FROM HIS FIRST DAY IN OFFICE, RIGHT OFF HIS PHONY “CHANGE” PLATFORM, OBAMA WENT TO WORK SERVICES HIS CRIMINAL BANKSTER DONORS, AND LA RAZA, THE MEX FASCIST PARTY of AMERICA.
ONCE
AGAIN THE BANKSTERS HAVE FILLED HIS POCKETS. WHILE FORECLOSURES HAVE CONTINUED
TO SOAR, AND SO HAVE BANKSTERS’ PROFITS. BANKS HAVE MADE MORE DURING OBAMA’S
FIRST TWO YEARS OF OBAMANOMICS, THAN THEY DID UNDER ALL EIGHT OF BUSH’S.
ISN’T
OBAMA REALLY JUST BUSH’S THIRD TERM? WARS OVER THERE IN MUSLIM LANDS, AND OPEN
& UNDEFENDED BORDERS WITH NARCOMEX!
THE RICH KEEP LOOTING, AND THE JOBS GO ONLY TO ILLEGALS!
Obama Sees Steep Dropoff in Cash From Major Donors
By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE and DEREK WILLIS
Published: April 20, 2012
President Obama’s
re-election campaign is straining to raise the huge sums it is counting on to
run against Mitt Romney, with sharp
dropoffs in donations from nearly every major industry forcing it to rely more
than ever on small contributions and a relative handful of major donors.
From Wall
Street to Hollywood, from doctors and lawyers, the traditional big sources of
campaign cash are not delivering for the Obama campaign as they did four years
ago. The falloff has left his fund-raising totals running behind where they
were at the same point in 2008 — though well ahead of Mr. Romney’s — and has
induced growing concern among aides and supporters as they confront the
prospect that Republicans and their “super PAC” allies will hold
a substantial advantage this fall.
With big
checks no longer flowing as quickly into his campaign, Mr. Obama is leaning
harder on his grass-roots supporters, whose small contributions make up well
over half of the money he raised through the end of March, according to reports
filed Friday with the Federal Election Commission. And Mr. Obama is asking far
more of those large donors still giving, exploiting his joint fund-raising
arrangement with the Democratic
National Committee to collect five-figure checks from individuals who
have already given the maximum $5,000 contribution to his re-election campaign.
“They
clearly are feeling the pressure,” said one major Obama fund-raiser, who asked
for anonymity to characterize his conversations with campaign officials.
“They’re behind where they expected to be. You have to factor in $500
million-plus in Republican super PAC money.”
With no
primary to excite his base, the economy struggling to rebound, and four years
of political battles with Wall Street and other industries taking their toll,
Mr. Obama’s campaign raised about $196 million through March, compared with
$235 million at the same point in 2008. It has lagged behind its own internal
quotas in some cities, according to people involved with the fund-raising
efforts. But that has been offset by a highly successful joint fund-raising
program with the national committee, which raised about $150 million, twice as
much as in 2008.
Mr. Obama
has held more than a hundred joint fund-raisers since last spring, far more
than President George W. Bush during his 2004 re-election, and has tucked
fund-raising stops into many of his official presidential trips.
The
result: The national committee’s fund-raising from the technology industry,
entrepreneurs, Wall Street and the entertainment industry have all risen
sharply compared with 2008, even as the Obama campaign’s performance in those
areas has tailed off, according to data provided by the Center for Responsive
Politics. And with no primary to fight, Mr. Obama is spending much less than he
was at this stage in 2008: He had about twice as much money in the bank at the
end of March than he did four years ago.
All told,
Mr. Obama and the Democratic committee ended March with about $130 million in
cash on hand, a sizable war chest and far more than Mr. Romney and the Republican
National Committee. Candidates typically raise more as the election
nears, and Mr. Obama’s fund-raising accelerated sharply in the summer of 2008.
But Mr.
Obama faces a major challenge in the months ahead. To raise as much money for
his campaign as he did four years ago, the president would have to raise about
$70 million a month through the end of the election cycle, more than triple the
rate he has been bringing in cash so far.
Jim
Messina, Mr. Obama’s campaign manager, has publicly set a more modest goal,
saying the campaign expects to exceed Mr. Obama’s 2008 fund-raising of about
$750 million only by counting money he is raising for the national committee as
well. That would require the campaign and the committee to raise about $51
million a month through November. Mr. Messina has also warned the party’s two
Congressional campaign committees not to expect their traditional allotments of
Democratic National Committee cash this year, money Mr. Obama is husbanding for
his own efforts.
Mr.
Romney, the likely Republican nominee, ended March with just $10 million in
cash on hand, according to campaign reports filed Friday with the Federal
Election Commission, and has raised about $87 million during the Republican
primary season. His aides are hoping to raise a total of $800 million for the
fall elections in combination with the Republican National Committee, which
last week finalized a joint fund-raising agreement with Mr. Romney. The
committee ended March with $23.4 million in cash on hand.
But Mr.
Romney is also expecting significant support from Republican super PACs and
other outside groups. On Friday, officials at American Crossroads, the leading
conservative super PAC, reported that they had raised close to $100 million so
far this year for the group and an affiliated organization, Crossroads GPS.
Crossroads alone is aiming to raise as much as $300 million this year, while
other conservative groups, like Americans for Prosperity, have aimed at raising
close to $200 million.
The super
PAC backing Mr. Romney in the Republican primary, Restore Our Future, has
raised $51.9 million, and plans to raise twice that by November.
By
contrast, the network of Democratic super PACs has raised far less. Democratic
groups with close ties to the party’s Congressional leaders have raised about
$18 million so far during the 2012 cycle. Priorities USA Action, founded by
former Obama aides as a counterweight to Crossroads, raised about $9 million
through the end of March.
To remain
competitive, the Obama campaign has spent millions of dollars on high-tech,
small-dollar prospecting. They have used sophisticated data mining techniques
and low-dollar promotions — like $3-a-head raffles for dinner with the
president — to reassemble the network of millions of supporters whose
contributions helped propel him into the White House.
All told, about 58 percent
of Mr. Obama’s total fund-raising during the election has come in checks of
less than $200, compared with about 38 percent in 2008. In March alone, Mr.
Obama took in $14.2 million worth of checks under $200 — more than all the
money his campaign raised in February.
OBAMA AND THE FALL of AMERICA:
*
THERE IS NOTHING IN OBAMA BUT A PERFORMANCE!
“That's the candidate
in him, the one that prefers performing for adoring crowds instead of
performing Oval Office duties.”
CHANGE? IT’S HIS BUSH THIRD TERM!
*
OBAMA HAS SABOTAGED E-VERIFY AND
PUT HILDA SOLIS, A LA RAZA SUPREMACIST IN AS SEC of (illegal) LABOR!
The economy, like
everything else adverse, is someone else's fault. But if only we borrowed and
spent a trillion dollars, unemployment would stay beneath 8%, Obama promised.
It soared far above. It's still above. No apology. No acknowledgment. Now, he
hails any dip as proof of progress when, in fact, it comes because so many just
give up seeking work.
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2012/04/change-will-nation-buy-another-obama.html
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2012/04/change-will-nation-buy-another-obama.html
Who is this guy pretending to be president?
By ANDREW MALCOLM
Posted 04/13/2012 08:18 AM ET
Has anyone seen Barack Obama recently? WHAT WOULD HE LOOK LIKE IF WE DID?
You know, the optimistic hopeful fellow with the charming smile who promised so many positive things four and five years ago, how he was going to change the harsh, partisan tone of our nation's capital and bring the country together as its first African American president.
Even allowing for political hyperbole, his empty resume and the invisible witnesses from the past, Obama was such a Real Good Talker that even some who didn't vote for him still had hope that he could change some things for the better in what seemed a sadly-splintered society.
WTH did that Obama go? Have you listened recently to this Chicago Doppelganger who's replaced him? This 2012 Obama is strident and mean, even deceitful, divisive, telling half-truths after half-truths. He's using Air Force One as his personal Brinks truck with wings to collect cash all over the country, disguising the trips as official.
He tries to intimidate the Supreme Court, an equal branch of government, when its thinking might stray from his. He distorts history, and if no one calls him, then it's true. If he's caught, this Obama says you obviously mis-heard. Because, as everyone knows, he could never mis-speak.
The economy, like everything else adverse, is someone else's fault. But if only we borrowed and spent a trillion dollars, unemployment would stay beneath 8%, Obama promised. It soared far above. It's still above. No apology. No acknowledgment. Now, he hails any dip as proof of progress when, in fact, it comes because so many just give up seeking work.
He chastises House Republicans for their draconian budget when his Senate Democrats haven't written a single one in three years; so, the fiscal drift abides. And wait till he exaggerates the frightening things the GOP wants to do, instead of presenting his own ideas.
Obama claims credit for the bottom half of a pipeline he had nothing to do with, when he killed the top half. He brags that domestic oil drilling is up when the part he's responsible for is down.
He says no one should ever go to Las Vegas on the taxpayer's dime. Then his wife, daughters and entourage do just that.
This year's Obama talks of the importance of windmills, algae and green energy, but he takes a 17-SUV motorcade to a photo op with an electric car. He lambasts oil companies for getting the same legal tax incentives (he calls them "subsidies") that other companies receive, hoping to aim anger at them so voters won't notice that gas prices have doubled since his inauguration with Honest Abe's Bible.
Take this Tuesday. The 2012 Obama flew to Florida for an official presidential speech on the economy, then three fundraisers. That way his campaign only pays a fraction of Air Force One's $182,000 per flight hour cost. All presidents do that, though none have done near as many.
But read the four speeches. You can't tell which is official and which is political. They're all political. He can't be a real president for one lousy speech? Why the phony presidential fig leaf? To chintz the United States of America out of a few thousand bucks when he plans to raise a billion?
The Buffet Rule? Americans have always admired the successful. The only thing wrong with rich people is we're not one of them -- yet. But now he's pitting most of us against rich folks, which is him, come to think of it. The only way he's bringing us together now is to resent their paying a smaller legal rate because theirs is a different kind of income.
And speaking of taxes, which are due Tuesday, how can the president of the United States allow 36 of his own White House aides to fall $833,000 behind in their tax payments?
How is that what the first Obama offered, making him an example of American success? (Hint: His GOP opponent is far richer than Obama and earned it the old-fashioned way through work, not fronting books.)
OK, Obama wants political skirmishes all over on any petty thing so people won't notice the absence of any conceivably positive record to run on. Risky when Americans start paying attention. But if that's his only card. It's all the Republicans' fault, of course. That's the candidate in him, the one that prefers performing for adoring crowds instead of performing Oval Office duties.
But whatever happened to the president part? The leader. The principled man who through his personal story, skills and charm was going to inspire, convince, cajole Americans as diverse as himself to work together for a common national success? That official part has merged with the political, like the four Florida speeches. Now, he's just trying to fool everybody about everything.
In a way, this could be good news for Republicans. The duplicate Ernst Blofeld makes Mitt Romney look like Mr. Rogers.
But without real presidential leadership, Obama's hand-picked harpie atop the Democratic National Committee feels empowered to assign a hired gun to dismiss his opponent's wife, the cancer-surviving mother of five sons, as someone who's never worked a day in her life. Are they that scared already?
Seriously? We're going to pit now one kind of working woman against another? The guy who talks about having so many women in his life isn't going to fire the women responsible for that? He thinks American women will buy this stuff?
OK, Obama was raised by grandparents because he didn't always have a stay-at-home mom or dad. But this is a nation, not a dysfunctional family or a windy city party where factions are left to their own wards and Solyndras.
Obama is the guy who said his own wife was off limits politically, the guy whose mother-in-law has resided since Day One in the White House at taxpayer expense as a live-in nanny so the first lady can campaign for money and healthy foods? But a woman who stays at home with her kids at no public expense can be trashed because of her party?
We were never exactly fond of the Original Obama. But we'd take him any day over the twilight character that inhabits the Oval Office now.
RELATED:
Why is Obama so rattled?
*
By ANDREW MALCOLM
Posted 04/13/2012 08:18 AM ET
Has anyone seen Barack Obama recently? WHAT WOULD HE LOOK LIKE IF WE DID?
You know, the optimistic hopeful fellow with the charming smile who promised so many positive things four and five years ago, how he was going to change the harsh, partisan tone of our nation's capital and bring the country together as its first African American president.
Even allowing for political hyperbole, his empty resume and the invisible witnesses from the past, Obama was such a Real Good Talker that even some who didn't vote for him still had hope that he could change some things for the better in what seemed a sadly-splintered society.
WTH did that Obama go? Have you listened recently to this Chicago Doppelganger who's replaced him? This 2012 Obama is strident and mean, even deceitful, divisive, telling half-truths after half-truths. He's using Air Force One as his personal Brinks truck with wings to collect cash all over the country, disguising the trips as official.
He tries to intimidate the Supreme Court, an equal branch of government, when its thinking might stray from his. He distorts history, and if no one calls him, then it's true. If he's caught, this Obama says you obviously mis-heard. Because, as everyone knows, he could never mis-speak.
The economy, like everything else adverse, is someone else's fault. But if only we borrowed and spent a trillion dollars, unemployment would stay beneath 8%, Obama promised. It soared far above. It's still above. No apology. No acknowledgment. Now, he hails any dip as proof of progress when, in fact, it comes because so many just give up seeking work.
He chastises House Republicans for their draconian budget when his Senate Democrats haven't written a single one in three years; so, the fiscal drift abides. And wait till he exaggerates the frightening things the GOP wants to do, instead of presenting his own ideas.
Obama claims credit for the bottom half of a pipeline he had nothing to do with, when he killed the top half. He brags that domestic oil drilling is up when the part he's responsible for is down.
He says no one should ever go to Las Vegas on the taxpayer's dime. Then his wife, daughters and entourage do just that.
This year's Obama talks of the importance of windmills, algae and green energy, but he takes a 17-SUV motorcade to a photo op with an electric car. He lambasts oil companies for getting the same legal tax incentives (he calls them "subsidies") that other companies receive, hoping to aim anger at them so voters won't notice that gas prices have doubled since his inauguration with Honest Abe's Bible.
Take this Tuesday. The 2012 Obama flew to Florida for an official presidential speech on the economy, then three fundraisers. That way his campaign only pays a fraction of Air Force One's $182,000 per flight hour cost. All presidents do that, though none have done near as many.
But read the four speeches. You can't tell which is official and which is political. They're all political. He can't be a real president for one lousy speech? Why the phony presidential fig leaf? To chintz the United States of America out of a few thousand bucks when he plans to raise a billion?
The Buffet Rule? Americans have always admired the successful. The only thing wrong with rich people is we're not one of them -- yet. But now he's pitting most of us against rich folks, which is him, come to think of it. The only way he's bringing us together now is to resent their paying a smaller legal rate because theirs is a different kind of income.
And speaking of taxes, which are due Tuesday, how can the president of the United States allow 36 of his own White House aides to fall $833,000 behind in their tax payments?
How is that what the first Obama offered, making him an example of American success? (Hint: His GOP opponent is far richer than Obama and earned it the old-fashioned way through work, not fronting books.)
OK, Obama wants political skirmishes all over on any petty thing so people won't notice the absence of any conceivably positive record to run on. Risky when Americans start paying attention. But if that's his only card. It's all the Republicans' fault, of course. That's the candidate in him, the one that prefers performing for adoring crowds instead of performing Oval Office duties.
But whatever happened to the president part? The leader. The principled man who through his personal story, skills and charm was going to inspire, convince, cajole Americans as diverse as himself to work together for a common national success? That official part has merged with the political, like the four Florida speeches. Now, he's just trying to fool everybody about everything.
In a way, this could be good news for Republicans. The duplicate Ernst Blofeld makes Mitt Romney look like Mr. Rogers.
But without real presidential leadership, Obama's hand-picked harpie atop the Democratic National Committee feels empowered to assign a hired gun to dismiss his opponent's wife, the cancer-surviving mother of five sons, as someone who's never worked a day in her life. Are they that scared already?
Seriously? We're going to pit now one kind of working woman against another? The guy who talks about having so many women in his life isn't going to fire the women responsible for that? He thinks American women will buy this stuff?
OK, Obama was raised by grandparents because he didn't always have a stay-at-home mom or dad. But this is a nation, not a dysfunctional family or a windy city party where factions are left to their own wards and Solyndras.
Obama is the guy who said his own wife was off limits politically, the guy whose mother-in-law has resided since Day One in the White House at taxpayer expense as a live-in nanny so the first lady can campaign for money and healthy foods? But a woman who stays at home with her kids at no public expense can be trashed because of her party?
We were never exactly fond of the Original Obama. But we'd take him any day over the twilight character that inhabits the Oval Office now.
RELATED:
Why is Obama so rattled?
*
PAT BUCHANAN ON OBAMA’S
HISPANDERING FOR THE ILLEGALS’ VOTES:
“What is the response of
Barack Obama, who took an oath to see to it that federal laws are faithfully
executed?”
“He is siding with the
law-breakers. He is pandering to the ethnic lobbies. He is not berating a
Mexican regime that aids and abets this invasion of the country of which he is
commander in chief. Instead, he attacks the government of Arizona for trying to
fill a gaping hole in law enforcement left by his own dereliction of duty.”
*
TOWNHALL.com
Whose
Country Is This?
Pat Buchanan
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
With
the support of 70 percent of its citizens, Arizona has ordered sheriffs and
police to secure the border and remove illegal aliens, half a million of whom
now reside there.
Arizona
acted because the U.S. government has abdicated its constitutional duty to
protect the states from invasion and refuses to enforce America's immigration
laws.
"We
in Arizona have been more than patient waiting for Washington to act,"
said Gov. Jan Brewer. "But decades of inaction and misguided policy have
created an unacceptable situation."
We
have a crisis in Arizona because we have a failed state in Washington.
What is the response of
Barack Obama, who took an oath to see to it that federal laws are faithfully
executed?
He is siding with the
law-breakers. He is pandering to the ethnic lobbies. He is not berating a
Mexican regime that aids and abets this invasion of the country of which he is
commander in chief. Instead, he attacks the government of Arizona for trying to
fill a gaping hole in law enforcement left by his own dereliction of duty.
He
has denounced Arizona as "misguided." He has called on the Justice
Department to ensure that Arizona's sheriffs and police do not violate anyone's
civil rights. But he has said nothing about the rights of the people of Arizona
who must deal with the costs of having hundreds of thousands of lawbreakers in
their midst.
How's
that for Andrew Jackson-style leadership?
Obama
has done everything but his duty to enforce the law.
Undeniably,
making it a state as well as a federal crime to be in this country illegally,
and requiring police to check the immigration status of anyone they have a
"reasonable suspicion" is here illegally, is tough and burdensome.
But what choice did Arizona have?
The
state has a fiscal crisis caused in part by the burden of providing schooling and
social welfare for illegals and their families, who consume far more in
services than they pay in taxes and who continue to pour in. Even John McCain
is now calling for 3,000 troops on the border.
Police
officers and a prominent rancher have been murdered. There have been
kidnappings believed to be tied to the Mexican drug cartels. There are nightly
high-speed chases through the barrios where innocent people are constantly at
risk.
If
Arizona does not get control of the border and stop the invasion, U.S. citizens
will stop coming to Arizona and will begin to depart, as they are already
fleeing California.
A country that cannot control
its borders isn't really a country anymore, Ronald Reagan reminded us.
What
we are talking about here is the Balkanization and breakup of a nation into
ethnic enclaves. A country that cannot
control its borders isn't really a country anymore, Ronald Reagan reminded us.
The
tasks that Arizonans are themselves undertaking are ones that belong by right,
the Constitution and federal law to the Border Patrol, Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, and Homeland Security.
Arizona
has been compelled to assume the feds' role because the feds won't do their
job. And for that dereliction of duty the buck stops on the desk of the president
of the United States.
Why
is Obama paralyzed? Why does he not enforce the law, even if he dislikes it, by
punishing the businessmen who hire illegals and by sending the 12 million to 20
million illegals back home? President Eisenhower did it. Why won't he?
*
OBAMA
THE HISPANDERING PRESIDENT SELLING OUT HIS OWN COUNTRY FOR THE ILLEGALS’ VOTES!
*
Because
he is politically correct. Because he owes a big debt to the Hispanic lobby
that helped deliver two-thirds of that vote in 2008. Though most citizens of
Hispanic descent in Arizona want the border protected and the laws enforced,
the Hispanic lobby demands that the law be changed.
Fair
enough. But the nation rose up as one to reject the
"path-to-citizenship" -- i.e., amnesty -- that the 2007 plan of
George W. Bush, McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama envisioned.
Al
Sharpton threatens to go to Phoenix and march in the streets against the new
Arizona law. Let him go.
JOBS?
NO LEGAL NEED APPLY HERE!
Let
us see how many African-Americans, who are today frozen out of the 8 million
jobs held by illegal aliens that might otherwise go to them or their children,
will march to defend an invasion for which they are themselves paying the
heaviest price.
Last
year, while Americans were losing a net of 5 million jobs, the U.S. government
-- Bush and Obama both -- issued 1,131,000 green cards to legal immigrants to
come and take the jobs that did open up, a flood of immigrants equaled in only
four other years in our history.
What
are we doing to our own people?
Whose
country is this, anyway?
America
today has an establishment that, because it does not like the immigration laws,
countenances and condones wholesale violation of those laws.
Nevertheless,
under those laws, the U.S. government is obligated to deport illegal aliens and
punish businesses that knowingly hire them.
This
is not an option. It is an obligation.
Can
anyone say Barack Obama is meeting that obligation?
*
FAIRUS.org
The
Administration's Phantom Immigration Enforcement Policy
According
to DHS’s own reports, very little of our nation’s borders (Southwestern or
otherwise) are secure, and gaining control is not even a goal of the
department.
By
Ira Mehlman
Published on 12/07/2009
Townhall.com
Published on 12/07/2009
Townhall.com
The
setting was not quite the flight deck of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln with a
“Mission Accomplished” banner as the backdrop, but it was the next best thing.
Speaking at the Center for American Progress (CAP) on Nov. 13, Homeland
Security Secretary Janet Napolitano declared victory over illegal immigration
and announced that the Obama administration is ready to move forward with a
mass amnesty for the millions of illegal aliens already living in the United
States.
Arguing
the Obama administration’s case for amnesty, Napolitano laid out what she
described as the “three-legged stool” for immigration reform. As the
administration views it, immigration reform must include “a commitment to
serious and effective enforcement, improved legal flows for families and
workers, and a firm but fair way to deal with those who are already here.”
Acknowledging
that a lack of confidence in the government’s ability and commitment to
effectively enforce the immigration laws it passes proved to be the Waterloo of
previous efforts to gain amnesty for illegal aliens, Napolitano was quick to
reassure the American public that those concerns could be put to rest.
“For
starters, the security of the Southwest border has been transformed from where
it was in 2007,” stated the secretary. Not only is the border locked up tight,
she continued, but the situation is well in-hand in the interior of the country
as well. “We’ve also shown that the government is serious and strategic in its
approach to enforcement by making changes in how we enforce the law in the
interior of the country and at worksites…Furthermore, we’ve transformed
worksite enforcement to truly address the demand side of illegal immigration.”
If
Rep. Joe Wilson had been in attendance to hear Secretary Napolitano’s CAP
speech he might well have had a few choice comments to offer. But since he
wasn’t, we will have to rely on the Department of Homeland Security’s own data
to assess the veracity of Napolitano’s claims.
According
to DHS’s own reports, very little of our nation’s borders (Southwestern or
otherwise) are secure, and gaining control is not even a goal of the
department. DHS claims to have “effective control” over just 894 miles of
border. That’s 894 out of 8,607 miles they are charged with protecting. As for
the other 7,713 miles? DHS’s stated border security goal for FY 2010 is the
same 894 miles.
The
administration’s strategic approach to interior and worksite enforcement is
just as chimerical as its strategy at the border, unless one considers
shuffling paper to be a strategy. DHS data, released November 18, show that
administrative arrests of immigration law violators fell by 68 percent between
2008 and 2009. The department also carried out 60 percent fewer arrests for
criminal violations of immigration laws, 58 percent fewer criminal indictments,
and won 63 percent fewer convictions.
While
the official unemployment rate has climbed from 7.6 percent when President
Obama took office in January to 10 percent today, the administration’s worksite
enforcement strategy has amounted to a bureaucratic game of musical chairs. The
administration has all but ended worksite enforcement actions and replaced them
with paperwork audits. When the audits determine that illegal aliens are on the
payroll, employers are given the opportunity to fire them with little or no
adverse consequence to the company, while no action is taken to remove the
illegal workers from the country. The illegal workers simply acquire a new set
of fraudulent documents and move on to the next employer seeking workers
willing to accept substandard wages.
In
Janet Napolitano’s alternative reality a mere 10 percent of our borders under
“effective control” and sharp declines in arrests and prosecutions of
immigration lawbreakers may be construed as confidence builders, but it is hard
to imagine that the American public is going to see it that way. If anything,
the administration’s record has left the public less confident that promises of
future immigration enforcement would be worth the government paper they’re
printed on.
As
Americans scrutinize the administration’s plans to overhaul immigration policy,
they are likely to find little in the “three-legged stool” being offered that
they like or trust. The first leg – enforcement – the administration has all
but sawed off. The second – increased admissions of extended family members and
workers – makes little sense with some 25 million Americans either unemployed
or relegated to part-time work. And the third – amnesty for millions of illegal
aliens – is anathema to their sense of justice and fair play.
As
Americans well know, declaring “Mission Accomplished” and actually
accomplishing a mission are two completely different things. When it comes to
enforcing immigration laws, the only message the public is receiving from this
administration is “Mission Aborted.”
*
MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com
Obama soft on illegals enforcement
Arrests of illegal immigrant
workers have dropped precipitously under President Obama, according to figures
released Wednesday. Criminal arrests, administrative arrests, indictments and
convictions of illegal immigrants at work sites all fell by more than 50
percent from fiscal 2008 to fiscal 2009.
The figures show that Mr. Obama has made good on his pledge to shift enforcement away from going after illegal immigrant workers themselves - but at the expense of Americans' jobs, said Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the Republican who compiled the numbers from the Department of Homeland Security's U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE). Mr. Smith, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said a period of economic turmoil is the wrong time to be cutting enforcement and letting illegal immigrants take jobs that Americans otherwise would hold.
The figures show that Mr. Obama has made good on his pledge to shift enforcement away from going after illegal immigrant workers themselves - but at the expense of Americans' jobs, said Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the Republican who compiled the numbers from the Department of Homeland Security's U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE). Mr. Smith, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said a period of economic turmoil is the wrong time to be cutting enforcement and letting illegal immigrants take jobs that Americans otherwise would hold.
*
Here is the Department of Homeland Security's Hotline for
reporting suspected illegal employees and employers: 866-347-2423 (YOU MAY BE
WASTING YOUR TIME HERE. HISPANDERING OBAMA SELECTED LA RAZA JANET NAPOLITANO TO
HEAD “HOMELAND SECURITY = PATHWAY TO CITIZENSHIP” FOR OPEN AND UNDEFENDED
BORDERS)
*
Shaping up to be the most corrupt
administration in American history:
administration in American history:
- Obama’s team:
Not the “best of the Washington insiders,” as the liberal media style
them, but rather, a dysfunctional and dangerous conglomerate of
business-as-usual cronies and hacks
- In the first two
weeks alone of his infant administration, Obama had made no fewer than 17
exceptions to his “no-lobbyist” rule
- Why the fact
that the massive infusion of union dues into his campaign treasury didn’t
trouble him in the least reveals Obama’s credibility as a reformer
- The lack of unprecedented
pace of withdrawals and botched appointments -- and how getting through
the confirmation process was no guarantee of ethical cleanliness or
competence, even as Obama’s cheerleaders were glorifying the Greatest
Transition in World History
- Inconsistency:
How Obama, erstwhile critic of the campaign finance practice known as
“bundling,” happily accepted more than $350,000 in bundled contributions
from billionaire hedge-fund managers
- How Obama broke
his transparency pledge with the very first bill he signed into law --
helping make hostility to transparency is a running thread through Obama’s
cabinet
- Michelle Obama:
Beneath the cultured pearls, sleeveless designer dresses, and eyelashes
applied by her full-time makeup artist, is a hardball Chicago politico
- Joe Biden: It’s
not just that he lies, it’s that he lies so well that you think he really
believes the stuff he makes up
- Treasury
Secretary Geithner: His ineptness and epic blundering -- including how he
nearly caused the collapse of the dollar in international trade with a
single remark
- The appalling
story of Technology Czar Vivek Kundra, the convicted shoplifter in charge
of the entire federal government’s information security infrastructure
- Obama’s “Porker
of the Month” Transportation Secretary, Roy LaHood: An earmark-addicted
influence peddler born and raised on the politics of pay-to-play
- SEIU:
Responsible for installing a cabal of hand-chosen officers who exploited
their cash-infused fiefdoms for personal gain and presided over rigged
elections -- in the process, becoming all that they had professed to stand
against as representatives of the downtrodden worker
- How Obama lied
on his “Fight the Smears” campaign website when he claimed that he “never
organized with ACORN”
- ACORN: How the
profound threat the group poses is not merely ideological or economic --
it’s electoral
- ACORN’s own
internal review of shady money transfers among its web of affiliates: How
it underscores concerns that conservatives have long raised about the
organization
- Liar, liar, pantsuit
on fire: How Hillary Clinton has already trampled upon her promise not to
let her husband’s financial dealings sway her decisions as Secretary of
State
- How even a few
principled progressives are finally beginning to question the cult of
Obama -- even as Obama sycophants in the mainstream media continue to
celebrate his “hipness” and “swagga”
*
ARE AMAZED AT HOW UTTERLY BRAZEN THESE CORPORATE OWNED
POLITICIANS ARE?
GET THIS BOOK!
Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats,
Crooks, and Cronies
by Michelle Malkin
Editorial Reviews
In her shocking new book, Malkin digs deep into the records
of President Obama's staff, revealing corrupt dealings, questionable pasts, and
abuses of power throughout his administration.
From the Inside Flap
The era of hope and change is dead....and it only took six
months in office to kill it.
Never has an administration taken office with more inflated
expectations of turning Washington around. Never have a media-anointed American
Idol and his entourage fallen so fast and hard. In her latest investigative
tour de force, New York Times bestselling author Michelle Malkin delivers a
powerful, damning, and comprehensive indictment of the culture of corruption
that surrounds Team Obama's brazen tax evaders, Wall Street cronies, petty
crooks, slum lords, and business-as-usual influence peddlers. In Culture of
Corruption, Malkin reveals:
* Why nepotism beneficiaries First Lady Michelle Obama and
Vice President Joe Biden are Team Obama's biggest liberal hypocrites--bashing
the corporate world and influence-peddling industries from which they and their
relatives have benefited mightily
* What secrets the ethics-deficient members of Obama's
cabinet--including Hillary Clinton--are trying to hide
* Why the Obama White House has more power-hungry,
unaccountable "czars" than any other administration
* How Team Obama's first one hundred days of appointments
became a litany of embarrassments as would-be appointee after would-be
appointee was exposed as a tax cheat or had to withdraw for other reasons
* How Obama's old ACORN and union cronies have squandered
millions of taxpayer dollars and dues money to enrich themselves and expand
their power
* How Obama's Wall Street money men and corporate lobbyists
are ruining the economy and helping their friends In Culture of Corruption,
Michelle Malkin lays bare the Obama administration's seamy underside that the
liberal media would rather keep hidden.
• Publisher:
Regnery Publishing (July 27, 2009)
• Language:
English
• ISBN-10:
1596981091
• ISBN-13:
978-1596981096
*
WHAT DID THE BANKSTERS KNOW ABOUT OUR ACTOR OBAMA THAT WE
DIDN’T KNOW?
Records show that four out of Obama's top five contributors
are employees of financial industry giants - Goldman Sachs ($571,330), UBS AG
($364,806), JPMorgan Chase ($362,207) and Citigroup ($358,054).
BARACK OBAMA HAS COLLECTED NEARLY TWICE AS MUCH MONEY AS
JOHN McCAIN
BY DAVID SALTONSTALL
DAILY NEWS SENIOR CORRESPONDENT
July 1st 2008
Wall Street firms have chipped in more than $9 million to
Barack Obama. Zurga/Bloomberg
Wall Street is investing heavily in Barack Obama.
Although the Democratic presidential hopeful has vowed to
raise capital gains and corporate taxes, financial industry bigs have
contributed almost twice as much to Obama as to GOP rival John McCain, a Daily
News analysis of campaign records shows.
"Wall Street wants change and wants a curtailment in
spending. It wants someone who focuses on the domestic economy," said Jim
Cramer, the boisterous host of CNBC's "Mad Money."
Cramer also does not discount nostalgia for the go-go 1990s,
when Bill Clinton led the largest economic expansion in history.
"It wants a Clinton like in 1992, but not a Hillary
Clinton," he said. "That's Barack Obama."
For both candidates, Wall Street's investment and banking
sectors have become among their portliest cash cows, contributing $9.5 million
to Obama and $5.3 million to McCain so far.
It's a haul that is already raising concerns that, as the
nation's faltering economy has become issue No. 1, the two candidates may have
a hard time playing tough on issues like market regulation or corporate-tax
loopholes.
"No matter who wins in November, Wall Street will have
a friend in the White House," said Massie Ritsch of the Center for
Responsive Politics, which crunched the data for The News.
*
OBAMA’S CULTURE OF CORRUPTION – CHANGE??? HE’S NOTHING BUT
BUSH’S THIRD TERM!
NEXT TO BANKSTERS, OBAMA’S ADMINISTRATION IS INFESTED WITH
THE MEXICAN FASCIST PARTY of LA RAZA!
OBAMA USES TAX DOLLARS TO FUND LA RAZA’S GET OUT THE
ILLEGALS VOTES!
NEW YORK TIMES
April 14, 2012
White House Opens Door to Big Donors, and
Lobbyists Slip In
Last May, as a battle was
heating up between Internet companies and Hollywood over how to stop online
piracy, a top entertainment industry lobbyist landed a meeting at the White
House with one of President Obama’s technology advisers.
The lobbyist did not get
there by himself.
He was accompanied by
Antoinette C. Bush, a well-connected Washington lawyer who has represented
companies like Viacom, Sony and News Corporation for 30 years. A friend of the
president and a cousin of his close aide Valerie B. Jarrett, Ms. Bush has been
to the White House at least nine times during his term, taking lobbyists along
on a few occasions, joining an invitation-only forum about intellectual
property, and making social visits with influential friends.
At the same time, she and
her husband, Dwight, have donated heavily to the president’s re-election
effort: Mr. Bush gave $35,800 on the day of his wife’s White House meeting last
year, and Ms. Bush contributed the same amount a month later. In November, they hosted a $17,900-a-plate
fund-raiser at their home, where Mr. Obama complained that the nation’s capital
should be more “responsive to the needs of people, not the needs of special
interests.”
“That is probably the
biggest piece of business that remains unfinished,” the president said, as
about 45 guests dined under a backyard tent.
Although Mr. Obama has made a point of not accepting contributions
from registered lobbyists, a review of campaign donations and White House
visitor logs shows that special interests have had little trouble making
themselves heard. Many of
the president’s biggest donors, while not lobbyists, took lobbyists with them
to the White House, while others performed essentially the same function on
their visits.
More broadly, the review
showed that those who donated the most to Mr. Obama and the Democratic Party
since he started running for president were far more likely to visit the White
House than others. Among donors who gave $30,000 or less, about 20 percent visited
the White House, according to a New York Times analysis that matched names in
the visitor logs with donor records. But among those who donated $100,000 or
more, the figure rises to about 75 percent. Approximately two-thirds of the
president’s top fund-raisers in the 2008 campaign visited the White House at
least once, some of them numerous times.
The reasons someone might
have gained access to the White House and made a donation are wide-ranging, and
it is clear that in some cases the administration came down against the
policies being sought by the visitors. But the regular appearance of big donors
inside the White House underscores how political contributions continue to
lubricate many of the interactions between officials and their guests, if for
no other reason than that donors view the money as useful for getting a foot in
the door.
Timing of Donations
Some of the donors had no previous record of giving to the
president or his party, or of making donations of such magnitude, so their
gifts, sometimes given in close proximity to meetings, raise questions about
whether they came with expectations of access or were expressions of gratitude.
Dr. William C. Mohlenbrock,
chairman of a health care data analysis firm, Verras Ltd., gave occasionally to
political candidates over the years, mostly small amounts to Republicans. But
last May he contributed the maximum allowable gift, $35,800, to the Obama
Victory Fund, which benefits the president’s campaign and the Democratic Party.
Later in the year, with help from a Democratic consultant, he landed a meeting
with a top White House aide involved in the health care overhaul, but failed to persuade Medicare officials to require more health data collection as part of the
new regulations.
Joe E. Kiani, who heads a
medical device company, Masimo Corporation, stepped up his giving to Democrats
last year as medical device makers campaigned unsuccessfully for the repeal of
an excise tax imposed on the industry. Mr. Kiani had several meetings with
White House officials last year, including two with lobbyists from his company
and another with representatives from his industry’s trade association. In the
midst of these gatherings, he donated $35,800 to the victory fund.
Administration officials
insisted that donations do not factor into White House visits, and they cited
steps taken to curb the influence of money in politics, including a ban on
executive branch employees’ accepting gifts from lobbyists and on appointees’
lobbying the White House after they leave. Eric Schultz, a White House
spokesman, pointed out that Mr. Obama was the first president to release the
visitor logs regularly, and added that “being a supporter of the president does
not secure you a visit to the White House, nor does it preclude you from one.”
“The people selected for
this article are contributors to the president,” Mr. Schultz said, “but this
article excludes the thousands of people who visit the White House every week
for meetings and events who did not contribute to the president, many of whom
may not have even supported the president.”
‘How This Business Works’
Most donors, including Dr.
Mohlenbrock and Mr. Kiani, declined to talk about their motivations for giving.
But Patrick J. Kennedy, the former representative from Rhode Island, who
donated $35,800 to an Obama re-election fund last fall while seeking
administration support for a nonprofit venture, said contributions were simply
a part of “how this business works.”
“If you want to call it
‘quid pro quo,’ fine,” he said. “At the end of the day, I want to make sure I
do my part.”
Mr. Kennedy visited the
White House several times to win support for One Mind for Research, his
initiative to help develop new treatments for brain disorders. While his family
name and connections are clearly influential, he said, he knows White House
officials are busy. And as a former chairman of the Democratic Congressional
Campaign Committee, he said he was keenly aware of the political realities they
face.
“I know that they look at
the reports,” he said, referring to records of campaign donations. “They’re my
friends anyway, but it won’t hurt when I ask them for a favor if they don’t see
me as a slouch.”
Others, like Ms. Bush,
rejected the notion that their donations were tied to access. Her husband said
it was a coincidence that his contribution last May — made at a Democratic
fund-raiser — came on the same day his wife was at the White House. And Ms.
Bush noted that most of her meetings occurred before she made her donation in
June. She added that as a longtime lawyer with the firm Skadden Arps, it should
not be surprising that her work would occasionally take her to the White House.
“Communications law is what
I do for a living,” Ms. Bush said. “Yes, I’m an Obama supporter, but in the end
I’m a communications law expert. I had the same clients in the Bush
administration as well as the Obama administration.”
Although those in office
invariably deny it, the notion that access is available at a price is a
well-founded reality of Washington. Memorably, President Nixon was caught on
tape remarking that $250,000 should be the minimum donation for an ambassadorship.
The Clinton White House offered major donors coffees with the president or
sleepovers in the Lincoln Bedroom. More recently, Republicans in Congress have
raised questions about whether Democratic donors who invested in the solar energy company Solyndra and other troubled firms influenced the
administration’s support of those businesses, pointing to White House visits
and other official contacts. The administration denies there was any
wrongdoing.
At a minimum, it is
standard for administrations to recognize generous supporters with sought-after
invitations to special events. The Obama White House logs are filled with the
names of donors welcomed for St. Patrick’s Day receptions, Super Bowl parties and concerts. Last year, several major Democratic donors
rounded out the guest list for a film screening with the first lady.
But in addition to social
events, business is also carried out in the White House and its executive
offices. The logs suggest some Obama fund-raisers and donors have been
trafficking in ties they forged to the administration, helping clients get a
seat at the table.
When Los Angeles officials
wanted White House backing for a program that would speed up local transit
projects, they turned last spring to a California political operative, Kerman
Maddox, a top Obama fund-raiser and party donor. “We thought he could help our
outreach in Washington,” said Richard Leahy, chief executive of the Los Angeles
County Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
In an internal memo
justifying Mr. Maddox’s hiring, the authority wrote that he had “direct access
to the Executive Oval Office” and cited his position on the Obama campaign’s
National Finance Committee. Mr. Maddox’s company Web site prominently features
photographs of him with the Obamas.
One day after the authority
signed off on his contract, Mr. Maddox made a $10,000 donation to the Obama
re-election effort; he donated an additional $6,000 in June. In August, Mr.
Maddox landed a meeting for himself and the authority officials with Melody
Barnes, then director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, one of
several meetings the officials were able to get.
The administration had
previously been supportive of Los Angeles County’s efforts to accelerate its
transit projects, but the following month, Mr. Obama also announced, as part of
his jobs package, a proposal to significantly expand a Transportation
Department loan program. The plan, which has drawn bipartisan support, is
something Mr. Maddox’s clients had sought. Mr. Maddox, soon donated an
additional $11,250 to the victory fund. He said in an e-mail that his donations
were tied to fund-raising events and had nothing to do with visiting the White
House.
Navigating Washington
Noah Mamet, another veteran
Democratic fund-raiser and consultant, emphasizes on his firm’s Web site that
he and his partners “are not lobbyists.” Instead, they help their clients
“strategically navigate the worlds of politics, philanthropy and business.” Mr.
Mamet, who donated $35,800 last year, and his partners have visited the Obama
White House more than a dozen times, including at least four occasions on which
they accompanied clients to meetings with administration officials. Mr. Mamet
declined to comment.
Lamell McMorris, a Chicago
native and longtime Obama supporter who appears in White House visitor logs 20
times, runs a Washington consulting firm that, as recently as last year, was
registered to lobby. He also operates a sports management company, and has
taken clients like the football player Cam Newton and the New Jersey Nets guard
Anthony Morrow to the White House for private tours. Mr. McMorris did not reply
to requests for comment.
With many of these
meetings, it is often difficult to discern what exactly was being discussed.
Clues can sometimes be gleaned by looking at the positions and interests of
other attendees — who often include lobbyists.
David Beier, who oversees
government affairs at the pharmaceutical company Amgen, has had nearly a dozen
meetings at the White House, according to the visitor logs. On a single day in
February last year, Mr. Beier, Amgen’s chief executive, Kevin W. Sharer, and
lobbyists from the Podesta Group, the firm led by the Democratic fund-raiser
Tony Podesta, had four meetings with top White House officials, including Ms.
Jarrett, Pete
Rouse and
Austan Goolsbee. Mr. Beier — who was registered to lobby for Amgen for 10 years
until last year — donated $35,800 in January, his largest such contribution.
The donation came two weeks after he and Mr. Podesta visited the White House
for another meeting with an economic official.
Amgen declined to comment,
but lobbying disclosure reports show that the company hired the Podesta Group
to press the White House and Congress on Medicare coverage and reimbursement
for drugs for end-stage renal disease, among other issues.
As for Ms. Bush, a former
Senate staff member whose stepfather is the Democratic power broker Vernon E.
Jordan Jr., she declined to comment on the nature of her visits. But the
purpose of some of them can be inferred from the more detailed records of
meetings she had around the same time with officials at the Federal
Communications Commission. Those agency meetings — some of which included the
same Sony and Viacom lobbyists whom she accompanied to the White House — were
mostly about shaping regulations to discourage piracy of digital media.
She also helped Viacom
fight an F.C.C. complaint that one of its Nickelodeon shows, Zevo-3, was little
more than a vehicle for the show’s marketing partner, Skechers. Writing to the
agency for Viacom, Ms. Bush argued that the cartoon show, which features
characters with special powers who previously appeared in Skechers commercials,
intentionally distances itself from the footwear Skechers sells.
“In particular,” she wrote,
“the characters in Zevo-3 do not derive any powers from their shoes, do not go
out of their way to refer to their shoes and do not indicate that their shoes
bear any relation to their roles on the program.”
Kevin Quealy contributed reporting.
*
WHY
WALL STREET GORGES ON OBAMA: HE’S PROMISED THE CRIMINALS NO PRISON TIME AND
SEVERELY DEPRESSED WAGED BY WITH HORDES OF ILLEGALS CLIMBING OUR OPEN &
UNDEFENDED BORDERS TO GET AT OUR JOBS!
PUTTING
LA RAZA IN OUR JOBS, KEEPS WAGES DEPRESSED AND PROFITS HIGHER FOR THE 1%!
BUT
ISN’T OBAMA MERELY THE PRESIDENT FOR ILLEGALS AND HIS CRIMINAL BANKSTERS?
HIS CRIMINAL BANKSTER DONORS MADE MORE
MONEY DURING THE FIRST TWO YEARS UNDER OBAMA, THAN THEY DID ALL EIGHT UNDER
BUSH!
NOT ONE HAS GONE TO PRISON, EVEN HAS
HUNDREDS OF OCCUPY WALL ST PROTESTORS HAVE BEEN ARRESTED.
IN FACT, THE SHIFT THIS NATION’S
ECONOMY DEEPER INTO THE POCKETS OF THE RICH HAS CONTINUED UNABATED UNDER OBAMA!
HE IS THE 1% PRESIDENT, AND IF YOU’RE A
BANKSTER, OR STRONG TIE$ TO BANKSTERS, OR A LA RAZA PARTY MEMBER, YOU CAN COME
WORK FOR THE BANKSTER-OWNED PRESIDENT!
“This return of corporate power comes in part
because the revolving door between government influence and corporate paydays
has begun to turn anew. Even President Obama has submitted to its centrifugal
force. His new White House chief of staff, William Daley, comes directly from J.P. Morgan
Chase. Daley scored that lucrative gig after serving as commerce secretary
during Bill Clinton's second term.”
TWO YEARS OF OBAMA:
Fifteen million Americans are out of work, thanks in part to
reckless Wall Street activities. Yet corporate profits are at record highs,
companies are sitting on vast amounts of cash, and, after a tough two years,
business interests are again atop the Washington power structure.
*
THE U.S. CHAMBER of COMMERCE,
LIKE OBAMA, ADVOCATES NO BORDERS WITH MEXICO, NO E-VERIFY, AND AMNESTY, OR AT
LEAST CONTINUED NON-ENFORCEMENT. IT’S ALL ABOUT KEEPING WAGES DEPRESSED!
Big business is back in business
By Dana Milbank
Wednesday, January 12, 2011;
Wednesday, January 12, 2011;
There was a festive
atmosphere at U.S. Chamber of Commerce headquarters
Tuesday morning as the corporate lobby delivered its annual "State of American Business" address.
Margaret Spellings,
the former Bush Cabinet officer who cashed out and joined the business group, made
the introductions, telling members that despite "the worst economic
climate since the Great Depression," the chamber had scored a "number
of legislative victories, tremendous success in the elections and another
strong year of fundraising."
Thanks to the
chamber, Spellings boasted, "the American business community always has a
seat at the table."
A seat?
Business has just about all the seats at the table - and more on back order.
Fifteen million Americans are out of work, thanks in part to
reckless Wall Street activities. Yet corporate profits are at record highs,
companies are sitting on vast amounts of cash, and, after a tough two years, business
interests are again atop the Washington power structure.
This return of corporate power comes in
part because the revolving door between government influence and corporate
paydays has begun to turn anew. Even President Obama has submitted to its centrifugal
force. His new White House chief of staff, William Daley, comes directly from J.P. Morgan
Chase. Daley scored that lucrative gig after serving as commerce secretary
during Bill Clinton's second term.
As Daley came in
through the revolving door, OMB Director Peter Orszag had just gone out. He cashed out to become
a vice chairman of Citigroup, where his government expertise should be worth
seven figures annually. One of Orszag's partners on Obama's economics team, Larry Summers, is returning to Harvard - but that
won't stop him from delivering the keynote address to the Global Hedge Fund Summit in
Bermuda.
The thrill of cashing
out has been endorsed by Obama himself. Explaining press secretary Robert
Gibbs's decision to depart, the president told the New
York Times: "He's had a
six-year stretch now where basically he's been going 24/7 with relatively
modest pay." The poor Gibbs, who had been earning a "modest" $172,200 a year, is now contemplating making much more
than that representing corporate clients.
At the other end of
Pennsylvania Avenue, corporate interests are becoming increasingly brazen.
Lobbyists have snagged key staff jobs in the new GOP House leadership and
chief-of-staff positions in many new lawmakers' offices. On the day John
Boehner was elected speaker last week, lobbyists were literally strutting their
stuff on the House floor.
Bob Livingston, the
former Republican congressman, was buttonholing members; he's the head of a lobbying
firm that advertises Livingston as "the only practicing former
chairman of the House Appropriations Committee." Also on the floor, Marty Russo, the longtime Democratic congressman
who had just stepped down as head of the lobbying giant Cassidy and Associates,
shook Boehner's hand.
A House Republican
source says Livingston left when informed that, as a registered lobbyist, he
was not allowed to be on the House floor.
Such behavior by
lobbyists - both registered lobbyists and unregistered corporate
"advisers" - has become more common. At last year's State of the
Union address, Post congressional correspondent Paul Kane observed, on the
House floor, former members Mike Ferguson, who runs a lobbying firm, and Jim
Greenwood, CEO of the biotech lobby. Kane has also spotted former senator Bill
Cohen, who runs a big lobbying and consulting firm, on the Senate floor; former
representative Sherry Boehlert, now a lobbyist, in the Speaker's Lobby off the
House floor; and lawmaker-turned-lobbyist Al Wynn entertaining clients in the
members' dining room.
The Center for Responsive
Politics has identified more
than 340 former members of Congress, and 3,665 former staffers, in lobbying or
related fields. The few rules to slow the revolving door do little, both
because of the routine granting of waivers and because of loose registration
requirements for lobbying.
All of this gave the
business lobby much to celebrate as chamber members discussed the State of
American Business over mini-muffins and banana bread Tuesday morning. Tom Donohue, the chamber's white-maned CEO, hailed
the "new tone coming from the White House" since the elections -
which the chamber influenced by spending tens of millions of dollars from
donors kept anonymous, Donohue explained, so opponents couldn't "demagogue
them." Donohue said he's "absolutely convinced" that the new
business-friendly White House will move his way on regulation and trade.
A reporter asked
Donohue for a suggestion of what corporate America, with its record profits, should
do to put people back to work. "I got to think about this for a
minute," Donohue said, then added: "I think the most important thing
to tell a company is to return a reasonable return to their investors."
*
NEW YORK TIMES
January 10, 2010
Op-Ed Columnist
The Other Plot to Wreck America
THERE may not be a
person in America without a strong opinion about what coulda, shoulda been done
to prevent the underwear bomber from boarding that Christmas flight to Detroit.
In the years since 9/11, we’ve all become counterterrorists. But in the 16
months since that other calamity in downtown New York — the crash precipitated
by the 9/15 failure of Lehman Brothers — most of us are still ignorant about what Warren Buffett
called the “financial weapons
of mass destruction” that wrecked our economy. Fluent as we are in Al Qaeda and
body scanners, when it comes to synthetic C.D.O.’s and credit-default swaps,
not so much.
What we don’t know will
hurt us, and quite possibly on a more devastating scale than any Qaeda attack. Americans
must be told the full story of how Wall Street gamed and inflated the housing
bubble, made out like bandits, and then left millions of households in ruin. Without that reckoning, there will be no public
clamor for serious reform of a financial system that was as cunningly breached
as airline security at the Amsterdam airport. And without reform, another
massive attack on our economic security is guaranteed. Now that it can count on
government bailouts, Wall Street has more incentive than ever to pump up its
risks — secure that it can keep the bonanzas while we get stuck with the
losses.
The window for change is
rapidly closing. Health care, Afghanistan and the terrorism panic may have
exhausted Washington’s already limited capacity for heavy lifting, especially
in an election year. The White House’s chief economic hand, Lawrence Summers,
has repeatedly announced that “everybody agrees that the recession is
over” — which is technically true from an economist’s perspective and
certainly true on Wall Street, where bailed-out banks are reporting record
profits and bonuses. The contrary voices of Americans who have lost pay, jobs,
homes and savings are either patronized or drowned out entirely by a political
system where the banking lobby rules in both parties and the revolving door
between finance and government never stops spinning.
It’s against this
backdrop that this week’s long-awaited initial public hearings of the Financial Crisis
Inquiry Commission are
so critical. This is the bipartisan panel that Congress mandated last spring to investigate the still murky story of what
happened in the meltdown. Phil Angelides, the former California treasurer who
is the inquiry’s chairman, told me in interviews late last year that he has
been busy deploying a tough investigative staff and will not allow the
proceedings to devolve into a typical blue-ribbon Beltway exercise in toothless
bloviation.
He wants to examine the financial sector’s
“greed, stupidity, hubris and outright corruption” — from traders on the ground
to the board room. “It’s important that we
deliver new information,” he said. “We can’t just rehash what we’ve known to
date.” He understands that if he fails to make news or to tell the story in a
way that is comprehensible and compelling enough to arouse Americans to demand
action, Wall Street and Washington will both keep moving on, unchallenged and
unchastened.
Angelides gets it. But
he has a tough act to follow: Ferdinand Pecora, the legendary
prosecutor who served as chief
counsel to the Senate committee that investigated the 1929 crash as F.D.R. took
office. Pecora was a master of detail and drama. He riveted America even
without the aid of television. His investigation led to indictments, jail
sentences and, ultimately, key New Deal reforms — the creation of the
Securities and Exchange Commission and the Glass-Steagall Act, designed to
prevent the formation of banks too big to fail.
As it happened, a major
Pecora target was the chief executive of National City Bank, the institution
that would grow up to be Citigroup. Among other transgressions, National City
had repackaged bad Latin
American debt as new securities that it then sold to easily suckered investors during the
frenzied 1920s boom. Once disaster struck, the bank’s executives helped
themselves to millions of dollars in interest-free loans. Yet their own
employees had to keep ponying up salary deductions for decimated National City
stock purchased at a heady precrash price.
Trade bad Latin American
debt for bad mortgage debt, and you have a partial portrait of Citigroup at the
height of the housing bubble. The reckless Citi executives of our day may not
have given themselves interest-free loans, but they often walked away with the
short-term, illusionary profits while their employees were left with shredded
jobs and 401(k)’s. Among those Citi executives was Robert Rubin, who, as the
Clinton Treasury secretary, helped repeal the last
vestiges of Glass-Steagall after years of Wall Street assault. Somewhere Pecora is turning
in his grave
Rubin has never
apologized, let alone been held accountable. But he’s hardly alone. Even after
all the country has gone through, the titans who fueled the bubble are
heedless. In last Sunday’s Times, Sandy Weill, the former chief executive who
built Citigroup (and recruited Rubin to its ranks), gave a remarkable interview
to Katrina Brooker blaming his own hand-picked successor, Charles Prince, for
his bank’s implosion. Weill said he preferred to be remembered for his
philanthropy. Good luck with that.
Among his causes is
Carnegie Hall, where he is chairman of the board. To see how far American
capitalism has fallen, contrast Weill with the giant who built Carnegie Hall. Not only is Andrew Carnegie remembered for far more epic and generous philanthropy
than Weill’s — some 1,600 public
libraries, just for starters —
but also for creating a steel empire that actually helped build America’s industrial
infrastructure in the late 19th century. At Citi, Weill built little more than
a bloated gambling casino. As Paul Volcker, the regrettably powerless chairman of
Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, said recently, there is not “one shred of neutral evidence”
that any financial innovation of the past 20 years has led to economic growth.
Citi, that “innovative” banking supermarket, destroyed far more wealth than
Weill can or will ever give away.
Even now — despite its
near-death experience, despite the departures of Weill, Prince and Rubin — Citi
remains as imperious as it was before 9/15. Its current chairman, Richard
Parsons, was one of three executives (along with Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman
Sachs and John Mack of Morgan Stanley) who failed to show up at
the mid-December White House meeting where President Obama implored bankers to increase lending. (The
trio blamed fog for forcing them to participate by speakerphone, but the
weather hadn’t grounded their peers or Amtrak.) Last week, ABC World News was
also stiffed by Citi, which refused to answer questions about its latest round
of outrageous credit card rate increases and instead e-mailed a statement blaming its customers for “not paying back their loans.” This from a
bank that still owes taxpayers $25
billion of its $45 billion handout!
If Citi, among the most
egregious of Wall Street reprobates, feels it can get away with business as
usual, it’s because it fears no retribution. And it got more good news last
week. Now that Chris Dodd is vacating the Senate, his chairmanship of the
Banking Committee may fall next year to
Tim Johnson of South Dakota, home to Citi’s credit card operation. Johnson was the only
Senate Democrat to vote against Congress’s recent bill policing credit card
abuses.
Though bad history shows
every sign of repeating itself on Wall Street, it will take a near-miracle for
Angelides to repeat Pecora’s triumph. Our zoo of financial skullduggery is far
more complex, with many more moving pieces, than that of the 1920s. The new
inquiry does have subpoena power, but its entire budget, a mere $8 million,
doesn’t even match the lobbying expenditures for just three banks (Citi, Morgan Stanley,
Bank of America) in the first nine months of 2009. The firms under scrutiny can
pay for as many lawyers as they need to stall between now and Dec. 15, deadline
day for the commission’s report.
More daunting still is
the inquiry’s duty to reach into high places in the public sector as well as
the private. The mystery of exactly what happened as TARP fell into place in
the fateful fall of 2008 thickens by the day — especially the
behind-closed-door machinations surrounding the government rescue of A.I.G. and
its counterparties. Last week, a Republican congressman, Darrell Issa of
California, released e-mail showing that officials at the New York Fed,
then led by Timothy Geithner, pressured A.I.G. to delay disclosing to the
S.E.C. and the public the details on the billions of bailout dollars it was
funneling to its trading partners. In this backdoor rescue, taxpayers
unknowingly awarded banks like Goldman 100 cents on the dollar for their bets
on mortgage-backed securities.
Why was our money used
to make these high-flying gamblers whole while ordinary Americans received no
such beneficence? Nothing less than complete transparency will connect the
dots. Among the big-name witnesses
that the Angelides commission has called for next week is Goldman’s Blankfein. Geithner, Henry
Paulson and Ben Bernanke should be next.
If they all skate away
yet again by deflecting blame or mouthing pro forma mea culpas, it will be a
sign that this inquiry, like so many other promises of reform since 9/15, is
likely to leave Wall Street’s status quo largely intact. That’s the
ticking-bomb scenario that truly imperils us all.
*
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/04/18/112346/obama-ran-against-bush-but-now.html
*
Posted on Mon, Apr. 18, 2011
Obama ran against Bush, but now governs like him
Steven Thomma | McClatchy Newspapers
last
updated: April 19, 2011 09:15:43 PM
WASHINGTON — He ran as the anti-Bush.
Silver-tongued, not tongue-tied. A team player on
the world stage, not a lone cowboy. A man who'd put a stop to reckless Bush
policies at home and abroad. In short, Barack Obama represented Change.
Well, that was then. Now, on one major policy after
another, President Barack Obama seems to be morphing into George W. Bush.
On the nation's finances, the man who once ripped
Bush as a failed leader for seeking to raise the nation's debt ceiling now
wants to do it himself.
On terrorism, he criticized Bush for sending
suspected terrorists to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and denying them access to U.S.
civilian courts. Now he says he'll do the same.
On taxes, he called the Bush-era tax cuts for the
wealthy wrong, and lately began calling again to end them. But in December he
signed a deal with Republicans to extend them for two years, and recently he
called the entire tax cut package good for the country.
And on war, as a candidate he said that the
president didn't have authority to unilaterally attack a country that didn't
pose an imminent threat to the U.S., and even then the president should always
seek the informed consent of Congress. Last month, without a vote in Congress,
he attacked Libya, which didn't threaten the U.S.
Big differences remain between Obama and Bush, to
be sure. His two nominees to the Supreme Court differ vastly from Bush's picks.
Obama does want to end the tax cuts for the wealthy. He also pushed through a
massive overhaul of the nation's health insurance system.
Yet even on health insurance, his stand wasn't so
much a reversal of Bush's approach as an escalation. Bush also pushed through a
massive expansion of Medicare by adding a costly prescription drug benefit — at
the time, the biggest expansion of a federal entitlement since Lyndon Johnson's
Great Society. Indeed, some of the differences between the two presidents are
measured in gray, not black and white as once seemed the case.
Some of the changes in Obama can be attributed to
the passion of campaign rhetoric giving way to the realities of governing,
analysts say.
"He is looking less like a candidate and more
like a president," said Dan Schnur, the director of the Jesse M. Unruh
Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California. "He has
discovered that it's much easier to make promises on the campaign trail than it
is to keep them as president."
At the same time, some of the surprising continuity
of Bush-era policies can be tied to the way Bush and events set the nation's
course, particularly on foreign policy.
"Morphing into Bush was not a willful
act," said Aaron David Miller, a scholar at the Woodrow Wilson
International Center for Scholars. "It was acquiescence to the policies
his predecessor shaped and the cruel realities that Obama inherited."
For example, Obama found he couldn't easily close
the prison at Guantanamo Bay because he couldn't find a place, abroad or at
home, willing to take all the terrorist suspects held there.
"Bush created, on the military and security
side, new realities from which no successor, Democrat or Republican, could
depart, "Miller said. "It's like turning around an aircraft carrier.
It cannot happen quickly."
Among the ways Obama has reversed his earlier
promises and adopted, extended or echoed Bush policies:
DEBT
In 2006, Bush had cut taxes, gone to war, and
expanded Medicare, and increased the national debt from $5.6 trillion to $8.2
trillion. He needed approval from Congress to raise the ceiling for debt to $9
trillion.
The Senate approved the increase by a narrow vote
of 52-48.
Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., voted no.
"Increasing America's debt weakens us
domestically and internationally," Obama said in 2006. "Leadership
means that 'the buck stops here.' Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of
bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has
a debt problem and a failure of leadership."
Now Obama's on the other side. He's increased the
national debt to $14 trillion, and needs Congress to approve more debt.
Moreover, Obama's aides now say that congressional meddling to use that needed
vote to wrangle budget concessions from the White House would be inappropriate
and risk financial Armageddon.
What about Obama's own vote against the president
in a similar situation? A mistake, the White House said.
TAXES
As a senator and presidential candidate, Obama
opposed extending the Bush tax cuts on incomes greater than $250,000 a year past
their expiration on Dec., 31, 2009.
In 2007, he said he was for "rolling back the
Bush tax cuts on the top 1 percent of people who don't need it." In a 2008
ad, he said, "Instead of extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest,
I'll focus on you."
As president, Obama proposed letting those tax cuts
expire as scheduled, while also proposing to make permanent the Bush tax cuts
for incomes of less than $250,000.
But he didn't get Congress to approve that. When
the issue came to a head last December, Republicans insisted on extending all
of the tax cuts or none, and Obama went along lest the tax cuts on incomes
below $250,000 expire even briefly. His final deal with the Congress also added
a one-year cut in the payroll tax for Medicare and Social Security.
"What all of us care about is growing the
American economy and creating jobs for the American people," Obama said.
"Taken as a whole, that's what this package of tax relief is going to do.
It's a good deal for the American people."
He said again last week that he wants to let the
Bush tax cuts for the wealthy expire, this time on Dec. 31, 2012.
TERRORISTS
As a presidential candidate, Obama vowed a broad
reversal of Bush's policies toward suspected terrorists.
Most pointedly, he said he'd close the prison in
Cuba and try suspected terrorists in civilian courts, not in military
tribunals.
"I have faith in America's courts," he
said in a 2007 speech. "As president, I will close Guantanamo, reject the
Military Commissions Act, and adhere to the Geneva Conventions. Our
Constitution and our Uniform Code of Military Justice provide a framework for
dealing with the terrorists."
He ran into a torrent of opposition, however.
Members of Congress balked at transferring suspected terrorists to U.S.
prisons. New Yorkers balked when his administration said it would try accused
9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a civilian court in lower Manhattan.
Last month, he changed course, saying he'd keep
Guantanamo Bay open, and would try Mohammed before a military court.
The reversal, said Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., the
chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, "is yet another
vindication of President Bush's detention policies by the Obama
administration."
Echoing Bush, Obama's also asserted that he has the
power to hold suspected terrorists without charges or trial, and that he has
the power to kill U.S. citizens abroad if his government considers them a
terrorist threat.
WAR POWERS
During his campaign, Obama signaled that he'd be
far more circumspect than Bush was in using military power. He did say he'd
send more troops to Afghanistan, which he's done, and that he'd attack al Qaida
terrorists in Pakistan, which he's also done.
But he opposed the Iraq war from the start, and
said he didn't think the president should wage war for humanitarian purposes or
act without congressional approval, absent an imminent threat to the U.S.
"The president does not have power under the
Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that
does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation," he
told The Boston Globe in 2007.
"In instances of self-defense, the president
would be within his constitutional authority to act before advising Congress or
seeking its consent. History has shown us time and again, however, that
military action is most successful when it is authorized and supported by the
legislative branch. It is always preferable to have the informed consent of
Congress prior to any military action."
On March 19, the U.S. attacked Libya on
humanitarian grounds, absent any threat to the U.S. and without approval from
Congress.
ORGY
OF GREED… Wall Street Celebrates Victory Over Their Crimes on Americans! AND NO
ONE SERVES THIS GREED MORE THAN BARACK OBAMA!
*
“On
the other side of the social divide is an uninhibited orgy of greed, documented
most recently by a Wednesday story in the New York Times (“Signs of
Swagger, Wallets out, Wall Street Celebrates.”
Thanksgiving
in America
US
corporations shatter profit records
25
November 2010
US corporations took
in $1.659 trillion in the third quarter, breaking records going back 60 years,
according to a Commerce Department report released Tuesday. It was the seventh
consecutive quarter of profit growth at “some of the fastest rates in history”
according to the New York Times.
If any more proof
were needed, the third quarter profit record exposes the lie promoted by
Democrats and Republicans alike that only the “free market” and private
businesses can reverse the nation’s 9.6 percent unemployment rate. The
corporations and banks are sitting on a cash horde in the trillions of dollars.
This money is not being used to hire workers, but to line the pockets of the
executives and top shareholders.
The profit bonanza
that lasted from July through September eclipsed the old record of $1.655
trillion established in the third quarter of 2006—just as the money-mad
speculation of the financial elite was hurtling the US and world economy toward
the precipice of its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
The resulting
financial crisis, which erupted in the autumn of 2008, threatened a total
collapse of the global financial system. In response, the governments of the
world, led by the US, used the disaster to hand over tens of trillions in
public wealth to the very finance houses that triggered the crisis. This
process continues, as demonstrated by the International Monetary Fund/European
Union-dictated rescue of the Irish banks this week.
The enormous profit
realized by US corporations in the third quarter are only the latest indication
that the Bush-Obama bailout of the financial and corporate elite has achieved
its desired aim of protecting the personal fortunes of the rich:
*Annual bonuses rose
by 11 percent for executives at the 450 largest US corporations last fiscal
year, according to a recent survey published by the Wall Street Journal.
Overall, median compensation—including salaries, bonuses, stocks, options and
other incentives—rose by three percent to $7.3 million in 2009. Shareholder
returns increased by 29 percent.
*An October survey by
the Wall Street Journal found that employees at 35 of the biggest banks,
investment banks, hedge funds, money management firms, and securities exchanges
will be paid a record $144 billion in 2010.
*According to Forbes
magazine, the net worth of the 400 richest Americans increased by 8 percent in
2010, to $1.37 trillion, more than the GDP of India, population 1.2 billion.
These vast fortunes
have been made possible through the impoverishment of the working class, the
vast majority of the population that must work in order to maintain itself.
*In 2009, 15 percent
of all US households, about 50 million people, went part or all of the year
without enough food to eat, according to a recent report from the US Department
of Agriculture (USDA). More than a third of these households, home to one
million children, went without meals on a regular basis.
*A record 49.9
million US adults went without health insurance for at least part of the past
year, up from 46 million in 2008, according to a recent report from the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The uninsured now constitute 26.2
percent of the total adult population, more than one in four, up from 24.5
percent two years ago.
*Average annual wages
for US workers fell by $457 in 2009, and the median annual wage fell by $247 to
$26,261, according to recently updated data from the Social Security
Administration (SSA).
*The US Census Bureau
found that about 44 million Americans were living in poverty in 2009, the highest
number on record and an increase of 3.8 million in one year. Nearly 19 million
Americans were living in extreme poverty in 2009, defined as half of the
official poverty level, an increase of 11 percent in one year.
This sampling—many
similar statistics could be cited—paints a portrait of a financial oligarchy
literally gorging itself at the expense of the population. Yet this reality,
which permeates every aspect of life in the US, has only whetted the appetite
of the elite and its political servants.
The holiday season
finds the lame duck 111th Congress putting the finishing touches on two years
of wealth redistribution to the rich. It is almost certain to extend Bush-era
income tax cuts for the richest Americans.
On November 30, five
days after the Thanksgiving holiday, unemployment benefits will expire for 1.2
million workers due to Congressional inaction. By Christmas and the New Year,
this figure will swell to 2 million. The fate of these workers and the several
million children who depend on them, tossed out without cash income into the
worst job market in seven decades, is of little consequence to the millionaires
and multi-millionaires who populate Congress.
One result of these
policies is that more people than ever, including those with jobs, are forced
to turn to soup kitchens, even on a day when families traditionally gather for
a holiday associated with the “bountiful harvest.” Charities across the country
are reporting record demand for help on Thanksgiving—a holiday established at a
national level by Abraham Lincoln in 1863 to honor the material abundance of
the Republic, even in the midst of the Civil War.
On the other side of
the social divide is an uninhibited orgy of greed, documented most recently by
a Wednesday story in the New York Times (“Signs of Swagger, Wallets out,
Wall Street Celebrates.”) From cosmetic plastic surgery to high-priced art
auctions, from rental properties in the Hamptons to bachelor parties that cost
tens of thousands of dollars, “Wall Street’s moneyed elite are breathing easier
again,” the article states.
The stranglehold over
society and the economy exercised by this parasitic social layer, this
modern-day aristocracy, must be broken once and for all.
Tom Eley
Wsws.org… get on their free no ads E-NEWS!
*
Lou Dobbs Tonight
Monday, November 12, 2007
Mortgage giants Wells Fargo and Banks of America are accused of slapping dubious fees on homeowners struggling to save their homes. With fewer new mortgages being written, these
companies appear to be leaning on these lucrative fees to stay profitable—with devastating consequences for homeowners. We’ll have that report.
Monday, November 12, 2007
Mortgage giants Wells Fargo and Banks of America are accused of slapping dubious fees on homeowners struggling to save their homes. With fewer new mortgages being written, these
companies appear to be leaning on these lucrative fees to stay profitable—with devastating consequences for homeowners. We’ll have that report.
“Rightly or wrongly, the
bankers seem to believe that a return to business as usual is just around the
corner.” PAUL KRUGMAN
NEW YORK TIMES
April 27, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
Money for Nothing
On July
15, 2007, The New York Times published an article with the headline “The
Richest of the Rich, Proud of a New Gilded Age.” The most prominently featured
of the “new titans” was Sanford Weill, the former chairman of Citigroup, who
insisted that he and his peers in the financial sector had earned their immense
wealth through their contributions to society.
Soon
after that article was printed, the financial edifice Mr. Weill took credit for
helping to build collapsed, inflicting immense collateral damage in the process. Even if we manage to avoid a repeat of
the Great Depression, the world economy will take years to recover from this
crisis.
All of
which explains why we should be disturbed by an article in Sunday’s Times
reporting that pay at investment banks, after dipping last year, is soaring
again — right back up to 2007 levels.
Why is
this disturbing? Let me count the ways.
First,
there’s no longer any reason to believe that the wizards of Wall Street
actually contribute anything positive to society, let alone enough to justify
those humongous paychecks.
Remember
that the gilded Wall Street of 2007 was a fairly new phenomenon. From the 1930s
until around 1980 banking was a staid, rather boring business that paid no
better, on average, than other industries, yet kept the economy’s wheels turning.
So why
did some bankers suddenly begin making vast fortunes? It was, we were told, a
reward for their creativity — for financial innovation. At this point, however,
it’s hard to think of any major recent financial innovations that actually
aided society, as opposed to being new, improved ways to blow bubbles, evade
regulations and implement de facto Ponzi schemes.
Consider
a recent speech by Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, in which he
tried to defend financial innovation. His examples of “good” financial
innovations were (1) credit cards — not exactly a new idea; (2) overdraft
protection; and (3) subprime mortgages. (I am not making this up.) These were
the things for which bankers got paid the big bucks?
Still,
you might argue that we have a free-market economy, and it’s up to the private
sector to decide how much its employees are worth. But this brings me to my
second point: Wall Street is no longer, in any real sense, part of the private
sector. It’s a ward of the state, every bit as dependent on government aid as
recipients of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, a k a “welfare.”
I’m not
just talking about the $600 billion or so already committed under the TARP.
There are also the huge credit lines extended by the Federal Reserve;
large-scale lending by Federal Home Loan Banks; the taxpayer-financed payoffs
of A.I.G. contracts; the vast expansion of F.D.I.C. guarantees; and, more
broadly, the implicit backing provided to every financial firm considered too
big, or too strategic, to fail.
One can
argue that it’s necessary to rescue Wall Street to protect the economy as a
whole — and in fact I agree. But given all that taxpayer money on the line,
financial firms should be acting like public utilities, not returning to the
practices and paychecks of 2007.
Furthermore,
paying vast sums to wheeler-dealers isn’t just outrageous; it’s dangerous. Why,
after all, did bankers take such huge risks? Because success — or even the
temporary appearance of success — offered such gigantic rewards: even
executives who blew up their companies could and did walk away with hundreds of
millions. Now we’re seeing similar rewards offered to people who can play their
risky games with federal backing.
So what’s
going on here? Why are paychecks heading for the stratosphere again? Claims
that firms have to pay these salaries to retain their best people aren’t
plausible: with employment in the financial sector plunging, where are those
people going to go?
No, the
real reason financial firms are paying big again is simply because they can.
They’re making money again (although not as much as they claim), and why not?
After all, they can borrow cheaply, thanks to all those federal guarantees, and
lend at much higher rates. So it’s eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow you
may be regulated.
Or maybe
not. There’s a palpable sense in the financial press that the storm has passed:
stocks are up, the economy’s nose-dive may be leveling off, and the Obama
administration will probably let the bankers off with nothing more than a few
stern speeches. Rightly or wrongly, the bankers seem to believe that a return
to business as usual is just around the corner.
We can
only hope that our leaders prove them wrong, and carry through with real
reform. In 2008, overpaid bankers taking big risks with other people’s money
brought the world economy to its knees. The last thing we need is to give them
a chance to do it all over again.
*
MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com
*
Go to http://www.MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com
and read articles and comments from other Americans on what they’ve witnessed
in their communities around the country. While most of the population of
California is now ILLEGAL, the problems, costs, assault to our culture by
Mexico is EVERYWHERE. copy and pass it to your friends.
*
Report Illegals & Employers Toll Free... (866) 347-2423
INS National Customer Service Center Phone: 1-800-375-5283.
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*
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*
GET THIS BOOK!
*
Obamanomics: How Barack
Obama Is Bankrupting You and Enriching His Wall Street Friends, Corporate
Lobbyists, and Union Bosses
BY TIMOTHY P
CARNEY
Editorial Reviews
Obama Is Making
You Poorer—But Who’s Getting Rich?
Goldman
Sachs, GE, Pfizer, the United Auto Workers—the same “special interests” Barack
Obama was supposed to chase from the temple—are profiting handsomely from
Obama’s Big Government policies that crush taxpayers, small businesses, and
consumers. In Obamanomics, investigative reporter Timothy P. Carney digs
up the dirt the mainstream media ignores and the White House wishes you
wouldn’t see. Rather than Hope and Change, Obama is delivering corporate
socialism to America, all while claiming he’s battling corporate America. It’s
corporate welfare and regulatory robbery—it’s Obamanomics.
Congressman
Ron Paul says, “Every libertarian and free-market conservative needs to read Obamanomics.”
And Johan Goldberg, columnist and bestselling author says, “Obamanomics
is conservative muckraking at its best and an indispensable field guide to the
Obama years.”
If
you’ve wondered what’s happening to America, as the federal government swallows
up the financial sector, the auto industry, and healthcare, and enacts deficit
exploding “stimulus packages,” this book makes it all clear—it’s a big scam.
Ultimately, Obamanomics boils down to this: every time government gets bigger,
somebody’s getting rich, and those somebodies are friends of Barack. This book
names the names—and it will make your blood boil.
*
Obama Is Making You Poorer—But Who’s Getting Rich?
Goldman
Sachs, GE, Pfizer, the United Auto Workers—the same “special interests” Barack
Obama was supposed to chase from the temple—are profiting handsomely from
Obama’s Big Government policies that crush taxpayers, small businesses, and
consumers.
Investigative
reporter Timothy P. Carney digs up the dirt the mainstream media ignores and
the White House wishes you wouldn’t see. Rather than Hope and Change, Obama is
delivering corporate socialism to America, all while claiming he’s battling
corporate America. It’s corporate welfare and regulatory robbery—it’s
Obamanomics. In this explosive book, Carney reveals:
* The
Great Health Care Scam—Obama’s backroom deals with drug companies spell
corporate profits and more government control
* The Global Warming Hoax—Obama has bought off industries with a pork-filled bill that will drain your wallet for Al Gore’s agenda
* Obama and Wall Street—“Change” means more bailouts and a heavy Goldman Sachs presence in the West Wing (including Rahm Emanuel)
* Stimulating K Street—The largest spending bill in history gave pork to the well-connected and created a feeding frenzy for lobbyists
* How the GOP needs to change its tune—drastically—to battle Obamanomics
* The Global Warming Hoax—Obama has bought off industries with a pork-filled bill that will drain your wallet for Al Gore’s agenda
* Obama and Wall Street—“Change” means more bailouts and a heavy Goldman Sachs presence in the West Wing (including Rahm Emanuel)
* Stimulating K Street—The largest spending bill in history gave pork to the well-connected and created a feeding frenzy for lobbyists
* How the GOP needs to change its tune—drastically—to battle Obamanomics
If
you’ve wondered what’s happening to our country, as the federal government
swallows up the financial sector, the auto industry, and healthcare, and enacts
deficit exploding “stimulus packages” that create make-work government jobs, this
book makes it all clear—it’s a big scam. Ultimately, Obamanomics boils down to
this: every time government gets bigger, somebody’s getting rich, and those
somebodies are friends of Barack. This book names the names—and it will make
your blood boil.
*
Praise for Obamanomics
Praise for Obamanomics
“The
notion that ‘big business’ is on the side of the free market is one of
progressivism’s most valuable myths. It allows them to demonize corporations by
day and get in bed with them by night. Obamanomics is conservative
muckraking at its best. It reveals how President Obama is exploiting the big
business mythology to undermine the free market and stick it to entrepreneurs,
taxpayers, and consumers. It’s an indispensable field guide to the Obama
years.”
—Jonha Goldberg, LA Times columnist and best-selling author
—Jonha Goldberg, LA Times columnist and best-selling author
“‘Every
time government gets bigger, somebody’s getting rich.’ With this astute
observation, Tim Carney begins his task of laying bare the Obama
administration’s corporatist governing strategy, hidden behind the president’s
populist veneer. This meticulously researched book is a must-read for anyone
who wants to understand how Washington really works.”
—David Freddoso, best-selling author of The Case Against Barack Obama
—David Freddoso, best-selling author of The Case Against Barack Obama
“Every
libertarian and free-market conservative who still believes that large
corporations are trusted allies in the battle for economic liberty needs to
read this book, as does every well-meaning liberal who believes that expansions
of the welfare-regulatory state are done to benefit the common people.”
—Congressman Ron Paul
—Congressman Ron Paul
“It’s
understandable for critics to condemn President Obama for his ‘socialism.’ But
as Tim Carney shows, the real situation is at once more subtle and more
sinister. Obamanomics favors big business while disproportionately punishing
everyone else. So-called progressives are too clueless to notice, as usual,
which is why we have Tim Carney and this book.”
—Thomas E. Woods, Jr., best-selling author of Meltdown and The Politically Incorrect Guide™ to American History
—Thomas E. Woods, Jr., best-selling author of Meltdown and The Politically Incorrect Guide™ to American History
*
·
Hardcover: 256 pages
·
Publisher: Regnery Press (November 30,
2009)
·
Language: English
·
ISBN-10: 1596986123
·
ISBN-13: 978-1596986121
*
ARE AMAZED AT HOW UTTERLY BRAZEN THESE CORPORATE OWNED
POLITICIANS ARE?
GET THIS BOOK!
Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats,
Crooks, and Cronies
by Michelle Malkin
Editorial Reviews
In her shocking new book, Malkin digs deep into the records
of President Obama's staff, revealing corrupt dealings, questionable pasts, and
abuses of power throughout his administration.
From the Inside Flap
The era of hope and change is dead....and it only took six
months in office to kill it.
Never has an administration taken office with more inflated
expectations of turning Washington around. Never have a media-anointed American
Idol and his entourage fallen so fast and hard. In her latest investigative
tour de force, New York Times bestselling author Michelle Malkin delivers a
powerful, damning, and comprehensive indictment of the culture of corruption
that surrounds Team Obama's brazen tax evaders, Wall Street cronies, petty
crooks, slum lords, and business-as-usual influence peddlers. In Culture of
Corruption, Malkin reveals:
* Why nepotism beneficiaries First Lady Michelle Obama and
Vice President Joe Biden are Team Obama's biggest liberal hypocrites--bashing
the corporate world and influence-peddling industries from which they and their
relatives have benefited mightily
* What secrets the ethics-deficient members of Obama's
cabinet--including Hillary Clinton--are trying to hide
* Why the Obama White House has more power-hungry,
unaccountable "czars" than any other administration
* How Team Obama's first one hundred days of appointments
became a litany of embarrassments as would-be appointee after would-be
appointee was exposed as a tax cheat or had to withdraw for other reasons
* How Obama's old ACORN and union cronies have squandered
millions of taxpayer dollars and dues money to enrich themselves and expand
their power
* How Obama's Wall Street money men and corporate lobbyists
are ruining the economy and helping their friends In Culture of Corruption,
Michelle Malkin lays bare the Obama administration's seamy underside that the
liberal media would rather keep hidden.
Product Details
• Hardcover:
376 pages
• Publisher:
Regnery Publishing (July 27, 2009)
• Language:
English
• ISBN-10:
1596981091
• ISBN-13:
978-1596981096
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