PopSugar

Ray J Blames Hotel Staff

justingirl1989 — Sat, 31 May 2008 05:34:19 -0700

Ray J is speaking out about the little incident he had while staying as a guest at the Hyatt in Washington D.C. To refresh your memory, they booted him after finding PCP and other drugs in his room. But don't worry, because it's all just a huge misunderstanding, as usual with celebrities. Ray J claims it wasn't his.

"The defamatory statements made by the staff at the Washington D.C. Hyatt accusing me of using the drug 'boat' or PCP are totally false and are an attempt by them to gain publicity for their hotel. These drugs are illegal and since the police were called, I would have been arrested if I had these drugs in my possession. The statements made by the hotel staff are extremely damaging, and I'm contemplating legal action. "

As if the reputable Hyatt has nothing better to do with their time than conjure up false drug stories about a non-celebrity. If anything, they've probably lost business, not gained it.
http://www.hollyscoop.com/drugs/ray-j-blames-hotel-staff-_16244.aspx

Ray J Sings About Sex With Whitney Houston

justingirl1989 — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 07:13:09 -0700

Ray J’s latest CD All I Feel is hitting store this week. If you are at all interested in hearing him sing about sex with former girlfriend Whitney Houston or talk smack about her ex husband Bobby Brown, then you are in for a real treat.

Here is just a bit of what you will hear on Ray J’s newest song that is supposedly about Whitney and Bobby:

“Is that your wife, is that your shorty, well I’m her boyfriend….I think the problem is you don’t beat it right….Making love is so cool, just pull her hair sometimes.”

WOW! He sounds like a real romeo. The girls should be lining up now for a shot at getting their hair pulled by the young Casanova. BLAH!

Houston, who has had her share of front page drama over the years, has got to be sick of these losers going back and forth. Bobby, who just came out with a tell all book, threw Whitney to the curb time and time again. First by saying that she turned him to the hard drugs and that he only smoked a little weed until he met the diva. Brown chimes in on Ray J in his book. He was ok with the 20 year age difference as long as his daughter was happy.

With Bobby looking out for the good of his daughter, expect to see a Father of the Year award coming very soon!

source: bittenandbound.com

Ray J Talks About Kim Kardashian Sex Tape (Video)

justingirl1989 — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 06:05:48 -0700

Ray J sat down with Tyra Banks on her talk show and discussed the now infamous sex tape he made with Kim Kardashian. When Tyra asked him why they made the tape, the rapper said they were bored.

According to Ray J, he had taken Kim to Cabo for her brithday, and after three days they found themselves looking for a little excitement. He had brought along his camera and suggested that the two make their own “reality show.”

When asked how the tape got “leaked,” he claims Kim had the only copy of the tape, and said that they both receive royalties.

Tyra asks if girls treat him differently now that the sex tape has made him famous for having such a large “personality.” (wink wink)

Celeb Style: Lindsay Lohan

FabSugar — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 11:00:08 -0800

Every once in a while, Lindsay Lohan hits the nail right on the fashion head. While leaving a hotel in London, the 6126 designer emoted major slick factor in an oversize wool blazer, graphic print tee, skinny jeans, and ravishing over-the-knee boots. A cozy scarf and dark Ray-Ban aviators finish off her irresistible incognito ensemble.

Check out CelebStyle for lots more celebrity street style!

Come Fab Finding With Me: Miami Food and Wine Festival

FabSugar — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 15:00:22 -0800

PartySugar will soon be heading to Miami for Food Network's Food and Wine Festival. Sun, fun, and food - pretty sweet, right? While out there, she will attend Rachael Ray's famous burger bash. Can you help her put together a smashing look? Nothing too tight since a lot of food will be consumed.

I'll start you off with this Brian Atwood Mattie Patent Clutch ($830, originally $1,660). The neutral hue will be the perfect backdrop to a colorful outfit.

Let's go Fab Finding. Be sure to come back and tell me your Fab Finds are up, or just tag your Fab Finds with Food and Wine Festival. Now, you can build outfits by creating your very own widget of clothing items. We have everything you need to build outfits, and you can use your Fab Find bookmarks, too. This is an even better way to put together an entire outfit when completing your Fab Finding missions. Learn what a Fab Find is and how to make one. And here's a detailed explanation of bookmarks from GeekSugar.

To see some of my favorite online stores, read more.

Report Card for the Obama Administration

Grandpa — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 10:36:52 -0800

Report Card for the Obama Administration

by CEI Staff
January 20, 2010

Washington, D.C., January 20, 2010-One year ago today, Barack Obama took the oath of office as President of the United States. Since then, he and his appointees have had the opportunity to begin implementing their policy agenda, with notable results throughout the federal government’s departments and agencies. The analysts of the Competitive Enterprise Institute have assessed the administration’s first-year performance and assigned grades accordingly.

D- White House (overall) ― Barack Obama, President

Grader: Fred L. Smith, Jr., President

Americans rallied behind President Obama’s message of hope and change, giving this administration a wonderful opportunity to reframe the debate about an array of issues in America-entitlements, environmental policy, health care, and the roles of the federal and state governments. Americans, not wedded to either the Democrats or the Republicans, were ready for a reappraisal, a rebalancing of the powers of the people and the politicians. He blew it. Despite being elected by moderates and independents, this administration adopted the most statist agenda and created the most bloated bureaucracy in America’s history. By championing further politicization of an already overly politicized America, there have been rapid drops in Obama’s credibility and popularity.

Americans are dropping out of his Long March toward Socialism. Obama could have adopted a “Nixon in China” policy, working with Republicans, Independents, and Democrats to rebalance private and political frontiers, encouraging greater private involvement in education, allowing private property a role in the environmental field, taking on the non-sustainable entitlement programs already threatening the survival of Europe, reducing the regulatory and tax burdens on entrepreneurial creativity, and moving away from the neo-conservative “nation building” crusade of his predecessor. Unfortunately, he has not. He could have been-and, if he reshapes his course quickly enough, might still become-a great president. But, in this first year of his presidency, he has disappointed. The performance of the White House to date merits only a D-.

D+ Department of Agriculture ― Tom Vilsack, Secretary

Grader: Frances B. Smith, Adjunct Fellow

In a February 24, 2009, address to Congress, President Obama promised the American people that his administration would be taking a hard look at farm support. “In this budget,” he said, “we will . . . end direct payments of large agribusinesses that don’t need them.” However, reality wasn’t consistent with that rhetoric, as the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that direct government payments would total $12.5 billion in 2009, a 2-percent increase over 2008. Agricultural policy in the Obama administration has also continued and expanded massive agricultural subsidies, with new “green” subsidies for ethanol production. In addition, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 gave USDA nearly $28 billion in funding, which together with guaranteed loan programs represents nearly $52 billion in new program funding. The Obama administration has also refused to touch special interest programs that benefit wealthy farmers at the expense of consumers-for example, the USDA decided not to increase import quotas for sugar, which restrict the amount of sugar available for sugar users and consumers. And, despite World Trade Organization rulings against U.S. cotton subsidies, no U.S. action has been taken to change that program.

D Consumer Product Safety Commission ― Inez Moore Tenenbaum, Chairman

Grader: Angela Logomasini, Director of Risk and Environmental Policy

The CPSC gets a D for its management of perhaps the most significant item on the Consumer Product Safety Commission agenda for 2009: the implementation of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 (CPSIA). It regulates lead and certain chemicals in toys. Never mind the fact that the trace levels are too low to pose a health risk, this draconian law is putting small businesses out of commission and forcing charities to toss old books, toys, and other items. Small businesses and others have been fighting this unreasonable and impractical law since its inception. But CPSC has made things even more difficult than necessary by refusing to apply any flexibility built into the law.

Commissioner Ann Northup, one of the few voices of reason at CPSC, noted recently in the Wall Street Journal: “For the past several months, American businesses have been caught in the middle of a classic standoff between the federal commissioners in the majority, who argue that the statute ties their hands, and members of Congress, who claim they wrote flexibility into the law and blame the commission for any harsh consequences. Although the commission steadfastly refused to reach out to Congress to seek clarifications to the law, Congress has now reached out to us-asking the agency last week for a list of recommendations to amend the statute. Thankfully the commission responded, in part, by agreeing to extend the stay on testing and certification for lead content. This window gives Congress time to consider such common-sense changes…” The commission gets a few points for having at least extended one compliance deadline to allow time for reform, but it could have taken more opportunities to apply some reason to the application of the law.

F Department of Energy ― Steven Chu, Secretary

Grader: Iain Murray, Vice President for Strategy

The mission of the Department of Energy has historically been one of ensuring that America has the power to meet its economic needs. Unfortunately, under Secretary Steven Chu, a Nobel-prize winning physicist, the Department has apparently decided that America’s economy is too big and needs to be scaled back. It has taken a decision to frown upon traditional sources of energy, generated from fossil fuels, and discouraged their further development. Alternative sources of energy, which cannot possibly meet America’s needs in the short-to-medium term, are instead encouraged with massive taxpayer-funded subsidies. Some noises have been made about nuclear energy, but it remains the red-headed stepchild of energy policy. The result will likely be a continuing degradation of America’s energy infrastructure which will almost certainly result in its failure to meet economic needs should the nation begin to climb out of the current recession, with the likelihood of a stalled recovery. For its failure to appreciate exactly what it is supposed to be there for, the Obama administration’s Department of Energy gets a resounding F.

F Environmental Protection Agency – Lisa P. Jackson, Administrator

Grader: Myron Ebell, Director of Energy and Global Warming Policy

EPA flunked on April 16, 2009, when EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson found that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare, and therefore must be regulated under the Clean Air Act. This endangerment finding came after an advance notice of proposed rulemaking begun during the Bush administration in July 2008 that resulted in numerous substantive expert comments that show clearly that the finding is unwarranted scientifically, that the Clean Air Act is entirely unsuitable for regulating greenhouse gas emissions, and that using it to do so would create a regulatory nightmare and do enormous economic damage. Administrator Jackson admitted that the Clean Air Act was not designed to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, but went ahead and made the finding anyway.

In addition, EPA has moved aggressively to stop coal production in Appalachia by intervening in mine-permitting decisions by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The EPA has even demanded that the Corps revoke permits for new mines that have already been granted. The grounds upon which the EPA is attempting to stop coal mining are utterly ridiculous.

D Federal Communications Commission – Julius Genachowski, Chairman

Grader: Ryan Radia, Associate Director of Technology Studies

Radio and television stations, Internet service providers, and even wireless phone companies are all regulated by the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC). This agency is tasked with governing the nation’s airwaves and making available communications services to the residents of the United States.

Technological evolution has spurred fundamental changes in the way we communicate over the last couple of decades. Consumers nowadays enjoy more information and entertainment sources than ever before, and the notion of scarcity in communications has yielded to a world of abundance. Consequently, the FCC’s proper role has grown smaller and smaller.

Like most modern bureaucracies, however, the FCC has maneuvered in recent years to interject itself in market processes in order to preserve the agency’s relevance in the face of a rapidly changing communications landscape. Most recently, the FCC has proposed imposing net neutrality rules that would limit how Internet providers can manage their networks in the name of protecting consumers. But these rules threaten to constrain tomorrow’s innovative business arrangements-arrangements which today’s shortsighted regulators simply cannot foresee.

The FCC also made headlines in the fall of 2009 when it launched an investigation into wireless industry practices. AT&T, the nation’s second largest wireless carrier, and Apple, the maker of the iPhone, were at the center of the controversy. Naturally, the FCC claimed its actions were aimed at protecting consumers. In fact, the looming scepter of regulatory intervention in the wireless market-a market which is highly innovative and competitive, according to objective measures-causes firms to retreat, stifling innovation and making consumers worse off.

On the other hand, the FCC has publicly acknowledged the need for expanding the pool of spectrum available to the marketplace. Spectrum is the lifeblood of mobile communications, but government controls giant swaths of this resource. The FCC has streamlined the process of deploying wireless services, which has helped ensure that wireless carriers are able to meet escalating demand for mobile data service. But the Commission still has a long ways to go if it’s to enable American enterprise to realize the full potential of the spectrum.

F Federal Trade Commission – Jon Leibowitz, Chairman

Grader: Michelle Minton, Policy Analyst

The purpose of the Federal Trade Commission is, ostensibly, to protect consumers and encourage competition in the marketplace. However, over the last year the FTC and the Obama administration have initiated or endorsed actions that display an increasingly interventionist intent and that would resoundingly impede competition and threaten the liberty of individual consumers. Congress initiated plans to repeal portions of the McCarran-Ferguson act, ending the long-standing antitrust exemption for health insurers. This proposal, endorsed by President Obama, would do nothing to reduce the costs of health insurance and would more than likely result in increased costs and market consolidation. The “collusion” practiced by health insurers actually allows them (especially small insurance companies) to share information and rate-setting standards for more accurate premium calculations. Setting accurate risk-based rates is fundamental to an insurer's ability to charge adequate rates that are neither too little or too much. States already have the power to regulate antitrust in the insurance industry so the result of repealing the antitrust exemption would most likely be insurance companies erring on the side of caution by reducing market cooperation, a reduction in premium rate accuracy and thus an increase in the costs of writing insurance.

Additionally, the FTC filed an antitrust suit against Intel, the leading manufacturer of microprocessors, alleging that the company violated federal laws by engaging in exclusionary business practices. In reality, Intel has been able to achieve its success due to constant innovation as a result of a vibrant and competitive market. The application of antitrust laws will only retard what is an otherwise dynamic market. There is no evidence that Intel's market success has harmed consumers in any way. Lastly, and most disturbingly, the FTC issued new rules which went into effect December 1, 2009, that would make the average blogger liable for civil penalties for false claims about products or failure to disclose material connections between the reviewer and the marketer of a product or service. This raises serious concerns about the scope of the FTC's powers and its ability and willingness to hamper individuals' freedom of speech. For this and the previously mentioned offenses the FTC receives an unequivocal F.

C- Food and Drug Administration – Dr. Margaret Hamburg, Commissioner

Grader: Gregory Conko, Senior Fellow

The Obama administration’s Food and Drug Administration had a sub-par performance in 2009. The agency’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research approved just 24 new drugs and biotech medicines last year-roughly on par with its performance in the final year of the Bush administration, but well below recent highs of 53 in 1996 and 39 in 1997. In other areas, the FDA’s new leadership has taken a “get tough” attitude with manufacturers that will do nothing to improve safety, but could deprive consumers of useful products and information. For example, in April, the agency informed drug manufacturers that their use of “sponsored link” ads on search engines such as Google and Yahoo! were unlawful because the 70-character links did not present the same encyclopedic risk information required of conventional print advertisements-even though the links directed users to a page containing the full risk disclosure.

In May, the FDA issued a warning letter to General Mills that labels on boxes of Cheerios indicating that consumers could lower their cholesterol by eating the whole grain cereal turned the product from a food into a medical drug. And, in July, Principle Deputy Commissioner Joshua Sharfstein recommended imposing strict limits on the use of certain antibiotics in livestock production. The appointment of so-called consumer advocates such as Sharfstein and Assistant Commissioner for Policy Peter Lurie suggest one reason why the new FDA leadership has been taking a needlessly antagonistic regulatory approach. Similarly, the appointment of Ralph Tyler, an attorney with no food and drug law experience, to serve as FDA chief counsel, bodes poorly for consumers and manufacturers alike.

F Immigration and Customs Enforcement – John T. Morton, Assistant Secretary
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services – Alejandro Mayorkas, Director

Grader: Alex Nowrasteh, Policy Analyst

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) receive an F for enforcing America’s self-destructive immigration policies. ICE and USCIS have the impossible task of separating immigrants from economic opportunity, and have failed spectacularly. The cost per apprehension of illegal immigrant on the border is up by 1,041 percent since 1992, and the number of illegal immigrants only seems to dip in response to recessions. When our immigration laws are confronted with the economic realities of mass immigration, ICE and USCIS end up with egg on their faces and taxpayers with a hole in their pockets.

F Department of Interior – Ken Salazar, Secretary

Grader: R.J. Smith, Senior Environmental Scholar

Unfortunately, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and the host of environmentalists who have filled key slots appear determined to continue to expand the amount of federal land ownership through the acquisition (and regulation) of private lands-supporting the creation of ever more National Parks, National Monuments, National Wildlife Refuges, National Heritage Areas, National Trails, and Wild and Scenic Rivers. With the poor record of stewardship on so many of the federal lands, one would hope for some demonstrated ability to care for what they already have, in place of endless acquisition as a seeming end in itself.

And while DOI is reducing private land ownership, it is also locking up millions of additional acres of existing federal lands in Wilderness Areas, which can never be used and most of which have never even been inventoried for their potential contributions to national survival. Additionally the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is in the process of listing more and more species of plants and animals as threatened or endangered regardless of the facts as well as designating ever-larger critical habitats for listed species. DOI is supporting efforts of environmentalists to not only close areas of known fossil fuel deposits to exploration and development, but is also opposing the creation of alternative wind and solar energy farms because they might impact endangered species and their habitat-or harm “viewsheds” -thus making doubly sure that America has neither non-renewable nor renewable energy supplies for the future. Such policies harm the land, the resources, the wildlife and the American people. How could one do worse?

F Department of Justice – Eric Holder, Attorney General

Grader: Hans Bader, Senior Attorney

The Justice Department is deeply politicized, putting partisanship before its legal responsibilities and the Constitution. It has failed to enforce federal voting rights laws like UOCAVA that protect the right of military service members to vote, resulting in many of them receiving absentee ballots to late to vote in close congressional races, like the special election for New York’s 20th congressional district. The obvious result of this is to put critics of the administration, who are disproportionately backed by military voters, at a disadvantage in every election. It dropped a voter-intimidation case after career justice department had already won the case and obtained a default judgment, shielding from punishment an Obama poll watcher and Philadelphia democratic official who used a nightstick and racial epithets to intimidate voters, and who belonged to the anti-Semitic, racist New Black Panther Party. It then thumbed its nose at the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, by refusing to comply with a subpoena issued by the Commission in its investigation of the administration’s actions. It overturned a legal opinion by David Baron, a liberal Justice Department attorney hired under the Obama administration, when he had the temerity to point out the inconvenient truth that giving D.C. a congressman, as Obama advocates, would violate the Constitution.

The Justice Department has expanded the use of Miranda Warnings in Afghanistan -even though they are not constitutionally required and impede investigators. Yet it argues in court briefs that detainees subjected to torture have no redress under the U.S. Constitution. It is eroding civil liberties by re-prosecuting in federal court teenagers acquitted of a hate crime in state court, even though testimony in the state case supported the jury’s not-guilty verdict by pointing to a different culprit. It failed to take steps to cut off funds to ACORN, a political ally of the President, despite ACORN’s being caught on video promoting mortgage fraud and other criminal activity, and the existence for years of federal statutes debarring contractors who engage in fraud.

D Department of Labor – Hilda L. Solis, Secretary

Grader: Ivan Osorio, Editorial Director

Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis gets a low grade for shifting the focus of the Department of Labor to run once again as if it were the Department of Organized Labor. Since taking office, she has worked with union bosses to promote organized labor’s agenda, including undermining efforts to improve union financial disclosure. However, one mitigating factor is the fact that the department’s searchable database for union LM-2 reports remains online (the database was made available online by Solis’s predecessor, Elaine Chao).

C- Office of Management and Budget – Peter Orszag, Director

Grader: Ryan Young, Journalism Fellow

Spending and deficits are far higher than under President George W. Bush, himself a big spender. But Obama can’t be given all the blame. The bailout and stimulus spending programs that caused much of the fresh red ink got their start under Bush. In a potentially positive regulatory development, the number of pages in the Federal Register decreased from 79,435 in 2008 to 69,676 in 2009. Of course, the contents of those pages matters more than how many of them there are. And on that front, the new administration is business as usual.

F Public Company Accounting Oversight Board – Daniel L. Goelzer, Acting Chairman

Grader: John Berlau, Director of the Center for Investors and Entrepreneurs

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, created by Sarbanes-Oxley to implement its rules, gets an F. It has done nothing to simplify the rules that Republicans and Democrats have called overly burdensome to small public companies. And this year when bonuses in the private sector were under so much scrutiny, the PCAOB raised the salary of its chairman to almost $700,000 a year.

However, it is important to note that Obama cannot be held accountable for any of the PCAOB's actions, since the PCAOB's unconstitutional structure prevents the President from exercising any control through either the appointment or removal process. Despite our disagreement with the Obama administration, in a pending Supreme Court case, CEI has argued for his and future administrations to have the necessary constitutional controls over this agency so that they can be held politically accountable for its actions, good or bad.

D Securities and Exchange Commission – Mary L. Schapiro, Chairman

Grader: John Berlau, Director of the Center for Investors and Entrepreneurs

The reason the SEC does not get an F is because its Chairman Mary Schapiro, appointed by President Obama last year at the beginning of his administration, has made going after major investor fraud a key priority. She has brought on law enforcement experts and shifted enforcement resources from trivial headline-grabbing investigations such as the alleged backdating of stock options, which caused little harm to shareholders’ bottom lines, into seeking out Madoff-like Ponzi schemes. Contrary to press accounts, the SEC was not inactive during the Bush administration, but focused on the wrong enforcement priorities. It threw the book at Martha Stewart for trivial charges, but ignored warnings about Bernie Madoff and other fraudsters (as the agency had also done with regard to Madoff, to be fair, under the Clinton administration).

However other actions of the Obama-Schapiro SEC have greatly undermined shareholder well-being. Schapiro brought back the widespread use of corporate penalties to punish shareholder fraud. But penalties on the corporation, rather than individual bad actors in the company, have the effect of punishing the very shareholders the fraud was committed against. The money to pay the penalties is taken from the corporate treasury, which ultimately belongs to the ordinary shareholders of the company. Thus, shareholders end up being penalized twice for the fraud: once when the corporate executives misuse a company's money and again when the corporate penalty further reduces the assets that belong to all shareholders.

Schapiro also gets this bad grade for, over the objection of the two Republican commissioners, overriding 150 years of state corporate law to mandate that companies list shareholder nominees on the same ballot with their own. These proposed “proxy access” rules would let special interests with agendas and shares of stocks, such as union pension funds and environmental groups, use the director nomination process as a wedge against management to promote political agenda items that are contrary to the interests of ordinary shareholders.

And Schapiro failed shareholders and entrepreneurs when she refused to extend an exemption from the Sarbanes-Oxley “internal control” auditing mandates to the very smallest public companies. At a time when President Obama and Republicans are worries about small business growth and the ability to create jobs, this will severely limit these companies ability to grow. And Sarbanes-Oxley, despite costing the economy more than $1 trillion according to University of Minnesota economist Ivy Zhang, did little for shareholders in preventing fraud in the subprime crisis. This action may be mitigated by bipartisan actions in Congress to create a permanent exemption for these smaller companies. This measure was inserted into the financial regulation bill that passed the House in December, with the Obama administration's limited support. But it still needs to clear the Senate. Schapiro should heed this bipartisan action and continue to extend this exemption so vital for entrepreneurs and shareholders from this law that was rushed through after Enron and signed by President Bush in 2002.

F Department of Transportation – Ray LaHood, Secretary

Grader: Sam Kazman, General Counsel

For proposing, in conjunction with EPA, to raise vehicle fuel economy standards to even greater levels, despite the overwhelming evidence that such standards kill people by causing cars to be made smaller and lighter. Downsizing may squeeze more mpgs out of a car, but it also reduces crashworthiness. When passenger car standards were at 27.5 mpg several years ago, the National Academy of Sciences estimated that they contributed to about 2,000 traffic deaths per year. As those standards are pushed up by DOT and EPA, that death toll will only climb, with nary a peep out of the agency whose alleged job is to promote traffic safety.

D Department of Treasury – Timothy F. Geithner, Secretary

Grader: Wayne Crews, Vice President for Policy

In a libertarian world of civil rather than political society, the Treasury Department would pay the modest bills of a constitutionally limited government. It’s true that Congress holds the purse strings; but during an economic and financial crisis rooted in already-gargantuan government that – despite the news reports – has regulated money, credit and interest rates many decades, a sane Treasury’s vision for leadership and recovery would rule out seducing Congress with yet more elaborate and larger purses (with elastic seams besides). This Treasury Department has compounded the “NASCAR” bailouts, helps inflate a silly “green energy” bubble, and stands at the podium cheerleading the idea of regulating the private-sector salaries among other priestly interventions in one formerly free endeavor after another. But creating ficticious economies through political means is nothing new; we’re experiencing the fruits of this key governmental function now. I want to give Treasury an “F” for standing by as the 2009 deficit topped an incomprehensible $1.6 trillion last year amid this self-serving orgy, a political spending phenomenon unrelated to the requirements of economic recovery.

However, Treasury gets only a “D” because it inherited from President Bush what was already the largest government on Planet Earth ($3 trillion) a behemoth it had few complaints about financing. We can argue it ‘till the whiskey’s gone, but there’s no question that under President Obama, Treasury has been instrumental in extending and “customizing” a Stimulus to Nowhere already making a beeline for the cliff’s edge, and things could have been otherwise. Federal interventions are so extensive that civil, voluntary society as opposed to administered society may never quite recover in this particular geographical area of the world during any of our lifetimes.

Since it insists upon doing more than keeping the books, to get an “A,” the U.S. Treasury Department must take a leadership role in removing obstacles to corporate and small business innovation like tax and capital gain liberalization, and help expand economic deregulation on a massive scale. Apart from paying the government’s own light bill, Treasury’s leadership is only valuable when it prioritizes wise and honest alternatives to spending yet more stimulus money that it doesn’t have. It can take a lead role in expanding ideas like privatization, liberalizing America’s network industries like electricity and telecommunications (it will surprise few that the latter is being newly regulated rather than deregulated), simplifying taxes, explaining why a VAT is disastrous, and much more. The U.S. federal government buys us far too much misery with the $4 trillion it now spends annually; I almost wish it were more Machiavellian rather than just crazy. Freedom and liberty cost less than this, America.

CEI is a non-profit, non-partisan public interest group that studies the intersection of regulation, risk, and markets.
Related Files:

http://cei.org/news-release/2010/01/20/report-card-obama-administration

Kim Kardashian won’t be starring in another sex tape any time soon.

Haute Chica — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 11:08:27 -0700

Kim Kardashian won’t be starring in another sex tape any time soon.
The reality star, 28, tells the November issue of Cosmopolitan that she was crushed when the raunchy video featuring her and ex beau Ray J (SingerBrandy’s little bro) was released Read More ~~~>source: http://haute-chica-foodies-celebrity-news.popsugar.com/
source: http://www.usmagazine.com

I wish every elected official could be challenged in a primary

Grandpa — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 10:30:13 -0700

The Murtha Method
Computer Analysis Shows 12 of 16 House Defense Subcommittee Members in Controversial Circles of Lobbyists, Earmarks, and Campaign Cash

By The Center for Public Integrity | September 08, 2009 For months, a cloud has swirled around Congressman John Murtha (D-Pa.), chairman of the powerful House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, and the relationship that Murtha and other subcommittee members had with the PMA Group, a lobbying firm filled with former subcommittee aides.

Index
Follow the links to see reporting on individual committee members.
■Reps. John Murtha and C.W. Bill Young■Rep. Peter Visclosky■Rep. Jim Moran■Rep. Kay Granger■Rep. Jack Kingston■Rep. Todd Tiahrt■Rep. Roger Wicker■Rep. Norm Dicks■Rep. Dave Hobson■Reps. Rodney Frelinghuysen and Steve Rothman
How the Circle Works
An interactive graphic walking you through the system of lobbyists, earmarks, and campaign cash.

Methodology
Click here to see how the Center completed this investigation.
Murtha and fellow panel members Peter Visclosky (D-Ind.) and Jim Moran (D-Va.) steered a host of earmarks to PMA clients, and those clients and PMA staffers gave campaign contributions to the lawmakers. Aspects of those relationships are the subject of a Justice Department probe, which is thought to be looking at whether there were explicit quid pro quo exchanges of favors for cash, which would make crimes out of relationships that are otherwise legal. The House ethics committee is also looking at the situation, and the PMA Group closed following an FBI raid late last year.

Now, a computer analysis by the Center for Public Integrity has revealed that fully three-quarters of the subcommittee members have been involved in similar patterns of behavior - in circles of relationships fraught with potential conflicts of interest, involving former congressional staffers-turned lobbyists, earmarks, and campaign cash. In these circles, former staffers became lobbyists for defense contractors; the contractors received earmarks from the representatives; and the representatives received campaign contributions from the lobbyists or the contractors.

The Center’s analysis, which covered fiscal year 2008, found these relationship circles included not only PMA but 10 other lobbying firms. More than 50 earmarks are involved, totaling more than $100 million, while the campaign contributions amounted to more than $1 million. The examination relied on data from Taxpayers for Common Sense, the Center for Responsive Politics, and the U.S. Senate’s Office of Public Records.

The House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee is widely considered the key House panel funding the Pentagon. Fully 12 of the subcommittee’s 16 members were involved in the controversial practices. Along with Murtha, Visclosky, and Moran, the list includes ranking Republican, C.W. Bill Young of Florida, Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.), Norman Dicks (D-Wash.), Dave Hobson (R-Ohio), Steve Rothman (D-N.J.), Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.), Kay Granger (R-Texas), and Roger Wicker (R-Miss.). Hobson retired at the end of last year, and Wicker became a senator, but all the others remain members of the subcommittee.

The lobbyists, the House members, and the companies that received earmarks say the relationships are entirely legal, and none of the representatives has been charged with wrongdoing. But government reform groups say the practices represent the worst of Washington’s revolving door culture, and are little more than legalized corruption.

“Former staffers are capitalizing on their connections, access, and influence to deliver for their clients,” says Steve Ellis, vice president for programs at Taxpayers for Common Sense. “Our men and women in harm’s way deserve the best products…We cannot afford to make funding decisions on the basis of political muscle rather than project merit.”

Former Senate staffer Winslow Wheeler, an analyst at the Center for Defense Information, is more blunt: “Earmarks and contributions are both legal and constitutional,” he says, “but corrupt as hell.”

Here is a run-down on the Center’s analysis, which matched databases on campaign contributions and earmark legislation with subcommittee members and their current and former staff. Among the findings:

John Murtha and C.W. Bill Young:
The Senior Earmarkers
Murtha:
Earmarks: $48.2 million
Contributions: $493,950
Young:
Earmarks: $21.8 million
Contributions: $145,291

C.W. Bill Young’s “network” analyzed by the Center included three former staffers representing one defense contractor each. Former Young legislative aide Bryan Blom is a government relations manager for Van Scoyoc Associates Inc., the self-described “largest independent lobbying firm in Washington, D.C.” His company biography boasts that he “fully grasps the federal funding process, having worked for a senior appropriator.” Perhaps this is why defense contracting behemoth SAIC retained his services. In 2008, the company received a pair of earmarks from Young, totaling $4.4 million for battlefield sensor netting and bioterrorism detection systems. Young got $20,500 from SAIC’s PAC and $2,250 from the company’s leadership. Van Scoyoc Associates told the Center that Blom himself has never lobbied Young or his staff on any issue.

Blom’s colleague at Van Scoyoc, Vice President Douglas M. Gregory, is also a former Young staffer, having served as the congressman’s chief of staff and on the appropriations defense subcommittee staff. Gregory represents the New Jersey-based DRS Technologies Inc., which received four 2008 Young earmarks totaling $7.6 million for items including radar technologies. Young got $20,000 from the DRS PAC, $36,100 from its executives, and $2,941 from Van Scoyoc’s PAC.

Finally, Young earmarked three projects at costs of $1 million, $2.4 million, and $3.2 million to Information Manufacturing Corp., now part of National Interest Security Company, for intelligence management systems. IMC’s lobbyist, Brent Jaquet, senior vice president at another lobbying firm, Cavarocchi Ruscio Dennis Associates LLC, was a senior appropriations aide to Young. Young received $2,400 from the company PAC and $29,100 from its executives.

John Murtha’s network included four former staffers - Carmen Scialabba of KSA Consulting Inc., Colette Marchesini Pollock of GSP Consulting Corp., Scott Harshman of Harshman Consulting LLC, and Gabrielle Carruth, who works directly for defense contractor Argon ST Inc. - representing six defense contractors. Those contractors - Advanced Acoustic Concepts, Argon ST, Coherent Systems, KDH Defense System Inc., Nokomis Inc., and Sabeus Sensor Systems - received a total of eight earmarks, worth a combined $18 million, for such items as a detection system for improvised explosive devices, waterway threat detection, and computer systems for small combat ships. Murtha and his Majority PAC received $51,100 from their corporate PACs, $111,600 from key corporate executives, $2,500 from GSP Consulting’s PAC, and $26,900 from the lobbyists’ own personal checkbooks - $192,100 in all. The treasurer of Argon ST’s corporate PAC is the very same Gabrielle Carruth. David Herbener, president of KDH, claimed in an e-mail that Scialabba has never represented his company, though KSA Consulting has filed more than a dozen public disclosure forms since 2003 declaring Scialabba’s lobbying work for KDH.

Murtha’s richest earmark largesse was saved for a former appropriations subcommittee staffer who had a long-standing personal relationship with the congressman, but never technically worked for him: Paul Magliocchetti of the now defunct PMA Group Inc. (PMA stood for Paul Magliocchetti Associates). Magliocchetti represented seven defense contractors - Concurrent Technologies Corp., Conemaugh Health System, the aforementioned DRS, Goodrich Corp., MTS Technologies Inc., Parametric Technology Corp., and ProLogic Inc. The companies received an impressive $30,200,000 in earmarks from Murtha and Murtha received $83,800 in PAC contributions and $209,050 in donations from executives at the companies. Murtha also received $7,000 from PMA’s PAC and $2,000 from Magliocchetti himself.

Similarly, Young arranged an earmark to General Dynamics, represented by PMA lobbyist Richard Efford, who had previously worked as a Republican staffer on the subcommittee. The Virginia-based defense contractor got $3.2 million for artillery technology and Young got $25,000 from the General Dynamics PAC, $2,500 from company executives, and $4,500 from PMA’s PAC.

The FBI raided PMA’s Arlington, Va., headquarters in November 2008. Concurrent Technologies and ProLogic are both reportedly under federal investigation for contracting irregularities. The House ethics committee has acknowledged that it is investigating possible misconduct in regards to members of Congress or staffers and their relationships with PMA. A spokesman for Murtha declined to comment for this story, though Murtha has previously defended his earmarking practices. “If I’m corrupt, it’s because I take care of my district,” he told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Young’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

Peter Visclosky: Another PMA Friend
Earmarks: $14 million
Contributions: $321,450

Two other congressmen - Peter Visclosky and Jim Moran - were involved in similar circles with former staffers who later worked at the PMA Group.

Visclosky, an Indiana Democrat in his 13th term in the House, is a former appropriations committee staff member himself. He is tied to the PMA Group through his former appropriations committee assistant, legislative director, and chief of staff Richard M. Kaelin.

After leaving his position with Visclosky in 2003, Kaelin joined PMA. Among his dozens of lobbying clients were at least ten defense contractors for whom his old boss secured a total of $14 million in earmarks. The companies, whose earmarks ranged from $800,000 to $2,000,000 apiece, were: 21st Century Systems Inc., BriarTek Inc., General Atomics, General Dynamics Corp., NuVant Systems Inc., Optimal Solutions & Technology, Parametric Technology Corp., ProLogic Inc., RaySat Antenna Systems LLC, and Sierra Nevada Corp. The earmarks were for such items as methanol fuel cell battery rechargers and a man-overboard identification system. Visclosky’s generosity was well rewarded: he and his Calumet leadership PAC received $124,100 from these contractors’ corporate PACs; $170,350 from individuals in the firms’ leadership, $14,000 from PMA’s company political action committee, and $13,000 from Kaelin himself. All told, Visclosky’s political committees received more than $321,000. On August 27, the Federal Election Commission approved a request from his re-election committee to allow him to use campaign funds to pay the legal bills for his current and former staffers as they deal with the PMA investigation. Visclosky’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Jim Moran: A Gusto for Earmarking
Earmarks: $3.2 million
Contributions: $69,900

The final PMA-tied earmarker to surface in the Center’s analysis was Virginia Congressman Jim Moran, a ten-term Democrat from the state’s Washington, D.C., suburbs. In June 2006, Moran told attendees at his district’s annual Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner that that if he were to become chairman of an appropriations subcommittee, he would “earmark the s-- out of it.” Though not yet a chairman, Moran received $12,000 in campaign contributions from PMA’s PAC between 2006 and 2008. He received $44,500 from Planning Systems Inc. during that same time. Both Planning Systems and another company, ProLogic, had hired Moran’s former chief of staff, PMA lobbyist Melissa Koloszar, to represent them. Moran secured a $1.6 million earmark for ProLogic for “global combat support”, and a $1.6 million earmark for Planning Systems Inc. to build a submarine warfare system.

Moran, Koloszar, and ProLogic did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for QinetiQ, the parent company of Planning Systems Inc. said he could not comment, pending the House Ethics Committee investigation. “It is our general policy to not comment on ongoing investigations,” he told the Center.

Kay Granger: On the Merits?
Earmarks: $3.6 million
Contributions: $23,000

Kay Granger, a seven-term Congresswoman from Texas, is the sole Republican woman on the subcommittee. Alyssa M. LeSage joined Granger’s staff in 2001 as a staff assistant and departed in 2003 as a legislative correspondent. She then joined the Washington-based government relations firm of Copeland Lowery Jaquez Denton & Shockey - now Innovative Federal Strategies LLC - and quickly became a registered lobbyist. Two of her clients were defense contractors L-3 Communications Corp. and General Dynamics Corp. L-3 received a $2,400,000 earmark from Granger for “Rivet Joint Network Interface Growth”; General Dynamics got $1,200,000 thanks to the congresswoman’s efforts for “I-1000 Warhead Technology Demonstration.” Granger Chief of Staff Craig Albright told the Center that the congresswoman “scrutinizes all [earmark] requests and considers them solely on their merit,” dismissing questions about the integrity of Granger’s appropriations work as “ridiculous.” Granger took $18,000 from the General Dynamics corporate PAC, $4,500 from L-3’s PAC, and $500 from LeSage.

A spokesman for General Dynamics, which also received earmarks from and made PAC contributions to Congressman Visclosky, said the firm hires lobbyists based on legislative expertise, “regardless of whether they ever worked for a particular member of Congress,” and that their contributions to both members were based on their support for the U.S. military.

As for Innovative Federal Strategies, a federal investigation has reportedly been underway since 2006 into earmarks and lobbying relationships involving the firm and Congressman Jerry Lewis, the ranking Republican on the full appropriations committee. Lewis is also a former chairman of the defense appropriations subcommittee. Innovative Federal Strategies did not respond to a request for comment. Lewis has previously defended his earmarking practices, noting that he does not monitor his former aides’ lobbying connections, as doing so would be “untoward.”

Jack Kingston: A Classic “Revolving Door”
Earmarks: $1.6 million
Contributions: $5,250

Innovative Federal Strategies and L-3 Communications also intersect with nine-term Georgia Republican Jack Kingston and a former Kingston staffer who epitomizes the concept of Washington’s “revolving door.” Between 2002 and 2005, Heather McNatt worked as a district scheduler, staff counsel, and then legislative director for Congressman Kingston. In 2005, she departed to become a lobbyist for Innovative (then still Copeland Lowery Jaquez Denton & White) and began representing L-3. In 2007, she returned to Kingston’s office, eventually becoming chief of staff - filling a void left when Kingston’s previous chief of staff took a position lobbying for another defense contractor. A year later, Kingston obtained a $1,600,000 earmark for L-3, the very company McNatt had represented; the earmark was for an Integrated Base Defense Security System for a Georgia Air Force base. McNatt left Kingston’s office at the end of 2008, returning to Innovative, and once again she is a registered lobbyist for L-3.

Kingston received $1,750 in contributions from McNatt, $2,000 in L-3 PAC money, and $1,500 in donations from top L-3 executives. A Kingston spokesman referred the Center to a 16-point checklist they use to consider defense earmark requests and noted that McNatt cannot currently lobby Kingston’s office due to ethics rules.

Todd Tiahrt: Protecting the Status Quo
Earmarks: $2.2 million
Contributions: $28,700

Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.) has spent 13 of his 15 years as a congressman on the Appropriations Committee. Lobbyist Brad Ayers worked in Tiahrt’s office as a legislative assistant from 2001 to 2004. When Ayers started a solo lobbying practice at the end of 2004, one of his first clients was Radiance Technologies, an Alabama-based company with an office in Wichita. Ayers has donated $11,400 to Tiahrt since leaving his employ and Radiance’s political action committee and executives have donated $17,300 to the Kansan. Radiance benefitted from two 2008 earmarks requested by Tiahrt - one for “upward looking sonar” technology ($1 million) and the other for an “integrated vehicle health monitoring system” ($1.2 million). Last November, when the House Republican Conference created a committee to examine the earmark process in the House, Tiahrt helped strip out a provision that would have sought a stop to earmarks during the period of the committee’s inquiry. Ayers, Radiance, and Tiahrt’s office did not respond to the Center’s requests for comment.

Roger Wicker: One Last Earmark
Earmarks: $4.4 million
Contributions: $23,100

Before working for Tiahrt, Brad Ayers was a legislative assistant to a fellow Ole Miss alum, then-Representative Roger Wicker. Now the junior senator from Mississippi, Wicker spent 12 years in the House and served on the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee until Governor Haley Barbour appointed him to his current position in December 2007. He won reelection in 2008. Radiance Technologies, which also operates an office in Oxford, Mississippi - in Wicker’s old district - also benefited from a $4.4 million 2008 earmark Wicker had requested, for work on an enhanced sensor system for the Army. Ayers donated $4,500 to his former boss; his client, Radiance, gave $8,000 in corporate PAC money to Wicker, and its executives, $10,600 to Wicker and his PAC. Wicker told the Center that the project was judged “solely on its merits.” Ayers previously told the Memphis Commercial Appeal that he and his clients don’t gain any advantage from his former employment.

Norm Dicks: Greetings from Torpedo Town
Earmarks: $2 million
Contributions: $39,300

The Kitsap Peninsula, nestled across the Puget Sound from Seattle, is home of “Torpedo Town USA” - Keyport, Wash., the epicenter of the country’s undersea warfare operations. In 2008, the region’s congressman, Norm Dicks, sent $2 million to Keyport and nearby Bremerton, flagged for defense giant SAIC to work on “underseas warfare.” SAIC had employed as a lobbyist Steve McBee, who worked as top adviser on military affairs for Dicks before beginning his K Street career. McBee started his own lobbying shop in 2002, and in 2007 The Hill named him one of the best “hired guns” in DC. SAIC’s political action committee has contributed $30,000 to the congressman’s campaign funds, with its top executives kicking in another $2,250. McBee has given his old boss $7,050.

George Behan, Dicks’ chief of staff, said SAIC’s PAC donations represent the support of its employees - Dicks’ constituents - for their representative. It doesn’t matter who lobbies for the company, Behan said. “When a question involves a few thousand employees, as in Keyport’s case, then we respond.” A spokesman for McBee Strategic Consulting also emphasized the firm’s close ties to Washington state; McBee is a native.

Dave Hobson: Pork-Barrel Congressman?
Earmarks: $2 million
Contributions: $10,750

Republican Dave Hobson, now president of the Ohio-based Vorys Advisors, LLC, represented the Buckeye State’s 7th District for 18 years. When Taxpayers for Common Sense ranked Hobson 22nd out of 435 House members for money directed to his district through earmarks, Hobson told the Dayton Daily News he wished he were closer to the top. David Williams of Citizens Against Government Waste told the paper in November that Hobson is “the epitome of a pork-barrel congressman.”

Navistar International’s PAC contributed $2,000 to Hobson’s campaign committee. The company’s subsidiary, International Truck and Engine Corp., hired Williams & Jensen PLLC lobbyist Michael Beer, who worked as a senior legislative aide to Hobson until he joined the firm 2003. In 2008, Hobson secured a $2 million Army earmark for the company to build diesel hybrid-electric utility vehicles. A Navistar spokesperson denied that the company was even involved in “this sort of network,” and noted that they support candidates “who share our approach to good public policy such as hybrid technology - which has helped put cleaner vehicles on the roads.” Hobson, Beer, and Williams & Jensen did not return calls and e-mail requests for comment.

Rodney Frelinghuysen and Steve Rothman: Bipartisan Earmarkers
Frelinghuysen:
Earmarks: $1.5 million
Contributions: $21,600
Rothman:
Earmarks: Same
Contributions: $13,000

Earmarking has historically been a passion of both Democrats and Republicans. One duo, New Jersey Republican Rodney Frelinghuysen and his fellow Garden State congressman, Democrat Steve Rothman, joined forces to obtain a $1.5 million earmark for Frontier Performance Polymers Corp. The earmark funded research into “lightweight multi-functional material technology” - packaging for military gear that could lighten soldiers’ load. Robert Zucker, a former Rothman staffer, represents Frontier as a lobbyist at Winning Strategies Washington, as does Donna Mullins, a former Frelinghuysen aide.

“He’s a good friend of the congressman’s and of mine,” said Rothman’s chief of staff, Bob Decheine, of Zucker. Rothman supported the earmark based on its merits, according to Decheine: “It’s exhausting for [soldiers] to schlep this stuff around,” he said. Frontier founder and president Jerry Chung acknowledged in an interview with the Center that earmarks have been a problem for some defense contractors, but said that Congressmen Rothman and Frelinghuysen have both been supportive only because his company does “a very good job.”

Neither Frontier Performance Polymers nor any of its executives contributed to the congressmen’s campaigns. However, Zucker has donated $4,000 to Rothman’s campaign funds, and his firm’s political action committee has given an additional $9,000. Mullins gave Frelinghuysen $9,600, and Winning Strategies’ PAC gave him an additional $12,000. Neither lobbyist responded to a request for comment.

Have Lobbyist Links Been Broken?
After regaining both houses of Congress in the November 2006 elections, the new Democratic leadership moved quickly to pass rules changes and legislation. Speaker Nancy Pelosi proclaimed in January 2007, “We have broken the link between lobbyists and legislation.” Though the new majority’s reforms included expanded lobbyist disclosure requirements, restrictions on favors lobbyists can do for members, and increased earmark transparency, critics warned at the time that it left loopholes for earmarks.

Despite the increased amount of data about what is in earmarks and who requests them, they continue to be used extensively by members to direct executive branch spending. The controversial PMA scandal - and all of the earmarks examined by the Center - took place under the reformed system. Some have proposed additional measures to curb earmarks. New Hampshire Democrat Paul Hodes has proposed making it illegal for members of Congress to take campaign contributions from those who benefit from their earmarks. Arizona Republican Jeff Flake supports this legislation and has offered similar proposals of his own. “No member of Congress should be able to award no-bid contracts - which is what many earmarks are - to private companies or other institutions,” Flake argued in a statement he released in April. “Earmarks aren’t a Democratic problem or a Republican problem. They are a problem that infects the entire Congress.”

Over the first half of 2009, Flake brought eight resolutions to the House floor, each demanding an ethics committee investigation of PMA. Though each proposal was decisively killed, mostly along party lines, a June 3 resolution by Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) was sent to the ethics committee on a 270-134 vote, instructing the committee to announce whether it is investigating any members or employees of the House relating to PMA. Eight days later, the committee confirmed in a statement that it was already reviewing the matter.

Little is known about the Justice Department probe into PMA and the subcommittee. It’s been widely reported that Justice is investigating the possibility of illegal campaign contribution reimbursements by Magliocchetti. Defense contractors close to Murtha have also been raided by the FBI, the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, and the IRS. Some of Congressman Visclosky’s records were subpoenaed in the spring by a grand jury looking into defense contracts. Two corporate executives and an Air Force official pleaded guilty this summer for their roles in a kickback scheme involving money from a Murtha-sponsored project; a third corporate executive was found guilty by a jury.

An FBI spokesman acknowledged, in a statement, that search warrants were executed at Kuchera Industries and Kuchera Defense Systems - recipients of Murtha-directed earmarks - earlier this year, but declined to confirm or comment on any pending investigations. The PMA Group was searched last November, according to several news accounts (Kuchera has never been a PMA client).

Investigators face a high bar to prove wrongdoing involving members of Congress in regard to their official actions. Stan Brand, a defense attorney with experience in public corruption cases and a former House of Representatives general counsel, told the Center that the sorts of relationship circles involving subcommittee members do not, on their own, indicate criminal malfeasance. From a legal standpoint, he notes, identifying such ties are “similar to saying the rooster crows every morning and causes the sun to come up. … You must have evidence of a direct nexus” to prove bribery.

The Real Costs of Defense Earmarks
Members of Congress defend their earmarks by pointing to benefits they bring to the Defense Department, and argue that the executive branch’s priorities aren’t always the right ones. But many knowledgeable defense experts contend that congressional earmarks may actually be harming national security. Defense secretary Robert Gates is among them.

“The Secretary believes there is a very real tradeoff with very real consequences when Congress adds money we didn’t ask for,” said Geoff Morell, the Pentagon’s press secretary, because “in an era of constraint which we’re entering, congressional additions are causing us to take money from programs that we view as more important.”

“So it comes at a cost to us, even if the up-front money is appropriated above and beyond what our budget request is,” Morell said. He used as an example the C-17 cargo plane, which has been repeatedly added to the defense budget the past several years. “Despite the fact that it’s a terrific plane, we have enough of them,” he said. And it’s not just about buying more planes. “Once they’re bought,” he added, “we have to maintain them, we have to staff them, and provide logistics.”

Former Senate staffer Wheeler goes farther. He says that earmarks are rarely additions to the budget, but are often funded by reducing the Defense Department’s operations and maintenance accounts - critical accounts used to keep troops supplied and trained and to repair vehicles and equipment.

According to the Congressional Research Service, the House cut more than $9 billion from the president’s fiscal year 2008 budget request, even as it added billions of dollars in earmarks and other additions - resulting in a net decrease of $3.55 billion. Among the reductions were cuts in the Army’s request for operations and maintenance and Navy and Air Force training budgets for units deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Data Editor David Donald and staff writers Sarah Laskow, Nick Schwellenbach, Kate Willson, Caitlin Ginley, and Laura Cheek contributed to this article

This Day in History: April 4th

Princesskitty22 — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 11:43:14 -0700

Just after 6 p.m. on April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. is fatally shot while standing on the balcony outside his second-story room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. The civil rights leader was in Memphis to support a sanitation workers' strike and was on his way to dinner when a bullet struck him in the jaw and severed his spinal cord. King was pronounced dead after his arrival at a Memphis hospital. He was 39 years old.

In the months before his assassination, Martin Luther King became increasingly concerned with the problem of economic inequality in America. He organized a Poor People's Campaign to focus on the issue, including an interracial poor people's march on Washington, and in March 1968 traveled to Memphis in support of poorly treated African-American sanitation workers. On March 28, a workers' protest march led by King ended in violence and the death of an African-American teenager. King left the city but vowed to return in early April to lead another demonstration.

On April 3, back in Memphis, King gave his last sermon, saying, "We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop...And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over, and I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the promised land."

One day after speaking those words, Dr. King was shot and killed by a sniper. As word of the assassination spread, riots broke out in cities all across the United States and National Guard troops were deployed in Memphis and Washington, D.C. On April 9, King was laid to rest in his hometown of Atlanta, Georgia. Tens of thousands of people lined the streets to pay tribute to King's casket as it passed by in a wooden farm cart drawn by two mules.

The evening of King's murder, a Remington .30-06 hunting rifle was found on the sidewalk beside a rooming house one block from the Lorraine Motel. During the next several weeks, the rifle, eyewitness reports, and fingerprints on the weapon all implicated a single suspect: escaped convict James Earl Ray. A two-bit criminal, Ray escaped a Missouri prison in April 1967 while serving a sentence for a holdup. In May 1968, a massive manhunt for Ray began. The FBI eventually determined that he had obtained a Canadian passport under a false identity, which at the time was relatively easy.

On June 8, Scotland Yard investigators arrested Ray at a London airport. He was trying to fly to Belgium, with the eventual goal, he later admitted, of reaching Rhodesia. Rhodesia, now called Zimbabwe, was at the time ruled by an oppressive and internationally condemned white minority government. Extradited to the United States, Ray stood before a Memphis judge in March 1969 and pleaded guilty to King's murder in order to avoid the electric chair. He was sentenced to 99 years in prison.

Three days later, he attempted to withdraw his guilty plea, claiming he was innocent of King's assassination and had been set up as a patsy in a larger conspiracy. He claimed that in 1967, a mysterious man named "Raoul" had approached him and recruited him into a gunrunning enterprise. On April 4, 1968, he said, he realized that he was to be the fall guy for the King assassination and fled to Canada. Ray's motion was denied, as were his dozens of other requests for a trial during the next 29 years.

During the 1990s, the widow and children of Martin Luther King Jr. spoke publicly in support of Ray and his claims, calling him innocent and speculating about an assassination conspiracy involving the U.S. government and military. U.S. authorities were, in conspiracists' minds, implicated circumstantially. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover obsessed over King, who he thought was under communist influence. For the last six years of his life, King underwent constant wiretapping and harassment by the FBI. Before his death, Dr. King was also monitored by U.S. military intelligence, which may have been asked to watch King after he publicly denounced the Vietnam War in 1967. Furthermore, by calling for radical economic reforms in 1968, including guaranteed annual incomes for all, King was making few new friends in the Cold War-era U.S. government.

Over the years, the assassination has been reexamined by the House Select Committee on Assassinations, the Shelby County, Tennessee, district attorney's office, and three times by the U.S. Justice Department. The investigations all ended with the same conclusion: James Earl Ray killed Martin Luther King. The House committee acknowledged that a low-level conspiracy might have existed, involving one or more accomplices to Ray, but uncovered no evidence to definitively prove this theory. In addition to the mountain of evidence against him--such as his fingerprints on the murder weapon and his admitted presence at the rooming house on April 4--Ray had a definite motive in assassinating King: hatred. According to his family and friends, he was an outspoken racist who informed them of his intent to kill Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He died in 1998.

Source

Ginsburg Orders Stay on Chrysler Sale

Michelann — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 09:13:09 -0700

The Supreme Court Gives Chrysler's Evil Speculator Some Hope

Shikha Dalmia
June 9, 2009, 9:47am

In President Obama's auto morality tale there are good guys and there are bad guys. The good guys are those who do his bidding. And the bad guys are those who don't.

Well, one of those bad guys, whom the president took to the airwaves and condemned as "speculators" when they resisted the crummy terms they were being offered as part of Chrysler's bankruptcy, turns out to be the Indiana pension fund whose members include not some Wall Street fat cats sitting in their plush offices punching trades on their 40" computer screens -- but state troopers and teachers many of whom are at the brink of having their life's savings wiped out.

After suffering rounds of losses in the lower courts, these "speculators" finally scored a minor victory in the Supreme Court yesterday. The administration urged the court to throw out their appeal on grounds that anything less would jeopardize the June 15 sale of Chrysler to Fiat and risk turning everyone concerned into pumpkins! But Ruth Bader Ginsburg - the court's most liberal justice who had to make the initial call - didn't buy it and has stayed the sale pending further notice.

This doesn't mean yet that Ginsburg will actually hear the case or, better yet, get the full court to hear it. But it does indicate that she doesn't think that the administration's case is a slam dunk -- and is at least somewhat disturbed by the rule of law issues that the evil "speculators" are raising.

The Indiana fund is making two arguments, one weak, one strong, in my opinion, in its lawsuit.

The weak argument is that the administration does not have the statutory authority to use TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) funding to bankroll the bankruptcy of a non-financial company. But the law is actually quite vague and broad on what it considers to be a financial institution. It states that the TARP money can be used for "any institution, including, but not limited to, (emphasis added) any bank, savings association, credit union, security broker or dealer or insurance company...."

Their stronger argument is the rule of law argument. Standing bankruptcy law stipulates a clear hierarchy of lenders under which secured lenders - meaning those whose debt is backed by actual company assets - are supposed to be paid ahead of unsecured lenders whose claims on the company are not backed by assets. The pension and health care obligations of the company to the UAW are essentially unsecured liabilities. But the Obama administration turned this law upside down, handing the UAW, who contributed millions to his campaign war-chest, nearly 60 cents on the dollar and secured lenders such as the Indiana fund a mere 29 cents. There is a word in ordinary parlance for this kind of property transfer: Theft.

One small - exceedingly small - ray of hope that Indiana will get justice is that in 1952 the Supreme Court rejected Harry S. Truman's attempt to seize steel mills during the Korean War as unconstitutional. If a property grab was not justified when the issue was national security, it is hard to see how it could be justified as a payoff to a political constituency. But stranger things have happened.

Source: http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=102812739856&h=5Wgk3&u=J5ATf&r...