Maryland's Democratic Governor Martin O'Malley has authorized the state's attorney general to investigate ACORN. "The Office of the Attorney General is authorized to use all necessary subpoena powers, to present to an appropriate grand jury any evidence and testimony considered necessary to carry out this authorization and directive, and to act with the full powers, rights and privileges possessed by a State's Attorney," O'Malley said in a news release.
O'Malley's announcement came in response to a request from Attorney General Doug Gansler to conduct an investigation into criminal allegations. Baltimore employees with the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN) were caught on video tape telling undercover investigators posing as a pimp and prostitute how they could sidestep tax laws and obtain illegal loans.
ACORN has fired four of the workers, including two from Baltimore. But it claims the tapes released on BigGovernment.com have been "doctored" and "edited." Employees in Washington D.C., Brooklyn and San Bernardino have also been implicated. "If criminal conduct is uncovered by this probe, the Office of Attorney General is authorized to bring and to prosecute appropriate charges in any court of this State against any and all persons and entities involved in or associated with the crimes," according to O'Malley.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/22/2009 09:14 ||
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Hassan Nemazee, a fund-raiser for Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and other Democrats, has been indicted for defrauding Bank of America, HSBC and Citigroup Inc out of more than $290 million in loan proceeds, U.S. prosecutors said on Monday.
Posted by: ed ||
09/22/2009 06:39 ||
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In a higher-than-usual sort of way. I'm so glad I don't know that man personally.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/22/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
For some reason this evokes thoughts of Marlon Brando in "On the Waterfront." Brando's classic line was: "I could have been a contender, I could have been somebody, instead of a bum which is what I am." Edwards wasn't that far away from the Democratic nomination until the meltdown.
When it comes to energy efficiency, will TVs go the way of refrigerators?
The California Energy Commission on Friday published a proposal to set efficiency standards for televisions, which are fast becoming one of the biggest energy consumers in homes.
The regulations mandate that retailers carry TVs with 33 percent lower energy consumption ratings starting in 2011, followed by more stringent levels in 2013. The policy, which is expected to be approved by the Energy Commission in November, will save households about $30 a year and the state $8.1 billion.
The move is significant because California's efficiency policies have been able to ratchet down household energy consumption without sacrificing product features in the past. An often-cited example is that tough energy efficiency codes on refrigerators in the state have helped keep per capita electricity consumption steady since the 1970s, even though electricity use from other appliances keeps rising.
With so many consumers buying new flat-screen TVs, households are taking on a significant new energy "load" which can be as much as a refrigerator. The growing use of consumer electronics overall--game consoles, cell phones, set-top boxes, and the like--means that these devices already represent 15 percent of people's electricity bills, according to the International Energy Agency.
The Consumer Electronics Association is opposed to the California Energy Commission's TV standards, the industry group said in a statement on Friday. The CEA said that it is better to rely on consumer demand to drive innovation in energy efficiency rather than regulations.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/22/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
Simple solution is to turn the damn thing off. It's all a load of crap anyway. Read a book. Go outside for a walk. Make babies.
Americans are overwhelmingly angry at the U.S. government and is nearly as let down by the lack of ideas from both political parties, a new poll by Rasmussen Reports revealed Tuesday.
Sixty-six percent of voters in a national poll said they're angry at the policies of the federal government, including 36 percent who counted themselves as very angry.
Thirty percent are not really angry, including 10 percent of whom say they aren't angry at all.
Among those most angry are Republicans -- 90 percent of whom say they are somewhat or very angry. Seventy-seven percent of independents are angry and just 44 percent of Democrats are peeved.
Among those suggesting anger abounds falls a majority of Republicans, Democrats and independents -- 59 percent overall -- who say the anger is greater now than it was during the Bush administration.
But few believe that the political parties have an answer. Of those surveyed, 60 percent said neither Republicans nor Democrats understand what is needed and among those who claimed to be very angry, that number rises to 80 percent.
Forty-three percent of people say they are at least partly concerned that the anger could turn violent. That fear breaks down among party lines with 63 percent of Democrats saying they are concerned and 71 percent of Republicans saying they are not concerned. Sixty-one percent of independents are also not concerned.
Additionally, those who are most angry are least concerned about violence. Among the 36 percent who are very angry at the government, only 15 percent say they are very concerned about the possibility of violence. But 51 percent of those who are not angry at all say they fear violence.
The poll of 1,000 adults was taken Sept. 20-21 and has a margin of error of 3 points.
#2
What the Donks don't grasp is this isn't about the Trunks or any efforts from their parts. This is about the legitimacy of the government itself. They're playing for power, but what happens when the entire structure fails. It's like the shuffle in the Politburo between the old guard and Gorbachev. Remember how that worked out.
A refresher course. Obama heads for the high grass.
Only one of the five television networks that interviewed President Obama for their Sunday shows bothered to ask him about Acorn, the left-wing community organizing group whose federal funding was cut off last week by an overwhelming vote in Congress.
"Frankly, it's not something I've followed closely," Mr. Obama claimed, adding he wasn't even aware the group had been the recipient of significant federal funding. "This is not the biggest issue facing the country. It's not something I'm paying a lot of attention to," he said.
Mr. Obama added that an investigation of Acorn was appropriate after an amateur hidden-camera investigation had found Acorn offices willing to abet prostitution, but he carefully declined to say whether he would approve a federal cutoff of funds to the group.
Mr. Obama took great pains to act as if he barely knew about Acorn. In fact, his association goes back almost 20 years. In 1991, he took time off from his law firm to run a voter-registration drive for Project Vote, an Acorn partner that was soon fully absorbed under the Acorn umbrella. The drive registered 135,000 voters and was considered a major factor in the upset victory of Democrat Carol Moseley Braun over incumbent Democratic Senator Alan Dixon in the 1992 Democratic Senate primary.
Mr. Obama's success made him a hot commodity on the community organizing circuit. He became a top trainer at Acorn's Chicago conferences. In 1995, he became Acorn's attorney, participating in a landmark case to force the state of Illinois to implement the federal Motor Voter Law. That law's loose voter registration requirements would later be exploited by Acorn employees in an effort to flood voter rolls with fake names.
In 1996, Mr. Obama filled out a questionnaire listing key supporters for his campaign for the Illinois Senate. He put Acorn first (it was not an alphabetical list). In the U.S. Senate, Mr. Obama became the leading critic of Voter ID laws, whose overturn was a top Acorn priority. In 2007, in a speech to Acorn's leaders prior to their political arm's endorsement of his presidential campaign, Mr. Obama was effusive: "I've been fighting alongside of Acorn on issues you care about my entire career. Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote in Illinois, Acorn was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work."
But the Obama campaign didn't appear eager to discuss the candidate's ties to Acorn. Its press operation vividly denied Mr. Obama had been an Acorn trainer until the New York Times uncovered records demonstrating that he had been. The Obama campaign also gave Citizens Consulting, Inc., an Acorn subsidiary, $832,000 for get-out-the-vote activities in key primary states. In filings with the Federal Election Commission, the Obama campaign listed the payments as "staging, sound, lighting," only correcting the filings after the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review revealed their true nature.
Given his longstanding ties with Acorn, President Obama's protestations of ignorance or disinterest in the group's latest scandal seem preposterous. Here's hoping White House reporters will press the president to clarify just how much he really knows about Acorn and when he knew it.
Posted by: ed ||
09/22/2009 15:29 ||
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#6
With the economy still not recovered, continued unemployment, and the financial fallout from all the bailouts still not fully realized, we will all be poor and qualifying for Medicaid or unemployment benefits. How do you tax the rich when wealth has been destroyed?
#7
GolfBravoUSMC. I don't know why. It was an internet dictionary for synonyms and antonyms--I think the first one picked up in a google search. I would agree that the dictionary is too limited in that it doesn't include communism and bolshevism. A dictatorship is a dictatorship by any name. I found it interesting that the only antonym given was democracy. Our freedoms are very precious no matter who tries to squelch them. They have come at a dear price as you well know.
The four drafty buildings had been fixtures of the Energy Department complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., for more than half a century. They burned energy like 1950s sedans.
The buildings seemed like perfect candidates for a federal conservation retrofit program that relies on private contractors that receive a percentage of the money they save. A deal was struck in 2001. The contractors reworked lighting and heating systems, among other things, and began collecting payments.
The project was counted among the department's "green" successes -- until auditors discovered that the buildings had been torn down several years ago, and the government had paid $850,000 for energy savings at facilities that no longer existed.
That's an effective way to reduce energy use to zero.
The audit findings show the potential
Potential is something that hasn't yet occurred, Mr. or Ms Journalist.
for waste and abuse at a time when the department is poised to launch billions of dollars more in stimulus spending on an unprecedented welter of green projects across the country.
The initiatives are hallmarks of the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act approved by Congress in February. The stimulus law directed almost $17 billion to the department's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, including $3.2 billion for energy-efficiency and conservation block grants and $3.1 billion for state energy programs.
The outsourcing arrangements such as those at Oak Ridge, known as "energy savings performance contracts," or ESPCs, will probably be an integral part of those efforts, according to government and industry officials.
In December, the department issued 16 deals called Super ESPCs that may be worth as much as $80 billion over the next quarter-century.
The explosion in green spending is occurring despite well-documented weaknesses at the core of the strategy: A chronic lack of government officials assigned and properly trained to oversee the financially and technically complex projects.
The problems are not exclusive to Oak Ridge. The auditors, from the department's inspector general's office, also determined that $565,000 had been paid over six years under the same arrangement to a contractor in Texas for a high-efficiency laundry that was no longer in use. The department also paid out $3.4 million on another project without checking whether the conservation measures worked -- and $160,000 for measurements that were never taken.
At the same time, the auditors found, some contractors appeared to use inflated energy cost estimates in their savings calculations, increasing their fees.
Shocking.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/22/2009 00:00 ||
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Other people's money = other people's problem.
Posted by: ed ||
09/22/2009 6:46 Comments ||
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In other shocking news, water is wet.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
09/22/2009 20:26 Comments ||
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At the Values Voter Summit Saturday, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney said of cap and trade legislation that "the Obama team had secretly calculated that his plan would cost the average American family $1,761 a year, the equivalent to a 15 percent income tax hike."
I'd estimate it at least 50% higher for those families that pay taxes, because many American families don't anymore.
$1,761??
The Congressional Budget Office has concluded that the cap and trade legislation in the House would only cost the average taxpayer $160 dollars a year.
So for a family of four that'd be... carry the 17... plus 3... $640 total. Do let's compare apples to fruit at least, if you please. Not a trivial amount to that average family, even if those secretly calculating wouldn't notice that much in the rounding errors.
Yet those opposed to the Democrats' cap and trade legislation -- including the American Petroleum Institute and Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn. -- are using this new, larger figure.
So where did it come from?
Earlier this week, the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute posted excerpts from transition memo from the U.S. Treasury Department that CEI obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. The Treasury document memo said that "given the administration's proposal to auction all emission allowances, a cap and trade program could generate federal receipts on the order of $100 to $200 billion annually."
Declan McCullagh, a libertarian blogger at CBS News, wrote about this memo this way: He assumed that the costs of these fees paid by polluters to the government would be entirely passed on to consumers, and divided the number $200 billion by the number of households in the United States -- approximately 113.5 million according to the census.
That came out to $1,761 per family per year.
Or, as he put it, the "Obama administration has privately concluded that a cap and trade law would cost American taxpayers up to $200 billion a year, the equivalent of hiking personal income taxes by about 15 percent."
Politifact looked at the $1,761 figure this week and concluded that it was false "based on a blogger's incorrect assumptions and overly simple math. The estimate does not account for revenue that will be returned to consumers in the form of rebates and other efficiency measures."
A Treasury official told ABC News that the $100 billion-$200 billion figure "was an estimate of auction revenue, not costs to households."
The official said the "statement in question was not a reference to a 'price tag' of climate legislation, but rather an order of magnitude estimate of auction revenue if all allowances were auctioned. That is, we were communicating that auction revenue would not be on the order of millions, $1 billion, or $1 trillion, but rather on the order of $100 [billion] to $200 billion."
Posted by: Fred ||
09/22/2009 00:00 ||
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It's actually worse that. The specific purpose of a cap and trade system as opposed to a taxation regime is to allow international trade in offsets.
Depending on the level of the cap versus demand, at least tens of billions of $$ will flow out of the country.
Ironically most of current money flows (under Kyoto) go to modernizing factories in China under the guise of reducing emissions of NO2 and a few other things.
#2
At $30/ton CO2, I calculated it will cost the family of four $1600/year. That's the same as every American family gifting a new car every 10 years to those government cronies selected to collect the wealth.
Posted by: ed ||
09/22/2009 6:41 Comments ||
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Betweem cap and trade, supporting the elitists in Washington, and forced health care insurance, there won't be enough left to eat unless it comes from a government breadline. Oh, maybe this is the plan.
#4
Went back and looked at my notes. The $1600/family of 4 is at $20/ton CO2. That's the starting point. The Obamaists are talking of then gradually moving the cost up to $30 or $35/ton. That's $2400 or $2800/family/year.
Posted by: ed ||
09/22/2009 9:18 Comments ||
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Taxing something as ubuiquitous (and harmless) as CO2, doesn't lower "pollution" it just moves who "pollutes"!
This is Marxist redistribution with a veneer of green. i.e. A typical Melon idea.
#6
And who, pray tell, will be managing the trading of the crap and trade? [and getting fees for doing absolutely nothing of value]
/rhetorical question
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
09/22/2009 21:43 Comments ||
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Senate officials are holding internal planning exercises this week to prepare for a swine flu outbreak that could hobble congressional offices.
The office of the Senate Sergeant at Arms (SAA) has been talking with Senate offices and attending Senate luncheons since the disease first began to spread in the spring. "It is becoming second nature to us right now about how to proceed," said Terry Gainer, the Senate Sergeant at Arms. "And in some respect you kind of want to say, let's get started with it, we've done so much prep work, let's begin to began."
The U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) and the Office of the Attending Physician are planning to attend this week's meeting with the SAA in which they will discuss a variety of different scenarios for how an H1N1 outbreak could affect Congress, including more than 10,000 staffers and nearly 2 million visitors so far this year.
Some have expressed concern for members who have a full workload this fall, saying that if they are infected it may interfere with their ability to attend committee hearings or even vote because doing so could spread the infection.
And while Gainer said senators have been advised to follow the same general guidelines the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has given to the rest of the country -- "if you don't feel well, you shouldn't come to work" -- he said the ultimate decision will be left up to the senators.
Work from home, like the rest of us with laptops and non-critical jobs. Or choose the assumption that the work will wait until everyone is healthy again. Given it's Congress, I vote we go with the second assumption.
"Senators, like any other critical position, have to balance that," Gainer said. "So if they're in the midst of any particular issues, they have to see how they can work through that and fortunately, to my knowledge, it hasn't arisen. The bottom line is there's no special member rules."
Posted by: Fred ||
09/22/2009 00:00 ||
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Some have expressed concern for members who have a full workload this fall, saying that if they are infected it may interfere with their ability to attend committee hearings or even vote because doing so could spread the infection.
That's the upside of a pandemic. I would have thought Congress would have voted to be vaccinated first again swine flu.
Should the National Endowment for the Arts encourage artists to create art on issues being vehemently debated nationally?
That is the question that I set out to discuss a little over three weeks ago when I wrote an article on Big Hollywood entitled The National Endowment for the Art of Persuasion?"
The question still requires debate but the facts do not.
The NEA and the White House did encourage a handpicked, pro-Obama arts group to address politically controversial issues under contentious national debate. That fact is irrefutable.
But some have claimed that the invite and passages, pulled from the conference call that inspired the article, were taken out of context.
On August 10th, the National Endowment for the Arts, the White House Office of Public Engagement, and the Corporation for National and Community Service hosted a conference call with a handpicked arts group. This arts group played a key role in Obama's arts effort during his election campaign, as declared by the organizers of the call, and many on the call played a role in the now famous Obama Hope poster.
Much of the talk on the conference call was a build up to what the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) was specifically asking of this group. Buffy Wicks, Deputy Director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, clearly identifieD this arts group as a pro-Obama collective and warns them of some "specific asks" that will be delivered later in the meeting. Audio at the link
Posted by: Fred ||
09/22/2009 00:00 ||
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You mean like this? (Of course, you'd have to replace the picture's subject with Obama).
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Americans are overwhelmingly angry at the U.S. government and is nearly as let down by the lack of ideas from both political parties, a new poll by Rasmussen Reports revealed Tuesday.
Senate officials are holding internal planning exercises this week to prepare for a swine flu outbreak that could hobble congressional offices.
Should the National Endowment for the Arts encourage artists to create art on issues being vehemently debated nationally?
