He strikes the flippin' mother lode! At least that's what happened to private investigator Derrick Roach at the National City (San Diego) ACORN office. Yep, Roach scored big-time on the cockroaches of ACORN when he staked out their San Diego workplace.
According to seƱor Roach via BigGovernment.com, after the release of the San Diego ACORN sting videos--which my daughter Hannah, James O'Keefe, and Andrew Breitbart dropped on the Nation's head--and following Governor Schwarzenegger's call for a probe into this batty zoo, Roach took it upon himself to get busy and see if he could ferret out more funky filth from this nefarious gang.
And, as stated, Roach scored more than Dwayne Wade would playing hoops against blind five-year-old, one-legged narcoleptic midgets.
What did Papa Roach come across? Well, my children, it was stuff like ...
Information exposing the inner workings of ACORN in California.
Sensitive personal information belonging to employees, members and ACORN clients, such as social security numbers, driver's license numbers, immigration records, and tax returns.
ACORN's political agenda is also laid bare, with thousands upon thousands of documents revealing the depth of the political machine that is ACORN and its disturbing ties not only to public employee labor unions but some of the most radical leftist organizations in existence (I wonder which politicians we will discover are in cahoots with these goofy clowns?).
The timing of this 20k plus page paper plunk of sensitive and incriminating 411 is kinda interesting as well. Check it out:
On October 1, 2009 California Attorney General Jerry announced that he was going to do a little look-see inside ACORN's hull to determine if their San Diego office was as innocent as Bertha Lewis, David Lagstein and the Mange Stream Media screamed them to be.
"Coincidently," just a few days prior to when AG Brown was slated to pay them a howdy-doo, low and behold, on October 9, ACORN San Diego decided to do a bit of midnight spring cleaning and dump all their docs in a public dumpster to spruce up the joint before the AG's arrival.
Unfortunately for poor ACORN, PI Derrick Roach was parked outside waiting for them to do something stupid like dump 20,000 plus pages of their corporate papyrus and their clients' personal records in a trash bin behind their slim shady facilities.
By the way, are there laws governing how personal info like social security numbers, tax returns, driver's license numbers and stuff like that should be handled? I'm thinking there would be. Hmmm, I don't know. Maybe Media Matters will look into it; if there are laws demanding stringent care and disposal of sensitive info, it looks like ACORN, prima facia, could be in deep crap with a stack of folks for placing their private stories in a public dumpster.
I would now like to address you, Mr. Roach. Good job, old chap! As Hannah Giles' father and one who has been on the receiving end of the ACORN/Mange Stream Media stick, please take my advice and brace for the vilifying crunch from these numb nuts.
They're are going to hit you with retarded stuff like ...
How dare a conservative PI jump into a dumpster and steal trash?! It's unethical.
You're not a legitimate trash man. You've never been to trash man school.
The trash did not give its consent to be removed from the dumpster. California law requires garbage to give its go-ahead before it is embraced by another.
FOX News paid you 100 kadrillion dollar$ to dumpster dive.
You tried this at thousands of other ACORN dumpsters and came up snake eyes.
No other ACORN office would ever dispose of their clients' records like this, except, of course, for that Oklahoma ACORN branch that left all their computers and crap on the curb after they got kicked out of their building for not paying the bills.
ACORN, naturally, is going into full damsel in distress mode, stating it was an accident and a coincidence that it occurred right before Brown and his boys were to perform their investigative colonoscopy into ACORN's corrupt underbelly.
ACORN also blathered that Roach stole their trash. Stole your trash? Hey ACORN, once you place your clients' sensitive info and your political playbook into le garbage it is public domain. Every hooker running a whorehouse with underage sex slaves knows that.
Lastly, will the little darlings on the left report this? Will Eric Holder call for a brutal investigation into the ACORNucopia of corruption of which BigGov and some citizen soldiers have uncovered? Garsh ... who knows! I guess we poor little serf's of Obamaland will just have to wait and see.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/28/2009 00:00 ||
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Will Eric Holder call for a brutal investigation into.....
ACORN OPSEC procedures and provide emergency funding for new high security paper shredders.
Maybe DOJ can have the local FBI SAC can drop by and pick it up until the shredders arrive.
Hassan Nemazee is a longtime Democratic money man who has raised campaign donations for the likes of President Obama and Hillary Clinton. So for Democrats it was a bit uncomfortable last August when Nemazee was arrested and later accused of perpetrating a $292 million Ponzi-esque scheme in which he created bogus collateral to borrow from one bank in order to pay off another. (The lenders entangled: Bank of America, Citibank and hsbc.) Nemazee pleaded not guilty to bank fraud.
But now it may be unsettling for New Mexico citizens to learn that a New York firm Nemazee partly owns has a four-year contract to manage $200 million of the state's public money. Both before and after Carret Asset Management got the contract in 2007, Nemazee and others connected with it gave campaign contributions to Democratic New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson. The contract with the State Investment Council has yielded $1.7 million in fees for Carret.
In July 2006 Nemazee contributed $5,000 to Richardson's gubernatorial campaign. A month later a company run by Alan Quasha, cochair of Carret and longtime business partner of Nemazee, gave $20,000. In late 2008 Nemazee, Nemazee's wife, Quasha and two other Carret employees contributed a total of $11,500 to Richardson's presidential campaign. By then Richardson had dropped out of the primary race, but his campaign committee was raising cash to pay off debts. Nemazee had been national finance chairman of rival Hillary Clinton's campaign.
Nemazee's lawyer declines to comment. But Quasha is blunt. "We did not pay to play," he says, meaning the contributions had nothing to do with Carret's New Mexico contract. He insisted that Nemazee, until recently cochairman of Carret, was a "minority shareholder and had no executive responsibilities."
Quasha distances himself from Carret, too. He says he has no direct or indirect interest in the firm. Richardson's spokesman says the governor, who is chairman of the New Mexico State Investment Council, played no role in the hiring of Carret. The State Investment Council says the decision was made by Gary Bland, the state's chief investment officer, who was appointed by Richardson and resigned in October amid pay-to-play scandals unrelated to Carret. He could not be reached for comment.
Earlier this year Richardson had to deal with allegations that he directed bond program contracts to a campaign contributor. A federal investigation into that has been dropped, but in January it caused Richardson to withdraw from his nomination as U.S. secretary of commerce.
"In retrospect, a lot of things look a little funny," says Quasha. "They weren't intended to be funny, but sometimes you go back in history and you look at stuff and you go, 'Wow, that doesn't look good.'"
Posted by: Fred ||
11/28/2009 00:00 ||
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But now it may be unsettling for New Mexico citizens to learn that a New York firm Nemazee partly owns has a four-year contract to manage $200 million of the state's public money.
No, its not unsettling. It's just another in a round of PRI style political behaviors that's SOP in the state. The Donks don't care about appearances, just about power and could care less about one of theirs, to include being found in bed with a dead girl or live boy, having apparent conflict of interests. The family takes care of business. It's about blood and power rather than the proper function of government as a disinterested agent to conduct the business of the state. That's why New Mexico will continue to compete against Louisiana and Mississippi for the bottom rungs of average personal income. $200 million is chump change in the upper tier of states.
The Justice Department has concluded that the Obama administration can lawfully pay the community group Acorn for services provided under contracts signed before Congress enacted a law banning the government from providing funds to the group. It may be lawful, but who in their right mind would pay a contractor for providing "services" subversively? They did nothing in my interest. Nothing. I don't want them to be paid any more than I would want to pay an electrician who I had found to be installing surveillance cameras in my bathroom. This is just common sense.
The department's conclusion, laid out in a recently disclosed five-page memorandum from David Barron, the acting assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel, adds a new wrinkle to a sharp political debate over the antipoverty group's activities and recent efforts to distance the government from it. You want to distance yourself from them? Don't pay them.
Since 1994, Acorn, which stands for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, has received about $53 million in federal aid, much of it grants from the Department of Housing and Urban Development for providing various services related to affordable housing. I'd like to take that money back. All of it. Of course, the only channel I have for that to happen is my federal government. Federal government, get to work for me.
But the group has become a prime target for conservative critics, and on Oct. 1, President Obama signed into law a spending bill that included a provision that said no taxpayer funds -- including funds authorized by previous legislation -- could be "provided to" the group or its affiliates. Make it happen. Or is the Obama paying for this out of his own pocket?
A Housing and Urban Development lawyer asked the Justice Department whether the new law meant that pre-existing contracts with Acorn should be broken. A-CORN already broke them. Pi$$ off.
But in a memorandum signed Oct. 23 and posted online this week, Mr. Barron said the government should continue to make payments to Acorn as required by such contracts. NO NO NO. Weasels.
The new law "should not be read as directing or authorizing HUD to breach a pre-existing binding contractual obligation to make payments to Acorn or its affiliates, subsidiaries or allied organizations where doing so would give rise to contractual liability," Mr. Barron wrote. Since when am I obligated to pay for services outside the scope of the original contract? Which I'm sure a large portion of those services were. And on top of that, they were subversive. NO!
The deputy director of national operations for Acorn, Brian Kettenring, praised Mr. Barron's decision. I don't care what he has to say.
"We are pleased that commitments will be honored relative to Acorn's work to help keep America's working families facing foreclosure in their homes," he said. You're a large part of the reason these families have homes to lose, idiot. They should have been in something more affordable.
Mr. Barron said he had based his conclusion on the statute's phrase "provided to." This phrase, he said, has no clearly defined meaning in the realm of government spending -- unlike such words as "obligate" and "expend." Idiot. Get me a farmer and we'll have him decide what all this hair-splitting should really mean.
Citing dictionary and thesaurus entries, he said "provided to" could be interpreted as meaning only instances in which an official was making "discretionary choices" about whether to give the group money, rather than instances in which the transfer of funds to Acorn was required to satisfy existing contractual obligations. I'm sure the lawyers had their thesaurii out when they came up with this contract. Why don't you a$$holes ask me what it means, eh? I didn't think so.
Since there are two possible ways to construe the term "provided to," Mr. Barron wrote, it makes sense to pick the interpretation that allows the government to avoid breaching contracts.
Moreover, he argued, requiring the government to abrogate existing contracts with a specifically named entity -- "including even in cases where performance has already been completed but payment has not been rendered" -- would raise constitutional concerns best avoided by interpreting the law differently. YOU ARE FUNDING A SUBVERSIVE ORGANIZATION!!! The Constitution is not a suicide pact!
The Constitution prohibits "bills of attainder" -- legislation aimed at punishing specific people or groups. Acorn has filed a lawsuit arguing that the statute banning the government from providing it funds amounts to an unconstitutional bill of attainder. It's not punishment. Bad service ==> No pay. Simple.
Founded in Arkansas in 1970, Acorn describes itself as the nation's largest grass-roots community organizing group. It provides financial services to poor and middle-income families, conducts voter registration drives, and advocates for higher minimum wages and more affordable housing. Git yer roots out of my yard. Go to work for my enemies.
Conservatives have long complained about Acorn's voter drives in poor neighborhoods, citing instances in which workers fraudulently registered imaginary voters like "Mickey Mouse." Acorn has argued that it is the real victim of such incidents, which its employees have often brought to the attention of the authorities. What is wrong with the authorities that they can't figure this out?
Criticism of the group escalated last September, when two conservative activists made public footage they had recorded using secret cameras of Acorn workers in several cities. The activists had posed as a pimp and a prostitute seeking financial advice. Instead of raising objections, the Acorn employees counseled the couple on how to hide their illicit activities and avoid paying taxes. We should pay for this kind of crap?
Conservatives seized on the videos to further criticize the group, highlighting that the Obama campaign had paid an Acorn affiliate for get-out-the-vote efforts. Congress then enacted the ban on providing funds to it. So this organization is allowed to pick sides politically? Why am I required to fund it?
Acorn has fired the employees depicted in the videos. That's the least it could do. The very least. And that's all it did, besides throwing a bunch of incriminating records in the dumpster.
#1
Based on performance, I believe a close review of the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) would reveal the Gov't has every right to terminate any outstanding contract. I am reasonably certain mentoring prostitution and providing advice regards methods of income tax evasion are outside the scope of any existing contract and thus represent grounds for cancellation alone.
#3
Well you are right Gorb, but the DOJ is trying to frame in red herring legal, "contractural" terms. ACORN has been and probably still is involved in illegal activities which should, by itself be suffecient grounds for termination of any contractural arrangement. Lastly, it was the US Congress that shut them off. But of course this doesn't matter to Barry's DOJ.
Posted by: Slath Prince of the Poles1925 ||
11/28/2009 15:42 Comments ||
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I'm thinking 1000-year T notes (tastefully emblazoned with an image of BHO and his cabinet) would be an excellent means by which to settle these "lawful" debts....
A top House Republican today blasted a ruling by the Justice Department that allows the Obama administration to pay ACORN for services provided under contracts signed before Congress passed a law banning the community advocacy group from receiving taxpayers money. I commented at the time that this vampire was far from dead...
Republicans have been on the warpath against ACORN since its voter registration efforts came under scrutiny during the 2008 presidential campaign. After conservative activists, who posed as a prostitute and pimp, released videos appearing to show ACORN staffers advising them how to skirt the law, Democrats joined in the outrage, leading to the congressional funding ban that Obama signed on Oct. 1. Didn't think anyone would notice?
Since 1994, ACORN, which stands for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, has received about $53 million in federal aid, much of it in grants to help poor people obtain affordable housing. The Justice Department asked whether the funding ban applied to prior contracts. In a ruling first reported by the New York Times, a department lawyer said the payments under prior contracts should continue because the language of the law did not expressly wipe them out. What the heck were they expressing then?
But Representative Darrell Issa, the top Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said "the bipartisan intent of Congress was clear -- no more federal dollars should flow to ACORN." "But that a bill of attainder!"
"It is telling that this administration continues to look for every excuse possible to circumvent the intent of Congress," Issa said in a statement. "Taxpayers should not have to continue subsidizing a criminal enterprise that helped Barack Obama get elected president. The politicization of the Justice Department to payback one of the presidentĀs political allies is shameful and amounts to nothing more than old-fashioned cronyism." The number of 'own-goals' this administration is scoring is surprising and even a bit unsettling.
#4
Right now, a RICO suit has been filed against ACORN for over a year now, and probably amended several times to include new revelations. I would add a bit to it to enjoin the use of any federal monies by ACORN in the lawsuit, by adding those monies to the damages.
This would mean that any money paid to ACORN by the feds would be frozen until the lawsuit was concluded.
President Obama's job approval ratings are below 50 percent or in negative territory in five of the seven states we are updating in our round-up of state polls (one of the new polls, for Texas, did not test job approval ratings, but instead asked about the impact of Obama's economic stimulus package and his health care proposal). The other updated states are Arizona, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, North Carolina and Wisconsin.
Tom Jensen of Public Policy Polling, which did some of the new surveys cited here, observes: "Obama generally seems to be having problems in the Midwest. A Des Moines Register poll (Nov. 8-11) showed Obama's approval rating there dropping to 49%. A Quinnipiac poll a few weeks ago in Ohio showed 50% of voters disapproving of him there to just 45% approval. A recent Rasmussen survey in Minnesota found him only slightly in positive territory, 51/48. He won all three of those states last year by margins ranging from 4 points in Ohio to 10 points in Iowa and Minnesota."
Posted by: Fred ||
11/28/2009 00:00 ||
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P. T. Barnum is proud as hell.
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
11/28/2009 2:10 Comments ||
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Barry Obama abandoned his license to practice law after it was revealed that he lied on his application about not having any aliases, aka Barry Soetoro and he is not allowed to applying again by the Illinois Bar Association.
Illinois attorneys affirm Mr.Obama was disbarred for lying under oath which is a felony and the Bar admits no felons.
And we also know that his wifeĀs law license was retracted by the state of Illinois. Actually her license was "court ordered inactive"
Posted by: Large Fluper1816 ||
11/28/2009 9:46 Comments ||
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Link for that, Fluper?
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/28/2009 10:11 Comments ||
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Posted by: Large Fluper1816 ||
11/28/2009 11:09 Comments ||
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#6
No need for conspiratorial nuttiness here.
Jimmy Earl Carter III is doing enough on his own to torpedo his presidency.
The chance that unemployment will be less than double digits by Nov 2012 is low, and diminishing by the month.
Just imagine the effects on new job creation of a new unfunded trillion dollar health insurance mandate + trillions in public debt crowding out capital for lending to small-med businesses. Ain't seen nothin' yet.
#7
President Obama's job approval ratings are below 50 percent or in negative territory
What?
Posted by: Perry Stanford White ||
11/28/2009 13:12 Comments ||
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Barry Obama abandoned his license to practice law after it was revealed that he lied on his application about not having any aliases, aka Barry Soetoro and he is not allowed to applying again by the Illinois Bar Association.
Let's not propagate false accusations. Barack Obama is listed as "Voluntarily retired" in 2008. No revocation is listed.
On the other hand, Michelle's law license is listed as "voluntarily inactive and not authorized to practice law." and "on court ordered inactive status." Last year registered 1993. What happened to Michelle Obama's law license?
Posted by: ed ||
11/28/2009 17:21 Comments ||
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The article you link doesn't suggest anything out of the ordinary there, ed. Is there some other information that suggests otherwise?
#10
Didn't mean to imply something illegal, instead debunking comment #3. I was contrasting Barack keeping his law license up to date until he was elected president, while Michelle let hers (most likely) lapse as soon as she went to work for Valerie Jarret at the city gov and well before having any kids.
Posted by: ed ||
11/28/2009 20:17 Comments ||
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There seems to be very quiet buyer's remorse out here in Deep Blue Iowa. I'd suspect the real total is lower, it is just not a politically correct thing to say in public at this time. The next few years should be interesting.
Two-dozen Democrats from Republican-leaning districts, who voted for the House version of President Obama's increasingly unpopular health care reform, are beginning to feel a growing public backlash. ReversetheVote.org has already raised $123,105 that will be dedicated exclusively to defeating all 24, including Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., in 2010 if they don't reject the final conference committee version of the bill. They "voted to take away your healthcare and put it in the hands of federal bureaucrats," the Web site says. "Democrats made a choice ... next fall, voters will make a choice."
They're not the only ones. Twenty-nine other House Democrats who voted for the bill come from districts that John McCain carried, making them particularly vulnerable to an angry electorate that never bought into the "hope and change" hype in the first place.
Democratic senators who are up for re-election next year in nine states face the same dilemma. As support erodes for Obamacare's massive tax increases and deep Medicare cuts, they must also consider the personal political cost. Only 38 percent of the public supports their health care plan, the lowest level of public support in more than two years. As more details of the 2,074-page behemoth -- which most members of Congress concede they have not read -- continue to trickle out, the more the poll numbers drop.
It's not hard to figure out why. Obamacare was supposed to lower costs, extend coverage and improve Americans' health care options. It does none of those things.
Despite accounting gimmicks, Obamacare will cost $4.9 trillion over the next 20 years. This enormous sum will suck the wind out of an already struggling economy. The plan includes higher premiums for younger workers, fines for those who refuse to purchase coverage, lower Medicare payments to doctors and hospitals, and job-killing taxes on employers.
Obamacare will also force an estimated five million workers to lose their employer-provided coverage.
Federal taxpayers will be forced to pay for elective abortions even though only 13 percent favor such coverage.
As far as improving health care options is concerned, the administration wants to cut down on mammograms and slash Medicare Advantage for seniors to save money. After all this spending and upheaval, 24 million Americans will remain uninsured in 2019. Every Democrat who ignores the public will and votes for this higher-cost, lower-care monstrosity will be held accountable. Voters back home won't let them forget it.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/28/2009 00:00 ||
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Federal taxpayers will be forced to pay for elective abortions even though only 13 percent favor such coverage.
The Pentagon's decision to shift the production of Army trucks from Texas to Wisconsin after 17 years caught Texas' elected officials by surprise, raising questions about overconfidence, a loss of political clout and the impact of economic incentives provided to the winning company by Wisconsin's Democratic governor.
Texas Republican Gov. Rick Perry and the 34-member Senate-House delegation are rallying to salvage a deal for BAE Systems that could be worth $2.6 billion and sustain 10,000 direct and indirect jobs around the sprawling truck manufacturing plant in Sealy.
But as one Democratic operative puts it: "That's like having a party in the corral after all the horses have run out."
The 92-year-old Oshkosh Corp. undercut BAE Systems' bid by roughly 10 percent. The Wisconsin company had support by a predominantly Democratic congressional delegation that helped Barack Obama carry the state last November. And the truck builder reaped the benefits of state assistance crafted by Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle.
Elected officials in Texas assumed the contract would remain in their state, relied on networks of support built up during Republican control of the White House and Congress and did not provide BAE Systems any state assistance.
Katherine Cesinger, Perry's deputy press secretary, said BAE Systems "did not ask our office for any assistance prior to the recent decision."
"It sounds to me like complacency may be the biggest factor in Texas losing this contract," says political scientist Paul Light of New York University. "The Army made a decision to give the contract to the lowest bidder. If I were an elected official from Texas, I'd stop whining and start asking questions about why Texas didn't put up the dollars to help the company keep that contract."
The congressional watchdog, the Government Accountability Office, expects to decide by mid-December the outcome of BAE Systems' appeal of the Army decision. The contract calls for production of 23,000 trucks and trailers over the next five years, starting with manufacturing 2,568 trucks for $281 million.
"We are hopeful the government will reverse the decision in the interests of the U.S. military and the U.S. taxpayer," says BAE spokesman Michael Teegardin.
The setback for Texas illustrates just how far the state's political leverage has plummeted since Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, D-Houston, helped BAE's predecessor win the initial contract in 1991 under President George H.W. Bush, and Sens. Phil Gramm, R-College Station, and Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Dallas, helped the company retain the contract in 2001 under President George W. Bush.
"We never saw this coming -- we were completely blindsided," says a top aide to Sen. John Cornyn, R-San Antonio, a former member of the Senate Armed Services Committee panel with jurisdiction over military vehicles.
Lawmakers and BAE officials alike felt "sucker punched," added David Davis, a top Hutchison aide. " 'Shocked' doesn't begin to describe it."
Posted by: Fred ||
11/28/2009 00:00 ||
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There goes that "special relationship". BAE is British.
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
11/28/2009 2:12 Comments ||
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Always pass that plant on I-10 into Houston. Not surprised the pols simply assumed that once they got it, it was theirs forever.
#3
Damn lucky Oshkosh got it and Barru didn't hand it off to the phueching CHINESE or RUSSIANS! Don't know whether they came out of Eglin AFB or NAS Pensacola, but seeing Russian HIND helicopters fly up and down Orange Beach last week was just about enough for me.
#4
The Pentagon's decision to shift the production of Army trucks from Texas to Wisconsin after 17 years caught Texas' elected officials by surprise, raising questions about overconfidence, a loss of political clout and the impact of economic incentives provided to the winning company by Wisconsin's Democratic governor.
em>
By KARL ROVE
After engineering an unprecedented spending surge for nearly a year, President Barack Obama now wants to signal that he takes deficits seriously. So this week the White House announced that it is considering creating a commission to figure how to fix the budget mess.
Eureka!
Well, almost. What seems to concern the president is not the problem runaway spending poses for taxpayers and the economy. Rather, what bothers him is the political problem it poses for Democrats.
Last year, Mr. Obama made fiscal restraint a constant theme of his presidential campaign. "Washington will have to tighten its belt and put off spending," he said back then, while pledging to "go through the federal budget, line by line, ending programs that we don't need." Voters found this fiscal conservatism reassuring.
However, since taking office Mr. Obama pushed through a $787 billion stimulus, a $33 billion expansion of the child health program known as S-chip, a $410 billion omnibus appropriations spending bill, and an $80 billion car company bailout. He also pushed a $821 billion cap-and-trade bill through the House and is now urging Congress to pass a nearly $1 trillion health-care bill.
An honest appraisal of the nation's finances would recommend dropping both of these last two priorities. But the administration has long planned to run up the federal credit card. In February, Mr. Obama's budget plan for the next decade projected that revenues would equal about 18% of GDP while spending would jump to 24% of GDP, up from its post World War II average of 21%. Annual deficits of about 6% of GDP were projected for years to come.
When Mr. Obama was sworn into office the federal deficit for this year stood at $422 billion. At the end of October, it stood at $1.42 trillion. The total national debt also soared to $7.5 trillion at the end of last month, up from $6.3 trillion shortly after Inauguration Day.
This spending has been matched by a decline in the president's poll numbers. This week, Gallup found that his job approval rating slipped below 50%. Last March, Americans approved of Mr. Obama's handling of the deficit by a 52% to 43% margin in the ABC News/Washington Post poll. By October, his standing had flipped in the same poll, with 45% approving and 51% disapproving.
Anger over deficits was picked up in a late October NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, which asked voters if they'd rather boost "the economy even though it may mean larger budget deficits" or keep the "budget deficit down, even though it may mean it will take longer for the economy to recover." Only 31% chose boosting the economy; 62% wanted to keep the deficit down.
These numbers suggest trouble for Democrats. In 1994, a wave of budget concerns (among other factors) handed Republicans control of Congress. Just before Election Day that year, 33% of voters approved and 59% disapproved of President Bill Clinton's handling of the deficit.
Today the latest Quinnipiac Poll tells us that only 19% of voters believe that Mr. Obama's health-care reform won't add to the deficit. The rest of us have reason to be skeptical. The bill includes all sorts of budget gimmicks, two of which illustrate that there is no fiscal restraint in it. One calls for steep cuts in Medicare and the other imposes a 40% excise tax on private, gold-plated health plans. It's just not plausible that this Congress will actually cut Medicare or tax health plans the unions have spent decades creating.
The administration says it is now instructing agencies to either freeze spending or propose 5% cuts in their budgets for next year. This won't add up to much unless agencies use the budgets they had before the stimulus inflated their spending as their baseline in calculating their cuts.
For example, if the Education Department uses its current stimulus-inflated budget of $141 billion instead of the $60 billion budget it had before Mr. Obama moved into the White House, freezing its budget will do nothing to fix the fiscal mess the president has created.
Ominously for Democrats, concerns over spending have recently helped to flip the Gallup generic ballot to now favor Republicans by four points (48% to 44%). Last year, Democrats held a 12-point generic ballot advantage. The change has been driven by independents, who now favor Republicans by 22 points. By comparison, in the run-up to the 1994 congressional elections, Republicans first eclipsed Democrats in March of that year, when they gained a one-point advantage, before falling behind Democrats until the fall.
Mr. Obama's spending choices are dragging congressional Democrats into ugly electoral territory where many are likely to meet a brutal fate next fall.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/28/2009 00:00 ||
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It's remarkable how much damage this Marxist idiot along with his congressional (TERM LIMITS NOW!!) and media outlet sycophants have done in less than a year.
If anything demonstrates how cynical this douche bag is, this about face on spending (while not stopping it by the way) takes the prize.
He assumes we're stupid, lazy, or unengaged. 2010 should be quite the wake up call.
Without a budget deal, New York will be left with just $36 million in the bank by the end of December, according to current projections. And the money will last that long, officials say, only if the state chooses to fully exhaust its emergency reserves by tapping several billion dollars' worth of temporary loans from its rainy-day fund and short-term investments.
For weeks, Gov. David A. Paterson has invoked the shrinking amount of available cash in an effort to provoke the Legislature to deal with the state's $3.2 billion budget deficit. So far, the specter of such dire fiscal outcomes has been greeted with what amount to legislative shrugs, chiefly in the recalcitrant State Senate.
The stalemate in Albany is familiar, of course, and there are many lawmakers and experts who predict that the Legislature will act at the 11th hour, as it has before, to avoid the worst damage.
But with no end in sight to the negotiations, state officials are beginning to reckon with what could be an unprecedented cash crisis. And many say that even if the current deficit is closed, the state is at considerable risk going forward -- less able, for instance, to borrow money because of worsening credit ratings and ill prepared for far more severe deficits ahead.
New York, which has a roughly $130 billion budget, the second-largest behind California, is certainly not suffering alone. The 50 states have faced cumulative deficits of more than $250 billion over their last two budget cycles, according to data compiled by the National Conference of State Legislatures. In New York, the weight of the recession has been coupled with the struggles of Wall Street, the state's main financial engine.
But New York is by no means California, which has become the national measuring stick of statewide financial ruin. The state is not sending out i.o.u.'s to creditors, students at state schools are not holding sit-ins in dormitories, and Albany, unlike Sacramento, has not had to grapple with relocating a tent city for the homeless. Further, revenue typically picks up in January, when Wall Street bonuses, however diminished from previous levels, start coming in.
But the situation in New York is not good, either.
In modern times, the state's general fund has never had a negative balance, according to the state comptroller's office. If New York does in fact run out of cash, it will have to delay paying some of its biggest bills. Chief among the bills the state will face in December are $1.6 billion in aid the state is supposed to pay school districts, $2.5 billion in property tax relief to individual homeowners, and $500 million in general aid meant to go to local governments.
"If you put any of that off, at some point people are not getting the money they are expecting," said the state comptroller, Thomas P. DiNapoli, a Democrat. "That could affect local governments, school districts, nonprofits, hospitals."
The governor and his staff have raised the threat of layoffs and furloughs if the impasse drags on, and there is the potential for a partial shutdown of some government services.
"Unless we act, New York will run out of money, even after we delay payments to schools and local governments," the governor said Tuesday in a brief address via Web cast. "This is an unprecedented fiscal emergency."
The state's credit rating is below average and at some risk of a further downgrade. The Paterson administration has already squeezed the budgets of state agencies, an action it can take unilaterally. And this year's skirmish is considered a prelude to a fierce budget fight in 2010, when the deficit is far larger in what is an election year for the entire Legislature.
There have already been any number of ways that the strain on the budget has been felt across the state. Billions of dollars worth of scheduled increases in school aid, enacted by Gov. Eliot Spitzer to settle a long-running lawsuit over the distribution of school aid, will be stretched out over seven years instead of four. Taxes on the wealthy have been raised, and fees of all kinds have been increased.
For the first time in decades, the state Police Academy probably will not have a new class for either the fall or the spring. The state has closed three upstate minimum-security prison camps and six facilities operated by the Office of Children and Family Services. Hours have been limited and facilities closed at parks including Jones Beach, and parks across the state are mowing fewer lawns to save money. The state ice rink was closed last winter.
Budget watchdogs say far steeper cuts are needed to reckon with deficits that will escalate sharply in 2011 as federal stimulus money runs out and the new wealth tax expires.
But negotiations have been fundamentally stalled -- and even irrational at times. Senate Democrats, who have thus far refused to hold a vote to legalize same-sex marriage, have nonetheless floated the theory in negotiations that the state could expect to take in more than $50 million a year in new revenue from the legalization of same-sex marriage, from a combination of marriage license and tourism revenue.
The state hasn't passed a budget bill on time in decades but this year they've outdone themselves. Upstate NY, which traditionally gets the raw end of the state spending stick anyway, is hurting really badly (which explains the Dede nomination, btw). 9/11 and the collapse of the finance industry hastened the inevitable consequences of the state's anti-business (especially hostile to small businesses and startups), pro-NYC welfare policies.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/28/2009 00:00 ||
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As the global warming fraud unravels, it's a good time to look at the politicians who have been some of the most outspoken advocates, using global warming/climate change to advance "Cap-and-Trade" legislation and other related laws and regulations.
Top of the list is President Barack Obama who has made many references to "climate change" and "global warming" to further this national and international fraud. He'll pick up his Nobel Peace Prize in December; the same one given to Al Gore and the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change a few years back. Further proof of his mendacity will be his attendance at the UN Climate Change Conference in Denmark.
Speaking on World Environment Day last June, Obama said of global warming, "We're going to have to make some tough decisions and take concrete actions if we are going to deal with a potentially cataclysmic disaster." This mirrors years of similar doomsday statements by former Vice President Al Gore.
This is the kind of drivel Americans and others around the world have heard from their supposed "leaders" for far too long.
As we move through the congressional hierarchy, one of the biggest prevaricators about global warming/climate change has been Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi (D-C) and her counterpart in the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), manages to wheeze about it from time to time.
Former presidential candidate, Sen. John Kerry, (D-MA) has been leading the fight for "Cap-and-Trade" but after much reflection former presidential candidate Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) concluded his support of global warming was a mistake.
Sen. Kerry said that failure to pass the Senate version of "Cap-and-Trade" (of greenhouse gas emission credits) would be comparable to another 9/11. He also has blamed tornadoes on global warming. The man is a complete idiot.
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) has uttered every global warming falsehood and has been joined by Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) and Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA). All three have played a critical role in advancing the "Cap-and-Trade" bill despite the fact that it is a massive tax on energy use and based on a lie.
Writing for the Huffington Post in October, Sen. Boxer said, "Global Warming is one of the greatest challenges of our generation. Addressing this challenge also represents enormous opportunities for economic recovery and long term prosperity." Her commentary was titled, "Telling the Whole Story on Global Warming"!
Never mind that global warming has been the excuse environmental groups have used to stop the building of coal-fired plants, nuclear plants, drilling for oil offshore in our continental shelf, et cetera. There's no economic recovery to be found in so-called "green jobs" and prosperity is a small light at the end of a very long tunnel as the result of the Obama administration's investments in "renewable energy" and massive increase of our national debt.
Among the other politicians hovering around Cap-and-Trade have been Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.VA), Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont), and Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM). Sen. Bingaman is a big fan of "renewable energy" (solar and wind) and proposed a nationwide renewable electricity standard even though it provides barely one percent of all the electricity Americans need and use every day.
Among the nation's prominent governors, California's Arnold Schwarzenegger has been vocal about environmental issues, many of which have left Californians trapped by idiotic measures ranging from restrictions on fireplaces in new homes or the purchase of large screen television sets. California's failure to anticipate its growing need for electricity has left it dependent on importing it from other states.
Meanwhile, over at the Environmental Protection Agency, they are using global warming to justify securing the right to regulate carbon dioxide emissions, claiming that they "cause" a global warming. The expose of the phony "scientific" data behind this massive fraud should, if truth mattered, end this power grab. The ability to regulate CO2 is the ability to control the use of all energy in the nation. That should be stopped!
Alone among his colleagues, Sen. James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma (R) has been the one outstanding voice for reason and for truth about global warming. The odds are that history will not give his courageous effort to expose the massive fraud the recognition he deserves. The nation owes him a debt of gratitude.
The lesson we can draw from this is that the next time any U.S. Senator or Representative, let alone the President and any member of his Cabinet, says anything positive about "global warming" or refers to "climate change" to justify some action, they are lying to you.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/28/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
the next time any U.S. Senator or Representative, let alone the President and any member of his Cabinet, says anything positive about "global warming" or refers to "climate change" to justify some action, they are lying to you.
You haven't heard it from America's mainstream media yet -- even Fox News hasn't covered it -- but the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Dr. John P. Holdren, is a key player in the Climategate e-mails flap, which is shaping up as the biggest scandal in the history of modern science.
Holdren is an intractable global warming activist with no time for climate change skepticism. In a New York Times article, he contended that such questioning "has delayed -- and continues to delay -- the development of the political consensus that will be needed if society is to embrace remedies commensurate with the challenge."
He has also become something of a celebrity, rubbing shoulders with the Hollywood luminaries at President Obama's state dinner Tuesday night honoring Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and repeatedly appearing as a guest on the David Letterman show.
But the Canada Free Press this week revealed that the former Harvard professor and Al Gore global warming adviser features prominently in the thousands of e-mails and other files made public after the hacking last week of a computer server used by the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit.
The most embarrassing item for the Obama Administration may be a 2003 exchange between Holdren and TCSDaily.com editor-in-chief Nick Schulz. Schulz challenged Holdren on whether downplaying the significance of the Medieval Warm Period required "what lawyers call the burden of proof."
Holdren's retort contained a remarkable assertion coming from a scientist: "In practice, burden of proof is an evolving thing -- it evolves as the amount of evidence relevant to a particular proposition grows."
Canada Free Press columnist and Canadian climatologist Dr. Tim Ball says of the correspondence with Schulz that Holdren's "entire defense and position devolves to a political position."
The CRU documents also find Holdren disparaging solar physicists Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon, contrarians regarding surface temperatures over the past millennium, who were colleagues of Holdren at Harvard, and Ball wonders if Holdren may have intimidated the two scientists before they "suddenly and politely withdrew from the fray," as Ball describes it.
As Newsmax has previously reported, Dr. Holdren has a history of alarmingly extremist views. He co-authored a 1977 book, "Ecoscience: Population Resources, Environment," advocating compulsory abortion for purposes of population control, mass sterilization, government-dictated family size like China's one-child policy, and a "planetary regime" to be policed by the United Nations.
Not long before the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade ruling legalizing abortion-on-demand throughout America, Holdren co-authored "Human Ecology: Problems and Solutions," which seems to argue that even years after birth a baby is not yet a human being.
"The fetus, given the opportunity to develop properly before birth," claims the book's "Population Limitation" section, "and given the essential early socializing experiences and sufficient nourishing food during the crucial early years after birth, will ultimately develop into a human being."
Holdren's "Human Ecology" warns of large-scale disaster that might require "involuntary fertility control" to stop population growth. "Compulsory control of family size is an unpalatable idea, but the alternatives may be much more horrifying," the Holdren book suggests.
As a member of President Bill Clinton's Committee of Advisers on Science and Technology, Holdren chaired a study providing the groundwork for U.S.-Russian cooperation on securing nuclear materials in the aftermath of post-Cold War disarmament.
#1
What's not to like about global warming by these "watermelons [green on the outside-red on the inside]?"
1. It puts junk science to work for their causes.
2. It creates a one world currency based on more snake oil; carbon credits.
3. It validates Al Gore's Peace Prize and Oscar.
4. It makes Hollywood look intelligent and "green" and caring.
5. It redistributes income to those who are deserving--that is everyone but US.
6. It bring our economy down to that of Zimbabwe, Somalia, and other 3rd world countries.
#2
Holdren's similarity to this guy is pretty striking. Disturbing, too...
Posted by: Ricky bin Ricardo (Abu Babaloo) ||
11/28/2009 15:07 Comments ||
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#3
Quite a few years ago I read the book, The rise and Fall of T.D. Lysenko. He set Russian agriculture back years with his crackpot theories. And quite a few died from his stupid agricultural policies.
The US under O is heading the same way unless we change course.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
11/28/2009 16:15 Comments ||
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#4
Thank Gaia that the Obama administration has stopped policising science. Now that those EVIL Republicans are out of power, we'll be able to use science to save the planet, assure peace, and social justice, stop pollution, save the rain forest, achieve self-actualization of all sentient life forms, align the planets, and achieve a new age of universal harmony and peace. Kumbaya my lord, kumbaya ...
#6
Another unscreened 'appointee' with defacto cabinet level power outed. A shining example of why the 'DWM's' who wrote the Constitution were so smart. It's called 'ADVISE AND CONSENT'
#7
This will be great! Another nutjob advising the number one nutjob. This will make great theater while the US is crumbling.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
11/28/2009 19:14 Comments ||
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#8
advocating compulsory abortion for purposes of population control, mass sterilization, government-dictated family size like China's one-child policy, and a "planetary regime" to be policed by the United Nations.
Another of Obama's inner circle whose favorite philosopher is Mao. Everybody must Great Leap Forward!
Posted by: ed ||
11/28/2009 20:28 Comments ||
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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.
He strikes the flippin' mother lode! At least that's what happened to private investigator Derrick Roach at the National City (San Diego) ACORN office. Yep, Roach scored big-time on the cockroaches of ACORN when he staked out their San Diego workplace.
The Justice Department has concluded that the Obama administration can lawfully pay the community group Acorn for services provided under contracts signed before Congress enacted a law banning the government from providing funds to the group.
Two-dozen Democrats from Republican-leaning districts, who voted for the House version of President Obama's increasingly unpopular health care reform, are beginning to feel a growing public backlash. ReversetheVote.org has already raised $123,105 that will be dedicated exclusively to defeating all 24, including Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., in 2010 if they don't reject the final conference committee version of the bill. They "voted to take away your healthcare and put it in the hands of federal bureaucrats," the Web site says. "Democrats made a choice ... next fall, voters will make a choice."
