FLINT WATER CRISIS REEKS OF POLITICAL CORRUPTION (OBAMA'S DIRTY DEALS)

FLINT WATER CRISIS REEKS OF POLITICAL CORRUPTION (OBAMA'S DIRTY DEALS):

GOV SNYDER & MIKE ROGERS' PREVIOUS POLITICAL DEALS WITH OBAMA ARE LINKED TO CURRENT FLINT WATER CRISIS.

NOW IN 2016 OBAMA USES FLINT WATER CRISIS TO DESTROY MICHIGAN'S GOP LEADERS & HELP DEMOCRATS.


In the video above I discuss how the current FLINT Water Crisis is directly linked to dirty Political deals between Pres OBAMA, Michigan governor RICK SNYDER and former Congressman MIKE ROGERS.

I also discuss the fall of BLACK former Detroit mayor KWAME KILPATRICK who was destined to become Michigan's governor before he was caught up in a CORRUPTION Scandal.


~ Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder Releases Emails Tied To Flint Water Crisis

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder released his collection of emails from 2014 and 2015 surrounding the toxic water crisis in Flint today, hoping, as he said in Tuesday’s State of the State address, to provide a better understanding of how the municipal emergency unfolded.

More than 270 pages of emails were released to the public and posted to the governor's website.

The state's Department of Environmental Quality first became aware of the elevated lead levels in children's blood on Aug. 23, 2015, when Virginia Tech professor Marc Edwards notified the department that the school would be studying Flint water quality issues "over the next few months," the emails indicate.

At that point, the city of Flint had already determined that it needed to install corrosion control treatment into the water system leading into the Flint River, the emails read.

Flint had stopped using Detroit's water system in 2014 while a connection to Lake Huron was established. The city switched back to the Detroit system in October 2015.

The DEQ disputed Edwards' test results indicating corrosion and lead leaching in early September, a timeline of the events leading up to Flint created by the Michigan government states.

On Sept. 5, Director of Urban Initiatives Harvey Hollins said to Snyder in an email that more than 1,500 water filters had been distributed to households and that were was a "demand for more."

On Sept. 26, Snyder's chief of staff, Dennis Muchmore, discussed the potential political ramifications, accusing officials in Flint of turning the crisis into "political football."

“The DEQ and DCH feel that some in Flint are taking the very sensitive issue of children's exposure to lead and trying to turn it into a political football claiming the departments are underestimating the impacts on the populations and particularly trying to shift responsibility to the state,” Muchmore wrote.

Flint residents were urged not to drink the water on Oct. 1, the timeline says. But, a press release from DEQ on Oct. 2 said that the water in Flint's system was safe to drink, "but some families with lead plumbing in their homes or service connections could experience higher levels of lead in the water that comes out of their faucets."

A message from the Flint Water Advisory Task Force to Snyder on Dec. 29 ascribed much of blame to the DEQ for the contaminated water.

On Wednesday, Snyder committed $28 million to remedy the water crisis, according to a statement, calling the funding "just one more step toward a long-term solution." He apologized to Flint residents in his state of the state address Tuesday night and promised to take "full responsibility" in solving the problem.

"No citizen of this great state should endure this kind of catastrophe," Snyder said Tuesday.

In the address, Snyder outlined the actions that were taken last October in response to the contaminated water crisis, including daily door-to-door distribution of water, water filters, filter replacements and water testing kits.

More than 21,000 homes in Flint have been visited by emergency responders and volunteers. Snyder vowed to tend to every home that needs attention "until every person has clean water every single day no matter what."
"We need to make sure this never happens again in any Michigan city," he said.

The Michigan government has made budgetary recommendations to replace water supply pipes and fixtures in Flint schools and to fund specialized staff locally in Flint for follow-up care for affected residents, Snyder said.

Provisions in the budget have also been made to keep Flint on the Detroit water line until the end of 2016, Snyder said.

Flint Mayor Karen Weaver said today during a U.S. Conference of Mayors event in Washington, D.C., that aid provided so far to Flint water is "not enough," adding that the city has been "crying" about the issue for almost two years.

President Obama and White House Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett met with Weaver Tuesday to say that his administration will provide continued support to state and local officials.

Obama declared a state of emergency in Flint on Saturday after a request from Snyder on Jan. 14.

Snyder appealed Obama's decision to deny a federal major disaster declaration for Flint, his office said in a statement Wednesday.


Sources: ABC News, BBC News, Shoebat, USA Today, WXYZ, Youtube

TaxMasters Files For Bankruptcy! Company's Advertising Success Proves U.S. Tax Code Reform Badly Needed

TaxMasters Files for Bankruptcy


The well-known and controversial tax advisory firm, TaxMasters Inc., filed for bankruptcy this morning, just as it was preparing to head to court to defend itself from charges of deceptive practices leveled by the Texas attorney general.

The Houston-based company, best known for a national advertising campaign that made company's bearded, red-haired founder Patrick Cox a recognizable figure, was the subject of an ABC News investigation in April, in which customers had alleged that the company persuaded them to pay large upfront fees, but never delivered on promises of helping them resolve their tax problems.

The commercials boast that the company's staff of former IRS agents and tax professionals "have helped many good people just like you."

But Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said the ads have been misleading. He filed a multi-count civil case against TaxMasters, accusing it of deceiving its customers and violating the state's debt collection laws.

"In the midst of a national economic downturn, TaxMasters used a nationwide marketing campaign to offer services for distressed taxpayers who needed help dealing with the IRS," Abbott said. "A state investigation and nearly 1,000 customer complaints indicate that the defendants routinely misled customers about the nature of their tax resolution service agreements – and worse, attempted to enforce those improper agreements through unlawful debt collection tactics."

ABC News made repeated attempts to contact the company and its founder last week, as word began circulating that it was in financial distress.

TaxMasters' customers had reported to KTRK, the owned-and-operated ABC News station in Houston, that they were not able to get responses when calling about their tax filings, and one described visiting the company's office, only to find the doors locked. A telephone sales agent told an ABC News reporter that the company "was not taking any new sales," but would not discuss the company's dire finances any further.

Within the past month, the landlord that owns the building where the company is headquartered sued alleging that Taxmasters failed to pay its January rent. A contracting firm handling construction work at the office also sued the company alleging it had not been paying its bills. Videos on the company's website displaying the well known TaxMasters advertisements featuring Cox were no longer working. Recent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission carry a warning that the company's earlier financial statements are being amended and should no longer be relied upon.

A spokesman for the Texas Attorney General told ABC News the state was preparing to head to court this morning in its civil case, but had not heard anything specific about TaxMasters' financial status. Court papers filed Monday morning indicate that TaxMasters has filed for bankruptcy with between $1 million and $10 million in liabilities.

TaxMasters Ad Blitz Increased Sales Volume, Says Company

The TaxMasters ad blitz has been a driving force in the company's soaring corporate revenues. The company, which went public in 2010, brought in $45.7 million, a three-fold increase in two years, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company linked "an increase in advertising expense" to "increased sales volume" in its year-end filing.

The Minnesota attorney general's office, which has also been investigating the firm, told ABC News that many of the company's employees are skilled tele-marketers who have little knowledge of the complicated tax issues faced by people who have fallen behind in filing their returns or making tax payments.

"This is a company which is taking advantage of people, and unfortunately when people see it on TV, they do believe in it," Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson told ABC News. "When you call, you think you're talking to a tax professional. You're really talking to just a salesperson who's trying to get you to sign up."

Cox declined to be interviewed by ABC News, and in a written statement he did not address the specific allegations in the two states' lawsuits. TaxMasters has denied the allegations in the lawsuits and Cox said the company "prides itself on honest customer service, a transparent process with our customer, and seeking fair treatment from the IRS."

At the heart of the problem, says Attorney General Swanson, is a requirement that customers pay an upfront fee ranging between $2000 and $8000.

"When you pay these upfront, advanced fees, now you're signed up, you're stuck, and the promised help doesn't materialize," she told ABC News.

Audio tapes of some sales calls, turned over to the attorney general by TaxMasters, prove the point, she says.

Salespeople tell potential customers TaxMasters is 97 or 98 percent successful in reducing the amount of taxes owed.

"You're owing $19,000," the TaxMasters salesman tells a customer on a recording provided to ABC News by the attorney general.

"I mean we can get you down to basically next to nothing," he continues. "I think we are the most successful tax resolution company. We're 97 percent successful," the salesman says.

"Not true," said Attorney General Swanson. "It's another falsehood of this company. These salesmen tell people that to sign them up, but they don't deliver on those promises."

The IRS says only a small number of taxpayers ever qualify for such a substantial reduction in taxes owed.


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Sources: ABC News, CNN, Google Maps

Solyndra Scandal Linked To Valerie Jarrett (Did She Rush DOE Loan Procedure?)

Solyndra: A Big Story for the Wrong Reasons

A bankrupt green energy company will create both real and political problems for President Obama today, as the U.S. House of Representatives continues its investigation into how Fremont, California-based Solyndra LLC used its access to the president and his inner circle in order to secure and lose half a billion taxpayer dollars.

Until last Thursday, the investigation into Solyndra had been coming only from the legislative branch of the federal government. In February, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Michigan ) opened a probe into a $535-million loan guarantee awarded to the maker of innovative solar panels by the Obama Department of Energy. That loan followed multiple visits to the White House by Solyndra officers and by George Kaiser, a Tulsa, Oklahoma billionaire and Obama fundraiser. Late in August Solyndra announced it would declare bankruptcy.

Last week, following a cycle of negative news coverage and revelations about the company’s close ties to the president, the executive branch response began with a raid on Solyndra’s headquarters by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Energy’s Inspector General. News coverage highlighting DoE Inspector General Gregory Friedman’s hawkishness about insufficient due diligence in making lending decisions suggests the Obama Administration’s image management apparatus is making an effort to show the president takes the Solyndra scandal seriously.

Because of the depth and documentation of Obama’s relationship with Solyndra, as well as new House revelations that White House officials pressed the Energy Department to expedite its lending to the troubled company, the effort to distance him from the scandal will almost certainly fail.

Obama did a photo opp at Solyndra headquarters last year and has emphasized the company’s cylindrical solar panels in his propaganda for green energy subsidies. Kaiser, whose Argonaut Ventures owned a 35 percent stake in Solyndra, bundled nearly $100,000 for Obama’s 2008 campaign. Solyndra executives met with White House executives about 20 times. In the period before and just after the March 2009 loan guarantee (Solyndra eventually borrowed and blew through $527 million), Kaiser met with senior advisors Austan Goolsbee, Pete Rouse and Valerie Jarrett; chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, and others.

FBI and Energy both report to the president. While suspicion of overt crime could have triggered the executive-branch investigation, the involvement of these two departments clouds what had been a straightforward congressional investigation. In addition to the risk that Obama appointees can steer investigators away from evidence harmful to the president, the involvement of a competing presidential investigation detracts from what has so far been very effective work by the House.

Shortly after Solyndra announced its bankruptcy, I made the none-too-daring prediction that this scandal would prove to be durable. The figure of a half-billion dollars is easy to understand yet still incomprehensibly large. There is no distance between the president and the scandal. And the company name is memorably goofy enough that there’s no need to add the lame suffix “-gate.”

Ron Bailey remarked earlier that Solyndra is already getting shoehorned into Republocrat he-said-she-said. Although it would be a shame if this lesson in the folly of subsidizing industry degenerated into simple point-scoring, it’s also true that in this case it is because of competitive politics that we know about the scandal at all. Solyndra’s dim financial prospects, its dubious technology and its unlikely survival as anything other than a ward of the state were known before the loan was approved. (In a Business Insider article, Bruce Krasting says the company’s only valuable item may be its net operating loss.) Yet in the period after that loan, Solyndra continued to behave as a green-energy market leader, even attempting an initial public offering. Who knows how much longer the company could have gone on wasting public money, deluding investors and delaying formal bankruptcy, if not for Upton’s investigation?

It’s also clear that “contextualizing” the Solyndra scandal in the way Bailey regretted (by noting that Republicans do it too) only makes the story more infuriating. While Solyndra will be useful as a campaign issue, the real outrage is that the government is proudly putting your money into companies that private investors are unwilling to put their own money into. Once this violation of common sense has taken place, the story can only end, as it appears to have ended here, in suffering and crime. That’s not a corruption of the system. It’s the natural way the system works.




Solyndra's loans were rushed

Republican lawmakers, escalating the political furor over the collapse of a solar equipment manufacturer that received a $528 million government loan, released excerpts from Obama administration emails Wednesday suggesting that the White House pressed federal officials to wrap up their review of the loan quickly for political purposes.

In the emails, officials at the Office of Management and Budget expressed frustration that they were being put under time pressure to sign off on the loan to the company, Solyndra, two years ago so that Vice President Joe Biden could announce its approval at a groundbreaking for a factory.

The White House wanted an announcement that would show progress on job creation.

The disclosure became a focus of a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing Wednesday about the loan to Solyndra, which has developed into a political headache for the Obama administration. The administration used the company as a prime example of stimulus-bill dollars creating "green jobs."

But Solyndra recently filed for bankruptcy protection and closed its factory, and its headquarters was raided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, apparently in connection with the loan.

The bankruptcy filing and the raid "clearly show that the committee was more than justified in its scrutiny of the deal," said the panel's chairman, Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich. "Why did the administration think Solyndra was such a good bet?"

Critics of the loan have focused on whether political considerations played a role in awarding the loan to Solyndra, which the Obama administration denies. But the hearing also cast doubt on the government's competence to assess how sure a bet it is making, regardless of politics.

Officials of the Energy Department's loan office and the White House budget office defended their decisions, which they said were carefully reviewed and not politically inspired. The administration said the emails showed only that the White House wanted to know when a decision would be made for its planning.

"As the emails indicate, there was interest in when a decision would be made because of its impact on whether an event involving the vice president could be scheduled for a particular date or not," said Eric Schultz, a White House spokesman. "But the loan-guarantee decision was merit-based and made by career staffers at the Department of Energy, and the process for this particular loan guarantee began under President George W. Bush."

Suspicions that the administration might have pushed the loan for political reasons have centered on the fact that a major investor in the company is a charitable foundation associated with George B. Kaiser, a billionaire from Tulsa, Okla., who raised $50,000 to $100,000 as a "bundler" for President Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign.

Logs show that Kaiser visited the White House on several occasions during the spring and summer of 2009, while the loan to Solyndra, based in Fremont, Calif., was being considered. Among the officials he met with were chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and Pete Rouse and Valerie Jarrett, both senior advisers to Obama.

"It seems like crony capitalism was trumping the smart decision-making," Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., said at the hearing.

Campaign finance records analyzed by OpenSecrets.org show that there were about 235 other bundlers for the Obama campaign in Kaiser's range, while about 326 bundlers raised significantly larger sums.

Administration officials said the White House meetings were not about Solyndra but rather were related to Kaiser's charitable interest in policy matters such as early-childhood education. The George Kaiser Family Foundation has said that Kaiser "did not participate in any discussions with the U.S. government regarding the loan."

Three factors pushed the market price of solar arrays below Solyndra's cost of production, according to experts. The cost of silicon, a key ingredient in competitors' cells but not in Solyndra's, fell sharply. The economic crisis in Europe cut demand for solar cells. And China subsidized a huge increase of solar equipment production, producing a surplus.




Furor Over Loans to Failed Solar Firm

Republican lawmakers, escalating the political furor over the collapse of a solar equipment manufacturer that received a $528 million government loan, released excerpts from Obama administration e-mails on Wednesday suggesting that the White House pressed federal officials to wrap up their review of the loan quickly for political purposes.

In the e-mails, officials at the Office of Management and Budget expressed frustration that they were being put under time pressure to sign off on the loan to the company, Solyndra, two years ago so that Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. could announce its approval at a groundbreaking for a factory. The White House wanted an announcement that would show progress on job creation. The emails were first reported by the Washington Post and on the Web site of ABC News, in partnership with iWatch.

The disclosure became a focus of a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing on Wednesday about the loan to Solyndra, which has developed into a political headache for the Obama administration. The administration used the company as a prime example of stimulus bill dollars creating “green jobs.” But Solyndra recently filed for bankruptcy protection and closed its factory, and its headquarters was raided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, apparently in connection with the loan.

The bankruptcy filing and the raid “clearly show that the committee was more than justified in its scrutiny of the deal,” said the panel’s chairman, Representative Fred Upton, Republican of Michigan. “Why did the administration think Solyndra was such a good bet?”

Critics of the loan have focused on whether political considerations played a role in awarding the loan to Solyndra, which the Obama administration denies. But the hearing also cast doubt on the government’s competence to assess how sure a bet it is making, regardless of politics.

Officials of the Energy Department’s loan office and the White House budget office defended their decisions, which they said were carefully reviewed and not politically inspired. The administration said that the e-mails showed only that the White House wanted to know when a decision would be made for its planning.

“As the e-mails indicate, there was interest in when a decision would be made because of its impact on whether an event involving the vice president could be scheduled for a particular date or not,” said Eric Schultz, a White House spokesman. “But the loan guarantee decision was merit-based and made by career staffers at the Department of Energy, and the process for this particular loan guarantee began under President George W. Bush.”

Suspicions that the administration might have pushed the loan for political reasons have centered on the fact that a major investor in the company is a charitable foundation associated with George B. Kaiser, a billionaire from Tulsa, Okla., who raised $50,000 to $100,000 as a “bundler” for President Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.

Logs show that Mr. Kaiser visited the White House on several occasions during the spring and summer of 2009, while the loan to Solyndra was being considered. Among the officials he met with were the chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, and Pete Rouse and Valerie Jarrett, both senior advisers to Mr. Obama.

“It seems like crony capitalism was trumping the smart decision-making,” Representative Steve Scalise, Republican of Louisiana, said at the hearing.

Campaign finance records analyzed by OpenSecrets.org show that there were about 235 other bundlers for the Obama campaign in Mr. Kaiser’s range, while about 326 bundlers raised significantly larger sums.

Administration officials said the White House meetings were not about Solyndra but rather were related to Mr. Kaiser’s charitable interest in policy matters like early childhood education. Mr. Kaiser has declined to comment directly about the meetings. But the George Kaiser Family Foundation has said that “he did not participate in any discussions with the U.S. government regarding the loan.”

While Mr. Kaiser’s connection to the Obama campaign and to Solyndra, based in Fremont, Calif., have helped draw attention to the loan, he was not a major topic of discussion at the hearing on Wednesday. Republicans did, however, press those testifying on whether the Solyndra bankruptcy offered proof that the government should not be lending to companies that have trouble raising money from private investors.

“In this time of record debt, I question whether the government is qualified to act as a venture capitalist, picking winners and losers in speculative ventures and shelling out billions of taxpayer dollars to keep them afloat,” Mr. Upton said.

Three factors pushed the market price of solar arrays below Solyndra’s cost of production, according to experts. The cost of silicon, a key ingredient in competitors’ cells but not in Solyndra’s, fell sharply. The European economic crisis cut demand for solar cells. And China subsidized a huge increase of solar equipment production, producing a surplus.

While taxpayers could lose the $528 million the company borrowed from the Treasury, Jeffrey D. Zients, deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, said that the system for evaluating such loans was sound. He said it was inevitable that some cutting-edge firms would fail but that over all, the investments would prove worthwhile. He did allow, “The lesson learned here is that marketplaces can change even more rapidly than one would have anticipated.”

Executives from Solyndra are scheduled to testify before the subcommittee next week.

Meanwhile, the White House provided about 900 pages of e-mails this week to the committee, which had asked for all correspondence between Obama aides and Solyndra executives. Most of the correspondence concerned logistics for a visit by Mr. Obama in the spring of 2010.

However, several e-mails from the company to the White House flagged and sought to discredit a handful of articles that had questioned the company’s financial viability as far back as July 2010. A Solyndra official, David Miller, called one such report baseless and noted that Solyndra “had no intention of going out of business” and that its goal was to be “a true success story for this administration to point to.”

Another Solyndra e-mail, from this past May, informed the White House that “things are going well” at the company and that it had “good market momentum, the factory is ramping up and our plan puts at cash positive later this year. Hopefully, we’ll have a great story to tell toward the end of the year.”

A White House official, Greg Nelson, replied: “Fantastic to hear that business is doing well — keep up the good work! We’re cheering for you.”



Solyndra "Scandal" Is Washington Business as Usual

I haven't written much about the California solar company Solyndra, which recently went bankrupt after receiving over $500 million in taxpayer money as part of the Department of Energy's program of loan guarantees for renewable energy companies. Short story: the sudden demise of the California-based company—which went out of business on Aug. 31, costing more than 1,000 employees their jobs—raised speculation that the Obama Administration may have channeled money toward Solyndra for political reasons.

Republicans in the House launched an investigation, and turned up emails that seemed to show White House staffers pushing officials at the Office of Management and Budget to sign off on the loans in time for a major public appearance by Vice-President Joe Biden at Solyndra's headquarters.

On Sept. 14 , a House subcommittee held hearings on the Solyndra affair, and Republican representatives tried to portray the Solyndra loans, and the White House's renewable energy support policy, as an expensive, politically motivated failure.

My response: meh. TIME's Michael Grunwald has covered this from the start, and while he's unhappy—to say the least—with executives at Solyndra for misleading the government on its financial health, the solar industry more broadly is doing well, thanks in part to the money the Obama Administration has channeled towards more successful companies. And it's worth noting that in addition to government loan guarantees, Solyndra also scored over $1 billion in private capital—including from GOP-friendly investors like the Walton family of Wal-Mart.

Solyndra turned out to be a bad investment—the company failed in part because it made the wrong bet on solar technology, failing to foresee that silicon prices would drop drastically.

Bad investments are a part of business, especially a cutting-edge industry like renewable energy, and failure is a necessary ingredient for innovation. (Just ask the famously fired Steve Jobs.) The idea that the collapse of one solar company discredits the entire solar industry is absurd.

Still, many Republicans would argue that the real question here is whether government policies like loan guarantees and subsidies can actually help support companies and create new jobs rather than simply engendering failure and waste. That's a fair debate to have. But the haters are being hypocritical.

Nosing for federal money and federal support is the name of the game in Washington—otherwise the expense accounts of lobbyists on K Street wouldn't be so generous.

Oil and gas and coal companies all spend millions in lobbying, putting former government regulators on their payrolls to ensure that policy goes their way.

House Speaker John Boehner himself has received more than $1.5 million from the coal industry—money that was spent well. It's not just Republicans—Democrats from oil or coal states know to look out for industry.

And it's not just the energy industry either—every major business sector is happy to lobby in Washington and bend legislation to their favor. That's the way things work—or don't, I suppose.

If Solyndra threw its weight around Washington to pull in that $500 million-plus loan guarantee, the firm was only copying its more entrenched competitors. In fact, maybe it was a sign that the renewable energy industry was finally ready for prime time. You can criticize the White House for spending public money foolishly in support of one of the President's signature policy objectives: building green jobs. But there's nothing here that makes the Solyndra debacle special. It's business as usual.


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Sources: Bloomberg TV, CNN, NY Times, Open Secrets, Reason.com, TIME, Twin Citizens.com, USA Today, Washington Post, Youtube, Google Maps

Mitt Romney's Job Killing Record: "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt!!"

Romney's jobs record to be scrutinized in race

Republican heavyweight Mitt Romney, in a second bid for the White House, is promoting his private-sector business experience to show he could do better than President Barack Obama in creating jobs.

But opponents will find fault in his record as a corporate raider in the 1980s and as Massachusetts governor when his performance on employment was mixed at best.

Romney stressed his experience as head of private equity firm Bain Capital when he announced on Monday he was forming an exploratory committee on seeking the Republican 2012 nomination to challenge Obama, a Democrat.

He made a fortune wheeling and dealing in companies, some of which endured big job cuts as part of restructuring. Some ultimately went bankrupt.

"He was a corporate raider who often made companies profitable, not by helping them perform better -- but by simply laying off employees and killing jobs," said Ray Buckley, Democratic Party chairman of New Hampshire.

Bain Capital, which Romney headed for more than a decade, specialized in leveraged buyouts: buying companies with money borrowed against their assets, grooming them to be sold off, and in the interim collecting huge management fees.

Later, as Massachusetts governor from January 2003 to January 2007, Romney presided over one of the puniest rates of employment growth among the 50 U.S. states, at a time the nation's economy was booming.

Labor Department figures showed Massachusetts ranked 47th among the states in the rate of jobs growth in those four years -- ahead of only Ohio, Michigan and Louisiana.

The Democratic party will attempt to pick holes in Romney's jobs record if he wins the Republican nomination, a party strategist said. Romney is an early front-runner to win the nomination and some polls even show him ahead of Obama in states such as Florida, Georgia and New Hampshire. He has high name recognition and a powerful fund-raising machine.

A SHARP LINE

Romney announced his first formal step for a presidential run on Monday in a short video shot at the University of New Hampshire, in which he drew a line between himself and Obama, criticizing the president for surrounding himself with people who "have never worked in the real economy."

That could be a persuasive argument at a time the world's largest economy is not growing quickly enough to make a sizable dent in the jobless rate, still at 8.8 percent, after a recession that ended in 2009.

To bolster his image as a job creator, Romney, 64, said in his video that Bain Capital started with just 10 employees and grew to hundreds of workers.

While the firm certainly grew, the impact on Bain's targets was often different. "Sometimes I was successful and help create jobs, other times I was not," Romney said in the video.

Romney faces several hurdles to win the Republican nomination and get a shot at Obama: his Mormon faith, his ideological makeover since leaving the Massachusetts governor's post, and the Massachusetts healthcare reform program that became the basis for Obama's national policy.

Still, Romney does have attributes that could appeal to traditional Republicans and independent voters.

The fiscal conservative has the looks and clean-cut image of a 1950s matinee idol. He and wife Ann have been married since 1969, and have five sons and 16 grandchildren.

"Romney would be Obama's toughest challenge. Romney looks presidential -- teeth gleaming white, jaw perfectly sculpted," Robert Reich, labor secretary under President Bill Clinton, said of Romney.

In a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll last week, Romney came out on top, supported by 21 percent in a nine-candidate field.

Many voters also warm up to Romney's unbridled optimism about the United States.

The title of his 2009 book/policy manifesto, "No Apology: The Case for American Greatness" (the subtitle was revised to "Believe in America" for the paperback edition) was in part a dig at Obama's habit of showing humility on the world stage.




Let Detroit go bankrupt


If General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for on Tuesday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye. It won't go overnight, but its demise will be virtually guaranteed.

Without that bailout, Detroit will need to drastically restructure itself. With it, the automakers will stay the course - the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses. Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check.

I love cars, American cars. I was born in Detroit, the son of an auto chief executive. In 1954, my dad, George Romney, was tapped to run American Motors when its president suddenly died. The company itself was on life support - banks were threatening to deal it a death blow. The stock collapsed. I watched Dad work to turn the company around - and years later at business school, they were still talking about it. From the lessons of that turnaround, and from my own experiences, I have several prescriptions for Detroit's automakers.

First, their huge disadvantage in costs relative to foreign brands must be eliminated. That means new labor agreements to align pay and benefits to match those of workers at competitors like BMW, Honda, Nissan and Toyota. Furthermore, retiree benefits must be reduced so that the total burden per auto for domestic makers is not higher than that of foreign producers.

That extra burden is estimated to be more than $2,000 per car. Think what that means: Ford, for example, needs to cut $2,000 worth of features and quality out of its Taurus to compete with Toyota's Avalon. Of course the Avalon feels like a better product - it has $2,000 more put into it. Considering this disadvantage, Detroit has done a remarkable job of designing and engineering its cars. But if this cost penalty persists, any bailout will only delay the inevitable.

Second, management as is must go. New faces should be recruited from unrelated industries - from companies widely respected for excellence in marketing, innovation, creativity and labor relations.

The new management must work with labor leaders to see that the enmity between labor and management comes to an end. This division is a holdover from the early years of the last century, when unions brought workers job security and better wages and benefits. But as Walter Reuther, the former head of the United Automobile Workers, said to my father, "Getting more and more pay for less and less work is a dead-end street."

You don't have to look far for industries with unions that went down that road. Companies in the 21st century cannot perpetuate the destructive labor relations of the 20th.

This will mean a new direction for the UAW, profit sharing or stock grants to all employees and a change in Big Three management culture.

The need for collaboration will mean accepting sanity in salaries and perks. At American Motors, my dad cut his pay and that of his executive team, he bought stock in the company, and he went out to factories to talk to workers directly. Get rid of the planes, the executive dining rooms - all the symbols that breed resentment among the hundreds of thousands who will also be sacrificing to keep the companies afloat.

Investments must be made for the future. No more focus on quarterly earnings or the kind of short-term stock appreciation that means quick riches for executives with options.

Manage with an eye on cash flow, balance sheets and long-term appreciation. Invest in truly competitive products and innovative technologies - especially fuel-saving designs - that may not arrive for years. Starving research and development is like eating the seed corn.

Just as important to the future of American carmakers is the sales force. When sales are down, you don't want to lose the only people who can get them to grow. So don't fire the best dealers, and don't crush them with new financial or performance demands they can't meet.

It is not wrong to ask for government help, but the automakers should come up with a win-win proposition. I believe the federal government should invest substantially more in basic research - on new energy sources, fuel-economy technology, materials science and the like - that will ultimately benefit the automotive industry, along with many others.

I believe Washington should raise energy research spending to $20 billion a year, from the $4 billion that is spent today. The research could be done at universities, at research labs and even through public-private collaboration. The federal government should also rectify the imbedded tax penalties that favor foreign carmakers.

But don'task Washington to give shareholders and bondholders a free pass - they bet on management and they lost.

The American auto industry is vital to our national interest as an employer and as a hub for manufacturing. A managed bankruptcy may be the only path to the fundamental restructuring the industry needs. It would permit the companies to shed excess labor, pension and real estate costs.

The federal government should provide guarantees for post-bankruptcy financing and assure car buyers that their warranties are not at risk. In a managed bankruptcy, the federal government would propel newly competitive and viable automakers, rather than seal their fate with a bailout check.


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Sources: CNN, Fox News, NY Times, Reuters, Youtube, Google Maps

Osama Bin Laden's Plan To Bankrupt America: "War On Terror"!!

Deceased Al-Qaeda Leader Osama Bin Laden Possessed A Great Deal Of Hate For America.

He Tried To Destroy This Country By Totally Bankrupting Our Economy.

Who Unknowingly Assisted Him In His Evil Plan?

Former Pres. George W. Bush!

Yes! It Was W. Bush Who Spent More Than $1 Trillion Dollars, While Risking The Lives Of Thousands Of U.S. Troops On This ONE Man!

A Man Whose ONLY Plan Was To Bring Our Nation To Its Knees Financially In The Form Of W. Bush's "War On Terror"!!

Pres. W. Bush's Administration Claimed It Couldn't Find Osama Even Though He Spent The Last 6 1/2 Years Of His Life Residing In A $1 Million Palatial Mansion , Less Than 1000 Yards Away From The Pakistani Capital.

Sounds Strange To Me But Than Again What Do I Know?

I'm Just A Regular U.S. Citizen.

I'm NOT The CIA, FBI, U.S. Dept Of Defense Secretary Or U.S. Secretary Of State!

So What Do I Know???

What I Do Know Is That It Took Pres. Obama's Administration 2 Years To Locate And Kill Osama & 8 Years For W. Bush's Administration To NEVER Find Him At All!!

Was The Purpose Of Choosing NOT To Capture Or Harm Osama Bin Laden For The U.S. To Have Continued Access To Saudi Arabia's Oil Or For Personal Capital Gain?

I Don't Know.

Perhaps We Will Never Know.

But I'm Still Glad That Osama Bin Laden Is Dead.

For Real!!

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Bin Laden’s war against the U.S. economy

Did Osama bin Laden win? No. Did he succeed? Well, America is still standing, and he isn’t. So why, when I called Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a counterterrorism expert who specializes in al-Qaeda, did he tell me that “bin Laden has been enormously successful”? There’s no caliphate. There’s no sweeping sharia law. Didn’t we win this one in a clean knockout?

Apparently not. Bin Laden, according to Gartenstein-Ross, had a strategy that we never bothered to understand, and thus that we never bothered to defend against. What he really wanted to do — and, more to the point, what he thought he could do — was bankrupt the United States of America. After all, he’d done the bankrupt-a-superpower thing before. And though it didn’t quite work out this time, it worked a lot better than most of us, in this exultant moment, are willing to admit.

Bin Laden’s transition from scion of a wealthy family to terrorist mastermind came in the 1980s, when the Soviet Union was trying to conquer Afghanistan. Bin Laden was part of the resistance, and the resistance was successful — not only in repelling the Soviet invasion, but in contributing to the communist super-state’s collapse a few years later. “We, alongside the mujaheddin, bled Russia for 10 years, until it went bankrupt,” he later explained.

The campaign taught bin Laden a lot. For one thing, superpowers fall because their economies crumble, not because they’re beaten on the battlefield. For another, superpowers are so allergic to losing that they’ll bankrupt themselves trying to conquer a mass of rocks and sand. This was bin Laden’s plan for the United States, too.

“He has compared the United States to the Soviet Union on numerous occasions — and these comparisons have been explicitly economic,” Gartenstein-Ross argues in a Foreign Policy article. “For example, in October 2004 bin Laden said that just as the Arab fighters and Afghan mujaheddin had destroyed Russia economically, al Qaeda was now doing the same to the United States, ‘continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy.’ ”

For bin Laden, in other words, success was not to be measured in body counts. It was to be measured in deficits, in borrowing costs, in investments we weren’t able to make in our country’s continued economic strength. And by those measures, bin Laden landed a lot of blows.

Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz estimates that the price tag on the Iraq War alone will surpass $3 trillion. Afghanistan likely amounts to another trillion or two. Add in the build-up in homeland security spending since 9/11 and you’re looking at yet another trillion. And don’t forget the indirect costs of all this turmoil: The Federal Reserve, worried about a fear-induced recession, slashed interest rates after the attack on the World Trade Center, and then kept them low to combat skyrocketing oil prices, a byproduct of the war in Iraq. That decade of loose monetary policy may well have contributed to the credit bubble that crashed the economy in 2007 and 2008.

Then there’s the post-9/11 slowdown in the economy, the time wasted in airports, the foregone returns on investments we didn’t make, the rise in oil prices as a result of the Iraq War, the cost of rebuilding Ground Zero, health care for the first responders and much, much more.

But it isn’t quite right to say bin Laden cost us all that money. We decided to spend more than a trillion dollars on homeland security measures to prevent another attack. We decided to invade Iraq as part of a grand, post-9/11 strategy of Middle Eastern transformation. We decided to pass hundreds of billions of dollars in unpaid-for tax cuts and add an unpaid-for prescription drug benefit in Medicare while we were involved in two wars. And now, partially though not entirely because of these actions, we are deep in debt. Bin Laden didn’t — couldn’t — bankrupt us. He could only provoke us into bankrupting ourselves. And he came pretty close.

It’s a smart play against a superpower. We didn’t need to respond to 9/11 by trying to reshape the entire Middle East, but we’re a superpower, and we think on that scale. We didn’t need to respond to failed attempts to smuggle bombs onto airplanes through shoes and shampoo bottles by screening all footwear and banning large shampoo bottles, but we’re a superpower, and our tolerance for risk is extremely low. His greatest achievement was getting our psychology at least somewhat right.

In the end, of course, bin Laden was just another bag of meat and bones, hiding in a walled compound in Pakistan, so deeply afraid of death that he tried to use his wife as a shield when the special forces came for him. But he understood the mind of the superpower well enough to use our capabilities against us. He may not have won, but he did succeed, at least partially.

But then, we can learn from our mistakes. He can’t.


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Sources: CNN, MSNBC, Washington Post, Google Maps

Foreclosure Ruins Consumer Credit For 7 To 14 Years

After Foreclosure: How Long Until You Can Buy Again?


Walking away from a mortgage you can still afford to pay has consequences; everyone knows that. Your credit score is shot and it can be impossible to get credit.

Some homeowners, no doubt, believe that the credit score hit is worth getting out from a deeply underwater mortgage. They may owe, say, $500,000 when their house value is only valued at $350,000. And, they figure, there's no way it will ever be worth what they owe so it's better to get out from underneath the burden.

After default, they reason, they can raise their FICO scores by paying all their bills on time and eventually finance another home purchase.

Don't count on it.

While homeowners who default due to economic hardship, such as a job loss or divorce, normally must wait two to five years before buying a home again, walkaways may face double that time.

"It could be well over seven or eight years before [walkaways] are able to obtain a mortgage to buy a home again," said Jay Brinkmann, chief economist for the Mortgage Bankers Association.




How Foreclosure impacts your credit score

"Credit scores are only one component of a complete credit decision," Brinkmann said. "[In these cases] credit scores are not a good indicator of their willingness to continue to pay their mortgage."

But future underwriters will scrutinize their records very closely, and if they find no precipitating factors leading to the defaults -- no job loss, no health issues --the repaired credit score won't overshadow the black mark of a walkaway.

"If you made a strategic decision to default on paying your mortgage, it will work against you," said Bill Merrell of the National Association of Review Appraisers and Mortgage Underwriters.



Merrell, who teaches underwriting, said banks are looking at several factors in determining whether to grant mortgages: the amount of money borrowers have in the bank; employment histories; payment history.

However, banks may be far more lenient if the default resulted from factors somewhat beyond the borrower's control, such as from local economic problems. "They'll give you more consideration if it's job related," he said. But, he added, banks look at strategic defaults "very negatively."

That said, it's not impossible to get a loan. Banks still want to make interest payments, so they might be willing to gamble with a walkaway.

"It might be a little more difficult for them to borrow, but [banks'] drive for market share -- to profit from making loans -- will trump that caution," said Keith Gumbinger, of the mortgage information publisher HSH Associates. "I don't think we'll see a full denial."

It's hard to foresee the state of mortgage lending six or seven months from now, let alone seven or eight years into the future. So lenders may look at applications from one-time strategic defaulters and say, "Yes, they walked away but it's a whole different market now," according to Gumbinger.

Even so, lenders may require more from borrowers who walked away than those who didn't.

"To the extent they could get a mortgage," said Brinkmann, "they can count on needing a heavy down payment."

The lenders may ask for 30% down or more. That would provide enough collateral cushion that the bank could get all or most of its money back in a foreclosure.

Strategic defaulters might also be charged higher interest rates, even above the levels other borrowers with similar credit scores would receive.


Sources: CNN, Video Credit Score

Pres. Obama Praises Passge Of Diluted, Partisan Financial Reform Bill

The President explains that while he continues to focus on jobs, it is also profoundly important to address the problems that created this economic mess in the first place. He commends the House of Representatives for passing reforms to our financial system, including a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency, and blasts Republican Leaders and financial industry lobbyists for their joint pep rally to defeat it.





Home prices up, more borrowers Underwater. CNBC's Diana Olick reports that while home prices show a slight gain, about 25 percent of homeowners owe more on their mortgages than they are worth.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

House kills Bankruptcy Mortgage Relief in Wall Street bill


The House has rejected an effort to expand a Wall Street regulation bill with mortgage relief that would let debt-ridden homeowners reduce their payments in bankruptcy court. The vote was 241-188 to reject.

The provision would have revived a previous bill that passed the House but later failed in the Senate.

Democrats hoped that by inserting the provision in the regulatory legislation they would have had another opportunity to make it law. Aiding homeowners through bankruptcy had been a key feature of President Barack Obama's foreclosure fighting proposal, but the president did not push for it.

Banks and credit unions have lobbied against the bankruptcy measure. They say it would force a flood of bankruptcy filings and ultimately drive up mortgage rates.





US House Passes Broad Wall Street Regulatory Overhaul


The House passed the most ambitious restructuring of federal financial regulations since the New Deal on Friday, aiming to head off any replay of last year's Wall Street failures that plunged the nation deep into recession.

The sprawling legislation would give the government new powers to break up companies that threaten the economy, create a new agency to oversee consumer banking transactions and shine a light into shadow financial markets that have escaped the oversight of regulators.

The vote was a party-line 223-202. No Republicans voted for the bill; 27 Democrats voted against it.

While a victory for the administration, the legislation dilutes some of President Barack Obama's recommendations, carving out exceptions to some of its toughest provision. The burden now shifts to the Senate, which is not expected to act on its version of a regulatory overhaul until early next year.

The president praised the House action Friday, and called on Congress to act swiftly to get the bill to the White House for his signature.

"The crisis from which we are still recovering was born not only of failure on Wall Street, but also in Washington," Obama said. "We have a responsibility to learn from it and to put in place reforms that will promote sound investment, encourage real competition and innovation and prevent such a crisis from ever happening again."

The legislation would govern the simplest payday loan and the most complicated high-finance trades. In its breadth, the measure seeks to impose restrictions on every house of finance, from two-teller neighborhood thrifts to huge interconnected conglomerates.

Democratic leaders had to fend off a last-minute attempt to kill a proposed consumer agency, a central element of the legislation and one the features pushed by the White House. The agency would take over consumer protection powers from current banking regulators, and big banks and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce vigorously opposed the idea.

Democrats said the broad legislation would help address problems that led to last year's calamitous financial crisis. Republicans argued that it overreached and would institutionalize bailouts for the financial industry.

"Let's put it to the American people: Do you prefer the Republican position of doing literally nothing to rein in these abuses or should we try to rein them in?" Rep. Barney Frank, who led the Democratic effort on the bill, asked moments before the final vote.

Republicans cast the regulatory bill as a burden to business and argued that it would continue to protect companies considered too big to fail. They offered an alternative that called for special bankruptcy proceedings to dismantle failing financial institutions. That alternative failed.

"This house has been on a spending spree, a bailout spree and a regulatory spree that I could never have imagined in any of my prior 18 years here in Congress," Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio said.

Consumer advocates cheered the survival of the consumer protection agency but said the overall legislation fell short, especially in the regulation of complex investment instruments known as derivatives.

The legislation aims to prevent manipulation and bring transparency to the $600 trillion global derivatives market. But an amendment by New York Democrat Scott Murphy, adopted 304-124 Thursday night, created an exception for nonfinancial companies that use derivatives as a hedge against price, currency and interest rate changes rather than as a speculative investment.

The amendment also provided an exception for businesses that are considered too small to be a risk to the financial system.

A Democratic effort to make more companies subject to derivatives regulations and to abusive-trading rules failed.

When the Obama administration first proposed a package of regulations, it called for regulations of derivatives without any exceptions. But a potent lobbying coalition that included Boeing Co., Caterpillar Inc., General Electric Co., Coca-Cola and other big companies persuaded lawmakers to dilute the restrictions.

"It does fall well short of what the administration promised and what everybody assumed we would get," said Barbara Roper, director of investor protection for the Consumer Federation of America. "It's a weakness in the bill and a win for Wall Street. Hedge funds and others that are not bona fide hedgers of commercial risk will slip through this language."

The bill would create a Financial Services Oversight Council made up of the Treasury secretary, the Federal Reserve chairman and heads of regulatory agencies to monitor the financial markets for potential threats to nation's system.

It would identify firms and activities that should be subject to heightened standards, including requirements that they place more money in reserve. Companies would have to plan for their own demise, detailing how they would be dismantled if they failed. The government could dismantle even healthy firms if they were considered a grave risk to the economy. Large firms with assets of more than $50 billion, and hedge funds with at least $10 billion in assets, would pay into a $150 billion resolution fund that would cover the costs of dismantling such a company.

It was that fund that Republicans argued amounted to yet another bailout pool.

The Federal Reserve, criticized for not spotting last year's crisis, would lose power in the legislation. The measure would limit the Fed's unilateral ability to inject large amounts of money into financial institutions. It also would take away the Federal Reserve's consumer regulation authority and would subject it to a broad audit by Congress' investigative arm.

The legislation also takes on Wall Street compensation. Company shareholders would get a nonbinding vote on the pay of top executives. Federal banking regulators would have to approve compensation practices, though not actual pay, at banks and bank holding companies.





Dems paint Wall St. vote as big win


Not a single Republican cast a “yes” vote for the Wall Street reform bill in the House Friday.

Democrats could hardly contain their glee.

“Seriously?” was the subject line of an asked the headline of an e-mail from Democratic National Committee communications director Brad Woodhouse after the House vote.

“Representative Mary Bono Mack has apparently learned nothing from the near-collapse of big banks and financial institutions that put our entire economy at risk,” read the e-mail sent to Mack’s California district and more than three dozen other target GOP incumbents by the Democratic Campaign Committee, slamming the incumbents for backing Wall Street over consumers.

With polls showing voters furious at Wall Street and their big fat bonus checks, Democrats smell an opportunity to turn their political fortunes around with the help of the financial reform legislation that’s moving through Congress.

The DCCC is raising money to produce “hard-hitting” spots against Republicans who sided with financial lobbyists “trying to kill reform,” according to a Nov. 10 fundraising e-mail. And the rhetoric during and after the debate this week made clear, Democrats – at least in the House – will try to turn their Republican opponents into Wall Street’s lapdogs and saddle them with the populist outrage still burning in the heartland.

The pitch may not be as easy as it sounds. Sure, opposing legislation that cracks down on greedy bankers, enhances consumer protection and puts an end to taxpayer bailouts sounds like political suicide. But Republican strategists disagree that this was a bad vote for their party.

“Opposing Barney Frank is not going to be a political liability” in swing districts, said GOP pollster Adam Geller, who worked for Christopher Christie’s successful 2009 New Jersey gubernatorial campaign. Voters see Frank – and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the other major face of the bill – “as kind of on the left extreme,” he said.

And a closer look at Friday’s votes shows the issue isn’t that black and white in every Democratic district.

Quite a few Democrats in tough reelection races bolted off the party line to oppose the bill, undermining the notion that Democrats have the undisputed political high ground on this one. The 27 Democrats who opposed the bill included highly vulnerable members such as Reps. Bobby Bright (D-Ala.), Eric Massa (D-N.Y.), Zach Space (D-Ohio) and Tom Perriello (D-Va.) – who took flak at home for voting “yes” on Democrats’ climate change bill. There were also a number of less-imperiled but still-worried Democrats that voted no.

And Democratic party brass also tacitly acknowledged that the politics on this aren’t so clear cut when they agreed to give Idaho freshman Walt Minnick a floor vote on his controversial amendment to gut the new consumer protection agency at the heart of the legislation. While the bulk of their rank-and-file opposed the measure, leadership wanted to give moderate Democrats the vote to help insulate themselves against industry-financed attacks next fall, leadership aides said, giving these lawmakers a chance to vote with the Chamber of Commerce – a strong opponent of the newly created consumer-protection agency that highlighted the vote politically.

After some tough whipping, Democratic leaders were able to defeat the amendment, 223-208, with 33 Democrats supporting it. But they were scared for a few hours that they might not be able to, said leadership aides.

Those votes suggests that voters in some of these tough Democratic districts the Republican arguments that the legislation amounts to a perpetual bailout, harmful government control of the economy and job-killing layers of bureaucracy might be more likely to resonate.

“As in the case of health care and energy policy, this bill was about empowering the government and not the individual. Government control and command was not what made America the largest and most successful economy in the world,” said Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.). “The array of new regulations and taxes on consumers, investors and businesses will destroy jobs and further undermine the fragile economy.”

Nonetheless, Democrats’ own polling gives them reasons for optimism. A recent survey done by Democratic polling firm Anzalone Liszt for Americans United for Change found that 70 percent of voters – Democrats, Republicans and independents alike – want to see major reform of the financial system.

Most Americans aren’t aware of the reform measures put forward by the Obama White House, but when voters heard descriptions of the proposals to beef up oversight of big banks, create a new consumer protection watchdog and crack down on corporate abuses, support shot up from 35 percent to 60 percent, the poll found. Independents were particularly supportive of the plan after hearing the description.

“This creates an opportunity for the President and members of Congress to address major financial concerns of voters and to be seen as standing up for working families,” said a memo from pollsters John Anzalone and Matt Hogan.

In an interview, Anzalone said the financial reform bill could be “the populist issue of the cycle, bringing strong accountability and oversight to Wall Street. There’s no good way to spin this one, except voting for it because it’s a good bill and people think it’s a good bill.”

Republicans who oppose the bill “are going to pay a very heavy price,” DCCC Chairman Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) warned Thursday on a conference call with reporters. He referred to a much-publicized meeting of banking lobbyists convened by House Minority Leader John Boehner earlier in the week to rally against the bill, saying “it was very clear whose side the Republicans were on, and they were on the side of protecting the special interests and allowing us to once again get ourselves in a mess where the taxpayers are left holding the bag for bad decisions on Wall Street.”

“This Republican recession based on [their] Wild West mentality cost this country millions of jobs and these guys should be ashamed of themselves,” fumed Rep. Ed Perlmutter (D-Colo.), taking a page from the Anzalone polling memo, which urged lawmakers to stress how financial reform will prevent future job losses.

“There is some risk” to voting against legislation framed as a reform of Wall Street, acknowledged Rep. Mike Castle of Delaware, a moderate Republican who is running for Joe Biden’s Senate seat. “Democrats have presented it as such – and I’m not sure it’s a fair presentation. I think it’s up to Republicans to be able to rebut it, maybe better than we have so far.”

Most Republicans dismiss the idea that their vote against the financial package would come back to haunt them.

“Anyone who expects a political advantage by supporting this bill is ignoring the public opposition to the Democrats’ agenda of big government and fewer jobs,” said National Republican Congressional Campaign spokesman Paul Lindsay.

“There’s a political opening on any bill, whether you vote yes or no, somebody can always spin it in a way that’s not advantageous to you,” said Rep. Scott Garrett (R-N.J.).

“Good policy at the end of the day makes good politics. And someone can just as easily argue that this is disastrous policy that would give us too big to fail banks, turning banks into utility companies that hurt the little guy,” said Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.).

“They’ll use it for ads, absolutely. Of course. You can twist your mind into pretzels on every one of these votes because they can twist, distort and demagogue just about any vote around here. If you let that guide you, then you’re running around in circles around here.”




Federal Judge: ACORN Funding Restored


A Federal Judge in New York ordered that ACORN’s federal funding be restored, rolling back a slew of Congressional actions that sought to stop taxpayer money from flowing to the community group on the heels of a fall full of embarrassments for it.

Nina Gershon, a district judge in New York, issued a preliminary injunction directing the US Department of Housing & Urban Development, the Office of Management & Budget, and the Treasury department to disregard a bill signed into law by President Obama that prohibited federal funding of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.

“The question here is only whether the Constitution allows Congress to declare that a single, named organization is barred from all federal funding in the absence of a trial,” Gershon wrote in her opinion. “Because it does not, and because the plaintiffs have shown the likelihood of irreparable harm in the absence of an injunction, I grant the plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction.”

Gershon said that “none of the government’s justifications stand up to scrutiny” and that “no non-punitive rational” is obvious.

ACORN was the subject of bi-partisan disdain in September, after undercover videos were released that seemed to show the organization’s employees offering advice on how to break the law. Republicans and Democrats voted to stop federal funding of the group – a measure signed into law by the president on the back of an appropriations bill.

In November, the group sued the federal government, claiming that the provision, attached to the legislative branch appropriations bill, was a bill of attainder – unconstitutional legislation that unfairly punishes one group. As part of this lawsuit, ACORN sought a Restoration of Federal Funding.

With Friday’s injunction, ACORN stands to begin receiving funds once again, including between $40,000 and $60,000 for housing assistance, according to the decision from the district court in eastern New York.

“Today’s ruling is a victory for the Constitutional Rights for all Americans and for the citizens who work through ACORN to improve their communities and promote responsible lending and homeownership,” ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis said in an emailed statement.

It is also is the second in a string of victories for ACORN. An investigation by former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger largely absolved the organization from any wrongdoings or illegalities in a hidden-video scandal which allegedly showed the organization’s employees offering advice on how to dodge taxes while setting up a prostitution ring of underage illegal immigrants.

Republicans are already hammering away at the decision. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), a longtime critic of ACORN and author of a report on the group’s problems, framed Gershon as an “activist judge” appointed by former President Bill Clinton.

“This left-wing activist Judge is setting a dangerous precedent that left-wing political organizations plagued by criminal accusations have a constitutional entitlement to taxpayer dollars,” Issa said in a news release. “The Obama administration should immediately move to appeal this injunction.”


Sources: Whitehouse.gov, Politico, Fox News, My Fox33.com, CNBC, ACORN, Youtube