Monthly Archives: October 2011
A quick question to any Conservative supporting Romney over Perry
First of all, let me be clear, and not like President Obama, but truly clear. I like Herman Cain, but he ain’t what I thought he was. And I have serious doubts that he can win. His statements on abortion were absurd, make up your mind already! His answers concerning releasing terrorists from Gitmo in exchange for captured U.S. soldiers was inane at best. And spare us the “I did not understand the question excuses Herman. Finally, when he says he could not support Perry if Perry is nominated? REALLY? But you could support Romney? Good grief! And why the lack of attacks on Romney? Something smells there
But this is not a bash Cain post. Frankly, I think Cain could be a great asset as a cabinet member. But, as president? Sorry, it pains me to say this but, Cain is not the man.
This post is meant to make Romney supporters, yes, like you Ann Coulter think. So, here is my question to those Conservatives ready to anoint Mitt. Are you serious? Look, if Romney gets the nomination then I will vote for him, but COME ON!
Somehow the Mitt Romney campaign thought it’d be awesome to stop at a Cincinnati call center for Ohio Issues 2 & 3, and then not endorse a Yes vote on both issues. Since Yes is the obvious conservative choice on two of the most important ballot issues in state history, this created an opportunity for other GOP primary candidates.
In short order, Rick Perry pounced into the new space on Romney’s right:
“As a true conservative, I stand with Gov. Kasich in promoting S.B.5 for fiscal responsibility and job creation in Ohio,” Perry said in a statement to CNN. “Gov. Kasich and the Republican leadership of Ohio are to be commended for their efforts.”
With D.C. union bosses spending millions to smear Senate Bill 5 as unfair, dangerous, and racist, Issue 2 is hardly a sure thing. It’s disappointing that instead of backing reforms which will empower Ohio taxpayers, Mitt Romney handed unions a rhetorical win by dodging a volatile issue that’s behind in the polls.
Here are some key elements of the bill Rick Perry endorsed:
- Issue 2 ends automatic step increases and requires merit pay for public workers.
- Issue 2 requires all government employees to pay 10% of their pension costs and 15% of their health insurance costs.
- Issue 2 ends forced payment of “fair-share” fees for government workers who don’t want to join a union.
- Issue 2 puts a stop to last-in, first-out firing policies, requiring considerations other than tenure when making layoffs.
- Issue 2 does not affect bargaining over wages or working conditions
Add to this Mitt’s flip-flopping or weak positions on abortion, gun control, etc. Add to this that Mitt is the darling of the Establishment Republicans. Add to this the fact that Perry’s tax plan maks Romney’s look, well, pretty pathetic!
Far less complicated than McRomney’s “59 point” plan, Perry’s plan can be easily summed up thus:
- Introduce a 20 percent flat rate on individual and corporate income, down from the current top rate of 35 percent.
- Provide an exemption of $12,500 per person, so that a family of four would face no tax on its first $50,000 in income.
- Preserve deductions for mortgage interest, charitable donations, and state and local taxes on incomes below $500,000.
- Allow anyone to file under the current system if they choose.
- Shift to a territorial system of corporate taxation, allowing corporations to repatriate profits still parked overseas at a 5.25 percent rate.
This plan is a winner for Gov. Perry because it’s self-explanatory, brief enough for everyone to get their minds around, and, most importantly, rooted in the pursuit of decreasing the size of government while simultaneously increasing liberty.
The brevity of Perry’s plan also highlights the absolute ridiculousness of McRomney’s 59-point plan: a plan which is so complicated that when printed out, it forms a “160-page book” (How big of a government does Romney want if his economic plan takes up 160 pages?).
Again, the brevity of Perry’s plan proves the truth of his oft-spoken desire to make the federal government as inconsequential in the lives of Americans as possible.
If I were advising Perry’s team, I’d tell them to get ready to make McRomney explain his plan point by point in the next debate. And when he says he doesn’t have time or if he says “I’ll explain mine if you explain yours,” Perry can sum his up his five points quickly and let everyone see McRomney for what he is – another big government politician who’s trying to trick us into thinking he’s a conservative.
Again, let me ask the question to Romney supporters. ARE YOU FREAKING SERIOUS?
An ACORN does not fall from the Tree of Communism, or from the Tree of Community organizing
Ah yes, ACORN, the radical Leftist group that was so involved with Obama’s 2008 campaign, until it was forced to “disband”. Is it any surprise that these Neo-Marxists are firmly involved with the OWS? Just take a look at what Jim Hoft unearthed
Barack Obama was not honest about his relationship with ACORN during the 2008 election.
In 2009 Congress voted to defund ACORN and its affiliates. But that didn’t stop the Obama Administration from giving $560,000 to ACORN affiliates in 2010.
So it really comes as no surprise that ACORN is working behind the scenes in the Obama-endorsed Occupy movement.
FOX News reported:The former New York office for ACORN, the disbanded community activist group, is playing a key role in the self-proclaimed “leaderless” Occupy Wall Street movement, organizing “guerrilla” protest events and hiring door-to-door canvassers to collect money under the banner of various causes while spending it on protest-related activities, sources tell FoxNews.com.
The former director of New York ACORN, Jon Kest, and his top aides are now busy working at protest events for New York Communities for Change (NYCC). That organization was created in late 2009 when some ACORN offices disbanded and reorganized under new names after undercover video exposes prompted Congress to cut off federal funds.
NYCC’s connection to ACORN isn’t a tenuous one: It works from the former ACORN offices in Brooklyn, uses old ACORN office stationery, employs much of the old ACORN staff and, according to several sources, engages in some of the old organization’s controversial techniques to raise money, interest and awareness for the protests.
Sources said NYCC has hired about 100 former ACORN-affiliated staff members from other cities – paying some of them $100 a day – to attend and support Occupy Wall Street. Dozens of New York homeless people recruited from shelters are also being paid to support the protests, at the rate of $10 an hour, the sources said.
How is that for transparency? This nation, or at least millions of us, were duped by a message of Hope and Change. A message delivered by a con man, and supported by a media that REFUSED to do any digging into the radicalism that oozes from Obama’s past, and apparently, his present as well, and seemingly everyone one of his associations .
Yesterday Joel Pollack at Big Government reported on how Barack Obama led #OccupyChicago style protests in Chicago in 1988.
From Stanley Kurtz’s essential Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism, pp. 117-8:Obama personally helped plan one of UNO’s most confrontational actions of the eighties [in 1988]: a break-in meant to intimidate a coalition of local business and neighborhood leaders into dropping a landfill expansion deal.
We know of Obama’s involvement in this demonstration only because his supporters in 2008 felt it necessary to rebut charges that, contrary to his claims of inter-racial healing, he had organized exclusively with blacks. Only then did Obama’s former colleagues from UNO [United Neighborhood Organization, a largely Mexican group] of Chicago reveal that he had helped to plan and lead this multi-ethnic demonstration against landfill expansion on Chicago’s South Side.
…Shouting “No deals!” somewhere between eighty and a hundred UNO-DCP [Developing Communities Project, a black group organized by Obama] marched to a local bank. There they broke into a meeting being conducted by the bank president and local community leaders. The group was exploring the possibility of a deal with Waste Management. The protestors, presumably including Obama, surrounded the meeting table while [Mary-Ellen] Montes [of UNO] told the negotiators, “We will fight you every step of the way.”
It wasn’t an isolated incident.
In his early years as a community organizer, Barack Obama sued banks and lenders to ease lending practices.
He also led protests at banks.
State Sen. Barack Obama and Fr. Michael Pfleger led a protest in January 2000 against the payday loan industry demanding the State of Illinois to regulate loan businesses. (NBC 5 Week of January 3, 2000)
America has paid a heavy price for falling for a message promising transparency that was only transparent in that it was obviously completely false. At least it was obvious for anyone paying attention.
Of course, too many of us refuse to pay attention. We fall for a message that tells us what we want to hear. This is what happens when a large part of the electorate does not know how to think, and does not know the history of this nation. I can only pray that our eyes are open next November. The Communist thugocracy has done enough damage to our Republic!
Socialism in Action: Obama’s Education Chief Says Student Loan Bailout Will Address Income Inequality | The Gateway Pundit
Obamunism on display! Democrats firmly believe in using taxes, and spending, to force their version of America on to the rest of us. Sadly many people fall for the class warfare rhetoric the Democrats have been spewing for decades now. Too many of us are too wiling to be victims, and to wallow in self-pity. Too many of us look at the rich, as bad people, who have somehow “stolen” what is rightfully ours. So, foolishly, we look to government to play Robin Hood, to avenge the wrongs the rich have committed against us.
It sounds so good, doesn’t it?If we just make the evil rich “pay their fair share”, then we can all live in a Utopia where “fairness” reigns. That, in the end is the message of all the”isms” that sprang from the demented minds of Marx and Engels.
Image via Wikipedia
But, the promise of Marxism is never fulfilled. Instead of a Utopia, nations that are seduced by the promise are soon robbed of any hope of bettering themselves, or of success. And eventually, they are robbed of their liberties as well.
See, the promise of Marxism might sound sweet, but the cost of the hope of Utopia, a hope that is never reached by the way, is that our freedoms are sacrificed on the altar of Collectivism. This, in essence is what the Democratic Party has become. It has become the Party of Collectivism.
State Department Stocks Key Libraries Around World With Obama’s Books… Same Books Were Banned From US Prisons For “Objectionable” Content
The US State Department is spending more than $70,000 on books authored by Barack Obama. The officials are sending the books out for Christmas gratuities and for stocking “key libraries” around the world.
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The Washington Times reported:
The State Department has bought more than $70,000 worth of books authored by President Obama, sending out copies as Christmas gratuities and stocking “key libraries” around the world with “Dreams from My Father” more than a decade after its release.
The U.S. Embassy in Egypt, for instance, spent $28,636 in August 2009 for copies of Mr. Obama’s best-selling 1995 memoir. Six weeks earlier, the embassy had placed another order for the same book for more than $9,000, federal purchasing records show.
About the same time, halfway around the world, the U.S. Embassy in South Korea had the same idea and spent more than $6,000 for copies of “Dreams from My Father.”
One month later, the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, spent more than $3,800 for hardcover copies of the Indonesian version of Mr. Obama’s “The Audacity of Hope,” records show.
A review of the expenditures in a federal database did not reveal any examples of State Department purchases of books by former Presidents George W. Bush or Bill Clinton.
These same books were recently banned from the US government’s most secure prison for objectionable content.
The federal government’s most secure prison has determined that two books written by President Barack Obama contain material “potentially detrimental to national security” and rejected an inmate’s request to read them.
Ahmed Omar Abu Ali is serving a 30-year sentence at the federal supermax prison in Florence, Colorado, for joining al-Qaida and plotting to assassinate then-President George W. Bush. Last year, Abu Ali requested two books written by Obama: “Dreams from My Father” and “The Audacity of Hope.”
But prison officials, citing guidance from the FBI, determined that passages in both books contain information that could damage national security…
…Prison officials cite specific pages – but not specific passages – in the books that they deem objectionable. They include one page in Obama’s 1995 book, “Dreams from My Father,” and 22 separate pages in his policy-oriented 2006 book, “The Audacity of Hope.” It was not immediately obvious what passages might have been deemed problematic, though nearly half of the pages cited are in a chapter devoted to foreign affairs.
Italian Deputies In Fist Fight Over Reforms
Italian Deputies In Fist Fight Over Reforms – Reuters
At least two deputies from the Northern League, a member of the ruling center-right coalition, fought with members from the opposition FLI party of speaker Gianfranco Fini. Two deputies grabbed each other by the throat as other parliamentarians rushed to separate them.
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The parliamentary sitting was suspended for several minutes after the fight, which broke out because of sarcastic remarks on television by Fini alleging that the wife of League leader Umberto Bossi had retired at 39.
Bossi has steadfastly refused to make more than slight concessions to Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on the League’s objections to changing Italy’s generous pension system as part of reforms demanded by European leaders.
Berlusconi will travel to Brussels on Wednesday with a letter of intent on reforms to boost stagnant growth and cut Italy’s debt. [ID:nL5E7LQ0OI] But critics, including senior Italian bankers say firmer and more substantive undertakings are required.
“There is a climate of violence and intolerance,” said Amedeo Ciccanti from the centrist UDC party. “We need to calm down because Italians are more irritated than us about this.”
Drug Smuggler Walks… Border Agent Goes To Prison!
Drug Smuggler Walks… Border Agent Goes To Prison! – National Patriot
This is nothing short of pure insanity. It’s OUTRAGEOUS and it’s WRONG. The world is turning upside down and this administration is proving every day that they are indeed… fundamentally changing… our nation.
SHAMEFUL!!!
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Border Agent Jesus E. Diaz Jr. was named in a November 2009 federal grand jury indictment with deprivation of rights under color of law during an October 2008 arrest near the Rio Grande in Eagle Pass and has now been sentenced to 2 years behind bars.
Here is what happened.
Diaz spotted a teenager crossing the Rio Grande wearing a backpack and arrested the kid. The backpack contained 75 pounds of pot from Mexico. The kid struggled and Diaz put his knee in the middle of the smugglers back and lifted up on his cuffed hands to control him.
The Mexican consulate in Eagle Pass had filed a formal written complaint just hours after the arrest, alleging that the teenager had been beaten.
The smuggler was given IMMUNITY from prosecution, testified before a grand jury and in court and then allowed to walk free.
Now… U.S. District Judge Alia Moses Ludlum in San Antonio has sentenced Diaz to 2 years in prison.
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HERE IS WHAT YOU REALLY NEED TO KNOW!!!
1) A border agent present during the arrest says NO beating or misdeed took place!
2) There wasn’t a mark OR a bruise on the smuggler OTHER than from the straps of a backpack across his shoulders which was loaded with 75 pounds of Mexican pot!!!
3) THE SMUGGLER HIMSELF HAS ADMITTED TO LYING ABOUT THE MISCONDUCT TO BOTH THE GRAND JURY AND IN THE TRIAL!!!
The result is a Mexican drug smuggler is free to smuggle again and again while a U.S. Border Patrol Agent is in PRISON for DOING HIS JOB AND PROTECTING THE CITIZENS OF THIS NATION!!!
Apparently what Janet Napolitano means when she says, over and over, that our border is safer now then it has ever been…
IS THAT IT’S SAFER FOR MEXICAN DRUG SMUGGLERS THAN IT’S EVER BEEN!!!
This administration sells high powered weapons to Mexican drug cartels, allows those cartels to kill our agents, lets a drug smuggler walk free after lying in court and LOCKS UP the Patriot who arrested him!
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WHAT KIND OF WORLD ARE WE LIVING IN FOR GOD’S SAKE???
If this administration had their way, they would offer milk and cookies to drug smugglers crossing our border, provide them with instate tuition, make sure they are armed to the teeth, hand them a voter ID card and send to prison anyone who stood in their way!!
HOPE AND CHANGE MY RED WHITE AND BLUE KEESTER!!!
Is it 2012 yet???
Catholic University Sued For Pursuing Catholic Standards In Its Own Dorms
Catholic University Sued For Pursuing Catholic Standards In Its Own Dorms – Catholic Vote
Professor Robert George has a brilliant post at the Mirror of Justice blog talking about the authoritarian nature of much of liberalism today.
You remember a couple weeks ago when the President of Catholic University of America in Washington D.C. announced that CUA would be converting to single-sex dorms only, to facilitate morality and curb alcohol abuse?
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Now a professor at another university has sued CUA, contending that the DC Goverment’s “Human Rights” law forces Catholic University to have co-ed dorms, on the basis that not doing so is the same as racial segregation.
Professor George points out that this is the direction in which liberalism today is headed. He distinguishes between classical liberalism’s more modest posture, in which it did not seek to crush the rights of disagreeing components of society, and today’s increasingly dominant form of “comprehensive” liberalism that demands conformity with abortion, “sexual freedom” and “same-sex marriage.”
Professor George also wonders out loud what will be the response of Catholic liberals and liberal scholars to this authoritarianism–will the people who praised Obama as “pro-life” and criticized John Boehner but not Nancy Pelosi as CUA’s commencement speakers, openly criticize the attempt to crush how Catholic institutions live their mission, or will they remain silent? Since liberal Catholic scholars tend to agree that opposing same-sex marriage is like opposing interracial marriage (it is not), thus leading to traditional marriage beliefs being punished by government in the same way racism is, what would be their principled basis for saying that single-sex dorms are NOT like racially segregated dorms, and for them to be treated the same way under anti-discrimination laws?
A junior editor at the liberal Catholic blog at Commonweal recently derided New York’s Archbishop Dolan for his citation of North Korea and China in comparison to New York’s proposal to redefine what marriage is and impose that on citizens. That editor proposed instead that EWTN’s selection of its own video content is like North Korea and China. His ignorant view, however, fails to grasp that government oppression and demand for conformity with the new sexular sexual orthodoxy, such as in New York law and now under this DC law, is indeed parallel to government oppression in communist regimes, whereas private religious choices about what to say and how to live, like CUA’s and EWTN’s decisions, are the antithesis of authoritarianism–those private choices ARE freedom.
Scottish Wind Farms Shut Because It’s Too Windy
Wind Farms Shut Because It’s Too Windy – The Sun
National Grid has been forced to ask wind farms to shut down for the second time in a month – because it’s too windy.
Seven wind farm operators switched off their turbines on Monday night.
National Grid said they were generating TOO MUCH power as storms ripped across Scotland.
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It leaves taxpayers with yet another bill. National Grid has to pay wind farm operators compensation when asking them to stop the turbines.
National Grid said: “It was very windy yesterday and there was some curtailment of wind generation.”
Despite huge subsidies for wind farm operators, National Grid claims its network is not ready to handle the power surge in storms.
Demand for electricity also drops off late at night.
National Grid paid out almost £3 million to wind farm operators in compensation in mid-September when a dozen wind farms were shut for three nights in a row.
Fred Olsen Renewables pocketed £1.2 million.
The Grid spokesman insisted: “This is all a normal part of how we balance the electricity transmission system and manage constraints on the network.”
Daily Benefactor News – Full-Blown Riots Erupt As Occupy Oakland Gets Out Of Control Overnight
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Full-Blown Riots Erupt As Occupy Oakland Gets Out Of Control Overnight – The Blaze
We’ve already brought you some pictures and video from the Occupy Oakland eviction last night, but this morning it seems things were much worse than previously expected. How much worse? Apparently the crowed erupted in riots and police used rubber bullets on the crowd.
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Intrepid blogger Zombie put together a collage of videos and pictures that seem to capture the full chaos of what happened. Here’s how he describes it in his piece, “Rioting in Downtown Oakland as Occupiers Clash with Police:”
What we know so far: After the Occupy Oakland encampment was torn down early Tuesday morning by police, the ousted protesters reconvened outside the Oakland Library on Tuesday afternoon and voted to attempt a re-occupation of the same plaza from which they had just been evicted. Summoned by waves of emergency tweets and emails, fresh recruits joined the evicted Occupiers and early this evening once again marched on downtown Oakland, intending to reclaim Frank Ogawa Plaza.
But the Oakland Police were of course monitoring all this, and along with many other local police departments they were waiting for the protesters’ invasion. After an hours-long standoff at 14th and Broadway, interrupted by several confrontations and arrests, everything started to turn violent some time after 9:30pm.
This is what resulted. (CONTENT WARNING for language on the videos.)
The cops initially gave the protesters a four-minute warning to disperse (which they ignored):
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As the police released the tear gas, it sounded like a war zone:
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This video claims police were using rubber bullets. If you listen close, it does sound like you can hear projectiles whizzing by. It has not been confirmed that police did, in fact, use rubber bullets. However several protesters have claimed as much. In fact, one person released a Twitter picture showing a 12 gauge shotgun shell and what appears to be a rubber bullet:
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Still, it’s unknown if that is the truth or an attempt to portray the police as escalating the situation:
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Protesters chanting, “Whose streets? Our streets!”
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And finally, videos show the protesters surrounding the police earlier in the day and throwing paint cans at them:
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Zombie also has some pictures of the night:
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See more pictures and video at Zombie’s blog.
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Perry proposes flat tax with some deductions – politics – Decision 2012 – msnbc.com
Rick Perry offers his tax reform plan
Shocker! Debbie Wasserman Schultz endorses Perry’s tax reform plan
Well, not really. But, by bashing the plan, Schultz makes me think it must be a winner. I mean if a moonbat like her hates it, it has to be good.
Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wassserman Schultz slammed Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry’s tax plan, saying his flat tax proposal would benefit the wealthiest Americans at the expense of the middle class and increase the deficit.
NO! I just cannot believe that she played the benefit the rich card. I think that card is maxed out Debs.
“My reaction to Rick Perry’s new/old plan is that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result,” said Wasserman Schultz on MSNBC Tuesday.
Perry, the Texas governor, laid out a sweeping overhaul to the nation’s tax code, entitlements and way of budgeting Tuesday. He called for an optional 20 percent flat tax, a privatized option for Social Security and a hike in the eligibility age for Social Security and Medicare.
Mark Levin, on the other hand, really likes the Perry plan The Club for Growth likes it a lot too!
Of course, Schultz would call any plan that lessens government controls, and Democratic greed crazy. And face it, Debs is kind of an expert on crazy!
This is what comes from negotiating with terrorists
Israel should have known better than to play the swap hostages game with Hamas.
(Ynet) — Saudi cleric Dr. Awad al-Qarni is offering a $100,000 reward to anyone who kidnaps Israeli soldiers. He is responding to an ad published by the Libman family offering a similar reward for anyone who catches the person who murdered their relative Shlomo Libman.
Libman was killed by terrorists near the settlement of Yitzhar in 1998.
“The press reported that the Zionist settlers will pay huge amounts of money to whoever kills the freed Palestinian prisoners,” al-Qarni said. “In response to these criminals I declare to the world that any Palestinian who will jail an Israeli soldier and exchange him for prisoners will be rewarded with a $100,000 prize,” he wrote on his Facebook page.
There is simply no good, none that comes from negotiating with terrorists, there is no appeasing them, no reasoning with them, no placating them. Either you kill them, or, they will kill you.
FBI Saw Dark Side Of Rep. John Murtha
FBI Saw Dark Side Of Rep. John Murtha – Roll Call
Last week’s release of FBI documents finally put in writing what nobody had ever said on the record: The FBI suspected that former Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) and lobbyists close to him were running a scheme to funnel earmarks to sham companies and nonprofits to benefit the lawmaker’s friends and former staffers.
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Bits and pieces of this story were kicked around for years before Murtha died in February 2010. The Los Angeles Times, Roll Call, the Washington Post and others had documented the odd appearance of earmarks for tiny defense contractors that just happened to open an office in western Pennsylvania and just happened to hire one of the lobbying firms close to Murtha and just happened to begin making campaign donations to Murtha and other Members of Congress close to him.
Reporters could do little but assemble the coincidences and couldn’t prove there was anything wrong with the bigger picture.
But it turns out the FBI was reading the stories and was very interested – interested enough that the Justice Department had opened a criminal investigation into Murtha and some of the lobbyists in his orbit, a fact that never leaked while Murtha was alive.
In part, the probe never leaked precisely because he was alive.
The watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed a Freedom of Information Act request for Justice Department files on Murtha and other Members of Congress. Its requests have been denied for the living Members on the grounds that they have a right to privacy, CREW Executive Director Melanie Sloan said last week. Murtha’s death eliminated the privacy exemption, and the Justice Department handed over a heavily redacted bunch of files to CREW on Oct. 14.
The files spell out for the first time a theory of the case that explains what Murtha’s cronies may have been up to.
In a memo dated June 19, 2009, FBI field agents requested the bureau “open a full public corruption investigation” regarding KSA Consulting, the lobbying firm that employed at various times the Congressman’s longtime defense aide Carmen Scialabba and the Congressman’s brother, Robert Murtha, widely known as Kit.
The FBI field agents concluded that “the relationships between Congressman John Murtha… and employees and partners of KSA Consulting provide for a potential Honest Services Fraud… if Congressman Murtha influenced the awarding of contracts to KSA-controlled entities or clients, in exchange for some personal benefit to the Congressman. KSA principals may also have committed Honest Services Fraud by lobbying Murtha to direct earmarks to KSA clients who ‘passed-thru’ the funds to subcontractor firms that did little actual work and were owned by KSA principles.”
Neither Murtha nor anybody from KSA was ever charged with a crime, and it is unclear what happened to the investigation.
A Nonprofit Called PAID
The best place to understand the FBI’s theory of the case is a defunct nonprofit called the Pennsylvania Association for Individuals with Disabilities, which had as its mission helping people with disabilities find employment.
Murtha announced the creation of PAID on June 1, 2001, saying that Aeptec Microsystems Inc., a company that he helped bring to western Pennsylvania, would be opening a new headquarters and hiring two clients of the new organization. The company had just hired KSA Consulting as its lobbying firm. Murtha was the honorary chairman of PAID, and his longtime defense appropriations aide, Scialabba, was listed as the founder of the group.
PAID’s board of directors was a who’s who of lobbyists connected to Murtha, as well as executives from firms that had received Murtha earmarks, including KSA founder Ken Stalder. In May 2002, David Fyock, CEO of MountainTop Technologies, a Johnstown firm that received many Murtha earmarks, testified before Congress in his capacity as the vice president of PAID. In an odd quirk of timing, the Justice Department inspector general released a report Monday concluding that while MountainTop had a federal grant to distribute resources to local police departments, Murtha’s office actually made the decisions about which departments got funding, and MountainTop served simply as a “pass through.” The IG report was first reported by the website Main Justice.
Scialabba left Murtha’s office at the end of 2002, according to Congressional pay records maintained by LegiStorm. By Dec. 1, 2002, he was registered as a lobbyist at KSA.
Roll Call investigated PAID in 2007 and could find little evidence that the group was doing anything. A spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Labor told Roll Call that PAID had received $650,000 in “earmark grants” sponsored by Murtha in 2003 and 2004, but the group’s access to the funding was restricted because PAID had significant turnover and “did not have anyone qualified to make decisions or sign off on invoices.”
The FBI thought PAID may have been set up simply to provide a financial cushion for Scialabba, who was apparently having financial troubles. While the names in the documents obtained by CREW are redacted, the description matches Scialabba, and tax liens noted in the document match liens against Scialabba. “If PAID was set-up for the purpose of unjustly enriching [Scialabba], it appears that [Scialabba] and Murtha may have engaged in a conspiracy that could potentially violate federal statutes,” the FBI file reads.
Federal tax forms filed by PAID do not indicate any salary for Scialabba, so it is not clear how the group might have benefited him.
PAID is no longer in business. Its phone has been disconnected, and a receptionist in the building where the group had its office said that PAID moved out in February 2010 – the same month Murtha died.
Scialabba has never been charged in the case, and phone messages left on what appears to be his home phone were not returned.
Criminal Convictions
Aeptec and KSA were also at the center of the one Murtha earmark that resulted in criminal convictions.
By 2004, Murtha had helped Aeptec secure millions in earmarks, and in April of that year, the Congressman announced the opening of a new building in Indiana, Pa., that Aeptec would occupy. At the time, Aeptec’s lobbyists at KSA included Stalder, Scialabba and Kit Murtha.
But later that year, someone discovered a problem with Aeptec. “They were outsourcing to Taiwan,” Stalder told Roll Call in a June 2007 interview. A Murtha spokesman told Roll Call in 2009, “there was an import/export issue that had involved Aeptec, and when this was brought to light, they disappeared as a company.”
By the end of 2004, KSA had terminated its relationship with Aeptec, and in early 2005 – with Murtha as ranking member of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense – the House approved a supplemental defense spending bill with a technical amendment that stripped the firm’s funding. The technical amendment directed the Pentagon to transfer $8.2 million from Aeptec projects to a program known as the “Mobile Common Data Link Gateway.” That project was an earmark for Coherent Systems Inc., another KSA client.
The Mobile Gateway earmark money ended up scattered among companies that had close ties to KSA.
In 2009, the Justice Department filed charges against Coherent CEO Richard Ianieri, alleging that he had used money from the Mobile Gateway project to buy products unrelated to the contract from several companies, including KSA clients VidiaFusion and Gensym.
VidiaFusion had no website, no telephone number and no email address. The address listed for VidiaFusion on the lobbying registration form submitted by KSA is a condominium building in West Palm Beach, Fla. The Florida secretary of state has no record of a company called VidiaFusion. The government charged that Ianieri paid VidiaFusion $274,660 for “software” that was unrelated to the Gateway project and was never used.
Ianieri also transferred $300,000 to Gensym, another KSA client, which was passing funding through to a subcontractor called Applied Technology. The FBI described Applied Technology as “an example of a KSA-created business that acquired federal earmarks and has no legitimate purpose.”
The FBI records indicate two KSA lobbyists were on the Applied Technology payroll, though their names have been redacted.
Ianieri pleaded guilty to filing false purchase orders and accepting a kickback from another company close to Murtha, Kuchera Defense Systems, and was sentenced to a fine and probation.
Coherent did deliver to the Air Force a vehicle-based communications system envisioned in the original “Mobile Gateway” earmark.
Mark O’Hair, an Air Force contracting official who oversaw the Gateway contracts, and contractor Richard Schaller, who was paid by Ianieri, both went to jail for their roles in the scheme, but nobody else was ever charged. There is no evidence that the FBI conducted a serious probe of who in Murtha’s office might have known about the bogus earmarks.
Roll Call reported in March 2010 that KSA had folded. Stalder and other KSA lobbyists appear to have created a new firm called Edge Solutions, but the phone number at that office is now disconnected and emails sent to Edge Solutions went unanswered.
Potential Cases Not Pursued
The FBI files uncovered by CREW offer a tantalizing array of hints of other possible malfeasance.
Federal agents had begun investigating Murtha in 2007 upon hearing allegations that the PMA Group, a lobbying firm run by former defense appropriations staffer Paul Magliocchetti, had paid for Murtha to have a driver. The PMA Group was raided by the FBI in February 2008, and the firm shut down the following year. Magliocchetti is serving a 27-month prison sentence for running a scheme to reimburse friends, family members and colleagues for hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of campaign contributions to Murtha and other Members of Congress.
The FBI investigation also suggested that a staff member in Murtha’s office may have failed to disclose thousands of dollars in income and assets on her annual financial disclosure forms; that money from Murtha’s campaign fund may have been used to buy guns for the personal use of another Murtha staffer; that Murtha may have steered contracts and earmarks to other family members; that staff members may have violated the one-year ban on lobbying Murtha’s office after leaving his employ; and that KSA may have run a fraudulent political action committee.
There is no evidence in the released documents that the FBI pursed any of these cases.
Sloan of CREW said the FBI files prove a long-sought point: “It was as bad as we said it was. It wasn’t nothing; it wasn’t OK.”
U.S. Consumer Confidence At Three-Year Low
U.S. Consumer Confidence At Three-Year Low – 24/7 Wall St.
Consumers simply don’t believe that the U.S. economy is recovering. That shouldn’t be surprising, considering that wages are stagnant, unemployment remains above 9%, and the prospects for the economy are dim, if not downright gloomy.
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The Conference Board has released its Consumer Confidence Index for October and the number has plummeted from 46.4 in September to 39.8. The Present Situation Index dropped from 33.3 to 26.3. The first index measures consumer perceptions up to six months ahead, while the second measures perceptions of the current situation.
It’s pretty difficult to fault consumers’ perception given the recent weak news on housing , a stubbornly high unemployment rate, and some estimates of 2011 GDP that have fallen to below 2%.
Business confidence is down, consumer confidence is down, and there’s little reason to believe that there’s a miracle in store for the US economy. This is shaping up to be a less-than-festive holiday season.
‘Get Your Freak On Girl’: US Airport Security Staff Leave Cringe-Worthy Note After Finding Sex Toy In Her Bag
It’s not the typical note a frequent flier sees from the Transportation Security Administration in their checked baggage.
But New York writer and lawyer Jill Filipovic says she found more than the standard inspection slip in her luggage when she arrived in Dublin on a flight from the U.S. on Monday, after packing a ‘personal item’.
Over the notice, a scribbled message reading: ‘GET YOUR FREAK ON GIRL’ has sparked an investigation by TSA officials.
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‘This is what TSA will do when they inspect a bag you checked and find a, um, “personal item”’, Ms Filipovic, a blogger for website Feministe, posted today in a snarky entry entitled ‘Your tax dollars at work’.
‘Total violation of privacy, wildly inappropriate and clearly not ok, but I also just died laughing in my hotel room,’ she wrote.
Ms Filipovic said she was travelling from Newark, New Jersey to Dublin over the weekend and found the note when she opened her luggage on Monday morning.
She told ABC News she had been with the bag from the time she packed until it was checked, leading her to believe a TSA agent wrote the note.
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The posting was a hot topic among commenters on the feminist site, prompting Ms Filipovic to caution: ‘So my parents read this blog and they don’t need to know the details, but… it was about the most basic lady-thing you can imagine.’
A tweet with a link to a photo of the note prompted followers to offer their best one-liners.
But despite the light-hearted commentary, Ms Filipovic told the network she believed the remark to be ‘offensive’, and plans to file an official complaint.
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A TSA spokesman said the agency is ‘one of several entities’ that handle checked bags for hand inspections if any alarms are raised when bags are screened.
The inspection card is inserted to alert travellers if their bags have been searched. However, the spokesman said there was not yet evidence as to who wrote the note.
A statement from the agency reads: ‘TSA takes all allegations of inappropriate conduct seriously and is investigating this claim.’
A spokesman said if inappropriate conduct was discovered ‘appropriate disciplinary action’ would be taken.
Gatordoug
darcprynce
Dave C
