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This afternoon, at his televised California town hall meeting, Obama said he knows folks are angry about the AIG bonuses. He said he is angry about them. He says blame is flying everywhere, at Treasury, Democrats, and Republicans. He said if folks need to blame someone, blame him. He said, ultimately, I am responsible. I am the president. All well and good as far as it goes. His words, however, don't allude to the depth of the first major black mark on his presidency.
CREW, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, writes:
House has opened wide loopholes in ethics rules.
As the U.S. House of Representatives continues its debate on how to proceed on ethics reform, an article in today's edition of The Hill is instructive. Even though, the Senate is far from doing all the work on policing its members that needs to be done, that body is viewed as more aggressive on ethics issues. Two former House members (Cunningham and Ney) are incarcerated. Two more members (Jefferson and Renzi) are currently under indictment.
Democrat's attempt to hide their 'Amnesty and Leave the Borders Open' bill, by burying it in the Defense Appropriations Bill, has failed. Some 490,000 NumbersUSA supporters, and many thousands of other Americans, hit their Senators again with raucous dissent via phone, fax, and email at this sneaky and underhanded attempt to revive the Amnesty bill which, failed last summer as a stand alone bill.
In a contradictory, and one of the worst thought out pieces of Washington Post writing I have read in a very long time, Shankar Vedantam both negates the power of wealthy special interests over our political system while closing with a warning if your opponents are giving more than you to your representatives. He blatantly contradicts himself. His topic however, could not be more momentous.
Sen. Barack Obama promised to curb lobbyists' influence from his first day as president. This is the first time a major party presidential candidate has made taking on the wealthy corporate special interest's control of government, a part of their campaign platform. It is a very refreshing and encouraging 5 thumbs up move.
Continue reading "Obama Goes After Special Interest Influence" »
Tax payers are being ripped off in the billions by incompetent and deceptive politicians in cahoots with deceptive private contractors. In this ongoing saga of corruption and abuse of taxpayers, the Washington Post sheds light on yet another story in which Sun Microsystems is alleged to have bilked tax payers out of millions of dollars under the blind eye of politicians and staffers.
Continue reading "Corruption Steals More Taxpayer Millions" »
Rep.'s Jack Murtha (D) and John Boehner (R) should be ashamed of themselves. But, they aren't. They are incumbents who have been in power too long. The attempts to reconcile differences between the House and Senate on lobbying and ethics reform has been a mess, and it is yet unclear whether the American people will get the relief they seek from legislation being bought and sold by special interests, and incumbents addicted to their legal bribes.
Last year the consumer was gouged at the gas pump. But, this year will be worse. Increasingly, MSNBC reports, customers are agreeing the oil companies are fleecing them. But, government has in fact, been fleecing Americans at the pump for decades.
The federal taxes on gasoline now amount to over 18 cents per gallon. The Reagan administration raised them, then Clinton raised them. Together more than 14 cents per gallon between 1982 and 1993. Why does N.J. have the lowest gasoline price in the country at the moment? Their state tax on gasoline is the lowest in the country. And California and New York have the highest gas prices due to state taxes, ranging from 32 to 60 cents per gallon. Add in local excise taxes by counties and municipalities and about $1 of each gallon of gasoline is tax.
There is a liar in the ranks of Republican Senators as discovered this week. There is no doubt a Republican Senator anonymously halted legislation on the floor of the Senate as Sen. Lamar Alexander's (R) objection attests. But, now, every Republican Senator has denied being the anonymous Bill stopper. That makes one of them a liar.
Since the 1960's, there is a growing frequency in upset individuals using their 2nd Amendment access right to guns to mow down numbers of people. America is hands down the most gun violent nation in the world. NY City alone with 8 million people has 100's of times more gun violence than all of Great Britain and Wales, despite Great Britain having several times more people than NYC.
Don Imus's reckless, condescending and racially derogatory remarks are losing the spotlight to the reaction to them. One man made foul remarks about good people in a poor and unthinking attempt at street-common humor. He apologized, profusely, and repeatedly. He got fired - he wasn't hired to not think before opening his mouth. It was just. That is all there is to that story. Now the bigger story is unfolding.
Wal-Mart, once heckled by Democrats for treatment of its working poor, is now in bed, if not sleeping, with Democrats in some very prominent ways. The Washington Post runs an article on this topic of great interest to those who thought corruption in government might get better under Democrats.
She was 9 years old. Abducted from her bed in the middle of the night by a pedophile with a record of such crimes, she was terrorized, tied up with speaker wire, sexually molested and tortured, and suffocated. The perpetrator then discarded her body like garbage, used up, and no longer of any use to him. Jessica Lunsford is no longer with us.
We as Americans should never forget this young girl's name or, the terror and horror she experienced in her last remaining hours with us, her society, charged with her protection and care. America failed this innocent young girl, and many, many thousands of other boys and girls, women and men, who are subjected to similar kinds of terror, torture, humiliation, degradation, and too often death, at the hands of a society that profits in the billions of dollars each year from the exploitation of desire and want.
Lou Dobbs of CNN just reported that Bank of America has announced it will extend credit cards to illegal aliens in this country. In this latest and most blatant example of how capitalists have no allegiance to country or law, the issue of regulation is again raised. Pro-capitalist purists say it is none of the government's business who they give cards to. Moderates on the issue say supporting and abetting the breaking of our nation's laws demands government response.
The irony is many of those who support Bank of America's decision are the very same who argue that the non-binding resolution against escalating the war in Iraq, is aiding and abetting the enemy. Apparently, Bank of America and their supporters do not view criminals, those who violate our laws, as the enemy. How very profitable for them, eh?
Congress passed a sham of a law purported to restore ethics unto the People's branch of government. A little frill cut here, a little frill cut there. But, the mainstay of bribery by wealthy lobbyists and special interests was not touched. Congress reserved the right to be bribed by the wealthy campaign donors, which made this ethics reform anything but.
The NY Times reports that departing Ohio Gov. Bob Taft (R) received the minimum punishment on Wednesday for failing to report nearly $6,000 worth of golf outings and other gifts, a coda to his scandal-plagued final term in office, which ends Jan. 8.
"Public reprimand was the minimum penalty that could have been imposed by the court, which had the discretion to suspend Mr. Taft's law license in Ohio or to bar him permanently from practicing law in the state."
"This strongly suggests that we're buying the wrong stuff, the wrong way, possibly from the wrong contractors, and failing to check before, during or after," said Charles Tiefer, an expert on government contracting who teaches at the University of Baltimore School of Law.
This quote is from a Washington Post article yesterday, covering Dept. of Homeland Defense contracting procedures which leave contracts unenforceable due to their not even being able to find the contracts for which billions of our tax dollars were doled out. 33 of 72 contracts selected for review could not be found.
Democrats ran on cleaning up ethics violations and corruption in government. Now, some are back stepping, and an internal feud is building. At the center of the looming conflict, Sen. Barack Obama is calling for an independent ethics commission, and in opposition, is Sen. Diane Feinstein who says this can be handled in a bi-partisan way by the recipients of obscene sums of legal bribes for their reelection by special interests and lobbyists.
The NY Time's David D. Kirkpatrick has an excellent article written yesterday, providing a lot of information on the players and background of this looming inter-, and intra-party fight which is going to scare the bejeesus out of a number of politicians both Republican and Democratic, whose own affairs and actions in the Congress may not stand up to independent scrutiny.
