Ben Nelson was another Democrat senator on the fence for the Senate Health Care bill. He was up in the air based on his pro-life stance and the abortion mandates being slipped into the bill.
The White House and Democratic Leadership in the Senate has told Senator Nelson they will close every military base in Nebraska — a threat that is not credible, really — but they have also offered Senator Nelson between $300 million to $500 million in earmarks, according to key hill health care operatives. These hundreds of millions will be available for whatever he wants to spend them on in Nebraska.
Earlier, as mentioned above, there was a report that the White House and other Democrats were threatening to close Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska.
A Nelson aide has not only discredited the AFB threat, but has also stated the earmark bribery is an erroneous report.
As the Senate health care debate enters crunch time, the pressure from all sides continued to grow today, with Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., right in the middle.
His spokesman quickly dismissed a report by conservative columnist Michelle Malkin that Nelson was even being threatened with “closure of an air force base,” presumably Offutt Air Force Base, which is south of Omaha and home of U.S. Strategic Command. Malkin also said Nelson has been promised a “bribe bigger than Sen. Landrieu’s.”
That’s a reference to Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu, a Democrat and one of the last holdouts on the vote to begin the health care debate. The legislation includes a provision to increase Louisiana’s Medicaid funds that Landrieu says is worth $300 million.
I wonder who we should believe? Another politician or people legitimately concerned about the future of the country? Excuse me if I’m not ready to concede that the bribery is false, given the fact that so many politicians seem to have lost all sense of decency, integrity and any connection to the people they supposedly represent.
Hillary Clinton’s pollster, Mark Penn, received funds for two of his firms from the recent stimulus bill. The same bill that was supposed to put jobless Americans back to work. The evidence that this bill was merely a pay off to all of DC’s cronies continues to pile up.
Mark Penn received nearly $6 million in funds (From the New York Daily News):
Hillary Clinton pollster Mark Penn is looking at some pretty sweet numbers – namely $6 million in federal stimulus contracts awarded to two firms he controls.
The Hill newspaper reported Wednesday that $5.97 million from the $787 billion stimulus package helped preserve three jobs at Burson-Marsteller, the global PR firm headed by Penn.
The Obama administration awarded the contracts to Burson-Marsteller to work on a public-relations campaign to advertise the national switch from analog to digital television.
A portion of the funds also went to Penn’s polling firm, Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates, according to federal records.
Please save the moral equivalency – this is rampant on both sides of the aisle and the corruption needs to be stopped!
Najibullah Zazi, the man captured and being questioned for the terrorist raid in New York was found to have $50K in unsecured loans in the form of unsecured credit cards from the banks that were bailed out by the government. So far the only mentions of this come from the Jawa Report, Market Ticker, and the NY Daily news. This is a HUGE story – where is the media and the outrage of the American public? Oh that’s right, the media is still too busy talking about the continuing aftermath of Jackson’s death and now Teddy Kennedy’s. Journalism is dead!
Between 2005 and 2008, he opened credit card accounts with Bank of America, Chase, Capital One, Discover and Citibank and ran up a debt of more than $50,000.
When he filed for bankruptcy, Zazi said he hadn’t worked in two months.
HOW IN THE HELL DO OUR BANKING REGULATORS ALLOW THIS SORT OF OUTRIGHT FRAUDULENT GRANTING OF CREDIT? $50,000 IN UNSECURED CREDIT LINES TO A FREAKING DELIVERY DRIVER WHO APPEARS TO BE A FOREIGN NATIONAL WITH NO ASSETS IN THE UNITED STATES AGAINST WHICH TO SECURE THE LOAN?
THE BANKS THAT WE BAILED OUT FAILED TO STOP THIS CRAP ALL THE WAY UP TO MARCH OF THIS YEAR AT LEAST (WHEN THIS GUY FILED BANKRUPTCY) AND PROBABLY STILL ARE DOING IT!
This is an OUTRAGE. Not only did this guy effectively stick the US Taxpayer with the $50,000 in debt it appears he may have been using the freaking money to plot some sort of terrorist attack as part of an Al-Qaida cell INSIDE THE UNITED STATES?
TO PUT THIS IN ONE SENTENCE: BANKS THAT WE BAILED OUT WITH TAXPAYER MONEY ARE FUNDING TERRORISTS INSIDE THE US?!
I’m sure more government regulation will really help thwart all of the corruption and criminal activity – especially when it comes to our own country funding terrorist plots on our own soil.
It’s time to clean house! I’d like to see a sweeping investigation into any and all big labor unions, “non-partisan” taxpayer funded groups, lobbyists, and major corporations that donate to politicians.
An interesting admission by James A. Williams, president of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades in Philadelphia, can be seen in an interview he did with the Philly Inquirer. It is an admission that confirms one of the things that anti-union folks have been saying for years, but one union officials are loath to admit.
While discussing the hard economic times, the Philly Inquirer asked how the recession was affecting the union. In his answer President Wilson admitted that his union uses out-of-work members for “political events.” Wilson mentioned that they lower dues to $1 a month after a member has been out of work for more than six months, but that isn’t just the kind hearted union looking out for its members. No, the union expects something in return for that lowering of dues.
Would exploitation and quid pro quo be considered commendable by the bleeding heart liberals? Union leadership has always been in the business of lining their own pockets and achieving their own objectives, no matter who gets stepped on along the way, including their own members.
Obama has long been a union advocate, as are many other Democrats. Unions became part of the Democrat voting block after FDR focused his efforts on creating certain groups that could be used for votes. Big labor, since that time, has been a large contributor to the DNC. Obama has spoken at the UAW, SEIU, and AFL-CIO conventions numerous times and most recently this past week. The latest push for union control of ports and the fact that Obama supports easing the rules of union organizing should give anyone pause.
President Obama gave a corker of a campaign speech yesterday at the AFL-CIO convention in Pittsburgh, promising to deliver on his promise to ease the rules for union organizing. If you want to know what this means in action, consider the current Teamsters play to control California ports.
[…]
The American Trucking Association sued to block the rule, and with good cause. Federal law has long pre-empted state and local regulation of interstate trucking “prices, routes and services,” for the reason that international and interstate trade depend on uniform regulation. The courts have recognized this, and even the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found that the new port rule had likely violated the Constitution’s Commerce Clause, which led to a court injunction earlier this year. Trial on the merits of the rule has been set for next year.
[…]
Unionization would give the Teamsters enormous bargaining leverage over work rules and pay, sharply raising the cost of moving goods, as well the power to shut down ports in a strike. Some 32 trade groups, from farm organizations to the National Retail Federation, signed a recent letter to Mr. Oberstar opposing the legislation. The response of shippers would be to divert cargo to Mexico or Canada, or pass through an expanding Panama Canal for ports on the Gulf or East Coasts. California doesn’t need more reasons for business to flee the state.
For a group who continues to point their finger at George Bush and the Republicans for the current state of the economy, it sure seems as though they would prefer the economy to stay stagnant and hand it over to big labor and government, two of the causes for our hardships now.
An example of the sheer lack of morals and utter corruption that has corroded big labor for quite some time is the recent conviction of Jaime Enrique Feliciano, a 50 yr. old man sentenced to 25 years in prison for child molestation, possession of child pornography and the intent to manufacture child pornography. So who is Feliciano? He was the former district president of the California SEIU, a proud partner of ACORN.
It’s time to wake up and take control of our country again. These big labor organizations and large non-profits that are acting as arms to the government, doing their bidding, need to be disbanded and swept clean. People on both sides should be sick and tired of the corruption, the ponzi schemes, the pay-to-play politics, and the lack of consideration for the people of America.
Yesterday, the Senate voted to defund ACORN after the unbelievable footage of tax fraud, human trafficking, prostitution, and underage sex surfaced. The footage proved that the acceptance of such illegal activity is not just one isolated incident, but rather a nationwide, culture of corruption for this organization. The Senate voted 83-7 in favor of defunding the group from any other housing grants. The next requirement from Congress will be a vote on the investigation of ACORN’s books, practices, and its management. The disturbing part of the 83-7 vote is that 7 senators actually believed ACORN should still be in business after this scandal broke! Those Senators are the following:
Whitehouse (D-RI)
Burris (D-IL)
Durbin (D-MI)
Sanders (D-VT)
Leahy (D-VT)
Casey (D-PA)
Gillibrand (D-NY)
These senators need to be driven out on a rail in 2010 if their seats are up – how morally bankrupt must one be to continue to back another morally bankrupt organization?
Many of us knew that something fishy was going on with this group back during the election of 2008. It’s too bad that we were not made privy of this behavior prior to the election, because ACORN has apparently been working in this manner for years. Simple curiosity and a desire to actually investigate has brought citizen reporters/activists out of the woodwork since the big named journalists refuse to do their jobs any longer. Charlie Gibson, who was so pompous and egotistical during the Palin interview, appears to have as much credibility as Alex Trebek who is spoon-fed the answers on note cards. Gibson was recently on the Don & Roma radio show where he was asked what he thought about the current events regarding ACORN – he had no clue!
“I don’t even know about it,” Gibson said, laughing. “So you’ve got me at a loss. … But my goodness, if it’s got everything, including sleaziness in it, we should talk about it in the morning.”
When one of the radio show’s hosts described it as a “huge issue,” Gibson said ABC had “done some stories about ACORN before, but this one I don’t know about.”
Elitist media snobs like Katie Couric, Gibson, Brian Williams, Diane Sawyer, Chris Matthews, etc. do not have the intellect to truly understand the issues of the day, just a false sense of self based on their ‘reporting’ position to feel as though they are worldly. Each one of those “reporters” likes to throw out gotcha questions, which were most likely written by some aide or intern working in a cubicle. The elitist mentality has sure done our media in, especially now that the public trust of their profession is at an all time low of 29%.
In this year’s survey, 63 percent of respondents said news articles were often inaccurate and only 29 percent said the media generally “get the facts straight” — the worst marks Pew has recorded — compared with 53 percent and 39 percent in 2007.
How sheltered must our media elite be to not report on a huge criminal racket like ACORN? ACORN is not a partisan issue, anybody concerned with corruption and cleaning house in this country should want organizations like ACORN shut down and barred from receiving anymore taxpayer money.
The prostitution scandal is not the only illegal activity that Americans should be concerned with. ACORN has also been involved with partisan politics. One of the reasons ACORN was able to receive grants and taxpayer funds was due to it’s supposed “non-partisan” status. Most of us who have seen old video footage from ACORN conferences realize that the group was never in fact non-partisan, but as of a few days ago, the group has been even more outward in its ideological bias. ACORN has inserted itself into a 2nd Amendment case in the state of New Jersey, and they are attempting to help ban that constitutional right from the public. I ask why on earth does ACORN think it has any clue about fire arms? Why, if they purport to be neutral, do they get involved in an obvious partisan debate?
The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now — a publicly funded national organization linked to voter fraud in several states, is now actively interfering with the exercise of firearm civil rights in New Jersey, and the Second Amendment Foundation is calling for an immediate federal investigation.
One example of ACORN’s gun control activism is when its officials intervened in an unsuccessful attempt to defend Jersey City, New Jersey’s local gun control ordinance, which was struck down by the New Jersey state court as a violation of state law preempting stronger local gun ordinances.
“ACORN has, since 1998, received an estimated $31 million in government funding,” said SAF founder Alan Gottlieb. “Now they have intervened in a New Jersey gun rights case in defense of an illegal Jersey City one-gun-a-month ordinance that violates the state preemption statute.”
There are also the arguments from the higher-ups in ACORN who exclaim that they only have a few rogue employees and cannot be held accountable for the actions of those who are working on their behalf. I call shenanigans on that one. Anybody who has gone through orientation at a company or has taken any type of corporate compliance training knows exactly who is liable for the actions of employees: management! To further drive the nail into the coffin, it was recently discovered that Maryland had issues with ACORN back in 2006, when ACORN, Inc., forfeited their corporate charter. The ACORN Housing sector of ACORN, Inc. also let their charter lapse in 2008, therefore any ACORN field offices working on behalf of the organization in the state of Maryland would be conducting business illegally. Please explain to me how this is not a management issue? That’s what I thought!
Update: The House has also voted to defund ACORN; 345-75 – I never thought I would see the day!
75 Democrats voted to continue support of ACORN here’s the roll call vote:
It comes as no surprise that Baltimore is one of the more corrupt cities in America. It also maintains one of the highest crimes rates in the nation, my personal favorite, however, is the title of Heroine Capital of the United States, but who’s keeping track? Barring all of that, there was a recent scandal that hit regarding ACORN and its associates. A woman and a man, who went undercover disclosed to the world, the vile nature of this organization. She masked herself as a prostitute who wanted to start a business with her pimp boyfriend. The two were trying to figure out how they could purchase a home and start an illegal prostitution business in that home.
The first part of their conversation included tax evasion, aiding and abetting illegal activity, and fraud. The two women working at this ACORN facility seemed to have no problem that a 19 year-old female and her pimp were trying to start a business that would obviously expose the neighborhood to inappropriate activity. The worst part of all of this, if complicity and ambivalence for the sake of money wasn’t enough, the fact that the couple wanted to traffic underage illegal aliens to perform sexual activities should be. How void of morals/principles must one be to condone such acts? This would be incomprehensible to most people and in most areas, but not in Baltimore, no siree! – Balti-morons have had a long history of corruption and scandal. One only has to look as far as the city council to be aware of how political and deep this runs. The poor communities of Baltimore have stayed poor. Other areas have been refurbished, but there is still crime, especially an up-tick in murders at places like the Inner Harbor and the ‘touristy’ sections: The “safe havens” of the city aren’t really all that safe. If a person wants to ever see what really takes place on the streets of Baltimore they should actually watch The Wire, which is not far fetched; in all actuality the episodes that are depicted stem from true stories written in the Baltimore Sun or some other city paper. The papers in Baltimore are just as politicized as they are in any other city, but the cronyism and cover-ups of murder statistics and money laundering go above and beyond. There is no such thing as objective reporting in the likes of Baltimore, but then again, is there really such a thing in America anymore?
The city has been rocked by recent scandal with its Democrat Mayor Sheila Dixon as well as several Democrat city council members who were all being investigated for fraud and bribery, but even in the local realm of politics that still isn’t enough to send these cockroaches packing. They infiltrate large community organizations that shake down businesses in the name of social justice and ‘change.’ Nothing has changed in Baltimore, especially not within the areas that have been destitute and crime ridden for decades. It’s a wonder why they continue to vote for the same party who has been in power since 1967, yet continue to blame Republicans for their strife. Republicans cannot be let off the hook that easily though, because the biggest mistake they make is staying away from the cities. Too many have just given up on inner cities and won’t even try to communicate a different message or a conservative cause. Without that one-on-one face-time it’s almost impossible to prove, through action, not words, that the change that might be needed is an entirely different train of thought.
Democrats have been running Baltimore since the age of Abe Lincoln. One interesting historical story was a man by the name of George Proctor Kane. After the party of the Whigs disappeared he joined the Democrats and became a member of the Confederacy. He was the police chief during Lincoln’s train ride through the East to his eventual destination of Washington, D.C. He was later arrested and sent to Canada after it was discovered he was plotting to help assassinate Lincoln on his way through Baltimore. Lincoln caught wind of this and did not disclose to the mayor or to Mr. Kane that he would be leaving Harrisburg early and would travel through Baltimore 3 hours in advance of when he was originally expected. Although that’s a bit of history, the crazy thing was that this man was elected mayor of the city after the Civil War. He only served one year from 1877-1878 because he died while in office.
My other favorite piece of Baltimore history involves Nancy Pelosi, yes that’s right, Nancy Pelosi hailed from Baltimore not the Bay Area. She actually came from a family that ran the city, and by ran, I mean Mafia, which not only loves “doing business,” it also loves politics. Both her father and her brother have been mayor of Baltimore: Thomas D’Alesandro, Jr. 1947-1959, Thomas L. J. D’Alesandro, III 1967-1971. Both brother and father were indicted for bribery, conspiracy, and her father was also indicted for a scandal involving a garage operator. The family’s last name has a variant spelling: D’Alessandro, which is what was originally used when they immigrated from Italy to the Port of Baltimore. (More mafia/Baltimore related stories can be found under the variant name). The D’Alesandro’s were THE FAMILY of Baltimore and ran the Democrat Political Machine in Maryland for decades… I hear Little Italy on Eastern Ave. loves them!
The list of Republican mayors is short-lived so here it is:
Alcaeus Hooper 1895-1897
William T. Malster 1897-1899
E. Clay Timanus 1904-1907
William Broening 1919-1923 & 1927-1931
Theodore McKeldin 1943-1947 & 1963-1967
There you have it – the only Republicans to ever run the city of Baltimore, a total of 23 years. Can one of the progressives please tell me again why they continue to blame conservatives for all their problems and the conditions of inner cities? We are seeing that Democrats continue to be the party of oppression, the party of those who exploit and use others in order to gain power and votes. Plantation politics, the politics of slavery, have been shifted from the old Democratic days of the Confederacy and the KKK to entitlements (enabling), welfare (carrot and stick philosophy), community organizing, the exacerbation of the victim mentality, and the exploitation of demographic groups, labor groups, class, religion, and gender.
The two women who were videotaped advocating on behalf of the prostitute and the pimp, were fired. ACORN, to this day exclaims that it is not responsible for the actions of its employees, but try that excuse at any big company and see how the liberals wail. Management, in any form of business, for profit or not, is incredibly responsible for the actions of those working on behalf of the company name and their mission. It’s amusing to see that the people running these “social justice” groups are white liberal elitists while the worker bees are people of color. I just hope that one day soon, people begin to wake up!
The Crabby Constituent 