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Archive for the ‘Culture of Corruption’ Category

Massachusetts Legislature to Citizens: Screw You.

Thursday, April 30th, 2009

In state well know for out of control government spending, corruption, and general inefficiency, our completely out of touch reality and massively democrat majority legislature has decided to raise the sales tax from 5% to 6.25%.

Even our clueless “Cadillac of Governors” has figured out that this is a bad idea and threated to veto it. So his democrat allies in the State House responded by passing the bill with a veto proof majority.

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BHO’s slap in the face to America

Tuesday, April 21st, 2009

Hundreds of thousands of Americans protested against massive government spending and the crushing federal debt, and our Dear Leader responded by getting his entire cabinet to cut about half of what BHO spend on his inauguration.

Let’s put this in perspective. This is the equivalent of a family with an annual income of $60,000 cutting $6 out of their budget.

The Spin Meter points out a few examples of just how small the President’s gesture is:

$100 million amounts to:

–Less than one-quarter of the budget increase that Congress awarded to itself.

–Less than half the cost of one F-22 fighter plane.

–7 percent of the federal subsidy for the money-losing Amtrak passenger rail system.

–1/10,000th of the government’s operating budgets for Cabinet agencies, excluding the Iraq and Afghan wars and the stimulus bill.

Oh, and if you thought he was asking for new cuts, guess again.

Many of the savings he asked them to achieve are already under way and are included in the calculation.

So what we have is an empty promise and a massive government spending spree, unparalleled in American History, and a crushing debt our grandchildren will still be paying off.

Is this the “Hope & Change” you were expecting?

Update: While our Dear Leader makes empty gestures at “cutting costs”, he’s printing up more money to spend outside the US. In this case $100 Billion for the International Monetary Fund. You remember the IMF, that’s the organization that reimbursed tax cheat and Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner for taxes he never planned on paying.

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The Corruption keeps rolling along

Sunday, April 5th, 2009

Corrupt democrat Congressman John Murtha is continuing his pattern of pork barrel spending.

Four of the earmark requests from Murtha’s office are for current or former clients of a lobbying firm, the PMA Group, that is currently under federal investigation for connection to possible “straw” donations to Murtha and other Democratic members of the House.

Murtha also has not yet apologized to the cleared US Marines he insulted.

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Control of the Banks

Saturday, April 4th, 2009

As Stuart Varney points out in this Wall Street Journal article, control of the banks is clearly the goal of our Dear Leader‘s administration.

The government wants to control the banks, just as it now controls GM and Chrysler, and will surely control the health industry in the not-too-distant future. Keeping them TARP-stuffed is the key to control. And for this intensely political president, mere influence is not enough. The White House wants to tell ’em what to do. Control. Direct. Command.

If the banks are forced to keep TARP cash — which was often forced on them in the first place — the Obama team can work its will on the financial system to unprecedented degree. That’s what’s happening right now.

Fast forward to today, and that same bank is begging to give the money back. The chairman offers to write a check, now, with interest. He’s been sitting on the cash for months and has felt the dead hand of government threatening to run his business and dictate pay scales. He sees the writing on the wall and he wants out. But the Obama team says no, since unlike the smaller banks that gave their TARP money back, this bank is far more prominent. The bank has also been threatened with “adverse” consequences if its chairman persists. That’s politics talking, not economics.

The clear goal here is not economic recovery, it is to use the power of the federal executive branch to bully private business to rewarding the President’s friends and punish his political enemies.

Welcome to the Third World folks.

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AIG execs pressured to donate to democrat Senator Dodd

Monday, March 30th, 2009

The Washington Times has the story on how the Senate Banking Committee Chair, democrat Chris Dodd, collected large donations from AIG employees.

Mr. Dodd’s campaign quickly hit pay dirt, collecting more than $160,000 from employees and their spouses at the AIG Financial Products division (AIG-FP) in Wilton, Conn., in the days before he took over as the committee chairman in January 2007. Months later, the senator transferred the donations to jump-start his 2008 presidential bid, which later failed.

Now, two years later, Mr. Dodd has emerged as a central figure in the government’s decision to let executives at the now-failing AIG collect more than $218 million in bonuses, according to the Connecticut attorney general – even as the company was receiving billions of dollars in assistance from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). He acknowledged that he slipped a provision into legislation in February that authorized the bonuses, but said the Treasury Department asked him to do it.

The employees were told, “If you agree,” to write checks for $2,100 from themselves and their spouses and to send them to Mr. Dodd’s campaign within four days. They also were to ask the senior members of their management teams to do the same and send copies of their checks to the company.

The Dodd campaign collected $162,100 from AIG-FP employees and their spouses within six weeks of the e-mail, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics and the Federal Election Commission.

Note that the employees were told to send copies of their checks to the company. That may be legal, but it clearly crosses an ethical line.

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Another one bites the dust

Thursday, March 26th, 2009

Yet another one of BHO’s selections, this one for Deputy Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, has removed his name from the running. It was disclosed that Jon Cannon was on the board of a nonprofit group faulted for mishandling federal grant money.

A 2007 EPA inspector general’s report on the foundation alleged a variety of irregularities involving $25 million in federal grants to assess water quality problems, including those at farms and pork processing facilities. The problems with accounting, improper cash advances and similar violations stretched from 1998 to 2005, according to the report.

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