● Congress's Phony Insider-Trading Reform... ● Obama denounces Senate vote to block Cordray at consumer watchdog agency... ● Walker signs 'castle doctrine' bill, other measures... ● Holder faces House Republicans over health-care law, ‘Fast and Furious’... ● Postal workers behaving badly!... ● The supercommittee failed because Democrats insisted on $1 trillion in new taxes... ● Happy Thanksgiving!... ● Supercommittee announces failure in effort to tame debt... ● Happy Veterans Day to the brave men and women of the United States Armed Forces.... ● Dead federal retirees are paid $120 million annually, report says...
PositiveReform header image 4
When the people fear the government, there is tyranny; When the government fears the people, there is liberty.  ~ Thomas Jefferson

 

Entries Tagged as 'Accountability'

Obama denounces Senate vote to block Cordray at consumer watchdog agency

December 10th, 2011 · Accountability, Congress, Deception, Dissention, Ethics, Federal Spending, Government, Non-Transparency, Obama Exposed, Obama Nominees, Obama's Scheme, Politics, Terrorism from Within

Reference: Issues concerning past Obama Nominees

By David Nakamura and Ylan Q. Mui, Published: December 8

An agitated President Obama accused congressional Republicans on Thursday of not standing up for ordinary Americans after the Senate derailed his nominee to head a new federal consumer protection agency.

At a brief news conference, the president charged that his Republican adversaries were not acting “on the level” after they blocked, by filibuster, his appointment of former Ohio attorney general Richard Cordray as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

“This makes no sense,” Obama declared. “Consumers across the country understand part of the reason we got into the financial mess we did is because regulators are not doing their jobs.”

Two days after signaling that he would make economic inequality a central pillar of his reelection effort, Obama seized the opportunity Thursday to restate his argument that Republicans were not acting in the interest of middle-class Americans.

[View Complete Article →]

Tags:

No Comments

Holder faces House Republicans over health-care law, ‘Fast and Furious’

December 8th, 2011 · Accountability, Corruption, Deception, Ethics, Government Control, Healthcare, Money Matters, Non-Transparency, Obama Exposed, Obama Nominees, Obama's Scheme, Politics, Selling Out the US, Supreme Court, Tax Dollars, Terrorism from Within, Treason

By Jerry Markon, Published: December 8

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. clashed with congressional Republicans on Thursday, defending the Justice Department in the face of criticism of its “Fast and Furious” gun-trafficking sting and its refusal to turn over documents on the health-care law adopted last year.

Under exhaustive questioning from the House Judiciary Committee, Holder reiterated that his department would not provide Congress with more information about Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan’s health-care-related role when she was President Obama’s solicitor general. Republicans are seeking internal e-mails and other documents, arguing that Kagan might have to recuse herself from the court’s decision on the health-care law if she was involved in the legislation.

Attorney General Eric Holder says it’s inexcusable for the bureau to use a controversial tactic known as “gun-walking” in its effort to identify and prosecute major arms trafficking networks along the Southwest border. (Dec. 8)

Holder also was grilled over the Phoenix-based Fast and Furious operation, in which federal agents targeting drug cartels allowed guns to flow illegally onto U.S. streets and into Mexico. The operation led to a storm of criticism from Republicans, many of whom have urged Holder to resign.

The attorney general, who has resisted calls to step down, said the controversial Fast and Furious tactic known as “gun walking,’’ was “wholly unacceptable” and “must never happen again.” But he also condemned his accusers, saying the congressional investigation of the gun sting has been political and calling for cooperation in fighting firearms trafficking along the southwest border.

“Each of us have a duty to act, and to rise above partisan divisions and politically motivated ‘gotcha’ games,’’ Holder said. “The American people deserve better.’’

[View Complete Article →]

Tags:

No Comments

The supercommittee failed because Democrats insisted on $1 trillion in new taxes

November 25th, 2011 · Accountability, Deception, Democrats, Dissention, Economy, Ethics, Federal Spending, Government, Government Control, Greed, Money Lost, Money Matters, Non-Transparency, Obama Nominees, Obama's Scheme, Stimulus, Tax Dollars, Terrorism from Within

By Jon Kyl, Rob Portman, Pat Toomey, Jeb Hensarling, Fred Upton and Dave Camp, Published: November 25

We do not choose to add more to the blame game for failure of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction , but one Democratic talking point needs debunking: that the talks failed because of Republicans’ attachment to the Bush tax cuts.

The untold story of the negotiations is the significance of the Republican offer of fundamental tax reform. It is critical to understand the interplay between the proposal (dubbed the “Toomey plan”) and existing tax law.

First, a bit of history. The 2001 and 2003 changes to the tax code reduced marginal rates for all taxpayers as well as the rates for capital gains, dividends and the death tax. For technical reasons, all of these provisions expire at the end of next year — meaning that if Congress does not act, Americans will face the largest tax increase in our history.

This prospect has put a wet blanket over job creation and economic recovery. It would be the wrong medicine for our ailing economy. As President Obama has famously said, “You don’t raise taxes in a recession.” Partially to avoid this result, but also to try to meet the Democrats partway — given their absolute insistence on big, new tax increases — Republicans offered a proposal that would have both reformed the current code and produced significant new tax revenue.

[View Complete Article →]

Tags:

No Comments

Supercommittee announces failure in effort to tame debt

November 21st, 2011 · Accountability, Congress, Economy, Federal Spending, Finance, Greed, Money Lost, Money Matters, Non-Transparency, Obama Nominees, Obama's Scheme, Politics, Stimulus, Tax Dollars, Terrorism from Within

By Lori Montgomery and Paul Kane, Published: November 21

A special congressional committee created to try to curb the national debt abandoned its work and conceded failure Monday, the latest setback in a long effort by Washington to overcome ideological differences and stem the rising tide of red ink.

In a joint statement issued hours before a midnight deadline, the Democratic and Republican leaders of the panel said that they were “deeply disappointed” by their inability to reach an agreement and that they hope for progress in the months ahead.

supercommittee conceded defeat Monday in its quest to conquer a government debt that stands at a staggering $15 trillion, unable to overcome deep and enduring political divisions over taxes and spending. (Nov. 21)

“Despite our inability to bridge the committee’s significant differences, we end this process united in our belief that the nation’s fiscal crisis must be addressed and that we cannot leave it for the next generation to solve,” said the statement from Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Tex.) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.). “We remain hopeful that Congress can build on this committee’s work and can find a way to tackle this issue in a way that works for the American people and our economy.”

[View Complete Article →]

Tags:

No Comments

Dead federal retirees are paid $120 million annually, report says

September 23rd, 2011 · Accountability, Corruption, Ethics, Federal Spending, Fraud Alert, Government, Tax Dollars

By Ed O’Keefe: September 22

The federal government pays out millions of dollars to dead people each year — including deceased retired federal workers, according to a new report.

In the past five years, the Office of Personnel Management has made more than $601 million in benefits payments to deceased federal annuitants, according to the agency’s inspector general. Total annual payouts range between $100 million and $150 million.

[View Complete Article →]

Tags:

No Comments

The Constitutional Moment: Judge Vinson introduces ObamaCare to Madison and Marshall.

February 1st, 2011 · Accountability, Government, Government Control, Healthcare

‘If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”

Federal Judge Roger Vinson opens his decision declaring ObamaCare unconstitutional with that citation from Federalist No. 51, written by James Madison in 1788. His exhaustive and erudite opinion is an important moment for American liberty, and yesterday may well stand as the moment the political branches were obliged to return to the government of limited and enumerated powers that the framers envisioned.

[View Complete Article →]

Tags:

No Comments

CIA launches task force to assess impact of U.S. cables’ exposure by WikiLeaks

December 23rd, 2010 · Accountability, Homeland Security, National Security, War on Terrorism, WikiLeaks

By Greg Miller Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 22, 2010; 12:24 AM

The CIA has launched a task force to assess the impact of the exposure of thousands of U.S. diplomatic cables and military files by WikiLeaks.

Officially, the panel is called the WikiLeaks Task Force. But at CIA headquarters, it’s mainly known by its all-too-apt acronym: W.T.F.

The irreverence is perhaps understandable for an agency that has been relatively unscathed by WikiLeaks. Only a handful of CIA files have surfaced on the WikiLeaks Web site, and records from other agencies posted online reveal remarkably little about CIA employees or operations.

Even so, CIA officials said the agency is conducting an extensive inventory of the classified information, which is routinely distributed on a dozen or more networks that connect agency employees around the world.

And the task force is focused on the immediate impact of the most recently released files. One issue is whether the agency’s ability to recruit informants could be damaged by declining confidence in the U.S. government’s ability to keep secrets.

“The director asked the task force to examine whether the latest release of WikiLeaks documents might affect the agency’s foreign relationships or operations,” CIA spokesman George Little said. The panel is being led by the CIA’s Counterintelligence Center but has more than two dozen members from departments across the agency.

To some agency veterans, WikiLeaks has vindicated the CIA’s long-standing aversion to sharing secrets with other government agencies, a posture that came under sharp criticism after it was identified as a factor that contributed to the nation’s failure to prevent the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

[View Complete Article →]

Tags:

No Comments

Obama administration readies indefinite detention order for Guantanamo detainees

December 23rd, 2010 · Accountability, Defense, Homeland Security, National Security, War on Terrorism

By Peter Finn and Anne E. Kornblut Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, December 21, 2010; 7:30 PM

The Obama administration is preparing an executive order that would formalize indefinite detention without trial for some detainees at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but allow those detainees and their lawyers to challenge the basis for continued incarceration, U.S. officials said.

The administration has long signaled that the use of prolonged detention, preferably at a facility in the United States, was one element of its plan to close Guantanamo. An interagency task force found that 48 of the 174 detainees remaining at the facility would have to be held in what the administration calls prolonged detention.

“We have a plan to close Guantanamo, and this detainee review process is one element,” said an administration official who discussed the order on the condition of anonymity because it has yet to reach the president.

However, almost every part of the administration’s plan to close Guantanamo is on hold, and it could be crippled this week if Congress bans the transfer of detainees to the United States for trial and sets up steep hurdles to the repatriation or resettlement in third countries of other detainees.

Officials worked intensively on the executive order over the past several weeks, but a senior White House official said it had been in the works for more than a year. If Congress blocks the administration’s ability to put detainees on trial or transfer them out of Guantanamo, the official said, the executive order could still be implemented.

[View Complete Article →]

Tags:

No Comments

Senate spending bill contains thousands of earmarks

December 15th, 2010 · Accountability, Congress, Corruption, Democrats, Dissention, Economy, Ethics, Federal Spending, Fraud Alert, Greed, Non-Transparency, Republicans, Selling Out the US, Tax Dollars, Taxes, Terrorism from Within

By Philip Rucker and Paul Kane Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, December 15, 2010; 12:00 AM

Weeks after swearing off earmarks, many senators stand to gain tens of millions of dollars for pet projects in a massive spending bill that could be their last chance at the money before a more conservative Congress begins next month.

The $1.2 trillion bill, released on Tuesday, includes more than 6,000 earmarks totaling $8 billion, an amount that many lawmakers decried as an irresponsible binge following a midterm election in which many voters demanded that the government cut spending.

“The American people said just 42 days ago, ‘Enough!’ . . . Are we tone deaf? Are we stricken with amnesia?” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a leading earmark critic, said on the Senate floor, flipping through the 1,924-page bill as he pounded his desk.

The bill includes $18 million for two nonprofits associated with deceased Democrats, the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy and Rep. John P. Murtha; $349,000 for swine waste management in North Carolina; and $6 million for a rural Iowa school program named after Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa).

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) epitomizes the conflicted nature of the debate. Formerly a member of the committee that doles out earmarks, McConnell reluctantly embraced a moratorium on the practice last month to send a signal that Republicans are serious about curbing spending.

Yet the legislation includes provisions requested this year by McConnell, including $650,000 for a genetic technology center at the University of Kentucky, according to an analysis of the bill by Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan watchdog.

Saying he was now “vigorously in opposition” to the legislation, McConnell said Tuesday that rushed consideration of the bill “here on Christmas Eve” compelled him to try to block the bill through a filibuster. “I’m going to vote against things that arguably would benefit my state. I do not think this is the appropriate way to run the Senate,” he said.

[View Complete Article →]

Tags: ···········

No Comments

Gun dealers often stay in business with new licenses after ATF shuts them down

December 14th, 2010 · Accountability

By David S. Fallis Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 14, 2010; 12:27 AM

About a hundred times a year, regulators strip gun dealers of their licenses for violations of federal law, an extreme step taken only when repeated infractions are deemed a threat to public safety.

But a year-long Washington Post investigation documented about 60 cases since 2003 in which the businesses stayed open, often re-licensed through relatives, employees, associates or newly formed companies.

“We’ll just have to play musical licenses,” the owner of the Highland Gun Barn in Michigan said when a federal inspector served him with a final notice to surrender his license.

A California sports shop had its license revoked after inspectors from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said the 87-year-old owner’s repeated violations of gun laws showed she was unable to run a gun business. Before she forfeited her license, the woman’s son obtained a permit to sell guns at the same shop. He said he would be at the shop two days a week and that his mother would “exclusively direct all day-to-day business.”

A Maryland gun store that ATF said lost track of weapons and failed to do background checks was forced to surrender its license after the owner lost a court battle. Six months later, ATF issued the dealer’s wife a license at his old shop in Fallston, Md.

A Georgia gun dealer had its license revoked after ATF said it could not account for hundreds of guns. The dealer’s daughter and son-in-law secured their own license to keep the business going.

It is all legal.

“This is the way Congress wrote the law,” said James Zammillo, who was with ATF for four decades and served as deputy assistant director of industry operations before retiring this year. “The spirit of the law is that unless the applicant is prohibited, you have to issue a license. There is no discretion.”

Because of the secrecy Congress imposed on federal gun records in 2003, the details of inspection violations are typically redacted from public records unless a case ends up in court. When revocations are pursued, the problems can include sales done without background checks, improperly completed forms or missing weapons, one of ATF’s chief concerns.

[View Complete Article →]

Tags: ·

No Comments