As its financial resources dwindle, radical advocacy group and organized crime syndicate ACORN may have to file for bankruptcy protection before Christmas, ACORN insiders say.
"They may have to file for bankruptcy if they don't have several big pending grants approved or get emergency loans," a highly placed ACORN source told me over the weekend. This information bolsters Rep. Darrell Issa's (R-Calif.) claim last week that ACORN is in turmoil amidst internal power struggles and on the verge of bankruptcy.
Given that ACORN is a network of hundreds of affiliated nonprofits, it's not exactly clear how a bankruptcy filing would work, but the idea is under serious consideration by ACORN's leadership. It was discussed at length at the group's most recent national board meeting, which took place in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., during the Oct. 14-15 weekend, ACORN sources told me.
But even if ACORN were to go bankrupt, that doesn't mean it would disappear.
ACORN may dissolve and then re-emerge as a new organization, the group's lawyer Arthur Z. Schwartz says. Such a re-organization may involve "the creation of new nonprofit entities in each state where ACORN functions, as ACORN considers moving from a centralized corporate structure, to a decentralized federated structure," Schwartz said. "ACORN will need help from people who have handled rebranding."
As of Nov. 11, ACORN and its affiliates owed at least $2,328,596 in long overdue back taxes to all levels of government. Many of the tax liens, which are only issued by creditor tax agencies after a tax debt has become seriously delinquent, do not appear in the Nexis database, so the actual total may be much higher. ACORN has been negotiating with tax collectors to have interest on its tax debts waived and to have some of the debts partially forgiven.
The new tax lien data throw new light on why ACORN can't sell its former headquarters at 1024 Elysian Fields Ave. in New Orleans. French Quarter Realty is asking $835,000 for the property, which is now weighed down by a whopping $1,278,862 in tax liens.
Of that nearly $1.3 million, $619,271 is owed to the IRS. It's unclear why the Obama administration's tax enforcers haven't seized the property yet. Perhaps the president is extending a courtesy to his former employer.
Most of the taxes ACORN and its affiliates failed to pay may be payroll taxes. Directors of ACORN and its affiliates may find themselves in for a rude shock because even in bankruptcy directors can find themselves personally liable for payroll deductions for taxes that were not remitted to the government.
Federal funding for ACORN has been cut off until at least Dec. 18 by Congress. Some big foundations and corporate donors are now shunning ACORN in light of the undercover prostitution sting videos that began surfacing in September.
Out of desperation the group filed a lawsuit last week against the federal government making the argument that in effect it has a constitutional right to receive public funds. The action was filed by the allegedly terrorist-funded Center for Constitutional Rights,
Wait, what?!? Which terrorist?? And who is alleging?
whose Che Guevara-loving president, Michael Ratner, has a vested interest in the success of ACORN.
This is the same dubious argument Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), a longtime ally of ACORN who funds and has been endorsed by the group's partisan arm, the Working Families Party of New York, has made based on the Constitution's ban on bills of attainder.
Nadler heads a congressional subcommittee that may be investigating ACORN in the not-too-distant future and has been providing advice to ACORN's lawyer. Ilan Kayatsky, Nadler's communications director, refuses to return my calls to comment on the apparent conflict of interest.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/17/2009 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[6 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
ACORN may have to file for bankruptcy protection before Christmas
(Bloomberg) -- Members of Congress are plumping their feathers, holding press conferences and congratulating themselves for a job well done.
Not that they need an excuse. This time, though, they're celebrating the completion of a draft bill to overhaul the financial regulatory system.
The proposed legislation from the House Financial Services Committee, under the leadership of Massachusetts Democrat Barney Frank, would create a council to monitor systemic risks. The council would identify firms that are too big to fail and subject them to enhanced oversight. The legislation would establish a process to wind down troubled non-bank financial institutions in such a way as to minimize the burden on taxpayers.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
11/17/2009 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
#2
It was regulators, not regulations, that failed. The article's point of view completely ignores things like the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act and the downgrading of financial institution's reserve requirements, and many other factors that contributed to the present economic disaster. To simply say "Regulations don't work" is foolish.
#3
Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett's business partner, said it better than I could: ""People really thought that giving a predatory class of people the ability to do whatever they wanted was free market enterprise. It wasn't. It was legalized armed robbery. And it was incredibly stupid.""
Much bitching and whining that they were rolled by the con man. Pretty pathetic funny stuff
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/17/2009 11:09 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[3 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
"if the rest of the world were to follow the US example in their approach to fossil fuels, the oceans would not only heat up, but would probably soon begin to boil....
#3
For once I must agree with this Glockenspiel. Americans have done too much harm to Germany by buying all those ecosystem destroying, carbon belching Teutonic panzer machinas und luft wagons. While in America, forests are expanding and now cover a greater area than when Columbus was but an illegal alien. Primal forests are encroaching on Detroit and Seattle can only be described as "green" year round.
So America, help our poor, suffering, concrete entombed German cousins, sacrifice one of the 7 quadrillion American trees and buy Detroit. Do your part for the climate, help expand the near extinct Central European wildlife, and make Germans proud of Amerika once again. Gaia and Der Spiegel readers beseech you.
Posted by: ed ||
11/17/2009 11:43 Comments ||
Top||
#4
Seems he lied to the Europeans.
Heartbreaking.
Posted by: Bobby ||
11/17/2009 11:52 Comments ||
Top||
#5
As with all his other failures, Zero's failures are victories for free men.
#6
O-bow-ma doesn't need any stinking climate change summit. His nomination was when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal. Don't they know they know they are criticizing the Chosen One.
#7
From http://timworstall.com/2009/11/17/good-grief-14/
response 2 (not me).
#
#
2 Nigel Sedgwick // Nov 17, 2009 at 1:34 pm
In the referenced newspaper article by Dr Stuart Clarke, I did not find any mention of the low-pass filtering effect caused by the specific heat capacity of the oceans. I actually think this is very important, not least because that specific heat capacity is vastly greater than that of the atmosphere.
The mass of water in the oceans is about 1.4×10^21 kilogrammes: from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean#Physical_properties
The specific heat capacity of sea water (at 36F is about 3.93 kJ/kg (compared to 4.19 kJ/kg for fresh water): from http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/specific-heat-fluids-d_151.html
Assuming the sea water specific heat capacity of 3.93 kJ/kg, this means that approximately 5.5×10^21 kJ of energy is required to heat the oceans by 1C (one degree Celsius).
The average solar irradiance hitting the disc of the earth is 1,360 W/m2; the Earth’s cross sectional area is 127.4×10^6 square kilometres, so the average total solar irradiance of the Earth is 1.740×10^17 Watts: from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_irradiance#Solar_constant
It thus requires the total energy from around 31.61 million seconds of solar irradiance, totally adsorbed and directed to that end, to warm the oceans by 1C. This is 1.0023 years.
Given that, in practice average annual solar irradiance varies by only a very small proportion (IIRC less than 1%), that only a fraction of that energy is not re-radiated, that average cloud cover causes only a small fractional change, that only a (perhaps largish) fraction of that energy difference goes towards ocean warming or cooling, and the limitations from deep-to-surface and surface-to-deep ocean currents, I think we can expect that the oceans impose a lowpass filtering effect on any fluctuations in the EarthÂ’s average temperature that will have its effect over many decades, perhaps even centuries. Obviously though, there will be shorter term and more direct effect at the EarthÂ’s surface and in the atmosphere, even as rapidly as day and night and summer and winter.
Overall, I donÂ’t think we should expect some definitive and fairly simply interpreted scientific evidence next year, or even in a couple of years after that.
However, if the weather over several years returns pretty much to that we experienced in the 1960s in the UK, I think we can draw the conclusion that the theory of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming, IIRC put forward in the 1970s (after the ice-age scare disappeared), is distinctly weakened.
#1
Sadly, I know something about how difficult it is to tie specific public projects to employment impacts. I also know about the difficulty of having sanity in a data base which is fed by thousands of volunteers with widely ranging interest, knowledge and inclination to 'bend' the input. The administration's efforts in building this kind of database should serve someday as a textbook example of DON'T DO THIS. The OMB has numerous guidelines on sampling, etc. (as part of the unfunded mandates act) and this effort violates a huge number of the provisions.
Posted by: lord garth ||
11/17/2009 13:59 Comments ||
Top||
Today's Wall Street Journal and Fresno Bee report that SEIU engaged in illegal threats, ballot-tampering, and other serious violations of election rules during a June union election for 10,000 homecare providers in Fresno, according to voters and union staff who worked for SEIU during the election and have now come forward.
A sworn declaration from an SEIU whistleblower says that senior SEIU officials instructed organizers to violate election rules during the mail-in, secret-ballot vote, and then destroyed evidence of the violations. Statements from two former SEIU staff and several homecare providers were recently submitted to the California Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) as evidence accompanying a request to overturn the election results.
Among the illegal tactics reported:
SEIU staff tampered with workers' ballots, by voiding the ballots of workers who marked their ballot for NUHW, and by collecting ballots directly from workers' mailboxes.
Senior SEIU officials instructed staff to handle ballots in violation of election rule, and advised staff on how to do so in a way that was legally deniable.
SEIU organizers threatened Latino caregivers that SEIU would "call immigration" and have them deported in retaliation unless they voted for SEIU.
SEIU officials instructed staff to threaten and lie to voters that they would lose their wages, their health insurance, and even their jobs unless they voted for SEIU.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/17/2009 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[2 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
DOJ / Holder won't care. Might even look upon this favorably.
Posted by: Whiskey Mike ||
11/17/2009 2:46 Comments ||
Top||
A day before she clinched the nomination to fill a vacancy in the Missouri House of Representatives on Saturday, St. Louis Democrat Hope Whitehead paid a visit to City Hall. Not to mobilize supporters, but to pay hundreds of dollars in outstanding taxes.
Her trip downtown was more than just civic duty. Under state law, candidates with overdue tax bills are ineligible for the ballot.
When her obligations were met, a panel of city Democratic leaders gathered Saturday to nominate Whitehead, 50, to fill the vacancy created by former state Rep. Talibdin El-Amin, who submitted his resignation in September after pleading guilty to federal bribery charges.
El-Amin is the third local Democratic lawmaker to leave office this year after getting caught in an FBI crackdown on corruption.
El-Amin is the third local Democratic lawmaker to leave office this year after getting caught in an FBI crackdown on corruption.
An attorney, Whitehead served previously in the city prosecutor's office and was head of the state Division of Liquor Control under former Gov. Mel Carnahan.
In special elections, party leaders, not primary voters, select the party's nominee. As the Democratic nominee, Whitehead is virtually assured of winning the Feb. 2 contest; Republicans generally do not compete in the district, which covers a section of northwestern St. Louis.
Even so, Whitehead will be under close scrutiny. She'll have only a few months in Jefferson City before gearing up to run again in 2010. A top priority, she said, will be wresting the St. Louis Police Department from state control.
Whitehead also said on Saturday that she would do a better job of paying her taxes on time -- city records show she owed $1,155 in personal property taxes and related fees. Whitehead acknowledged paying her vehicle taxes only when her two-year registration expired, not each year as required.
"I've got to do that different now," she said.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/17/2009 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[2 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
"I've got to do that different now," she said.
But only if I get re-elected.
Posted by: Bobby ||
11/17/2009 5:48 Comments ||
Top||
#2
Now we know what it takes to get a Democrat to pay their taxes.
President Obama's first federal court nominee was Judge David Hamilton of Indiana. If you are drinking your morning coffee as you read what follows here, you might want to put down your cup before reading further:
Among Hamilton's "qualifications" is the fact that he is a former fund raiser for ACORN. That fact was conspicuously left out of the White House statement announcing Obama's nomination of the federal district judge for a position on the Seventh Circuit federal appeals court.
Even though it was only for a month, the fact Hamilton would work for any length of time for ACORN is disturbing. And there is no evidence that he has ever subsequently reputiadated his association with ACORN.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has scheduled a Senate confirmation vote on Hamilton's nomination for Tuesday, Nov. 17.
As the American Civil Rights Union's Ken Klukowski details in an oped posted earlier this morning here on washingtonexaminer.com, Hamilton is an ACLU big-wig who also has a deeply hypocritical view of Christianity:
"He has also shown surprising hostility to people of Christian faith. He ruled that any prayers uttered in the Indiana statehouse that invoke the name of Jesus Christ are unconstitutional and cannot be permitted.
"Nor can anyone offer a prayer that is 'sectarian' or 'pervasively Christian.' Oddly, although prayers mentioning Jesus are somehow a threat to the republic, Judge Hamilton said that it's okay to offer prayers to Allah."
Hamilton's various rulings are a good illustration of why so many social conservatives view attempts by the ACLU and other liberals to ban all expressions of Christian faith from the public square to be supremely bigoted and patently unconstitutional violations of the First Amendment's guarantee of religious freedom.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/17/2009 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[2 views]
Top|| File under:
The White House on Sunday slapped down ex-Mayor Rudy Giuliani and other critics of its decision to try the 9/11 plotters in New York City.
White House adviser David Axelrod took to the Sunday morning airwaves to accuse Giuliani and other Republicans of two-faced politics.
"When the 20th 9/11 bomber [Zacarias Moussaoui] was tried in Virginia, in a civilian court, and convicted, Mayor Giuliani testified in that case and he heralded the outcome," Axelrod said on CNN.
Axelrod's counter-punch came after Giuliani appeared on Fox, CNN and ABC bashing the plan to make 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four of his henchmen face justice just blocks from the World Trade Center they're accused of demolishing.
Giuliani said moving the case to a Manhattan federal court "seems to be an overconcern with the rights of terrorists and a lack of concern for the rights of the public."
He said Mohammed and his co-conspirators should stay in Guantanamo Bay and face a military tribunal for war crimes.
"What the Obama administration is telling us loud and clear is that both in substance and reality the war on terror from their point of view is over," Giuliani said.
He contends it was a mistake to try the 1993 World Trade Center bombers in New York even though at the time he supported it.
"We're going to go back to the pre-9/11 approach that we had in 1993, trying it as a civilian matter, which turned out to be a terrible mistake," Giuliani said. "They are repeating the mistake of history."
Axelrod countered that Giuliani is trying to rewrite history.
"So he may have changed his view, but we haven't changed ours," Axelrod bristled.
After Moussaoui was convicted in 2006, but spared the death penalty by a federal jury, Giuliani said he was "in awe of our system."
"It does demonstrate that we can give people a fair trial, that we are exactly what we say we are. We are a nation of law. . . .I think [Moussaoui's] going to be a symbol of American justice."
In his dramatic announcement Friday, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder's said he will seek the death penalty for Al Qaeda thugs, saying the pursuit of justice had been delayed too long.
Asked about the decision, Secretary of State Clinton told NBC, "I'm not going to second guess any decision that the attorney general made."
Clinton said she supports seeking death for the plotters whose evil cost 2,973 lives.
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) agreed that executing the defendants, who all asked for executions at Gitmo in order to be "martyrs," will "speak louder than anything else" and won't put the city always in Al Qaeda's sights at greater risk.
"The best way to serve justice is give him the ultimate penalty he deserves," Schumer said of Mohammed.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/17/2009 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
"The best way to serve justice is give him the ultimate penalty he deserves."
Sentence first, trial by jury after!
So, riddle me this: how is it "justice" if the verdict and the sentence are known in advance?
Or is the whole point of this show trial really to indict the Bush administration's methods?
#2
The difference is Moussaoui was already in custody prior to AQ's act of war.
Think of the outrage (not by me) if his status had been flipped to non-uniformed combatant after the attack, which if I'm not mistaken would have made him eligible for immediate execution.
I have it on good authority that Camp Delta contains some of the most vile and hateful people on the planet who would kill Americans again given half a chance. The world would be a better place if they were dragged out, wrapped in bacon and hung.
#4
Lex: is there any doubt in your mind that the man is guilty?
I mean, other than KSM has admitted his involvement, indeed gloried in it?
The issue about a civilian trial is that having one 1) forces the government to reveal information from classified sources 2) gives KSM a forum for his hateful ideology 3) allows KSM and his lawyers at the CCR an opportunity to harm our country again 4) makes our judicial system a farce.
Now you might not care about that, indeed, you might even want to see those things happen.
But we don't.
KSM can have a military tribunal. He can have his sentence reviewed by a military appeals court.
And then he can be hanged.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/17/2009 12:44 Comments ||
Top||
#5
4) makes our judicial system a farce.
I don't think KSM has to do anything for that to be seen. It was SCOTUS Justice Kennedy that opened the can of worms when he choose to ignore precedent in dealing with illegal combatants. It's a self inflicted wound.
The ugliness surrounding the pushing out of White House Counsel Gregory Craig was months in the making, but culminated on the day on which the White House announced that the Justice Department would be prosecuting Guantanamo prisoners on U.S. soil, the very project Craig was supposedly brought into the administration to bring about.
Last Friday it remained unclear why Craig was being shown the door, but it was clear he had angered several different constituencies. Rumors -- some generated by current Hillary Clinton allies at the State Department -- swirled that Craig had failed to gain the proper security clearances for his job, or that he had run afoul of the First Lady's staff in not moving quickly enough to clear several staffers. Another rumor had him angering White House senior advisor Valerie Jarrett for not supporting her hand-picked political appointees, such as former Obama aide Van Jones. Yet another had him being caught out leaking far too many details about the Obama Administration's failed Gitmo effort.
Craig, who is considered one of the more connected of the Washington insiders brought into the Obama administration, but who long had been associated with Bill and Hillary Clinton due to his role as one of then-President Clinton's attorneys during the Monica Lewinsky scandal and impeachment process, had been rumored to be leaving his White House post for several months. That the Clinton operation was seeking to smear Craig raised some eyebrows, but Craig made a fateful decision last year to support Obama, and wrote a famous op-ed during the primary season that was seen as an attempt to break through Hillary Clinton's wall of donors and political support. "We've had it out for him for quite a while," says one current Clinton loyalist who is not in the administration. "Everyone gets a second chance, but before that can happen, one needs to some penance. Greg is getting his penance."
But the main reason most often cited for Craig's exit was his failure to successfully manage a multi-Cabinet department process to shut down Gitmo and relocate more than 200 terrorists held there to other secure facilities. The shutting down of Guantanamo is but one of several high-profile promises Obama has failed to deliver on to his most leftist and ardent supporters.
Craig was managing one of the largest White House staffs, with far more attorneys and staffers on White House Counsel's Office payroll than at any time in the Bush Administration. It rivals the Counsel's Office staffing level of the Clinton impeachment era. At the start of the Administration, Craig's staff took on a decidedly political edge, and it included the White House's political opposition researcher in its ranks. Within several months, that staffer left, and the post was moved back to the Democratic National Committee, where Obama's own political operation is now housed.
But more mysterious than Craig's exit was the announced move eight days ago by Craig's deputy, Cassandra Butts, a Harvard classmate of Obama's and one of the administration's highest-ranking African Americans. Earlier this month, the White House announced she was leaving to become counsel to Millennium Challenge Corporation.
Butts was believed to be the White House point person in vetting a number of high profile Obama appointments, not the least of whom was Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Butts was viewed as one of Obama's closest "Harvard friends" in the administration, a group that had known Obama for a number of years, and worked tirelessly on his behalf to get him to the position he holds today.
After Butts quietly resigned on Friday, November 6, friends began calling reporters to insist her resignation had nothing to do with politics and everything to do with her desire to work in the anti-poverty arena, an issue she cares about. "The whispers had already started that there was something odd going on here," says a former Butts colleague in the White House counsel's office. "We were really caught off guard by her resignation, but everyone here has been kind of on high alert for several weeks now. A lot of meetings behind closed doors, that kind of stuff."
The result is that Craig and Butts -- two respected attorneys -- are on the outside of a White House, and Obama's personal attorney, Robert Bauer, who has worked on a number of Obama personal issues over the past five years, is now taking the Counsel job.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/17/2009 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Nothing to see here - move along now...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
11/17/2009 0:42 Comments ||
Top||
#2
Craig had failed to gain the proper security clearances for his job
I'll give that one a NO vote. If Barry can get a TS clearance, anyone can.
Posted by: ed ||
11/17/2009 7:05 Comments ||
Top||
#5
Hussein Onyango Obama, Mr ObamaÂ’s paternal grandfather, even though a Luo who supported Kikuyu separatists, became involved in the Kenyan independence (Mau Mau) movement while working as a cook for a British army officer after the war. He was arrested in 1949 and jailed for two years in a high-security prison where, according to his family, he was subjected to horrific violence to extract information about the growing insurgency.
And it continues yet today:Barack has stated his support for Luo Opposition Leader in Kenya RaRaila Odinga (who signed a Shariah pact with Muslims and claims to be Obama's cousin) and is married to Ida Odinga. They have four children - two sons and two daughters. His oldest son, Fidel, is named after Fidel Castro.
Attorney General Jerry Brown, a likely Democratic candidate for governor next year, faces political blowback no matter how he rules on the undercover videotaping by conservative filmmakers at offices of the community group ACORN in Southern California.
Brown is investigating the filmmakers, who posed as a prostitute and a pimp, for possible violations of state privacy laws. He is also investigating the group for what is shown in the video: an employee of ACORN apparently advising the filmmakers how to smuggle Mexican girls across the border to work as prostitutes.
After the tapes were released, House Republicans used a series of similar videos to pass a resolution to cut all federal funding for ACORN, or the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. The group sued the federal government Friday to restore funding, claiming Congress punitively targeted an individual organization.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
11/17/2009 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[2 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
"Sometimes, Jerry, less is less."
-- Linda Ronstadt
#3
Re: the picture. He took Linda R. on a trip to Africa with him; when the press started to ding him on it, he said "but nothing happened". He was such a wuss that most everybody believed him.
Newsweek has done it again: a few weeks after acknowledging half its letters were critical of Joe Biden (but publishing none of them), they proclaimed their Al Gore cover was unpopular. Forty-six percent of their letter writers wrote on the subject of Gore, and 74 percent of them were critical. Still, Newsweek ran only positive letters. The first, most prominent one (in larger red type) read: "Until each nation makes responsibility for this earth a priority, we will continue to devastate it -- and ourselves."
The next letter praises Gore's courage and conscience, but still presses him from the left to crush the problem of human overpopulation:
As a six-continent bicycle traveler for the past 35 years, I admire Al Gore addressing climate change. However, he fails to highlight the basic factor accelerating it: human overpopulation. Either we address it, or Mother Nature will do it for us. -- Frosty Wooldridge, Golden, Colo.
Then the reading gets really hair-curling. Lee Bidgood Jr of Gainesville, Florida compared global-warming deniers to people who denied the Holocaust:
Propaganda by global-warming skeptics and deniers reminds me of 1944, when as an Army officer I saw living skeletons in striped pajamas. Horror stories about Nazi concentration camps suddenly rang true. I wondered how intelligent people could commit such atrocities. History records the effectiveness of Joseph Goebbels's propaganda. I hope Al Gore and others can prevail over today's anti--science propaganda.
Newsweek even included a letter from a professional liberal complaining that all the goo for Gore was ruined by including an essay by Karl Rove. It was (as usual) an "unworthy" counterpoint:
"Rove's essay repeats debunked claims about cap-and-trade systems and fails to offer an alternative method for significantly reducing carbon emissions to the levels scientists say are necessary. Rove's opinion piece was an unworthy counterpoint to Gore's serious call to action."
It was signed Aaron Huertas, Press Secretary, Union of Concerned Scientists, Washington, D.C.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/17/2009 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[0 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Meanwhile their circulation numbers continue to fall and they can't figure out why.
#2
I heard Newsweek is changing their name to OBAMA!
Posted by: ed ||
11/17/2009 8:09 Comments ||
Top||
#3
During 2008-2009 Newsweek undertook a dramatic restructuring of its business. It shrank its subscriber rate base, from 3.1 million to 2.6 million in early 2008 (down 500K), then to 1.9 million in July, 2009 (down 700K) and will shrink to 1.5 million in January, 2010 (down 400K); for a decline of 50% in one year. During this period the magazine has laid off substantial numbers of its staff and has repositioned its content towards opinion and commentary and away from weekly news reporting. Advertising revenues are down almost 50% compared to the prior year but losses at Newsweek are diminishing as well, as costs evidently are dropping faster than revenues.
Can't wait till they lose the crucial doctor and dentist office subscriber base.
Posted by: ed ||
11/17/2009 8:12 Comments ||
Top||
#4
The party has always been small in relationship with the population base.
The party's 70 million members[3] constitute 5.5% of the total population of mainland China.
#5
Watching a magazine slit it's own throat should be more fun than this. They just lost some more of their dwindling readership by weaseling away from the truth.
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter said Monday he was pressed by his advisers to attack Iran during the hostage crisis there more than 30 years ago but resisted because he feared 20,000 Iranians could have died.
Islamist militants stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran on Nov. 4, 1979, and seized its occupants. Fifty-two Americans were held hostage for 444 days.
Carter said one proposed option was a military strike on Iran, but he chose to stick with negotiations to prevent bloodshed and bring the hostages home safely.
"My main advisers insisted that I should attack Iran," he told reporters in the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai, where he was helping build houses for Habitat for Humanity. "I could have destroyed Iran with my weaponry. But I felt in the process it was likely the hostages' lives would be lost, and I didn't want to kill 20,000 Iranians. So I didn't attack."
The hostages were released on Jan. 20, 1981, just minutes after the swearing in of President Ronald Reagan, whose victory over Carter is largely attributed to the crisis.
The former president has commented in the past on how military action had been an option but that he feared a death toll in the tens of thousands, according to Carter spokeswoman Deanna Congileo.
Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, are among 3,000 volunteers from 25 countries working with Habitat for Humanity this week to help build and repair homes along the Mekong River in Thailand, Vietnam, China, Cambodia and Laos.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/17/2009 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[9 views]
Top|| File under:
#4
"My main advisers insisted that I should attack Iran,"
Nothing stopped you, except yourself, of call for and addressing a joint session of Congress to request a formal declaration of war, as would any other major nation in 4000 years of human history for the act that had just been carried out. Whether you act upon it or not, that would have placed the enemy in a far more difficult position to diplomatically maneuver than the one you gave them. When you're dealing with such people, you need to act in manner they understand. That means you have to communicate with them in terms of their own comprehension. They would have understood what a Declaration of War meant rather then dithering with paper shuffling diplomacy.
#7
Carter said one proposed option was a military strike on Iran, but he chose to stick with negotiations to prevent bloodshed and bring the hostages home safely.
He appears to have forgotten the Gulf of Oman, April 24th, 1980.
#8
he also forgot what country he was supposed too be president of.
Posted by: chris ||
11/17/2009 10:27 Comments ||
Top||
#9
I think Carter is shaking in his boots. If and when Israel attacks Iran, it will entirely be Carter's fault, for *causing* a major war, by abandoning a US ally to a despotic regime of tyrannical mullahs.
And this theory should be spread far and wide. Carter's "good intentions" threw Nicaragua to the Sandinistas, where they abused many innocent people. And Carter's "good intentions" threw Iran into the clutches of fanatics, which has harmed millions of people.
Because of Carter's incompetence, General Zia overthrew the elected government of Pakistan and embraced the Taliban.
Because of Carter's arrogance, the Panama Canal was given away, and now both ends are managed by the Chinese. In effect, the PLA.
Cuban mercenaries were fighting in Africa, and Carter wimps out. Finally the French FL drive them out.
Afghanistan officially became a communist state. After Carter does nothing to stop the Killing Fields in Cambodia, finally the Vietnamese intervene.
Maurice Bishop leads a coup in Grenada, and Carter does nothing. Reagan does something, when Bishop invites the Soviet Union to the party.
Samuel Doe overthrows one of the oldest democracies in the world and becomes dictator of Liberia. Carter does nothing.
The Sverdlovsk anthrax disaster demonstrates the Soviet Union is making military quantities of biological weapons, and Carter did nothing. He did, however, sign the utterly worthless SALT II treaty, which was never ratified because the Soviets invaded Afghanistan and put a brigade of soldiers in Cuba.
#12
II he had acted right away there might have been a chance of successful rescue. Those students would have ran away if 100 or so marines/soldiers showed up in an air assault. But it should ahve been down the next day. You can hate me but I think he made the right call not to bomb Iran.
#14
I think Carter is shaking in his boots. If and when Israel attacks Iran, it will entirely be Carter's fault, for *causing* a major war, by abandoning a US ally to a despotic regime of tyrannical mullahs.
You're right... Jimmuah believes in his Mommas version of a Pussified Hell.... he's starting to see the downsides of his actions.
/CRAM JIMMY! CRAM! IT AIN'T TOOOOOOOOOOO LATE! BABY JESUS STILL LOVES YOU!
About a year ago, thousands jammed Grant Park in Chicago to celebrate Barack Obama's election to the White House, a communal civic defining moment. But those giddy days are long gone as Democrats in Illinois face the potential of losing the Senate seat President Obama once held next November.
The Illinois primary is Feb. 2, and the Democrat and Republican races are ripening, with the deadlines to file or withdraw nominating petitions now passed.
Democratic Party leaders in Washington -- and the Obama White House -- failed to recruit a candidate strong enough to scare Rep. Mark Kirk -- the Republicans' best bet -- from the race. The only luck they had was the decision by Sen. Roland Burris -- appointed by now-indicted former Gov. Rod Blagojevich to fill Obama's remaining term -- not to run to keep the seat.
The chairman of the Democratic Party of Illinois -- Michael J. Madigan, the speaker of the Illinois House -- is the father of Attorney General Lisa Madigan, who rebuffed Obama and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee when they wooed her for the Senate. Papa Madigan, more concerned with keeping his state House majority, doesn't really care who the senator is.
A look at the leading Democratic and GOP Senate candidates:
Alexi Giannoulias is the Democratic front-runner. His main competitors are Cheryle Jackson, the former Chicago Urban League chief and former Blagojevich spokeswoman; former City of Chicago Inspector General David Hoffman, and attorney Jacob Meister, who is a factor only because he put more than $1 million of his own cash into the race. With days lost to Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's, well, it's practically voting day already.
He's also a friend of Obama, and his family is connected to a mobbed-up bank. Just who you want as a state treasurer, eh ...
The money: As of Sept. 30, federal reports show Giannoulias has $2.4 million on hand. Hoffman has $836,957 (which includes $500,000 he lent to his campaign). Jackson has $317,828.
Name recognition: Giannoulias is the only one -- Democrat or Republican -- who has run statewide. Hoffman, Jackson and Meister have never run for elected office.
The endorsements: Giannoulias locked up labor support. Hoffman has a string of endorsements from North Shore state lawmakers who like his good-government and ethics messages. Jackson has prominent African-American elected officials and the feminist EMILY's List on her side.
The base vote: Meister is looking for a gay and Jewish base. Giannoulias' base will include labor, many city wards, county chairmen, Greek Americans and some support Downstate. Hoffman's base is the North Shore suburbs, Jews, and wards in Chicago with a lot of police and firefighters.
Jackson's base includes females and African Americans. Burris is the Senate's only black member.
The minus: Giannoulias' potential biggest liability is his former association with Broadway Bank, founded by his father and the subject of controversy because of loans made to alleged mobsters and convicted influence peddler Tony Rezko. Giannoulias did not make the loans.
If I were Kirk I'd be loading up the commercials on that.
Hoffman's minus is lack of name recognition and money. Jackson's Achilles' heel is Blagojevich. Meister's minus: He's unknown.
On the GOP side:
The money: Kirk has $2.3 million to $340,048 for Hinsdale real estate developer Patrick Hughes (including $250,000 of his own money). The others on the ballot have a few thousand dollars.
Name recognition: Kirk, a veteran lawmaker from the North Shore 10th District, is a favorite of editorial boards. He's running a stealth primary campaign, however, refusing to disclose a political schedule. So far it has worked.
Endorsements: Kirk has GOP establishment in Washington and Illinois. Hughes hits Washington on Tuesday to seek backing from conservative groups, hoping to catch a conservative wave, similar to a New York House contest where the moderate Republican was forced out by conservatives.
Kirk, billed as a moderate, was caught up in a controversy last week when news leaked out that he solicited Sarah Palin for support.
Minus and plus: For Kirk, running to the right, a plus for the primary and a minus -- maybe -- in the general election.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/17/2009 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[2 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Illinois is ripe for change. If the Republicans had remembered to run credible candidates they could have swept the election! As it is there are a few credible candidates and the National Republicans had better support them big time
The Obama administration, under fire for inflating job growth from the $787 billion stimulus plan, slashed over 60,000 jobs from its most recent report on the program because the reporting outlets had submitted "unrealistic data," according to a document obtained by ABC News.
The Office of Management and Budget document shows that before an Oct. 30 progress report on the program the administration asked the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board to remove information from 12 stimulus recipients that contained "unrealistic data," including "unrealistic job data." (Read the document here.)
One recipient -- Talladega County of Alabama --claimed that 5,000 jobs had been saved or created from only $42,000 in stimulus funds. "The administration committed from the start to be upfront with the American people about the impact of the Recovery Act. Overall, the recipients provided good information on the impact of the Recovery Act across the country," Rob Nabors, deputy director at OMB, told ABC News Monday. "The test that we used when examining the data for accuracy was, 'Is that reasonable?' When the answer was no, we acted accordingly."
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
11/17/2009 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[6 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
See also FREEREPUBLIC > THE NEXT SEVEN MILYUHN JOBS WILL BE LOST???
MSNBC anchor Dylan Ratigan apologized this morning for using fake photos of Sarah Palin last Friday in a segment about the former Alaska governor, and for not acknowledging their inauthenticity.
The pictures, which were widely circulated during last year's presidential campaign, show Palin's head photoshopped onto other women's bodies. In one, "Palin" is wearing an American flag bikini and holding a rifle; in the other, the faux Palin is wearing a tight black miniskirt.
"I want to apologize to Gov. Palin and all our viewers. On Friday, in a very misguided attempt to have some fun in advance of Palin's upcoming book, Going Rogue, our staff mistakenly used some clearly photoshopped images of Ms. Palin without any acknowledgment, and on behalf of the show I would like to say that this was completely unacceptable. We should have never used those photos in the first place," Ratigan said today. "I apologize."
He also said the staff has taken "measures to make sure it will never happen again."
In the segment, which explored "What it is about Palin that drives America wild," the miniskirt image appeared when Ratigan said "She's hot." The bikini image, juxtaposed with one of former Vice President Cheney holding a rifle, comes as Ratigan said, "She's not Bush."
Posted by: Fred ||
11/17/2009 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[2 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
You mean they weren't real? I took all those cold showers for nuthin'?
#2
our staff mistakenly used some clearly photoshopped images of Ms. Palin without any acknowledgment, and on behalf of the show I would like to say that this was completely unacceptable
The apology for not acknowledging the sources for the photos, not for the reason why they used them.
#3
She is probably too modest but she could make a calendar of real/photo shopped pics side by side. Give the proceeds to the shriners or march of dimes. They hate her BECAUSE those photos could be real, making them real would really tweak their noses.
One of President Obama's primary justifications for pushing health care legislation has been that the status quo is "unsustainable" because of the skyrocketing cost of medical care in the United States. The way to rein in costs, he argues, is to do adopt the policies that he and his fellow Democrats are proposing. But a new report by the government actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a branch of the Obama administration's Department of Health and Human Services, has found that the exact opposite is true.
CMS took a close look at the health care bill that was passed by House Democrats and endorsed by the White House, and it found that not only would the bill not reduce health care costs -- it would increase them. Time and again, we have been reminded that the United States spends a higher percentage of its GDP on health care than any other nation -- about 16 percent. As Obama but it in his June speech to the American Medical Association, "If we fail to act, one out of every five dollars we earn will be spent on health care within a decade." Yet if we adopt the legislation supported by Obama -- which finances expanded coverage through tax increases and Medicare cuts -- health care spending will actually rise to 21.1 percent of GDP, according to CMS, compared to 20.8 percent if we simply do nothing.
"Make no mistake: The cost of our health care is a threat to our economy," Obama told AMA. "It's an escalating burden on our families and businesses. It's a ticking time bomb for the federal budget. And it is unsustainable for the United States of America."
I suppose a liberal could still argue that it's better to cover more people even if it will cost us more as a nation. But given that Obama has spent much of the year arguing that the reason we need to do something about health care is that the status quo is "unsustainable," then it's pretty hard to justify health care policies that are more costly than the status quo.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/17/2009 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[2 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
The sign in the STD Clinic reads: "Erections Have Consequences!"
Posted by: Albert Ebbager8936 ||
11/17/2009 6:51 Comments ||
Top||
#2
Revenues down? Er huh.......elimiating the ceiling amount one can earn WORKING while collecting his or her Social Security might be a start. Of couse it goes against the grain, ie, penalize those who WORK AND EARN, etc.
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.
As its financial resources dwindle, radical advocacy group and organized crime syndicate ACORN may have to file for bankruptcy protection before Christmas, ACORN insiders say.
(Bloomberg) -- Members of Congress are plumping their feathers, holding press conferences and congratulating themselves for a job well done.
Today's Wall Street Journal and Fresno Bee report that SEIU engaged in illegal threats, ballot-tampering, and other serious violations of election rules during a June union election for 10,000 homecare providers in Fresno, according to voters and union staff who worked for SEIU during the election and have now come forward.
President Obama's first federal court nominee was Judge David Hamilton of Indiana. If you are drinking your morning coffee as you read what follows here, you might want to put down your cup before reading further:
The White House on Sunday slapped down ex-Mayor Rudy Giuliani and other critics of its decision to try the 9/11 plotters in New York City.
The ugliness surrounding the pushing out of White House Counsel Gregory Craig was months in the making, but culminated on the day on which the White House announced that the Justice Department would be prosecuting Guantanamo prisoners on U.S. soil, the very project Craig was supposedly brought into the administration to bring about.
Attorney General Jerry Brown, a likely Democratic candidate for governor next year, faces political blowback no matter how he rules on the undercover videotaping by conservative filmmakers at offices of the community group ACORN in Southern California.
Newsweek has done it again: a few weeks after acknowledging half its letters were critical of Joe Biden (but publishing none of them), they proclaimed their Al Gore cover was unpopular. Forty-six percent of their letter writers wrote on the subject of Gore, and 74 percent of them were critical. Still, Newsweek ran only positive letters. The first, most prominent one (in larger red type) read: "Until each nation makes responsibility for this earth a priority, we will continue to devastate it -- and ourselves."
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter said Monday he was pressed by his advisers to attack Iran during the hostage crisis there more than 30 years ago but resisted because he feared 20,000 Iranians could have died.
About a year ago, thousands jammed Grant Park in Chicago to celebrate Barack Obama's election to the White House, a communal civic defining moment. But those giddy days are long gone as Democrats in Illinois face the potential of losing the Senate seat President Obama once held next November.
The Obama administration, under fire for inflating job growth from the $787 billion stimulus plan, slashed over 60,000 jobs from its most recent report on the program because the reporting outlets had submitted "unrealistic data," according to a document obtained by ABC News.
MSNBC anchor Dylan Ratigan apologized this morning for using fake photos of Sarah Palin last Friday in a segment about the former Alaska governor, and for not acknowledging their inauthenticity.
One of President Obama's primary justifications for pushing health care legislation has been that the status quo is "unsustainable" because of the skyrocketing cost of medical care in the United States. The way to rein in costs, he argues, is to do adopt the policies that he and his fellow Democrats are proposing. But a new report by the government actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a branch of the Obama administration's Department of Health and Human Services, has found that the exact opposite is true.
