue, containing news of Monday's events, on Wednesday," said Paul Boyle, a senior vice president of the Newspaper Association of America, which represents nearly 2,000 newspapers in the U.S. and Canada. "Especially in rural areas where there might not be broadband access for Internet news, it will hurt the ability of newspapers to reach customers who pretty much rely on the printed newspaper to stay connected to their communities."

_AT&T, which mails approximately 55 million customer billing statements each month, wants assurances that the Postal Service will widely publicize and educate the public about changes to avoid confusion over delivery that might lead to delinquent payments. The company is also concerned that after extensive cuts the Postal Service might realize it cannot meet a relaxed standard of two-to-three day delivery.

Other companies standing to lose include Netflix, which offers monthly pricing plans for unlimited DVDs by mail, sent one disc or two at a time. Longer delivery times would mean fewer opportunities to receive discs each month, effectively a price increase. Netflix in recent months has been vigorously promoting its video streaming service as an alternative.

"DVD by mail may not last forever, but we want it to last as long as possible," Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said this year.

Maine Sen. Susan Collins, the top Republican on the Senate committee that oversees the post office, believes the agency is taking the wrong approach. She says service cuts will only push more consumers to online bill payment or private carriers such as UPS or FedEx, leading to lower revenue in the future.

"Time and time again in the face of more red ink, the Postal Service puts forward ideas that could well accelerate its death spiral," she said, urging passage of a bill that would refund nearly $7 billion the Postal Service overpaid into a federal retirement fund, encourage a restructuring of health benefits and reduce the agency's annual payments into a retiree health account.

That measure would postpone a move to five-day-a-week mail delivery for at least two years and require additional layers of review before the agency closed postal branches and mail processing centers.

"The solution to the Postal Service's financial crisis is not easy but must involve tackling more significant expenses that do not drive customers," Collins said.

In the event of a shutdown due to bankruptcy, private companies such as FedEx and UPS could handle a small portion of the material the post office moves, but they do not go everywhere. No business has shown interest in delivering letters everywhere in the country for a set rate of 44 cents or 45 cents for a first-class letter.

HOW ABOUT CHARGING MORE THEN?????? HAS ANYBODY THOUGHT ABOUT THAT???

I would be willing to pay more, it is still reasonable to put a letter in the mailbox at my home and it gets to Hawaii or Alaska in a few days...who can get that none for say 95 cents????

Ruth Goldway, chair of the Postal Regulatory Commission, said the planned cuts could test the limits of the Postal Service's legal obligation to serve all Americans, regardless of geography, at uniform price and quality. "It will have substantial cost savings, but it really does have the potential to change what the postal service is and its role in providing fast and efficient delivery of mail," she said.

CRAZY JOHN MCCAIN AND OTHERS ATTEMPT TO SUBVERT THE CONSTITUTION AND TO IMPRISON AMERICANS...STOP THESE TRAITORS BY CALLING THE SENATE TO STIOP THIS!!

2011-11-28T09:09:00.004-06:00

Senate Moves To Allow Military To Intern Americans Without Trial

NDAA detention provision would turn America into a “battlefield”

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com

Arrest Americans

The Senate is set to vote on a bill today that would define the whole of the United States as a “battlefield” and allow the U.S. Military to arrest American citizens in their own back yard without charge or trial.

“The Senate is going to vote on whether Congress will give this president—and every future president — the power to order the military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial civilians anywhere in the world. The power is so broad that even U.S. citizens could be swept up by the military and the military could be used far from any battlefield, even within the United States itself,” writes Chris Anders of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office.

Under the ‘worldwide indefinite detention without charge or trial’ provision of S.1867, the National Defense Authorization Act bill, which is set to be up for a vote on the Senate floor this week, the legislation will “basically say in law for the first time that the homeland is part of the battlefield,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who supports the bill.

The bill was drafted in secret by Senators Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.), before being passed in a closed-door committee meeting without any kind of hearing. The language appears in sections 1031 and 1032 of the NDAA bill.

“I would also point out that these provisions raise serious questions as to who we are as a society and what our Constitution seeks to protect,” Colorado Senator Mark Udall said in a speech last week. One section of these provisions, section 1031, would be interpreted as allowing the military to capture and indefinitely detain American citizens on U.S. soil. Section 1031 essentially repeals the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 by authorizing the U.S. military to perform law enforcement functions on American soil. That alone should alarm my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, but there are other problems with these provisions that must be resolved.”

This means Americans could be declared domestic terrorists and thrown in a military brig with no recourse whatsoever. Given that the Department of Homeland Security has characterized behavior such as buying gold, owning guns, using a watch or binoculars, donating to charity, using the telephone or email to find information, using cash, and all manner of mundane behaviors as potential indicators of domestic terrorism, such a provision would be wide open to abuse.

“American citizens and people picked up on American or Canadian or British streets being sent to military prisons indefinitely without even being charged with a crime. Really? Does anyone think this is a good idea? And why now?” asks Anders.

The ACLU is urging citizens to call their Senator and demand that the Udall Amendment be added to the bill, a change that would at least act as a check to prevent Americans being snatched off the streets without some form of Congressional oversight.

We have been warning for over a decade that Americans would become the target of laws supposedly aimed at terrorists and enemy combatants. Alex Jones personally documented how U.S. troops were being trained to arrest U.S. citizens in the event of martial law during urban warfare training drills back in the 90′s. Under the the National Defense Authorization Act bill, no declaration of martial law is necessary since Americans would now be subject to the same treatment as suspected insurgents in places like Afghanistan and Iraq.

If you thought that the executive assassination of American citizens abroad was bad enough, now similar powers will be extended to the “homeland,” in other words, your town, your community, your back yard.

*********************

Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show.

YOU LIE OBAMA, MORE ACCURATE THAN EVER BASED ON TRUE LOSSES FROM AUTO BAILOUT AND TARP...GOVERNMENT LIES ABOUT EVERYTHING AS USUAL

2011-11-17T09:13:00.004-06:00

THE MONEY PIT BLACK HOLE OF WASTE CONTINUES UNDER OBAMA.

U.S. boosts estimate of auto bailout losses to $23.6B.

The Treasury Department dramatically boosted its estimate of losses from its $85 billion auto industry bailout by more than $9 billion in the face of General Motors Co.'s steep stock decline.

In its monthly report to Congress, the Treasury Department now says it expects to lose $23.6 billion, up from its previous estimate of $14.33 billion.

The Treasury now pegs the cost of the bailout of GM, Chrysler Group LLC and the auto finance companies at $79.6 billion. It no longer includes $5 billion it set aside to guarantee payments to auto suppliers in 2009.

The big increase is a reflection of the sharp decline in the value of GM's share price.

The current estimate of losses is based on GM's Sept. 30 closing price of $20.18, down one-third over the previous quarterly price.

GM's stock closed Monday at $22.99, up 2 percent. The government won't reassess the estimate of the costs until Dec. 30.

The government has recovered $23.2 billion of its $49.5 billion GM bailout, and cut its stake in the company from 61 percent to 26.5 percent. But it has been forced to put on hold the sale of its remaining 500 million shares of stock.

The new estimate also hikes the overall cost of the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program costs to taxpayers. TARP is the emergency program approved by Congress in late 2008 at the height of the financial crisis.

In total, the government used $425 billion to bailout banks, insurance companies and automakers, and provided $45 billion in housing program assistance.

The government now expects to lose $57.33 billion, including the full cost of the housing program, up from $36.7 billion. The new estimate means the government doesn't believe it will make an overall profit on its bailouts.

Republican presidential candidates, including former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, have seized on the auto bailout losses estimates, as evidence that the Bush and Obama administrations "wasted" money.

Matt Anderson, a spokesman for the Treasury Department, said, "Both TARP and the auto industry rescue are still on track to cost a fraction of what was originally expected during the dark days of the financial crisis."

In 2009, the government initially forecast it would lose $44 billion on its auto industry bailout. It revised it down to $30 billion, and later to as low as $13.9 billion earlier this year.The administration and President Barack Obama have argued that any losses on the auto bailout were worth the hundreds of thousands of jobs saved.

"The investment paid off. The hundreds of thousands of jobs that have been saved made it worth it," he said at an appearance last month at GM's Orion Assembly plant. "I want to especially thank the people of Detroit for proving that, despite all the work that lies ahead, this is a city where a great American industry is coming back to life and the industries of tomorrow are taking root, and a city where people are dreaming up ways to prove all the skeptics wrong and write the next proud chapter in the Motor City's history."

The new bailout forecast also represents an increase in the government's forecast in its losses from its $17.2 billion bailout of Detroit-based auto and mortgage lender Ally Financial Inc. The government holds a 74 percent stake in Ally, which has been forced to put its planned initial public offering on hold because of market conditions.

THAT "YOU LIE" SCREAM TOWARDS OBAMA PROVED TRUE AGAIN!!!!

OBAMA'S NOMINEE TO SOCIAL SECURITY BOARD, A NON-ELECTED MORON, PLANS TO GUT MEDICAL CARE FOR SENIORS, OBAMA LIES EXPOSED AGAIN!

2011-11-16T07:14:00.005-06:00

Obama Nominee for Social Security Board Favors Rationing Health Care

Is it just a coincidence that the people that President Obama nominates to fill high-level governmental posts tend to favor government-directed health care rationing? Last year, Obama nominated Donald Berwick to head Medicare and Medicaid. Now he’s nominated Henry J. Aaron to head the Social Security Advisory Board.
Henry J. Aaron

Berwick, to whom Obama issued a dubious recess appointment to circumvent the usual Senate confirmation, has become notorious for statements like, “The decision is not whether or not we will ration care — the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open” — and, in progressive-speak, “The social budget is limited.”

Aaron, a recent Obama nominee, has expressed similar views. He wrote a piece earlier this year called, “The Independent Payment Advisory Board — Congress's ‘Good Deed.’” The grisly IPAB, one of the most underreported of Obamacare’s myriad of liberty-sapping features, would have the power to cut Medicare spending each year — if Obamacare isn’t repealed first. The dictates of its 15 unelected members would effectively become law. In fact, Congress couldn’t even overturn the IPAB’s decrees with a majority vote in each house and the President’s signature.

Obama has since doubled-down on the IPAB, seeking to grant it even more power to cut Medicare spending than Obamacare would grant it. To be clear, this is in addition to the nearly $1 trillion that the Congressional Budget Office says would be siphoned out of Medicare and spent on Obamacare during the overhaul’s real first decade (2014 to 2023).

Aaron praises the IPAB, although he does admit to having a few problems with it. He thinks that its largely unchecked power isn’t unchecked enough, as the board should be able to order payment reductions for other aspects of medical care that have so far escaped its statutory grant of power. He writes,

“I admit that the provisions governing the IPAB are less than optimal. For example, recommendations regarding payments to acute and long-term care hospitals, hospices and inpatient rehabilitation and psychiatric facilities are off-limits until 2020; and those to clinical laboratories are off-limits until 2016. These politically motivated restrictions should be repealed as early as possible so the IPAB’s recommendations can comprehend the delivery system as a whole.”

Aaron says that “the survival and strengthening of the IPAB is of critical importance.” In a sense, this is unsurprising, given his earlier views, which were captured in a Washington Post story published during the Reagan administration (when Aaron was in his late 40s). The Post article reads,

“If Americans are serious about curbing medical costs, they’ll have to face up to a much tougher issue than merely cutting waste, says Brookings Institution economist Henry J. Aaron.

“They’ll have to do what the British have done: ration some types of costly medical care — which means turning away patients from proven treatments.

“Cutting billions worth of ‘pure waste’ — in needless hospitalization, surplus beds, Cadillac-model machinery and superfluous tests — would only temporarily slow the growth in health spending, which now tops 10 percent a year, Aaron told a symposium sponsored by the American Academy of Physician Assistants last week in Reston.

“Eventually the ‘cornucopia of technology’ and America’s aging population will combine to drive up health costs by 6 or 7 percent a year anyway unless something else is done, he said.

“That ‘something else’ is what Aaron calls the ‘second stage’ of cost control. It’s a much more complex step, requiring choices that no one — doctor, patient or politician — likes to make.

“Aaron and Dr. William B. Schwartz, professor of medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine, recently completed a study of how these choices are made in Britain, a country which spends half as much per person as the United States on health care.

“Some medical services widely available in the United States are strictly rationed in Britain, Aaron and Schwartz report in their book, ‘The Painful Prescription.’ For example, British doctors order half as many X-rays per capita as their American counterparts, and use half as much film per X-ray. They do one-tenth as much coronary artery bypass surgery. British hospitals have one-sixth as many CAT scanners and less than one-fifth as many intensive care unit (ICU) beds....

“Half the patients with chronic kidney failure in Britain are left untreated — and die as a result….

“The key to the British system, they contend, lies not in regulation but in a different attitude toward medicine, mortality and the scarcity of resources.

“Unlike their American counterparts, who tend to believe in saving lives at all cost, British doctors define ‘what is best’ in terms of ‘what is available,’ Aaron said.

“As the director of a tiny 10-bed ICU in an 800-bed London hospital put it: ‘Yes, this would be too small in America. But if you took this unit and set it down in Sri Lanka or India, it would stick out like a sore thumb. It would be an obscene waste of money.’

“The burden of enforcing medical rationing in Britain falls mainly on doctors, who act as ‘gatekeepers’ in the system. They know funds for kidney dialysis are limited, so they simply don’t refer older patients for the life-saving treatment.

“Asked how he could turn away over-55 kidney patients from life-saving dialysis, one doctor told Aaron and Schwartz: ‘What you don’t seem to understand is that everybody over the age of 55 is a bit crumbly.’…

“It will be ‘a lot harder to move into this second stage of rationing in the U.S.,’ Aaron warned.

“The American public has not yet begun to understand what is being asked of it when it comes to limiting the growth in hospital spending.”

THAT IS BECAUSE OBAMA LIES ABOUT EVERYTHING RELATED TO HEALTH CARE AND IS APPOINTING PEOPLE WHO SPEAK IN WASHINGTONIAN LANGUAGE. FOR INSTANCE, INSTEAD OF SAYING, " I WANT TO RAISE YOUR TAXES"...THEY SAY " THE COUNTRY NEEDS REVENUE ENHANCERS."

Looks like congressman Joe was right when he screamed, " YOU LIE ", when Obama was spewing his lies during the State of the Union speech. Every lie has now come to be the truth. This feckless, clueless Marxist who fooled the uninformed and the naive to vote for him, needs to be thrown out of office as soon as possible....let's start marching on the White House and not on Wall Street. All bad decisions start in the White House...and always did.

OBAMA'S ENVORONMENTAL REGULATION WILL SKYROCKET ELECTIC RATES AND CAUSE POWER SHORTAGES FOR ALL AMERICANS; EPA OUT OF CONTROL

2011-11-15T19:39:00.006-06:00

ALL WORLD ECONOMIES GROW THOUGH HAVING ADEQUATE POWER SUPPLY AT REASONABLE RATES.

The moronic administration of Obama is planning to skyrocket rates and bring our industrial capacity to third world standards.

Congressional deadlock means two game-changing Environmental Protection Agency rules are poised to take effect unless a court stops them or the White House weighs in.

The rules will cost electric utilities and their ratepayers billions. But the utility industry itself is split between those that have invested to lower their air pollution ahead of federal regulation and say stricter standards can be met, and those who remain highly coal-dependent and contend the EPA is forcing changes so fast it will endanger electric reliability.

For more news and information on the rapidly evolving energy industry, please sign up for the AOL Energy newsletter. Connect with the authors and editors of AOL Energy on our LinkedIn Group.

House Republicans have made repeated attempts this year to stop EPA, but none of those efforts are even getting to a vote in the Senate. Given the budget deadlock, there's little expectation that will change before compliance schedules kick in.

The two rules are the Mercury & Air Toxics Standards (known as the Utility Maximum Achievable Control Technology, or MACT, rule) and the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, CSAPR. Both stem from the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments.

Predecessors of both rules were issued in the George W. Bush administration and thrown out by courts. That left both rewrites to the Obama administration.

As issued in July, CSAPR ratchets down the permitted sulfur and nitrogen oxide emissions in 27 upwind states, to limit harm to air in downwind states. Some 45 plaintiffs--mainly upwind state governments and power companies--are alleging irreparable harm if the rule takes effect January 1, 2012 as scheduled. They say complying in 2012 may mean shutting facilities and risking power shortages. They want a federal court to delay the rule while its legality is litigated.
Downwind states and cities, plus some utilities and environmental groups, have joined EPA in defending the rule.

The MACT Act

The Utility MACT rule responds to a court decision that mercury emissions cannot be traded like pollutants covered by CSAPR. So the Utility MACT rule sets standards that every generating site must meet, in effect ending the "grandfathering" of old coal and oil plants enabled by pollutant trading systems.

The Utility MACT rule was due to be final November 16 but the court gave EPA a one-month extension to consider final comments. So it's now under Office of Management & Budget review, and is due out in mid-December. It would take effect in 2015, giving utilities three years to ready their facilities.

There's no debate that the MACT rules would mean shutdown of many smaller, older coal plants that can't be upgraded economically, and expensive upgrades to many other coal facilities. Shutdown predictions run somewhere between 30 and 70 gigawatts (of more than 300 coal-fired GW.) EPA estimates this rule will cost $10.9 billion annually in the next decade, for retrofits and replacements. Some utility estimates run much higher.

But the costs, like those for CSAPR, are unevenly distributed, affecting coal-dependent utilities and regions more heavily. Twenty-five states and some utilities are trying to get a federal court to delay the Utility MACT rule, so far unsuccessfully.

The North American Electric Reliability Council has raised concerns that coal plants in locations important to electric grid reliability could be forced shut. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is holding a technical conference November 29-30 to discuss the situation.

Inside Support For Regulation

But not everyone in the industry sees a problem. Ralph Izzo, Chairman, CEO and President of Public Service Enterprise Group (PSEG), wrote in an October 27 blog that the rules have been in process for 20 years.

"During the past five years, we have invested more than $2 billion" to replace older PSEG generating units and upgrade others.

Izzo said EPA's rules are "overdue" and will give the capital-intensive electricity industry the certainty it needs to make large new investments.

John Rowe, Chairman and CEO of Exelon, said in a November 9 statement that the continuing low price of natural gas provides an opportunity for utilities to meet new pollution rules at reasonable cost.

Setting clean air standards, and then letting utilities figure the most efficient way to meet them, is the least expensive way for government to get clean energy, Rowe contended. "Congress should not stop the EPA," he said, noting the new rules will create new jobs.

Easing The Impact

One difficulty in assessing the rules' impact is that the average coal plant dates to the 1960s, and utilities are starting to shut many anyway.

Jim Rogers, Chairman, President and CEO of Duke Energy, said October 31 that the wholesale replacements needed mean electricity prices must go up. He said rates, in real terms, have stayed flat for 50 years.

Industry experts are speculating whether the White House will step in, despite the criticism that environmentalists rained on President Obama two months ago after he delayed review of ozone standards to 2013.

Kevin Book of ClearView Energy Partners said, given the importance of MACT to environmental groups, the White House might offer some delay or modification to CSAPR as an "olive branch" to affected states important in the 2012 election.

Christine Tezak, senior energy and environment policy analyst at R.W. Baird & Co., said OMB might add "safety valve" provisions to MACT to ensure grid reliability and ease requirements for utilities to get an additional year for compliance.

COMMENTS:
jones3731

obama hopes this doesn't go through til after the election

SuKDu

Perhaps I am misunderstanding the term "Enviro-Terrorists" as used by Jerome in an early post. I'm not sure whether he refers to those who would do anything, however violent, to protect the environment, or those who would do anything, however damaging to the environment, for profit. The usage in his post suggests that he thinks that pro-environment persons blew up the Deep Horizon.

Perhaps Jerome believes that extreme environmntalists would take the risk of destroying the evironment in order to save it. Very convoluted thinking, and very wrong. Forget the rabid environmentalists. Try extreme stupidity: The woman who was supposed to be watching the systems and sound the alarm when two or three signals went off, "became confused" when ten went off at once. She "didn't know what to do," so instead of sounding the alarm, possibly in time to save the 11 who died, did nothing.

On the other hand, Oil Companies and their associates do not care about the environment, but do care about their equipment.

Jerome, the Gulf disaster was caused by BP and its associates foregoing one safety procedure after another to save money and increase profits. Common practice, but this time it didn't work, Big Time. Why did they do it? Easy: They'd done it so many times before, they didn't think they'd get caught. I guess they didn't consider the consequences of hiring really, really stupid people to watch over that equipment.

Perhaps we should consider the fact that, despite the cost of the loss of the rig, BP was able to pony up 20 BILLION dollars to partially offset the losses by ordinary people working in in the area. The ecological damage to the Gulf and to the already fragile Louisiana coastline, is beyond calculation by ordiinary means, and will take decades to determine. We may rest assured that, however many billions of dollars BP forks over in compensation, it will not change their basic operating credo: Profits over everything else. They'll even spend millions in PR to show how they are helping the environment.

I won't go into the incestuous relationship between the oil companies and the local regulators; the term speaks for itself and is quite appropriate.

I don't think that profit, per se, is a bad thing. But there has to be a balance between profit and environmental protection. That's called regulation. Considering the really bad history of these international mega companies, strict regulation coupled with massive fines and penalties -- large enough to really hurt the company bottom line -- are necessary, regardless of what pro-business persons think.

z06corvette500

I live by Niagara Falls.lol Hydro Electric Power.It sounds like you need a wind farm put up.It would cut your bill down to 1/3 of what you pay now.Wind power is for you.Get to gether and have it done.

steve thompson

Here in Indiana our coal fired electric plant has already issued a statement saying they would shut down the plant rather than spend the money to upgrade to meet the specifications in these laws. Leaving us face to face with whats going to be an ENORMOUS hike in prices as we import electricity. hEY GUVMINT MAN, YOU'VE MADE NO FRIENDS HERE!

jclement19

First of all, why does a group of unelected bureaucrats make laws, that is congress's job? secondly thanks to all the liberal retards that support and vote for obama and his anti-american agenda.

suckmyfungun

ABOLISH THE EPA NOW,,, ITS OUT LIVED ITS USEFULNESS

franksguitar

In CT we already pay the highest cost of electricity now. If this passes it will cost far more than we pay for our mortgage! This is complete insanity in this economy and is unsustainable. If What do people do if its a choice been keeping warm or foreclosure! Washington is broken for sure!

beesidemeusa

There has been global warming and cooling long before there were people, so there is nothing we can do to "Save the Planet". Those people are hysterics or have political motives. It is economically unfeasible to retrofit some old plants. New plants should meet somewhat cleaner standards, but not ever-increasingly cleaner standards, particularly if they raise the cost of living, the cost of electricity for all. The environmentalists actually seem to hate people for existing. They think our CO2 is causing GW and would stop it entirely. OK, you exhale CO2, so when will they have a breathing tax and cause you to cease breathing if you can't pay the tax. Fire produces CO2, so ban or tax fire, and those who can't pay will freeze to death. Alternative power requires metal, but mining and the use of fire to get metal is evil to an extreme environmentalist. Alternative energy sources are all more expensive and less reliable than coal, natural gas, hydro and nuclear. They think if energy prices rise, it will force everyone to use less energy and harm the planet less. They don't care about standard of living and general survival, because environmentalism is their religion. Normal people want a reasonably clean environment, that doesn't lower their standard of living or raise their cost of living. There has to be a balance between everything, which the environmentalists do not allow for.

1 reply to beesidemeusa's comment
rann948

George Carlin, rest his soul, had a comedy routine about "saving the Earth". His take: the Earth would be just fine, it was Humans that needed saving. LOL.

Ben

The real problem is that the EPA doesn't know when we are reaching diminishing returns. They cleaned up the air when the agency was in its infancy so they are heroes. But now we have a giant bureaucracy that has to justify its existence by finding ways to remove every last little bit of pollution from every industry. That has driven most manufacturing plants overseas, where people are glad to get the work despite much worse pollution than we have here. Unfortunately power can't really be imported except from Canada and Mexico. So if EPA has its way, we will pay more and more earn less and less to support their draconian measures, with a small if any benefit.

Mike

Might as well throw the VAT tax in there at the same time. But yes, let's subsidize Jon Bon Jovi and the big farmer consortiums, send our jobs overseas and buy oil from people who hate us while they charge the average man more and more. Just stick in and break it off all at one time and get it over with. This is like someone pulling a bandaid off of a scab slowly.

OBAMA GIVES $433 MILLION BOGUS CONTRACT TO BIG DEMOCRATIC DONOR FOR -NON-EXISTENT DISEASE..WASTE AND FRAUD BY OBAMA AGAIN

2011-11-12T09:29:00.003-06:00

Cost, need questioned in $433-million smallpox drug deal
A company controlled by a longtime political donor gets a no-bid contract to supply an experimental remedy for a threat that may not exist.

The U.S. searched Iraq for weapons of mass destruction, including smallpox, after the 2003 invasion. None were found. But fears that other rogue states might hold smallpox are part of the reason the U.S. entered into a $433-million contract for an
experimental drug. (Carolyn Cole, Los Angeles Times / November 13, 2011)

By David Willman

Over the last year, the Obama administration has aggressively pushed a $433-million plan to buy an experimental smallpox drug, despite uncertainty over whether it is needed or will work.

Senior officials have taken unusual steps to secure the contract for New York-based Siga Technologies Inc., whose controlling shareholder is billionaire Ronald O. Perelman, one of the world's richest men and a longtime Democratic Party donor.

When Siga complained that contracting specialists at the Department of Health and Human Services were resisting the company's financial demands, senior officials replaced the government's lead negotiator for the deal, interviews and documents show.

When Siga was in danger of losing its grip on the contract a year ago, the officials blocked other firms from competing.

Siga was awarded the final contract in May through a "sole-source" procurement in which it was the only company asked to submit a proposal. The contract calls for Siga to deliver 1.7 million doses of the drug for the nation's biodefense stockpile. The price of approximately $255 per dose is well above what the government's specialists had earlier said was reasonable, according to internal documents and interviews.

Once feared for its grotesque pustules and 30% death rate, smallpox was eradicated worldwide as of 1978 and is known to exist only in the locked freezers of a Russian scientific institute and the U.S. government. There is no credible evidence that any other country or a terrorist group possesses smallpox.

If there were an attack, the government could draw on $1 billion worth of smallpox vaccine it already owns to inoculate the entire U.S. population and quickly treat people exposed to the virus. The vaccine, which costs the government $3 per dose, can reliably prevent death when given within four days of exposure.

Siga's drug, an antiviral pill called ST-246, would be used to treat people who were diagnosed with smallpox too late for the vaccine to help. Yet the new drug cannot be tested for effectiveness in people because of ethical constraints — and no one knows whether animal testing could prove it would work in humans.

The government's pursuit of Siga's product raises the question: Should the U.S. buy an unproven drug for such a nebulous threat?

"We've got a vaccine that I hope we never have to use — how much more do we need?" said Dr. Donald A. "D.A." Henderson, the epidemiologist who led the global eradication of smallpox for the World Health Organization and later helped organize U.S. biodefense efforts under President George W. Bush. "The bottom line is, we've got a limited amount of money."

Dr. Thomas M. Mack, an epidemiologist at USC's Keck School of Medicine, battled smallpox outbreaks in Pakistan and has advised the Food and Drug Administration on the virus. He called the plan to stockpile Siga's drug "a waste of time and a waste of money."

The Obama administration official who has overseen the buying of Siga's drug says she is trying to strengthen the nation's preparedness. Dr. Nicole Lurie, a presidential appointee who heads biodefense planning at Health and Human Services, cited a 2004 finding by the Bush administration that there was a "material threat" smallpox could be used as a biological weapon.

Smallpox is one of 12 pathogens for which such determinations have been made.

"I don't put probabilities around anything in terms of imminent or not," said Lurie, a physician whose experience in public health includes government service and work with the Rand Corp. "Because what I can tell you is, in the two-plus years I've been in this job, it's the unexpected that always happens."

Negotiations over the price of the drug and Siga's profit margin were contentious. In an internal memo in March, Dr. Richard J. Hatchett, chief medical officer for HHS' biodefense preparedness unit, said Siga's projected profit at that point was 180%, which he called "outrageous."

In an email earlier the same day, a department colleague told Hatchett that no government contracting officer "would sign a 3 digit profit percentage."

In April, after Siga's chief executive, Dr. Eric A. Rose, complained in writing about the department's "approach to profit," Lurie assured him that the "most senior procurement official" would be taking over the negotiations.

"I trust this will be satisfactory to you," Lurie wrote Rose in a letter.

In an interview, Lurie said the contract was awarded strictly on merit. She said she had discussed buying a smallpox antiviral for the nation's emergency stockpile with White House officials and with HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, but that the conversations focused on policy, not the manufacturer.

"We discussed the need for the product, and a need for a product to be stockpiled," Lurie said. "And we discussed an impending procurement."

Lurie denied that she had spoken with or written to Rose regarding the contract, saying such contact would have been inappropriate.

But in a subsequent statement, an HHS spokeswoman acknowledged Lurie's letter to Rose, saying it "reflects the critical importance of the potential procurement to national security."

Representatives of Siga, speaking on the condition they not be identified, said the new drug has been effective in animal testing and that the company is being paid a price commensurate with its value.

Neither the HHS spokeswoman nor the Siga representatives would disclose the agreed-upon profit margin or the per-treatment price. Siga has cited terms of the contract in its public financial statements — but without those financial details.

Worst-case scenarios

Worrying about worst-case scenarios is what biodefense planners do. In the case of smallpox, millions of Americans have no immunity because the vaccination of civilians ended in 1972. And there is no way to guarantee that a rogue regime such as North Korea is not holding smallpox.

Nonetheless, no such threat has been verified. The Bush administration suspected Saddam Hussein of possessing smallpox and other biological weapons, but inspectors did not find any after the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003.

Still, pressure to move quickly and spend more has helped shape U.S. biodefense policy since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the anthrax mailings that fall.

Investors such as Perelman saw opportunity. In 2003, Perelman, through his holding company MacAndrews & Forbes Holdings Inc., invested heavily in Siga and installed a team of executives to run it.

The move seemed prescient when Bush, in June 2004, signed Project BioShield, a 10-year, $5.6-billion initiative to fund the development and stockpiling of medications to counter bioterrorism.

Two months later, Siga purchased the rights to what became known as ST-246 from a Pennsylvania company, ViroPharma Inc., for $1 million in cash and 1 million shares of Siga's common stock. Over the next three years, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases awarded Siga two research grants and a related contract, worth a total of $23.5 million, to develop the new drug.

From the outset, there was only one potential customer: the U.S. government.

For Siga, the stakes were high. ST-246 was its most promising experimental compound.

From 2005 through September, the company has paid three lobbying firms $800,000 to represent its interests in Washington, public records show. Disclosures filed by the lobbyists said they focused on Project BioShield and "issues related to homeland security and HHS," along with "government procurement of vaccines."

Siga representatives told The Times that the company had lobbied only "generally" for biodefense spending, adding: "Neither Siga nor anyone else on Siga's behalf ever lobbied anyone to get this contract."

Perelman and others at Siga's affiliate, MacAndrews & Forbes, have long been major political donors. They gave a total of $607,550 to federal campaigns for the 2008 and 2010 elections, according to records compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. About 65% of that money went to Democrats. Perelman donated an additional $50,000 to President Obama's inauguration.

A spokeswoman for Perelman said his contributions reflected nothing more than "his right as a citizen to support candidates he believes in."

From December 2007 to January of this year, Rose, Siga's chief executive, served on the U.S. National Biodefense Science Board, which has advised Lurie on how to respond to biological terrorism and other potential health emergencies. (Rose was appointed during the Bush administration.)

In June 2010, Siga further heightened its presence in Washington by naming to its board Andrew Stern, former head of the Service Employees International Union and a frequent visitor to the Obama White House. The union is a wellspring of campaign money and volunteers for Democratic candidates.

On Oct. 13, 2010, Siga announced that the government intended to award it a contract for ST-246 worth as much as $2.8 billion. Within days, Siga's stock price soared. In its year-end financial statement, the company said:

"Our ability to generate near-term revenue is particularly dependent on the success of our smallpox antiviral drug candidate."

But the federal contract required that the winning bidder be a small business, with no more than 500 employees. Chimerix Inc., a North Carolina company that had competed for the contract, protested, saying Siga was too big.

Officials at the Small Business Administration investigated and quickly agreed, finding that Siga's affiliation with MacAndrews & Forbes disqualified it.

The Obama administration could have awarded the contract to Chimerix as the only eligible small-business applicant. Or it could have reopened the competition to companies of any size.

Instead, the administration moved to block all companies — except Siga — from bidding on a second offering of the contract.

In early December, officials completed a required "justification for other than full and open competition," which said an antiviral against smallpox was needed within five years and Siga was the only company able to meet that timetable.

The rationale was questioned by some in HHS, including contracting officer Brian K. Goodger, who in an internal email called it "a stretch."

On Feb. 18, HHS terminated the original contract and requested a proposal from Siga.

Siga and government officials soon began tangling over the price the company would be paid. Because the contract was no longer to be awarded based on competition and because the only customer was the government, officials sought to assess whether the company's proposed price was "fair and reasonable," as required by federal law.

In so doing, officials looked at how much government money had already gone into developing ST-246. Public records show $115 million in federal support, not including the stockpile contract.

After reviewing Siga's costs and the prices of other drugs produced in low volumes compared with commercial products, the HHS negotiators wanted to pay about $170 for each treatment. The company argued for more based on ST-246's potential value to the nation.

"Siga did not derive its price based on any cost information, and, from Siga's viewpoint, such information is not relevant to determination of an appropriate price," the company's chief financial officer, Daniel J. Luckshire, wrote to Lurie's office and others on March 4.

"Siga has created extremely valuable intellectual property, embodied in ST-246, and Siga has priced ST-246 based on the value of that intellectual property," Luckshire added.

After the two sides had conferred and again aired their differences, a senior HHS official, Michael A. Balady, told a colleague in an email April 4 that the negotiations "went extremely badly.… They are intransigent on price."

On April 6, Rose emailed the government's chief negotiator, D. Andre Early, saying the two sides were "at impasse." Rose said "any further negotiation should occur with a more senior official [with] the authority to take into account the important policy issues that surround this procurement."

Two days later, Lurie wrote her conciliatory letter to Rose, pledging to install a new lead negotiator. Her top subordinate, Balady, followed through by naming Goodger to replace Early, who continued to work on the contract but not as lead negotiator.

A financial analyst for RBC Capital Markets reported to investors in May that the agreed-upon price per dose appeared to be $255. He arrived at that estimate by dividing the $433-million contract by the 1.7 million doses to be delivered. Siga told The Times that this would give a rough approximation of the per-treatment price.

On May 13, HHS announced what amounted to the second awarding of the contract, worth between $433 million and $2.8 billion, depending on whether the government exercised options to buy more of the drug in future years. Siga hailed it as a "historic event for the biodefense industry."

FDA skepticism

Throughout the negotiations over price and profit, a separate issue loomed: uncertainty over whether the Food and Drug Administration would approve ST-246 for use in humans.

For more than a year, the enthusiasm of HHS officials for stockpiling the drug has stood in contrast to the skepticism of the FDA. The agency's stance is important because the contract requires Siga to develop its drug "for ultimate approval by the FDA."

In a June 2010 email, Gary Disbrow, a virologist in HHS' biomedical unit, shared with colleagues his assessment of where the FDA stood on the smallpox drugs being developed by Siga and Chimerix, the North Carolina company: "My interpretation of their current position is that there is NO foreseeable path to licensure."

The problem was the inherent limits of animal testing in determining whether the drugs would be safe and effective in fighting smallpox in humans. Researchers are prohibited from infecting humans with the virus.

In May of this year, Robert G. Kosko Jr., a manager in the FDA's antiviral-products division, wrote that there was "no clear regulatory path" for approving antiviral drugs for smallpox — again because of the uncertainty surrounding proof of effectiveness.

The FDA has scheduled a public meeting in December to discuss Siga's and Chimerix's drugs. Siga's contract requires it to conduct additional studies to seek the agency's approval.

Lurie said she hoped the FDA would ultimately approve ST-246. "We would not have gone ahead with a procurement unless we thought there was a pathway," she said.

Short shelf life

Unlike the smallpox vaccine, which remains potent for decades, Siga's drug is guaranteed for only 38 months.

The administration had intended to award Siga the exclusive option to replenish or expand the stockpile, but officials relented after Chimerix formally protested. In June, the government settled the dispute by dropping the exclusivity provision. That limited the value of Siga's contract to $433 million and meant that other companies could compete to fill future orders for the drug.

"Though unhappy about it, Eric [Rose of Siga] would rather remove the options than take the chance of possibly losing the protest and thus the entire contract," Goodger wrote to his superiors on June 11.

HHS officials, however, were concerned about how Siga might react. Goodger reassured his higher-ups that despite its disappointment, the company would not seek "any negative publicity."

WHEN WILL THIS ENTIRE ADMINISTRATION HAVE ALL OF ITS ACTIONS PUT UNDER THE MICROSCOPE AND HEADS START TO ROLL FOR ALL THE POINTLESS MONEY WASTED ON DEMOCRATIC DONORS???? OBAMA AND HIS MINIONS ARE SHAMELESSLY AND FRAUDULENTLY WASTING TAXPAYER FUNDS.

OBAMA IS THE BIG LOSER IN VIRGINIA ELECTIONS; EVEN THE DEMOCRATS CLAIM TO NEVER HEARD OF HIM-SIGN OF THE TIMES

2011-11-11T10:28:00.007-06:00

Obama will be NOBAMA with great margins if what happened in Virginia elections in 2011 proves out nationally.

Finally the electorate in Virginia, which is stacked with so called "white collar independents" showed Obama, and his Democrats the door.

Of all the noise of this week's state election results, what mattered most for Election 2012 came out of Virginia. It was the sound of the air leaking out of the Plouffe plan.

That would be David Plouffe, President Obama's former campaign manager and current senior strategist, who is focused today on how to cobble together 270 electoral votes for re-election. That's proving tough, what with the economy hurting Mr. Obama in states like Ohio, Indiana and Pennsylvania that he won in 2008. The White House's response has been to pin its hopes on a more roundabout path to electoral victory, one based on the Southern and Western states Mr. Obama also claimed in 2008.

States like Virginia. Mr. Obama was the first Democrat to win Virginia since 1964; he beat John McCain by seven percentage points; and he did so on the strength of his appeal to Northern Virginia's many white-collar independents. Along with victories in North Carolina, Colorado and Nevada, the Obama Old Dominion win in 2008 inspired a flurry of stories about how Democrats had forever altered the political map.

So the White House is pouring resources into what Tim Kaine, the state's former Democratic governor, now pridefully refers to as Democrats' "New Dominion." The Obama campaign has held some 1,600 events in the state in the last half-year alone. Only last month Mr. Obama hopped a three-day bus trip through Virginia and North Carolina. Obama officials keep flocking to the state, and Tuesday's election was to offer the first indication of how these efforts are succeeding.

Let's just say the New Dominion is looking an awful lot like the Old Dominion. If anything, more so.

Democrats were trounced in Tuesday's state legislature election, despite the president's heavy investment of time in the state.

Virginia Republicans added seven new seats to their majority in the House of Delegates, giving them two-thirds of that chamber's votes—the party's largest margin in history. The GOP also took over the Virginia Senate in results that were especially notable, given that Virginia Democrats this spring crafted an aggressive redistricting plan that had only one aim: providing a firewall against a Republican takeover of that chamber. Even that extreme gerrymander didn't work.

Every Republican incumbent—52 in the House, 15 in the Senate—won. The state GOP is looking at unified control over government for only the second time since the Civil War. This is after winning all three top statewide offices—including the election of Gov. Bob McDonnell—in 2009, and picking off three U.S. House Democrats in last year's midterms.

Topline figures aside, what ought to really concern the White House was the nature of the campaign, and the breakout of Tuesday's election data. Mr. Obama may have big plans for Virginia, but the question is increasingly: him and what army?

Elected state Democrats—who form the backbone of grass-roots movements—couldn't distance themselves far enough from Mr. Obama in this race. Most refused to mention the president, to defend his policies, or to appear with him. The more Republicans sought to nationalize the Virginia campaign, the more Democrats stressed local issues.

State House Minority Leader Ward Armstrong felt compelled to run an ad protesting that it was a "stretch" for his GOP opponent to "compare me to Barack Obama." After all, he was "pro-life, pro-gun and I always put Virginia first." (Mr. Armstrong lost on Tuesday.)

Virginia Democrats were happy to identify with one top official: Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell, who is providing a lesson in the benefits of smart GOP governance in battleground states. Criticized as being too socially conservative for Virginia when he was elected in 2009, Mr. McDonnell has won over voters by focusing on the economy and jobs. His approval ratings are in the 60s, and he helped raise some $5 million for local candidates. He's popular enough that Democrats took to including pictures of him in their campaign literature, and bragging that they'd worked with him.

Mr. McDonnell has been particularly adept at connecting with the independent, white-collar voters Mr. Obama used to win Virginia in 2008. That crowd lives in North Virginia's booming exurb counties of Prince William and Loudoun, and presidential races hinge on their votes. Mr. Obama's 2008 victory in Virginia rested on his significant wins in both Loudoun (8%) and Prince Williams (16%).

Yet Tuesday's results showed the extent to which that support has reversed. Loudoun in particular proved an unmitigated rout for Democrats. Republicans won or held three of four of the county's Senate seats. It swept all seven of the county's House seats. It won all nine slots on the county's Board of Supervisors, and pretty much every other county office. In Prince William, the story was much the same. This is what happens when a recent Quinnipiac poll shows Mr. Obama's approval rating among Virginia independents at 29%.

Democrats are now arguing that turnout (about 30%) was too low to prove anything, but then again, the particularly low Democratic turnout suggests that, on top of everything else, the White House really does face an enthusiasm gap.

How can anyone with a brain be enthusiastic about a Marxist moron destroying the American Dream for everyone.

NOBAMA, I CAN HARDLY WAIT TO VOTE 2012.

COMMENTS:

With all of Obama's lies, stimulus to DNC corruption, propaganda, distractions, dirty tricks, alinsky tactics and smear campaigns he can't hide his record of FAILURE from the American people:

“Mr. Obama has enacted myriad policies at great expense to American taxpayers and amid political rancor.”…
“The economic records set on Mr. Obama's watch really are historic. These include the first downgrade of sovereign U.S. debt in American history, and, relative to GDP, the highest federal spending in U.S. history save the peak years of World War II, plus the highest federal debt since just after World War II.
The employment picture doesn't look any better. The fraction of the population working is the lowest since 1983. Long-term unemployment is by far the highest since the Great Depression. Job growth during the first two years of recovery after a severe recession is the slowest in postwar history.
Moreover, the home-ownership rate is the lowest since 1965 and foreclosures are at a post-Depression high. And perhaps most ominously, the share of Americans paying income taxes is the lowest in the modern era, while dependency on government is the highest in U.S. history.
That's quite a record, although not what Mr. Obama and his supporters had in mind when they pronounced this presidency historic” Michael J. Boskin.

Vee Kay wrote:

I would suggest the Democrats continue to link themselves to the fleabag OWS demonstrations!! Who needs business when we are about to re-enter a recession, or rather step two of the Obama Depression....

Jim Souders replied:

A couple more have died in the OW camps. One in California was a murder. I am soooo glad O' Blamer and his democRats have indicated their support of this human garbage.

Tim Cogswell wrote:

Obama was a mistake from the start and honest Democrats will admit it.

Carl Palminteri replied:

Whoa!
'Honest" and "Democrat" in the same sentence?
How does that happen?

Jim Souders wrote:

Please, Lord, let this be a preview of the presidential election!
Steven Ahle wrote:

Gee, and this despite the fact that Debbie Wassername Schultz has said the Obama regime "owns the recovery", Reid saying that private sector workers are doing good and Nancy Pelosi saying without the stimulus we would have 15 million unemployed. No one believed them? Dang, what a shock.

Carl Palminteri wrote:

Hmmm....Nationalizing local races and forcing the Dems to either embrace or reject Obama.
Sounds eerily familiar to the recipe Bob Turner used in the NY 9th CD to capture that seat after Weiner resigned in disgrace.

Joseph Rosenberger wrote:

While my sense of the electorate is anecdotal, I'm hearing "I can't wait to vote" droplets splash onto and around political conversations and comments blogs. This meme reminds me of a welcome summer rain storm after a dusty August dog day’s drought.

Virginia had their cloud burst of fresh, smart voter rain and the rest of us want some too.

I can't wait to vote next year. Anybody but Obama.

1. Energy supply from only friendly suppliers who will not spend their profits against us.
2. Flat tax alternatives (like Hong Kong)
3. School vouchers
4. Medicare/Medicaid vouchers; no direct payments to health care providers.
5. Move all benevolent social services and safety net spending out of the general fund and into a national charitable trust; no t-bill "IOU's", everything means tested. End the Ponzi scheme; pay as we go.
6. End all federal guarantees of private loans for education and home ownership except for veterans; these are personal responsibilities.
7. Sell all non-monument / defense related federal lands to US citizens only.
8. Redeploy the troops from A-stan to the US-Mexican border and stop the flow of foreign citizen trespassing and drugs.

Just basic common-sense stuff.

michael lodge wrote:

To anyone capable of logical analysis, (this excludes liberals) Obama is the worst President in US history and a walking tragedy. His list of catastrophic failures grows weekly and now the Dems only strategy is to pretend they never heard of Obama.
Recommend
Virginians are among the most polished, educated and sophisticated citizens in the U.S. Like all of us - they have been presented with a President, who the major media has proclaimed to be the most brilliant and cerebral mind to occupy that office in decades, perhaps centuries. They have watched him demonstrate his own particular brand of leadership and style. They also listened as he told the world media that he couldn't communicate with leaders in Vienna because he "didn't speak Austrian." They have now had a chance to vote; the rest of us are waiting our turn.

frankn Liwop replied:

but he has been to all 57 states.......twice

GOVERNMENT NOW ADDS DIAPERS AS SOMETHING PEOPLE ARE ENTITLED TO GET FOR FREE; CRAZY DEMOCRAT BLUMENTHAL PROPOSES MORE GOVERNMENT HANDOUTS!

2011-11-03T10:32:00.005-05:00

Senate Democrat, newly elected moron, seeks federal funding for diapers.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), creepy guy if you remember his problems, even looks like the other pervert, Spitzer, introduced legislation that would allow federal block grants that states now use to subsidize child-care services to also allow for the purchase of diapers and "diapering supplies."

The bill, S. 1778, would amend the Child Care and Development Block Grant Act of 1990 to allow diapers and related supplies to be bought with grant money provided to states. Under current law, the money is meant to subsidize child-care services to parents who are entering the labor force or are in job training and education programs. It also helps subsidize child-care services for certain eligible families.

Under the law, 4 percent of all funds must be used to improve the quality of child-care. A summary of Blumenthal's bill indicates that it would allow the purchase of diapers under this provision, as it would "include the provision of diapers and diapering supplies among the activities for which funds may be employed to improve the quality of and access to child care."

The federal program, called the Child Care and Development Fund, received $5 billion in fiscal 2011, which it distributed to all 50 states, the District of Columbia and scores of tribal governments. The program now helps to provide for an estimated 1.8 million children each month.

The program also received an extra $2 billion under the 2009 stimulus bill.

COMMENTS:

“Politicians are like diapers; they need to be changed often and for the same reason.”

― Mark TwainBY SoquelCreek

So Democrats want to add diapers to the list of things Americans are entitled to? What has happened to this once great nation?BY Marie

Gee, when I had kids in daycare, I had to provide diapers for my kids. BY jb80538

Senators using our money for SHlT.
Go figure.BY Mark

MANDATORY STERILIZATION for ALL PARTICIPANTS of the PROGRAM !!!!!
CAN'T FEED or CLOTHE THEM—-DON'T BREED THEM YOU RATS!!!!!BY Common Sense

This one even those with limited intelligence should be able to understand…if you have no money…don't have kids. If you have no education…don't have kids. If you can name all the Kardashians…don't have kids. The rest of us, who pay the taxes, are sick of taking care of you and your spawns.BY Jenny

How did we survive 220 years before?
Sick. BY JWH

DemocRATS need stimulus for diapers because they spend so much of their energy sticking up our rears.BY Paolo

Why not buy cigs, beer, wine, sox, underwear, halloween masks, etc for everyone——WHEN/WHERE DOES THIS STUFF STOP. Do you not realize, the govt is luring you in ever closer to the ultimate "NANNY STATE". BY olde pablo

Thank goodness for the 2010 election. Nonsense like this is DOA in the House.BY Curmudgeon10

Really? Really? Couldn't find a better use for 7 Billion dollars then diapers? How about using that money to help homeowners that are underwater that are NOT backed by Freddie and Fanny who got their loans with REAL proof of income that are innocent sufferers in this economy that is no longer GWB's…BY chris

Ever hear of cloth diapers?…re-use, recycle, reclaim…duh!BY jack

Connecticut gave us the USS Nautilus, the first nuclear submarine. And now Senator Blumenthal. Thank you nutmeggers. Was the pro wrestling lady really worse than this guy?BY JR

Why not have the government provide EVERYTHING for us? We wouldn't even have to get out bed! The politicians would be able to do anything they please. I am going to be watching this vote very carefully. There may not be a happy ending for the dolts that vote for this.BY mrsharfer

"No Child Wet Behind"BY KenL

Why on earth are we the taxpayers paying for anyone else's child, little alone their diapers? If you can't afford kids… don't have them. BY RCM

I have four kids.
Not once did I ever look at my neighbor and figure, "You should be paying for my kids' diapers."BY Heat Seeker

Just another money laundering scheme for the Democrats, that leads to funding their campaigns. Yep. We, the American Taxpayer are funding the campaigns of the Democrats through our hard earned tax dollars. Illegal? You bet…so… who's going to be the first to investigate this?BY Donna

Seriously, I can't take this anymore. Their food, their housing, their medical expenses, their education, their job retraining, their Katrina cash cards and now their diapers. BTW, before anyone makes racist accusations toward me; "their" = LAZY AMERICANS of ALL races. ALL.BY ToledoJoe

Better stock up now, if diapers are subsidized, they will soon be costing $10 a piece.BY WetDiaper

So the US government is going to subsidize diapers only for child care parents, stay at home moms need not apply. BY Jake

Where does the Constitution give the authority to buy diapers!!!BY Ron

If these liberal loons had to spend their own money, they wouldn't propose stupid legislation like this.

THE PROBLEM is that they are spending other people's money and there is no motivation whatsoever for them to curb their out of control spending.

They are BUYING VOTES with the tax dollars confiscated from a rapidly diminishing work force.BY RealityBites

How come the taxpayers get to pay for the pre-natal, post natal, food, healthcare and now diapers for the little darlings but don't get the fun in making them?BY Bubba

This is the lying IDIOT that CT put into office.BY MTB

If this doesn't say "Nanny" state, I don't know what does!BY Sam

Next, the Dems will have us turn our children over at birth to suckle on the Govt. teat!!! This is what welfare breeds, GIMMEE, GIMMEE, GIMMEE!!!!!BY NOTAKOOLAIDDRINKER

The Nanny State grows larger by the minute.BY Mike D

So we really have become a nanny state. This is just ludicrous.BY maggier

All those welfare babies should be given a foreclosed house, college education funds, and the parent (if any) should be given $100,000 per year to live on.
It's not their fault they are stupid.BY bruce_almty

can't feed em
don't breed em !BY Billy DickWiggler

Democrats want cradle to grave dependency; he's just getting an early start.BY Kent

WHY DOES TAXPAYER HAVE TO PAY DIAPERS AND SUCH DON'T THESE NON WORKING PEOPLE GET ENOUGH MONEY AND FOOD STAMPS ALREADY, GIVE ME A BREAK I AM TRULY SICK OF THIS GOVERNMENT, I WILL BE SO GLAD WHEN ALL THERE CRIMES ARE BROUGHT TO JUSTICE,AND THEY CAN BE ROOM MATES WITH MADOFFBY ADNAWGIRL

Look a 100 weeks of unemployment pay…a billion + dollars in solar fantasy companies down the drain, billions and billions in obama's iraq, afganistan, uganda, libya, obamacare, etc, etc, whats the matter with a few diapers?BY steve mcfadden

Unbeliveable!!! ! Are we going to support everything. If you can't afford children you should NOT have them period!!! In case Washington didn't notice we are BROKE..quite ALL subsidies and spending everyone else's damn money!!!BY Steve A LegalCitizen

Our founders would be proud!BY LIBERTY NOW

Fer crying out loud…birth control.. …baby food…day care…diapers…what is this? "Adopt a kid" program by the federal government?
Comonnnnnn…when do you expect people to pay for their own kids?BY No one important

More money going to Acorn thugs.BY Mike

We can call it "The Diapers for Anchor Babies Act of 2011".

There was a time when people could support their own breed. And disposable diapers are expensive because they are luxuries. If you can't afford disposable diapers then buy a wash tub and some soap, and move to cloth diapers.BY JoeTheFilmmaker

Every cent they spend is BORROWED MONEY! Stop coming up with new ways to blow money! Better yet, stop trying to buy votes with other peoples money. We can't take it anymore. God help all of you next November. Time to update ur resumes. BY FedUp

The nanny state is already destroying us. More and more people receive handouts from the government and think that is the primary role of the state. The ones who don't currently get the handouts are figuring out ways to cash in on the 'free money'. We have a dependent class that is growing and generational. Try and push independence and self reliant with these slugs and see where it gets you. 47% of the people pay NO federal income taxes. The Chinese will simply buy us as we disarm so we can increase the number who receive entitlement checks. BY Perplexed

I guess liquor stores will now be selling diapers.BY Joe
Good.. gives me more money for my cell phone plan , booze and hair care products.. BY gram

HOMOSEXUAL SLUR USED BY HILDA SOLIS AGAINST TEA PARTY AT DIRECTION OF OBAMA; LOWLIFES TAKING OVER GOVERNMENT-TAKE IT BACK IN 2012 ELECTION!

2011-11-01T08:24:00.009-05:00

Carrying Water for Obama, Hilda Solis Picks a Fight with the Tea Party
By: Kevin Derby

With the team behind President Barack Obama targeting the Sunshine State in their bid for a second term in 2012, the White House sent U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis to speak to the Florida Democratic Convention on Saturday.

THIS DEPARTMENT SHOULD BE CALLED THE "THE DEPARTMENT OF UNION THUGS".

A day after Vice President Joe Biden told the convention at Walt Disney World that Obama needed to carry Florida to win in 2012, Solis attempted to rally Democrats for the elections and urged them to push for the Obama jobs plan which, with Republicans controlling the U.S. House, has no chance of passing Congress.

Speaking at a luncheon event on Saturday, Solis carried water for Obama, bashing Republicans and praising the administration’s economic policies.

Solis offered harsh words about conservatives. Looking at 2012, Solis slammed the tea party movement, calling them “teabaggers” and promising the Obama administration will take them on.

What has not be criticized or even mentioned is that "teabggers", is a homosexual slur term...look it up, and the Democrats including the moron President, Vice president and other in the administration, have been freely using it!

Combating the noise of a crowd often more concerned with holding their own conversations and eating their lunches than listening to her speech, Solis attempted to defend the Obama economic policies, praising the federal stimulus that the White House backed and the president’s job plan.

Solis claimed that the Obama job plan was backed by 65 percent of the American people and would “put 2 million people, especially construction workers, back to work.”

Besides attempting to sell the Obama jobs plan, Solis took aim at the Republicans. She attacked Republican Gov. Rick Scott’s labor policies, arguing that he is looking to take away collective bargaining and other rights from public-sector employees.

Solis accused Republicans in Florida and other states, including Ohio and Wisconsin, of “picking on” teachers, police officers and other government workers.

Blaming globalization and market changes for the decline of organized labor in the private sector, Solis conceded that government workers retained strong unions. “We’ve seen the movement in the labor house diminish in the private sector,” said Solis.

Solis urged the crowd to back Obama and his jobs plan.“You need to understand that this president is fighting for you,” she insisted. Make that fighting against you, dummy, Ms. Solis!

When Obama took the oath of office in January 2009, the national unemployment rate stood at 7.6 percent. In September 2011, the national unemployment rate was 9.1 percent. Or, in the alternative about 20% when you add the real people not working including those that gave up looking.

The unemployment rate is not calculated using real numbers, it is an estimate and also uses random phone surveys...how accurate is that?

Also based on the fact that this is the most incompetent administration ever, and has lied about everything, can we trust them with such an important statistic?

COMMENTS:

BMF
Good Lord. You don't normally expect this kind of base rhetoric from the Cabinet. But, Obama and Biden have eliminated decorum from the Executive Branch.

It's like we have a mob mentality running the country.

Don
Don't you folks have a bunch of hungry alligators there?
May as well feed her to them. Wait...that would be animal cruelty.

terryatrae
What has she got against homosexuals? All these lefty's keep referring to these sexual preferences and it shows just how homophobic they are.

IrvTheLiquidator
I don't understand why people in opposition call the Tea Party folks "tea baggers." If the opposition is a tea bagger then you must be a tea bagee. I have to say I would much rather be a tea bagger than a tea bagee...

gr29az
I hope statements like these keep on coming. It will only solidify my fellow right wing racist bigoted tea party s.o.b.’s even more. Nov 2012 is right around the corner. it will make Nov 2010 look like a walk in the park.

tim
The TEA party is ready, willing an anxious to save our country from these despicable arrogant selfish greedy classless people who think they know how to run our lives better then we do.

Tony Consalvo
If bullshit was poetry, Solis would be the next Longfellow. Now she is just an incompetent and racist fool.

stukinIL4now
So the Labor Secretary emphasizes that among the 2 million that stimuslush will put back to work are "especially construction workers"--duh, Ms. Labor Secretary, are they really anywhere near the most unemployed of workers in this country?

No, since she goes on to further to emphasize the "decline of organized labor in the private sector" because all she and this corrupt administration have their eyes on is the cold cash they need to fill their campaign coffers with from UNIONS. She's just one more of Ogreedy's slacker/flunky campaigners paid for courtesy of the American taxpayer.

Pink Floyd Fan
Funny how the left can get away with insulting names for righties. But just let one righty call a lefty a libtard the poopy would hit the fan.

Fidlin1
You guys just don't get it, fear tactics and insults don't work. Sixty five percent of the American people don't approve of the Obama Plan. We don't want the Government involved in our business, we don't want you regulating of us out of business so you can stick your nose in ours. You're going down and big in '12 and all the Czars and this administration better get their resumes together to compete with the real America we all believe in. D.C.'s going to be in your rear view mirror shortly. Good riddance Scumbaggers.

Sparky222
A desperate plea from a desperate administration. The failure of an economy directed by government is everywhere, on Earth evident. The Tea Party solution is the Federal Government must operate within the confines of the Constitution is the correct path. "For satisfactory results, use (the Constitution) as directed (by the Constitution)."

Justin
You can call them teabaggers all you want because they all call Obama a one term president. Who is right remains to be seen.

GNACDAK
Where is the media? Lost again? Calling me a TEABAGGER - is OFFENSIVE. To me it is the equivalent of the "N" word to a blackman.
What a double standard the Dems live by.

Mitch MO FKIN Van Damme
I LOVE it when they use the term "teabagger", Teabagging is an activity, and it is NOT homosexual in nature at all, Females can be teabagged. The action of teabagging involves two people, A "teabagger" and a "teabagee" , if we are the "teabaggers", that means we are placing our jewels into the mouth of the "teabagee", meaning the liberals, are the "teabagees", So...with that said, Open wide for 2012 communists.

Dems R Commies
So I guess Flea Baggers is appropriate for the OWS pukes.

INDEPNMS
Hilda Solis does have it right. Obama is working for "them" the federal and state union member employees. What Hilda apparently doesn't seem to know is that it is the various states(in junction with local municipalities) that hire and fire teachers, police, firefighters, etc. Since the founding of our nation, the process of statehood and municipal incorporation have guided this with the premise that revenues are generated by local property and sales taxes. Obama's jobs bill is only going to prop up the unions long enough to get through this election cycle. The hard decisions are being and will be made after the "Obama candy" runs out in less than a year. In the mean time, states and municipallities do not have the true economic stimulus in the form of regulatory reduction and tax reform that they need in the private sector of their localized economies. If a true economic policy was in place other than tax and spend, there would suffiicent local and state revenues to sustain these local and state government employees. Solis, like so many elitist liberals, have the entire principles of sound economics backwards. Ultimately, the only job Solis and her ilk are interested in preserving is her/their own. Let's provide them a fresh private sector experience in 2012 by voting them out FOREVER!

Chris Alexander
When is this administration going to start leading and stop the name calling and pitting American against American? Leadership is about convincing people you are right, not picking fights with those who disagree. It is shameful what is happening in today's government.

Dick Large
Solis .................... a circus clown living in a ferry tail, what was that unemployment number 7.6 when the circus came to town and now 9.1 ... Yes that is change for sure ..... NEWS FLASH!!!! higher numbers MEAN it is WORSE.........

Angel
I think it is amazing the hypocrisy politicians play. On one hand you have the Tea Party who was organized, paid for permits, paid for security, paid for toilets, and basically paid for everything needed to express themselves in a civil manner regarding the status of our country.

Now we have this administration and other politicians backing up these Occupy Movements. These folks have not paid for a darn thing; they want it all free. In the mean time cities are running up a tab watching out for them. This administration backs up companies who have been defaulting on government loans and just wants to write it off.

Where is the fairness across the board? There is none. They are out to destroy the middle class. There are so many rich people in the U.S. Once they are tapped dry the next target will be the middle class.

DH
Did someone call her a shriveled up old communist lesbian? How can she get away with this unanswered? I don't understand the hypocrisy surrounding the opponents of tea party members. They can make homosexual insulting references disparaging a Tea Party member's character but don't you dare say something about any protected class. That's completely taboo and should be dealt with by having Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton shake the offender down.

debra booth
How sad that they chose Disney world to spew their b.s. what a way to ruin someone's vacation. what's-her-face should've walked around incognito; maybe in goofy's costume so she could hear what people really think of her & Barry's agenda

marg1
Bring it on, Barry--we're ready to fight you FLEABAGGERS.

grant olson
I find it beneath the office of a US cabinet member to refer to an opponent using a crude and offensive term. A "teabagger," according to the Huffington Post, is defined as: a man who dips his testicles into the mouth of another person (as if dipping a tea bag into hot water).

Although the left will claim the term has other meanings, it is clear they are using the term derogatorily with the above intent in mind.

Don Woods
What a peach Hilda is. If the idiot in the White House had any decency he would fire her for such remarks. Sadly, neither Obama nor any of his administration has any decency. I have never heard politicians call potential voters vile names before. Hopefully the American people will throw these fools out in 2012.

eve from eden
Construction workers need shovel ready jobs so to speak and we know jive turkey in charge laughed about that. You have to learn a foreign language to get a job. LIES Tea bagging is a filthy sexual term so why does the puke say nasty stuff like that?

poorhardworker
Someone should wash her mouth out with soap and then take her task for using such a word to describe a group. Totally unacceptable and shows what a low class person this "water carrier" is. And then to heap lies on top? Obama has ONLY helped cronies and unions. And unions are one reason we no longer manufacture things in this country. Another reason is because government has become to restrictive for businesses to risk capital. And teachers? We have thrown away so much money in education and our children are not getting smarter. Get a grip...get out of businesses way because they are the only ones who create jobs. Government only siphons off money...and they are getting rich managing our hard earned tax dollars.

american-american
How can you say 65% of the people support Obama's jobs bill when there is not 60% who support Obama?

Thomas Newman
Obama does not work for my best interest. I'm not a public sector employee. His plan only benefits public sector unions that in turn donate to him and his political machine through union donations(yes I belong to a non public sector union). With the average government worker earning 140,000/year off the backs of the tax payers they need to be curbed.

wboehmer
Labor Secretary Hilda Solis is dumber than a box of rocks.

The American Jobs Act = 2 million jobs, she says . . . even if true, that's $225,000 per temporary, make-work job. Who in their right mind could ever think that's a good idea?

Janis
The "useful idiot" is just preaching to Obama's choir. That's all that's left (pun intended) to them. "Their chickens have come home to roost", cackle, cackle, blah, blah & yuk, yuking to the old hippies and their commie offspring.

DaveB
What a despicable but entirely predictatble thing for a cabinet member in this administration to say. She evidently has intimate knowledge of teabagging. A shameful, despicable group has infiltrated our government. Absolutely vile.

Vanguard
More divisiveness and derogatory insults coming from the left. You leftists have no shame in light of your support for the nasty vile criminal animals infesting the OWS crowd. You people don't deserve a seat in political governance, you can't even act right or talk to people properly. Sickening. Most of you democrats will all be out of work in 2012.

Perspective
I am always so impressed with the class and quality of Obama appointees. So proud of them to be our government leaders!! Solis is a shining light of what Americans want their kids to grow up to be ( sarcasm off finally)....foolish ideologues who have studied Alinsky very, very well and blindly follow the dreams "of their fathers"... while leading the USA off the cliff of Marxism.

Just praying we survive until Jan 2013 when we can finally start rolling back the damage.

No One Important
Always nice to see the cabinet members now insulting representatives that represent a "majority" of the nation now (they do have a majority in the house). . . . .always a good move. . . .insult Americans. . . . .is Hilda an illegal alien, like Obama's other relatives in the USA???

Tom McCue
I wonder why Solis didn't mention that federal workers don't have the same bargaining rights as the state workers to whom she was speaking?

DaveB
It astonishes me that a cabinet secretary is calling any group a name associated with a gay sex act. Perhaps she has some experience with it. What a shameful, despicable crowd in this White House. Utterly disgusting.

TxSon
It is high time the public and media started challenging these leftist attack dogs using such derogatory terms about patriotic American citizens. Where's the civility the Big O demands. Funny how the left only care about civility when they are challenged on their "facts".

I'm sick and tired of the left being allowed to be as inciting, hateful, racist, and insulting as they want to be without being called out and put down by their leaders and media.

Big Dog
Isn't it amazing that these people will disparage the TEA Party, a group that obeys the law and is peaceful, by calling them a sexually explicit name and all the while they will support the Occupy crowd. The FLEA (Free Loading Enemy of America) baggers commit rape, violence, vandalism, drug use and assault and the liberals love them.

It is also amazing that the keep screaming that the stimulus worked (so well we need more) and that it is supported when most people do NOT support it. As for public sector unions, no bargaining. We pay them and we should decide. They should not be able to launder money through their groups back to the Democrats.

Ken
The re-election there for Obama seems to be, send in the Boss, then the buffooms, then send in the clowns.
Obama makes a Florida appearance, then sends in Obiden, and finally organized labor. I wonder how else they are going to buy Florida votes. A chicken in every pot? Payouts to government workers?
God luck to a bad idea, heh.

Lipstick
Another Teabagger fool. The more you criticize us the stronger we get. I guess you like masturbating protesters on Wall Street better. How will this put construction workers back to work. It's the same recycled mess you spent before and no jobs came from that. Do Dems think all people are stupid as the democratic party is? The more Washington spends the worse it gets here on Main St. If they were poor and worked for a living they would see it just like we do and stop what they are doing. Unless they truly do wish to hurt the American People. I bet most of these folks ruling over us have never worked at any of the jobs where we are hurting today yesterday and will still be hurting from tomorrow. 2012 cannot come fast enough for me. It is truly time for a change and Herman Cain is the man.

slwrig2
Once again the regime displays it hypocrisy and arrogance. These Marxist want to destroy America!!!!!!!

Earl Lee Swagger
Very, very little of what the Obama or the members of the Ad. does or says is going to be believed. To little, to late. Even the Dem. are falling away. ABBO is now the word on the street. Individuals know that the Pres. is campaigning with hollow words, or worst.

NEED WE SAY MORE??? This is what happens when a dummy runs the country! Live and learn from this mistake my fellow Americans. Mark that calendar in November 2012, and get your friends to come out and vote this Moron out.

US GOVERMENT LOSES $40 BILLION IN CASH THAT WAS SHIPPED TO IRAQ; AS USUAL INCOMPETENCE RULES THE GOVERNMENT!

2011-10-27T08:09:00.007-05:00

It has been called the largest airborne transfer of currency in the history of the world. But finding out what happened to all the money involved has become one of the biggest financial mysteries of all time.

Source: CNBC Sources
US troops get ready to unload cash transported inside Iraq by helicopter.

Beginning in the very earliest days of the war in Iraq, the New York Federal Reserve shipped billions of dollars in physical cash to Baghdad to pay for the reopening of the government and restoration of basic services.

The money was packed onto pallets inside a heavily guarded New York Federal Reserve compound in East Rutherford, New Jersey, trucked to Andrews Air Force Base outside of Washington, and flown by military aircraft to Baghdad International Airport.

By one account, the New York Fed shipped about $40 billion in cash between 2003 and 2008. In just the first two years, the shipments included more than 281 million individual bills weighing a total of 363 tons. But soon after the money arrived in the chaos of war-torn Baghdad, the paper trail documenting who controlled it all began to go cold.

Since then, investigators have spent years trying to trace what happened to the enormous amount of money shipped in the frantic days of the occupation of Iraq. Although there have been hundreds of pages of reports, Congressional hearings, and inquiries from Washington to Baghdad, no one in Congress, a special inspector general’s office, the Department of Defense or the Iraqi government itself can say with certainty what exactly happened to all of that money.

Much of it may have been spent on the things it was intended for—but billions of dollars may have simply been stolen. The thefts likely ranged from complicated contracting schemes to brazen appropriations of billions in cash still in their New York Fed plastic wrappers.

Source: CNBC Sources
US military officers in front of billions of dollars in cash inside the vault of the Central Bank of Iraq.

To find out what happened, a special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction has focused on the chain of custody—who was responsible for the money, minute by minute, as it made its way to Baghdad.

And although the money was handled by a variety of trained American officials and military officers in the first legs of its trip halfway around the world, CNBC has learned that something unusual happened on the Baghdad side of the transaction: Each of the money flights to Baghdad was met at the airport in Iraq by the same man.

The previously unknown Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) official was tasked with picking up the bales of billions as they were unloaded from C-17s and arranging for them to get to the Central Bank of Iraq in downtown Baghdad. It was a perilous journey of about seven miles over a road the U.S. military called “Route Irish” through territory often controlled by insurgents. Travelers faced the threat of rocket propelled grenades, mortars, car bombs and IEDs.

Transit was so dangerous that returning American GI’s often posted YouTube videos of their trips on Route Irish, just for the bragging rights of having been there.

The CPA official was a stocky, middle-aged naturalized American citizen of Lebanese descent who was born in Saudi Arabia. His first name is Basel. At his request, CNBC has agreed to withhold his last name from this story. Basel ferried cash in Baghdad for the CPA and the American embassy from 2003 until 2008—all told handling, he said, about $40 billion in cash.

His job made him the very last American to see that money before it disappeared into the vaults at the Central Bank of Iraq. And it may have made him the only person in the history of the world to oversee the movement of $40 billion in a combat zone.

It doesn’t seem that anyone in the US government planned ahead of time to put so much responsibility—and temptation—into the hands of just one man. Former Republican Connecticut Congressman Christopher Shays co-chaired the Commission on Wartime Contracting, digging into waste, fraud and abuse in Iraq. He has traveled to Iraq scores of times to oversee US efforts there. Shays did a double take when CNBC told him how much money Basel said he handled in Iraq.

“Wait, one person?” Shays asked. “One person received $40 billion?”

Asked what he thinks about that, Shays said, “It just blows you away.”

The enormous undertaking of moving the billions began in the heavily guarded Federal Reserve compound on 100 Orchard Street in East Rutherford, NJ. There, carefully screened employees loaded pallets of cash into tractor-trailers for their journey down I-95 toward Washington, DC. The money came from an account held at the New York Fed called the “Development Fund for Iraq” which was made up of billions of dollars in Saddam Hussein’s financial assets that had been frozen under various US and global sanctions regimes. They weren’t taxpayer dollars, but the US government was responsible for making sure they got where they were going.

Source: CNBC Sources
Aircraft unloading bales of cash slated for transfer to the Central Bank of Iraq.

A typical pallet held 640 bundles, which the handlers called “bricks,” with a thousand bills in each bundle. Each pallet weighed 1,500 pounds, and they were separated by color. Gold seals were used for $100 bills, brown seals held $50 bills, purple seals $20, and so on.

The operation was handled with the utmost secrecy—just imagine what could have happened if the mafia found out which trucks held the money. The chain of custody of the cash was rigorously documented as it left the custody of the New York Fed and was signed over to Air Force officers, who oversaw the loading of C-17 transport planes and flew with the bales of money on the long flight to Baghdad. When the cargo holds were unloaded in Baghdad, Basel was there. But his presence on the receiving end of the largest airborne currency transfer in history began almost entirely by accident.

As a fluent speaker of multiple Arabic dialects, Basel had come to Iraq as a civilian with the American military. Both he and his former boss say Basel was sitting in a waiting area in Saddam Hussein’s palace in early 2003, waiting for his first assignment. While he was waiting, a US Treasury official burst into the room, looking for a translator.

“I have a situation here,” the official said. Basel raised his hand to help.

Soon he found himself wrangling with a crew of Iraqi truck drivers who had been told to make a delivery to the Central Bank of Iraq. But the bank was closed for the night, and they did not understand the instructions their American overseers were trying to impart about where to store their trucks. Basel intervened, untangling the confusion.

Impressed, the Treasury official, David Nummy, recruited Basel on the spot. Nummy said he soon put Basel in charge of meeting the cash flights from Washington at Baghdad airport, largely because he found Basel to be trustworthy. “He proved himself to be very reliable,” Nummy said of Basel in an interview with CNBC. “Very competent. Very committed and he performed a great service during the time that I was there.”

“I'm not surprised that he turned out as good as he did,” Nummy said. “I think its … one of many examples we hear of people being in the right place at the right time and find their calling really by circumstance.”

Source: CNBC Sources
Pallets of cash unloaded on to the tarmac at Baghdad International Airport.

Basel said he brought two senior Iraqi government officials with him to the airport for each flight, and those people signed receipts presented by the Air Force officials for the money, witnessing each other’s signature. It was for the government’s protection—and his own. Basel wanted to be able to prove that he had turned over the money as promised. But in the chaos of war planning, no one seems to have thought about paperwork. Basel said the CPA didn’t give him any forms or documents with which to record the transfer of the billions. So he wrote up his own, using Microsoft Word.

One document Basel showed CNBC was a one-page receipt of shipment for a billion-dollar delivery in April of 2006. Basel typed it up himself. It read, in part: “This is to testify that we, the undersigned, have received in our custody from [Basel’s full name] … the total amount of USD 1,000,000,000.00 (United States Dollars One Billion Only).” At the bottom were the hastily scrawled signatures of two officials of the Central Bank of Iraq.

“Its my neck on the line,” Basel said. “I documented the hell out of this.” With the Iraqi government signatures in place, the money was in legal custody of the government of Iraq from the instant it was unloaded from the C-17s. It was Basel’s job to make sure it stayed that way, at least until it got to the vaults of the Central Bank of Iraq.

Though he said he had no formal security training, Basel demonstrated a flair for subterfuge. Knowing a successful heist of the cash would be a momentum-shifting bonanza for the growing Iraqi insurgency, Basel rolled out a variety of tricks to keep the insurgents from figuring out just how much cash was moving right past them. He didn’t repeat the same configuration of trucks and cars to carry the money, so any watching insurgents or criminals wouldn’t be able to pin down a pattern of which vehicles carried cash. On some of the most dangerous missions, he eschewed the bristling military security convoys that would be a sure sign that something important was being shipped.

Source: CNBC Sources
Iraqi couriers make a dangerous transfer of cash on the open road.

He worked on scheduling the timing of the flights, so they wouldn’t arrive in Baghdad at a dangerous moment. He hired scouts to park on overpasses and drive the route ahead of the convoy to report on suspicious activity. And he used jammers to block the cell phone signals of any insurgents who tried to call in details of the convoy’s movement or trigger a bomb in the roadway.

On one billion-dollar run, Basel used garbage trucks to throw the insurgents off the trail. “I hired garbage trucks, and in the back of the garbage truck you had $1 billion dollars.” Basel said. “And I was in the front with a gun pointed at the driver. I said to him, ‘don't try anything funny. If everything goes well, you'll make $1,000. If you make a move, I'll kill you right here and drive the rest of the way myself.’”

He said the drivers he hired were thrilled to get $1,000, and that none ever tried to steal a single bill. It helped, he said, that he never used the same driver twice.

And he was not averse to using force. “I am willing and able to engage any entity,” said. “I will open fire first and ask questions later.” He held a firm belief in overwhelming firepower. “If you want to mess with a .50 cal (machine gun), go ahead and be my guest. You will lose every time.”

Basel’s Baghdad job came with enormous risks. At one point, the insurgents placed a million-dollar bounty on his head. At another, the Iraqi government issued a warrant for his arrest. Basel laughs off both incidents, saying the bounty should have been higher, and that the arrest warrant was a political trap designed to damage his credibility.

Source: CNBC Sources
Insurgents often attacked convoy on "Route Irish" whether they knew the contents onboard or not.

He said through all that, he never lost a shipment. “My record shows, you give Basel $10 billion to deliver, and Basel delivers $10 billion plus $400,” he said. “I delivered more money than I received.” That was possible, he explained, because the U.S. military came to him with any cash they found during nighttime raids on insurgent hideouts. Figuring that money rightly belonged to the Iraqi government, Basel said he delivered it to the Central Bank along with the pallets of cash from the New York Fed.

Basel said he didn’t steal any of the Baghdad billions, but he knows who stole at least some of it.

Asked whether he thinks any of the money he delivered was stolen or misappropriated, Basel said, “absolutely, without a doubt.” But asked who stole it, he said, “I’m sure I have an idea, but I can’t name names.” That’s because, he explained quietly, “I have a wife and family to worry about.”
When CNBC showed up in front of the East Rutherford Operations Center of the New York Fed to record a video segment for this story, police officers working for the Fed shooed our camera crew off the driveway and onto a small strip of public land that abuts the facility. Later, when we returned to our cars in the parking lot of a nearby convenience store, three police cars— including an unmarked car—blocked our exit. A local police officer politely asked us who we were and why we were taking pictures of the Fed. Satisfied that we were who we said we were, he let us go.

Such high-alert security is understandable, given the huge amounts of currency processed at the sleek modern facility, which was opened in 1992. The accounts held there for the Iraqi government alone are enormous. Despite the $40 billion Basel said he has distributed to the Central Bank of Iraq over the years, the value of the accounts at the New York Fed haven’t gone down—they’ve gone up.

RELATED LINKS

NY Fed Won't Say How Much Money Went to Iraq

That’s because the government of Iraq continues to pour the proceeds of its newly refurbished oil industry into its accounts at the Fed in New York. In April, the Iraqi government informed the UN security council that it was going to open a new account at the Fed to replace the Development Fund for Iraq account that had been established years earlier. Baghdad will continue to operate a second account, called the “Oil Proceeds Receipts Account” that serves as a cash reserve for the Iraqi Central Bank, supporting the Iraqi currency.

The New York Fed is experienced at this sort of thing—it also holds billions in reserves for a slew of other countries around the world. The New York Fed’s website explains that it offers custodial accounts for foreign government cash and “vault services” services for their gold. The Fed invests the money in “overnight repurchase agreements, or U.S. Treasury and agency securities. The Federal Reserve does not give investment advice.”

Officials at the Fed declined to comment for this story, even to confirm the existence of Iraqi accounts it holds. But publicly, the Fed says that taken together, its gold holdings “constitute the world's largest concentration of monetary gold; the U.S. Treasury's depository at Fort Knox, Kentucky, is the second largest.”

To this day, say several sources, the New York Fed is still rolling trucks filled with bills to Baghdad. According to one source familiar with the Central Bank of Iraq, the amounts are much smaller now than they were in the early days of the war.

Many people in Iraq like to hold dollars instead of dinars. And the Central Bank sells dollars for Iraqi dinars at a fixed exchange rate in auctions it holds on most business days. According to the Central Bank of Iraq, for example, on September 12th 2011, it sold $12.3 million in cash at auction.

As for Basel, his experiences in Iraq opened up huge new opportunities for him around the world. Before the war, he lived in a modest townhouse in suburban Centreville, VA, outside of Washington, DC. But Basel didn’t return to the United States after his time in Baghdad. Instead, he set himself up as one of the world’s leading experts in transporting cash in war zones, operating a business out of his new home of Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, where we sat down with him for an interview.

Today, Basel says he is planning a trip to Sudan, and is negotiating for a contract to transport billions of dollars in cash into newly liberated Libya.

The man who escorted $40 billion says he still needs to earn a living.

CNBC 360 TV

OBAMA STEALS FROM TAXPAYERS AGAIN TO DISGUISE BAD STUDENT LOANS AND OVERPRICED COLLEGES-TAXPAYERS LOSE AGAIN, AND LOSE BIG!

2011-10-27T07:46:00.005-05:00

Obama Taps Taxpayers For Student Stimulus

Obama Looks to Wring Stimulus From Saturated Student Loan Market

“$1 Trillion” Can be lost eventually or more!

That's the estimated amount of student loan debt owed by Americans.

In keeping with his new campaign theme of “we can’t wait,” President Obama today will roll out a plan to put more money in the pockets of some of the nation’s 36 million student loan recipients, and less for taxpayers.

Obama has broad latitude in this area – certainly broader than the first two parts of his western campaign trip, underwater mortgages and subsidies for hiring veterans – because one of his early legislative initiatives was to have the federal government take over the student lending business in America. This takeover has been a disaster, as all Federal programs.

Obama argued for the measure in 2009 as a cost-savings initiative, saying that the old system of privately issued, government secured loans reduced the amount of available money for needy students and also prevented the feds from making the system more efficient.

Allow me to shed some light on this more efficient program.

Someone in my family was enrolling in a private university which cost about $30,000 annually, and even though qualified for substantial scholarships and grants, the total still came about $10,000 short for each school year.

The information package from the school provided a breakdown of the shortfall and described how it could be covered though various "loans" that the student qualified for if he filled in some forms. No forms were filled out as the student decided to forgo entry into the university until next year.

Nonetheless, automatically, the loans were processed, and a check was about to be mailed to the university for the $10,000...it took calls and letters to the university and the loan processors to stop it! That's efficiency, now that the government was taking over the program! I would like to see under what legal doctrine would this student be liable for this loan repayment, if he never agreed to anything or signed anything? This is probably another "SOLYNDRA" waiting to happen.

But Obama is now seeking to use that new power to obtain a taxpayer-financed stimulus that Congress won’t approve. The idea is to cap student loan repayment rates at 10 percent of a debtor’s income that goes above the poverty line, and then limiting the life of a loan to 20 years.

Take this example: If Suzy Creamcheese gets into George Washington University and borrows from the government the requisite $212,000 to obtain an undergraduate degree, her repayment schedule will be based on what she earns. If Suzy opts to heed the president’s call for public service, and takes a job as a city social worker earning $25,000, her payments would be limited to $1,411 a year after the $10,890 of poverty-level income is subtracted from her total exposure.

Twenty years at that rate would have taxpayers recoup only $28,220 of their $212,000 loan to Suzy.

The president will also allow student debtors to refinance and consolidate loans on more favorable terms, further decreasing the payoff for taxpayers.

Obama’s move comes at a moment when many economists are warning of a college debt bubble that is distorting college tuition rates and threatening to further damage credit markets. The president’s move is intended to make college more affordable for more people, which will, in turn allow universities to jack up their rates.

As in the housing bubble, cheap credit on easy terms increases the amount of money chasing the product (in this case a diploma) allowing schools to increase prices. This inflation makes it harder for middle-class families to afford paying their own tuition, driving them into the government financing program, which, you guessed it, drives up costs further still.

Obama’s goals, aside from continuing to encourage young people to spurn the private sector in favor of service jobs, is to try to juice the economy. Those who participate in the program could see their monthly incomes rise by hundreds of dollars, thereby increasing the money they have to buy stuff and try to juice the economy.

A more modest program already in place has been a bit of a bust with only 1.25 percent of debtors signing up, likely because of the unpleasant notion of additional paperwork and government reporting hassles. But by sweetening the deal and putting a big PR push behind it, Obama is betting that he can get people spending in time to help shore up his re-election chances.

The best part for Obama is that he can obligate the Treasury without Congressional approval thanks to the passage of what he described as a cost-saving measure in 2009.

Update: White House Responds

A White House official responds to Power Play, saying that the president's student loan action will "almost certainly reduce" deficit spending because of the savings the administration says will be achieved by a 2010 federal college lending takeover and what the administration believes will be a lower rate of default among student debtors due to lower lending rates.

The official also stressed that the loan program is only an expedited version of the forgiveness and refinancing rules enacted by President Obama and congressional Democrats in 2010. The original law calls for the end of participants’ obligations after 25 years and caps payments at 15 percent of a debtor’s income above the poverty line.

That legislation, passed in the Senate as a rider on the president’s health law in order to use the reconciliation process that requires 50 votes instead of the usual 60 votes due to bipartisan opposition, was promised to reduce federal outlays by $68 billion over the next decade, monies which were earmarked for cost savings and an expansion of the Pell Grant program for needy college students. The funds for the stimulus endeavor announced by the president in Denver on Wednesday are said to be drawn from that cache.

IF YOU BELIEVE ANYTHING THAT THE WHITE HOUSE AND OBAMA SAY, I HAVE A BRIDGE IN BROOKLYN YOU MAY WANT TO BUY.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/10/26/obama-taps-taxpayers-for-student-stimulus/#ixzz1bzAzmzcf

BLOATED UNION SALARIES FOR STATE WORKERS INFURIATE TAXPAYERS ALL OVER THE COUNTRY: $500,000 FOR VACATION PAY ?

2011-10-26T14:12:00.007-05:00

Nurse Making $270,000 in California, a retiring doctor collects $590,000 in vacation pay!

California runs the nation’s largest correctional system, with about 161,000 inmates. The U.S. Supreme Court, citing overcrowding and inadequate health care, ordered the state to reduce the prison population by 33,000 in two years.

Collective-bargaining rights granted to state workers by Governor Jerry Brown, a 73-year-old Democrat, when he first held the office three decades ago made it more difficult to pursue cost-cutting measures such as eliminating extra pay allowances or privatizing prisons. Photographer: Ken James/Bloomberg

Jean Keller earned $269,810 last year working as a nurse at a men’s prison on California’s central coast by tripling her regular pay with overtime hours.

Keller got more overtime in 2010 than any other state employee. In all, California’s public workers collected $1.7 billion of extra pay last year, more than half of it in overtime, state payroll data show. The rest was for unused vacation and union-negotiated benefits such as clothing allowances, physical-fitness incentives and special compensation in recognition of a “complex work load.”

“It’s outrageous,” said 29-year-old Gilbert Ramirez, one of about 30,000 teachers fired in California since 2007 because of budget cuts. “It boils my blood that I’m out of work and they claim they don’t have enough money to pay me.”

California paid the additional wages -- enough to fund the average salaries of about 25,000 teachers -- as it faced a $19 billion deficit and cut school spending and services for poor children and the elderly. The state may have to trim the academic year by seven days and eliminate some student busing if revenue shortfalls persist.

The extra compensation underscores a broader trend in California, where government workers are paid more than in other states for similar duties. Among them: city managers whose pay is higher than the governor’s, prison doctors who make more than counterparts in other states and Los Angeles firefighters who collect twice the national mean.

Union-negotiated “pay differentials,” requirements that workers take monthly furloughs and staff cuts that heaped extra work onto remaining employees combined to inflate overtime and other non-salaried pay, the data show. So did inefficiencies in management of state departments, said Dan Pellissier, a deputy cabinet secretary under former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

“It’s just a mess,” said Pellissier, now head of a group pushing for changes in public employee pensions. “The way the state establishes its pay classifications is very complex and often obscure. What we need is transparency and disclosure and a fair accounting of what those costs are so we know if we are paying the right amount for labor.”

Among those who got large payouts are a prison doctor who cashed out more than $590,000 of vacation time when he retired, a computer specialist in the Legislature’s legal office who got $61,905 in overtime on top of his $71,560 salary, a psychiatrist for the Developmental Services Department who received $97,700 in extra-duty pay and the head of the state gambling commission, who banked $169,623 in unused holiday pay.

Collective-bargaining rights granted to state workers by Governor Jerry Brown, a 73-year-old Democrat, when he first held the office three decades ago made it more difficult to pursue cost-cutting measures such as eliminating extra pay allowances or privatizing prisons.

Union-backed provisions, among other things, allow employees to collect as much as $1,200 in “arduous duty” pay for projects requiring long hours and, in the case of prison guards, receive a $130-a-month fitness bonus for getting annual physical exams, even if they aren’t fit.

“I’m so angry as a taxpayer,” said Marilyn Cohen, chief executive officer of Envision Capital Management in Los Angeles, who manages $250 million of fixed-income assets, including California debt. “This makes me sick. I don’t know what it is going to take for this state to come to its Jesus moment.”

Unpaid Days Off

State rules allow employees to cash out unused vacation at their highest salary levels regardless of when the time was accrued. Cash-strapped departments have held off hiring new staff, pushing existing workers to put in extra hours to get the jobs done.

Three unpaid days off each month, instituted by Schwarzenegger, helped depress regular wages paid last year and forced overtime compensation for employees, such as prison guards, who had to work through them. The first six months of the furloughs, for instance, cost California $52 million in accrued vacation time for prison guards alone, according to findings by the state Senate Office of Oversight and Outcomes.

New York also paid its employees more than their normal pay in 2010 -- though less than in California. New York state workers took in about $1.5 billion above regular pay, or about $9,348 per employee on average, compared with $10,643 in California, a comparison of the states’ pay databases shows.

In California, the amount of extra compensation grew from $1.67 billion in 2008 to $1.7 billion last year. In 2007, the year the state budget reached its record high, employees got $1.9 billion in additional pay, according to the California controller’s office.
Payroll Costs

The government has tried to curb its payroll costs, including a hiring freeze ordered by Brown in February. California now has the fourth leanest state workforce in the U.S., behind Florida, Arizona and Illinois, at about 11 state employees for every 1,000 residents, according to 2009 data from the U.S. Census Bureau. The state paid $906 million in overtime last year, nearly three-quarters of it in agencies where staffing is required around the clock, such as prisons, mental- health hospitals and the highway patrol.

“The hiring freeze put in place by the governor has prevented the state from hiring as many employees as it could have, which has reduced the overall state employment level,” Elizabeth Ashford, a spokeswoman for the governor, said in an e- mail. “This has saved the state millions and millions of dollars.”
Largest Union

Service Employees International Union Local 1000, the largest union of state employees in California with about 95,000 members, agreed to concessions last year aimed at reducing overtime, spokesman Jim Zamora said.

State workers, for example, used to be able to collect overtime anytime they worked certain holidays such as Martin Luther King Day, Cesar Chavez Day or the day after Thanksgiving. Now they can only collect the extra pay if the holiday is in addition to a full week of work. State workers also must pay more toward their own pensions, Zamora said.

“We entered the collective bargaining process with an open mind and a desire to help the state work though its financial problems and to make things work,” Zamora said.

In addition to the overtime, state workers in California collected $472 million last year in bonuses and extra compensation for additional duties and qualifications such as speaking more than one language, obtaining a commercial driver’s license or having to make a presentation to the governor, the payroll data show.
Additional Wages

California unions have secured almost 400 pay differentials granting additional wages to state employees.

Certain workers at the Department of General Services, for example, are eligible for a $10,000 annual bonus for “exceptional performance.” Some accountants working at San Quentin prison outside San Francisco get $200 a month as a retention bonus on top of their $3,209 maximum monthly salary. Hydroelectric plant workers get an extra $1.10 an hour to work rotating shifts, in addition to the $32 to $38 an hour a senior operator typically makes.

Workers tasked with fielding phone calls from the public at the Consumer Affairs Department earn an extra $100 a month “in recognition of the complex work load and level and knowledge required to receive and respond to consumer calls.”

Besides overtime, extra-duty pay and bonuses, state workers got payments totaling $293 million, mostly for unused vacation and accrued leave. The state also paid out $25 million more to 74,000 workers for fringe benefits such as clothing allowances and mileage.
New York Pay

California will spend 8 percent of its $86 billion general- fund budget this fiscal year on wages. In New York, by comparison, payroll expenses will account for 9.8 percent of the $56.9 billion budget.

The average state worker in California made $58,340 in total pay last year, according to data provided by the controller’s office. Per-capita income for all employees in California, public and private, was $42,578, the U.S. Commerce Department said.

The state pays employees time-and-a-half for overtime. That’s still cheaper than hiring an additional worker full time to cover the overtime hours, because the state would also have to pay the new worker benefits that can equal one-third of salary, says Lynelle Jolley, spokeswoman for the Personnel Administration Department.

“When you look at individual employees, some of them rake in a lot of money, but from the employer’s perspective you have to ask is that cheaper than paying to have someone else on the payroll,” she said.
Prisons, Mental Health

More than half of the overtime was accrued by just two state agencies: prisons and mental health, both of which must operate around the clock with required staffing levels.

Keller, the nurse at a prison near San Luis Obispo who tripled her pay with overtime, worked 2,450 extra hours in 2010, or 102 full days. Some of that was required overtime, though she volunteered as well, said Nancy Kincaid, spokeswoman for the federal court-appointed receiver that runs California’s prison health-care system.

Keller wasn’t alone. Nurses working in California’s crowded prison system earned $54 million in overtime in 2010, an average of $13,600 each, in addition to their regular pay. Nurses working in mental health hospitals got $41 million more in overtime. Through her supervisor, Keller declined to comment.
‘Meet That Minimum’

“When you run a 24-7 health-care facility, you are required in order to have your license to have a certain number of staff,” Kincaid said. “You have to meet that minimum. So if you don’t have enough staff to cover for vacations or when someone is sick, then you have to go to registry or someone has to work overtime.” Registry refers to hiring temporary nurses.

California state employees can cash out unused vacation when they resign or retire. The practice of banking such pay for retirement is so prevalent that the Personnel Administration Department keeps a Lump Sum Separation Pay Calculator on its web page.

State policy says workers shouldn’t accumulate more than 640 hours of vacation time, yet many do. When workers breach the cap, managers are supposed to develop a plan to draw down the time. But the law doesn’t forbid employees from banking the hours, and state data show that many take more than 640 hours worth of pay when they leave.

Terri Ciau retired last year as the executive director of the California Gambling Control Commission and cashed out $169,623 in vacation time she had banked during her career. She declined to comment.
‘Within the Rules’

“It was strictly within the rules,” said 65-year-old Jay Wickizer, a retired section chief for the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said of his own $294,440 vacation payout when he left last year at a salary of $83,100. “Sometimes you just don’t have the time to take vacation.”

Fong Lai, the retired prison doctor who got $590,000 in vacation pay, couldn’t be located for comment. Matt Hazel, the computer specialist who received $61,905 in overtime, and Daisy Demaranville, the psychiatrist who collected $97,700 in extra- duty pay, weren’t unavailable to comment, their supervisors said.

Schwarzenegger, a Republican who often battled with unions over contracts, won concessions last year with 150,000 state workers that require them to contribute between 2 percent and 5 percent more toward their own pension benefits and increased years of service to qualify for full benefits.

Brown struck similar deals with 51,000 more employees earlier this year.
Unlimited Accumulation

Those compacts allow guards to accumulate an unlimited amount of unused vacation and sick leave. The guards had faced an 80-day cap on how much they could bank, though in practice the cap was ignored to maintain minimum staffing levels amid mandated furloughs.

Brown’s deals also cut state worker pay by about 4.6 percent in the current fiscal year through an unpaid day of leave once a month. Yet employees already in the top range of their salaries would get a pay increase equal to their higher pension contributions beginning next year.

“It’s fiscal insanity,” said Assemblyman Tim Donnelly, a Republican from Hesperia, criticizing “this notion of spending money and paying people more than we need at a time when every department is broke, when we are starving our local schools and we are cutting public safety.”
Hiring Freeze

The governor has taken other steps to curb payroll costs. In February he imposed a statewide hiring freeze, one part of an effort he said could trim $363 million in operational costs this year. He also said he will propose a package of reforms to state and local government pensions. Brown ordered state workers to hand in half of the 96,000 government-paid mobile phones and reduce the fleet of 13,600 vehicles by half.

The state’s $1.7 billion in 2010 non-salaried pay “includes all the various forms of disability pay as well as hundreds of different kinds of add-ons to pay that range from recruitment incentives for hard-to-recruit areas, education differentials, night-shift differentials, bilingual pay, hazardous duty pay, etc.,” Ashford, Brown’s spokeswoman, said by e-mail.

Ramirez, the Los Angeles teacher who lost his job in 2009, lived off unemployment benefits until they ran out. He postponed his wedding and said he almost became homeless before his brother agreed to let him sleep in a spare room.

“Outrage would be the word,” Ramirez said. “They confiscated my career.”

That my friends id why the states and the federal government wants to raise your taxes; so that they can pay outrageous salaries to unionized state and federal workers!

JACK MURTHA A FRAUD AND PELOSI CONFIDANT, STEERED BUSINESS TOWARD SHAM COMPANIES TO DEFRAUD TAXPAYERS...AS SUSPECTED!

2011-10-25T19:57:00.004-05:00

JOHN "JACK" MURTHA HAD FBI
Suspected Lawmaker in Scheme Funneling Funds to Benefit Friends, Ex-Staffers
By Paul Singer
Roll Call Staff

Neither Rep. John Murtha nor anybody from KSA Consulting was ever charged with a crime, and it is unclear what happened to the FBI’s investigation.

How about Pelosi/Obama killed the investigation for a suspicion?

Companies Follow Murtha’s Earmark Trail
DOJ Says Murtha Earmark Money Was Illicitly Distributed
Firm Tied to Murtha Earmarks Goes Dark
PMA Founder Magliocchetti Sentenced
Cleland Leaves Disability Group

Last week’s release of FBI documents finally put in writing what nobody had ever said on the record: The FBI suspected that former Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) and lobbyists close to him were running a scheme to funnel earmarks to sham companies and nonprofits to benefit the lawmaker’s friends and former staffers.

Bits and pieces of this story were kicked around for years before Murtha died in February 2010. The Los Angeles Times, Roll Call, the Washington Post and others had documented the odd appearance of earmarks for tiny defense contractors that just happened to open an office in western Pennsylvania and just happened to hire one of the lobbying firms close to Murtha and just happened to begin making campaign donations to Murtha and other Members of Congress close to him.

Reporters could do little but assemble the coincidences and couldn’t prove there was anything wrong with the bigger picture.

But it turns out the FBI was reading the stories and was very interested — interested enough that the Justice Department had opened a criminal investigation into Murtha and some of the lobbyists in his orbit, a fact that never leaked while Murtha was alive.

In part, the probe never leaked precisely because he was alive.

The watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed a Freedom of Information Act request for Justice Department files on Murtha and other Members of Congress. Its requests have been denied for the living Members on the grounds that they have a right to privacy, CREW Executive Director Melanie Sloan said last week. Murtha’s death eliminated the privacy exemption, and the Justice Department handed over a heavily redacted bunch of files to CREW on Oct. 14.

The files spell out for the first time a theory of the case that explains what Murtha’s cronies may have been up to.

In a memo dated June 19, 2009, FBI field agents requested the bureau “open a full public corruption investigation” regarding KSA Consulting, the lobbying firm that employed at various times the Congressman’s longtime defense aide Carmen Scialabba and the Congressman’s brother, Robert Murtha, widely known as Kit.

The FBI field agents concluded that “the relationships between Congressman John Murtha ... and employees and partners of KSA Consulting provide for a potential Honest Services Fraud ... if Congressman Murtha influenced the awarding of contracts to KSA-controlled entities or clients, in exchange for some personal benefit to the Congressman. KSA principals may also have committed Honest Services Fraud by lobbying Murtha to direct earmarks to KSA clients who ‘passed-thru’ the funds to subcontractor firms that did little actual work and were owned by KSA principles.”

Neither Murtha nor anybody from KSA was ever charged with a crime, and it is unclear what happened to the investigation.

A Nonprofit Called PAID

The best place to understand the FBI’s theory of the case is a defunct nonprofit called the Pennsylvania Association for Individuals with Disabilities, which had as its mission helping people with disabilities find employment.

Murtha announced the creation of PAID on June 1, 2001, saying that Aeptec Microsystems Inc., a company that he helped bring to western Pennsylvania, would be opening a new headquarters and hiring two clients of the new organization. The company had just hired KSA Consulting as its lobbying firm. Murtha was the honorary chairman of PAID, and his longtime defense appropriations aide, Scialabba, was listed as the founder of the group.

PAID’s board of directors was a who’s who of lobbyists connected to Murtha, as well as executives from firms that had received Murtha earmarks, including KSA founder Ken Stalder. In May 2002, David Fyock, CEO of MountainTop Technologies, a Johnstown firm that received many Murtha earmarks, testified before Congress in his capacity as the vice president of PAID. In an odd quirk of timing, the Justice Department inspector general released a report Monday concluding that while MountainTop had a federal grant to distribute resources to local police departments, Murtha’s office actually made the decisions about which departments got funding, and MountainTop served simply as a “pass through.” The IG report was first reported by the website Main Justice.

Scialabba left Murtha’s office at the end of 2002, according to Congressional pay records maintained by LegiStorm. By Dec. 1, 2002, he was registered as a lobbyist at KSA.

Roll Call investigated PAID in 2007 and could find little evidence that the group was doing anything. A spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Labor told Roll Call that PAID had received $650,000 in “earmark grants” sponsored by Murtha in 2003 and 2004, but the group’s access to the funding was restricted because PAID had significant turnover and “did not have anyone qualified to make decisions or sign off on invoices.”

The FBI thought PAID may have been set up simply to provide a financial cushion for Scialabba, who was apparently having financial troubles. While the names in the documents obtained by CREW are redacted, the description matches Scialabba, and tax liens noted in the document match liens against Scialabba. “If PAID was set-up for the purpose of unjustly enriching [Scialabba], it appears that [Scialabba] and Murtha may have engaged in a conspiracy that could potentially violate federal statutes,” the FBI file reads.

Federal tax forms filed by PAID do not indicate any salary for Scialabba, so it is not clear how the group might have benefited him.

PAID is no longer in business. Its phone has been disconnected, and a receptionist in the building where the group had its office said that PAID moved out in February 2010 — the same month Murtha died.

Scialabba has never been charged in the case, and phone messages left on what appears to be his home phone were not returned.

Criminal Convictions

Aeptec and KSA were also at the center of the one Murtha earmark that resulted in criminal convictions.

By 2004, Murtha had helped Aeptec secure millions in earmarks, and in April of that year, the Congressman announced the opening of a new building in Indiana, Pa., that Aeptec would occupy. At the time, Aeptec’s lobbyists at KSA included Stalder, Scialabba and Kit Murtha.

But later that year, someone discovered a problem with Aeptec. “They were outsourcing to Taiwan,” Stalder told Roll Call in a June 2007 interview. A Murtha spokesman told Roll Call in 2009, “there was an import/export issue that had involved Aeptec, and when this was brought to light, they disappeared as a company.”

By the end of 2004, KSA had terminated its relationship with Aeptec, and in early 2005 — with Murtha as ranking member of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense — the House approved a supplemental defense spending bill with a technical amendment that stripped the firm’s funding. The technical amendment directed the Pentagon to transfer $8.2 million from Aeptec projects to a program known as the “Mobile Common Data Link Gateway.” That project was an earmark for Coherent Systems Inc., another KSA client.

The Mobile Gateway earmark money ended up scattered among companies that had close ties to KSA.

In 2009, the Justice Department filed charges against Coherent CEO Richard Ianieri, alleging that he had used money from the Mobile Gateway project to buy products unrelated to the contract from several companies, including KSA clients VidiaFusion and Gensym.

VidiaFusion had no website, no telephone number and no email address. The address listed for VidiaFusion on the lobbying registration form submitted by KSA is a condominium building in West Palm Beach, Fla. The Florida secretary of state has no record of a company called VidiaFusion. The government charged that Ianieri paid VidiaFusion $274,660 for “software” that was unrelated to the Gateway project and was never used.

Ianieri also transferred $300,000 to Gensym, another KSA client, which was passing funding through to a subcontractor called Applied Technology. The FBI described Applied Technology as “an example of a KSA-created business that acquired federal earmarks and has no legitimate purpose.”

The FBI records indicate two KSA lobbyists were on the Applied Technology payroll, though their names have been redacted.

Ianieri pleaded guilty to filing false purchase orders and accepting a kickback from another company close to Murtha, Kuchera Defense Systems, and was sentenced to a fine and probation.

Coherent did deliver to the Air Force a vehicle-based communications system envisioned in the original “Mobile Gateway” earmark.

Mark O’Hair, an Air Force contracting official who oversaw the Gateway contracts, and contractor Richard Schaller, who was paid by Ianieri, both went to jail for their roles in the scheme, but nobody else was ever charged. There is no evidence that the FBI conducted a serious probe of who in Murtha’s office might have known about the bogus earmarks.

Roll Call reported in March 2010 that KSA had folded. Stalder and other KSA lobbyists appear to have created a new firm called Edge Solutions, but the phone number at that office is now disconnected and emails sent to Edge Solutions went unanswered.

Potential Cases Not Pursued

The FBI files uncovered by CREW offer a tantalizing array of hints of other possible malfeasance.

Federal agents had begun investigating Murtha in 2007 upon hearing allegations that the PMA Group, a lobbying firm run by former defense appropriations staffer Paul Magliocchetti, had paid for Murtha to have a driver. The PMA Group was raided by the FBI in February 2008, and the firm shut down the following year. Magliocchetti is serving a 27-month prison sentence for running a scheme to reimburse friends, family members and colleagues for hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of campaign contributions to Murtha and other Members of Congress.

The FBI investigation also suggested that a staff member in Murtha’s office may have failed to disclose thousands of dollars in income and assets on her annual financial disclosure forms; that money from Murtha’s campaign fund may have been used to buy guns for the personal use of another Murtha staffer; that Murtha may have steered contracts and earmarks to other family members; that staff members may have violated the one-year ban on lobbying Murtha’s office after leaving his employ; and that KSA may have run a fraudulent political action committee.

There is no evidence in the released documents that the FBI pursed any of these cases.

Sloan of CREW said the FBI files prove a long-sought point: “It was as bad as we said it was. It wasn’t nothing; it wasn’t OK.”

WALL STREET PROTESTERS DO NOT KNOW WHAT THEY BELIEVE, OR ARE CONFUSED ABOUT THE FACTS...WHO NEEDS FACTS WHEN NONSENSE IS BETTER

2011-10-21T14:11:00.003-05:00

By: Katherine Ernst
You Say You Want a Revolution
What do the Wall Street protesters want? You know, stuff . . .

F. D. ROSEVELT KNOWS WHAT TO DO. So reads a patch of the cardboard-carpet corner of Zuccotti Park, Lower Manhattan home base for the “Occupy Wall Street” protest. There was a second “o” above “Rosevelt,” with an arrow pointing between letters “o” and “s,” lest you think the erstwhile revolutionary who inked the sign is a few bongos short of a drum circle. When “the world is watching,” though, you should probably make sure your ace spell-checker is on duty.

The cardboard carpet is both adorably predictable and a little creepy: BILDERBERGERS WE KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE; MY PARENTS WERE FORCED FED A PREDATORY LOAN THEY COULDN’T AFFORD! THANKS HANK PAULSON!; WHERE’S MY FORESKIN? END MALE GENITAL MUTILATION. On one side, Japanese tourists take pictures and Scoop Bradys like me take notes; on the other, drab students scribble more bon mots, play guitar, or catch some shut-eye on a sea of cruddy tarps. There’s the obligatory drum circle to the east, a little cigarette-rolling enclave in the back. The ambitious give out pamphlets around the perimeter.

I chatted with some of the throng. All wanted me to know they were speaking only for themselves, not the group. So what’s the endgame here? “Uh . . . that’s hard to explain,” said Moses, a nice young man. His answer was a nonsensical roundabout, but he used the phrase “socio-economic” a lot. He implied he was unemployed, so I inquired about a dream job. “To be a decent human being . . . to not live in reaction to a market.” Gotcha.

Becca, a sweet “organic gardener” from Brooklyn, was there to “end a capitalist system that treats people like cattle” and live in an America where everyone has “equal wealth.” She wanted a country with a “high tax,” a la “Sweden and Finland,” to ensure “personal well-being.” (Those Scandinavian examples both have a much lower corporate tax rate—26 percent and 26.3 percent, respectively— than the U.S.’s 35 percent rate, but let’s not get hung up on details.) Then the irony gods flexed their muscles as a friend interrupted Becca; she handed him her Visa card to order something over the phone. The revolution will not be televised, but it will be magnetized.

Most everyone is aware of how unserious Occupy Wall Street is. The New Republic mocks it. Salon laments its fecklessness, and then curses Fox News for noticing it. Mother Jones sheepishly dubs the childish schizophrenia “The Kitchen Sink Approach” in a piece on the movement’s inertia. Nicolas Kristof of the New York Times, who must’ve seen Zuccotti Park through beer goggles, concedes: “Where the movement falters is in its demands: It doesn’t really have any. . . . So let me try to help.” He then offers some straight-laced financial bullet points, some nice tax n’ trade talk, as though the protesters just needed Dad to take off the training wheels so they can speed off by themselves into adulthood.

As much as the Zuccotti kids like to compare themselves with the “Arab Street,” they’re really much closer, I think, to their cousins across the pond. A Q&A with some of those rioters on the BBC swiftly became infamous. What are you all raising hell for, asked the Beeb, after two young girls giggled over their “free alcohol!” “It’s the government’s fault. I don’t know,” admitted one. “Conservatives,” chirped her friend. “Yeah, I forget who it is. I don’t know.” They eventually settled on an answer: “It’s the rich people, the people that got businesses, and that’s why all of this is happening, because of rich people. So we’re just showing the rich people we can do what we want.”

There’s this running gag on the Internet where, whenever someone makes a mountain out of a molehill—“GRRR! Glee sucking this season!!! FML!!!—someone retorts, “#FirstWorldProblems.” Three simple words, but they illustrate one’s lack of proportion with comparative ease. When life is exponentially easier for you than it was for most of the world throughout most of human history— right up until the mid-twentieth century—boredom creates a vacuum. To be a hero, you have to create your own dragon to slay. But fighting real oppression, the kind ayatollahs dispense daily? Too brutal, too gauche. Mastering the intricacies of credit-default swaps so as to articulate an effective reform of the broken financial system? Way too tough. Better to create a dragon that can only be slain with performance-art zombie metaphors.

Indeed, any honest contact with this group brings to mind some textbook Eric Hoffer, True Believer stuff:

The permanent misfits can find salvation only in a complete separation from the self; and they usually find it by losing themselves in the compact collectivity of a mass movement. By renouncing individual will, judgment and ambition, and dedicating all their powers to the service of an eternal cause, they are at last lifted off the endless treadmill which can never lead them to fulfillment.

New York magazine polled “100 protesters who are in it for the long haul.” The numbers: 50 percent of the group is aged 20-29 (a whopping 60 percent are under 30), 66 percent are male, and 55 percent didn’t vote in the last election (you might want to try the ballot box first, guys). The real takeaway is this, though: 34 percent are “convinced the U.S. is no better than, say, Al-Qaeda.” In other words, a significant percentage of this tiny-but-loud group of protesters are chasing a dragon.

Despite the copycat protests springing up around the world and bravos from Congress’s fringes, that’s not a recipe for an enduring movement. The “endless treadmill” has a way of tiring even the stalwart. I asked Becca how long she thinks she’ll make the trek to Zuccotti. “Well, it’s getting really cold,” she mused, non-ironically.

Ah, just what every revolution needs to succeed: a fair-weather friend.

Katherine Ernst is a writer living in New York City.

ANOTHER BILLION IN LOANS LIKELY TO FAIL; OBAMA AND BIDEN KEEP GIVING LOANS TO DONORS AND INSIDERS-TAXPAYERS LIKELY TO LOSE BIG AGAIN!!

2011-10-20T22:55:00.008-05:00

With the approval of the Obama administration, an electric car company that received a $529 million federal government loan guarantee is assembling its first line of cars in Finland, saying it could not find a facility in the United States capable of doing the work.

Vice President Joseph Biden heralded the Energy Department's $529 million loan to the start-up electric car company called Fisker as a bright new path to thousands of American manufacturing jobs. But two years after the loan was announced, the job of assembling the flashy electric Fisker Karma sports car has been outsourced to Finland.

"There was no contract manufacturer in the U.S. that could actually produce our vehicle," the car company's founder and namesake told ABC News. "They don't exist here."

Henrik Fisker said the U.S. money so far has been spent on engineering and design work that stayed in the U.S., not on the 500 manufacturing jobs that went to a rural Finnish firm, Valmet Automotive.

"We're not in the business of failing; we're in the business of winning. So we make the right decision for the business," Fisker said. "That's why we went to Finland."

The loan to Fisker is part of a $1 billion bet the Energy Department has made in two politically connected California-based electric carmakers producing sporty -- and pricey -- cutting-edge autos. Fisker Automotive, backed by a powerhouse venture capital firm whose partners include former Vice President Al Gore, predicts it will eventually be churning out tens of thousands of electric sports sedans at the shuttered GM factory it bought in Delaware. And Tesla Motors, whose prime backers include PayPal mogul Elon Musk and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, says it will do the same in a massive facility tooling up in Silicon Valley.

For more on the Fisker and Tesla loans and the Obama administration's green auto loan program, watch "Good Morning America," "World News with Diane Sawyer," and "Nightline."

An investigation by ABC News and the Center for Public Integrity's iWatch News that will air on "Good Morning America" found that the DOE's bet carries risks for taxpayers, has raised concern among industry observers and government auditors, and adds to questions about the way billions of dollars in loans for smart cars and green energy companies have been awarded. Fisker is more than a year behind rolling out its $97,000 luxury vehicle bankrolled in part with DOE money. While more are promised soon, just 40 of its Karma cars (below) have been manufactured and only two delivered to customers' driveways, including one to movie star Leonardo DiCaprio. Tesla's SEC filings reveal the start-up has lost money every quarter. And while its federal funding is intended to help it mass produce a new $57,400 Model S sedan, the company has no experience in a project so vast.

READ the iWATCH News Story on Tesla and Fisker

There is intense scrutiny of the decisions made by the Department of Energy as it invests billions of taxpayer dollars in alternative energy. The questions come in the wake of the administration's failed $535 million investment in solar panel maker Solyndra. The company's collapse, bankruptcy and raid by FBI agents generated a litany of questions about how the Energy Department doles out billions in highly sought after green energy seed money.

A key question, experts and investigators say, is whether another Solyndra is in the offing.

In interviews, executives with Tesla and Fisker said comparisons to Solyndra are unfounded. Each said the government's investments will ultimately pay off by supporting a fleet of electric cars that will ease the nation's dependence on fuel and benefit the environment.

"It's absolutely a worthwhile risk," said Diarmuid O'Connell, vice president of corporate and business development for Tesla Motors. "I absolutely believe it was a good bet for American taxpayers." Tesla has said its mass production of the sedan will ultimately lead to profitability.

Henrik Fisker, the renowned auto designer who founded the car company that carries his name, said his company holds tremendous promise and has accumulated $600 million in private financing.

When asked directly by ABC News if taxpayers should worry about the more than $500 million in federal funds on the line, he was emphatic: "No, I don't think they need to worry about it," Fisker said. When asked if Fisker might be the next Solyndra, he said, "Absolutely not."

Fisker: We Didn't Want to Be Solyndra

In a lengthy interview, Fisker said he apprised the Department of Energy of his decision to assemble the high-priced Karma in Finland after he could not find an American facility that could handle the work. They signed off, he said, so long as he did not spend the federal loan money in Finland -- something he says the company has taken care to avoid. He said the decision, ultimately, was to help prevent his company from following the path of Solyndra, which exhausted nearly all of its loan money on a high-tech solar manufacturing plant in Freemont, California.

"If you just start doing like what Solyndra did, making a factory in a place where it was too expensive to manufacture … [you] obviously fail," he said.

By some key measures, Tesla is ahead of Fisker. More than 2,000 of its first electric car, the Tesla Roadster, are on the road, while Fisker is just starting to get its first car into showrooms. And Tesla is further along in advancing a second, lower-cost car, the Model S. While both firms boast of big dollar private investments, Tesla's vulnerabilities are more publicly visible through its SEC filings, in contrast to the privately held Fisker.

Chelsea Sexton, a 20-year veteran of the electric car movement and an outspoken advocate for alternative fuel vehicles, said she can plainly see the risks, even though her husband works for Tesla.

"None of us with any experience in the industry think there's any sort of guarantee they'll make it," Sexton said of Tesla. "It looks pretty good right now, they're building out their plant, things seem to be on track, so we're all encouraged. But you know, we watched GM and Chrysler go bankrupt."

Energy Department officials said such loans, by their nature, are risky because the department is financing innovative, potentially game-changing technologies that could deliver long-term benefits. They said neither firm has missed a loan payment, or sought help from the department to restructure their lending agreements.

"Two years ago, critics said we shouldn't be investing in American auto manufacturing at all because the industry wouldn't survive," said Damien LaVera, an Energy Department spokesman. "They were wrong then and they're wrong today. From well-established names like Ford to innovative startups like Tesla and Fisker, America's auto industry is being reinvented. Continuing this turnaround demands more innovation, not defeatism. While supporting innovative technologies always carries a degree of risk, these investments deliver long-term benefits."

Yet an audit this year by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, criticized the Energy Department for not keeping close enough tabs on its fleet of auto loans -- including those to Fisker and Tesla -- to ensure they meet benchmarks. The funding was issued under the $25 billion Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing loan program, one piece of a giant umbrella of DOE loans and loan guarantees going out the door.

"DOE cannot be assured that the projects are on track to deliver the vehicles as agreed," said the GAO report examining the department's ATVM program. "It also means that U.S. taxpayers do not know whether they are getting what they paid for through the loans."

Tesla and Fisker stand in rare company in securing the ATVM loans. To date, records show, more than 95 percent of applicants are still awaiting approval or have been rejected from the loan pool.

Between them, Fisker, at $529 million, and Tesla, at $465 million, have secured nearly $1 billion to jump-start production of their cars. Combined, the companies have already drawn down more than $300 million, Federal Financing Bank records show.

Industry watchers question whether the Department of Energy had the auto industry know-how to make an informed choice, and they worry that another government-backed failure could damage the very industry the program intended to help.

"I think we'll absolutely end up having our version of Solyndra in the transport world based on the way the DOE has, and seems to still be executing its loan program without enough veteran diligence in the process," Sexton said.

The majority of the DOE funding for Fisker is earmarked for the company to develop a less costly, mass market sedan, called Project Nina. Energy officials issued the loans for a car that, even two years later, has not been publicly revealed.

"A half billion dollars for a car that no one has seen a picture of, in the Fisker Nina, was a bit more surprising to people," Sexton said.

Fisker said the mass market car Nina has been designed and built, but it remains under wraps to maintain a competitive edge.

Heavyweight Support

Standing in a shuttered General Motors plant in Wilmington, Del., Vice President Biden proclaimed that a half-billion-dollar Department of Energy loan would transform the idled site into a production line for electric cars.

"Folks, we're making a bet," Biden said on Oct. 27, 2009. "We're making a bet on the future, we're making a bet on the American people, we're making a bet on the market, we're making a bet on innovation."

The announcement that the plant would re-open followed a heavy lobbying push by Delaware politicians from both parties, who cited the news as a sign of industry's turnaround. In September 2009, Republican Rep. Mike Castle wrote directly to Energy Secretary Steven Chu, saying the Fisker proposal had "great merit," and urging Chu to give the company "careful consideration" for the loan.

The governor and state politicians took turns, along with Biden, to proclaim the project to cheering blue-collar workers clad in jeans, caps and jackets. They said it would produce thousands of jobs and have cars rolling off the line by next year. Fisker said he remains convinced those jobs will come. While he has hired marketing, design and engineering teams in the U.S., the auto plant jobs in Wilmington right now number about 100.

The Department of Energy loan to Fisker closed in April 2010, and again Biden took center stage in a department statement announcing the loan. "The story of Fisker is a story of ingenuity of an American company, a commitment to innovation by the U.S. government and the perseverance of the American auto industry," said the vice president.

ABC News sent questions to the White House Monday and requested an interview with the vice president. Biden was not made available, but an official in his office said "the Office of the Vice President did not encourage the Department of Energy to choose any particular company over any other but, like others in the Administration, supported the Department's loan program and the creation of car manufacturing jobs in the United States."

Energy Department officials have been steadfast that politics never entered the picture and each project was screened by professionals and secured on the merits. And executives from Tesla and Fisker said they won government support because their projects had the best shot at success. They said the involvement of well-connected figures in their companies should not suggest they attempted to use special influence to secure the loans.

Both companies have political heavyweights behind them. One of Fisker's biggest financial supporters, records show, is the California venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. The firm financially supports numerous green-tech firms, records show.

Kleiner Perkins partner John Doerr, a California billionaire who made a fortune investing in Google, hosted President Obama at a February dinner for high-tech executives at his secluded estate south of San Francisco. Doerr and Kleiner Perkins executives have contributed more than $1 million to federal political causes and campaigns over the last two decades, primarily supporting Democrats. Doerr serves on Obama's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. Doerr has not replied to interview requests since March.

Former Vice President Al Gore is another Kleiner Perkins senior partner. Gore could not be reached for comment.

"Their major venture investor is Kleiner Perkins, who has Al Gore as a partner and is certainly politically connected in general," said industry observer Sexton. "Whether that played a role or not is up to the DOE to explain."

Tesla brings political pull, as well. A former Tesla board member, Steve Westly, is an Obama bundler who raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the president in 2008 and for his 2012 re-election campaign. His Westly Group was also a financial supporter of Tesla Motors until Tesla went public in 2010, and Westly continues to back the company. Westly has declined interview requests since February, but has appeared in multiple conferences, forums and TV interviews publicly praising Tesla Motors.

Tesla's founder and CEO, Elon Musk, is a hearty political contributor who has primarily backed Democrats, including Obama. According to published reports, another Tesla investor is Nick Pritzker, a donor to Obama and a cousin of Penny Pritzker, the national finance chair of Obama's 2008 campaign.

O'Connell, the Tesla executive, said political muscle played no role in the company's award of the $465 million in loans, noting that the initial application was filed under Bush -- though landed under Obama.

Demonstrated Track Record'

In Tesla's case, as in Fisker's, the government loan was broken into two parts.

The first chunk, for $365 million, is to finance a manufacturing facility for the Tesla Model S sedan, Tesla's lower-cost answer to its pricey Roadster.

The other $100 million funded a facility to manufacture battery packs and electric drive trains used by Teslas and other automakers, including the Smart For Two city car by Daimler. Tesla points to such partnerships - along with investments from Toyota and Panasonic - as signs that long established companies believe in its cars.

"We have a demonstrated track record on the financial side," O'Connell said, "that should give great comfort to the American taxpayer, as they think about a loan that's helped us to accelerate our business model."

Unlike Fisker, Tesla is a public company. Its SEC filings offer a more sober assessment of the obstacles it faces on the road to profitability.

Tesla has yet to turn a profit and suffered net losses in each quarter. "Since inception and through the three and six months ended June 30, 2011, we had accumulated net losses of $522.8 million," its most recent 10-K form shows.

It has no experience in high-volume manufacturing of electric cars, its filings say -- the very project it sees as the road toward profitability. Tesla said it encountered "significant delays" in launching the Roadster - and acknowledges that developing the Model S will be a more complex undertaking. The newer car is the project financed by DOE.

"We have no experience to date in high volume manufacturing of our electric vehicles," Tesla's SEC filings say. "Our future business depends in large part on our ability to execute on our plans to develop, manufacture, market and sell our planned Model S electric vehicle."

The Roadster was produced in small quantities with the body assembled by Lotus in the United Kingdom and final assembly by the company at its facility in Menlo Park, Calif. The Model S, by contrast, will have much greater volume and be manufactured in Fremont, Calif. The company said production will begin next year.

Industry observers say Tesla's grand plan to launch the Model S is fraught with challenges.

"They want to scale up production from 1,000 cars a year to 20,000 cars a year, [and] that's going to be a very hard trick for them to do," said Alex Taylor, a veteran auto industry analyst and writer. "They want to make most of their own parts; Detroit can't do that because it's too inefficient. And Tesla wants to own its own dealerships. Henry Ford tried that back in the 1920s and gave it up because it was too difficult."

O'Connell said the SEC filings present worst case scenarios. He said the company, and its major investors, believe the risk will reap rewards.

"It is a risky venture in the best heritage of some of the other great companies that have grown up in the Silicon Valley," he said. "This is a place where people propose ideas, finance those ideas, achieve milestones, attract a greater finance, and succeed along the way."

I WILL GIVE IT ODDS 1,000 TO ONE, Las Vegas style...against the taxpayers ever seeing their money.

GOVERNMENT WASTE; 50 BIGGEST WASTES OF TAXPAYER'S MONEY JUST IN ONE YEAR!

2011-10-19T11:18:00.004-05:00

50 Examples of Government Waste

BY: Conn Carroll

The Congressional Budget Office reported that the U.S. government ended its 2009 fiscal year with a deficit of $1.4 trillion, the biggest since 1945.

Washington will spend $33,932 per household in 2009–$8,000 per household more than last year. Following President Barack Obama’s budget, Washington will be spending $33,000 per household (adjusted for inflation) by 2019, and that does not include the costs of Obamacare. This spending is not inevitable.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Washington consistently spent $21,000 per household (adjusted for inflation). Simply returning to that level would balance the budget by 2012 without any tax hikes. Alternatively, returning to the $25,000 per household level (adjusted for inflation) that Washington spent before the current recession would likely balance the budget by 2019 without any tax hikes.

To help move back to these healthier levels of spending, Heritage Senior Policy Analyst Brian Riedl has identified 50 Examples of Government Waste. Eliminating waste cannot balance the budget. But here’s a start:

1. The federal government made at least $72 billion in improper payments in 2008.
2. Washington spends $92 billion on corporate welfare (excluding TARP) versus $71 billion on homeland security.
3. Washington spends $25 billion annually maintaining unused or vacant federal properties.
4. Government auditors spent the past five years examining all federal programs and found that 22 percent of them–costing taxpayers a total of $123 billion annually–fail to show any positive impact on the populations they serve.
5. The Congressional Budget Office published a “Budget Options” series identifying more than $100 billion in potential spending cuts.
6. Examples from multiple Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports of wasteful duplication include 342 economic development programs; 130 programs serving the disabled; 130 programs serving at-risk youth; 90 early childhood development programs; 75 programs funding international education, cultural, and training exchange activities; and 72 safe water programs.
7. Washington will spend $2.6 million training Chinese prostitutes to drink more responsibly on the job.
8. A GAO audit classified nearly half of all purchases on government credit cards as improper, fraudulent, or embezzled. Examples of taxpayer-funded purchases include gambling, mortgage payments, liquor, lingerie, iPods, Xboxes, jewelry, Internet dating services, and Hawaiian vacations. In one extraordinary example, the Postal Service spent $13,500 on one dinner at a Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse, including “over 200 appetizers and over $3,000 of alcohol, including more than 40 bottles of wine costing more than $50 each and brand-name liquor such as Courvoisier, Belvedere and Johnny Walker Gold.” The 81 guests consumed an average of $167 worth of food and drink apiece.
9. Federal agencies are delinquent on nearly 20 percent of employee travel charge cards, costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars annually.
10. The Securities and Exchange Commission spent $3.9 million rearranging desks and offices at its Washington, D.C., headquarters.
11. The Pentagon recently spent $998,798 shipping two 19-cent washers from South Carolina to Texas and $293,451 sending an 89-cent washer from South Carolina to Florida.
12. Over half of all farm subsidies go to commercial farms, which report average household incomes of $200,000.
13. Health care fraud is estimated to cost taxpayers more than $60 billion annually.
14. A GAO audit found that 95 Pentagon weapons systems suffered from a combined $295 billion in cost overruns.
15. The refusal of many federal employees to fly coach costs taxpayers $146 million annually in flight upgrades.
16. Washington will spend $126 million in 2009 to enhance the Kennedy family legacy in Massachusetts. Additionally, Senator John Kerry (D-MA) diverted $20 million from the 2010 defense budget to subsidize a new Edward M. Kennedy Institute.
17. Federal investigators have launched more than 20 criminal fraud investigations related to the TARP financial bailout.
18. Despite trillion-dollar deficits, last year’s 10,160 earmarks included $200,000 for a tattoo removal program in Mission Hills, California; $190,000 for the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming; and $75,000 for the Totally Teen Zone in Albany, Georgia.
19. The federal government owns more than 50,000 vacant homes.
20. The Federal Communications Commission spent $350,000 to sponsor NASCAR driver David Gilliland.
21. Members of Congress have spent hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars supplying their offices with popcorn machines, plasma televisions, DVD equipment, ionic air fresheners, camcorders, and signature machines–plus $24,730 leasing a Lexus, $1,434 on a digital camera, and $84,000 on personalized calendars.
22. More than $13 billion in Iraq aid has been classified as wasted or stolen. Another $7.8 billion cannot be accounted for.
23. Fraud related to Hurricane Katrina spending is estimated to top $2 billion. In addition, debit cards provided to hurricane victims were used to pay for Caribbean vacations, NFL tickets, Dom Perignon champagne, “Girls Gone Wild” videos, and at least one sex change operation.
24. Auditors discovered that 900,000 of the 2.5 million recipients of emergency Katrina assistance provided false names, addresses, or Social Security numbers or submitted multiple applications.
25. Congress recently gave Alaska Airlines $500,000 to paint a Chinook salmon on a Boeing 737.
26. The Transportation Department will subsidize up to $2,000 per flight for direct flights between Washington, D.C., and the small hometown of Congressman Hal Rogers (R-KY)–but only on Monday mornings and Friday evenings, when lawmakers, staff, and lobbyists usually fly. Rogers is a member of the Appropriations Committee, which writes the Transportation Department’s budget.
27. Washington has spent $3 billion re-sanding beaches–even as this new sand washes back into the ocean.
28. A Department of Agriculture report concedes that much of the $2.5 billion in “stimulus” funding for broadband Internet will be wasted.
29. The Defense Department wasted $100 million on unused flight tickets and never bothered to collect refunds even though the tickets were refundable.
30. Washington spends $60,000 per hour shooting Air Force One photo-ops in front of national landmarks.
31. Over one recent 18-month period, Air Force and Navy personnel used government-funded credit cards to charge at least $102,400 on admission to entertainment events, $48,250 on gambling, $69,300 on cruises, and $73,950 on exotic dance clubs and prostitutes.
32. Members of Congress are set to pay themselves $90 million to increase their franked mailings for the 2010 election year.
33. Congress has ignored efficiency recommendations from the Department of Health and Human Services that would save $9 billion annually.
34. Taxpayers are funding paintings of high-ranking government officials at a cost of up to $50,000 apiece.
35. The state of Washington sent $1 food stamp checks to 250,000 households in order to raise state caseload figures and trigger $43 million in additional federal funds.
36. Suburban families are receiving large farm subsidies for the grass in their backyards–subsidies that many of these families never requested and do not want.
37. Congress appropriated $20 million for “commemoration of success” celebrations related to Iraq and Afghanistan.
38. Homeland Security employee purchases include 63-inch plasma TVs, iPods, and $230 for a beer brewing kit.
39. Two drafting errors in the 2005 Deficit Reduction Act resulted in a $2 billion taxpayer cost.
40. North Ridgeville, Ohio, received $800,000 in “stimulus” funds for a project that its mayor described as “a long way from the top priority.”
41. The National Institutes of Health spends $1.3 million per month to rent a lab that it cannot use.
42. Congress recently spent $2.4 billion on 10 new jets that the Pentagon insists it does not need and will not use.
43. Lawmakers diverted $13 million from Hurricane Katrina relief spending to build a museum celebrating the Army Corps of Engineers–the agency partially responsible for the failed levees that flooded New Orleans.
44. Medicare officials recently mailed $50 million in erroneous refunds to 230,000 Medicare recipients.
45. Audits showed $34 billion worth of Department of Homeland Security contracts contained significant waste, fraud, and abuse.
46. Washington recently spent $1.8 million to help build a private golf course in Atlanta, Georgia.
47. The Advanced Technology Program spends $150 million annually subsidizing private businesses; 40 percent of this funding goes to Fortune 500 companies.
48. Congressional investigators were able to receive $55,000 in federal student loan funding for a fictional college they created to test the Department of Education.
49. The Conservation Reserve program pays farmers $2 billion annually not to farm their land.
50. The Commerce Department has lost 1,137 computers since 2001, many containing Americans’ personal data.

At a time when the U.S. national debt is closing in on 14 trillion dollars, government waste just seems more out of control than ever. The following are 20 of the craziest things that the U.S. government is spending money on....

#1 A total of $3 million has been granted to researchers at the University of California at Irvine so that they can play video games such as World of Warcraft. The goal of this "video game research" is reportedly to study how "emerging forms of communication, including multiplayer computer games and online virtual worlds such as World of Warcraft and Second Life can help organizations collaborate and compete more effectively in the global marketplace."

#2 The U.S. Department of Agriculture gave the University of New Hampshire $700,000 this year to study methane gas emissions from dairy cows.

#3 $615,000 was given to the University of California at Santa Cruz to digitize photos, T-shirts and concert tickets belonging to the Grateful Dead.

#4 A professor at Stanford University received $239,100 to study how Americans use the Internet to find love. So far one of the key findings of this "research" is that the Internet is a safer and more discreet way to find same-sex partners.

#5 The National Science Foundation spent $216,000 to study whether or not politicians "gain or lose support by taking ambiguous positions."

#6 The National Institutes of Health spent approximately $442,340 to study the behavior of male prostitutes in Vietnam.

#7 Approximately $1 million of U.S. taxpayer money was used to create poetry for the Little Rock, New Orleans, Milwaukee and Chicago zoos. The goal of the "poetry" is to help raise awareness on environmental issues.

#8 The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs spent $175 million during 2010 to maintain hundreds of buildings that it does not even use. This includes a pink, octagonal monkey house in the city of Dayton, Ohio.

#9 $1.8 million of U.S. taxpayer dollars went for a "museum of neon signs" in Las Vegas, Nevada.

#10 $35 million was reportedly paid out by Medicare to 118 "phantom" medical clinics that never even existed. Apparently these "phantom" medical clinics were established by a network of criminal gangs as a way to defraud the U.S. government.

#11 The Conservation Commission of Monkton, Vermont got $150,000 from the federal government to construct a "critter crossing". Thanks to U.S. government money, the lives of "thousands" of migrating salamanders are now being saved.

#12 In California, one park received $440,000 in federal funds to perform "green energy upgrades" on a building that has not been used for a decade.

#13 $440,955 was spent this past year on an office for former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert that he rarely even visits.

#14 One Tennessee library was given $5,000 in federal funds to host a series of video game parties.

#15 The U.S. Census Bureau spent $2.5 million on a television commercial during the Super Bowl that was so poorly produced that virtually nobody understood what is was trying to say.

#16 A professor at Dartmouth University received $137,530 to create a "recession-themed" video game entitled "Layoff".

#17 The National Science Foundation gave the Minnesota Zoo over $600,000 so that they could develop an online video game called "Wolfquest".

#18 A pizzeria in Iowa was given $60,000 to renovate the pizzeria's facade and give it a more "inviting feel".

#19 The U.S. Department of Agriculture gave one enterprising group of farmers $30,000 to develop a tourist-friendly database of farms that host guests for overnight "haycations". This one sounds like something that Dwight Schrute would have dreamed up.

#20 Almost unbelievably, the National Institutes of Health was given $800,000 in "stimulus funds" to study the impact of a "genital-washing program" on men in South Africa.

In light of all this, is it any wonder why the approval rating of Congress recently hit another new record low?

According to the most recent Gallup poll, only 13 percent of Americans approve of the job that Congress is doing.

Just think about that - only 13 percent!

Our politicians seem very confused about why there is so much anger in the country today. Well, there are certainly a lot of reasons for it, including the fact that the U.S. economy is on the verge of collapse, but it certainly doesn't help that our government is basically flushing our tax dollars down the toilet and spending them on some of the most wasteful things imaginable.

Comments:

Elizabeth Cox, Washi
Speaking of government waste has the thought occured to anyone that the reason the administration does not want the bills proposed to be read is because of the pet projects that are hung on the bills. Especially the Obamacare health bill?

Albert campbellsvill
I just don't know what to say,this just makes you sick if you have any kind of common sense.Ive said for years if they ended fraud,waste and theft we would have a huge surplus.these people steeling from us is downright evil,but they are never held accountable.I thought Obama was going to fix all this,CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN.

bobbie Jay
Thank you Conn and Brian.

If given an in depth research of Obama's employment history and present demeanor, there's little doubt he is directly or indirectly involved in most of the waste. He ignores his duty to correct the current waste. His will is to increase.

John, Madison, WI
Hmmm. NO mention of the 2 wars and direct spending on TARP. Guess those were too obvious.

Sudbrook, Balt
Is there no mercy in Congress on real people who go without things so that they can waste money?

James Becker
Would we really want 'this government' to run our health care?

Paul Dibble Ada, MI
I think this kind of waste is inevitable in government--regardless of who is in power. The answer is not cleaning up the waste (though we can try). The answer is reducing the size and power of the government.

Greg Lawritson, Sout · 105 weeks ago
.... what's the difference between what's been found and organized crime? Nothing. It's all about self-entitlement on the backs of others under the threat of harsh consequences. Instead of "Knuckles and "Guido" visiting you late one night to help you find your wallet, ... we have the IRS performing 'walletectomies' without due process of law. Try and find an attorney who will honestly fight the IRS, ... near impossible. We are self destructing - imploding from the inside, ... we'll continue to ignore what has been described above and stand by apathetically, hanging on to our individual slice of freedom and job like zebras in the herd hoping the lions in Washington don't pick us off to quickly. I love this country, but am ashamed of our leadership and what they are doing to our legacy.

D.R., Orlando, FL
If the waste is in the private sector, the tax payers are not being forced to pay for the waste, whoever owns the company is. And if the company owner can discover who is robbing his company he can have them charged, tried and sent to prison if found guilty. Unfortunately, in the government sector the crooks get made cabinet secretaries, presidential "czars", congress people, and senators so they can rob the tax payers ever more!

Patricia Brittell
I think I made a comment in another issue that would have fit this better. I will just shorten it to say this; Obama wants to get as many people on welfare as possible. This is in the plan to overtake the government and bring about a dictatorship. When people completely depend on the government to feed, house, and medicate them the country will go broke because there won't be enough taxes or tax payers to keep up the handouts. It might sound crazy to you, but think about it. I would venture to say most of the uneployment right now quit their jobs because, woopee, now they can sit on their ass and get paid for it. We have millions on welfare, the give-me-free individuals.

Then the big Corporations take their business' to foreign countries so they can pay cheap wages. Everything thats happening now was a plan years ago and the very wealthy hired Obama as their puppet to reinforce the evils with his charismatic speeches. We need more than money to fight, we need people in huge numbers if we want to win back our free country and the Constitution.

Bobbie Jay
That's right. Private sector pays their own money if trouble arises, without infringing on the tax payer. Everything the government is doing outside their job of upholding the American Constitution, is a total violation and financial infringement on innocent taxpayers who are accustomed to living by the American Constitution that the government is freely destroying...

When there's financial mayhem in government it is usually covered up and an increase of tax to boot. More government thievery!

U.S. Will Pay $2.6 Million to Train Chinese Prostitutes to Drink Responsibly on the Job | Republican Party of Milwaukee County
[...] by Edwin Mora, Tuesday, May 12, 2009 (CNSNews.com) -- The National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAA), a part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), will pay $2.6 million in U.S. tax dollars to train Chinese prostitutes to drink responsibly on the job. Dr. Xiaoming Li, the researcher conducting the program, is director of the Prevention Research Center at Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit. The grant, made last November, refers to prostitutes as "female sex workers"--or FSW--and their handlers as "gatekeepers." . . . Li said his study is being done in China rather than the U.S. because prostitution occurs with alcohol use in the United States like it does in China, Americans will be able to benefit from the project’s findings. Read more at http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=47976 (The above is one of) 50 Examples of Government Waste Read more examples at ttp://blog.heritage.org/2009/10/08/50-examples-of-government-waste/ [...]

Miles, California
"Before we get too self-righteous about government misallocations, is there any documentation about private sector misallocations?"

There aren't any because the private sector has economic calculation through the free price mechanism. Anyone who's taken a basic course in Econ 101 would tell you that. An act of waste from a private institution would be a loss of profit, which is that last thing a private institution would want to do. It would mean debt and impoverishment for workers and employees (not to mention shareholders). Government however, isn't driven by that same price mechanism. They coercively plunder revenue and redistribute wealth in accordance to THEIR own consent as opposed to the consumers. People voluntarily consent to the purchase of private services, ergo the businesses adjusts their product/services to the consumers desires to remain profitable. People DON'T voluntarily consent to the purchase of government services, ergo government has no motivation to remain profitable nor do they understand what the citizens truly want or need to improve the quality in product/services. The government isn't threatened to remain profitable from price and competition like business is nor are they motivated to improve their quality of service/product again like the business is.

As for abolishing organizations? Yes, as long as they're government run. I'd vote for any politician promising to have a field day gutting these frivolous and unconstitutional bureaucracies.

Donn, Ohio
After reading this list, I don't think I will be so sick about not being able to pay my back taxes due to loss of work.

David California
Gee I wonder why folks don't like paying taxes. It seems to me if the Government would clean up its act we would have no taxes at all.

OBAMA AND 900 DAYS OF IRRESPONSIBLE BEHAVIOR BY HARRY REID AND OTHER MORONS..NO BUDGET YET!

2011-10-19T11:03:00.003-05:00

Dems' 900 Days Of Irresponsibility

Over the weekend, Senate Democrats passed a dubious milestone — going 900 days without fulfilling their legal obligation to pass a budget. Worse is the fact that this gross dereliction of duty has gone largely unnoticed.

You have to go all the way back to April 29, 2009 — just three months after President Obama took the oath of office — to find the last time Senate Democrats managed to discharge their legal obligation to produce a budget plan.

That's right — legal obligation. It says right in the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 that the Senate must produce a budget resolution by April of each year.

Instead, all the country has gotten from Senate Democrats are excuses.

In May, Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said "it would be foolish for us to do a budget at this stage," since the so-called Gang of Six was working with Vice President Biden to come up with a debt reduction deal.

In early July, Republicans sent a letter to Reid asking where the Democrats' budget was. Turns out, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., had a plan ready to be unveiled, but Reid forced him to keep it locked up. Ostensibly that was because of the then-ongoing debt ceiling talks.

Democrats did, however, find the time in May to force a vote on the House Republican budget plan, but only in hopes of embarrassing their Senate counterparts.

Obama's hardly been any better. His latest budget was so outrageously irresponsible that the entire Senate, including every single Democrat, voted against it.
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So, without any budget plan to guide them, here's what Congress managed to do in the 29 months since the Senate last passed a plan:

• Spent a total of $8.5 trillion.

• Ran up monthly deficits totaling $2.6 trillion.

• Added $3.6 trillion to the national debt — a stunning 32% increase.

Now it's the middle of October, with the debt deal done months ago, and there's still no Senate plan anywhere in sight. What's Reid's new excuse?

Turns out, he doesn't have to make one up, since the debt deal Obama signed in August lets the Senate off the budget hook for another two years.

According to a Democratic Policy and Communications Center memo obtained by Commentary magazine in August, "One important but overlooked element of the bipartisan debt limit compromise is that it ... in effect, 'deems' a budget resolution passed for each of the next two fiscal years."

This, the memo says, "significantly reduces the chances of a sequel to last spring's government shutdown drama."

But what it really does is let Democrats continue to play political games with the budget, attacking serious, credible GOP proposals without ever having to offer anything concrete of their own.

Earlier this year, Obama said that "families across this country understand what it takes to manage a budget," and that "it's time Washington acted as responsibly as our families do."

He's right. Except that it's members of his own party who refuse to act like responsible adults.

SOCIAL SECURITY IS A PONZI SCHEME AND PRESIDENT OBAMA JUST PROVED THAT HE LIES AND LIES ABOUT IT...HIS OWN WORDS!

2011-10-19T10:22:00.008-05:00

Trying to score political points against the GOP by recently warning that retirement checks were in jeopardy if the debt ceiling isn't raised, President Obama exposed the fraud at the heart of Social Security.

The closer the self-imposed deadline for raising the debt ceiling come, the more oddly politicians in Washington were behaving — and that's saying something.

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner ridiculously insisted on a plan within 48 hours. Sen. Mitch McConnell proposed a Rube Goldberg idea to let President Obama increase the debt by vetoing a bill denying him a debt increase, or something like that.

Obama beat everyone, however, with his scaremongering claim that Social Security checks are at risk if he doesn't get his way on the debt ceiling. "I cannot guarantee that those checks go out if we haven't resolved this issue," he told CBS News, "because there may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it."

Wait! What happened to Social Security's "guarantee"? You know, the iron-clad assurance of Social Security benefits in exchange for paying into the program your whole working life? It's something Democrats constantly talk about, particularly when attacking Republicans who propose privatizing the program.

As Nancy Pelosi once put it: "Social Security has never failed to pay promised benefits, and Democrats will fight to make sure that Republicans do not turn a guaranteed benefit into a guaranteed gamble."

The AFL-CIO warned in 2005 about "President Bush's plan to replace Social Security's guaranteed benefits with risky private accounts." The AARP describes Social Security as "the guaranteed part of your retirement plan." Etc., etc.

Turns out, this "guarantee" is a lie.

In 1960, the Supreme Court ruled that workers do not have a legal right to their Social Security benefits. Congress can cut them any time it wants, which it's done several times. And, because there are no ownership rights, if you die the day you retire after making a lifetime of payments into Social Security, your heirs get nothing.

Indeed, Social Security's only guarantee is that today's workers will get an incredibly lousy return on the huge amount of money they've "invested" in the program.

And what about that Social Security "Trust Fund" the Democrats rhapsodize about? Isn't it supposed to guarantee benefit payments for another 30 or 40 years?

Truth is, the fund is nothing more than an accounting gimmick designed to make the program look healthier than it is. Obama exposed this scam as well by showing that retirees can't trust the "Trust Fund" for anything.

These are, by the way, all shortcomings that Social Security privatization advocates have tried to point out for years, only to be shouted down by Democrats.

In the current debt debate, Republicans could easily waylay Obama's threat about cutting off grandma's Social Security checks with a resolution ordering the Treasury to put retirees first in line for any government spending after Aug. 2. Let Democrats try to block that.

Whatever happens, the fact remains that Obama has accidentally made a pretty good case for Social Security reform by revealing the program for what it really is. A BIG PONZI SCHEME.

COMMENTS:
Posted By: billmeek

When Lyndon Johnson was president he and his Democratic Congress quietly moved Social Security funding from a separate pool of money ("Lockbox") into the general fund. He did this to hide the true cost of his Vietnam war from the taxpayers. Am I the only one who remembers this?

Posted By: moebellini

Thank you and can someone please see that Bernie Sanders, the delusional moron from Vermont, reads this. He has steadfastly held to the idea that there is no problem with social security and that republicans are fear mongers. Well Bernie, your guy, the president has just blown your cover. One of you guys is a total liar and should be removed from office.

Posted By: JohnQLiberty(5) on 7/14/2011 | 3:13 PM ET

Unlike other federal expenditures, Social Security is a separate program with its own income stream of FICA taxes, which will continue to be paid regardless of the debt limit. To the extent that FICA taxes are enough to cover the outgoing checks, no social security recipient need lose a dime. Michele Bachmann pointed this out on cable news last night.

Posted By: mrtriax

Isn't it time to stop the 'which party is responsible for what' squabbling and addressed the real problem? Both parties have been fiscally irresponsible for decades. The ratio of productive workers to consumers has tanked. Small businesses have seen their operations choked by mindless regulation. Entitlements have gone through the roof with no additional income to pay for them. 4 indecisive wars they lacked the guts to win. Medical costs have soared ... the list goes on.

AMERICA SUCKS, END CAPITALISM, CONFISCATE THE ASSETS OF THE RICH,TAX THE 1%, CANCEL ALL DEBT, PAY EVERYBODY $20/HR...IN AMERICA

2011-10-19T07:16:00.007-05:00

I have read a bit more about the goals of the WALL STREET occupiers and in a further evaluation of SOME of their goals, the goals started to sound familiar to me and then I realized that these "goals" were familiar, since they were the identical goals of the Bolsheviks!

These were the goals of the many, many, failed Communist policies that have failed, and finally died a well deserved death in the Soviet Union!

THESE PROTESTERS HAVE BEEN SUPPORTED NOW BY PRESIDENT BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA, WHO HAS FINALLY SHOWED HIS TRUE COLORS ( in case you did not know this previously).

Imagine the destruction of the banking system as all loans to the 99% are to be forgiven. Imagine then all employees at the lowest level that will have to be paid $20/hr. How many jobs will this create?

These policies have been put forth from the unions and the clueless "students" who have had their minds loaded with nonsense by the likes of "professors", Obama's intimate friends in Chicago who bombed the Pentagon!

Do you expect anything else....well now you know, and are warned. Truth hurts those who lie!

STATES THAT HAVE LOW TAXES AND SPEND LESS HAVE HIGHEST CREDIT RATINGS..DUH!!! IS THAT ANY SURPRISE? IL AND CA ARE WORST!

2011-10-19T07:06:00.006-05:00

Judge Economic Policies By State's Credit Ratings

By JAMES CARTER AND CHRISTINE HARBIN

The Tenth Amendment and America's federalist structure give the states the right to be "laboratories of democracy" — each with the opportunity to implement unique public policies within the confines of their borders.

(THIS PROVES ONCE AGAIN THAT KEEPING THE BOOT OFF THE NECK OF CITIZENS AND BUSINESS IS THE WISEST POLICY TO FOLLOW FOR SUCCESSFUL QUALITY OF LIFE AS WELL AS FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY.)

Writing for the dissent in an early 1932 Supreme Court case, Justice Louis Brandeis celebrated this right, declaring:

"It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country."

In the nearly eight decades since Brandeis issued his opinion, divergent state-level economic policies have led some states to prosper while others have learned — sometimes painfully — that not all "experiments" succeed. Divergent policies bring divergent outcomes.

Imperfect as they are, state credit ratings speak volumes about the underlying quality of a state's economic policies.

But what are they saying?

What are highly rated states doing right?

What are the lowest rated states — California and Illinois, in particular — doing wrong?

• States with strong credit ratings have a few key traits in common. For one, they tend to keep taxes low.

The average top marginal personal income-tax rate for states boasting the S&P's AAA and AA+ credit ratings (the two highest ratings) is 5.1%. This figure rises to 6.3% for states in the middle-rated group (AA and AA-) and 7.7% in states in the lowest-rated group (A+ and A-).

The average top marginal corporate income-tax rate for states boasting the S&P's AAA and AA+ credit ratings is 6.7%. This figure rises to 7.6% for states in the middle-rated group and 9.2% in states in the lowest-rated group.

The overall state and local tax burden is lowest in the highest-rated group and highest in the lowest-rated group.

• State governments with strong credit ratings tend to carry less debt and spend less on debt service. On average, the highest-rated states spend 7.8% of their annual tax revenue on debt service. States in the middle-rated group (AA and AA-) spend 8.4% while those in the lowest-rated group (A+ and A-) spend 9.2%.

• State governments with strong credit ratings are far more likely to be a "right-to-work" state. Roughly half of the states with AAA and AA+ credit ratings give employees the right to decide whether to join or financially support a union.

Fewer than one in three states in the middle-rated group, and none of the states in the lowest-rated group, give employees that right.

• States with strong credit ratings maintain quality legal systems that are conducive to economic growth. As a group, states with the highest credit ratings score the highest in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's "State Liability Systems Ranking Study." States with the lowest credit ratings tend to fare among the worst in the study.

• States with strong credit ratings tend to maintain those ratings for extended periods of time. That is, credit ratings may rise and fall for most states, but the highest-rated states tend to maintain consistently high credit ratings.

For example, Missouri, North Carolina, Virginia and Utah have each held AAA credit ratings for at least 45 years while Maryland has held that distinction for 50 years.

None of this should come as a surprise. States that keep taxes and spending in check have a greater untapped capacity to meet their debt obligations and deal with budget problems as they arise.

States that maintain policies conducive to economic growth are less likely to encounter debt and budget crises and, over time, benefit from a healthier tax base.

Justice Brandeis believed in the usefulness of having states "try novel social and economic experiments."

But with decades of divergent policies and divergent outcomes behind us, the lesson going forward should be clear to anyone willing to listen.

• Carter was a deputy assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury under President George W. Bush and served on the staff of the Senate Budget Committee. Harbin is a research manager for the American Legislative Exchange Council, a nonpartisan group of state legislators.

OBAMA AS RABBLE ROUSER SUPPORTS CLASS WAR AND WAR AGAINST ALL BUSINESSES NOW, NOT JUST OIL COMPANIES AND COAL COMPANIES AND...YOU.?????

2011-10-18T21:50:00.009-05:00

Obama on Occupy Wall Street: 'We Are on Their Side'

Who exactly is the "WE" he is referring to? Not me, not anybody I even know!

Now Obama and his idiot sidekick, Biden, are at war with all corporations, all businesses. It was not enough to be against oil companies, coal companies, energy companies, big automobiles being built, against Boeing opening a new plant in the Carolinas without union labor,against all "big" business...now he and Biden are against all business, against capitalism.

Hey Mr. Obommer, and WALL STREET protesters take note, nobody has to buy anything from a big business...it got that way making and selling products people want to buy.

Don't like their product? Buy somebody else's, or better yet see if you can make your own, maybe for less, and you can then sell yours to others and if they like it they will buy more and tell others, and you too can become rich in America.

Steve Jobs founded Apple Computer in his garage, while a college dropout. Now Apple has a market value of $400 BILLION! Do you hate Mr. Jobs and Apple? Are they too big for your liking? Should he have to divide up the shares and give them to people who do not have them?

Herman Cain, one of the GOP presidential hopefuls had it right: in America if you are poor do not blame somebody else, blame yourself!

If you do not graduate high school, if you acquire no job skills, if you do not want to work, why should it be somebody else's responsibility to make sure that your income is equal to someone who is working 80 hours a week!

In an interview ABC News, President Obama continues to express his commitment to the Occupy Wall Street protesters. A commitment? What commitment? To destroy business, to have a business give up its profits?

The very reason a business is started is to make a profit for the people who started it as their financial reward...that is the very essence of an economy and how it works.

One of the earliest examples of this was how the early voyages to the NEW WORLD were financed, and later various other business ventures in the NEW WORLD and throughout the newly discovered "trading" countries.

Investors would put up funds to buy or sponsor a sea voyage to the new area to bring back goods to sell in the original country. They bought products in say, India, and brought them back to England, and bought products made in England and brought them back to India. Each time making a profit!

That is the basis of all business...there is no variation, ever!

If each voyage would be at a loss, there would be no profit, and there would be no commerce without a profit to support more trade.

Mr. Obama is clueless about this, apparently never learning anything about the discovery of the NEW WORLD, he probably did not take that class being a part of the "special" programs that just moved him up though the classes.

The only "business" in the world that does not ever make a profit, but only takes capital and takes and takes, is the government!

If businesses were run like the government, we would still be writing on stone tablets and arguing against putting out of work buggy manufacturers!

“The most important thing we can do right now is those of us in leadership letting people know that we understand their struggles and we are on their side, and that we want to set up a system in which hard work, responsibility, doing what you’re supposed to do, is rewarded,” Obama tells ABC News. “And that people who are irresponsible, who are reckless, who don’t feel a sense of obligation to their communities and their companies and their workers that those folks aren’t rewarded.”

What does this statement really mean? Not rewarded? Does that mean they are not allowed to make a profit? What obligation does a business have to its workers?
Something way over and above providing a safe place to work and a wage that they accept in return for their work? Now it it the business of business to provide more now? Apparently according to Obama, that is the case, or else that business has to "NOT BE REWARDED!" What is that, Communism, Marxist theory, what is it?

The president also compares the protesters to the Tea Party. “In some ways, they’re not that different from some of the protests that we saw coming from the Tea Party," Obama says. "Both on the left and the right, I think people feel separated from their government. They feel that their institutions aren’t looking out for them.”

But it wasn't too long ago that President Obama openly mocked the Tea Party movement:

"Those of you who are watching certain news channels on which I'm not very popular, and you see folks waving tea bags around,["] Obama said, “let me just remind them that I am happy to have a serious conversation about how we are going to cut our health care costs down over the long term, how we are going to stabilize Social Security.”

News to Mr. NOBAMA, you have been given plenty of suggestions what to do but you only do what you want as stupid as it is. When will you get this?

GOVERNMENT LIES ABOUT TRUE INFLATION BY EXCLUDING FOOD AND FUEL COSTS..DECEIVING US BY SHOWING A SMALLER AMOUNT THAN ACTUAL

2011-10-18T12:49:00.009-05:00

When we receive from the government the official results of inflation, we get as expected, a lie! They basically exclude the increased costs of the basic commodities we buy every day like FOOD and FUEL to tell us that prices did not increase!

They exclude the things that affect us the most, and tell us that there is no inflation, when those things that affect us the most are EXCLUDED.

Typical government mumbo jumbo.

To explain it in layman's lingo, something we can all understand this is the long and short of it, and why it is so deceitful.

Let's say that Michelle Obama goes shopping for the White House food pantry and she buys a dozen eggs for $3, and a gallon of ice cream for $8. These same products cost $1.50 and $4 last month.

So they were up by 50% in just a month, showing significant inflation!

But that is not how the government figures it ( how it lies and misleads).

It considers other factors which it refers to as CORE INFLATION, a term to screw us all to hide the true inflation.

What this essentially means is that in addition to the eggs and ice cream you purchased at 50% more than the previous month, (and you noticed how high it got), they compare that increase against a cost DECREASE in the price of the WAL-MART television manufactured in China that was $400 last month, and is now priced at $199, thus a 50% DECREASE.

Voila, like magic, there was no inflation that month since the cost increase in your food of 50%, was OFFSET by the 50% DECREASE in the cost of TV's at Wal-Mart.(NOTICE THE WAL-MART SALE SIGN...MADE FOR DUMMIES)

THAT IS HOW THEY FIGURE YOUR INFLATION. Go buy a TV at Wal-Mart and stop complaining about inflation, you just would have save $199, and buy all those expensive eggs and ice creams...you are way ahead on the savings!!

If the same methodology that was used in 1980 to chronicle the double digit inflation of that era were in use today, we would have an inflation rate of ten percent right now, according to Shadow Government Statistics. We are entering a massive era of stagflation which recalls to us our writing in Catastrophe, published two years ago, that “inflation may well be the enduring legacy of the Obama presidency.”

How does the federal government understate the inflation rate? Let us count the ways:

1. It excludes food and fuel costs from its rate of “core inflation.” Each month, the Federal Reserve calms national inflation fears by pointing to the low rate of core inflation, currently at an annual pace of just 2.1%. It reaffirms that the economy is meeting the goal set for it by the Fed of keeping core inflation around or below two percent.

Claiming that food and fuel are too unstable to be included in the inflation rate, it excludes precisely those areas in which inflation is felt most deeply. In the past year, the cost of commodities from corn to soybeans has doubled and the price of gasoline at the pump is one third higher than it was one year ago. The average American household budget devotes one-third of its cash to food and energy costs. Leaving these elements out of the inflation rate has no justification.

2. It substitutes less expensive products when prices rise When prices go up, the economists who generate the Consumer Price Index substitute less a expensive alternative product for the one that has risen in price. For example, if the cost of steak goes up, the CPI does not reflect the increase, but simply replaces steak with hamburger in computing the price index.

3. It excludes “hedonistic” products as price rises The Fed adjusts for price rises by dumbing down the luxury elements of the products whose price it measures. It might, for example, measure the price of cars without air conditioning as a way of avoiding reporting the increase in the cost of automobiles. Even when the luxury features cannot easily be removed from the product, the CPI economists assume that they are.

4. In averaging the price of different commodities, it uses a geometric — not an arithmetic mean. Since the geometric mean, which compares the square roots of product prices, comes out lower, it understates the rate of inflation.0

To the layman, an increase in total spending of 50 cents on a base of $2 would represent a 25% increase in price. But that uses the arithmetic mean.

The geometric mean compares the square root of (new price / original price) multiplied by the same for the other commodity. Using this method of calculation, the increase in price would only be 22.5%.

The CPI switched to geometric comparison in 1994. Neat huh?

But no matter how the federal economists bend and twist the data, most Americans realize that we are in for a massive bout of inflation.

And this inflation is dramatically different from the last hyper inflation of the late 70s and early 80s. That inflation was caused by too much money chasing too few products. To slow down the economy and tame price increases, the Fed raised interest rates. But this inflation has nothing to do with demand. Rather, it is caused by the upward push of costs like gasoline, taxes, food, health insurance, and, soon, interest rates. This cost-push increase in prices cannot be tamed by cooling off the economy, which is, in fact, so cool already that it is approaching zero growth.

Stagflation, which will get worse and worse, may be Obama’s real legacy to this country.

GOVERNMENT SPENT MORE THIS YEAR THAN LAST; TAXPAYERS ARE LIED TO AGAIN AND AGAIN AS SPENDING INCREASES!!

2011-10-17T19:14:00.003-05:00

The Austerity Myth: Federal Spending Up 5% This Year

By JOHN MERLINE, INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

When Republicans took control of the House in January, they pledged to make deep cuts in federal spending, and in April they succeeded in passing a bill advertised as cutting $38 billion from fiscal 2011's budget. Then in August, they pushed for a deal to cut an additional $2.4 trillion over the next decade.

Some analysts have blamed these spending cuts for this year's economic slowdown.

But data released by the Treasury Department on Friday show that, so far, there haven't been any spending cuts at all.

Higher Spending, Deficits

In fact, in the first nine months of this year, federal spending was $120 billion higher than in the same period in 2010, the data show. That's an increase of almost 5%. And deficits during this time were $23.5 billion higher.

These spending hikes haven't stopped many analysts from claiming that the country is in an age of budget austerity, one that's hurting economic growth.

A July article in USA Today, for example, claimed that "Already in 2011, softer government spending has sapped growth."

Jared Bernstein, former chief economic adviser to Vice President Biden, wrote over the summer that "government spending cutbacks have been a large drag on growth in recent quarters and have led to sharp losses in state and local employment."

Economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman argued in September that "the turn toward austerity (is) a major factor in our growth slowdown."

If government spending is related to growth, as these and others claim, then the economy presumably should be growing faster, not slower, given the current higher rates of federal outlays.

State Spending Higher Too

Nor does the claim that state governments sharply cut spending stand up well to closer scrutiny.

Overall state spending continued to climb right through the recession, when all money from state general funds and other funds, federal grants and state bonds is combined.

Total state outlays in 2010 were almost 10% higher than in 2008, according to the National Association of State Budget Officers' annual State Expenditure Report.

And general fund spending — which makes up about 40% of total state spending — is expected to climb 5.2% in 2011 and 2.6% next year, according to the association's latest survey.

NASBO says that states were able to sustain spending growth through 2010 only because the federal government was pumping more money in via the $830 billion stimulus, and that these funds are now all but exhausted.

As the survey report notes, the tapering off of the stimulus "combined with a slow recovery in state revenue collections, will continue the tight resource environment for states in fiscal 2012."

Meanwhile, the claim that state and local government jobs have been severely cut is, at the very least, open to some debate.

"We know that the biggest problem that we've had in terms of unemployment over the last several months has not been in the private sector," President Obama said at a recent press briefing. "It's actually been layoffs of teachers and cops and firefighters."

Monthly data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics do show that from December 2007 — when the recession officially started — until the end of 2010, state and local governments shed 221,000 jobs. And they've cut another 234,000 jobs so far this year.

But a separate annual survey from the Census Bureau shows that "full-time-equivalent" state and local employment climbed 200,000 between 2007 and 2010 (the latest year for which these census data are available.) The differences come from the methodologies used.

In any case, even using BLS data, the number of state and local government jobs has fallen just 2.3% since December 2007. That compares with a decline of 5.4% for private-sector jobs.

1,271 GOVERMENT ORGANIZATIONS NOW WORK ON COUNTER-TERRORISM AND 854,000 PEOPLE HAVE SECURITY CLEARANCE TO SPY ON ALL CITIZENS!! MORE MONEY WASTED !

2011-10-17T11:55:00.015-05:00

The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.

These are some of the findings of a two-year investigation by The Washington Post that discovered what amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight. After nine years of unprecedented spending and growth, the result is that the system put in place to keep the United States safe is so massive that its effectiveness is impossible to determine.

The investigation's other findings include:

* Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counter terrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.

* An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.

* In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings - about 17 million square feet of space.

* Many security and intelligence agencies do the same work, creating redundancy and waste. For example, 51 federal organizations and military commands, operating in 15 U.S. cities, track the flow of money to and from terrorist networks.

* Analysts who make sense of documents and conversations obtained by foreign and domestic spying share their judgment by publishing 50,000 intelligence reports each year - a volume so large that many are routinely ignored.

Gallery thumb
An alternative geography
Since Sept. 11, 2001, the top-secret world created to respond to the terrorist attacks has grown into an unwieldy enterprise spread over 10,000 U.S. locations.

These are not academic issues; lack of focus, not lack of resources, was at the heart of the Fort Hood shooting that left 13 dead, as well as the Christmas Day bomb attempt thwarted not by the thousands of analysts employed to find lone terrorists but by an alert airline passenger who saw smoke coming from his seatmate.

They are also issues that greatly concern some of the people in charge of the nation's security.

"There has been so much growth since 9/11 that getting your arms around that - not just for the CIA, for the secretary of defense - is a challenge," Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said in an interview with The Post last week.

In the Department of Defense, where more than two-thirds of the intelligence programs reside, only a handful of senior officials - called Super Users - have the ability to even know about all the department's activities. But as two of the Super Users indicated in interviews, there is simply no way they can keep up with the nation's most sensitive work.

"I'm not going to live long enough to be briefed on everything" was how one Super User put it. The other recounted that for his initial briefing, he was escorted into a tiny, dark room, seated at a small table and told he couldn't take notes. Program after program began flashing on a screen, he said, until he yelled ''Stop!" in frustration.

"I wasn't remembering any of it," he said.

Underscoring the seriousness of these issues are the conclusions of retired Army Lt. Gen. John R. Vines, who was asked last year to review the method for tracking the Defense Department's most sensitive programs. Vines, who once commanded 145,000 troops in Iraq and is familiar with complex problems, was stunned by what he discovered.

"I'm not aware of any agency with the authority, responsibility or a process in place to coordinate all these interagency and commercial activities," he said in an interview. "The complexity of this system defies description."

The result, he added, is that it's impossible to tell whether the country is safer because of all this spending and all these activities. "Because it lacks a synchronizing process, it inevitably results in message dissonance, reduced effectiveness and waste," Vines said. "We consequently can't effectively assess whether it is making us more safe."

The Post's investigation is based on government documents and contracts, job descriptions, property records, corporate and social networking Web sites, additional records, and hundreds of interviews with intelligence, military and corporate officials and former officials. Most requested anonymity either because they are prohibited from speaking publicly or because, they said, they feared retaliation at work for describing their concerns.

The Post's online database of government organizations and private companies was built entirely on public records. The investigation focused on top-secret work because the amount classified at the secret level is too large to accurately track.

Today's article describes the government's role in this expanding enterprise. Tuesday's article describes the government's dependence on private contractors. Wednesday's is a portrait of one Top Secret America community. On the Web, an extensive, searchable database built by The Post about Top Secret America is available at washingtonpost.com/topsecretamerica.

Defense Secretary Gates, in his interview with The Post, said that he does not believe the system has become too big to manage but that getting precise data is sometimes difficult. Singling out the growth of intelligence units in the Defense Department, he said he intends to review those programs for waste. "Nine years after 9/11, it makes a lot of sense to sort of take a look at this and say, 'Okay, we've built tremendous capability, but do we have more than we need?' " he said.

CIA Director Leon Panetta, who was also interviewed by The Post last week, said he's begun mapping out a five-year plan for his agency because the levels of spending since 9/11 are not sustainable. "Particularly with these deficits, we're going to hit the wall. I want to be prepared for that," he said. "Frankly, I think everyone in intelligence ought to be doing that."

In an interview before he resigned as the director of national intelligence in May, retired Adm. Dennis C. Blair said he did not believe there was overlap and redundancy in the intelligence world. "Much of what appears to be redundancy is, in fact, providing tailored intelligence for many different customers," he said.

Blair also expressed confidence that subordinates told him what he needed to know. "I have visibility on all the important intelligence programs across the community, and there are processes in place to ensure the different intelligence capabilities are working together where they need to," he said.

Weeks later, as he sat in the corner of a ballroom at the Willard Hotel waiting to give a speech, he mused about The Post's findings. "After 9/11, when we decided to attack violent extremism, we did as we so often do in this country," he said. "The attitude was, if it's worth doing, it's probably worth overdoing."

22 MILLION PEOPLE WORK FOR THE GOVERNMENT IN AMERICA...ONE OUT OF SEVEN NOW ARE ON DIRECT GOVERNMENT DOLE! THIEVES ROBBING PENSIONS!

2011-10-17T10:58:00.010-05:00

As we read about the unsustainable burden of having less and less workers contributing to the Social Security system, now at 2.5 workers per retiree, we have an even bigger burden that is coming...the GOVERNMENT WORKER drag on the economy!

An even bigger problem is that literally the only place that Unions are growing is though the unionization of those poor downtrodden government workers, by the SEIU for instance!

GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES BY LEVEL OF GOVERNMENT
Government Level Total Employees AS PERCENT OF Labor Force
Federal 2,730,040 2%
State 5,329,022 3.4%
Local 14,227,163 9%
Total 22,286,225 14.4% OF THE LABOR FORCE WORK FOR GOVERNMENT!

This total is ever increasing and if continued, will reach 25% of the workforce by 2050, and 50% by 2100!

That total is totally unsustainable, and will be heading to Communism where the government IS the employer....of everyone. Furthermore, every communist country is a failed state having nothing but poverty and shortages of everything necessary for a decent life.

We need to wake up and stop electing those who keep fostering this, especially with the uncontrollable and generous pensions!

At least eight Chicago labor leaders who are eligible for inflated city pensions also stand to receive union pensions covering the same work period, thanks to a charitable interpretation of state law by officials representing two city pension funds, a Tribune/WGN-TV investigation has found.

By double and even triple dipping on pensions, these union officials stand to reap millions more in retirement while thousands of rank-and-file union members face hard times and city pension funds stagger toward insolvency.

Union pension benefits are not public record, but the Tribune and WGN-TV obtained information confirming that at least seven union officials are accruing benefits in multiple pensions and another retired official already is receiving money from two pensions.

One labor leader stands to reap more than $400,000 a year from three pensions — the city laborers fund, a union district council fund and a national union fund — all covering the same time period. During his expected lifetime, he stands to receive approximately $9 million, according to an analysis based on the funds’ actuarial assumptions.

Union officials are accumulating these benefits even though the state pension code includes language aimed at preventing double dipping.

Pension experts, state lawmakers and attorneys specializing in pension law say the spirit of the statute clearly prohibits labor leaders from receiving a second pension from funds established by their locals, although it does appear to contain a loophole that allows pensions from national unions.

City pension fund directors and their attorney, Fredrick Heiss, say that the law is vague and that if the Legislature had wanted to bar labor leaders from participating in union pension plans, they would have said so more clearly.

“The Legislature never told us how to administer this thing,” Heiss said. “They could have said ‘no second pension at all,’ but they didn’t say that.” And this coming from a lawyer, what a surprise!

Retired Chicago Federation of Labor President Dennis Gannon was rehired by the city for one day, after years of being off the payroll, so he would qualify for an annual pension of more than $150,000. His highest pay at the city was $56,000. Twenty-two other labor leaders are also gaming the pension system in what will ultimately cost it and taxpayers a total of $56 million.

Some background: Pension laws are set by state government. Boosts in benefits are easy for lawmakers to support because they offer future benefits to government employees at no immediate budget cost. Every two years an omnibus pension bill would wend its way quietly through the General Assembly, providing pension credits for such things as time served as a member of a park board or city council, which are volunteer or low-paid positions, not generally thought of as jobs that carry pension credits. All the legislators and lobbyists were aware of the bill (though not its details) and said nothing, myself included, when I was president of a business trade association.

It isn't just those big bad people in Chicago who play the game. Many school boards jack up their superintendents' salary in the two or three years prior to retirement. So if a superintendent was paid $100,000 but then in his or her final years that was boosted to $200,000, the pension benefit would increase dramatically - without the superintendent having paid into the system over the years to support such a high pension.

The foundation for Chicago's shenanigans go back to the 1870s, when the leaders of immigrant populations began taking over local governments. Irish, German, Italian, Polish and Eastern European residents were shunned by the better educated, more prosperous WASPs, and decided they could get the better of them. Patronage and corruption reigned, and carry over to this day.

I define public corruption as "personal gain at public expense." The pension scams certainly fit. To pay the union leaders' extravagant government pensions will require that taxpayers and current and future city employees pay more to keep the systems solvent. According to the Civic Committee, a watchdog group, the city pension funds will be depleted of assets in 20 years unless government steps in and the benefits of today's and tomorrow's employees are reduced. As for the union bosses, there's nothing that can be done. The state constitution guarantees pension benefits that are legally "earned," even though in these cases the benefits were not ethical.

It's enough to make you sick, and to lower trust and confidence in our governments, which scrape the ground as is.

Comments:

Cowboy Logic 144p
Have they no shame? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoKn7vkSMBc

FlexoRick 93p
Union Bosses...the new Mob....what good is RICO?

OLJingoist 102p
REMARKABLE

Darby64 93p
Obama is right to transfer money from the poor to union leaders. What are the poor going to do with that money? Probably buy food. Certainly not retire. The unions need to be kept wealthy at all costs, be it higher taxes, impoverishing Americans, so says Barack Obama.

USMCsc 82p
Tell me it's not true! How can the labor bosses who only care about the working stiffs be accused of something this despicable? And in Chicago? And bears do what; where?

EOD 125p
Treasonous.

These actions must be punished under the Treason Statute to the fullest extent that the Law allows.

One_More_Nail 78p · 4 days ago
Union leaders looking out for themselves.........................Come on Trumka....speak out against this......for the working class....?.....should we hold our breath????????????..........brotherhood........?.........hello...........is that crickets I hear......................................................no doubt Bushes fault.........damn banks........o and wall street...that evil wall street...............

onecornpone 123p
Anyone who doesn't leave IL ASAP has questionable intelligence.

I wish that state to become a vacant wasteland... Why would anyone stay?

GUNNYG 116p
HAHAHA! As the song goes, "just look for, the union label, for crony corruption and lies..."

Small wonder President Alinsky supports unions, hell, his Klingon War Bride had a job not unlike a union boss at a hospital, doing NOTHING and making big coin.

http://theantiliberalzone.blogspot.com/
THE ANTI LIBERAL ZONE

HeReturnsSoon 108p
That's why the Laborers Union and others LOVE college kids.
They pay dues for a few years then they disappear.
It's FREE MONEY to the unions.

crankitup 87p
hoffa jr. wants to take the SOB'S out. Oh not them, sorry!

EricBrodin 112p
Hey, caring for the "working man" is hard business. It's hard damn work community organizing, lying, and raping the taxpayers.

War_Machine 109p
But the problem is big business and Wall Street?!?!?!? Isn't it?!?!?!?............. LOL..when someone retires after working for a BUSINESS, BIG OR SMALL, they do not steal the pension money from the rest of us taxpayers!!!!!

IsrealFeller 83p
Man, you just can't make this stuff up.

actsnow 113p
it's all about the ruling class,it's hard work keeping the Rubes in line.

John G 86p
Don't the rank and file union members have a problem with this? Is this even known to them?

ReaganiteGOPer 83p
SLIME

DrConstitution 83p
I wonder how long the rank and file will remain completely ignorant of these facts. Not just this, but how about all the union members (public unions in particular) who got let go because their "senior brethren" refused to a take a minor paycut in order to avoid letting other workers go - as has happened with many police departments (oh wait - I thought they were all about public safety, right?) ? How do you think they'll vote this time around?

I love to see unions shoot themselves in the foot, it's really fun to watch.

JTWhistler 59p
Union Bosses: Union Members = Useful Idiots.

Wesley69 114p
Where are the Wall Street Protestors?????

Cannon649 73p
The state just raised taxes 67%, to help pay for this fraud.

Businesses are leaving -

Unemployment rising

Any reason why unions are needed - Think this guy was worth anything like his pension
Illinois has a Attorney General - where is she - or is she part of problem?
Can't the people see it?
What will it take?

larrygrant876 98p
Union Violence anyone? Don't forget one of the steps the communists stated was to take over the unions, they have.
http://www.righttoworkcommittee.org/fuva_videohn....

hologram5 113p · 4 days ago
What?! No trolls here to defend their supreme overlords? What's up with that?

MEXICANIZING AMERICAN STUDENTS BY FORCING TO LEARN THE MEXICAN ANTHEM AND PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE TO MEXICO-A FAILED HELLHOLE AND NARCO STATE

2011-10-17T09:58:00.007-05:00

TX High School Students Made to Recite Mexican National Anthem, Pledge of Allegiance
by Madeleine Morgenstern

JUST AN FYI, THE PHOTO IS FROM THE CITY OF CANCUN,,,THIS IS HOW PEOPLE IN MEXICO REALLY LIVE, THESE ARE THE PEOPLE THAT WORK IN THE RESORT HOTELS...NOW YOU KNOW WHY THEY WANT TO COME HER???

Students in a Texas public high school were made to stand up and recite the Mexican national anthem and Mexican pledge of allegiance as part of a Spanish class assignment, but the school district maintains there was nothing wrong with the lesson.

It happened last month in an intermediate Spanish class at Achieve Early College High School in McAllen, Texas — a city located about 10 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border.

Wearing red, white and green, students had to memorize the Mexican anthem and pledge and stand up and recite them in individually in front of the class.

That didn’t go over well with sophomore Brenda Brinsdon. The 15-year-old sat down and refused to participate. She also caught it all on video:

“I just thought it was out of hand, I didn’t think it was right,” she told The Blaze. “Reciting pledges to Mexico and being loyal to it has nothing to do with learning Spanish.”

She said she was particularly offended because the presentations in teacher Reyna Santos’s class took place during “Freedom Week,” the week after the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, and on U.S. Constitution Day — the same day as Mexico’s Independence Day.

“Why are we doing their independence when it‘s Freedom Week and it’s also Constitution Day?” Brinsdon said.

Brinsdon said she complained to the school principal, Yvette Cavazo, who told her it was part of the curriculum and that she should participate. Her father, William, also got involved, calling the school district superintendent to complain.

When Brenda made clear she would not stand up and recite the pledge, she was given an alternative assignment: an essay on the history of the Mexican revolution.

Meanwhile, other students continued with their presentations, which took place over the course of several days.

When Brinsdon talked to Santos — a first-year teacher at Achieve — about her new assignment, the teacher told her she grew up in Mexico.

“She told me that she loved Mexico,” Brinsdon said.

School district spokesman Mark May defended the presentations, saying it’s a state requirement for upper-level language classes to teach about foreign culture.

According to the state’s Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills standards, students are expected to gain “knowledge and understanding” of other cultures and use the language to demonstrate understanding of different practices and perspectives. There are no specific requirements about learning to recite pledges or anthems.

May said it’s up to the teacher how to interpret and teach the standards.

“It wasn’t required to pledge loyalty and renounce the U.S., they were simply spreading the culture of another country,” May told The Blaze. “In my mind it’s no different from memorizing a poem or memorizing a passage from Shakespeare.”

William Brinsdon took issue with that notion, saying if that’s the case it cheapens the pledge.

“You‘re taking their allegiance and their oath from Mexico and cheapening it just as a grade or words don’t mean anything,” he said.

May reiterated that the lesson was all done within the context of meeting the state requirements, and that the school did its duty providing Brenda with an alternative assignment when she objected.

“The students came away with a better understanding of the culture, heritage and customs of a neighboring country where Spanish is the primary language,” he said.

May added that the lesson was “well received” by other students and parents.

“There’s always going to be people that always feel a little bit differently,” May said.

William Brinsdon is still having a hard time fathoming the idea of reciting foreign pledges and anthems in a U.S. public school in the first place.

“Our kids don’t even know the [American] national anthem and here we are…teaching them to memorize and perform the national anthem for Mexico,” he said. “I just think it’s so backwards.”

Jon Seidl contributed to this report.

Comments

Mandors
Okay, it’s SPANISH class. Singing the national anthem of Mexico, fine. Reciting their pledge? No. Nationalism turns to chauvinism turns to bigotry, and I’m talking about Mexicans in this country.

Eliasim
Do you know there are people of Mexican descent in the U.S military who would fight for Mexico if it ever came to blows between Mexico and the U.S?

TXPilot

One has to wonder why Mexicans come here and talk about how great Mexico is, and profess how they would like the US to be more like their homeland. However, if Mexico truly is that wonderful, why are people so willing to flee from it, even at the risk of their own lives to do so? The truth is that Mexico has always been a poverty stricken, corrupt Hellhole, where there has never been anything approaching human liberty, and with the drug wars continuing to heat up, its getting nothing but worse down there. It’s bad shameful that illegal aliens break the law, come here and take jobs away from hard working Americans, avail themselves of any taxpayer provided free service and increase our crime rates , but to also stand around insulting our country and comparing it to a place that has always been and will always be a sewer.

Stuck_in_CA

THIS IS RECONQUESTA!!! The “Tan Klan” has been working overtime, reclaiming the Southwest. The last three presidents have endorsed and encouraged, as Al Gore once put it, “The browning of America.”
Our Republic is under assault from within and without.
WHEN will we make a stand??? And there’s this:
Now we now why Gov. Perry panders to illegal aliens…they can vote in Texas!‏ By Dave Gibson
http://www.examiner.com/immigration-reform-in-national/now-we-now-why-gov-perry-panders-to-illegal-aliens-they-can-vote-texas?render=print#print
Stuck_in_CA
grfd703

When I was in Spanish class back in the eighties, we were required to learn the US pledge of allegiance in Spanish. Very different, and still meets the intent.

Yo hago juramento a la bandera de los Estados Unidos de America, y a la quien representa. Una nacion, bajo Dios, indivisible, con libertad y justicia para todos.

ashestoashes

Part of the curriculum? Rick Perry’s state.

grfd703
Ok, let’s try this again… (I left out “and to the republic” the first time)

Yo hago juramento a la bandera de los Estados Unidos de America, y a la republica a quien representa. Una nacion, bajo Dios, indivisible, con libertad y justicia para todos.

Eliasim

Do you know there are people of Mexican descent in the U.S military who would fight for Mexico if it ever came to blows between Mexico and the U.S?
********************************************************************************************************************

I find this statement sooo funny. the mexicans in the US already chose not to fight for mexico. There is a war going on in mexico right now. all this mexican Pride yet none of them are going home to fight the drug cartels for mexico. So please stop pretending to be proud of mexico. If you disagree with me. by all means go to mexico and prove me wrong. Thats what i thought!

autoteck1

If the Mexicans want to recite their pledge of alegiance they should be in Mexico! If it’s so great there that you need to sing the anthem and recite your loyalty, just go back! No one is forcing you to stay here against your will. If it were american Citizens in Mexico doing it they would either be jailed or mysteriously dissapear! Another case of “Do as we say, Not as we do”!

teamarcheson

WHAT IS GOVERNOR PERRY GOING TO DO ABOUT THIS?

What a mistake it was to back Perry. What a mistake it was to back Christi of New Jersey. A pledge is an oath and these students raised their hands to signify the affirmation oath followed by the Mexican National Anthem. This is not a mistake or class room exercise. We are not shooting each other yet but the second American Civil War for Freedom as already started. Our enemy has invaded our schools, our parks and our governments.

Nostraquedeo

Heck I had whole classes that were taught in spanish because all the rest of the students understood spanish better. I was told your a smart little white kid and your going to pass anyways so just sit in the back and take the tests so I can teach the other kids so they can pass. South Texas is Mexico.

gsplgtr

My Chilean grandfather is rolling over in his grave. He would never had allowed his children to disrespect the country that adopted him! In spanish class yo learn SPANISH. You can learn about the history of Mexico in HISTORY CLASS. Enough said!

ALSO….if Mexicans/latinos come here for a better life than they have had..
???…WHY DO THEY KEEP TRYING TO CHANGE THIS COUNTRY INTO WHERE THEY “RAN” FROM????
You miss it?…you love it?? want to live here?…go visit, but quit trying to change America into the loser/down trodden culture you came from!!
Latinos have a culture that has seen many ups and downs, a grand warm culture…that has at this point failed to help it’s own people. Quit trying to force it on Americans.

lillymckim
Ok parents this is when YOU stand up and take them out of that classroom.

AIDANMAN
why MEXICO… it should be SPAIN…

rodamaa
Interesting,

Why the Mexican anthem? With all the other countries in south and central America why that choice?

I am American of Cuban decent and I have never once had any desire to sing the Cuban national anthem. We need to get rid of these traitors that now occupy our country.

God Bless America

Nostraquedeo
Posted on October 17, 2011 at 10:24am

In a little town outside of McAllen I remember during recess running from a gang of 8 boys. Almost reaching the security guard who was watching and being taken to the ground and I will never forget the look of disinterest on his face as I looked up from the ground through the dust and the boots that were stomping and kicking me and watching him 6 feet from me just leaning against a pole and finishing his cigarette. Or my first day of school being told to get off the bus because the bus driver said I must be a rich little white kid and should have my parents pick me up and he didn‘t want to clean up the blood from the buss if I was on it because he didn’t have time to drive and protect a little white kid. I’m having involuntary shaking just remembering it. They told me over and over when I was growing up. They were going to take back the land we stole from them.

watchtheotherhand

Ok, here is the problem with this whole situation. It may be Spanish class, but you have a situation on the US-Mexican border where there is daily violence and fighting, illegal immigration, and drug running, however, liberals want to make it about struggling people looking for work and jobs, which is fine, but when they come to this country legally they take an oath of loyalty to this country. The problem I have is many want the benefits of this country but then want to show disdain for it by remaining loyal to their homeland at heart (which is OK if you also assimilate to your new home). They do not want to assimilate they want to change what is already here in many instances. Learn the American pledge in Spanish. I am so sick of this cultural sensitivity BS I could puke. Our children are falling behind in public education in every way and we are trying to teach them about other cultures when they don’t even know American history or geography. We have got to be one of the dumbest generations in the history of man for the disservice we have done to our children !!!! We sell them out to China, we bow to dictators around the world so they will like us and we teach other countries Pledges to our own children and call it meeting state requirements. Doubt me just take one look at the “brilliant” minds on the Occupy wall street front. Those people are some of the dumbest people I have ever seen on TV.

@OGmoonman

10-15 years ago, there were MS-13 kids in class “A” school with the tear drop tatoo, which means they had a kill in the gangs. They come in to learn skills that they can take back to the gangs. I believe every word that if it came down to it there are Mexican-Americans that would side with Mexico. Of course, they won’t actually LEAVE America to fight they would fight from our shores. They know how much better America is, but they‘ll send their money home to family that can’t get out.

@leftfighter

I disagree. I live in Florida. I didn’t learn the Cuban (or Mexican, Venezuelan, Spanish, etc) anthem in high school Spanish, nor did the German classes learn the German anthem, or Italian in Italian.

Learning a foreign language doesn’t include learning the national pride aspects of another nation, particularly when the nation chosen isn’t the only nation in the world speaking that language. When I took Japanese in college, I didn’t sing their anthem, and they *are* the only Japanese speaking nation in the world. Just sayin’.

This is content for a Mexican history class, not Spanish language. There, I’d have no issue with it- providing, of course, that the “Mexico was stolen” curriculuum is left at the teacher’s home.
@leftfighter
bigwheel4482

the immigrants that came years ago cannot be compared to what is happening today. 40 million Spanish people in this country. when do you see any on tv? they are already a country within a country. they have their own tv and radio stations they don't need ours. we have encouraged them never to Americanize. they are more closely tied to mexico. mecha and la raza are the most dangerous anti-american hate groups in this country. this teacher should be deported, she shows no love for this country. mexico is a very nationalist country that doesnt like this country.

TH30PH1LUS

One wrong move and those painted-on-pants are going to explode. What self-respecting teacher stands in front of students looking like a stuffed sausage in clothes so tight she can’t bend over without detroying them?

Oh, she’s indoctrinating students in the anti-American public school system. Makes sense now.

AzDebi

Abolish the Department of Education!

http://aconservativeteacher.blogspot.com/2011/09/abolish-department-of-education-what.html

President Reagan declared that he would rid our country of this cancer…he was unable to accomplish it!
AzDebi
motonutt

The parents need to show up at the school and make the school administraters see that they are not going to tolerate it. Plain and simple. This is what I did when my boy’s were still in school. You would be surprised how easly they cave in when you go in calm cool and collected, after doing your homework on the matter.

Eliasim, “Do you know there are people of Mexican descent in the U.S military who would fight for Mexico if it ever came to blows between Mexico and the U.S?”

Yes, I’ve seen it first hand. In fact, I wanted to look up some old friends in the Corps by joining a facebook group, and one of the first pictures I came across was two Marines (in their barracks) with a Mexican flag on their wall. This was prevalent in 1991, I can’t imagine how it is now.
This_Individual
Jim in Houston

She loves Mexico? Send her @ss back and tell her to stay there!

mils

ALSO…
when i took Spanish….we learned about SPAIN…..SPAIN…NOT MEXICO….

Imagine learning about the country that the language originated in…hhmmmm that would be novel.

teddrunk

Mexican national anthem? Is that a song about burros, a siesta, and dancing around a hat?

euragone

Mexican National Anthem has detail’s on how to cross the border into the U.S.
euragone
Roz Anders

It’s a song about Cucarachasssssss!

kentuckypatriot

I find it ironic when one person complains, yet they continue with this outrageous assignment. If a muslim or an illegal complained, I’m sure the school would bend over backwards and discontinue the assignment because they were “ offended ”.
kentuckypatriot
smithclar3nc3

It’s very simple pull you children out of the public indoctronation centers and either home school them or private school them. If there was a mass exodus from the public school system in texas it would send a message that every school district in the country would hear. The bi*ch and complain will do nothing it takes action to get things changed.

TheWholeTruth

Exactly! ONE person complains about the US flag in a room and BOOM, it’s GONE! ONE person complains about the lyrics of a song and BOOM! it can’t be sung. But yet no one said anything other than “It’s just part of the course?” Give me a BREAK!

I was the soloist at my High School Baculariat back in 1979. I had my song all done and read. Then the choir teacher came to me and told me that I couldn’t sing it because 2 girls (sisters) complained that their ‘religion’ forbade mention of the crucifiction. She told me that I would have to change my song because these girls couldn’t mention it. THEY WEREN’T SINGING IT, I WAS! But, she told me I had to change it three days before the performance. WAKE UP AMERICA!

BOspreadnwealth

Ask the teacher if she denounces the US Pledge of Allegiance and her citizenship (assuming she is a citizen, if not then deport her). Then ask the teacher why she couldn’t just have taught the kids how to say the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance in spanish.

keith phillips

While I agree with SEC777, I am sure that the pledge and the anthem are not the only two things that the Mexican culture has written. Use anything else out of the 10′s of thousands of articles short enough to learn.

uzi4u2

I beg to differ, I taught school in the Philippines for 8 years and we never had the students recite the pledge or the National Anthem. We did have them do theirs in English. I wonder if they should be made to recite what ever the pledge of Iran is if they are in a middle eastern studies class? Or as said above, muslim students in english classes? Another example of the “we hate the US” crowd.

NHwinter

How do you know its false outrage? If a muslim didn’t want to recite our Pledge of Allegiance would that be false outrage? You have no right to judge this young girl. I admire her for even thinking beyond the assignment to what it means to actually say a pledge to any country. A thinking young person!!! Good for her, its rare.

Z_only1

Such a sheeple response but nevertheless patently ignorant of what is happening around you. It‘s people like you that ignore the warning signs before it’s to late. It’s people like you that say we should be tolerant when behind the scene they spit on our flag, burn our flag. It’s people like you who bury their heads in the sand when disrespectful occurrences happen towards our nation. It’s people like you who take being an American for granted. It’s people like you who seems to think that compromise ones principles is okay. It’s people like you who are to ignorant to notice little by little our republic is slowly being eating away from invaders. It‘s people like you who don’t understand Islam and Christianity can never compromise and/or get along. It’s people like you that are the useful idiots amongst us.

READ THE BOOK: DESTRUCTION OF AMERICA BY 2050
It describes how the Mexicans will be 150 million strong here by 2050, as predicted by the US CENSUS BUREAU.

1st a Father

You know, you’re right. If I moved to a different country either permanently or temporarily, I would expect I would be fine with learning such materials. They have moved here. They have committed to be here, why are they requiring US citizens to recite the Mexican pledge? If this were just an exorcise in reciting the pledge, why would they have the student make the solute while reciting it. Sure, show the solute, but requiring them to do it during the recitation. Something is definitely wrong here.

It‘s time to stand up to the school districts and tell them it’s wrong. Time for parents to review the curriculum being taught to their children. Get involved.
SEC777. (rolling eyes)

Please, Obi Wan, enthrall us with your extensive knowledge! Please, oh please, continue to explain to us how it would simply NOT BE POSSIBLE to teach the American pledge in Spanish (or any other language) like it’s been done in many other classes across this fine country for years and years. And please bestow upon us your wisdom regarding the teacher’s inability to find anything else written in Mexico from which she could have chosen her assignment. Oh, we wait with bated breath for the wisdom to flow from your keyboard….. (cough)

bigwheel4482

what planet are you living on? i lived on the border for 16 yrs. my nieces who have a spanish last name had to take all spanish classes even though they only knew english and didnt want to learn spanish. using that same logic there if your last name was german they would teach you in german. bi-ligual education is forced on schools and it is very expensive and waste of time. we spend more money per student educating illegals than we do our own. 30 yrs ago lemon grove ca was a beautuful place go today and it is unrecognizable

OBAMA BLAME GAME NEVER ENDS, NOTHING IN THE COUNTRY IS HIS RESPONSIBILITY, HE TAKES NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANYTHING HE HAS CAUSED-NEEDS MORE EXCUSES!

2011-10-17T09:34:00.004-05:00

I am so sick and tired of hearing over and over that whatever is happening in our economy is not the fault of this President but that it is always somebody else's fault: Big banks, small banks, traders on the exchanges, the Arab Spring, Israel, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and of course the RICH and my favorite...WE ARE NOT PAYING ENOUGH TAXES!

Obama's speeches are so boring and pointless lately and their theme is the same: " I need more money from the taxpayers, to pay to and employ the non-taxpayers!"; "I need the rich to pay more than the 70% of the taxes that they are paying, to be more fair to everyone"; and my all time favorite..." We need to stop spending and need to make the deficits smaller!".

Are we the morons or is he the moron here?

This is like that mind control thing used by the jedi in the Star Wars movie, where the drones end up "hearing" what the jedi is saying to make them believe it?

Does anyone ever believe this divisive race hater, rich people hater and class envy generator, no matter what he says?

Yes, they do...there is a solid group that do not read the papers, know anything out politics and will believe anything that they may hear in the 10 second sound bites..they are called THE DEMOCRATIC BASE.

WHAT DO OBAMA, THE NAZI PARTY, THE COMMUNISTS, THE ANARCHISTS IN EUROPE AND THE TEACHER'S UNION HAVE IN COMMON? ANTI CAPITALIST PROTESTS!

2011-10-17T09:12:00.009-05:00

As amazing as it would seem, this week has seen the unification of the weirdest groups around the country and the world. This unification clearly shows that the leftist leaning groups are much like the communists and the Nazi's in hating the status-quo, the bourgeois.

To me the marching scenes on TV reminded me of that opening scene in the movie Dr. Zhivago, where the disenfranchised are marching on the winter palace, with one exception....there is no oppression and the demonstrators are the results of the excesses of the bourgeois! THESE MARCHERS HAVE VOTED IN THE PEOPLE THAT CREATED THE PROBLEM, AND THEY ARE ABSOLUTELY CLUELESS AS TO THE CAUSES OF THE PROBLEMS!

Can you believe it, the population can be so easily duped to just follow blindly...nothing...they do not really know what they are for but they sure hate those 1% that are the top earners...those who pay 30% of all taxes collected.

Was it not the goal of every American to have upward income mobility??

Only in America it is said that you can be anything you want ( Obama?) earn as much as your abilities can allow, and to show your financial success in a wonderful lifestyle? Now that is wrong?

OBAMA DEMEANS MARTIN LUTHER KINGS ACCOMPLISHMENTS; TIES HIM INTO WALL STREET PROTESTERS WHICH MLK WOULD NEVER AGREE WITH AT ALL! MLK WOULD HATE OBAMA

2011-10-16T16:43:00.012-05:00

Again Barack Obama showed that he in nothing but a divider and hater, and not a "uniter" as he falsely claimed to be. So far in his failed destructive presidency, he has done nothing to unite the people, he has instead consistently sought to divide by race, by wealth and by color.

Martin Luther King would be criticizing this evil and divisive president, and especially if he tried to tie him into the so called Wall Street protesters. Shame on Barack Obama, shame for this low blow to Dr. Martin Luther King, who would never side with these ill informed people.

MLK, would never support the life on the dole that has become the norm for blacks in America, he would never support the rhetoric of the Al Sharpton's and the Jesse Jackson's or Obama as well. MLK would never support demeaning notions like the affirmative action programs, and the dumbing down of firefighter's exams so blacks could qualify. THAT WAS NOT WHAT MKL WAS ALL ABOUT.

BARACK OBAMA, I KNEW DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, AND YOU ARE NOTHING AT ALL LIKE THAT GREAT LEADER, YOU ARE NO DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING.

Obama is the opposite of what MKL was all about and a traitor and usurper of the legacy that is not his to usurp. I know I was there in 1968, and understood that MLK was proud to say that his plan for his black people was that they could easily show that they were in fact equal, and he would never accept an affirmative action step-up! MLK would probably be a Republican today!

On this day of dedication of the MLK long overdue memorial to this great leader, Obama diminished his legacy shamefully by equating what MLK stood for with the likes of the clueless Wall Street protesters in his shameful speech printed below.

In addition Obama managed to add some additional pro-Union thuggery to his speech as well, thus further diminishing the occasion.

Obama diminishes the occasion further by trying to usurp the occasion mas "his" to profile, when MLK would be ashamed of this shameful Marxist "leader", a divider if there was ever one, far worse than the "haters" of the 1960's.

MLK never envisioned taking from those who have and giving it to those who refuse to work, never.

I can still remember the Chicago speech I attended as a teenager to hear the voice of MLK, and there is absolutely no words that were used to divide, or words to claim somebody else's wealth to be given to those that did not have it.

His inspiration to me was that one famous speech that I will always remember...what a speech..."if a man is a street sweeper.... ".

Here is what Martin Luther King, Jr. said in a speech in 1956 in Montgomery, Alabama:

If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, like Shakespeare wrote poetry, like Beethoven composed music; sweep streets so well that all the host of heaven and earth will have to pause and say, ‘Here lived a great street sweeper, who swept his job well.’”

THESE ARE WORDS YOU WILL NEVER HEAR FROM OBAMA, AND HIS FRIENDS LIKE SHARPTON, JACKSON OR ANY OF THE CURRENT BLACK LEADERSHIP. To the contrary, you only hear about the entitlement mentality, and never standing up for yourself, ever!

MLK, never invoked the likes of slavery or entitlements. Now people like Obama who is not ever remotely related to any slaves, still hold the grudges and incite other to hold those grudges.

What a shameful way to usurp the great man that MKL was.

Here is the text of the speech that was not worth of the great MLK, by Obama, of course as usual written for him by his liberal speech writers:

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. (Applause.) Thank you. (Applause.) Please be seated.

An earthquake and a hurricane may have delayed this day, but this is a day that would not be denied.

For this day, we celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s return to the National Mall. In this place, he will stand for all time, among monuments to those who fathered this nation and those who defended it; a black preacher with no official rank or title who somehow gave voice to our deepest dreams and our most lasting ideals, a man who stirred our conscience and thereby helped make our union more perfect.

And Dr. King would be the first to remind us that this memorial is not for him alone. The movement of which he was a part depended on an entire generation of leaders. Many are here today, and for their service and their sacrifice, we owe them our everlasting gratitude. This is a monument to your collective achievement. (Applause.)

Some giants of the civil rights movement -- like Rosa Parks and Dorothy Height, Benjamin Hooks, Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth -- they've been taken from us these past few years. This monument attests to their strength and their courage, and while we miss them dearly, we know they rest in a better place.

And finally, there are the multitudes of men and women whose names never appear in the history books -- those who marched and those who sang, those who sat in and those who stood firm, those who organized and those who mobilized -- all those men and women who through countless acts of quiet heroism helped bring about changes few thought were even possible. "By the thousands," said Dr. King, "faceless, anonymous, relentless young people, black and white...have taken our whole nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in the formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence." To those men and women, to those foot soldiers for justice, know that this monument is yours, as well.

Nearly half a century has passed since that historic March on Washington, a day when thousands upon thousands gathered for jobs and for freedom. That is what our schoolchildren remember best when they think of Dr. King -- his booming voice across this Mall, calling on America to make freedom a reality for all of God's children, prophesizing of a day when the jangling discord of our nation would be transformed into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.

It is right that we honor that march, that we lift up Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech -- for without that shining moment, without Dr. King's glorious words, we might not have had the courage to come as far as we have. Because of that hopeful vision, because of Dr. King's moral imagination, barricades began to fall and bigotry began to fade. New doors of opportunity swung open for an entire generation. Yes, laws changed, but hearts and minds changed, as well.

Look at the faces here around you, and you see an America that is more fair and more free and more just than the one Dr. King addressed that day. We are right to savor that slow but certain progress -- progress that's expressed itself in a million ways, large and small, across this nation every single day, as people of all colors and creeds live together, and work together, and fight alongside one another, and learn together, and build together, and love one another.

So it is right for us to celebrate today Dr. King's dream and his vision of unity. And yet it is also important on this day to remind ourselves that such progress did not come easily; that Dr. King's faith was hard-won; that it sprung out of a harsh reality and some bitter disappointments.

It is right for us to celebrate Dr. King's marvelous oratory, but it is worth remembering that progress did not come from words alone. Progress was hard. Progress was purchased through enduring the smack of billy clubs and the blast of fire hoses. It was bought with days in jail cells and nights of bomb threats. For every victory during the height of the civil rights movement, there were setbacks and there were defeats.

We forget now, but during his life, Dr. King wasn't always considered a unifying figure. Even after rising to prominence, even after winning the Nobel Peace Prize, Dr. King was vilified by many, denounced as a rabble rouser and an agitator, a communist and a radical. He was even attacked by his own people, by those who felt he was going too fast or those who felt he was going too slow; by those who felt he shouldn't meddle in issues like the Vietnam War or the rights of union workers. We know from his own testimony the doubts and the pain this caused him, and that the controversy that would swirl around his actions would last until the fateful day he died.

I raise all this because nearly 50 years after the March on Washington, our work, Dr. King's work, is not yet complete. We gather here at a moment of great challenge and great change. In the first decade of this new century, we have been tested by war and by tragedy; by an economic crisis and its aftermath that has left millions out of work, and poverty on the rise, and millions more just struggling to get by. Indeed, even before this crisis struck, we had endured a decade of rising inequality and stagnant wages. In too many troubled neighborhoods across the country, the conditions of our poorest citizens appear little changed from what existed 50 years ago -- neighborhoods with underfunded schools and broken-down slums, inadequate health care, constant violence, neighborhoods in which too many young people grow up with little hope and few prospects for the future.

Our work is not done. And so on this day, in which we celebrate a man and a movement that did so much for this country, let us draw strength from those earlier struggles. First and foremost, let us remember that change has never been quick. Change has never been simple, or without controversy. Change depends on persistence. Change requires determination. It took a full decade before the moral guidance of Brown v. Board of Education was translated into the enforcement measures of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, but those 10 long years did not lead Dr. King to give up. He kept on pushing, he kept on speaking, he kept on marching until change finally came. (Applause.)

And then when, even after the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act passed, African Americans still found themselves trapped in pockets of poverty across the country, Dr. King didn't say those laws were a failure; he didn't say this is too hard; he didn't say, let's settle for what we got and go home. Instead he said, let's take those victories and broaden our mission to achieve not just civil and political equality but also economic justice; let's fight for a living wage and better schools and jobs for all who are willing to work. In other words, when met with hardship, when confronting disappointment, Dr. King refused to accept what he called the "isness" of today. He kept pushing towards the "oughtness" of tomorrow.

And so, as we think about all the work that we must do -- rebuilding an economy that can compete on a global stage, and fixing our schools so that every child -- not just some, but every child -- gets a world-class education, and making sure that our health care system is affordable and accessible to all, and that our economic system is one in which everybody gets a fair shake and everybody does their fair share, let us not be trapped by what is. (Applause.) We can't be discouraged by what is. We've got to keep pushing for what ought to be, the America we ought to leave to our children, mindful that the hardships we face are nothing compared to those Dr. King and his fellow marchers faced 50 years ago, and that if we maintain our faith, in ourselves and in the possibilities of this nation, there is no challenge we cannot surmount.

And just as we draw strength from Dr. King's struggles, so must we draw inspiration from his constant insistence on the oneness of man; the belief in his words that "we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny." It was that insistence, rooted in his Christian faith, that led him to tell a group of angry young protesters, "I love you as I love my own children," even as one threw a rock that glanced off his neck.

It was that insistence, that belief that God resides in each of us, from the high to the low, in the oppressor and the oppressed, that convinced him that people and systems could change. It fortified his belief in non-violence. It permitted him to place his faith in a government that had fallen short of its ideals. It led him to see his charge not only as freeing black America from the shackles of discrimination, but also freeing many Americans from their own prejudices, and freeing Americans of every color from the depredations of poverty.

And so at this moment, when our politics appear so sharply polarized, and faith in our institutions so greatly diminished, we need more than ever to take heed of Dr. King's teachings. He calls on us to stand in the other person's shoes; to see through their eyes; to understand their pain. He tells us that we have a duty to fight against poverty, even if we are well off; to care about the child in the decrepit school even if our own children are doing fine; to show compassion toward the immigrant family, with the knowledge that most of us are only a few generations removed from similar hardships. (Applause.)

To say that we are bound together as one people, and must constantly strive to see ourselves in one another, is not to argue for a false unity that papers over our differences and ratifies an unjust status quo. As was true 50 years ago, as has been true throughout human history, those with power and privilege will often decry any call for change as "divisive." They'll say any challenge to the existing arrangements are unwise and destabilizing. Dr. King understood that peace without justice was no peace at all; that aligning our reality with our ideals often requires the speaking of uncomfortable truths and the creative tension of non-violent protest.

But he also understood that to bring about true and lasting change, there must be the possibility of reconciliation; that any social movement has to channel this tension through the spirit of love and mutuality.

If he were alive today, I believe he would remind us that the unemployed worker can rightly challenge the excesses of Wall Street without demonizing all who work there; that the businessman can enter tough negotiations with his company's union without vilifying the right to collectively bargain. He would want us to know we can argue fiercely about the proper size and role of government without questioning each other's love for this country -- (applause) -- with the knowledge that in this democracy, government is no distant object but is rather an expression of our common commitments to one another. He would call on us to assume the best in each other rather than the worst, and challenge one another in ways that ultimately heal rather than wound.

In the end, that's what I hope my daughters take away from this monument. I want them to come away from here with a faith in what they can accomplish when they are determined and working for a righteous cause. I want them to come away from here with a faith in other people and a faith in a benevolent God. This sculpture, massive and iconic as it is, will remind them of Dr. King's strength, but to see him only as larger than life would do a disservice to what he taught us about ourselves. He would want them to know that he had setbacks, because they will have setbacks. He would want them to know that he had doubts, because they will have doubts. He would want them to know that he was flawed, because all of us have flaws.

It is precisely because Dr. King was a man of flesh and blood and not a figure of stone that he inspires us so. His life, his story, tells us that change can come if you don't give up. He would not give up, no matter how long it took, because in the smallest hamlets and the darkest slums, he had witnessed the highest reaches of the human spirit; because in those moments when the struggle seemed most hopeless, he had seen men and women and children conquer their fear; because he had seen hills and mountains made low and rough places made plain, and the crooked places made straight and God make a way out of no way.

And that is why we honor this man -- because he had faith in us. And that is why he belongs on this Mall -- because he saw what we might become. That is why Dr. King was so quintessentially American -- because for all the hardships we've endured, for all our sometimes tragic history, ours is a story of optimism and achievement and constant striving that is unique upon this Earth. And that is why the rest of the world still looks to us to lead. This is a country where ordinary people find in their hearts the courage to do extraordinary things; the courage to stand up in the face of the fiercest resistance and despair and say this is wrong, and this is right; we will not settle for what the cynics tell us we have to accept and we will reach again and again, no matter the odds, for what we know is possible.

That is the conviction we must carry now in our hearts. (Applause.) As tough as times may be, I know we will overcome. I know there are better days ahead. I know this because of the man towering over us. I know this because all he and his generation endured -- we are here today in a country that dedicated a monument to that legacy.

And so with our eyes on the horizon and our faith squarely placed in one another, let us keep striving; let us keep struggling; let us keep climbing toward that promised land of a nation and a world that is more fair, and more just, and more equal for every single child of God.

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless the United States of America. (Applause.)

THE UNITED NATIONS IS A FARCE AND HILLARY CLINTON AND OBAMA WANT ITS FUNDING CONTINUED EVEN THOUGH IT WASTES MONEY GALORE!

2011-10-15T15:43:00.004-05:00

Republicans Advance Bill Targeting US Funding for UN: ‘What Are We Paying For?’
By Patrick Goodenough

A U.S. House committee Thursday approved a bill linking U.S. contributions to the United Nations to significant financial and other reforms, one day after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned she would recommend that President Obama veto the measure if it reaches his desk.

Deeply divided along party lines, the House Foreign Relations Committee voted 23-15 for the U.N. Transparency, Accountability, and Reform Act (H.R. 2829), whose most radical provision aims to force the U.N. to change its funding mechanism from the current system of “assessed” contributions to voluntary ones.

Proponents say this would allow the U.S. – and other member states – to fund only those activities and agencies it regards as being efficiently managed, and in the national interest.

In order to compel the U.N. to make the shift, the legislation would withhold 50 percent of the U.S. assessed contributions to the regular budget (which does not include peacekeeping) if the U.N. has not moved at least 80 percent of the budget to voluntary funding within two years.

American taxpayers account for 22 percent of the U.N.’s regular operating budget and 27 percent of the separate peacekeeping budget in “assessed” dues. In addition the U.S. provides billions of dollars in voluntary contributions for various U.N. agencies. In FY 2010 the total U.S. contribution was $7.69 billion.

Conservatives critical of the U.N. have long advocated the U.S. using its leverage, as the biggest funder by far, to push the world body to reform – and to weaken efforts by hostile member-states to use the U.N. to harm American interests.

The bill’s author, committee chairwoman Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), told Thursday’s markup hearing that the U.N. budget continues to climb.

“What are we paying for?” she asked, then cited repressive regimes’ membership on the Human Rights Council, a continuing anti-Israel bias, the elevation of member states like North Korea and Iran to leadership positions in various bodies, and corruption scandals.

“Why do we bear the financial burden for this?” Ros-Lehtinen continued. “Every year, scores of member countries that contribute almost nothing to the U.N. vote together to pass the budget. Then they pass the costs on to big donors like the U.S., which is assessed a whopping 22 percent.

“In contrast, China pays just three percent. We need a game-changer.”

The committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Howard Berman, said the “real agenda” behind the bill was to end U.S. participation in the U.N. and to “deal a fatal financial blow to the world body.”

He argued that there was no evidence to support the notion that withholding dues can leverage meaningful change.

“Previous attempts at withholding did not lead to any significant and lasting reforms – they only succeeded in weakening our diplomatic standing and influence, and undermining efforts to promote transparency, fiscal responsibility and good management practices in the U.N. system,” Berman told the committee.

‘A dangerous retreat’

If the bill does pass in the House – where it has 125 co-sponsors, all Republican – its passage through the Democrat-controlled Senate would be an uphill battle. Even if it did make it through the Senate, its chances of making it into law are slim.

In a letter to Ros-Lehtinen on Wednesday, Clinton expressed strong opposition to the measure, saying if it reached the president, she would recommend a veto.

Citing U.N. missions in Iraq and Afghanistan as examples, she argued that international engagement through the U.N. comes at a fraction of the cost of acting alone.

“This bill also represents a dangerous retreat from the longstanding, bipartisan focus of the United States on constructive engagement within the United Nations to galvanize collective action to tackle urgent security problems,” she wrote.

“If we act to diminish our global stature, the United States would surrender a key platform from which to shape international priorities, such as obtaining tough sanctions on Iran.”

During the hearing, Ros-Lehtinen referred to Clinton’s letter, and in particular the suggestion that the legislation could harm U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan because other countries would not share the burden by paying for U.N. missions in those countries.

“Does the administration have such little faith in our allies and in our diplomacy – which they pride themselves on – to think that they would not share the burden of fighting Islamist extremists unless the U.N. forced them to?” she asked.

On the eve the markup hearing, the U.N. Foundation released results of a poll in which 64 percent of respondents said they supported the U.S. “paying our dues to the U.N. on time and in full” while 31 percent said they opposed this.

The poll also found 55 percent of respondents were not in favor of legislation that would cut U.S. funding of the U.N., while 39 percent favored it.

The wording of the question on the proposed legislation said that it “cuts fifty percent of the United States’ funding to the United Nations,” “ends United States’ funding to UNICEF and the World Health Organization” and “ends United States’ funding of United Nations’ agencies that respond and take action after a natural disaster or humanitarian crisis.”

The poll wording did not say that 50 percent of U.S. funding would only be cut if the U.N. failed to shift from an assessed to voluntary payment mechanism. Neither did the wording make clear that funding to agencies like UNICEF would only end if those agencies fail to provide the U.S. Comptroller General with a certificate of transparency, or to comply with that certification.

The U.N. Foundation was set up in 1998 with a $1 billion donation to U.N. causes by CNN founder and philanthropist Ted Turner. Its priorities include building public support for the U.N. and advocating U.S. funding for the U.N.

“At a time when the United Nations is more relevant than ever in addressing the world’s greatest peace and security challenges, this survey is evidence that voters believe in the value of the United Nations to American interests,” U.N. Foundation president Timothy Wirth said in a statement on the poll.

OBAMA'S JOB CREATING MACHINE---AS EFFECTIVE AS HIS JOB CREATING "JOBS BILL" A JOKE FOR EVERYONE TO LAUGH AT

2011-10-15T15:33:00.004-05:00

Just in case you thought that the government was able to create jobs, in their usual magical type of way....just look at this machine that creates jobs designed by the government.

Recently we learned that at a cost of $82 million a job, the Obama administration gave away over a billion in loan guarantees to a failing solar plant again!

With that type of job creation, I want to line up for the JOBS that are being created.

OBAMA WEIGHS DOWN THE ECONONY AND BUSINESS WITH NEEDLESS REGULATIONS THEN WONDERS WHY THE ECONOMY IS STALLED-THE IDIOT PRESIDENT

2011-10-15T15:08:00.003-05:00

Evey week, as new economic statistics are announced ranging from continued unemployment to wholesale sales, the headlines always are preceded by the word: "unexpectedly".

Gee, is the President just so stupid that he does not realize that the economic burdens are so holding back every possible sting of the economy, or is he doeing it on purpose as part of his plan to make over the country like he promised.

His makeover is towards a socialist state that is destroying all European countries that have embraced that model.

Unless this President is replaced as soon as possible, the USA will be so moribund with rules and regulations that strangle every new business that tries to expand or to grow will NOT!

November 2012 can not come soon enough.

These are great cartoons by Michael Romirez.

OBAMA LONG TERM HEALTH PLAN FULL OF LIES, STARTING TO UNRAVEL DUE TO LIES AND DECEIT: "CLASS" IS R.I.P, KENNEDY TOO!

2011-10-15T08:46:00.010-05:00

The lies and deceit of Barack Obama regarding the OBAMACARE plan has started to catch up with his administration's signature health overhaul law, under relentless assault by Republicans, has suffered its first major casualty - a long-term care insurance plan.

This crazy scheme hatched by Obama's advisers, assumed that people would pay $50 a month, voluntarily to get these benefits, but now the incompetent HHS Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, admits that the true premium should have been in a range of $235 to $3,000 monthly to make it sustainable!

Look at the lies and misconceptions that were rammed though on OBAMACARE!

The program, expected to launch in 2012, had been dogged from the beginning by doubts over its financial solvency. Did any one of us have doubts that this was a failure since it was just another outward lie from Obama? It was supposed to be certified to be solvent for at least 75 years! It did not even make if for a few months, instead of 75 years, due to the lies and distortions made by Obama.

Proponents, including many groups that fought to pass the health care law, have vowed a vigorous effort to rescue the program, insisting that Congress gave the administration broad authority to make changes. Long-term care includes not only nursing homes, but such services as home health aides for disabled people.

"This is a victory for the American taxpayer and future generations," said Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., spearheading opposition in the Senate. "The administration is finally admitting (the long-term care plan) is unsustainable and cannot be implemented."

Known as CLASS, the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports program was a long-standing priority of the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass. Thankfully both this deceitful program and that pervert Kennedy are both now the same, R.I.P..

Although sponsored by the government (bad sign tight there, and doomed to be a failed program), it was supposed to function as a self-sustaining voluntary insurance plan, open to working adults regardless of age or health. Workers would pay an affordable monthly premium during their careers and could collect a modest daily cash benefit of at least $50 if they became disabled later in life. The money could go for services at home or to help with nursing home bills.

But a central design flaw dogged CLASS. Unless large numbers of healthy people willingly sign up during their working years, soaring premiums driven by the needs of disabled beneficiaries would destabilize it, eventually requiring a taxpayer bailout.

Now tell me folks, why would I sign up at say, age 25 to get this plan when I am 85 years old and pay from $235 to $3,000 voluntarily, monthly all those years???? That's more than most people's mortgages and rent!!! Yet, that moron Kennedy and Barack Obama, neither of whom even read the bill, made the assumption that millions of people would voluntarily start paying in the this crazy scheme!

After months insisting that could be fixed, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius finally acknowledged Friday she doesn't see how. What a fricking rocket scientist she is!

"Despite our best analytical efforts, I do not see a viable path forward for CLASS implementation at this time," Sebelius said in a letter to congressional leaders. And this incompetent moron heads up this incompetent agency!!!!

The law required the administration to certify that CLASS would remain financially solvent for 75 years before it could be put into place.

But officials said they discovered they could not make CLASS both affordable and financially solvent while keeping it a voluntary program open to virtually all workers, as the law also required.

Monthly premiums would have ranged from $235 to $391, even as high as $3,000 under some scenarios, the administration said. At those prices, healthy people were unlikely to sign up. Suggested changes aimed at discouraging enrollment by people in poor health could have opened the program to court challenges, officials said.

I guess nobody looked at the existing long term health care plans now that exist all over the country to see how they work or what they cost to see that at their planned $50 a month, no way could such ever be solvent, since these plans now average $1,500 a month and up..so how could a substitute be offered for $50???? MORONS!

"If healthy purchasers are not attracted ... then premiums will increase, which will make it even more unattractive to purchasers who could also obtain policies in the private market," Kathy Greenlee, the lead official on CLASS, said in a memo to Sebelius. That "would cause the program to quickly collapse." NO Sh..t, Sherlock!

That's the same conclusion a top government expert reached in 2009. Nearly a year before the health care law passed, Richard Foster, head of long-range economic forecasts for Medicare, warned administration and congressional officials that CLASS would be unworkable.

His warnings were disregarded, as President Barack Obama lied and declared his support for adding the long-term care plan to his health care bill.
Another lie by this insufferable moron of a leader destroying our financial future, not to mention our health care system!

The demise of CLASS immediately touched off speculation about its impact on the federal budget. Although no premiums are likely to be collected, the program still counts as reducing the federal deficit by about $80 billion over the next 10 years. That's because of a rule that would have required workers to pay in for at least five years before they could collect any benefits.

So let's see, this is a program that collects no money, yet it REDUCED THE FEDERAL DEFICIT BY $80 BILLION???? WHAT A CROCK OF LIES AGAIN!!!!

"The CLASS Act was a budget gimmick that might enhance the numbers on a Washington bureaucrat's spreadsheet but was destined to fail in the real world," said Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. WELL SENATOR, STEP UP AND INVESTIGATE THE LIARS WHO PRESENTED THIS...!!!!

Administration officials said Obama's next budget would reflect the decision not to go forward. Even without CLASS premiums, they said the health care law will still reduce the deficit by more than $120 billion over 10 years.

DO WE BELIEVE THIS....THIS STATEMENT IS AN EVEN BIGGER LIE AS THERE IS NO WAY THAT AN ENTITLEMENT PLAN THAT INCLUDES ILLEGALS NUMBERING SOME 20 MILLION OR MORE WHO WILL PAY NOTHING IN AT ALL WILL ALSO HAVE TO BE COVERED!

THE PROPOSED PLAN IS LIKELY TO BANKRUPT THE COUNTRY AND THEN PROVIDE ABSOLUTELY NO HEALTH CARE.

Kennedy's original idea was to give families some financial breathing room, while everybody else, the paying taxpayers of course again pay for everything. Most families cannot afford to hire a home health aide for a frail elder, let alone pay nursing home bills. Care is usually provided by family members as was the case for the last 1,000 years or so.

"We're disappointed that (Sebelius) has prematurely stated she does not see a path forward," AARP, the seniors lobby, said in a statement. "The need for long-term care will only continue to grow."

AARP, the dumbest organization that has actually contributed and supported the $500 billion MEDICARE cuts, now wants a plan that is unsupportable. These morons need to start thinking about helping the seniors that they claim to represent, instead of blindly following the dumbest President ever elected ( close second to Carter) and believing all his lies and distortions about the OBAMACARE failed programs.

Sebelius said the administration wants to work with Congress and supporters of the program to find a solution. But in a polarized political climate, it appears unlikely that CLASS can be salvaged. Congressional Republicans remain committed to its repeal.

Hey Ms. Sebelius, have you ever heard of "INSURANCE" and how that program operates???? People who want coverage buy it, if they can afford it, and if they can't or do not want it they do not. We can not as a country just provide everything to everybody, as it all has a cost....realistically, we all will die and that is a natural occurrence. No amount of money will make us all live forever.

The only thing that will last forever are pointless government programs.

COMMENTS:
JohnnyBazing
It could of, it Obama simply raised taxes and then went out and bought everyone insurance. But he didn't. Of course, now he is telling the Supreme Court it was always a tax from the beginning. Obama is an idiot. He does not want to tax 1/2 the population, but he wants raise taxes on the other half. He flat out said Obamacare was not a tax when he was selling it and now calls it a tax. He is a liar on top of being an idiot.

megapril
The government is not going to be able to "mandate" jack squat without a mass rebellion. This is just the first domino to fall in this illegal and socialist mess of a healthcare fraud... The rest will fall soon enough, even if it takes until January 2012 when this psychopath is kicked the he11 out

bob2032
With a mandate it's not insurance, it's redistribution of wealth.

JHamlin
Yep. Too bad that pesky little Constitution gets in the way.

Bragar
The final irony begins, Obama has moved so far to the right in a desperate scrabble for vote that he is now repealing his own signature legislation lol

guyonearth
More like, jack@$$, I mean Obama, has realized what a disaster this thing is. Wait until the rest kicks in, if the Supreme Court doesn't get rid of it then Obama and Co will be busy scrambling to undo their mess, or the next poor sap of a President will be.

megapril
Do you even know the difference between left and right? There isn't a right bone in Obama's body...

JHamlin
Far to the right? Of whom? Karl Marx?

Bragar
I'm told you can compost old people especially democrats because all that hot air encourages fermentation of the biomass

cooldaddy1
Sure is a good thing that we put Government in charge of everything. Us dumb sob's can't even wipe our A$s

slats
That is some power. In one swipe, a whole insurance program within the Health Care program is eliminated by fiat.

HenryMiller
fu23--you're right: It's about the willingness, even the eagerness, of the left to spend and waste other peoples' money. If you feel strongly that people ought to be entitle to some kind of institutional help, start some charity to collect voluntary donations for that purpose. Trying to force oth... more

megapril
Odd, my Grandfather worked his butt off his entire life, defended his Country in war, and was able to provide for his family so as not to burden them with financial debt. And he never asked for or expected anyone to pay for his eldercare, he was responsible, and planned ahead.

KEEPING UP WITH HERMAN CAIN-ROMNEY RELEASES THE 8-8-8 PLAN; OBAMA RELEASES THE BORROW $18 TRILLION BY 2020 PLAN...WOW SO MANY PLANS!

2011-10-14T14:31:00.005-05:00

As the presidential campaigns start into full swing, the various candidates are starting to announce their plans for the country if you vote for them.

Romney announced his 8-8-8 Plan, to compete with Cain's 9-9-9 Plan, and Obama, beat them all by announcing his, Borrow $18 billion by 2020 plan...oops!

God save us all from the various plans!