● U.S. effort to help Afghanistan fight corruption has complicated ties... ● The Obama Heyday Is Over ... ● WI Moms keeping "Made in America" alive.... ● Tax Contradictions: Obama says the economy needs a tax cut—and a tax increase.... ● Capitol Hill employees owed $9.3 million in back taxes last year... ● Another reason Obama and the Dems should have thought thing through before just passing reform bills.... ● Most Americans object to planned Islamic center near Ground Zero, poll finds... ● Political controversy over Islam tarnishes 9/11 anniversary: How quickly we forget.... ● Karzai seeks to limit role of U.S. corruption investigators like Obama and Ft. Hood... ● CBO Update...
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When the people fear the government, there is tyranny; When the government fears the people, there is liberty.  ~ Thomas Jefferson

 

Entries Tagged as 'Obama Nominees'

The Obama Economy: How trillions in fiscal and monetary stimulus produced a 1.6% recovery.

September 7th, 2010 · Accountability, Change of Power, Deception, Democrats, Dissention, Ethics, Federal Spending, Greed, Money Lost, Non-Transparency, Obama Nominees, Obama's Scheme, Selling Out the US, Terrorism from Within, Unemployment

So two months before an election, and 19 months after the mother of all spending programs, President Obama said yesterday he’s rolling out one more plan to stimulate the economy. We’ll discuss the details when they’re released, but the effort itself is a tacit admission that his earlier proposals have flopped. As the autumn economic debate gets underway, it’s important to understand how and why we got here.

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The recession preceded Mr. Obama’s Inaugural by 13 months, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, and so did the President’s fiscal policy ideas. George W. Bush got there first. In February 2008, he and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi agreed on a $168 billion combination of federal spending and temporary tax rebates that were supposed to maintain growth through the housing market decline that election year.

Larry Summers, who would later become Mr. Obama’s chief economic adviser, made the case for such a stimulus to boost domestic “demand” in late 2007. Any stimulus, he told the Brookings Institution, should be “timely, targeted and temporary.” Peter Orszag, then at the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) before joining the Obama White House, made the same case.

The official GDP statistics did show a growth blip in the second quarter of 2008 to 0.6%, but third quarter GDP fell by 4%, and we all know what happened after the financial meltdown. Stimulus I failed.

Enter Stimulus II, the $814 billion plan that was also supposed to make up for lost private demand. It too was a combination of one-time tax rebates and spending, mostly on social programs like Medicaid rather than on “shovel-ready projects.” Mr. Summers promised this would have a 1.5 “multiplier” effect on GDP growth, and White House economists Christina Romer and Jared Bernstein famously predicted the spending would keep the jobless rate below 8%.

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Pentagon push to phase out top brass causing much consternation

August 16th, 2010 · Deception, Defense, Democrats, Ethics, Federal Spending, Homeland Security, National Security, Non-Transparency, Obama Nominees, Obama's Scheme, Selling Out the US, Terrorism from Within, Treason, Unemployment

By Craig Whitlock Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 13, 2010

Of all the spending cuts and budget battles the Pentagon is confronting, none is causing more angst than Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates‘s vow to start getting rid of generals and admirals.

By almost any measure, the military is more top-heavy an institution than it has been for decades. Today, there are 40 four-star generals and admirals — one more than in 1971, during the Vietnam War, even though the number of active-duty troops has shrunk by almost half.

The number of active-duty generals and admirals of all rank, meanwhile, has increased by about 13 percent since 1996.

It is, as Gates puts it, “brass creep.”

But the defense secretary’s pledge Monday to cut about 5 percent of the brass is nothing short of seismic for many at the Pentagon. The cuts would be the largest in the upper ranks since a similar squeeze at the end of the Cold War, when the collapse of the Soviet Union prompted the military to downsize.

The defense secretary has said he also wants to make similar trims in the civilian leadership, noting that the number of people assigned to his office has grown by nearly 1,000 over the past decade.

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From Union VP to Obama Nominee for GPO

July 17th, 2010 · Corruption, Non-Transparency, Obama Nominees, Obama's Scheme, Selling Out the US

Obama’s nominee to head Government Printing Office reimburses $3,100

By Ed O’Keefe Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 16, 2010

William J. Boarman, President Obama‘s nominee to lead the Government Printing Office, received and cashed about $3,100 in improper payments from the GPO in the past six years and repaid the funds Tuesday, according to government records.

Boarman has been on leave without pay from the GPO since he took the first in a series of union positions in 1977. He currently serves as a senior vice president with the Communication Workers of America, the world’s largest telecommunications union.

The agency notified Boarman by letter on July 8 that it had improperly paid him because of administrative errors.

The GPO labor agreement permits workers to take a leave of absence if they are serving as union officers. Documents provided to The Washington Post by a GPO official show Boarman first requested leave in 1977, when he became president of the Columbia Typographical Union. He requested leave again in 1978, 1979, 1981 and 1985 to continue serving as union president. The records do not indicate his leave was extended beyond Jan. 1, 1987.

Despite being on leave without pay, Boarman received $1,615.04 in 2004 for six days of holiday pay and one day of regular pay, according to GPO records. He received $945.92 in 2005 for three days of holiday pay and one day of regular pay and in 2007 banked $1,055.25 for 35 hours of annual leave. Boarman cashed the payments, records show.

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Administration again tries to raise fuel costs by suspending drilling

July 13th, 2010 · Accountability, Corruption, Deception, Government, Government Control, Obama Nominees, Obama's Scheme, Selling Out the US, Terrorism from Within, Treason

Administration issues revised moratorium on offshore drilling

By Steven Mufson Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 12, 2010; 8:42 PM

The Interior Department has issued a new offshore drilling moratorium that is different, but not very different, from the one blocked recently by a New Orleans federal judge.

The six-month moratorium announced in May in the wake of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill barred drilling in waters more than 500 feet deep. The moratorium announced Monday doesn’t mention water depths, but it bars drilling by the types of rigs and drilling technology typically used in those waters.

A senior Interior Department official said none of the 33 rigs whose activity was interrupted in May would be able to resume the exploration drilling activity they were involved in then.

The Justice Department said that the new order supersedes the earlier one and renders the legal challenge to the moratorium moot. That challenge had been mounted by Hornbeck Offshore Services and other drilling firms, which had won an injunction from a district court judge. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals denied the Interior Department’s motion to stay the preliminary injunction pending appeal.

The appellate court set oral arguments for the week of Aug. 30. But the Justice Department said it would now ask the courts to vacate the injunction and dismiss the Hornbeck case “because the challenged May 28 decision is no longer operative and, thus, does not impact the plaintiffs.”

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Democratic campaign committees losing big Wall Street donors

July 6th, 2010 · Accountability, Deception, Democrats, Ethics, Federal Spending, Finance, Government, Government Control, Greed, Non-Transparency, Obama Nominees

By T.W. Farnam and Paul Kane Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, July 6, 2010

A revolt among big donors on Wall Street is hurting fundraising for the Democrats’ two congressional campaign committees, with contributions from the world’s financial capital down 65 percent from two years ago.

The drop in support comes from many of the same bankers, hedge fund executives and financial services chief executives who are most upset about the financial regulatory reform bill that House Democrats passed last week with almost no Republican support. The Senate expects to take up the measure this month.

This fundraising free fall from the New York area has left Democrats with diminished resources to defend their House and Senate majorities in November’s midterm elections. Although the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee have seen just a 16 percent drop in overall donations compared with this stage of the 2008 campaign, party leaders are concerned about the loss of big-dollar donors. The two congressional committees have raised $49.5 million this election cycle from people giving $1,000 or more at a time, compared with $81.3 million at this point in the last election.

Almost half of that decline in large-dollar fundraising can be attributed to New York, according to a Washington Post analysis of records filed with the Federal Election Commission. Donors from that area have given $8.7 million this year, compared with $23.9 million at this point in the 2008 cycle, with most of those contributions coming from big contributors in the financial sector. New York donors had given congressional Democrats almost twice as much money at this stage of the 2006 midterm campaigns, when Republicans ruled both chambers and held the White House.

Reasons for the plummeting donations include concern about the economic recovery and the personalities of the campaign committee leaders, Democratic experts say. But the overwhelming factor is the rising anger among financial executives who think they have not been treated well based on their support of Democrats over the past four years, according to lawmakers, party strategists and fundraisers. Several of the party’s biggest New York donors declined through spokesmen to be interviewed. Some Democrats say pushing Wall Street reform is more important than any slippage in political donations.

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High court nominees’ cautious answers frustrate senators: Something to Hide

July 5th, 2010 · Accountability, Deception, Democrats, Ethics, Obama Nominees, Obama's Scheme, Supreme Court

By Robert Barnes Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 4, 2010

It would be easy to come away from Elena Kagan‘s confirmation hearing with the impression that, in the minds of some senators, certain members of the Supreme Court might be — how to put this? — less than truthful.

Or, at least, dissemblers. The Senate Judiciary Committee’s 17-hour, 500-question grilling of the Supreme Court nominee was marked by repeated references from some senators to feeling burned by the three previous nominees: John G. Roberts Jr., Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Sonia Sotomayor.

“You know, we’ve become skeptical,” Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) told Kagan, because “it really isn’t going to matter what you said, because once you’re there, you’re there, and we have very little ability to change it.”

Coburn was criticizing Sotomayor at the time, saying her vote in a recent gun rights case was at odds with her testimony before the committee just a year ago. But he acknowledged his Democratic colleagues’ similar critiques of Roberts and Alito, who were nominated in 2005.

“You can understand the skepticism we might have, and especially in the fact that many on the other side of the aisle, the implication has been that the same thing by Alito and Roberts, that they weren’t straightforward, that, in fact, they didn’t keep their word on stare decisis,” Coburn said, referring to the principle of respecting the court’s precedents.

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Civil rights organizations question nominee Elena Kagan’s record on race

June 28th, 2010 · Accountability, Deception, Democrats, Ethics, Obama Nominees, Obama's Scheme, Selling Out the US, Supreme Court

By Amy GoldsteinWashington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 27, 2010

On the eve of Elena Kagan’s Senate confirmation hearings, her record on race in the Clinton White House and at Harvard Law School is producing discomfort among some leading civil rights organizations, leaving them struggling to decide whether they want her to join the Supreme Court.

Their reservations have introduced the first substantive division among liberals in what has otherwise been a low-key partisan debate over Kagan’s merits to replace Justice John Paul Stevens. The uncertainty among some on the left is particularly striking, given that she was nominated by the nation’s first black president.

Decades after the height of the civil rights movement, questions involving race and ethnicity persist as a recurrent theme before the Supreme Court, and attitudes on those issues remain a significant prism through which nominees are evaluated by those on the left and the right.

The National Bar Association, the main organization of black lawyers, has refrained from endorsing Kagan, giving her a lukewarm rating. The group’s president, Mavis T. Thompson, said it “had some qualms” about Kagan’s statements on crack-cocaine sentencing and what it regards as her inadequate emphasis while dean at Harvard Law School on diversifying the school along racial and ethnic lines. Others have expressed reservations about Kagan’s views on affirmative action, racial profiling and immigration.

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Obama Administration seeks to reimpose drilling moratorium in response to court ruling

June 23rd, 2010 · Corruption, Deception, Democrats, Ethics, Government Control, Non-Transparency, Obama Nominees, Obama's Scheme, Terrorism from Within, Treason

By ERICA WERNER – The Associated Press
Tuesday, June 22, 2010; 8:24 PM

WASHINGTON — Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says he will issue a new order imposing a moratorium on deepwater drilling after a federal judge struck down the existing one.

Salazar said in a statement Tuesday evening that the new order will contain additional information making clear why the six-month drilling pause was necessary in the wake of the Gulf oil spill. The judge in New Orleans who struck down the moratorium earlier in the day complained there wasn’t enough justification for it.

Salazar pointed to indications of inadequate safety precautions by industry on deepwater wells. He said he would issue a new order in the coming days showing that a moratorium is needed. 

The White House immediately promised to appeal the ruling, the process of which could take longer than the moratorium itself.  And even if that ruling were to come within the six-month period, Uhlmer notes that the Minerals Management Service could effectively maintain the moratorium by not providing approval for new drilling, or by simply canceling permits.

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Cases against Wall Street lag despite Holder’s vows to target financial fraud

June 22nd, 2010 · Banking Industry, Corruption, Deception, Democrats, Ethics, Finance, Government, Greed, Money Lost, Non-Transparency, Obama Nominees, Obama's Scheme, Selling Out the US, Taxes, Terrorism from Within

By Jerry Markon – Friday, June 18, 2010

Since taking office at the height of the financial crisis, President Obama has promised to hold Wall Street accountable for the meltdown. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. reinforced that message in November when he vowed to prosecute Wall Street executives and others responsible for the crisis.

“We will be relentless in our investigation of corporate and financial wrongdoing, and we will not hesitate to bring charges,” Holder said as he launched a financial fraud task force.

His Justice Department took steps to fulfill that promise this week when it arrested the former chairman of one of the nation’s biggest mortgage firms — the largest crisis-related criminal case — and announced that 1,215 people have been charged with mortgage fraud since March 1. But that success masks the government’s difficulties in the highest-profile investigations: those of Wall Street banks.

Nearly 1 1/2 years into Obama’s tenure, despite several cases against mortgage companies whose lending practices contributed to the crisis, the administration has not brought any charges against the big Wall Street banks that took those loans, converted them into toxic securities and pumped them into the world’s financial markets. Law enforcement sources say no such charges are imminent.

The blunt words of administration officials have triggered debate over whether they have gone too far in appearing to promise difficult cases that critics say might never be filed, in part because they would essentially criminalize an entire business model in the financial industry.

“The attorney general got out ahead of the facts and the evidence in saying, ‘We’re going to go down to Wall Street with a pitchfork and roust those fat cats out of their offices and put them in jail,’ ” said Tim Coleman, who prosecuted major fraud cases before leaving the Justice Department five years ago. “This was a case, in general, of people making business judgments and taking risks and having them go badly. That’s not criminal misconduct.”

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Interior inspector general expected to fault oil spill probe, Gov also to blame.

June 17th, 2010 · Accountability, Corruption, Deception, Ethics, Government, Greed, National Security, Non-Transparency, Obama Nominees, Obama's Scheme, Politics, Selling Out the US, Terrorism from Within

By Juliet Eilperin – Thursday, June 17, 2010

Elected officials should consider imposing ethics rules on oil and gas companies that do business with the federal government, the Interior Department’s acting inspector general plans to tell the House Natural Resources Committee on Thursday.

Mary L. Kendall will also tell the panel that the Minerals Management Agency, which oversees offshore oil drilling, is probing the BP oil spill in a “completely backwards” way and needs to have its culture revamped. The Washington Post obtained a copy of Kendall’s prepared testimony late Wednesday.

“While there is ample opportunity to improve and strengthen the regulations that govern MMS and the industry that extracts valuable resources from federal lands, the greatest challenge in reorganizing and reforming MMS lies with the culture — both within MMS and within industry,” Kendall intends to tell lawmakers.

The agency’s inspectors are not only underpaid and inadequately trained but are also faced with having to oversee too many rigs, she says in her prepared testimony. About 60 MMS inspectors oversee 4,000 facilities in the Gulf of Mexico, Kendall notes, while the Pacific Coast has 10 inspectors for 23 facilities. Kendall’s testimony was first reported Wednesday by the Wall Street Journal.

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