From politics (moderates who lean to the right) to Pogo (drools during poker stare) to rants (Whatcha expect from savvy, sassy sexagenarians?) to raves (Have you had your kudo today?) -- we never take ourselves too seriously.
We do, however, reserve the right to slaughter an occasional sacred cow. And in case we fail to mention it -- we will never forget....
Step back for a moment from Russian predictions and the Israel-Gaza conflict and those extended attacks on George Bush (which include some of the things that BHO also voted for, nah nah nah) and those over-the-top male-on-male "tingly" articles on BHO's manly chest or his wretched golf game and ....
We've got another (among other) issue to address. Such as the news out of Wyoming about the super-volcano calamity brewing beneath our national Yellowstone Park ....
Don't want to overly-alarm anyone, but this is not the type of situation that can be remedied by campaign contributions or executive orders or the United Nations.
It's the real world. A notch above terrorism and lunatics with nukes and stolen elections and even more critical (uh huh) than the economy or bailouts or George Soros' Secretary of State project (controlling the folks who count the ballots as an effort to subjugate voters who cast ballots).
Sorta reeks of reality. You know -- the world around us? That is, if you put down the remote long enough to read or glance at the geophysical maps.
It's that type of real-world reality that tells us that there are some events we can't control. No matter how much attention we give to unions or to vote recounts or to the prez-elect's manly pecs .....
Am I the only one who would be feeling safer if Mitt Romney were about to be inaugurated on January 20?
I can't help but wonder how the "anybody but a Mormon" crowd is crowing about how the Huckster (with his shady financial dealings) would be handling the economy ....
Me bitter? No --- just disappointed that conservatives seem to have become/been their own worst enemies.
We can do better. We must do better. And it could possibly begin with Mitt Romney in 2012.
Have you ever wondered how capitalism was pushed over the edge of the cliff just six weeks before the American presidential election?
According to financial experts, the world, as we know it will change dramatically by the year 2012. People, who provided for their families only three years ago, will be desperately searching for food.
The story of the economic meltdown of 2008 begins and ends with the United Nations and its carefully managed One World Order.
Behind the curtain of this dark chapter in human misery are ogres Maurice Strong and George Soros.
It is both power lust and an all-consuming hatred of the United States of America that elevated this deadly duo to ogre status.
Fortunately for all of those searching for answers, much of their plan for the world, post November 4, 2008 is already mapped out in writing.
Leading economic experts and Strong agree that in 2012 people will be going hungry.
“Strong has worked diligently and effectively to bring his ideas to fruition, He is now in a position to implement them.” (Henry Lamb, The Rise of Global Governance, available at sovereignty.net). “His speeches and writings provide a clear picture of what to expect. In 1991, Strong wrote the introduction to a book published by the Trilateral Commission, called Beyond Interdependence: The Meshing of the World’s Economy and the Earth’s Ecology, by Jim MacNeil. (David Rockefeller wrote the foreword). Strong said this:
“This interlocking…is the new reality of the century, with profound implications for the shape of our institutions of governance, national and international. By the year 2012, these changes must be fully integrated into our economic and political life.”
These chilling words are in line with ones he used for the opening session of the Rio Conference (Earth Summit II) in 1992, that industrialized countries have:
“Developed and benefited from the unsustainable patterns of production and consumption which have produced our present dilemma. It is clear that current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class—involving high meat intake, consumption of large amounts of frozen and convenience foods, use of fossil fuels, appliances, home and work-place air-conditioning, and suburban housing—are not sustainable. A shift is necessary toward lifestyles less geared to environmentally damaging consumption patterns.”
The only change that has happened since 1992 is that Strong and Soros now have their Agent of Change coming to the White House.
In other words, the world according to Maurice Strong, is unfolding as it should.
In an era ridden by bankruptcies and job loss, Zombie-like cultists will swarm Washington, D.C. for the January 20, 2009 inauguration of Barack Obama.
Voluntary acceptance of global governance is the preferred means of achieving a takeover of America without a single shot having been fired.
“Education programs to teach the “global ethic” have been underway by UNESCO and by UNEP for more than twenty years.” (Page 90, The Rise of Global Governance). “That the U.S. government, through its representatives to the various U.N. agencies, has not already crushed this global governance agenda is s testament to the effectiveness of the U.N.’s education program.”
Back to how to how ogres Strong and Soros, along with others, were able to hijack a world economy.
“A new Economic Security Council (ESC) would replace the existing Economic and Social Council. The new ESC would consist of no more than 23 members who would have responsibility for all international financial and development activities. The IMF, the World Bank, and the WTO—virtually all finance and development activities—would be under the authority of this body. There would be no veto power by any nation. (Italics CFP’s). Nor would there be permanent member status for any nation.”
Bloggers and website owners may recall how the Obama campaign team seemed to have thousands of volunteers available with G-Mail accounts to send out a barrage of nasty letters any time a blog or website asked too many questions or dared to criticize “The Messiah”.
In a post January 20 world, it seems that Obama will develop his activist base from within the White House.
But in Maurice Strong’s New World, NGOs will flag the new order about truth tellers: “The Commission (on Global Governance) believes that the U.N. should protect the “security of the people” inside the borders of sovereign nations, with or without the invitation of the national government. It proposes the expansion of an NGO “early warning” network to function through the Petitions Council to alert the U.N. to possible action.” (Italics CFP’s).
Maurice Strong has had a longtime influence with the major Foundations, which provide the funding for NGOs, and he has influence with the major international NGOs that coordinate the activities of the thousands of smaller NGOs around the world.
Small wonder that Strong spends his time far away in Communist China these days.
But there is a silver lining to be found even with the darkest of storm clouds over America and something for Americans to contemplate over the upcoming holidays.
In spite of the hype coming out of the Office of the President-elect, Obama is merely a fop for the global elite. He is their, and not the people’s true agent of change.
The January 20 inauguration with its promise of 5 million observers in Washington, D.C. will be the extravaganza of a lifetime, deepening recession notwithstanding.
It is Obama’s job to demoralize the 58 million people who did not buy into his campaign and for all of those who do not want One World Order.
Starring among all the glitterati at the Inauguration Ball, Barack and Michelle are like the stick figures from a kindergartener’s drawing, for this is an emperor who truly has no clothes.
Based on what has been publicly said by the President and the SEC, the culprits could possibly include operators of the controversial, mysterious and secretive financial vehicles known as hedge funds.
A glance of the 'NoBama' links to the left reveal the multiple articles and posts which have followed the audacity of Obama's connections to George Soros and Soros' personal mission to bankrupt, to literally destroy America.
There is more to the Soros-Obama connection that many within our government want us to know.
Joe Biden made headlines by talking about a “generated crisis” for President Obama. But is the current financial meltdown another “generated crisis?” Why did this crisis suddenly occur only six weeks before the election? Is it just a coincidence that it occurred at a time when John McCain was leading in the national public opinion polls and appeared to be on his way to a November 4 election victory?
“If it were not for the financial crisis,” commented Byron York of National Review, “McCain might have won” the election. It was the financial mess—not Obama’s massive advantage in campaign spending and a sympathetic media— that really hurt McCain.
If you examine the polling trend, McCain was moving ahead of Obama by mid-September. One poll, the Rasmussen poll, had McCain over Obama every day from September 12-17. McCain evened up the race again on September 23, after Obama had taken a lead, but it was Obama all the way after that.
The crisis, which is continuing and could get far worse, was man-made. It was not a natural disaster like an earthquake or a hurricane. And it is a fact that President Bush’s Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who worked for a Democratic firm, Goldman Sachs, and has very close ties to Communist China, is the one who convinced Bush on September 18 to publicly demand hundreds of billions of bailout dollars from Congress.
This is when McCain began falling in the polls. That’s apparently because McCain, like Bush, is a Republican, and he was blamed by Obama and the Democrats for the Republican policies that were said by the media to have produced this crisis.
Part of the problem was of McCain’s own making. He voted for the $700-billion plan after flirting with the House conservatives opposing it. He missed a critical opportunity to take on the incumbent President of his own party, Obama, the Democrats, and Wall Street interests.
The growing suspicion that the financial meltdown is a “generated crisis” has been fed by statements from President Bush himself. On September 18, Bush announced that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was stepping up its enforcement actions “against illegal market manipulation.”
The next day, September 19, Bush appeared in the Rose Garden with Paulson, SEC chairman Christopher Cox, and Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke. Bush declared that the SEC “has launched rigorous enforcement actions to detect fraud and manipulation in the market. Anyone engaging in illegal financial transactions will be caught and persecuted [sic].”
For its part, on the same day, the SEC announced “a sweeping expansion of its ongoing investigation into possible market manipulation in the securities of certain financial institutions.” The SEC declared, “Hedge fund managers, broker-dealers, and institutional investors with significant trading activity in financial issuers or positions in credit default swaps will be required, under oath, to disclose those positions to the Commission and provide certain other information.” But no details were provided.
Almost as secretive were Treasury Secretary Paulson’s maneuvers. He produced a quick three-page proposal to make himself a virtual financial dictator without judicial oversight or review. Then just as quickly it was secretly altered so that he would have the authority to bail out banks in China and other foreign countries.
The China Connection
The October issue of Bloomberg Markets notes that Paulson was sworn in as secretary in July 2006 and that by September he was announcing “creation of the first U.S.-China Strategic Economic Dialogue.” Paulson, the magazine reports, has a relationship with Chinese leaders and has traveled to China at least 70 times in his career. It reports that he personally had $25 million worth of holdings in a Goldman Sachs fund whose sole asset was a stake in the Industrial & Commercial Bank of China.
Goldman Sachs, a “full-service global investment banking and securities firm,” is “the leading underwriter of Chinese equity securities and M&A [merger and acquisition] advisor in China,” its website declares.
“Managing the U.S. relationship with China is an increasingly important part of the Treasury secretary’s job,” Bloomberg Markets says. “During the Fannie and Freddie crisis, Paulson used his credibility with Chinese leaders to reassure them that the U.S. mortgage companies weren’t in jeopardy.” Paulson is quoted as saying that “I clearly talked with the Chinese through this. They’ve worked with me enough that they knew I wouldn’t say it unless I believed it.”
Why was this necessary? Back on July 21, 2008, in an article headlined, “Trouble at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Stirs Concern Abroad,” The New York Times noted that China held $376 billion in securities issued by the quasi-governmental agencies, known as Government Sponsored Enterprises. In total, foreign investors held some $1.5 trillion in the housing giants, about one-fifth of their securities. China was the leading foreign investor.
On September 7, the U.S. Government, under Paulson’s direction, took control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, putting the U.S. taxpayers on the hook for $5 trillion of their mortgages. This constituted, in effect, a bailout of the foreign investors.
About a week and a half later the demands came for more taxpayer money for Wall Street, and the national economic crisis was well underway.
Bush’s November 15 “international summit,” including the United Nations Secretary-General, was to “begin developing principles of reform for regulatory bodies and institutions related to our financial sectors.” This is bureaucratic doublespeak for what has been called “global governance.” Some may fear with good reason that world government and global taxes are on the way in and U.S. sovereignty is on the way out.
The U.N., under its new General Assembly President, Miguel D’Escoto, is working to take advantage of the continuing crisis. D’Escoto is the renegade Catholic Priest and former foreign minister of Communist Sandinista Nicaragua who advocates Marxist-oriented liberation theology and won the Lenin Peace Prize from the old Soviet Union.
While Bush insists that the nations at this summit must “recommit to the fundamentals of long-term economic growth-free markets, free enterprise, and free trade,” he has already authorized several socialist-style schemes, including the $700-billion bailout, nationalization of mortgage companies, massive subsidies to American International Group (AIG), and the federal government taking ownership stakes in big banks. The estimated cost is already $1.8 trillion—more than $17,000 per American household.
It is important to note that none of this has stabilized the financial system, although that is what we were told by the media would happen.
Calling the global financial crisis an “historic opportunity,” a coalition of “progressive” individuals, social movements and non-governmental organizations met in Beijing on October 15 and issued a statement urging the “radical economic transformation” of the global economy. They advocate a “global taxation system,” including what are known as “Tobin taxes, on the movements of speculative capital,” and “stringent progressive carbon taxes on those [nations] with the biggest carbon footprints.”
Their plan also includes phasing out the U.S. dollar as the international reserve currency and establishing “a people’s inquiry into the mechanisms necessary for a just international monetary system.” Clearly, they intend to bring the U.S. into a system of international socialism, with new and more powerful global agencies deciding our economic and financial fate.
At the same time, the Left wants to make sure that “aid transfers do not fall as a result of the crisis.” Foreign aid must not only continue, they say, it must be expanded. The primary vehicle for this is the Millennium Development Goals project of the United Nations, whereby nations such as the U.S. are supposed to provide .7 percent of their Gross National Product (GNP) in foreign aid.
Setting The Stage For Obama
Their point man is Joseph Stiglitz, who won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2001 and is now a Columbia University professor. Stiglitz has been appointed by D’Escoto to chair a high-level U.N. task force to review the global financial system.
His first book, Globalization and its Discontents, suggested that while a global tax on currency transactions, the so-called Tobin Tax, was being seriously studied in Europe, it might involve serious “implementation problems.” But with his subsequent book, Making Globalization Work, those problems have vanished, as he argues for a variety of global tax schemes that would cost American taxpayers billions of dollars.
Stiglitz, a financial contributor to Obama’s presidential campaign and major backer of the national Democratic Party, is in a perfect position to guide the transition into a global socialist economy.
On October 23, at a U.N. meeting, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon met with Stiglitz to discuss the financial crisis and the November 15 global summit. One of the other economists in attendance was Jeffrey Sachs, also of Columbia University, and the head of the U.N. office that supervises foreign aid commitments and contributions to the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
Sachs has estimated that the U.S. is short by $65 billion a year in foreign aid, which adds up to $845 billion over the 13-year period during which nations are supposed to attain the MDGs. Through references to various U.N. resolutions and conferences, as well as the MDGs, Obama’s Global Poverty Act is designed to make the U.S. comply with the requirement of .7 percent of GNP being provided for “official development assistance.” Sachs has stated openly that a global tax will be necessary to force the U.S. to come up with the money.
At the Clinton Global Initiative meeting in September, Obama reaffirmed his own “embracing” of the MDGs and noted, “This will take more resources from the United States, and as President I will increase our foreign assistance to provide them.” On top of that, Obama supports the Jubilee Act, which would cancel as much as $75 billion of third world debt. That adds up to $920 billion more in taxpayer money on top of the estimated $1.8 trillion in national and domestic spending to deal with the current crisis.
We may be facing the bankruptcy of the United States, even without all of this new spending. Indeed, the Global Europe Anticipation Bulletin, which predicted the current crisis, reports the likelihood that the U.S. will default on some of its debts next year.
It declares that “…our researchers anticipate that, before next summer 2009, the US government will default and be prevented to pay back its creditors (holders of US Treasury Bonds, of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac shares, etc.). Of course such a bankruptcy will provoke some very negative outcome for all USD- [dollar] denominated asset holders. According to our team, the period that will then begin should be conducive to the setting up of a ‘new Dollar’ to remedy the problem of default and of induced massive capital drain from the US.”
This is what the international Left is hoping for.
Financial analyst Peter Schiff, who also predicted the current crisis, warns that “the fundamentals loom simple and irrefutable: American borrowers of all stripes cannot afford to repay the trillions of dollars we owe. Over the past decade, the vast majority of lending has come from abroad, and as Americans don’t pay, the losses show up on foreign balance sheets. Since we blew most of the money we borrowed on consumption, we simply lack the industrial capacity to repay our debts without resorting to a printing press.”
He adds, “In bankruptcy, both the debtor and creditors are affected. However, while creditors take a financial hit, ramifications for debtors are typically more severe. Creditors are generally better prepared to absorb their losses. However, for bankrupt debtors usually much more substantial changes ensue.
“Since America is the world’s biggest debtor, with our IOU’s broadly held by every creditor nation, the effects of our bankruptcy are being felt worldwide. However, while our creditors are suffering now, their pain will be temporary and relatively mild compared to what awaits Americans.
“So while it may appear to some that things are worse abroad, that is only because the full extent of our problems has yet to be reckoned with. The main lesson our creditors will learn from this crisis is not to lend American consumers any more money. Once the lending stops, our ‘cart before the horse’ borrow to spend economy will crumble. While the rest of the world absorbs their losses and moves on, we will be digging our way out of the rubble for years to come.”
Goldman Sachs Connection
This ominous future is why the role of Henry Paulson in sparking the panic should be probed.
Paulson “does not act or sound much like a conservative Republican to the GOP remnant at the Treasury,” noted Robert Novak in an October 2007 column. Novak reported that Paulson had “marched to his own drummer” by naming Eric Mindich, chairman of Eton Park Capital Management, to head the Asset Managers’ Committee of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets. “A former Goldman Sachs colleague of Paulson’s, Mindich is a top-level Democratic fundraiser,” Novak noted. “He was in Sen. John Kerry’s inner circle for the 2004 presidential campaign and backs Sen. Barack Obama for 2008.”
Significantly, on September 23, Paulson’s former firm, Goldman-Sachs, received $5 billion from Warren Buffett, a major Obama financial backer and booster.
Then, during the current crisis, Paulson appointed another former Goldman Sachs banker, Neel Kashkari, to run the new “Office of Financial Stability” and buy bad loans and distressed securities.
Under Paulson and Kashkari, $10 billion of taxpayer money was soon extended to Goldman Sachs.
Information from the Center for Responsive Politics identifies Goldman Sachs as a “strongly Democratic” firm, having contributed 73 percent of their almost $5 million in 2008 election cycle contributions to Democrats.
Some liberals understand the connection between Goldman Sachs and Obama. “Obama’s number one bundler is Goldman Sachs,” notes John R. MacArthur, publisher of Harper’s Magazine, in a release from the “progressive” group calling itself the Institute for Public Accuracy. He was referring to how money from the firm is packaged for the Obama campaign. “In his book, ‘The Audacity of Hope,’ Obama talks about how much he likes investment bankers, how bright and liberal they are,” says MacArthur.
Obama was clearly the firm’s favorite in the presidential race.
Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Tribune recently discovered that, on May 3, 2007, Obama had attended an event at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan “that was not on his public schedule and is only now surfacing—a private dinner for Goldman Sachs traders with a discussion on issues moderated for the Wall Street firm by NBC’s Tom Brokaw”—the moderator of the second presidential debate.
Her column noted other Obama campaign connections, including a report that Obama addressed Goldman Sachs’s annual partners meeting 2006 in Chicago.
The Hedge Funds
Based on what has been publicly said by the President and the SEC, the culprits could possibly include operators of the controversial, mysterious and secretive financial vehicles known as hedge funds.
A hedge fund operator such as George Soros, who was convicted of insider trading in France, is known to make money from the collapse of national economies and currencies. He was labeled “The Man who broke the Bank of England” because of his financial activities against the British currency. Did he break the U.S. economy?
Considering that Soros pours millions of dollars into the Democratic Party, its front groups and candidates, it is doubtful that the Democrats controlling Congress will want to investigate or even aggressively question the multi-billionaire.
The Wall Street Journal in January had reported that hedge fund operator John Paulson received a visit from Soros, a public supporter of and contributor to the Obama campaign, after Paulson had made about $4 billion betting on a housing market collapse. Obviously, Soros wanted to know how he had done it. But Soros wouldn’t talk to the Journal about his meeting with Paulson.
Soros gets away with a “no-comment” because he pours money into journalism organizations, including the Center for Investigative Reporting, the Fund for Investigative Journalism, and Investigative Reporters & Editors, thereby guaranteeing that they won’t investigate how and where he gets his money. Isn’t this convenient?
A recent example of this conflict of interest came in Bill Moyers’ October 10 interview on the Public Broadcasting Service. Moyers lavished Soros with praise, saying that he is “one of the world’s best known and successful investors,” and mentioned Soros’s new book, The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What It Means.
Not once did Moyers question Soros about his reported discussions with John Paulson. Not once did he question whether Soros’s financial activities had facilitated or precipitated the current financial crisis that he writes about in his book.
Soros insists that one contributing factor to the crisis was the lack of financial regulation. But he takes advantage of the lack of those regulations. Back in 2005, one Soros company was a member of the Managed Funds Association, which describes itself as “the global voice for the hedge fund industry” and was actively fighting an SEC proposal to impose more regulation on hedge-fund managers.
Is there anybody in the media willing to question Soros about how he made that money? And whether it came at the expense of the American people?
I'm but one person, but I will continue to monitor this connection.
The big question here…in this citadel of the national Democratic party (the nation’s oldest political machine) and the home of the walk-on-water messiah…is whether a ramrod-straight Irish Catholic federal prosecutor will reappointed by President-elect Obama. If so, Patrick Fitzgerald will continue to prosecute more members of the bipartisan combine which runs this town and state. For now, he is a distinct threat to the man known as Richard II, Mayor Richard M. Daley, the Democratic apparatus here including the governor-and very possibly Obama. So don’t hold your breath that his service will be renewed by our reformist president.Fitzgerald, 47, is the U..S. attorney for the northern district of Illinois, who, ever since his appointment in 2001, has been giving fits to Daley Democrats and “moderate” Republicans who bed down with the Dems There is no doubt that he, recommended for his post by Republican U.S. Senator Peter Fitzgerald, (no relation), is fearless and heedless of political propriety. No sooner was Pat Fitzgerald named by George W. Bush than he launched an investigation of GOP Governor George Ryan with close ties to the White House. Ryan, an apostate ex-prolifer who turned pro-abort and who commuted the death sentences to all inmates of death row to life in order to ingratiate himself with what he figured would be a liberal black jury-a close confidant of Mayor Daley and non-ideological pragmatic Republicans in Washington including members of President Bush’s staff and then House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert-was found guilty on all 18 counts against him. He got a sentence of 6–1/2 years. So powerful was Ryan that James R. (Big Jim) Thompson, 72, a liberal Republican former governor who is the state’s most clout-heavy lobbyist, devoted years at his blue-chip law firm on a pro-bono basis to getting Ryan sprung on successive appeals which went all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court. Thompson spent more than $20 million of the firm’s money using its top defense counsel defending Ryan which cut into his and his partners’ bonuses for which in pique they replaced him as managing partner. Being demoted didn’t bother Thompson, a multi-millionaire and former federal prosecutor who discarded a rosy career to hustle for big bucks clients in Springfield and Washington, D. C.. He has bigger things to worry about. For years he was a man driven to spend whatever it cost his law firm to get his former lieutenant governor off the hook…reportedly petrified that if angered Ryan would spill some costly beans about Thompson and others in the rarified world of Republi-crat back-scratching. So solicitous was Thompson after Ryan’s conviction that he had Ryan driven to the federal prison in his own law firm’s limousine while he sat in the back seat comforting Ryan while Ryan’s wife sobbed. Thompson is supposed to have said he’d work overtime to get George W. Bush to pardon the bulbous-nosed old ex-governor whose licenses for bribes corruption as secretary of state contributed to aliens getting commercial licenses who could not understand English. One such illegal contributed to an accident that burned five children alive-a grisly act for which Ryan refused to apologize.
Getting Close to Richard II.
Having convicted Ryan, Fitzgerald started to move on the Great Untouchable in Chicago politics-Mayor Richard M. Daley. In 2005 his office indicted a number of top aides to Daley on charges of mail fraud, alleging numerous instances of corruption in hiring practices at City Hall. Despite a federal decision allegedly removing hiring as reward for continued political service, it seems Mayor Daley had turned a blind eye to its operation. Fitzgerald found that a Daley top aide fielded requests for promotions from taxpayer-paid civil workers in recompense for political work they performed-including flooding the neighborhoods with canvassers in the 5th district which cuts an oddly-shaped swath across the city’s north side…in behalf of Rahm Emanuel. Emanuel is a lean and hungry Cassius…a former ballet dancer but who is definitely not a girly man…a brash and profane son of an Israeli immigrant (he uses the “f” word in almost every sentence), who owes his soul to Mayor Daley and who had become (a) political director of the Clinton White House where he regularly defended the 42nd president in the media vis-à-vis the Monica Lewinsky affair and (b) a multi-millionaire by learning first-hand from those close to ex-treasury secretary Robert Rubin how to make money in the investment banking business by using his old political connections. He became independently wealthy…$16 million net worth… managing a merger involving Chicago’s major utility, Com Ed which as a novice he managed by hanging on the phone and following orders dictated by Rubin associates. He was on the board of Freddie Mac, never mentioned in a laudatory “New York Times” bio, Freddie Mac having been fined $50 million during the time of his service for serious ethical impropriety). He ran for Congress in the 5th district (Dan Rostenkowski’s old district) and when a senile worker for Emanuel’s Democratic opponent claimed Emanuel had duel citizenship (here and Israel) Emanuel raised a stink, claimed his opponent was anti-Semitic and got the nomination, tantamount to election. Still and all, his election ground game was run largely by patronage workers from the city water department, for which its recruiter, Don Tomczak, went to jail-a matter Fitzgerald is still looking at. Once in the House, Emanuel proceeded apace, is a member of Ways and Means and is now chairman of the House Democratic Caucus. He has just been appointed as Obama’s chief of staff in the White House. But needless to say, Emanuel will never forgive Fitzgerald for prosecuting the man who mobilized city water department employees into a political army that elected him and others. Then Fitzgerald moved to the scandal-plagued program in the city that involved hiring private trucks to do city work. Daley-connected truck owners waited patiently in line to sign up their vehicles and drivers so that they could stand idle and collect money for doing nothing in a $40 million program. Daley’s kid brother sold insurance to three major trucking companies which understood that if their vehicles were to be hired by the city it would be prudent to have John Daley write the insurance. Twenty-five percent of all hired truck companies happened to come from the 11th ward, ancestral home of the Daleys where John serves as Democratic committeeman (in addition to commissioner of Cook county where he is ensconced as chairman of its finance committee). In return more than $105,000 in campaign donations flowed to the mayor from companies in the program. In February, 2005 Daley, his cheeks aflame addressed the hired trucks scandal by shouting-reminiscent of his late father, Richard I [1902–76] (although with better syntax)-“Anyone who believes that my interest in public life is enriching my family, friends or political supporters doesn’t know or understand me at all.. My reputation and the well-being of this city are more important to me than any election.” The press corps which still retains its honor could hardly keep a straight face. Sure enough, in February, 2006 a close relative pleaded guilty to taking at least $5,400 to steer hired truck work to a trucking company. Following this, Fitzgerald prosecuted the former city clerk, Democrat pro-abort James Laski with taking bribes and obstructing justice after the feds caught him on tape urging witnesses to lie to a grand jury and deny they gave him $500 to $1,000 a week each in cash bribes to keep getting business in the hired truck program. Also his predecessor was convicted in a ghost payroll scheme with taxpayers shelling out more than $400,000 in salaries to six politicians who didn’t show over a dozen years. In addition Fitzgerald discovered that tons of asphalt paid by the city were stolen by truck drivers in the hired trucks program and used on private jobs.
…Then to the Bush Administration.
Pro-Bush Republicans were gloating about these bad things happening to the Daleyites when Fitzgerald wheeled on his heel and…retaining his office here… went to Washington part-time as special counsel to investigate the Valerie Plame matter in 2003. He brought an indictment on 5 counts against Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby, Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff and for a time the Bush administration held its collective breath fearing that he would indict Karl Rove, the president’s political guru and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley. Libby was convicted of 4 of the 5 counts and sentenced to a $250,000 fine, 2–1/2 years in prison and 2 years of probation. After an appeals court rejected Libby’s attempt to delay the prison sentence, President Bush commuted that portion of Libby’s sentence. I personally have trouble with this conviction since the purpose of the probe was to find out who leaked to journalist Robert Novak that Plame was CIA-connected. Fitzgerald knew at the outset it wasn’t Libby but deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage (and, in fact, told Armitage to shut up about it). Fitz claims he caught Libby in a subsequent lie so he convicted him anyhow -the mark of a true zealot… which confirms what his critics say about him, but no one accuses Fitz of being soft on those he zeroes in on. After Fitzgerald returned full-time to prosecutions here, one Republican writhing under an investigation for fixing contracts was caught on tape vowing he would use his credentials with the White House…presumably with Rove who began in politics here… to get Fitzgerald replaced. Sure enough, in March, 2007 it was revealed that Fitzgerald “was ranked among prosecutors who had `not distinguished themselves” on a Justice Department chart sent to the White House in March, 2005. The downgrade was so blatant that President Bush rushed a statement out saying Fitzgerald “is a highly qualified prosecutor who carried out his responsibilities [on the Plame matter] as charged.”
Embarrassment for “Big Jim.”
All the while Big Jim Thompson was defending George Ryan pro-bono, Fitzgerald launched an investigation against the pompous CEO of Hollinger newspapers, which owned a string of publications including The Chicago Sun-Times, Conrad Black. He charged Black with criminal fraud, violations of fiduciary obligations and running “a corporate kleptocracy.” The indictment came perilously close to the patriarch of let’s-cut-a-deal bipartisanship in Illinois, Thompson who was chairman of the newspaper’s audit committee. Big Jimbo so relished serving on a board that included Henry Kissinger and neo-con Richard Perle that he personally and without examination signed off on outlandish expenditures by Black to ingratiate himself with management. As result Thompson was investigated by the SEC for wanton carelessness, agreeing to expenses by Black that were not remotely connected to the newspaper-and very narrowly missed being indicted for malfeasance by Fitzgerald. Black was convicted last year and sentenced to 78 months in federal prison, required to pay the newspaper $6.1 million in restitution and a fine of $125,000. Thompson escaped federal indictment by a hair’s breath and there is no doubt that he is gunning for Fitzgerald to be replaced.
Corruption with Ties to Dem Governor.
Although liberal Democrat Gov. Rod Blagojevich was elected (Serbian Orthodox) on a pledge to end corruption in Illinois government, Fitzgerald moved swiftly on first report of play for pay dealings in state government where big contributors were rewarded with cushy contracts and other favors. Republican Thompson’s law firm was Blagojevich’s general counsel on “ethics” (believe it or not) and Thompson raised campaign money for Blagojevich. Now Blagojevich has been widely rumored to be the unnamed “Public Official A” in the indictment of Antonin “Tony” Rezko, who has been a major fund-raiser and patron for Barack Obama’s career who has aided Blagojevich in at least one alleged extortion attempt. Rezko was convicted by Fitzgerald on 16 of 24 counts against him. Sent to prison where he could well spend decades, he so dislikes solitary confinement that he has agreed to talk to prosecutors. The danger for Blagojevich…and a host of pols of both parties—and possibly for Obama——is not inconsiderable. The first indication of Rezko’s information came last week when a big power-broker in the Republi-crat combine was indicted, Catholic Bill Cellini, close to Ryan, Thompson and a host of Dems, who has been playing bipartisan deals in this state since 1969. The feds also are looking seriously at Mrs. Blagojevich, daughter of a highly placed Catholic multi-millionaire Democratic pro-abort alderman who started the man known as “Blago” on his way…and who has been estranged from the governor and the fact that Patricia Mell Blagojevich, a licensed real estate broker, earned $113,000 in commissions from the owners of a company that won a no-bid contract with the state. But now it gets really interesting since Fitzgerald has done years of digging that may finally tie the Presidential Swami of Hope, Obama to dirty deals in the filthiest municipal tag team match of corruption extant in the nation, a process that John Kass of the Tribune, the only major columnist not supinely craven to Obama, calls “the Chicago Way.”
Ties to Obama.
Because Pat Fitzgerald is such a straight arrow, pols here don’t know how to deal with him. Regarded as an instinctive Democrat due to his Irish heritage as the son of a hotel doorman, born in Brooklyn, Fitzgerald has nevertheless been fearless in prosecuting close-up allies of Mayor Richard II and will likely indict a second governor, Democrat Blagojevich with rumors that this will be done before Thanksgiving. Not only that, with jailbird Antonin Rezko chirping like a canary in order to get his sentence reduced, what happens to the entire Democratic structure of power if bad things surface in his tales about Barack Obama who is regarded by so many media idolaters as a distant relative of the Deity? Like pro-abort Catholic MSNBC commentator Chris Matthews they feel collectively “a tingle” up their leg when Obama walks into a room. But the facts are there and this Demo-publican combine town is pathologically worried Fitzgerald will uncover more. What is known is toxic bad p.r. for Obama (but never played up by deferential local and national media). Rezko rehabbed a 31-unit building here eleven years ago with a loan from Chicago taxpayers. They couldn’t find the money to restore the heat in a winter season but they did dig up enough dough to give $1,000 to the newly elected state senator whose district included the rehabbed building. Obama, then a young operator on the make, took donations from Rezko while Rezko’s low-income housing empire was collapsing, leaving many black families in buildings with squalid conditions, lack of heat, filled with drug dealers and squatters. In all, 11 buildings Rezko rehabbed were in Obama’s legislative district. There is no evidence that Obama lifted a finger to help ease conditions caused by Rezko’s company; instead, he gratefully accepted Rezko’s dough and patronage. Moreover as a lawyer, Obama helped Rezko’s company get more than $43 million in government funding to rehab 15 buildings “for the poor.” Many had code violations; hundreds of apartments were vacant; taxpayers have been stuck with millions of dollars in unpaid loans; at least a dozen times, the city of Chicago had to sue Rezko for failure to heat the buildings. And that’s not all. What might interest Fitzgerald is that Obama teamed with Rezko in a cushy deal to improve his own living conditions. With money from his autobiography which through media hype became a best-seller, Obama then a U.S. senator paid less than the asking price for the home. He wanted to acquire a lot next door for a garden. Then Rezko’s wife…who was earning only $30,000 in salary…paid the full price for the lot next door and Obama bought part of the lot from her for $104,000-a transaction Obama later apologized for as “a boneheaded mistake,” acknowledging people might think he benefited from this gift from Rezko. The U.S. Senate’s ethics violations take such benefits seriously as we’ve learned from the case of Alaska’s Ted Stevens, found guilty of seven felonious counts of accepting gifts without reporting them. Rumor is consummate digger Fitzgerald is finding further business dealings between Obama and Rezko.
What to Do with Fitzgerald Dems Ponder.
John McCain announced that if elected president he would keep Fitzgerald on the job in Illinois. Obama has been less definite but in his smooth way expressed support for the prosecutor. Yet behind the scenes, there is much consternation in Democratic circles here. One pol close to Obama told me “it’s important we ditch this guy but do it the right way.” Meaning kicking him upstairs in Justice. But there Fitzgerald might still influence a probe. So the entire Illinois Demo-publican combine starting with the president-elect and centering on Richard II is uneasy. Chicago Democrats aren’t known for ancient history or literary accomplishment but they would be interested to learn that his namesake, Britain’s Richard II [1367–1400] overreached in power-grabbing, was deposed and sentenced to the Tower. In Act II, scene 2 the besieged king says, “the ripest fruit soon falls.” Richie Daley making license plates with George Ryan and Rod Blagojevich? Brrrrr!
The No. 1 priority, Obama said, is to get Congress to approve an economic stimulus plan that would extend jobless benefits, send food aid to the poor, dispatch Medicaid funds to states and spend tens of billions of dollars on public works projects. If the plan is not approved this month, in a special session of Congress, Obama said that "it will be the first thing I get done as president of the United States."
The big question is what kind of a tax cut is it? Is it an actual broad cut in income tax rates? Or is it an Obama-style “tax cut” that’s really a tax hike on Americans already paying the most taxes and a check in the mail for those already paying nothing?
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she wants to hurry up and enact a stimulus package of between $60 billion and $100 billion, and then establish a permanent, direct tax cut early next year to help the flailing U.S. economy. “Let’s see if we can’t do something, working together now, that gives us a two month jump,” she told The Wall Street Journal on Thursday. The tax cut would not include a capital-gains cut and Pelosi doesn’t want a tax rebate like before. Instead, she favors an adjustment to tax withholding tables that would put more money in workers’ pockets immediately. Pelosi’s aides later said any decision would be linked to both payroll and incomes taxes.
I don’t think the federal government can afford to be sending out any more checks, and certainly the economic impact of the last round of stimulus checks was short-lived. At best. The tax cuts interest me though. Could tax rate cuts be in the works? And if so, how do Democrats plan on cutting tax rates without *gasp* giving tax cuts for the rich? The people who pay the highest rates and the most taxes? The only way you can give the people
Democrats define as not being rich a tax cut is by eliminating their tax burden altogether or sending them a check in the mail. Which isn’t so much a tax cut as welfare. This middle class American says "no, thanks." We've had enough stimulus .... The checks we received earlier this year didn't work. Let the first bailout package work itself out and give Wall Street an opportunity to heal itself.
Meanwhile ... it appears that we may have the beginnings of a power struggle between the Office of the President Elect and the Office of the Speaker of the House Elect!!!
Up by 1, Zogby says. It's probably accurate, based on the general reaction to the changes Obama is making to his economic plan (raising the middle class "tax ceiling" to $120,000 today), his plans to develop cost-heavy programs in a time of national recession, word that his disabled aunt lives in a slum in Boston, how THE ONE has banned TV stations for asking tough questions and how three news anchors have been removed from his plane because their editors endorsed John McCain.
Mac's favorability rating may continue to rise, if the reception to Arnold Schwarzeneggar's speech is an indicator.
** Credit card fraud enabled by campaign "omission" allows anonymous and criminal donations:
Remember the 137,000 foreign donations that were converted to U. S. dollars?
Remember the ridiculous names that appeared on the Obama donor list?
Remember the contributions which exceeded the $2,300 limit?
Remember the number of stolen credit cards which contained a donation to Obama which were NOT made by the credit card owner? Consider that over half -- HALF -- of Obama's campaign contributions have been made by credit card donation....
Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign is allowing donors to use largely untraceable prepaid credit cards that could potentially be used to evade limits on how much an individual is legally allowed to give or to mask a contributor's identity, campaign officials confirmed.
Faced with a huge influx of donations over the Internet, the campaign has also chosen not to use basic security measures to prevent potentially illegal or anonymous contributions from flowing into its accounts, aides acknowledged. Instead, the campaign is scrutinizing its books for improper donations after the money has been deposited. The Obama organization said its extensive review has ensured that the campaign has refunded any improper contributions, and noted that Federal Election Commission rules do not require front-end screening of donations. In recent weeks, questionable contributions have created headaches for Obama's accounting team as it has tried to explain why campaign finance filings have included itemized donations from individuals using fake names, such as Es Esh or Doodad Pro. Those revelations prompted conservative bloggers to further test Obama's finance vetting by giving money using the kind of prepaid cards that can be bought at a drugstore and cannot be traced to a donor.
....
There is only one reason to deliberately choose to bypass those security processes, and that's to facilitate fraud. Team Obama claims that they vet the donations after the fact, but that's hogwash. It costs far more to do that than to screen for security codes and address verification up front, and everyone knows it. Obama counts on the fact that most of the fraud will fly under the radar of its victims, and the only cost they'll incur is when they have to process refunds after getting a specific complaint.
This is a key, revelatory moment about Obama and his team. They have deliberately chosen to make it easier for people to defraud the public so that they can ring up millions more in a campaign that has already broken records for fundraising. It's unethical, dishonest, and dangerous — especially since these will be the same people with their hands on tax records if Obama wins this election.
Possibly the most accurate comparison of Obama's and McCain's heathcare programs are at the Washington Times under Beware Obama-Care:
Mr. Obama's silver tongue has indeed lulled many in the media, including both sides of the aisle ....
... Obama's plan is filled with fantasies about costs, new government mandates and bureaucracies, and in the end, taxes and faith in big government that necessarily will be far greater and broader than his campaign admits, or perhaps worse yet, fails to understand.
... Obama's plan would instill new government mandates and expand costly government entitlement programs already stressed far beyond their sustainability. He creates a mandate that all families buy health insurance coverage for their children. He expands Medicaid and SCHIP eligibility, programs already overreaching by either covering families who can already afford insurance but choose not to, or by insuring adults (even childless ones) via a program designed strictly for children. He establishes a new government-run National Health Exchange, a Big Brother bureaucracy that will oversee the private insurance industry and "will act as a watchdog and help reform the private insurance market by creating rules and standards for participating insurance plans."
He calls for a new public insurance entitlement program for those without employer-provided care, once again repeating the mistake of positioning the government as the all-knowing insurer rather than as the provider of money to empower individuals and families so they themselves can purchase insurance they value.
... Obama's plans are funded by fantasies and new taxes. The financing of his plan depends heavily on purely hypothetical cost savings, most of which are already discredited by the Congressional Budget Office (see May 2008, "Evidence on the Costs and Benefits of Health Information Technology"), including his naive estimates from "investments in IT to reduce administrative costs, better disease management, reduced insurance overhead, reinsurance, and reduced uncompensated care" and claims that "businesses will save $140 billion annually in insurance premiums... and the typical family will save $2,500 per year."
He goes on to paint the illusion of pain-free government expansion and his new public insurance system by invoking key tenets of unabashed class warfare, anti-business liberalism with his new personal income taxes "on the rich" and new payroll taxes, both of which ultimately reduce workers' wages and inhibit much needed economic growth.
Compare Obama's plan with John McCains:
... McCain empowers the individual, not the government, by putting control of the health-care dollar in the hands of Americans, so they can make value-based purchases of health insurance they actually want, rather than insurance they are forced to buy.
Mr. McCain's health-care tax credit will introduce fairness into the tax treatment of health-care expenses, and specifically assist lower-income workers and their families, as well as small-business employees, i.e. those who do not benefit from the current tax treatment of health coverage, to purchase private health insurance coverage.
Mr. McCain will force transparency on the system with access to information on quality, price and healthy lifestyles for disease prevention. He will create insurance affordability for all, by generating a new, competitive national health insurance market.
The difference?
... Hiding under the veneer of positive change, Mr. Obama's health plan relies on a radical expansion of overburdened entitlements, and on creating new government programs that only seem moderate when compared to other extremist advocates of even more centralized power.
The choice should be obvious:
While Americans may reel from fear and uncertainty regarding the future of a sick economy, we can only hope they understand the stakes may be even higher when voting on the future of their own health.
