The Top Twenty Obama Administration Scandals

by Ulsterman on May 31, 2013 

It was not so long ago the Mainstream Media attempted to portray the Obama administration as “scandal free”.  Keith Koffler makes clear that even if one were to ignore the latest batch of Obama related scandals, this White House has long been mired in the scandal-ridden political muck soon after it took the oath of office.  You may disagree with the order of importance, but the list is a good snapshot of just how corrupt and inept the Obama White House has been…

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(via WHD)

It’s easy to forget that the three scandals currently swirling about President Obama are just the latest episodes of potential misdoings by the scandal-plagued Obama administration.
As a refresher, here is a full list of the administration’s most egregious scandals.

1. IRS targets Obama’s enemies: The IRS targeted conservative and pro-Israel groups prior to the 2012 election. Questions are being raised about why this occurred, who ordered it, whether there was any White House involvement and whether there was an initial effort to hide who knew about the targeting and when.

2. Benghazi: This is actually three scandals in one:

• The failure of administration to protect the Benghazi mission.
• The changes made to the talking points in order to suggest the attack was motivated by an anti-Muslim video
• The refusal of the White House to say what President Obama did the night of the attack

3. Watching the AP: The Justice Department performed a massive cull of Associated Press reporters’ phone records as part of a leak investigation.
4. Rosengate: The Justice Department suggested that Fox News reporter James Rosen is a criminal for reporting about classified information and subsequently monitored his phones and emails.
5. Potential Holder perjury I: Attorney General Eric Holder told Congress he had never been associated with “potential prosecution” of a journalist for perjury when in fact he signed the affidavit that termed Rosen a potential criminal.
6. The ATF “Fast and Furious” scheme: Allowed weapons from the U.S. to “walk” across the border into the hands of Mexican drug dealers. The ATF lost track of hundreds of firearms, many of which were used in crimes, including the December 2010 killing of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.
7. Potential Holder Perjury II: Holder told Congress in May 2011 that he had just recently heard about the Fast and Furious gun walking scheme when there is evidence he may have known much earlier.
8. Sebelius demands payment: HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius solicited donations from companies HHS might regulate. The money would be used to help her sign up uninsured Americans for ObamaCare.
9. The Pigford scandal: An Agriculture Department effort that started as an attempt to compensate black farmer who had been discriminated against by the agency but evolved into a gravy train delivering several billion dollars in cash to thousands of additional minority and female farmers who probably didn’t face discrimination.
10. GSA gone wild: The General Services Administration in 2010 held an $823,000 training conference in Las Vegas, featuring a clown and a mind readers. Resulted in the resignation of the GSA administrator.
11. Veterans Affairs in Disney World: The agency wasted more than $6 million on two conferences in Orlando. An assistant secretary was fired.
12. Sebelius violates the Hatch Act: A U.S. special counsel determined that Sebelius violated the Hatch Act when she made “extemporaneous partisan remarks” during a speech in her official capacity last year. During the remarks, Sebelius called for the election of the Democratic candidate for governor of North Carolina.
13. Solyndra: Republicans charged the Obama administration funded and promoted its poster boy for green energy despite warning signs the company was headed for bankruptcy. The administration also allegedly pressed Solyndra to delay layoff announcements until after the 2010 midterm elections.
14. AKA Lisa Jackson: Former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson used the name “Richard Windsor” when corresponding by email with other government officials, drawing charges she was trying to evade scrutiny.
15. The New Black Panthers: The Justice Department was accused of using a racial double standard in failing to pursue a voter intimidation case against Black Panthers who appeared to be menacing voters at a polling place in 2008 in Philadelphia.
16. Waging war all by myself: Obama may have violated the Constitution and both the letter and the spirit of the War Powers Resolution by attacking Libya without Congressional approval.
17. Biden bullies the press: Vice President Biden’s office has repeatedly interfered with coverage, including forcing a reporter to wait in a closet, making a reporter delete photos, and editing pool reports.
18. AKPD not A-OK: The administration paid millions to the former firm of then-White House adviser David Axelrod, AKPD Message and Media, to promote passage of Obamacare. Some questioned whether the firm was hired to help pay Axelrod $2 million AKPD owed him.
19. Sestak, we’ll take care of you: Former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel used Bill Clinton as an intermediary to probe whether former Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.) would accept a prominent, unpaid White House advisory position in exchange for dropping out of the 2010 primary against former Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.).
20. I’ll pass my own laws: Obama has repeatedly been accused of making end runs around Congress by deciding which laws to enforce, including the decision not to deport illegal immigrants who may have been allowed to stay in the United States had Congress passed the “Dream Act.”

Original  Source: http://theulstermanreport.com/2013/05/31/the-top-twenty-obama-white-house-scandals/

Beware The Consequences of Pre-Emptive War

From the desk of Dr. Ron Paul:
Last year more US troops died by suicide than died in combat in Afghanistan. More than 20 percent of military personnel deployed to combat will develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Some 32 percent of US soldiers reported depression after deployments. More than 20 percent of active-duty military are on potentially dangerous psychotropic drugs; many are on multiple types. Violent crime among active duty military members increased 31 percent between 2006-2011.
The statistics, compiled by the military last year, are as telling as they are disturbing. The Defense Department scrambles to implement new programs to better treat the symptoms. They implement new substance abuse and psychological counseling programs while they continue to prescribe more dangerous psychotropic drugs. Unfortunately, most often ignored are the real causes of these alarming statistics.
The sharp rise in military suicides, drug and alcohol abuse, and domestic and other violence, is the unintended consequence of a violent foreign policy -- of an endless and indefinable “global war on terrorism.”
Particularly in the past decade or so, we have lived in a society increasingly marked by belief in the use of force as a first and only option. We have seen wars of preemption and aggression, everywhere from Iraq to Pakistan to Libya, Yemen, and elsewhere. We have seen an unprecedented increase in the use of drones to kill overseas, often resulting in civilian deaths, which we call “collateral damage.” We have seen torture and assassination (even of American citizens) become official US policy. When asked by Senator Ron Wyden last week if the president has the right to assassinate American citizens on US soil, President Obama’s nominee to head the CIA, John Brennan, could not even give a straight answer.
The warning that "he who lives by the sword dies by the sword" goes not only for individuals but for entire societies. It is a warning to all of us. A country or a society that lives with the violence of pre-emptive war in fact self-destructs.
Let us not forget that this endless war is brought to us primarily by the neo-conservatives who dominate foreign policy in both political parties and who never cease agitating for US military deployments overseas. Of course with very few exceptions they have declined to serve in the military themselves. These endless wars would not be possible, we should also remember, without the Federal Reserve printing the money out of thin air to finance our overseas empire. We are speeding toward national bankruptcy while at the same time turning the rest of the world against us with our aggressive foreign policy. Does anyone really believe this will make us safer and more secure?
Many who claim to support the military look the other way when the service-members return home broken in mind and body after years of deployments abroad. I served five years as a US military doctor in the difficult 1960s and even then saw some of this first-hand. During the 1960s the consequence of an unwise prolonged war tragically resulted in violence in our streets, and even students being shot by our military at Kent State University.
The truth is, killing strangers in unconstitutional and senseless wars causes guilt to the participant no matter what kind of military indoctrination is attempted. Those afflicted may attempt to bury the pain in alcohol or drugs or other destructive behaviors, but we see that only leads to more problems. It may not be popular to point this out, but it goes against human nature to kill a fellow human being for retaliating against those who initiate a war of aggression on their soil.
Who cares most for those in military service, those who agitate for more of what is destroying their lives and weakening our national defense, or the many of us who are urging a foreign policy of non-intervention and peace? If we are to survive, we must beware the seen and unseen consequences of pre-emptive war.

Source: http://the-free-foundation.org/tst2-11-2013.html

The Coming Debt Limit Drama: Government Wins, We Lose

From Dr. Ron Paul - 

Last week President Obama bluntly warned Congress that he will not negotiate when it comes to raising the statutory debt limit.  If Republicans attempt to use a debt ceiling vote to win concessions on spending from the White House, Mr. Obama threatens simply to raise the limit by executive order or other unilateral action. 

This is business as usual in Washington.  Democrats literally do not believe we have a deficit and debt problem, and reliably propose greater borrowing and spending.  Republicans talk a good game when it comes to government debt, but have no credibility to argue against deficits or abuses of executive power.  Brinksmanship ensues, and ugly compromises are reached at the 11th hour.  We all lose as the endless borrowing and money printing further erode our dollar and our economy.

Keep in mind that the federal government relentlessly spends about $100 billion more each month than it collects in taxes. This means roughly 40% of every dollar Washington spends is borrowed, to be “paid back” only in highly devalued, newly created money. Ultimately this can only lead to the destruction of the US dollar, as history plainly teaches.  But in the face of this reality Obama just shrugs, turning to demagoguery and talk of little old ladies’ Social Security checks . Like Obama, far too many Americans view federal debt as a nonissue.  Consider Paul Krugman, America’s most reliable Keynesian economist and a beloved figure among mainstream journalists.  He recently wrote an article about the debt limit issue, in which he discussed a controversial proposal to have the federal government simply create a platinum coin with a face value of $1 trillion:

“Here’s how it would work: The Treasury would mint a platinum coin with a face value of $1 trillion (or many coins with smaller values; it doesn’t really matter). This coin would immediately be deposited at the Federal Reserve, which would credit the sum to the government’s account. And the government could then write checks against that account, continuing normal operations without issuing new debt.”

To be fair, Mr. Krugman acknowledges that minting such a coin would be an accounting “trick,” but he is dead serious about this option for the Obama administration.  This then is the state of modern economics discourse in America, where a respected New York Times economist literally can propose creating “money for nothing” and have the idea taken seriously.  Krugman’s suggestion is just another variant of the endless stimulus proposals, which purport to create greater aggregate demand in the economy by creating more money.  Whether this is done by the Fed or the Treasury is of little importance, as long as government is creating demand-side “growth,” however artificial.

But in just a few short sentences Professor Hans-Hermann Hoppe eviscerates the Krugmans of the world by pointing out the obvious: If governments or central banks really can create wealth simply by creating money, why does poverty exist anywhere on earth?  Why haven’t successive rounds of quantitative easing by the US Fed solved our economic recession?  And if Fed money creation really works, and doesn’t create inflation, why haven’t Americans gotten richer as the money supply has grown?

The truth is obvious to everyone.  Fiat currency is not wealth, and the creation of more fiat dollars does not mean that more rice, steel, soybeans, Ipads, or Honda Accords suddenly come into existence.  The creation of new fiat currency simply strengthens a fantasy balance sheet, either by adding to cash reserves or servicing debt.  But this balance sheet wealth is an illusion, just as the notion we can continue to raise the debt limit and borrow money forever is an illusion.

Source:  http://the-free-foundation.org/tst1-21-2013.html 

World Net Daily Names Ron Paul "Man Of The Decade"

Honoring one of the most inspiring and principled political careers in contemporary American politics, culminating in an extraordinary “farewell address” upon his recent announced retirement from the House of Representatives, WND has named U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, as its “Man of the Decade.”

His rise in influence, which helped to create the tea party movement, burst forth initially in 2008 with his presidential campaign bid, and surged again mightily in 2012, when he got 190 delegates at the GOP National Convention.

He is also the author of six books, “The Case for Gold” (1982), “A Foreign Policy of Freedom” (2007), “The Revolution: A Manifesto” (2008), “Pillars of Prosperity” (2008), “End The Fed” (2009), and “Liberty Defined” (2011).

On liberty – his favorite subject – Dr. Paul expressed his fear of rising world government as a key agenda of the American elites. If a person truly believes in individual liberty, said Paul, one cannot believe in one-world government. He gave examples of how America goes to war under a U.N. banner or NATO resolution and noted that the IMF regulates American monetary policy and that these are all stepping stones towards world government.

 
“To me, the solution to all this mess that we have is to believe in and understand what personal liberty is all about. Our lives, and our liberties, come from our Creator – not our government – and the purpose of government should be to protect those liberties,” he said.

“And the follow through on this is private property and sound economic policy, which is sound money. And also a basic moral principle is, you can’t do anything to other people that you wouldn’t want done to you. That means you want to protect your life and liberty, which means you cannot impose yourself on others, whether it’s on a personal basis or an international basis. That to me is the most important thing to do.”

 

Complete article at http://www.wnd.com/2012/12/meet-wnds-man-of-the-decade/#zvlwoRlGsZuevi9B.99

470 Murders in Chicago, Rahm Emanuel ‘Has Some Blood on His Hands’

In Chicago, there have been 470 murders within its city limits in 2012, as of December 2; a 19 percent increase in homicide from 2011. Rahm Emanuel, the mayor of Chicago, has turned Chicago into a victim disarmament zone. 

“Rahm Emanuel has some blood on his hands,” said Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, in a statement.  “He and the city council have done everything possible to prevent law-abiding Chicago residents from exercising their restored Second Amendment rights in the two years since the Supreme Court’s landmark McDonald ruling.” 
(In June 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 against a handgun ban in the city of Chicago in McDonald v. Chicago.) 
Original article at: http://cnsnews.com/news/article/gun-rights-leader-470-murders-chicago-rahm-emanuel-has-some-blood-his-hands

Ron Paul's thoughts on Obama's $1.5 trillion tax hike

President Obama’s job creation and deficit reduction plan will do nothing to combat joblessness or reduce the crushing debt that the federal government has accumulated and is still accumulating.

That’s because when the President starts targeting the so-called rich, he’s really targeting small business owners, so ultimately he’s threatening the little guy. The President’s plan, then, will result in a fatal broadside to the national economy from Main Street on down.

The President’s class-baiting rhetoric categorizes Americans into opposing groups and pits them against one another, purely for his own political gain. This gets us nowhere as a nation, and nowhere closer to solving our economic problems.

A $1.5 trillion tax hike will do nothing to help us out of this mess we’re in, and will more than likely create more problems, lead to less investment, and cause more job loss at a time when Americans of all kinds are hurting.

President Obama and his administration refuse to confront the realities of our situation and the actions that are necessary. We must reduce spending, instead they pretend that the budget can be balanced and prosperity restored by increasing spending and taxes.

Instead of raising taxes, this administration should cut corporate welfare, foreign welfare and end the trillion dollars overseas wars by bringing troops home.

These would be sound policy actions, the kind that create prosperity and engender greater freedom. These are the kind of policies that a President Ron Paul will advocate for and institute to restore limited government principles and a strong America.

Presidential Candidate Ron Paul has whirlwind weekend

Presidential candidate Ron Paul had a whirlwind week. Starting Wednesday, August 17th, Dr. Paul's new campaign headquarters opened in Concord, New Hampshire and hundreds of people came to see him speak; pictured above.
Grand opening speech here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyciLmlplL8

Then on Friday, Ron was the keynote speaker at the 3rd annual Liberty Summit in Orlando Florida.
See speech here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wphRQF36TX8

On Saturday, Congressman Paul topped the New Hampshire Young Republicans Straw poll with 45%:
* Ron Paul, 45%
* Mitt Romney, 10%
* Rick Perry, 8%
* Thaddeus McCotter, 8%
* Gary Johnson, 6%
* Herman Cain, 5%
* Michele Bachmann, 5%
* Jon Huntsman, 3%
* Rick Santorum, 3%
* Newt Gingrich, 1%
* Paul Ryan, 1%
* Rudy Giuliani, 1%

And... to celebrate Congressman Paul's birthday on Saturday the 20th, starting at midnight Eastern time on Friday, a money bomb exploded. By midnight Eastern Sunday night, Representative Paul's campaign war chest increased by over $1.7 million.

Happy Birthday

Dr. Ron Paul!

Presidential Candidate Ron Paul and Wife Carol, in Iowa

"The Ron Paul wave has not crested yet. It will continue to grow because real answers are nowhere else to be found." -- Moses

"They [the status quo] have good reason to be terrified of Ron Paul -- unlike Obama/Bush/Romney/Perry, etc, he isn't bought and paid for by big banks. This nonsense of bailing out banks and financial companies who engage in risky behavior (because they know they will be bailed out) will be over, as will all the corporate welfare. The big military companies are terrified because we won't be constantly attacking foreign nations and giving them sweetheart deals for programs that don't work.

The Federal Reserve and the military industrial complex is absolutely terrified right now at how Dr. Paul is surging in the polls. He is beating Perry in Texas, and in third place in iowa and new hampshire, while just four points behind perry in new hampshire. Ron Paul's message of peace and liberty are far more powerful than the neo-con and establishment media's marching orders they received -- and things are only going to get worse for them in the days of the internet. Why else would anywhere from 500 to over 1,000 (depending on reports) people show up for Congressman Paul opening up his campaign headquarters in New Hampshire in a state where presidential candidates are a dime a dozen? As Lew Rockwell said, the media is experiencing blowback, and there is nothing they can do about it.

The Revolution is growing by leaps and bounds every day." -- neocontrotsky

"In the beginning of a change, the patriot is a scarce man; brave, hated, and scorned. When his cause succeeds, however, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot."

- - Mark Twain

Corruption Escalates In Project Gunrunner

Written by Ism
Sunday, 10 July 2011 17:04

As the details of Project Gunrunner–and it’s spin-off, Operation “Fast and Furious”–are beginning to see the light of day, some very interesting facts are being unveiled and some very important people are being implicated.
People like the FBI, the Attorney General Eric Holder, and President Barack Obama.
This scandal could be a devastating blow to the current administration. If the emerging facts prove to be true, this should cost Eric Holder his job and could reach deep into the bowels of the White House.
Yes, the bowels.

And as on prior occasions when he’s been caught with his hand in the cookie jar, the President of the United States is mimicking Sergeant Shultz of Hogan’s Heroes fame– “I know nothing.”
A quick review: As I wrote about in a prior blog, Project Gunrunner began in 2005 as a pilot project in Laredo, Texas by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF). The ATF operates within the Department of Justice which is headed, of course, by Attorney General Eric Holder. It’s original intent was to stop the flow of drugs and firearms across the border and in the process, control the level of violence by depriving the Mexican drug cartels of weapons.

The DOJ launched Operation “Fast and Furious” under the Obama administration.

We have recently learned that “Fast and Furious” is a very corrupt operation, one in which guns have been systematically sold by the American government to Mexican drug lords and have been used by these thugs to kill not only hundreds of Mexicans, but in at least one case, an American border agent. Gun stores throughout the West were forced by our government to sell weapons illegally to drug lords despite their pleas against such action.
That was bad enough.
It gets worse.

Thanks to the reporting at WND, we are now learning that this program “originated at the highest levels of the Obama administration.” This is not just some low-level operation which was carried out by a few rogue agents.
Here’s what’s being reported:
The link is the $10 million in taxpayer dollars designated to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives for Project Gunrunner in Obama’s 2009 American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, otherwise known as the Stimulus Bill.
You read that right. $10,000,000 was set aside in the Stimulus Bill to go directly to Project Gunrunner. You and I and every taxpaying citizen in the United States helped to finance an illegal gun-running operation which ultimately killed hundreds of people– and apparently Joe Biden forgot to tell us about it.

Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Barack Obama, and Eric Holder, along with every member of Congress who helped to craft the Stimulus Bill have blood on their hands. They conned us into believing that the Stimulus Bill was going to be used to create American jobs and was instead partially used to pay drug lords to buy guns illegally in our country and to take them across the border into Mexico.
Would that fall under the category of Mexican jobs “saved” or “created”?
That $10 Million in Stimulus funds was over and above the already Obama-approved $11 Million given to the program and the $12 Million Obama has requested for the end of this year.

There’s something even stranger in this whole mess. While we all know that most members of Congress didn’t read the 2000 page monstrosity, there was a collection of folks who not only read it, they WROTE it. Harry Reid gave us a clue as to who, exactly, helped to author the bill: “The Apollo Alliance has been an important factor in helping us develop and execute a strategy that makes great progress on these goals and in motivating the public to support them.”
The Apollo Alliance helped to craft the legislation?
Yup.

And who, exactly, ARE members of the Apollo Alliance?
Well, we have our good friend, Van Jones, best known for his short stint at the White House serving as our Green Jobs Czar. He stepped down when it was leaked that he is a self-avowed communist.
Another member is our good friend, Jeff Jones, a man who now works for the state of New York distributing the funds from the Stimulus Law. He and his buddy, Bill Ayers, were the founders of the Weatherman Underground. They are domestic terrorists who planted bombs in the Capitol and the Pentagon back in the 1970′s.

We have Leo Gerard, International President of the United Steelworkers Union, Joel Rogers, the professor from Madison, WI., who founded the Socialist New Party, and Andy Stern, formerly the head of SEIU. Stern is not only a socialist, he also has the distinction of being the most frequent visitor to Obama’s White House during his union days.
During the days of the Stimulus.
And guess who helped to co-found and continues to finance the Apollo Alliance? None other than our friend, George Soros, the man who is single-handedly trying to take down America using his vast wealth as the main weapon.
Van Jones, Jeff Jones, Leo Gerard, Joel Rogers, Andy Stern, George Soros, and countless others knew exactly what was in the Stimulus Bill because they helped to write it. They are responsible for the $10 Million which went to this gun-running operation on our Southern border.

Why?
It’s a little thing called the 2nd Amendment. These men are out to destroy the constitution and they were fully aware that if these illegally sold guns– including assault weapons– did enough damage in both Mexico and the United States, then Barack and Eric Holder- -along with Regulatory Czar, Cass Sunstein– could slowly reign in the 2nd Amendment. The “duped” citizens of America, in an effort to “feel safe”, would easily comply.
It’s only common sense that those who control the guns, control the power—and they want the power.
Scary stuff.

In a C-Span statement which you can watch here, Jamie Ogden, the Deputy Attorney General specifically names both Obama and Holder as players in this Project Gunrunner scheme. He tells us that orders came from Obama and Holder to assign the $10 Million to the ATF for covert operations.
One more twist to this story: One of the recipients of some of the $10 Million is a paid FBI informant and illegal alien who was previously arrested and cut a deal to work with them. The agents at the ATF were following this guy, completely unaware that he was now on OUR side. You see, no one from the FBI or the DOJ bothered to tell them.So who was running this operation? Holder is trying to point the finger at the director of the ATF, a man named Kenneth Melson. The facts prove otherwise. If the ATF didn’t even have knowledge about the paid “flipped” informant, then clearly, they were not running the show.
Which means that someone in the DOJ is responsible.
Holder is trying to do damage control and is claiming that he only found out about Project Gunrunner “a few weeks ago”, however Big Government has a tape of Holder talking about this operation back in 2009.
More lies.

It appears that the FBI, Eric Holder, and Barack Obama all had knowledge- or should have had knowledge– of this gun-running scheme.
Just some “common sense” measures. Nothing to worry about.
Move along, comrades. Nothing to see here….
Move along.

Complete story at: http://www.looktruenorth.com/liberty/right-to-keep-and-bear-arms/17091-corruption-escalates-in-project-gunrunner.html
Cross-posted at awaken the elephants
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It should be called Organizing AGAINST America!

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Because the President of the United States called Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's attempt to bridge a $3 billion budget shortfall by proposing modest cuts in health care and pension benefits to state employees an "attack on unions," Barack Hussein Obama's activist organizing wing, Organizing for America, are playing an extensive role in exploiting the taxpayers with protests against the state government's crusade to avoid bankruptcy.

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Bused in members of the Service Employees International Union, (SEIU), the most influential union in national Democratic circles, have also joined the fray in opposition of Governor Walker's proposed budget cuts to save the state from insolvency.

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With regard to inheriting a $137 million deficit for this year alone, Governor Scott Walker commented on what led up to the economic crisis the people in Wisconsin are now facing:

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“Previous governors and legislatures from both parties took money from our tobacco settlement. They raided more than a billion dollars from the transportation fund and $200 million from the patients’ compensation fund. They increased taxes on the sick and set up shell games to draw down additional federal funds. They relied on one-time federal stimulus dollars as if the money would be there forever – but it’s already gone.”

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Urgently needed to balance the budget and save government jobs, along with 30 other states that are negotiating union cuts, and/or pay freezes, Governor Walker is asking government workers to make a 5.8% pension contribution (about the national average) and 12.6% health insurance contribution (about half the national average). Since benefits represent on average 46% of their total package, Governor Walker has also proposed the public sector unions give up their privilege to collectively bargain for benefits, but NOT their wages.

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"This is a statist uprising that is being fueled by leftist politicians and the leftist media.” “Wisconsin’s governor is proposing that state union workers should pay a little more of their health benefits (from 6% to 12%) and media calls this America’s Cairo moment?

This is outrageous.”

- - Grassfire Nation's Steve Elliott

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Union leaders are just as corrupt as the Obama administration. They use their workers/member's dues to further their own cause and get rich at the worker's expense. They work with the "progressives" in office because they are despicable enough to swindle the people, and they keep their re-election coffers filled. What should we expect? The "progressives" have sold their souls to the unions, as they regularly raise tens of millions of dollars for political campaigns. We see them for what they are: racketeers.

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Obama has also said:

"I don't think it does anybody any good when public employees are denigrated or vilified or their rights are infringed upon."

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Governor Walker’s office issued this statement:

“I’m sure the President knows that most federal employees do not have collective bargaining for wages and benefits while our plan allows it for base pay. And I’m sure the President knows that the average federal worker pays twice as much for health insurance as what we are asking for in Wisconsin. At least I would hope he knows these facts.“Furthermore, I’m sure the President knows that we have repeatedly praised the more than 300,000 government workers who come to work every day in Wisconsin.“I’m sure that President Obama simply misunderstands the issues in Wisconsin, and isn’t acting like the union bosses in saying one thing and doing another.”

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You'll be glad to know a couple more fine upstanding organizations are also supporting the union protesters along with Barack Hussein Obama:

Socialist Party USA

...are backing the public sector unions. In an article found on their website, written by Omar Mohamad, Socialist Party of South Central Wisconsin and Billy Wharton, co-chair Socialist Party USA they state:

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The mass protests led by public employees unions in Madison, Wisconsin have been presented by some mainstream commentators as a labor’s last stand. They are not. They are a spark, a spark with the potential to create a new protest movement capable of revitalizing our unions, radicalizing student organizing and creating a space for democratic socialist politics. As socialists, we stand steadfastly in solidarity with this protest movement. We pledge to support the immediate goal of blocking Governor Scott Walker’s reactionary and draconian anti-union legislation and the longer-term project of building a serious left-wing political movement in the US.

http://socialistparty-usa.org/statements/wilabor21911.html

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Communist Party USA

The Communist Party USA urges the widest possible solidarity with public workers all over our country.

http://www.cpusa.org/on-wisconsin-show-your-solidarity/

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"I think we're focused on balancing our budget. It would be wise for the president and others in Washington to focus on balancing their budget, which they're a long ways from doing."

- - Governor Scott Walker

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Representing government employees has turned unions into determined supporters of tax increases and more government spending. They care not, that many states face unfunded liabilities that are simply unsustainable. Taxpayers now pay for unionized government jobs paying notably more, than those available in the private sector. Let's hope the voters will remember how the unions are blackmailing the taxpayers of Wisconsin.

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"Labor unions would have us believe that they transfer income from rich capitalists to poor workers. In fact, they mostly transfer income from the large number of non-union workers to a small number of relatively well-off union workers."

- - Robert E. Anderson

GOP invokes 1700's doctrine in health care fight

Republican lawmakers in nearly a dozen states are reaching into the dusty annals of American history to fight Obama's Socialist takeover of our health care system.
They are introducing measures that hinge on "nullification," Thomas Jefferson's late 18th-century doctrine that purported to give states the ultimate say in constitutional matters.
GOP lawmakers introduced such a measure Wednesday in the Idaho House, and Alabama, Kansas, Maine, Missouri, Montana, Oregon, Nebraska, Texas and Wyoming are also talking about the idea.

The 10th Amendment to the US Constitution states, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
Yet, the Federal Government has expanded its powers well beyond the scope intended by the founding fathers of our country.
How do we stop this unconstitutional expansion of federal power?

Nullification is a legal theory that says states, through their legislative bodies, have the right to nullify or invalidate any federal law deemed unconstitutional by that state. Nullification argues that because the states originally entered the Union as sovereign entities on the terms of a compact, they have the power to nullify any law passed by the federal government they believe is unconstitutional.

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In this video, Thomas Woods sets the foundation for the principle of nullification through illustration of Thomas Jefferson's actions in 1798.

U.S. Senate lifts veil on secret bailout funds

By Congressional mandate the Federal Reserve banking cartel was forced to divulge on Dec. 1, 2010, 21,000 lending transactions, that show it disbursed $3.3 trillion from Dec. 1, 2007, to July 21, 2010. It has also been disclosed that numerous institutions and many foreign banks received over $9 trillion off-balance sheet transactions. So $12.3 trillion tax dollars were thrown around in secrecy by unelected bankers… and Congress didn’t know any of the details!?

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• McDonald’s took $203 million from the Federal Reserve
• Six Minnesota banks received a total $450 million
• Caterpillar took $733 million from the Federal Reserve
• The USA based Verizon Communications took $1.5 billion from the Federal Reserve
• Harley-Davidson received bailout money 33 times, for a total of $2.3 billion
• The amount injected by loans into Utah-based financial institutions was $6.6 billion
• $9.6 billion went to the Central Bank of Mexico
• General Electric Co. needed funding 12 times for a total of $16 billion
• Deutsche Bank got 73 loans totalling about $76 billion
• Barclays pulled in $232 billion via 188 loans
• Goldman Sachs received nearly $600 billion
• Bear Stearns received just under $1 trillion
• Morgan Stanley got $1.9 trillion coming from 212 loans
• Merrill Lynch received $2.1 trillion, spread across 226 loans
• Citigroup got 279 loans totaling $2 trillion

"I think they [the Federal Reserve], prevented a deep recession for the people who deserved it, the big money people... the Goldman Sachs of the world.”

- - Ron Paul

Call Reid's Bluff

Conn Carroll reports that Gallup released a poll this morning showing that the American people dislike this 111th Congress more than any other Congress. Specifically, a full 83% of Americans disapprove of the way Congress is handling its job while only 13% approve. That is the worst approval rating in more than 30 years of tracking congressional job performance.

Why do Americans so despise this Congress? The reckless way it spends other people’s money, for starters. One would have thought that after getting “shellacked” at the polls this November, Congress would have gotten the message. No luck. Majority Leader Harry Reid introduced a $1.27 trillion 1,924 page omnibus spending bill last night that contains 6,000 earmarks worth $8 billion. Oh, and all this has to be approved by midnight Saturday or the government shuts down.

By waiting until late yesterday to unveil this 1,924-page monstrosity, Reid is playing a high stakes game of chicken with small government conservatives. Since the FY 2010 budget expired on September 30th, the federal government has been operating on a series of continuing resolutions (CR). The most recent CR expires on midnight Saturday. If the Senate does not pass a bill by then the federal government shuts down. Reid believes that conservatives do not have courage to back up their spending cut convictions. Conservative Senators should call Reid’s bluff.

Full article by Conn Carroll at:
http://blog.heritage.org/2010/12/15/morning-bell-call-reids-bluff/

Here are a few of the wasteful measures included in Harry Reid's disgraceful spending binge:

$247,000 - Virus free grapes in Washington State

$413,000 - Peanut research in Alabama

$125,000 - Fishery equipment for the Guam Fisherman’s Cooperative Association

$349,000 - Swine waste management in North Carolina

$277,000 - Potato pest management in Wisconsin

$246,000 - Bovine tuberculosis treatment in Michigan and Minnesota

$522,000 - Cranberry and blueberry disease and breeding in New Jersey

$500,000 - Oyster safety in Florida

$400,000 - Solar parking canopies and plug-in electric stations in Kansas

$165,000 - Maple syrup research in Vermont

Source: http://www.redstate.com/jrichardson/2010/12/14/redstate-action-alert-dissect-the-omnibus/

“Governments that are supposed to be of the people and for the people routinely incur debts against the people. Some governments even borrow money to oppress their citizens, and then expect them to pay for their own oppression with interest.”

– Ron Paul

AUSTRALIA REJECTS GLOBAL WARMING FRAUD

In rejecting its emissions trading system, Australia has fired a shot now being heard round the world.

E-mails have surfaced from the University of East Anglia, exposing leading scientists and scientific institutions profiting by creating and fostering the lie, that global warming is a global crisis.

Lord Monckton, the third Viscount Monckton of Brenchley and adviser to Margaret Thatcher’s policy unit in the 1980's said:

• [The news that the world's leading climate science institutions had been collaborating internationally for many years in a systematic and ruthless scientific and financial fraud by which they altered, suppressed, reprocessed, concealed, and conspired to destroy the data on which the world's temperature records are based has come as a wake up call to politicians previously slumbering.
• The first effects are evident in Australia, where the leader of the opposition Liberal Party was removed from office when more than half of his members of Parliament voted against his declared support for an emissions trading scheme which the world now knows to be unneccesary.
• The day after Mr. Turnbull's humiliating, but richly deserved defeat, the upper house of the Australian National Legislature, the Senate, voted decisively to reject the emissions trading scheme.
• No longer will the world's politicians allow themselves to be misled by self-serving scientists and institutions who have been making enormous financial profits at the expense of ordinary working people by fabricating the global warming scare and by then saying that they are the only people who can make that scare go away.
• Politicians worldwide who may previously have thought that there were votes to be gained by joining the global warming conspiracy should be warned first that every opinion poll shows smaller and smaller proportions of the electorate believing in this conspiracy and that the public authorities have already been called in to investigate criminal aspects of the conspiracy.
• Politicians should understand that they will not be immune from indictment themselves if they continue to pretend that global warming is a global crisis when it is now known that the crisis was fabricated by scientists who have proven themselves to be no better than profiteers and racketeers.
• The voters will not tolerate the largest tax increase in the history of human kind in the name of saving a planet which was successfully saved 2,000 years ago and does not need to be saved again.
• Now that the people have been told the truth about a conspiracy to spit on the scientific method and to invent what everyone now knows to be a baseless scare, they will not vote for politicians stupid enough, or crooked enough to speak out in favor of what is simply nonsense.]

Stop the cap and trade scam:

http://allpainnogain.cfact.org/

Obama's manufacturing czar - Ron Bloom

Just a sample of the czars, Obama has appointed:

• Van Jones: an avowed Communist, the former green jobs czar.
• Anita Dunn: Obama's czar of Homeland Propaganda. She cites Chairman Mao Tse-tung as one of her favorite political philosophers.
• Cass Sunstein: Obama's regulatory czar is an anti-gun progressive activist judge, who believes that citizens’ rights exist only to the extent that they are granted by the government.
• John Holdren: Obama's science czar has advocated coercive population control as far back as the 1970's.
• Ron Bloom: now we have Obama's manufacturing czar citing Mao Tse-tung, and calling the free market, "nonsense."

How can we not conclude, that this regime's goal is to malign the work of our founding fathers, and impose another kind of government entirely, on the citizens of America - completely abolishing our Constitutional Republic.

The entire world will be devastated, if Obama's radical anti-American transformation destroys our country - the last beacon of freedom left on the globe. Obama's compliance with The United Nations Climate Change Summit, to take place this December in Copenhagen, Denmark, will end the sovereignty of the United States of America, forever. We will be controlled by a United Nations global governance, all predicated on the global warming hoax, solely designed to extort tax money from Americans, as they implement a wealth distribution mechanism throughout the planet.

It becomes clearer as the months progress... Obama's aspirations may go well beyond the Oval Office. After transforming the U.S. into a third world country through cap and trade, (in addition to a government-run healthcare system that will bankrupt our country even further), the ultimate goal of this menace, may be to head the United Nations. That will then enable the fascist-in-chief, and his minions, to achieve a progressive, "correct thinking" collective regimentation, on a global scale.

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This disturbing video shows part of a speech by Ron Bloom, while he was an assistant to the president of the United Steel Workers Union, at the 6th Annual Distressed Investing Forum, Union League Club, NY, on February 27-28, 2008.

At http://www.haltobama.com/2009/10/556/#more-556 Dr. Rick Scarborough said:

[Despite a degree from the Harvard Business School, Bloom apparently believes that the free market is a con game — that it’s not about investors and innovators, entrepreneurs and workers getting together to offer useful goods and services at competitive prices, but a carnival side-show attraction whose objective is to fleece the rubes.
It seems the president believes this too. Every one of his policies seeks to undermine the market, take power away from businesses, transfer income from consumers (via taxation and inflation) and put it all in the hands of unelected and unvetted government bureaucrats – like Manufacturing Czar Ron Bloom.
No wonder Mr. Obama has chosen to by-pass the Senate and its constitutional mandate to advise and consent, which would have required open hearings, before such ideologues were given sweeping powers, as have the more than three dozens Czars appointed during his first year in office. This president has built a shadow government, and the more we learn, the more we see that his agenda isn’t “hope and change” but “bait and switch.”]

Further analysis at: http://digg.com/d317jzx

"We get the joke. We know that the free market is nonsense. We know that the whole point is to game the system, to beat the market or at least find someone who will pay you a lot of money because they're convinced that there is a free lunch. We know this is largely about power, that it's an adults-only, no-limit game. We kind of agree with Mao that political power comes largely from the barrel of a gun."

- - Ron Bloom

Grove Parc Olympics

Still living like royalty at taxpayer expense, in her speech in Copenhagen, on September 30, 2009, First Lady Michelle Obama said her trip to Denmark, along with the travel of her "dear friend" Oprah Winfrey, as well as tomorrow's visit by President Obama, is a "sacrifice" on behalf of the children of Chicago and the United States. They were in Denmark groveling at the alter of the International Olympic Committee, (IOC), to bring the Olympics to Chicago in 2016.

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• "As much of a sacrifice as people say this is for me or Oprah or the president to come for these few days,"

the first lady told a crowd of people involved in the Chicago project,

• "so many of you in this room have been working for years to bring this bid home."

ABC news reported:
[The White House billed the trip as an "official" journey, so taxpayers picked up the costs for the slightly more than 14-hour round trip on Air Force One. The Defense Department pegs the operating costs for the president's 747 at $100,219 per flight hour. Double it to include the backup plane that always accompanies the president. Add the costs of the Air Force 757 that Mrs. Obama used to fly to Copenhagen earlier in the week. It adds up to nearly $3-million dollars. And that doesn't include the aircraft used to fly the presidential limousines and Secret Service vehicles there as well.]

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Almost before Obama could get back on Air Force One, Chicago was rejected in the first round. Was it all about celebrating the greatest athletes in the world or was the Obama Olympic push 'political payback' for Chicago cronies?

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Like Barack Obama, Valerie Jarrett is a product of the corrupt Chicago political machine and is the Senior Advisor and assistant to the president. Before that, she worked not only as the deputy chief of staff for Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, but served as the CEO of Habitat Company, the group that managed the federally subsidized Chicago housing project, Grove Parc Plaza Apartments, located in Barack Obama's state senate district. Federal inspectors have graded the condition of the Grove Parc complex, substandard, as it has been beset with code violations. In other words, at the bottom of the barrel in terms of quality, (11 on a 100-point scale in a 2006, inspection). It was run into the ground under Valerie Jarrett's tenure.

FOX News asked Michelle Malkin her take on Grove Parc Plaza:

• "It sits in the shadow of where the Olympic stadium would be built. And that's not a coincidence."
• "And, look, there is no question that property values would rise and all of these developers would benefit from that. That's why they are lobbying so hard to bring it there in the first place."
• "And all you have to do is look at how these economic development boondoggles have worked in other cities. They will use eminent domain to clear all of this land, push poor people out, and build these sports palaces that will be empty after the Olympics. That's how it always works."

Massachusetts Senate Bill (S.2028), Would Allow Forced Vaccinations

"The United States of America is devolving into medical fascism and Massachusetts is leading the way with the passage of a new bill, the “Pandemic Response Bill” (S. 2028), reportedly just passed by the MA state Senate and now awaiting approval in the House. This bill suspends virtually all Constitutional rights of Massachusetts citizens and forces anyone “suspected” of being infected to submit to interrogations, “decontaminations” and vaccines."

- - Mike Adams

Written by Alex Newman
Tuesday, 01 September 2009 17:00

Full article at: http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/health-care/1797

“Under this bill, Massachusetts becomes a medical police state. There is no debating it,” wrote Natural News editor Michael Adams in an August 28 article entitled "Wake Up, America: Forced vaccinations, quarantine camps, health care interrogations and mandatory 'decontaminations,'" where he suggested America was delving into medical fascism. “The citizens of Massachusetts will have no rights, period. The Constitution is ancient history. You are now the property of the State.”

The bill contains a number of controversial, alarming, and blatantly unconstitutional provisions. Under an emergency declared by the governor, the statute purports to give the health commissioner, and law enforcement and medical personnel broad authority to mobilize forces, vaccinate the population, enter private property with no warrants, and even quarantine people against their will.

The legislation provides severe penalties — $1,000 fine per day and possible jail time — for not complying with state orders, while also claiming to shield everyone involved from liability. It gives local health authorities the power “to restrict or prohibit assemblages of persons” and gives government agents the authority to “arrest without a warrant any person whom the officer has probable cause to believe has violated an order” while using “reasonable diligence to enforce such order.” Also, law-enforcement authorities “shall assist” medical personnel in the “involuntary transportation” of people to “treatment centers.”

The provision on vaccines does give citizens the authority to refuse the vaccination, but people who do can be “isolated or quarantined.” The same fate awaits those are “unable or unwilling to submit to decontamination or procedures necessary for diagnosis.” One part of the legislation requires that owners or occupiers of a property “permit entry into and investigation of the premises,” and another section creates price controls.

California State and Local Government Pensions

The list is long.
There are 5,115 retired California government workers currently receiving pensions in excess of $100,000 per year, from the California Public Employees Retirement System.

What happened to our beautiful state? Well... In 1999, heavily pushed by the unions, the California legislature passed a bill, that not only increased retirement benefits for public employees, but lowered the retirement age and applied the increased benefits retroactively.

Why is California's economic future so bleak? One reason is public employees are retiring as young as 50 and 55. Some are collecting as much as 100% of their salary, annual cost of living raises and lifetime health care benefits. And it's not uncommon to see the same retirees go back to work for the same public agency that they worked for in the first place. Double dipping, as it were.

The Democrats do the bidding of the cubical workers, those state employees, and the Republicans do the bidding of the police and the fire and the prison guards. So one public employees union or another owns just about everybody in Sacramento, along with most cities and county's in the state.

Public sector employees earn about 40% higher salaries and 60% greater benefits than private sector employees. Since California is the only state in the nation that bases it's pensions on it's single highest earning year, the estimated unfunded liabilities for retirement benefits, just for state employees alone, exceeds $100 billion. Most cities and counties in California are now paying between 15% and 20% of their entire budget just to pay for retirement benefits.

The bankrupt L.A. Unified School District (LAUSD), will be spending nearly 1/3 of their budget on unfunded liability retirement benefits between pension and retiree health care. To compensate for this, the L.A. Unified School District may be able to raise the property taxes on you, L.A. County and L.A. Unified School District homeowners. To further burden the taxpayer, L.A. Unified has undertaken a huge school building project. Over 100 new schools will be built at the cost of $20.1 billion. With enrollment dropping close to 7% since the start of the decade, (it's estimated over 100,000 empty seats will exist in the LAUSD by the year 2012), this boondoggle will be of massive proportion. A year ago, the LAUSD convinced voters to vote for Bond Measure Q. Get ready for another tax assault, L.A. homeowners. They buried some sort of tax provision in Measure Q which might allow the LAUSD to almost double your property taxes!

The estimates for pensions and retirement benefits could take up to 10% of the state budget. The yearly cost for state employees pensions in 2001, was about $160 million. The current annual cost for state pensions in California is now estimated at $3.4 billion. That's only for pension costs, that doesn't include the retiree health care costs in which the state of California owes right around $60 billion.

Because of this irreversible decision, made by these thieving politicians, in cahoots with the unions 10 years ago, cities and counties may be forced to go bankrupt. These retirement plans, cooked up by the crooks in Sacramento and the unions, are clearly unsustainable. Lets hope not, but unless a reversal of spending is achieved soon, this travesty may be what topples California into a wasteland.

http://www.californiapensionreform.com/?p=179

Outraged Voters Overload House Of Representatives E-Mail Web Site

Congress was bombarded on Thursday with so many e-mails from outraged Americans against Obama's socialized medicine debacle, that the House's primary Web site, crashed.

An alert was issued to congressional staff that the site, http://www.house.gov/, may be down periodically, because of the large volume of e-mail being generated to members.

Jeff Ventura, a spokesman for the House's chief administrative officer said:

• "It is clearly health care reform," "There's no doubt about it."

A grassroots backlash has emerged throughout the United States against Obama's plan to overhaul the nation's health care system, and while lawmakers are in their home districts for the August recess, they are really hearing about it from their constituents.

A spokesman for Rep. Joe Barton, a Texas Republican, said e-mail traffic related to government-run health care has exploded in recent weeks.

In the last five weeks, Sean Brown said the office has received 2,761 e-mails on the subject of socialized medicine. He estimated that 90 to 95 percent of the e-mails were opposed to Obama's plan.