Over the years a lot of suspicion has built up across the country about Washington and its population of opportunistic transients coming to see
themselves as a special kind of person, somehow above average working Americans who don't work down in that former swamp.Well, finally, an end to all those undocumented doubts. Thanks to some diligent digging by the Washington Post, those suspicions can at last be put to rest.
They're correct. Accurate. Dead-on. Laser-guided. On target. Bingo-bango. As clear as it's always seemed to those Americans who don't feel special entitlements and do meet their government obligations.
We now know that federal employees across the nation owe fully $1 billion in back taxes to the Internal Revenue Service.
Friday, September 10, 2010
41 Obama White House aides owe the IRS $831,000 in back taxes -- and they're not alone
Tuesday, September 07, 2010
CA Prop. 27 - VOTE NO
this measure will repeal California Proposition 11 (2008), which authorized the creation of the California Citizens Redistricting Commission. It would also modify the provision in California law that says that proposed congressional districts can't be subjected to a veto referendum.[3]
According to political journalist Shane Goldmacher, Democratic political strategists say that this initiative can be seen as a political tactic to defeat the Congressional Redistricting Initiative, which is likely to be on the November 2, 2010 ballot: "Democratic political strategists say the best way to ensure a 'no' vote this fall on the congressional [reform] measure]] is to confuse the public further with a second ballot measure on the already head spinning topic of political line drawing."[
Opposition
John Diaz, the editorial page editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, has written, " The proposed ballot language for the Financial Accountability in Redistricting Act makes the laughably absurd argument that this is about money: That a state facing an "unprecedented economic crisis" with a political leadership that "has failed us" cannot afford the cost of outsourcing this duty to a commission. A more honest title of this initiative, which is being conceived by a small group of Democratic insiders, would be the Incumbent Protection Act."[12]
The editorial board of the Daily Breeze recommends that the publication's readers refrain from signing the petition to put this measure on the ballot, saying, "...staying in office and party control of seats has become more important than representing the people who gave them those seats in the first place."[13]
Ian Johnson of The Rose Institute of State and Local Government at Claremont McKenna College says, "The California Democratic redistricting machine is worried. Led by Congressman Howard Berman and his consultant brother Michael, they controlled the state’s bipartisan incumbent-protection gerrymander in 2001. Now their control is threatened by an initiative that would place Congressional redistricting within the mandate of the Citizens Redistricting Commission. Congressman Berman and his allies are responding with a misleading measure aimed at confusing voters, apparently conceding that they cannot win the debate on the merits of their views...In one respect, FAIR is a positive sign: when the beneficiaries of the status quo are forced to resort to deception to preserve their positions, it is a sign they are desperate. Clearly, even they can see which way the winds of change are blowing."[4]
John Kabateck, executive director of the California branch of the National Federation of Independent Business. He says, "Enough is enough. Decades of cynical, self-serving behavior from politicians has helped plummet this state into a fiscal and economic abyss. We need to be able to hold our elected officials accountable when they don’t do the job we elected them to do. One way to ensure that politicians remain accountable to voters is by taking the power to draw political district lines from the very politicians who stand to personally benefit from the outcome."[14]
Campaign finance complaint
Supporters of the Voters FIRST Act for Congress have asked the Fair Political Practices Commission and the Federal Elections Commission to investigate whether some members of California's U.S. Congressional delegation are "hiding their controlling involvement in the initiative" in a way that obscures who is really behind it.[14]
Follow the link & read all the info!
Wednesday, September 01, 2010
Obama: Muslim Missionary? (Part 2) by Chuck Norris on Creators.com - A Syndicate Of Talent
To me, this interview — which took place March 27, 2004, when Obama was a candidate for the U.S. Senate — is by far the best documentation of Obama's faith. In it, Obama gave often lengthy responses about his faith and practice to a series of questions from then-Chicago Sun-Times religion reporter Cathleen Falsani, though he often seemed confused and even obtuse in his replies.
To the question "do you pray often?" Obama replied, "Uh, yeah, I guess I do."
"Guess"?
When asked whether he had read the Bible, Obama responded: "Absolutely. (But) these days I don't have much time for reading or reflection, period. ... I'll be honest with you; I used to all the time, in a fairly disciplined way. But during the course of this campaign, I don't."
In answering reporter Falsani's question about whether there was a role model who combined everything Obama said he wanted to do in his life and faith, Obama's first response was, "I think Gandhi is a great example of a profoundly spiritual man."
Gandhi? A Hindu? How about Jesus, seeing as Obama claims to be a "committed Christian"?
When Obama was asked pointedly, "Who's Jesus to you?" he immediately responded with a nervous laugh, followed by a rather sarcastic "Right." He proceeded, "Jesus is an historical figure for me, and he's also a bridge between God and man, in the Christian faith, and one that I think is powerful precisely because he serves as that means of us reaching something higher. And he's also a wonderful teacher."
Could that "reaching something higher" possibly be heaven?
In answering the question on whether he believed in a literal heaven, Obama retorted back: "Do I believe in the harps and clouds and wings? ...
What I believe in is that if I live my life as well as I can, that I will be rewarded. I don't presume to have knowledge of what happens after I die."
Follow the link and read all 3 parts he's written so far!
What American President Would emDo/em That?
Other presidents have been wrong. Other presidents have been misguided. Other presidents have been weak and pusillanimous and pathetic.
Only one truly disdains America. His name is Barack Obama.
How else to explain his latest outrage against the country that elevated him to the ranks of world leadership? Last week, the Obama State Department submitted a report to the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights on the supposed human rights violations taking place in the United States. According to the Washington Times, the report
describes how the United States discriminates against the disabled, homosexuals, women, Native Americans, blacks, Hispanics and those who don't speak English. There is the expected pandering to Muslims...the report notes that until recently, the U.S. engaged in torture, unlawfully detained terrorist suspects and illegally spied on Americans communicating with terrorists ... but the report assures readers that Mr. Obama has been putting a stop to all that.
This president is a waste of flesh!
'Systemic Risk' Stonewall
Chairman Phil Angelides and his panel will begin two days of hearings on the subject of "Too Big to Fail," featuring testimony from Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Chairman Sheila Bair. Across bailouts from Bear Stearns to AIG, the government has refused to release its analysis of the "systemic risks" that compelled it to mount unprecedented interventions into the financial system with taxpayer money. Two years after the crisis, Mr. Angelides and his colleagues should finally let the sun shine on this critical period of our economic history.
A year ago we told you about former FDIC official Vern McKinley, who has made a series of Freedom of Information Act requests. He wanted to know what Fed governors meant when they said a Bear Stearns failure would cause a "contagion." This term was used in the minutes of the Fed meeting at which the central bank discussed plans by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to finance Bear's sale to J.P. Morgan Chase. The minutes contained no detail on how exactly the fall of Bear would destroy America.
He also requested minutes of the FDIC board meeting at which regulators approved financing for a Citigroup takeover of Wachovia. To provide this assistance, the board had to invoke the "systemic risk" exception in the Federal Deposit Insurance Act, and it therefore had to assert that such assistance was necessary for the health of the financial system. Yet days later, Wachovia cut a better deal to sell itself to Wells Fargo, instead of Citi. So how necessary was the assistance?
The regulators have been giving Mr. McKinley the Heisman, but two weeks ago federal Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle made the FDIC show her the Wachovia documents. She is still considering the McKinley suit, but the crisis commission doesn't need to wait for her decision. It should let all Americans read them now.
Then there's AIG. Who decided that firm was too big to fail, and on what basis? Last winter, Senator Jim Bunning went on CNBC and said that Mr. Bernanke's staff did not think AIG was too big to fail. "His staff didn't agree with him. . . . I'm talking about an email that he sent his staff after his staff recommended that the Federal Reserve not touch AIG," said Mr. Bunning.
In February, we sent a FOIA request to the Fed for an internal memo entitled "Issues Related to Possible IPC Lending to American International Group" and an email from Chairman Bernanke that included a draft of the proposal that he would soon present to the Fed Board of Governors to approve lending to AIG. Yesterday a Fed spokeswoman us it is still reviewing the request.
You could argue that the Fed has been a model of good government in handling our request compared to the way it has responded to TARP inspector general Neil Barofsky. Documents he's asked for were not produced and in some cases the New York Fed has told Mr. Barofsky that documents did not exist when in fact they did. Along with investigating the management of the crisis, the former prosecutor is also now investigating the withholding of information about the crisis.
What could the New York Fed be hiding? For one thing, a clear explanation of why it felt it had to bail out AIG. The story from regulators during the crisis was that credit-default swap counterparties had to be paid lest the financial system collapse. The public became incensed about 100-cents on the dollar pay-outs to big banks. Then last winter, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who ran the New York Fed in 2008, said the real problem had been AIG's insurance business, threatening average consumers.
Writing in our pages in February, former New York Insurance Superintendent Eric Dinallo said that "policyholders would have been protected" in the event of an AIG bankruptcy. That seemed clear enough, but then Mr. Dinallo immediately added that an AIG bankruptcy "would have been bad for those same policyholders." So which was it? State insurance regulators and industry analysts have since told us that Mr. Dinallo was wrong when he suggested that policyholders would have suffered.
Two years after the bailouts and more than a month after President Obama signed into law new authority for the government to prevent "systemic risk," Washington still won't tell us what this term means. Releasing the history of 2008 would at least allow us to know what regulators thought it meant at the time, with lessons for the future. Is there any other reason for this inquiry commission to exist?
Monday, August 30, 2010
The Other Ground Zero Mosque: Flight 93 Islamic Crescent Memorial
We too need your help; we need to stop the National Park Service building another mosque in Shanksville. PA.
I served on the 2005 2nd jury that was commissioned to select a design honoring the passengers and crew on Flight 93. The public submitted over 1100 designs. The first jury went through those 1100 designs and selected 5 designs that were presented to the 2nd jury.
When I saw Crescent of Embrace, I immediately saw the Islamic symbols. I spoke out against the design and explained my reasons to the other members of the jury. The vote was taken, 9 for the Crescent of Embrace and 6 against that design. That vote was not unanimous.
There were 4 excellent designs left; there was absolutely no reason to select a design that even suggested Islamic symbols.
I knew that the public would agree with me when they saw the Crescent of Embrace design. They did, but our government would not listen or investigate our claims. All of our letters ended up in the same hands, the National Park Service. We can’t give up; we must stop this mosque being built in Shanksville, as well as the one in New York.
Glenn Beck crowd: Not so white as advertised
Hundreds of thousands of Americans – of many creeds and colors – made what ended up being a pilgrimage of sorts to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., for Glenn Beck's Restoring Honor rally.
Catholics, other Christians and Jews spoke to WND on site, many celebrating the themes of faith and reliance on God proclaimed from the platform.
Follow the link and read the entire article.
Friday, August 27, 2010
Environmental Protection Agency Reviewing Petition to Ban Lead Bullets
The EPA has asked for public comment on banning lead in ammunition, and an EPA notice was published seeking public comment that closes on October 31.
Go to the EPA website and voice your comments!
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Little-known fact: Obama's failed stimulus program cost more than the Iraq war | Washington Examiner
* Obama's stimulus, passed in his first month in office, will cost more than the entire Iraq War -- more than $100 billion (15%) more.
* Just the first two years of Obama's stimulus cost more than the entire cost of the Iraq War under President Bush, or six years of that war.
* Iraq War spending accounted for just 3.2% of all federal spending while it lasted.
* Iraq War spending was not even one quarter of what we spent on Medicare in the same time frame.Read more at the Washington Examiner:
Net-neutrality group challenged by ties to MoveOn.Org, ACORN - The Hill's Hillicon Valley
The blog RedState described Save The Internet as a "neo-Marxist Robert McChesney-FreePress/Save the Internet think tank" and questioned why GOA would participate in a coalition that includes liberal groups such as the ACLU, MoveOn.Org, SEIU, CREDO and ACORN.
GOA was one of the charter members of Save the Internet, but a spokesman for the gun rights group said times have changed.
"Back in 2006 we supported net neutrality, as we had been concerned that AOL and others might continue to block pro-second amendment issues," said
Erich Pratt, communications director for GOA.
Monday, August 23, 2010
Philly requiring bloggers to pay $300 for a business license | Washington Examiner
In May, the city sent Bess a letter demanding that she pay $300, the price of a business privilege license.
“The real kick in the pants is that I don’t even have a full-time job, so for the city to tell me to pony up $300 for a business privilege license, pay wage tax, business privilege tax, net profits tax on a handful of money is outrageous,” Bess says.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Scofflaws cited for cycling on sidewalk
So Leslie and Duane Smith and Matt and Sharon Pierce hopped on their bikes, left their picturesque enclave in Newport Beach’s Bayshores Community, and ventured out into the “real world.”
The Pierces, who were at the front of the convoy, commented on how crazy things seemed. The officer said he wouldn’t ride in this area at all; it’s dangerous, and many accidents are reported; the Pierces smiled, thinking the officer was stressing how careful they should be riding their bikes.They were quite surprised when that officer soon pulled them over for riding on the sidewalk.
“Did he really need to use his sirens and lights for stopping 4 emerging senior citizens leisurely riding their bikes?” Leslie Smith asks us in an exhaustive email account detailing the incident. “We were treated like common criminals and issued traffic tickets, going so far as to fingerprint me as I had inadvertently left home without my drivers license. The police officer claimed that, according to CA Code 12.56.030 (A) NBMC, it is against the law to ride a bicycle on a sidewalk in CA, despite the ever present signs posted on the sidewalk along PCH that state ‘Bike Route – Bike Riding Permitted on This Sidewalk.’"
Government strikes again! Follow the link and read the entire article.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Dumbing down for Race to the Top | federal, standards, california
What a bad civics lesson for our children. In school, California's students learn that, under the U.S. Constitution, America has a federal system of government. The federal government performs certain functions, such as national defense, while most things "are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people," as the 10th Amendment mandates.
Education, obviously, is a state and local issue. But on Aug. 2, the California Board of Education knuckled under to federal pressure to ease California school standards. This was done when the board voted to implement the school standards for President Barack Obama's Race to the Top initiative. The new standards replace much more vigorous California standards. The unanimous vote of the 10-member board means that California now can qualify for a chunk of the $700 million in federal grants to state schools under the Race to the Top program. The board's vote promotes "California's high expectations and our belief that every student is capable of success in the classroom," Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said.
Is this happening in your state?
Monday, August 09, 2010
Jerry Brown a repeat offender on Ballots
Judges twice last week found ballot language prepared by Attorney General Jerry Brown to be misleading and ordered the wording stricken from sample ballots for the November election.
We applaud both court decisions. Voters now will receive more accurate summaries of two crucial November ballot initiatives – Proposition 25, which would reduce from two-thirds to a simple majority legislators' standard for passing a state budget, and Prop. 23, which would delay implementation of California's most Draconian global warming law.
But we are troubled by what appears to be the state's top lawman attempting to mislead voters in a way that also appears to favor his political agenda. This is all the more troubling considering Mr. Brown wants to be the next governor. But we are troubled by what appears to be the state's top lawman attempting to mislead voters in a way that also appears to favor his political agenda. This is all the more troubling considering Mr. Brown wants to be the next governor.
Something to think about before making your decision on who to vote for for Ca's next governor!
The Obama presidency increasingly resembles a modern-day Ancien Régime: extravagant and out of touch with the American people
It is epitomised above all by the President’s relentless drive towards big overnment against the will of the American people, and the dramatic increases in government spending and borrowing, which threaten to leave the US hugely in debt for generations. It is also showcased by Barack Obama’s drive towards a socialised health care system, which, as I’ve noted before, is “a thinly disguised vanity project for a president who is committed to transforming the United States from the world’s most successful large-scale free enterprise economy, to a highly interventionist society with a massive role for centralized government.”
Thursday, August 05, 2010
The Secret History of Climate Alarmism
The image on the cover of the magazine depicted Cologne’s historic cathedral urrounded by the waters of the Atlantic Ocean: a consequence of the melting of the polar ice caps, as was explained on the inside of the issue. Thus was the “global warming” scare born. In Germany, in 1986.
Elena Kagan tied to Obama's birth certificate
Just when you thought there couldn't be any more players in the ongoing soap opera over the hunt for President Obama's original birth certificate and his constitutional eligibility for office, there comes yet another name: Elena Kagan.
Yes, the same Elena Kagan nominated by the commander in chief to be the next justice on the U.S. Supreme Court has actually been playing a role for some time in the dispute over whether Obama is legally qualified to be in the White House.
This explain alot doesn't it!