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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 'Not an Obama Priority'

Obama administration’s sex-ed program criticized by both sides of abstinence debate

October 29th, 2010 · Corruption, Deception, Democrats, Ethics, Federal Spending, Government Control, Obama's Scheme, Selling Out the US, Tax Dollars, Terrorism from Within

By Rob Stein Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 28, 2010; 12:27 AM

Over the past decade, politicians have battled about how to reduce the teen pregnancy rate: safe-sex vs. abstinence-only sex education programs, even as films such as “Juno” and births by famous teens such as Bristol Palin and Jamie Lynn Spears seemed to make adolescent pregnancies more socially acceptable.

At the same time, after declining for years, the teen pregnancy rate increased, but the pace at which teens were having babies appeared to stop falling or even inch up.

Now, the Obama administration has entered the politically sensitive debate, promising to put scientific evidence before political ideology. A $110 million campaign will support a range of programs, including those that teach about the risks of specific sexual activities and the benefits of contraception and others that focus primarily on encouraging teens to delay sex.

The initiative exemplifies the administration’s oft-repeated quest to find new strategies to defuse some of the nation’s most divisive issues. In this case, officials are hoping to appease advocates of teaching teens about condoms and other forms of birth control as well as those who oppose sex outside marriage.

Although the program is being hailed by many adolescent health experts, it is being denounced by some on both sides of the abstinence debate.

“This is one of those emotionally charged issues where it’s very difficult to find compromise,” said Amy E. Black, a political scientist at Wheaton College in Illinois. “It inevitably becomes entangled in a larger constellation of issues, such as abortion, that raise ideological, moral and religious questions.”

During the George W. Bush administration, the federal government spent $1.5 billion on programs that encouraged teens to delay sex until marriage. Critics said it was grounded in religious tenets and conservative doctrine, failed to educate teens about condoms in the age of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, and ineffective.

In response, the Obama administration launched a teen pregnancy prevention program that officials promised would fund only programs that had been proven to work. Last month, the Department of Health and Human Services awarded $75 million to 75 groups to try to reproduce some of the 28 programs deemed to have been “proven effective through rigorous evaluation.”

HHS also awarded $35 million to 40 organizations to test “innovative strategies” that appeared promising. Altogether, 115 programs in 38 states and the District received funding.

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Obama’s Incoherent Closing Argument : While the economy is the No. 1 issue, the president constantly changes the subject.

October 21st, 2010 · Democrats, Economy, Obama's Scheme, Selling Out the US

Associated Press

By Karl Rove

At an April 2008 fund-raiser in San Francisco, Barack Obama let loose with his famous “they cling to guns or religion” line. Last Saturday at a West Newton, Mass., fund-raiser, the president said, “facts and science and argument [do] not seem to be winning . . . because we’re hard-wired not to always think clearly when we’re scared.”

Memo to White House: Calling voters stupid is not a winning strategy.

The economy and jobs are the No. 1 issue in every poll. Yet Mr. Obama of late has talked about immigration reform and weighed in (unprompted) on the Ground Zero mosque. He devoted Labor Day to an ineffective Mideast peace initiative. He demeans large blocs of voters and now is ending his midterm pitch with attacks on nonexistent foreign campaign contributions and weird assertions that “the Empire is striking back.”

Meanwhile, Republicans have talked about little else than the economy—drawing attention to lackluster job growth, the failed stimulus, out-of-control spending, escalating deficits and the dangers of ObamaCare.

On Sunday, White House senior adviser David Axelrod promised that the administration’s focus next year would be “to generate more growth and jobs” and “on our fiscal situation.” That must have left congressional Democrats—battered for months by the GOP’s message discipline—wondering why there’s been no focus on that up to now.

Much of the blame lies with the president, who has left his party with an incoherent closing argument 12 days before the election.

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Obama may be on his own if he wants big changes: Still grasping at straws.

October 18th, 2010 · Deception, Democrats, Dissention, Federal Spending, Government Control, Obama Exposed, Obama's Scheme, Selling Out the US

By Scott Wilson Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 17, 2010; 12:31 AM

As the tumultuous first two years of Barack Obama‘s presidency draw to a close, the president and his advisers have begun to puzzle over a difficult question: Now what?

There are many things Obama has said he would like to accomplish in the next two years of his term – overhauling the nation’s immigration laws, passing energy and climate-change legislation, and shrinking the federal deficit, to name a few. Yet doing so may be exceptionally challenging, if even possible, given the skeptical mood of the public and the coming shake-up in Washington.

Next month’s midterm elections will leave the president with fewer friends in Congress, and possibly a Republican majority in one or both chambers emboldened to thwart his plans.

In White House strategy sessions, Obama’s senior staffers are debating their options. They have not yet settled on a specific plan, and the president has not spelled one out. How Obama approaches the coming years will depend in part on whether Democrats lose Congress or survive with narrower majorities. Yet no matter how the elections turn out, a consensus has emerged in the West Wing that Obama will have to set out goals that do not rely as much on Congress to advance his unfinished reform agenda. Even with his party now in control on Capitol Hill, Obama has had difficulty winning approval for big initiatives such as health care and financial regulation. After the grueling midterms, and with diminished ranks, Democrats will probably return for the new Congress in January more cautious.

“Clearly the agenda carried out by the administration in the first two years – the agenda that it wanted to do rather than had to do – will be smaller these next two years,” said William A. Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who was a policy adviser in the Clinton administration. “But there is still an agenda of necessity with Congress and the administration will not be able to just avoid it entirely.”

One senior administration official said that the courts may play an expanded role in the next two years, as the president defends his health-care and financial-regulation reform laws against legal challenges brought by opponents who hope to undo them or dial them back.

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Call the Senate’s bluff on recess appointments: A waste of tax payer’s money.

October 17th, 2010 · Congress, Deception, Federal Spending, Government Control, Politics, Senate, Tax Dollars

By Steven G. Bradbury and John P. ElwoodFriday, October 15, 2010

At 11:30 a.m. on Friday, Oct. 1, 2010, Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland called an otherwise empty Senate chamber to order. He asked the clerk to read a letter from Sen. Daniel Inouye, the president pro tempore of the Senate, appointing Cardin acting president. Then, as presiding officer, Cardin abruptly declared the Senate in recess until 11 a.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 5. This “pro forma session” lasted precisely 28 seconds.

The same procedure will be used 13 more times, at least twice a week for six weeks, until the 111th Congress reconvenes for real after the November elections. The unanimous-consent order setting up this odd procedure stipulates that the Senate shall “meet in pro forma session only with no business conducted.”

What’s the point of these phony “pro forma sessions”? They serve but one purpose: to prevent the president from exercising his constitutional authority to make recess appointments.

A novelty first seen during the waning months of the Bush administration, the pro forma session threatens to become a permanent roadblock in the already dysfunctional appointments process.

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GAO: Contractors get federal business despite violations

October 14th, 2010 · Accountability, Corruption, Deception, Democrats, Ethics, Federal Spending, Greed, Non-Transparency, Obama's Scheme, Selling Out the US, Tax Dollars, Taxes, Terrorism from Within

By Joe Davidson Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 13, 2010; 11:31 PM

When Uncle Sam dishes out billions of dollars in contracts to companies doing the government’s work, you’d think he’d want to deal with firms that don’t break his laws.

But a Government Accountability Office report says numerous contractors received government business even after they had been cited for violating laws designed to protect workers.

Consider this example:

The Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) hit a large petroleum company with $55 million in fines for labor law violations between fiscal 2005 and 2009.

A big chunk of the fines followed health and safety inspections “after a massive refinery explosion where there were 15 deaths and almost 200 injuries,” GAO reported.

Yet in 2009, Sam awarded the firm’s parent company more than $2 billion worth of work.

Perhaps he wanted to make sure it had enough money to pay the fines.

Here’s another case:

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Momentum builds for nationwide freeze on foreclosures despite the grave impact on the nation’s housing market and economic recovery.

October 11th, 2010 · Banking Industry, Corruption, Deception, Democrats, Economy, Federal Spending, Government Control, Greed, Housing Industry, Obama's Scheme, Real Estate, Selling Out the US, Tax Dollars, Taxes, Terrorism from Within, Treason, Treasury, Unemployment

By Ariana Eunjung Cha, Steven Mufson and Jia Lynn Yang Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, October 9, 2010; 10:23 AM

Senior Obama administration officials said Friday that a nationwide moratorium on foreclosure sales may be inevitable, despite their grave reservations about the impact a broad freeze would have on the nation’s housing market and economic recovery.

Their remarks were made as pressure for a nationwide moratorium mounted Friday when Bank of America, the nation’s largest bank, halted foreclosure sales in all 50 states. Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), who is locked in a tight reelection campaign, called on other major lenders to follow suit.

The White House has so far resisted joining the election-season calls for action but convened two interagency meetings this week to discuss reports that banks filed fraudulent documents to evict delinquent borrowers and to deal with questions about whether banks are seizing properties without having clear ownership of the mortgages.

One meeting was made up mostly of groups that regulate the housing industry, including the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Treasury Department and the White House. The other, which involved the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Internal Revenue Service and U.S. attorneys from across the country, was focused on the question of whether financial fraud was committed.

With foreclosed properties comprising one in every four homes sold in the United States, the spreading moratorium could disrupt real estate deals in progress, slow down the process of clearing the backlog of troubled home loans and prolong the economic recovery, analysts said.

A freeze would also strike at the financial sector, just two years after it suffered one of the worst crises in its history. One government official who has been in discussions with several big financial firms said the banks are bracing themselves for a wave of lawsuits from homeowners who are fighting to keep their homes and from investors who had bought mortgage loans on Wall Street. On Friday, while the Dow Jones industrial average crossed 11,000, most major bank stocks fell.

Bank of America is the first bank to put a moratorium on foreclosures in all states, extending its suspension to states such as California and Nevada, which have been hit hardest by the housing bust. Previously, Bank of America, J.P. Morgan Chase and others had announced that they were stopping foreclosures only in the 23 states where a court order is needed for an eviction.

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Unemployment remains 9.6%

October 8th, 2010 · Economy, Unemployment

By Michael A. Fletcher Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 8, 2010; 1:19 PM

The nation’s gloomy job situation remained essentially static in September, as a modest increase in private employment was offset by the loss of government jobs, the Labor Department reported Friday.

The politically sensitive unemployment rate remained at 9.6 percent, and the number of unemployed people – 14.8 million – remained essentially unchanged from the previous month.

Overall, employers shed 95,000 jobs in September. Private employers added 64,000 jobs, but the loss of temporary Census jobs and increasing cuts by state and local governments grappling with the aftershocks of the recession caused the loss of 159,000 government posts.

The number of people involuntarily working part time increased by 612,000 in September to 9.5 million, the government reported.

Men continued to bear the brunt of the unemployment problem, with an overall unemployment rate of 9.8 percent compared with 8 percent rate for women. The unemployment rate for blacks was 16.1 percent; for Hispanics the rate was 12.4 percent; for whites it was 8.7 percent; and for Asians it was 6.4 percent. All of those rates were little changed from August.

The report is the last before crucial midterm elections in November, in which the troubled job market has emerged as a paramount issue.

The White House tried to place the mixed jobs report in a broader context.

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Senate report: Mismanaged U.S. contractor money aids enemy in Afghanistan

October 8th, 2010 · Accountability, Corruption, Deception, Democrats, Economy, Federal Spending, Foreign Policy, Homeland Security, National Security, Obama's Scheme, Selling Out the US, Tax Dollars, Taxes, Terrorism from Within, Terrorist Threat, Treason, Unemployment, War on Terrorism

Reference: SASC Report on Private Security Contractors in Afghanistan 10/07/2010

By Karen DeYoung Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 8, 2010; 12:34 AM

The U.S. military has only minimal knowledge of – and exercises virtually no control over – the thousands of Afghans it indirectly pays to guard its installations, including “warlords and strongmen linked to murder, kidnapping, bribery” and to the Taliban, Senate investigators said in a blistering report released Thursday.

The bipartisan report, compiled after a year-long investigation, notes that the military has recently launched its own investigations of the situation and has taken some steps to address it. In one of the most significant steps, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, has issued new contractor guidelines.

Still, the Senate investigation documents a failure to properly vet, train and supervise Afghan security subcontractors, hired by U.S. and other international firms under multimillion-dollar military contracts.

That failure has cost American lives, undermined the U.S. mission and the Afghan government, and “helped play into the hands of the enemy,” said Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Some of the Afghan security subcontractors, Levin told reporters Thursday, are “creating the very threat they are hired to combat.”

Committee staff reviewed more than 125 Defense Department security contracts dated between 2007 and 2009 and provided a detailed account of two in which subcontractors had direct and well-known ties to the Taliban. The report recounts an instance in which the military raided a Taliban meeting being held at the house of a subcontractor. It also notes instances in which security subcontractors were believed by U.S. military intelligence to be Iranian agents.

According to the U.S. Central Command, the report said, there were more than 112,000 Defense Department contractor personnel in Afghanistan as of April 30. As of May, more than 26,000 armed private security personnel – nearly all of them Afghans – worked for the Pentagon and other U.S. agencies.

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Obama won’t sign bill that would affect foreclosure proceedings

October 7th, 2010 · Banking Industry, Democrats, Economy, Housing Industry, Obama's Scheme, Selling Out the US

By Jia Lynn Yang Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 7, 2010; 2:34 PM

Amid growing furor over the legitimacy of foreclosure proceedings, White House officials said Thursday that President Obama will not sign a two-page bill passed by lawmakers without public debate after critics said the legislation could loosen standards for foreclosure documents.

The bill, named the Interstate Recognition of Notarizations Act, would require courts to accept document notarizations made out of state. Its sponsors intended the effort to promote interstate commerce. But homeowner advocates warn the new law could allow lenders to cut even more corners as they seek to evict homeowners.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said the president did not believe Congress meant to undermine consumer protections regarding foreclosure challenges. Still, Obama will use a “pocket veto,” which will effectively kill the legislation.

Democratic leaders on the Hill were scrambling to figure out how the bill managed to sail through both chambers of Congress without any objection. The episode may prove embarrassing for Democrats who in recent weeks have been calling for federal investigations into flawed paperwork, forged documents and other kinds of misconduct in foreclosure proceedings initiated by big lenders.

The House passed the bill in April by a voice vote, meaning there’s no record of who voted for or against the legislation. The Senate passed the bill on Sept. 27, just before recess, without any debate.

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Amid backlash and budget deficits, government workers’ pensions are targets like the rest of America

October 6th, 2010 · Deception, Democrats, Economy, Federal Spending, Greed, Money Lost, Obama's Scheme, Selling Out the US, States, Tax Dollars, Treasury, Unemployment

By Michael A. Fletcher Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 6, 2010; 2:45 AM

PHILADELPHIA – Faced with deep budget deficits and overextended pension plans, state and local leaders are increasingly looking to trim the lucrative retirement benefits that have long been associated with government employment.

Public employees are facing a backlash that has intensified with the nation’s economic woes, union leaders say, because of their good job security, generous health-care and pension benefits, and right to retire long before most private-sector workers.

In California, where an estimated 80 cents out of every government dollar goes to employee pay and benefits, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) has proposed a two-tier system of pensions that offers new state workers reduced benefits with tighter retirement formulas. He also wants state workers to kick in higher pension contributions to help deal with California’s staggering deficit.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) calls reform of public employee pensions essential to fixing the state’s enormous fiscal problems. Michigan Gov. Jennifer M. Gran-holm (D) recently signed a change to her state’s teacher pensions that increases employee contributions. Illinois has pushed back the retirement age for new employees. Detailing his agenda for New York, Democratic gubernatorial nominee Andrew M. Cuomo has said, “We simply can’t afford to pay benefits and pensions that are out of line with economic reality.”

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