Wednesday - February 23, 2011

Wisconsin - an excellent analysis

James Taranto hits the nail on the head in The Means of Coercion over at the WSJ. Read it!

To make sense of what’s going on in Wisconsin, it helps to understand that the left in America lives in an ideological fantasy world. The dispute between the state government and the unions representing its employees is “about power,” Paul Krugman of the New York Times observes accurately, before going off the rails:

What [Gov. Scott] Walker and his backers are trying to do is to make Wisconsin--and eventually, America--less of a functioning democracy and more of a third-world-style oligarchy. And that’s why anyone who believes that we need some counterweight to the political power of big money should be on the demonstrators’ side.

In any case, it seems to have escaped Krugman’s and Drum’s notice that the Wisconsin dispute has nothing to do with corporations. The unions’ antagonist is the state government. “Industrial unions are organized against the might and greed of ownership,” writes Time’s Joe Klein, a liberal who understands the crucial distinction. “Public employees unions are organized against the might and greed . . . of the public?”

The “labor movement” in America has increasingly come to consist of people who work for government, not private companies. As the BLS notes, the union-participation rate for public-sector workers in 2010 was 36.2%, vs. just 6.9% for private-sector workers.

There is a fundamental difference between private- and public-sector workers. A private-sector labor dispute is a clear clash of competing interests, with management representing shareholders and unions representing workers. In the public sector, as George Will notes, taxpayers--whose position is analogous to that of shareholders--are usually denied a seat at the table
...
Collective bargaining in the public sector thus is less a negotiation than a conspiracy to steal money from taxpayers. The notion that this is “in the economic interests of the middle class” for government employees in Wisconsin and elsewhere to get above-market wages and extremely lavish benefits is just laughable.

There is lots more at the link, but that bolded line is the real gist of it.

It’s quite striking the way almost every lie the left ever told about the Tea Party has turned out to be true of the government unionists in Wisconsin and their supporters

UPDATE: ... and if you think that’s messed up, give this one a read: Republicans in the Wisconsin legislature are crying that they can’t get bills passed because they don’t have a quorum because the Democrats are hiding out in Illinois ( they’re probably at the party for Rahmn Emanuel’s unexpected victory in the Chicago Mayor’s race ) BUT those same Dems are listening in on conference calls and voting on stuff by fax and telephone! And phone voting has been OK in that state for years! So, “quorum” doesn’t have much meaning does it? Too bad these folks didn’t update their definitions when they allowed this slack-ass approach to governing.

Can I venture an opinion on that one? Just say NO to phone voting. Being in the statehouse is your job. Do it. Maybe you have to lodge your vote in advance if you’ll be out of town, but that’s it. Hey, I’m all for balance: for regular citizens, unless you’re in the military, a nursing home, or a hospital, I’m not in favor of absentee ballots either. Get your ass to the polls and vote. Not that I have anything against secure polls being open for 3 weeks prior to Election Day Vote Counting Day. The population is simply too big these days to pack everyone in to the polling stations in one day without appointments. And the cost of creating tens of thousands of new polling stations would be prohibitive. So let people vote for extended times, but make them make the effort to do so physically. It’s their quorum, and it’s their civic duty to attend.

Posted by Drew458     on 02/23/2011 at 08:56 AM   
Filed Under: • Government • Corruption and Greed • Unions-Labor •  
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   Saturday - January 01, 2011

Bust ‘em

Michelle Malkin essays on the snowmageddon fiasco in New York City. 

Posted by Drew458     on 01/01/2011 at 01:29 PM   
Filed Under: • Crime • Corruption and Greed •  
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   Thursday - December 23, 2010

One Line Posts, Part II

Was there ever any doubt? Laws only apply to Republicans in the 100% corrupt Chicago Democrat Machine.

Posted by Drew458     on 12/23/2010 at 02:22 PM   
Filed Under: • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists • Corruption and Greed •  
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   Tuesday - November 16, 2010

Now Make Him Pay The Price

A House ethics panel has found Democratic Rep. Charles Rangel of New York guilty on 11 counts of breaking House rules.

The full ethics committee will next conduct a hearing on the appropriate punishment for the former chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. The committee will then make a recommendation to the House.

Possible punishments include a House vote deploring Rangel’s conduct, a fine and denial of privileges.

The eight-member ethics panel had sat as a jury to judge Rangel’s conduct. The 80-year-old congressman from Harlem was charged with 13 counts of financial and fundraising wrongdoing.

What was wrong with the other 2 counts?

And punishment? Hey, this is a clear and unmistakable pattern of deliberate abuse. 11 counts. Not just 1 or 2. Fire him. Impeach him. Strip him of all committee memberships. Then turn the case over to a criminal prosecutor. And the IRS. Old Charlie is not above the law.

Posted by Drew458     on 11/16/2010 at 01:19 PM   
Filed Under: • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists • Corruption and Greed •  
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   Friday - October 29, 2010

Find The Real Boobs

Buffalo teachers left taxpayers on the hook for nearly $9 million worth of cosmetic surgery last year, according to the state-appointed authority overseeing public school finances.

The Buffalo Fiscal Stability Authority found that last year’s costs for elective procedures such as chemical peels and other skin treatments were up $8 million over 2004’s $1 million tab for cosmetic surgery.

The procedures, provided under the teachers’ union contract, accounted for 9 percent of the district’s total spending on health benefits for employees and retirees, The Buffalo News reported Thursday.

About 10,000 school employees are eligible for the benefit. District officials said teachers or their dependents accounted for 90 percent of the approximately 500 people who received cosmetic surgery last year.

Barbara J. Smith, the district’s chief financial officer, said those 500 people represent less than 2 percent of those covered by health insurance through the district—a figure she estimated works out to an average of nearly $18,000 in elective procedures last year per employee who used the benefit.

The president of the Buffalo Teachers Federation said the union has agreed to give up the benefit in the next contract and said teachers may be simply rushing to use the benefit while they can.

Somebody tell me why elective cosmetic surgery was EVER in their health plan to being with. Talk about your “Cadillac care plans”! Horry clap. And this bennie was extended to all family members and retirees.

Sheesh. Your kid can’t read, but his teacher sure has a nice perky rack!

Throw them out. To hell with renegotiating a contract. Fire them all and start over. Union free. No unions for teachers, cops, firefighters, postal workers, or anyone else who works for the government.

Posted by Drew458     on 10/29/2010 at 12:00 PM   
Filed Under: • Education • Corruption and Greed • Unions-Labor •  
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   Saturday - October 16, 2010

Too Big To Fail, Or To Fine

Countrywide Financial Corp. co-founder Angelo Mozilo has agreed to a $67.5 million settlement to avoid trial on civil fraud and insider trading charges that alleged he profited from doling out risky mortgages while misleading investors about the risks.

Two other former Countrywide executives also settled before trial next week on charges filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission. But employment agreements that protect the men from lawsuits involving the failed lender mean Bank of America Corp., which bought Countrywide in July 2008, will pick up most of the tab.

The agreement requires Mozilo to repay $45 million in ill-gotten profits and $22.5 million in civil penalties. Former Countrywide President David Sambol owes $5 million in profits and $520,000 in civil penalties, and former Chief Financial Officer Eric P. Sieracki will pay $130,000 in civil penalties.

It’s “the fitting outcome for a corporate executive who deliberately disregarded his duty to investors by hiding what he saw in the executive suite,” SEC Enforcement Director Robert Khuzami said in a conference call with reporters.

But $25 million of Mozilo’s restitution will come from an escrow fund the company set up to cover shareholder litigation and Mozilo has no obligation to pay the remaining amount, according to the settlement agreement.

Sambol’s agreement stipulates that his entire $5 million forfeiture will come from the escrow fund.
...
The SEC accused the men of misleading shareholders about the quality of the loans on Countrywide’s books. The civil complaint also accused Mozilo of acting on his inside knowledge of the company’s precarious state when he sold shares between November 2006 and October 2007 ahead of its collapse, reaping more than $139 million.

Under the settlement, the three men did not admit wrongdoing.
...
Under the settlement, Mozilo agreed to never again serve as an officer or director of a publicly traded company. Sambol agreed not to do so for three years.

Posted by Drew458     on 10/16/2010 at 08:44 AM   
Filed Under: • Big Business • Corruption and Greed • Miscellaneous •  
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   Wednesday - October 13, 2010

the great global warming fraud ……..

This issue is something else that won’t go away anytime soon.  The zealots on the left of course will do all they can to silence the debate.  There are btw, some schools here that already are teaching youngsters one side of the argument and “green things” have become a religion.  Kiddies are lecturing parents about it, which tells you how far the tree huggers are in the argument.  I can not imagine a public school here teaching another viewpoint without either losing funding or finding themselves at the center of a storm they will not weather well.

This is a heck of a story, I’m doubtful any of you have seen it.  I’d encourage you to read all the letter at the link below. You may want to use it if you have your own blog site. Or simply share it any other way you see fit.  Take a look.

US physics professor: ‘Global warming is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life’

By James Delingpole
Harold Lewis is Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Here is his letter of resignation to Curtis G. Callan Jr, Princeton University, President of the American Physical Society.
This is an important moment in science history. I would describe it as a letter on the scale of Martin Luther, nailing his 95 theses to the Wittenburg church door. It is worthy of repeating this letter in entirety on every blog that discusses science.

Dear Curt:
When I first joined the American Physical Society sixty-seven years ago it was much smaller, much gentler, and as yet uncorrupted by the money flood (a threat against which Dwight Eisenhower warned a half-century ago). How different it is now. The giants no longer walk the earth, and the money flood has become the raison d’être of much physics research, the vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold numbers of professional jobs. For reasons that will soon become clear my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame, and I am forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from the Society.

It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford’s book organizes the facts very well.) I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.
So what has the APS, as an organization, done in the face of this challenge? It has accepted the corruption as the norm, and gone along with it. For example:

READ IT ALL HERE

Posted by peiper     on 10/13/2010 at 08:48 AM   
Filed Under: • Environment • Corruption and Greed •  
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   Friday - October 01, 2010

It Must Be Racism

IRS to Al Sharpton: You owe us $538,000, and that’s just for last year only.

Gee whix, can’t a brother catch a break? LINK.

So, who is going to pay the bill? Maybe not his political organization, the National Action Network; they’ve got tax troubles of their own. 

Posted by Drew458     on 10/01/2010 at 07:57 AM   
Filed Under: • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists • Corruption and Greed •  
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   Monday - August 16, 2010

$2.25 Billion for Reparations?

via C&S, via Freep, via Pajamas Media

I am full-on confused here. WTFFFF?

Barack Obama and USDA’s Shirley Sherrod involved in reparations shake down?

Ok, there was this court case. Pigford v. Glickman. 1997. 400 black farmers felt they had been discriminated against by the USDA when applying for farm loans. They won. In 1999 each was given $50,000 for settlement. But by then the word had leaked out, and the original 400 plaintiffs had grown to a class action suit involving thousands. Sixteen thousand to be a little specific. It was the free money tree: all you had to be was black, and a farmer, and the government would cut you a check for 50 Large. Period. Done deal, no proof of anything discriminatory required. Yikes.

Well, that’s not entirely true. At the time the government was reviewing each claimant, and about 41% of them were denied.  But quite a few years later the case was re-opened. By a freshman Senator, Barack Obama. And by Chuck Grassley (R - IA). And the awarding started all over again, with those denied in the past now being accepted. And tens of thousands of new applicants accepted and approved. So many, in fact, that the number of applicants was 2 to 4 times greater than the actual number of black farmers, then, now, or ever. Go figure.

Somehow in this mess, Shirley Sherrod and her husband managed to get awarded a $13 million settlement, for a farm that they owned that had gone out of business. The largest settlement of all the Pigford claimants. How about that? And just after that, coincidentally, she got hired by the USDA. Amazing.

Now it looks like the total settlement amount could add at least $1.25 BILLION to the $1 BILLION already paid out.

What was originally a $20 million settlement has ballooned exponentially, twice. It does not appear that any real proof of discrimination, or even of actual farming, is necessary. It looks to me like somebody planted ACORNS and grew a money tree, and the fruit is ready for picking.

This really looks like a major scam. It looks like Sherrod and Obama are in it up to their necks. Please read the whole story, or at least as much as is known at this point, starting with

Rdoger’s post at C&S, a slightly longer synopsis at Hummers & Cigarettes then loads of details and data in Zombie’s post at Pajamas, and then by what might be the first post on this over at Free Republic. Googling up Pigford v. Glickman couldn’t hurt either.

From what I gather, $1 billion had already been paid out, back in 1999. Another $1.25 has been awarded, but the allocation of that money is in doubt. Looks like it was recently removed from a defense appropriations bill. How it was in there to begin with, God only knows, but that’s DC.

400 black farmers were discriminated against. Agreed. Pay them their settlement. 16,000 more tried to get some of that 11 years ago. Half failed. Now 89,000 black farmers are claiming they should be paid as well. Even though we have don’t have even half that many black farmers. How can this not be a scam? How the EFFITY EFF did Sherrod get $13 million and a job out of this? How can this not be some kind of stealth reparations in the most original form - because somewhere between $50,000 and $13 million really ought to enable you to buy 40 acres and a mule.

Spread the word. If this is not a con and corruption, then this is the biggest example of government ineptness ever. Ever. I want to see proof of discrimination for each and every loan application, all 89,000 of them, for the period in question. With further proof of farm ownership at that time. And 10 years in jail for any and every applicant who faked it. You can not join a class action suit after it is settled. That’s not allowed. It is not the fault of the government that the suit may not have been advertised sufficiently at the time, is it? You certainly can not be allowed to put your claim in 11 years after the fact. This smells to high heaven, and if it turns out to be rotten, then Chuck Grassley should get the axe too. Good intentions are no excuse if he didn’t investigate enough to smell a rat.

Posted by Drew458     on 08/16/2010 at 10:20 AM   
Filed Under: • Government • Corruption and Greed • Obama, The One • Politically Correct B.S. •  
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   Monday - July 12, 2010

And this is news?

Felons Voting Illegally May Have Put Franken Over the Top in Minnesota, Study Finds

The six-month election recount that turned former “Saturday Night Live” comedian Al Franken into a U.S. senator may have been decided by convicted felons who voted illegally in Minnesota’s Twin Cities.

That’s the finding of an 18-month study conducted by Minnesota Majority, a conservative watchdog group, which found that at least 341 convicted felons in largely Democratic Minneapolis-St. Paul voted illegally in the 2008 Senate race between Franken, a Democrat, and his Republican opponent, then-incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman.

The final recount vote in the race, determined six months after Election Day, showed Franken beat Coleman by 312 votes—fewer votes than the number of felons whose illegal ballots were counted, according to Minnesota Majority’s newly released study, which matched publicly available conviction lists with voting records.

Furthermore, the report charges that efforts to get state and federal authorities to act on its findings have been “stonewalled.”

“We aren’t trying to change the result of the last election. That legally can’t be done,” said Dan McGrath, Minnesota Majority’s executive director. “We are just trying to make sure the integrity of the next election isn’t compromised.”

He said his group was largely ignored when it turned over a list of hundreds of names to prosecutors in two of the state’s largest counties, Ramsey and Hennepin, where fraud seemed to be the greatest.

A spokesman for both county attorneys’ offices belittled the information, saying it was “just plain wrong” and full of errors, which prompted the group to go back and start an in-depth look at the records.

“What we did this time is irrefutable,” McGrath said. “We took the voting lists and matched them with conviction lists and then went back to the records and found the roster lists, where voters sign in before walking to the voting booth, and matched them by hand.

“The only way we can be wrong is if someone with the same first, middle and last names, same year of birth as the felon, and living in the same community, has voted. And that isn’t very likely.”

The report said that in Hennepin County, which in includes Minneapolis, 899 suspected felons had been matched on the county’s voting records, and the review showed 289 voters were conclusively matched to felon records. The report says only three people in the county have been charged with voter fraud so far.

Shit piss and corruption! I’ve said it a hundred times, and I’ll say it again: Every town, every county in every state need to purge their voter rolls and re-register everyone all over again. This time with proper ID, proof of citizenship, SSN matched to the Social Security database, and a criminal background check. A photographic ID card needs to be issued, and no one will be allowed to vote without it.
( I leave it up to you to solve the absentee voter problem, but it isn’t very hard. Make Election Day the last day of Election Fortnight and 80% of absentee balloting would be unnecessary. Clear out those laws that allow for Motor Voters and Lazy Voters: absentee voting is for actual disabled folks and soldiers oversees only. Make the military vote first, perhaps a month ahead of time for those oversees, and put in validation checkpoints along the way so those votes don’t evaporate. That should handle another 10% of it right there. You figure out the rest. )

You provide more information to the credit card companies and the DMV than you do to your local board of elections. But without ensuring that the people who do vote are the people who are allowed to vote and no others, then the system is a fraud. And the results ... see above. And in many other places, like the state of Washington.

This garbage is by no means limited to Minnesota. It’s in your state too. In your county. Right in your own town. Mine too. The people hired by the government to keep the voter rolls clean and up to date do not do their jobs. This is done purposely: the technology already exists and the computer systems are in place. It’s no bet at all that Visa and MasterCard have a far better list of their members than the government has of it’s voters. It’s the same technology too, which means the whole job could be outsourced to Discover, who could do the work for nothing more than a tax write-off. Social Security could do it as well, and so could quite a few other government databases.

Anyone who has ever gone through the background search process while applying for a gun permit or a security clearance knows what I mean. There are databases out there that the rest of us don’t even know exist. Adding just one bit and 4 characters to the NCIC database record - a Y/N flag for whether a conviction denies the criminal the right to vote, and if Y the 4 digit year when that denial expires; 9999 = “never”, and Y2K-aphobes should see that’s good for another 8000 years - and sharing those 1 Y/N value with the elections people when an SSN inquiry is made is all it takes. Heck, many polling places have a cop nearby or on hand, don’t they, and it’s certainly fine for any cop to access that database. Double Heck, just have NCIC build an external hash table and let the elections people access that. Concerned citizens or criminals coming off of probation would be advised to make sure their number is in the clear before the voting starts. You don’t even need a day-month-year code in the NCIC database, since you’d write the table entry code to look at Election Fortnight and judge accordingly. Probation ends in June? You’re in. Ends October 25th? Sorry, you get your voting rights back the year after. You don’t have to be smarter than a fifth grader to write code like that. Third graders could probably do it these days.

It really is that easy. The technology is there. Are you kidding? The technology is there so that any citizen ought to be able to walk into any polling station in the country and vote in their local election, and then not be able to vote anywhere else in that same election. All that would take is one more flag bit (voted/didn’t vote yet) at NCIC and a flag-clearing operation run the day after. And that’s one line of code, m’kay? Piss simple stuff here people.

Meanwhile in Missouri it’s the same old dirty story:

Last year, Justice abandoned a case it had pursued for three years against Missouri for failing to clean up its rolls. When filed in 2005, one-third of Missouri counties had more registered voters than voting-age residents. What’s more, Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan, a Democrat who this year is her party’s candidate for a vacant U.S. Senate seat, contended that her office had no obligation to ensure individual counties were complying with the federal law mandating a cleanup of their voter rolls.

The case made slow but steady progress through the courts for more than three years, amid little or no evidence of progress in cleaning up Missouri’s voter rolls. Despite this, Obama Justice saw fit to dismiss the case in March 2009. Curiously, only a month earlier, Ms. Carnahan had announced her Senate candidacy. Missouri has a long and documented history of voter fraud in Democratic-leaning cities such as St. Louis and Kansas City. Ms. Carnahan may now stand to benefit from voter fraud facilitated by the improperly kept voter rolls that she herself allowed to continue.

Mr. Adams’ allegations would seem to call for the senior management of Justice to be compelled to testify under oath to U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. But Justice is making none of its officials available and is refusing to enforce subpoenas issued by the commission. The more this story develops, the more it appears Justice is engaged in a massive coverup of its politicization of voting rights cases.

Elected officials should be trotted out to the pillories once per year, everyone from the town clerks or is whoever responsible for the rolls, all the way up to the governor. Are the voter rolls clean, accurate, and up to date (accurate to within 60 days)?

Yes? Great! You may keep your jobs. And your skin.

No? 10 lashes for each of the clerks, and 2 lashes more for each level of administration above that. In some states I think that would mean about 100 lashes for the governor. Punish them, then send them on their way, unemployed. Draw names from a list of unemployed college graduates and give them the jobs at the same pay and benefit level. Call a special election in 45 days to replace the elected officials.

One step towards restoring America is restoring people’s faith in America. Guaranteeing clean elections and up to date voter rolls would go a long way ... and we’d never ever be plagued by an Al Gore “selected not elected” month of hell again. With broadband just about everywhere, and computers already everywhere, it should not take more than about ... half an hour after the polls close for anyone in America to know the exact vote count in every state, county, and town. WTF, they can do it for American Idol. How about doing it for American Democracy?

Posted by Drew458     on 07/12/2010 at 03:55 PM   
Filed Under: • Corruption and Greed • No Shit, Sherlock • Politics •  
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   Friday - April 02, 2010

Then Let Them Starve

After six days of waiting at Haiti’s border, Mario Polanco was losing patience with the red tape holding up his truck full of earthquake relief supplies.

Polanco drove the equipment for the International Committee of the Red Cross 11 hours from a port in the Dominican Republic, only to have the Haitian customs agent find one problem after another with his paperwork. As he waited in the shade of his truck’s cab in this dusty border town, dozens of others were lined up behind him.

“I don’t know why they are making it so difficult on people,” Polanco said.

For more than six weeks following the Jan. 12 earthquake, Haiti left its border with the Dominican Republic open to speed the delivery of aid. As the government now reasserts control, the return of bureaucracy is leading to delays as trucks idle for days.

One day this week at the customs office at Malpasse, the Haitian town across from Jimani, a single agent was processing a caravan of trucks, including Polanco’s, that stretched for two miles (three kilometers). In the line were rice, beans, canned food, construction materials and ambulances — all desperately needed in Haiti.

“We haven’t been able to distribute food for two weeks,” said Paloma Rivera, an official with Quisqueya in Action, a nonprofit Dominican organization that is feeding some of Haiti’s homeless quake victims.

Haiti’s bureaucracy was famously sluggish even before the earthquake shattered government agencies. Businesses could wait months for supplies from the U.S. to clear customs at seaports.

Corruption was also a problem. Haiti regularly ranks among the worst in Transparency International’s annual ranking of perceived corruption. Haiti ranked 168th out of 180 countries in 2009 on a scale where low scores mean most corruption.

At the border, drivers without other options have had luck with bribery.

Customs agents have been arbitrarily charging trucks $40 for entry, Reyes said. He said agents threaten to demand passports or visas that many drivers do not have.

One driver, Jose Lorenzo, was held up for four days before he was allowed to cross the border with a load of canned tuna for the SOS Children’s Villages organization.

When the Haitian agent demanded that he present a passport, Lorenzo said: “Here is my visa,” and handed over 150 Dominican pesos — about $5. He said the agent let him pass without further hassle.

Somebody please tell me why Haiti even has border guards? They have nothing. Zip, zilch, zero. Nada. They need everything. Nobody wants to live there. What on earth is the point of even looking into the bundles, bails, and barrels of free goods the world is sending them in their time of need? Drugs? Who effin’ cares? Nothing is getting out of Haiti, and the people there don’t have 2 cents to rub together. You think they can afford recreational drugs? Pssst - hey, you wanna trade that bag of heroin for this shovel full of mud? How about for this moldy old yam?

Puh-leez.

But if they want to put roadblocks in the way, it’s their country. Fine. If they want to slow the flow of badly needed supplies to a crawl so as to get a few dollars in bribes, let them. It can all go back on the ships, back on the planes, and go away.  Forever.

Fuck it up, even once, and you lose. Bye bye.

Posted by Drew458     on 04/02/2010 at 07:24 PM   
Filed Under: • Corruption and Greed • TURD WORLD •  
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   Tuesday - March 30, 2010

Give Us Our DaneGeld!

The 11 House Democrats led by Rep. Bart Stupak who dropped their opposition to health care reform mere hours before the final vote have requested $3.4 billion in earmarks—and one watchdog group wants to know whether the money represents business as usual, or a political payoff.

The Sunlight Foundation says it plans to track the earmark requests, which were put in one day after health care reform cleared Congress, to see whether they’re approved and whether it appears lawmakers are being rewarded for their vote.

“We know that in Congress one of the ways that leadership tries to influence members is through earmarks,” said Bill Allison, editorial director at the nonpartisan organization. “So this seemed to us something good to follow.”

Stupak and the 10 other Democrats were critical to the success of the health care bill. They were holding out over concerns about funding for abortion coverage but announced the president had assuaged their worries—with an executive order restricting abortion funding—the morning of the big vote.

Stupak’s office said there’s absolutely no link between the earmarks and the health care bill’s passage.

Here are the earmark amounts requested by the 11 House Democrats in the 2011 bill:

Rep. Jerry Costello of Illinois.: $1,418.7 million ($256.4 million in 2010)

Rep. Solomon Ortiz of Texas: $618 million ($726.1 million in 2010)

[Rep. Bart] Stupak of Michigan: $578.9 million

Rep. Steve Driehaus of Ohio: $332.2 million

Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Ohio: $294 million ($305.7 million in 2010)

Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper of Pennsylvania: $236.8 million ($54 million in 2010)

Rep. James Oberstar of Minnesota.: $207 million ($226 million in 2010)

Rep. Brad Ellsworth of Indiana.: $115.4 million ($82.3 million in 2010)

Rep. Charles Wilson of Ohio: $84 million ($62.3 million in 2010)

Rep. Paul Kanjorski of Pennsylvania.: $67.1 million

Rep. Joseph Donnelly of Indiana: $19.8 million ($11.65 million in 2010)

Guess these folks all had superior negotiating skills, that’s all. This is NOT legalized bribery of any kind. Huh? What? Oh, you must excuse me. My leg is ringing. I’d better go answer it.

Posted by Drew458     on 03/30/2010 at 12:49 PM   
Filed Under: • Government • Corruption and Greed •  
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   Saturday - March 27, 2010

What Change Looks Like, Part Deux

Posted by Christopher     on 03/27/2010 at 10:32 PM   
Filed Under: • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists • Government • Corruption and Greed • Obama, The One •  
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   Thursday - March 04, 2010

I’m not a lawyer—oh, wait, yes, I am!

Priceless! Ann Coulter remembers that she IS a lawyer!

Subprime crisis hits whorehouses

I’m just glad to know that Hynes conducted a thorough “investigation” first. Who did he have screen the videotapes, Gov. Paterson?

If his investigators had actually watched the videotapes, they would have found ACORN employees apparently advising a pimp and prostitute on how to defraud mortgage lenders, deposit prostitution money in a bank, hide money from the government and avoid detection while running a whorehouse with teenage girls from El Salvador.

I’m not a lawyer—oh, wait, yes, I am—but I count approximately a half-dozen state law crimes being discussed on those tapes, from money laundering to advancing prostitution.

In a “Eureka” moment, ACORN Employee-of-the-Month Volda Albert identifies for O’Keefe and Giles the problem they had been having getting a mortgage:

Albert: Um, is it legalized? Is prostitution legalized in New York state?
O’Keefe: It’s not. It’s not, unfortunately.
Albert: Well see, that’s your problem

As ACORN employee Milagros Rivera said, “You can’t say what you do for a living because of the law.” But displaying ACORN’s can-do attitude, she explained: “Honest is not going to get you a house.”

ACORN employees helped concoct a scheme to hide from the lender the source of O’Keefe and Giles’ down payment money. Albert suggested that O’Keefe “pay a down payment—or (Giles) can transfer to somebody else, who is not in that business ... a close friend, then (Giles) can transfer that, and then he can give you, like, a gift to purchase.”

Under New York law, hiding the true source of down payment money from a lender constitutes mortgage fraud. Also, using the proceeds of criminal conduct in any banking transaction is money laundering.

Does anybody need a flow chart at this point, or should I continue?

In fact, she does continue. The ACORNS never fall far from the Barack tree.

Posted by Christopher     on 03/04/2010 at 07:49 PM   
Filed Under: • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists • Corruption and Greed •  
• Comments (3) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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