Showing posts with label Pelosi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pelosi. Show all posts

Sunday, April 26, 2009

RED ALERT: Feinstein's husband hits the jackpot again!

Put simply, Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) appears to have hit the taxpayer lotto three times now, all surely by pure happenstance.

Days ago, The Washington Times discovered that Feinstein intervened with the FDIC in 2008. At its face, it appears to be a blatant quid pro quo steering millions of dollars of foreclosure business to her husband's company.


Click to zoom

After her intervention, the FDIC awarded a contract termed "highly unusual", both because of the margins CBRE could earn and the fact that the company did not have significant foreclosure experience. Less than sixty days after the award, the FDIC received $25 billion in TARP funds.

And despite an obvious conflict-of-interest as "a member of the Military Construction Appropriations subcommittee, Sen. Feinstein voted for appropriations worth billions to her husband's firms." The value of various defense contracts awarded to a company controlled by Feinstein's husband totalled $3.7 billion. In 2007, Feinstein resigned from the subcommittee after increasing scrutiny instigated on both sides of the aisle.

The Presidio Trust appears to be yet another of Feinstein's family bonanzas, in what I am sure is simply another happy coincidence.

The Presidio of San Francisco is a park on the northern tip of land in a highly desirable area, overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge. In 1989, as part of a military reduction program, Congress closed the Presidio as an active military installation. And in 1996, Bill Clinton signed into law a bill creating an "innovative" public-private partnership that would control and manage development. That organization is called the Presidio Trust.

A press release on Rep. Nancy Pelosi's site describes the federal Presidio Trust Bill of 1996. The bill was introduced by Pelosi and Senators Boxer and Feinstein in the Senate.

The Philadelphia Independent Media Center's coverage was typical, expressing the left's outrage at the creation of the nation's "first privatized national park".

In 1999's "Plundering the National Parks", Diana Scott pegs the amount of federal tax dollars sent to the privately controlled Presidio Trust at $300 million.

According to the official Presidio Trust Act, all commercial lease management for the Presidio Trust is managed through CB Richard Ellis (CBRE), the commercial real estate firm that Feinstein's husband Richard Blum heads as chairman. That's right, despite an obvious conflict of interest, Feinstein's husband's company is managing all commercial development for this plum piece of real estate.

That's not all. In addition, The Sedway Group -- a subsidiary of CBRE -- was retained as a consultant by the Presidio Trust, though no mention was made in the official meeting minutes of Sedway's connections to Blum and Feinstein.

This looks like a beautiful gig: Sedway comes in and makes recommendations and CBRE gets to implement them.

In a nutshell, Senator Diane Feinstein's family keeps hitting the lotto, the taxpayer lotto, that is.

Washington is certainly a sleazy place, but Feinstein doesn't even appear to be trying to rise above the stench.

But today's Democrats are above the law anyhow, what with dozens of current ethical violations swirling about and an utterly disinterested mainstream media. So I suppose Feinstein doesn't have to even keep appearances up. Only a couple of bloggers will report on this egregious behavior, so it's like a tree fell in a forest and only a few idiot taxpayers were around to hear it.


Hat tip: Biggest Crime. Linked by: Jawa Report. Thanks!

R.I.P.: The American Health Care System. Died: this week.


The Democrats' War on Poverty is nearly 50 years old, yet we're told there's too much poverty despite trillions in wealth transfers of every type.

The Democrats have run the education system for nearly 100 years -- with monopolies like the NEA and the AFT teacher's unions, yet we consistently hear that education is broken and that schools need more money.

Government was responsible for securing the southern border since the era of LBJ and have intentionally failed; this has led to the presence of as many as 20 million illegal aliens in the country thanks to Johnson's policies including "chain migration".

Democrats were responsible for implementing Medicare and Medicaid, which along with Social Security, are in ruins with approximately $55 trillion in debt. That's nearly a half million dollars for every household in America.

I could go down a long list of things the government said it would do, but hasn't done. Because the Statist Democrats are liars.

And now the Statist Democrats are launching the most massive attack on the American people in the history of government.

They promise health care for everyone, but they will not -- and they can't possibly -- deliver it.

While our health care system is certainly imperfect -- because all humans are imperfect, including doctors, nurses, hospitals and insurance companies -- they are more perfect, more competent, more informed, more capable than all of the bureaucrats to whom they'll be forced to report: a bureaucracy that will make all decisions about your health care.

And it is easy to confirm the havoc that socialized medicine will wreak on American society. All you need to do is to look at how Democrats are trying to ram home socialized medicine: they're doing it as fast as possible with as little debate as possible, using a loophole to slip it through without amendments or consideration.

Democrats claim it will be more cost-effective and efficient. That's bulls***. The man who's had the least experience at running anything is going to unleash the most massive federal leviathan in history.

This has been the dream of the Statist Democrats since FDR: to force each and every one of you, whether you like it or not, into a strait-jacket form of health care. It controls you; the actual being, the person.

Nameless, faceless bureaucrats substituting their decisions for those of your doctor.

Deciding whether you will have an operation or not. Whether you will have an MRI or not. Whether you will receive a life-saving, life-extending drug or not.

And we know this, because this is what occurs in Canada and Britain and other centralized bureaucracies, where you simply can not have access to advanced health care, period.

Where will the new drugs come from, since we produce half of them? Where will the new medical technologies come from, since we invent roughly three-fourths of them?

Who will run the hospitals and what will they look like when the government unions run them?

Who will be responsive in a massive federal bureaucracy, where no one takes responsibility for anything, and yet they're all-powerful decision-makers for your family's well-being?

Where will Barack Obama be in ten years, when the rest of us are struggling with a massive, out-of-control, federalized medical system that doesn't give a damn about individuals and is busy rationing?

He will be retired as a very young man; a very wealthy young man, who will have imposed his Marxist ideology upon this society and then walked away from it.

The politicians don't last. But their policies live forever.

And in every successive election cycle, the Statist Democrats will use the health care system to bludgeon their opponents. They will use health care as a weapon, rewarding you by offering more benefits for your votes and punishing you with less benefits if you dare to vote against them.

So much power for a faceless set of bureaucrats who can't possibly have the best interests of your family in mind. And yet they're going to take those decisions away from you and your doctor. And they've been lying every day to justify what they're doing.

They've been lying about the number of people without health care. They've been lying about whether the public is satisfied with health care. They've been lying about every aspect of health care.

They unleashed the slip-and-fall lawyers on the medical system, causing untold higher costs for medical practitioners. They've attacked the health care system relentlessly, driving up costs just like they've attacked the energy industry and the automakers.

And even when they have complete monopolistic control of a system, like the educational system in America, they want more control. It's never enough. They want more money, more regulations. More. They need to "invest". They need to raise taxes. They need to repress. They need to compel.

Because the Statist cannot make the imperfect perfect, even though he says he can. The Statist is more imperfect than anyone else.

I ask you to consider something: what kind of persons can Obama and the Democrat leadership be, to think they can do these things when history tells them they can not?

What kind of a mind refuses to look at the evidence? What kind of person would refuse to look at Britain and Canada? Or engage in arm-twisting secretly, behind the scenes? And use brownshirts like ACORN and the SEIU to intimidate organizations and legislators alike?

They're going to rush socialized medicine through the system, without any debate or transparency... and it's going to be a complete disaster on multiple levels.

Call the so-called conservative Blue Dog Democrats now. Make your voice heard. Help us stop this rush to disaster.


Based upon: Mark Levin 4/24/09.

Monday, April 20, 2009

Let Them Eat Dirt


It all started out as a simple, money-making scam. In the late nineties, members of the UN's International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) were tasked with assessing the scientific validity of the Kyoto Protocol.

The Protocol was an international emissions reduction treaty which required signatories to cut overall greenhouse gas emissions.

The IPCC subsequently produced the Special Report on Land Use, Land Use Change, and Forestry.

The report found that "carbon offsets" and "carbon trading" were viable ways to barter the right to pollute, because they would fund new forestry initiatives. But one critical detail was never disclosed in the report.

That is: members of the IPCC, such as Pedro Moura-Costa (above) and Gareth Philips, had major conflicts-of-interest. They owned, created and/or worked for businesses -- such as Ecosecurities and SGS Forestry -- that would directly benefit from the report's conclusions.

In fact, the IPCC panel members' companies were positioned to earn millions of dollars from the report. But the mainstream media did not report these conflicts and instead piled on the "global warming" and "carbon offset" bandwagons.

The carbon offset market quickly exploded. In fact, $92 billion worth of offsets were estimated to change hands in 2008.

But wanton profiteering appears to be the sole rationale for "carbon trading".

Put simply, a wide range of respected scientists, environmentalists, researchers, agriculturalists, and activists believe that carbon offsets are a "scam", "fantasy", "fiction", "nonsense", "fraudulent" and worse. And they've been saying so since 2000, though to read the newspaper you wouldn't know it.

The World Rainforest Movement, for example, investigated these bizarre financial ties and concluded that the IPCC report must "...be shelved due to their clear conflict of interest and a new report instigated which will be free of the taint of intellectual corruption."

To demonstrate the fraudulence of the carbon offset market, one need only request quotes from various carbon offset sellers. The price for offseting a flight from London to Toronto and back?
  • $85: from Climate Care (UK), which says 6 tons of CO2 must be offset.
  • $60: Carbon Neutral (UK), which says 4.3 tons of CO2 must be offset.
  • $195: Climate Friendly (Australia) asserts that 11.63 tons of CO2 must be offset.
  • $180: Green Seat (Netherlands) says 8.68 tons of CO2 must be offset.

Put simply: they're all basically making it up as they go along.

Whether you believe the world is warming or cooling, there is no arguing Democrats want more expensive energy for American citizens.

All that said, the real problem — and the reason Pelosi really does deserve blame — is that Democrats’ political goal of reducing carbon emissions continues to trump their populist rhetoric on gasoline prices. The two stances are impossible to reconcile. Try as they might to blame oil companies for the pain Americans feel at the pump, the Democrats want higher prices for gasoline — and for all forms of energy that emit carbon. Economic barriers against CO2 emissions are a requirement for environmental progress in the Democrats’ view, and this is the entire purpose of the carbon cap-and-trade system they will put before the House this summer — to create economic disincentives for emitting CO2.

There's that phrase again: carbon trading.

It all comes back to carbon offsets, the "global warming" scam promoted by the UN's IPCC. And now, a group of scientists has formally petitioned the IPCC, asking that they cease and desist marketing the message that CO2 emissions relate to warming temperatures. The scientists go on to renounce the unintended consequences of the UN's position: that the policy of burning food (to produce biofuel) has driven food prices sharply higher and is causing hunger and deforestation in countries around the world (especially the poorer countries).

The net result? In Haiti, for example, citizens have been forced to eat mud patties consisting of dirt, oil and sugar.

Furthermore, scientists are now coming to the conclusion that "green" fuels can't replace oil anytime soon.

* * *

The hunger and wild fluctuations in oil prices are certain to continue until we come to grips with reality. That is, fossil fuels are required for the world to survive the next several decades. The transition to green technologies will take significant time and will only occur because of the free market, not government mandate.

Unless we wish to see mass starvation and economic ruin, we must demand that American companies be permitted to take advantage of our immense storehouse of energy. Anything else is economic suicide. Contact your representative today and tell them to stop driving us to ruin.




Update: Chosen as the post o' the week by The Watchers Council, which consists of the all-star blogs: Thanks!

Monday, March 23, 2009

La Delgada Línea Azul


Earlier this month, undercover Houston cop Richard Salter and two fellow officers cautiously approached a tiny, battered east end house.

An informant had warned police that the East Avenue home was used for drug trafficking.

What they did not know is that an armed man, Wilfido Joel Alfaro, lay in wait.

Alfaro was watching a 50-inch flat screen -- part of a sophisticated security system that had cost as much as the house itself -- while police officers approached. He saw their every move.

Salter and two other officers were there to serve a drug warrant in the 9300 block. They loudly announced themselves while taking down the burglar bars.

Without warning, Salter was shot in the face after stepping through the doorway.

Alfaro was gunned down by police officers after Salter had been hit.

An illegal alien, Alfaro had been arrested five times for possession or delivery of drugs – including three times after an immigration judge granted him “voluntary departure” in March 2001.

Alfaro had left the country after serving time on the first felony drug charge. Alfaro was arrested again in 2002 in Pearland, and again in 2003 on a drug charge in Angleton, according to authorities.

Why wasn't Alfaro's status as a repeat offender and illegal alien available to Salter before serving the warrant?

Because Houston's mayor and police chief, Bill White and Harold Hurtt, refuse to participate in the federal 287(G) program that allows the law enforcement and immigration enforcement communities to share information.

The Houston Chronicle reports that White and Hurtt continually kowtowed to special interests and helped reinforce the policies that solidified Houston's reputation as a "Sanctuary City".

Last year, HPD jailers detained for immigration officials less than 1 percent of the 58,774 suspects booked... [in an email from] Houston Police Chief Harold Hurtt to White ... reported “several thousand” illegal immigrants eligible for deportation had passed through the city’s lockups.

Police officials who requested anonymity told the Chronicle that an immigrant with a criminal history similar to the Salvadoran man who shot Officer Richard Salter might today be able to slip through the cracks if he was picked up by HPD on a minor offense.

Other officials express frustration and anger for the failure of White and Hurtt to adopt the federal 287(G) program that allows sharing of law enforcement and immigration information. A city council member said, "My constituents and citizens across the area are screaming out for illegal immigrants to be dealt with, and especially those who commit crimes."

After the Salter shooting this month, a police union official asked, "I don’t know... how many people have to be killed before we stand up and do our part?"

The union official had a point. In 2006, the murder of Houston Police Officer Rodney Johnson by an illegal immigrant was basically ignored by White and Hurtt. According to KHOU 11 News, a week later White claimed that "high-level meetings" would occur and that "procedures would be reviewed". In effect, it appears nothing happened.

And just days ago in Corpus Christi, 20-year veteran of the force, police officer Stuart Jay Alexander was killed by a reported member of the gang MS-13.

* * *

Speaker of the House, Democrat Nancy Pelosi, says enforcement of immigration laws in the United States is "un-American."

Pelosi failed to specify which laws she feels are worth enforcing.

And Pelosi says men and women like Officer Salter, who risk their lives to protect American citizens from drug gangs run by illegal immigrants, are thugs.

Pelosi and the rest of the open-border Democrats should publicly apologize to the families of all fallen officers, starting with the family of Officer Rick Salter.

For it is the Democrats' open border policies that put our police officers -- and all of us -- at risk.

Because if these scumbags go after police officers, there are truly no limits.

Just say no to the open-borders policies of the Democrats. Just say no to the disgusting treatment of our men and women in blue.

Apologize, Nancy Pelosi. Apologize. And start protecting our police officers and our citizens as is your Constitutional duty. Or just resign.

* * *

Please consider donating to the family of critically wounded Officer Rick Salter, a 27-year veteran of the Houston Police Department who is married with two children. Any amount, large or small, is appreciated.