Showing posts with label Crime. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Crime. Show all posts

Friday, September 12, 2014

OFFICIALS WITHOUT VIRTUE: Eric Holder's DOJ Conspires with House Oversight's Elijah Cummings in Massive IRS Cover-Up

By Investor's Business Daily

IRS: An aide to the attorney general accidentally calls the office of the House Oversight Committee chairman, asking for help in spinning the defense of the agency whose head just said they obey the law when they can.

We have commented many times of the all-too-cozy relationship between the IRS and Democratic members of the House and Senate, with members writing to the agency demanding that specific conservative groups and political action committees they find particularly irritating be subject to the "special scrutiny" that the Tea Party and other conservative and religious groups were subjected to in the ongoing scandal.

Of particular interest to us has been Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., ranking member on Rep. Darrell Issa's House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, who has made every effort to keep the committee from finding out the true extent of IRS corruption and abuse of power in its targeting of conservatives.

PERFECT: Obama's New Policies Enable ISIS Terrorists to Legally Immigrate to the U.S. -- and Collect Welfare

By Michael Snyder

Did you know that one of the Americans that was recently killed fighting for ISIS once cleaned planes at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport? His name was Abdirahmaan Muhumed, and he was a Somali refugee. Since 1975, more than 3 million refugees have been resettled in cities in the United States, and thanks to the Obama administration an increasing percentage of those refugees are Muslim. As you will read about below, Obama has even made it possible for refugees that have given only “limited material support” to terrorists to come to America. The Obama administration says that it is still trying to keep full-blown terrorists from entering the country, but it has become exceedingly clear that administration officials aren’t exactly into that whole “border security” thing. And once refugees arrive in the United States, they are fully eligible for food stamps, Medicaid, housing assistance and a whole host of other welfare programs. So if you are a jihadist and you want to move to the United States legally, all you have to do is claim to be a “refugee” and you might just find that the red carpet gets rolled out for you.

Thursday, September 11, 2014

SESSIONS: If Democrats Really Cared About "Paycheck Fairness", They Would Fight Illegal Immigration

By Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL)

Earlier this week I spoke about the president’s promise that he would issue an executive amnesty to 5 or 6 million people. The planned amnesty would include work permits, photo IDs, and Social Security numbers for millions of people who illegally entered the U.S., illegally overstayed their visas, or defrauded U.S. immigration authorities.

The Senate Democratic conference has supported and enabled the president’s unlawful actions and blocked every effort to stop them. Not even one of our Democratic colleagues has backed the House legislation that would stop this planned executive amnesty or demanded that Senator Reid bring it up for a vote. Every Senate Democrat is therefore the president’s partner in his planned lawless acts.

Tonight I would like to talk about the influence of special interests on our nation’s immigration system. How did we get to the point where elected officials, activist groups, the ACLU, and global CEOs are openly working to deny American workers the immigration protections to which they are legally entitled? How did we get to the point where the Democratic party is prepared to nullify and wipe away the immigration laws of the United States of America?

Just yesterday Majority Leader Reid wrote in a tweet something that was shocking. He said: “Since House Republicans have failed to act on immigration, I know the President will. When he does, I hope he goes Real Big.”

Let this sink in for a moment. The majority leader of the Senate is bragging that he knows the president will circumvent Congress to issue executive amnesty to millions, and he is encouraging the president to ensure this amnesty includes as many people as possible. And the White House has acknowledged that 5 to 6 million is the number they are looking at.

Has one Senate Democrat stepped forward to reject Mr. Reid’s statement? Has one Senate Democrat stepped forward to say: I support the legislation passed by the House of Representatives that would secure the border and block this executive amnesty? Have they ever said they support that? Have they ever said: I will do everything in my power to see that the House legislation gets a vote in the Senate so the American people can know what is going on? No. All we hear is silence.

This body is not run by one man. We don’t have a dictator in the great Senate. Every member has a vote. And the only way Senator Reid can succeed in blocking this Senate from voting to stop the president’s executive actions is for members to stop supporting him.

Every senator needs to stand up and represent their constituents — not big business, not the ACLU, not activist groups, not political interests, but the American interests, the workers’ interests. That is what we need to expect from them, and we don’t have but a few weeks, it looks like, to get it done.

In effect, the entire Senate Democratic conference has surrendered the jobs, wages, and livelihoods of their constituents to a group of special interests meeting in secret at the White House. They are surrendering them to executive actions that will foist on the nation what Congress has refused to pass and the American people have rejected. They are plotting at the White House to move forward with executive action no matter what the people think and no matter what Congress — through the people’s House — has decided.

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

All of the NSA Revelations in a Single Chart

The farther northeast the program gets, the more every liberty-minded American should care.

Click to enbiggify.



Via Western Rifle Shooters Assocation

Tuesday, September 09, 2014

BORDER BREAKDOWN: Tuberculosis Outbreak Feared in Massachusetts After Obama Ships Hundreds of Illegals There

What, you think even Kreskin could have predicted this?

SHOT: Lynn officials: Illegal immigrant children are stressing city services
12 July 2014: Lynn is a municipality on the brink. Key department officials say a recent influx of illegal immigrant children and families in the city is stressing almost every service from trash collection to healthcare.

"We have been aware of the unaccompanied children issue for quite a while, and we were able to absorb a lot of these children early on," said Lynn Mayor Judith Flanagan Kennedy. "But now it's gotten to the point where the school system is overwhelmed, our health department is overwhelmed, the city's budget is being sustainably altered in order of accommodate all of these admissions in the school department."

...The amount of new foreign born student admissions has nearly doubled in the last two years. This school year alone saw more than 600 new admissions. Among those students, 248 were from Guatemala. Flanagan Kennedy says of those 248 children, 126 were illegal, undocumented minors.

"They are not literate in any language, so they do need some skills. And I assume they are enrolling in school to receive those skills," said Catherine Latham, Lynn's superintendent of schools...

CHASER: Hundreds in Lynn Tested for Tuberculosis
9 September 2014: More than 30 Lynn Community Health Center employees and 800 patients are being tested to determine if they were exposed to tuberculosis after center doctors confirmed a case.

Center Director Lori Berry says after confirming the single positive test for tuberculosis in a male health care worker around Labor Day, center medical workers contacted and tested employees as well as patients ‘‘having sufficient exposure to warrant testing.’’

City Health Director MaryAnn O'Connor tells The Daily Item the identified case at the center is ‘‘not a reason to panic’’ and said people should not stay away from clinic...

Crime, disease, racial strife, terrorism, violence, and war.

Yep, we've got a Democrat President, alright.


Hat tip: Drudge Report.

Sunday, September 07, 2014

BUBBLE: It Doesn't Take a Genius to See What's Coming

By Michael Snyder

People have such short memories. Even though we are repeating so many of the same patterns that we witnessed in 2000-2001 and 2007-2008, most people do not think that another financial crash is coming. In fact, with the stock market setting record high after record high lately, I have been taking quite a bit of criticism for my relentless warnings about the coming financial storm. Many of the comments go something like this: "Snyder you are a moron! Nothing you say ever comes true. The stock market is going to keep on rocking and Obama is going to lead this country back to greatness. I hope that you choke on all of your doom and gloom." Of course these critics never offer any hard evidence that I have been wrong about anything. They just assume that since the stock market has soared to unprecedented heights that all of us "bears" must have been wrong.

But the truth is that what we are observing right now is classic bubble behavior. The stock market crashes of 1929, 1987 and 2008 were all preceded by irrational market rallies in the spring or summer. The financial markets have become completely divorced from economic reality, and such a state of affairs never lasts forever. It is just a matter of time before a correction comes.

But every time there is a bubble, most people end up getting caught up in all of the euphoria. And it is happening again. In fact, CNBC has just reported that bearishness among market newsletter writers is the lowest that it has been since 1987. But of course we all remember what happened back in 1987...

IT'S YOUR FAULT: Federal Reserve Blames Americans Who “Hoard Money” For Obama's Economic Trainwreck

By Mac Slavo

Despite arguments to the contrary from the Obama administration, mounting evidence suggests that the U.S. economy is rapidly falling back into negative growth territory. More Americans are out of the workforce than ever before, median household incomes are at levels not seen since 1967, and consumer spending is coming to a veritable standstill. The crisis is apparently so significant that a Federal Reserve governor recently said U.S. policymakers are crafting regulations that will force bank depositors to cover any losses should their financial institutions fail.

The question that many are asking is, how did this happen? How, after six years of recovery efforts and trillions of dollars printed, is it possible that the economy is not booming again?

This week the Federal Reserve published a report that claims to have figured it out and it turns out that the renewed economic downturn has nothing to do with foreign outsourcing, high taxation, increased health care costs for business or rising consumer prices for food and energy.

No, according to the Fed it is your fault. Apparently, you are not spending enough money. In order for the economy to recover you need to stop hoarding cash now and get out there and start buying more homes, cars, vacations, and electronics. Otherwise, you’ll only have yourself to blame when the system comes unhinged.

From the St. Louis Federal Reserve:

HAPPY YET, DRONES? Early Preview of Obamacare Premiums Show a 40% Spike in 2015

It is my sincere hope that one day conservatives will kick teachers' unions to the curb and retake the nation's educational system. One of the first orders of business then would be to teach not only the genius of the American founding but also the utter, repeated and unbroken failures of collectivism.

Which brings me to Obamacare, a socialistic plan sold on a panoply of lies and doomed from the outset to failure. Failure that even the Obama administration acknowledges, with its serial and unlawful rewrites of the statute, along with delays and modifications to shield a complicit Democrat Party from enraged electorates.

As for what collectivism applied to health care will do to insurance premiums? It's just as we predicted.

On Thursday, the Alaska Division of Insurance announced hefty insurance rate increases in 2015 for Alaskans who purchased individual plans under the Affordable Care Act.

...In 2015, Premera Blue Cross insurance rates will increase between 35 and 40 percent, Wing-Heier said. Those plans cover roughly 7,000 Alaskans. Alaskans who chose a silver plan (the most popular) through Premera will see an increase of 37 percent.

Moda Health plans will increase between 22 and 28.8 percent, according to Wing-Heier. These plans cover roughly 8,000 Alaskans, Moda regional operations director Jason Gootee said.

Why the shocking and unprecedented increases?

Wing-Heier said 2015's greater increase is due to the small number of Alaskans on the individual market: “For insurance to work the way it’s intended ... you pool your risk and spread it across the pool.”

Insurers were facing “some very horrific claims” with “just not enough people” to balance it out, she said... ...“There are not enough healthy members in Alaska’s individual market to offset the cost of members with very high medical costs...”

...Premera expects to lose $3.7 million in 2014 on these plans, the company writes... “We need a 71.5 percent average rate increase to break even in 2015,” the release states. In 2015, Premera is forecasting losses of $5 million, even with the rate increase.

Alaska is but a microcosm of the insanity laced throughout the ill-named "Affordable Care Act."

Thousands of years of human history have proven, if nothing else, that central planning can never replace the efficiency of free markets.

And still the hard left, Marxist-controlled Democrat Party insists on its suicidal vision for America. We, the American people, will pay the price for their insane plans. And they, the oligarchs, won't feel a thing.


Hat tip: BadBlue News.

Saturday, September 06, 2014

National Labor Relations Board Ruling to Destroy Franchised Businesses... For the Children

Forbes contributor Mark Hendrickson sounds the alarm on another devastating blow to the economy, one inflicted by the most anti-business administration since that of FDR.

The NLRB has issued a ruling that McDonald's Corporation may be considered a joint employer of McDonald’s franchisees’ workers. If allowed to stand, this ruling will redefine the relationship between franchisors and franchisees by declaring both to be joint employers. This is bad law, bad for business, and bad for employment.

It’s bad law because it would unilaterally abrogate long-accepted contractual arrangements between thousands of franchisors and franchisees. It’s also bad law because it is an insult–no, a repudiation–of representative government. A major change in law that affects so many individuals and businesses is properly the province of Congress. By usurping the legislative prerogative, three unelected political appointees (a majority of the five-person NLRB) are presuming to make a decision that rightly should be made by [Congress].

The NLRB ruling will be immensely disruptive to all the franchisors and franchisees in the country. Indeed, it would destroy the harmony between a franchisor and its franchisees.

Currently, franchisors exert no control over hiring, firing, assigning workers to different shifts, determining the length of those shifts, deciding which worker performs which functions, etc. and if franchisors are now to be deemed joint employers of those who work in each local franchise, they would need to hire additional workers to be on site. You can’t manage a workforce in Peoria or Mesa or Tupelo from Chicago (or, in the case of McDonald’s, Oak Park). How would a franchisor cover these additional costs? They would have to receive a larger percentage of the franchisees’ income. They also might find it expedient to enter into a nationwide bargaining agreement with a union that would represent the workers in all the franchises, figuring that it would be more manageable for them to deal with one collective bargaining agent than having to micromanage labor issues in a large number of franchises.

...Clearly, the new NLRB ruling threatens to destroy jobs at a time when the overall job market remains less than robust. As is so often the case, government intervention in the name of helping America’s workers will end up imposing a severe toll on many of those workers.

Why would the NLRB promote a ruling certain to negatively impact small businesses and workers? Because it "is designed to help labor unions, a key element of President Obama’s powerbase."

Little wonder, as Hendrickson notes, that American companies are fleeing overseas.


Hat tip: BadBlue Money.

Father of Young Man Killed by Illegal Alien Has a Message for Obama

By Investor's Business Daily

Human Cost: The point above, made to President Obama by a grieving father whose 25-year-old son was run over by an illegal alien who won't be deported, underscores the high price of open borders for U.S. citizens.

That grieving father, Donald Rosenberg, has put another human face on the growing problem of importing crime through the Obama administration's tolerance of illegal immigration.

His plea also highlights the White House's refusal to deport those who shouldn't be here after they do grievous harm to Americans, sometimes even killing them.

In a letter sent to Obama last month, Rosenberg, a self-described "lifelong, very liberal Democrat," said his son Drew, run over and killed by an illegal alien in 2010, would still be alive if Washington consistently deported illegals who have conflicts with law enforcement.

Open-border advocates would argue that his son could have just as easily been killed by a U.S. citizen. True enough, except that he wasn't, and the fact is the odds of American citizens being victims of any crime would be reduced if our borders were secure and alien criminals were being deported.

Rosenberg's son was killed when Robert Galo, an illegal alien who had been here since 1998, made a left turn and crashed into Drew, who was riding his motorcycle home from law school.

It was a slow-speed crash and nothing serious might have happened had not Galo, who was driving without a license, "drove over (Drew's) body a third time," Rosenberg said in his letter, "in an attempt to flee."

One Question Quiz on the Ever-Growing Federal Behemoth

Courtesy of 90 Miles From Tyranny:


John Fund calls the result of these troubling developments "The United States of SWAT."


Hat tip: III Percent Patriots.

Friday, September 05, 2014

HILLARY, BENGHAZI, OBAMA AND ISIS: A Möbius Strip of Terror

By Richard Larsen

It is not uncommon to find inconsistencies and even contradictions in U.S. foreign policy. Usually a few years of separation are required to reveal our inconsistency, as in the case of Iran. Rarely do we see such striking contradictions in real time as we do today in the Middle East policies of the Obama administration.

ISIS occupies the center stage of our current iteration of contradictory policy. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which subsequently changed their name to the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL), apparently now wants to be known simply as The Islamic State (IS). This is the militaristic group that has emerged out of Syria, Al-Nusra, and merged with Al Qaeda of Iraq, to take over significant portions of eastern Syria and northern Iraq.

Threatening to violently take over all of Iraq and Syria, establishing an Islamic caliphate that would eventually cover the world, they have mercilessly spread their destruction from city to city. They behead or conduct mass executions against whoever opposes them (including American journalists), kidnap for ransoms to fund their operations, and have vowed to raise the ISIS flag over the White House. They are well funded from bank robberies, selling oil on the black market, and from kidnap ransoms. They are well trained, militant, and are well armed, predominantly with U.S. equipment.

This is the Al Qaeda-linked group of terrorists that Obama referred to as “JV” (junior varsity) just a few months ago. In an interview with New Yorker magazine in January, the president applied a metaphor, saying of ISIS, that putting on a “Laker’s uniform doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant.” That “JV” group of militants, now figured to be 10,000 strong (including some westerners and as many as 300 Americans) is now perceived to be the greatest terrorist threat in the world.

During the 2012 presidential campaign, more than 32 times the president claimed Al Qaeda was “decimated” or “defeated.” To acknowledge their resurgence just two years later would not fit with his narrative as slayer of Osama bin Laden and vanquisher of his terrorist group. Consequently, their emerging threat had to be minimized.

But that’s just the tip of the ISIS iceberg for the administration. We have to realize that for the past few years the president has been actively engaged in toppling Middle Eastern regimes; Khadafy in Libya, Mubarak in Egypt, and Assad in Syria. In fact, just over a year ago the president was requesting $500 million to help the “freedom fighters” in Syria topple the Assad regime. The majority of those “freedom fighters” now go by the name ISIS, and the president was poised to fund them.

Thursday, September 04, 2014

NO GLOBAL WARMING FOR 17 YEARS, 11 MONTHS: Crazed Sex Poodle* Hardest Hit

So reports Christopher Monckton:

The Great Pause has now persisted for 17 years 11 months. Indeed, to three decimal places on a per-decade basis, there has been no global warming for 18 full years. Professor Ross McKitrick, however, has upped the ante with a new statistical paper to say there has been no global warming for 19 years.

Whichever value one adopts, it is becoming harder and harder to maintain that we face a “climate crisis” caused by our past and present sins of emission...

...This is the longest continuous period without any warming in the global instrumental temperature record since the satellites first watched in 1979. It has endured for half the satellite temperature record. Yet the Great Pause coincides with a continuing, rapid increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration.

The RSS satellite records shows no global warming at all for the 215 months from October 1996 to August 2014. That is more than half the entire 428-month satellite record.

* The term "crazed sex poodle" was first used to describe Al Gore by a Denver masseuse who alleged the infamous climate grifter had "fondled and groped her".

Hat tip: BadBlue News.

Wednesday, September 03, 2014

BILL OF RIGHTS BANNED IN NEW YORK: State Troopers Demand Gun Shop Customer List, Threaten With Warrant-less SWAT Team Raid

By Ammoland

Joseph Palumbo, co-owner of the Albion Gun Shop, released information today that New York State Police officers from the Narcotics Enforcement Unit demanded the shop’s release of all customers who purchased New York SAFE Act compliant rifles under threat of a warrantless SWAT Team Raid.

Since the passing of the New York Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement (S.A.F.E.) Act, the New York State Troopers Narcotics Enforcement Unit has been delegated to enforce the S.A.F.E. Act and to handle all matters pertaining to the S.A.F.E. Act.

This unit has visited Mr. Palumbo on several occasions, disrupting his business, to see that Mr. Palumbo is compliant with the S.A.F.E. act provisions for licensed gun shops owners.

“The New York State Police told me that my guns were NY S.A.F.E. compliant. The chief of the Medina police told me my rifles were NY S.A.F.E. compliant and in fact purchased one of the guns from my shop.” James D. Tresmond, attorney for the Albion Gun Shop, raised the possibility of entrapment. “My client disclosed to me that he would not have sold these rifles to the general public had they not been approved by the New York Division of State Police”

Meanwhile, a confidential informant from within the state police released an email from New York State Police Division Counsel Kevin Bruen which insinuates that police department itself cannot understand the S.A.F.E. Act itself. The email, which was a response to a state trooper’s inquiry as to whether modified rifles were New York S.A.F.E. compliant. Division Counsel ordered that “a court would have to rule on the legality of these rifles”.

“The New York S.A.F.E. Act is being enforced arbitrarily on a case by case basis,” Tresmond said. “That amounts to unconstitutional vagueness under the Supreme Court’s Morales standard, and the law should be enjoined for that reason alone.”

Mr. Palumbo, concerned that his license to sell firearms in New York may be affected by recent solicitation by the New York State Trooper Narcotics Enforcement Unit, has retained Tresmond Law to represent him in all legal matters concerning any possible investigation or litigation made by the New York State Narcotics Enforcement Unit regarding his business. Mr. Palumbo opened up the Albion Gun Shop in 2012 and it is through this business that he makes his livelihood.

The Albion Gun Shop intends to take immediate legal action tomorrow morning to remedy this problem.

We will post updates as they become available.


Hat tip: BadBlue Gun News and WHEC News (image).

Tuesday, September 02, 2014

Obamacare Ruins More Than Health Care

By Richard E. Ralston

The suppression of liberty in health care choices will take all privacy down with it. Tight government control of electronic medical records—which used to be private—seems a minor contribution to the destruction of the Fourth Amendment compared to the seizure of everyone's communications with everybody, without individual court orders based on probable cause.

How can we protest loss of privacy in any communications when we must surrender it for our medical records?

In 2014, virtually no new physicians will be available to treat millions of new Medicaid patients, but 10,000 newly hired IRS agents will impose fines on those unwilling to buy mandatory insurance.

Hopefully this will distract the IRS from persecution of nonprofit organizations that oppose the party line coming from Washington, DC.

As the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) just reported, businesses will continue to cut jobs and implement reduction in the working hours of millions of employees to avoid the insurance mandate in 2015. Then they will cut insurance policies for employees in favor of paying fines and saving billions of dollars in rising insurance costs.

Who could have imagined they would do such a thing?

We will get more bad news when insurance companies announce far higher premiums for 2015, as young people are not rushing to sign up for more expensive insurance to subsidize their more affluent elders.

Who could have expected that?

President Obama could have expected it, just as he knew that insurance commissioners would generally reject his one-year reprieve from the lie that if you like your insurance, you can keep it.

The president will continue to delay or set aside any provision of the law without authorization of Congress or reference to the provisions of the law. In fact, the replacement of law approved by Congress with arbitrary and vague administrative regulations—approved by countless anonymous bureaucrats—is not just a consequence of Obamacare but an explicit objective of the president.

Monday, September 01, 2014

YET ANOTHER IMPEACHABLE OFFENSE: Obama's U.N. Climate "Accord" Will Trump U.S. Constitution

By Investor's Business Daily

Power: This lawless administration plans to bypass the two-thirds requirement for Senate ratification on a climate change treaty by entering into a "politically binding" hybrid agreement to "name and shame" climate scofflaws.

Apparently letting the Environmental Protection Agency run amok with regulations fulfilling candidate Obama's pledge to bankrupt the coal industry, and enact a de facto cap-and-trade regime the president couldn't get through Congress, is not enough.

The man who said his nomination was the moment the seas began to recede and the planet began to heal now plans to deal the rule of law and the U.S. Constitution yet another blow.

He's doing it by agreeing to a Kyoto-like "accord" he can use as moral cover for further destroying the U.S. economy, in lieu of an actual climate change "treaty" that must be ratified by two-thirds of a Senate that has already unanimously rejected such a pact.

The accord, to be signed at a United Nations summit meeting in Paris in 2015, is designed to bypass both Congress and the Constitution through the manipulation of language.

"Accords" do not have to be ratified, but they commit the nations involved to action, in this case meeting artificial and meaningless emission targets.

U.S. negotiators are meeting with diplomats from other countries to hammer out this deal, which is grounded neither in science nor the law.

Sunday, August 31, 2014

YOUR UNITED NATIONS IN ACTION: Photo of ISIS Driving UN Vehicle (Paid For With Your Tax Dollars)

How many countries in the world respect the rights of the individual, reject authoritarianism, and enjoy a civil society?

To be fair, that's a trick question. No country does, though a few come close. Perhaps Canada, Israel, and the U.S. for starters (though in the latter case, said attributes appear to be eroding on a daily basis).

So why would any rational American support an elite group of 100+ barbaric, tyrannical regimes? That's a rhetorical question, because we already do -- not by the consent of the governed, mind you -- and it's called "The United Nations" (or "U.N."). And the UN, by dint of numbers, supports Islamists, terrorists and other anti-civilization throwbacks.

Did you know the United Nations runs a car rental office just for bloodthirsty terrorist pig-dogs?


If you're a little bit late to the party, it's true: the United Nations actively supports terrorism.

One day, I pray, we elect a Constitutional conservative president. And one of their first acts is to completely defund the UN, boot it out of New York City, and name John Bolton the Secretary of State. For spite.

Yeah. I went there.


Hat tips: The Right Scoop and BadBlue News.

ACORN: Eric Holder's $17 Billion Settlement With Bank of America Funds Leftist Bank Shakedown Artists

By Investor's Business Daily

Extortion: Radical Democrat activist groups stand to collect millions from Attorney General Eric Holder's record $17 billion deal to settle alleged mortgage abuse charges against Bank of America.

Buried in the fine print of the deal, which includes $7 billion in soft-dollar consumer relief, are a raft of political payoffs to Obama constituency groups. In effect, the government has ordered the nation's largest bank to create a massive slush fund for Democrat special interests.

Besides requiring billions in debt forgiveness payments to delinquent borrowers in Cleveland, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Oakland, Detroit, Chicago and other Democrat strongholds — and up to $500 million to cover personal taxes owed on those checks — the deal requires BofA to make billions in new loans, while also building affordable low-income rental housing in those areas.

If there are leftover funds in four years, the settlement stipulates the money will go to Interest on Lawyers' Trust Account (IOLTA), which provides legal aid for the poor and supports left-wing causes, and NeighborWorks of America, which provides affordable housing and funds a national network of left-wing community organizers operating in the mold of Acorn.

In fact, in 2008 and 2009, NeighborWorks awarded a whopping $25 million to Acorn Housing.

In 2011 alone, NeighborWorks shelled out $35 million in "affordable housing grants" to 115 such groups, according to its website. Recipients included the radical Affordable Housing Alliance, which pressures banks to make high-risk loans in low-income neighborhoods and which happens to be the former employer of HUD's chief "fair housing" enforcer.

BofA gets extra credit if it makes at least $100 million in direct donations to IOLTA and housing activist groups approved by HUD.

Saturday, August 30, 2014

Marcus Tulius Cicero Offers an Observation on the Obama Democrats

Relayed by the relentlessly excellent Allen West:

A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within.

An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly.

But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men.

He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist.

A murderer is less to fear.

A Purdue University website reflects on some of the key reasons for the fall of the Roman Republic. Several might ring a bell:

• Roman Senators became oligarchs; their conspicuous consumption became visible signs of corruption.

• Emergence of Rome as an all-powerful, centralized and authoritarian government.

• An ever-increasing tax burden and massive government expenditures.

Well, thank goodness we have a Constitution which all of our politicians take an oath to uphold, which prevents any of this from happening in America.


Hat tip: BadBlue News.

LEAST-STOLEN AUTO IN U.S.: The Tesla Electric Scam-mobile

Slate Magazine calls taxpayer subsidies of Elon Musk's Tesla swindle "worse than Solyndra".

Without massive redistribution and subsidies, the Tesla Sedan would probably sticker for $400,000. And it would still be worth about $18,000.

Car thieves have confirmed its value, it would appear.

Good news for those of you who own a Tesla Model S—it's a car that's sharing top honors on the current list of "least stolen" vehicles within the United States...


...Tesla's Model S currently enjoys an extraordinarily low vehicles-made-to-vehicles-stolen-ratio. For every 1,000 vehicles shipped out of the Tesla factories, an average of 0.15 are stolen. Or, to flip the equation around a bit, one out of every 6,666 Tesla Model S cars are swiped...

...And as for why nobody appears to be running away with Model S in mass quantities, there are a few possible explanations. First off, there simply aren't that many Model S vehicles on the roads compared to the mass-produced, gas-guzzling cars of the company's competitors—more cars, more potential for theft.

There's also the fact that thieves aren't likely to get much resale value when they run away with a Model S car.

That and the fact that the Tesla has been known to occasionally turn into a fireball when it encounters road debris, perhaps.


Hat tip: BadBlue Tech News.