02/22/2012

Bad Hair Day: Blagojevich sentenced to 14 years

12/07/2011 By

Blagojevich convictedFormer Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich was sentenced to 14 years in prison on 18 corruption counts, including trying to sell President Obama’s old Senate seat.

The former Governor had spent the last few years publicly promoting his innocence on television and in news reports.

Blagojevich, in a last plea for mercy, tried an apology. After years of insisting he was innocent, the twice-elected Democrat told the judge he’d made “terrible mistakes” and acknowledged that he had broken the law — even as he maintained that at the time he did not know he was breaking the law.

As the judge announced the sentence, which includes a $20,000 fine, Blagojevich hunched forward and his face appeared frozen. Minutes later, his wife, Patti Blagojevich, stood up and fell into her husband’s arms. He pulled back to brush tears off her cheek and then rubbed her shoulders.

On his way out of the courthouse, Blagojevich said it was a time to be strong, to fight through adversity and be strong for his children. He said he and wife were heading home to speak to their daughters, and then left without answering any questions.

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Many legal experts expect many legal experts said the Blagojevich was likely to get around 10 years. Don’t look for a repeat appearance on Celebrity Apprentice anytime soon.

 

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Occupy Obama’s Bleeding Union Heart

10/20/2011 By

obama union supportWe decided to take a better look at President Obama’s recent support for the “Occupy” movements.

In a strange measure of support (and an even stranger call with major city mayors) our Chief Executive seems to be siding with those that are directing their anger at banks and corporations.

“I think it expresses the frustrations that the American people feel,” the president said of the NYC demonstration, which began in mid-September and spread to cities throughout the nation. “People are frustrated and the protesters are giving voice to a more broad-based frustration about how our financial system works.”

“Americans understand that not everybody has been following the rules,” he said, according to The New York Times. “These days a lot of folks that are doing the right thing aren’t rewarded, and a lot of folks who aren’t doing the right thing are rewarded.”

Could there be something behind Obama’s recent empathy?

First let’s examine some of the “demands” of the “Occupy” movement.

  • Jobs: Yes they want jobs, this is reasonable
  • Stop Foreclosures: Again, with all the recent pain, this seems reasonable
  • Make Banks and Corporations pay for these by spending the trillions of dollars they have in reserve….

What? Of course, this last demand is ridiculous on the face of it. Making Apple pay for infrastructure work nationwide, or making the banks absorb all the mortgages losses (after following Freddie and Fannie’s guidelines) will never fly. Aside from being illegal, morally wrong, and unethical, why is our President supporting this?

To understand the dynamics, we need to look at who sided up with the “Occupy” movements in September and early October.

  • AFL CIO – 12.2 million members
  • SEIU Service Employees International Union – 2.1 Million Members
  • CWA Communications Workers of America – 700,000 members
  • UAW – 390,000 members
  • Transport Workers Union – 40,000 members
  • and on and on and on

It’s All A Union Money Grab

You got it. As union support grew as a method of pressuring the administration on jobs spending, Obama softened his stance. But don’t be fooled by the words, it’s all about the money and all about taking your money.

There is no way that corporations and banks will be made to pay for mortgages and infrastructure redevelopment. It just won’t happen. So why promote instability and social outcry with no way of funding what they want?

It’s Your Money They Are After

The only way to fund the trillions of dollars in infrastructure and mortgage relief is for the federal government to finance it. The “Occupy” movement is a smokescreen for another enormous federal stimulus program, promoted as a “jobs and mortgage relief effort,” with borrowed taxpayer money.

The Obama administration sees the “Occupy” instability and unrest as a way of “pressuring” congressional leaders to support another vaguely disguised stimulus program.

Just In Time For The Election

Of course, such a massive stimulus would temporarily stimulate the economy just in time for the 2012 election. The fact that it adds to our crushing national debt, causes inflation, and vanishes in a year is not considered.

The re-election of President Obama would then represent the largest public transfer of wealth from the American people through our workers and into the pockets of worker’s unions.

A Dangerous Game

The one thing that the administration needs to recognize is that instability, social outcry, and turmoil are difficult things to control and direct once they gain momentum.

Just ask the British.

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Obama Dines With Sheryl Sandberg At $35,800 A Plate | Let Them Eat Spam

09/26/2011 By

Obama Let them eat spamIn a world where Politicians continue to lose touch with reality, President Obama attended a fundraising dinner yesterday at the home of Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg where donors got to dine with the President for $35,800 a plate. Oh yeah, they also got to see Lady Gaga.

I would bet this is not your typical Sunday evening event for most Americans. In fact, I don’t think the unemployed factory worker in Ohio, the unemployed teacher from Florida. or the unemployed computer programmer in California gets invited to attend these type of dinners.

I also don’t believe the dinner conversation had anything to do with helping any of them. They probably didn’t dwell on the fact that the unemployment rate is presently at 9.1% in Ohio, 10.7% in Florida, and 12.1% in California. Too depressing for an upbeat fundraiser.

This whole Sandberg affair reminds me of the famous quotation attributed to Queen Marie Antoinette upon learning that the peasants didn’t have enough to eat. “Let them eat cake,” she replied. The irony of that quote was that she really said “let them eat brioche” not knowing that peasants ate less expensive, plain bread.

At $35,800 a plate, I doubt if President Obama or his friends know what we have to eat everyday.

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Is Rick Perry Dead Or Just A Little Left?

09/23/2011 By

Rick Perry LosesWell, we knew there was something that bothered us about Rick Perry. Maybe he was a little too slick, maybe his chest jutted out a bit too much, or maybe he brought back memories of the worse days of George W.

Yesterday’s debate seems to have solidified something in the minds of voters: Perry leans left. We know he switched parties, but his ideas may be mired in between.

Perry has supported providing discounted in-state tuition at Texas public colleges and universities to children of illegal immigrants. And although we are aware of the human side of issue, we got very disturbed as Perry tried to cement his position by saying, “If you say that we should not educate children who have come into our state for no other reason than they’ve been brought there by no fault of their own, I don’t think you have a heart.”

Excuse me?

How about the thousands of LEGAL school children in Texas and around the country who can’t afford a decent education? Has Rick looked at the recent rise in state funded school tuitions? Does he have any clue as to what is happening to our public universities?

The University of California, Berkeley now has over 30% of its school population coming from outside the US and California Governor Jerry Brown has just signed a similar bill to Perry’s, providing for discounted in-state tuition to children of illegal immigrants. Not only that, of course all of the illegal immigrants children are all eligible for need based scholarships and grants.

Everyone in America has gotten the austerity message except these two left leaning politicians. With funds drying up and programs getting canceled, higher education in America is becoming a dream for the average family. This is the same average who pays for those universities through taxes.

Two year colleges in California are limiting enrollment due to finances and the Board of Regents has floated the idea of doubling tuition over the next few years as a way of paying for the universities.

A better idea

The Chief Executive of the University of California made $783,103 last year and was only 29th on the list of highest paid university executives.

Rick Perry’s U of Texas chief made $750,000 and the U of Texas, Austin chief made $746,738 last year.

Both of these pale in comparison to the top man at Ohio State University who pulled in a whopping $1,323,911 last year.

Of course these numbers are not the whole story as these execs have bonuses, deferred compensation, retirement contributions, car allowances, and even residences.

The full list of university’s President and Provost data can be seen here.

Is Rick Perry dead?

Well, he may not be dead, but he is politically wounded. Maybe he, and the other Presidential candidates, should focus on cutting costs at public institutions as a way of making a university education affordable for every American. That is something the public can rally around.

Take the top 30% of public university wage earners and cut their earnings (salary plus benefits) in half and see what it does for tuition costs and student enrollment.

 

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Tea Party Republicans Catch Blame For Congressional Impotence

09/23/2011 By

Tea PartyAs another budget deadline approaches, Republicans and Democrats are finding themselves at an impasse as they try and run with “politics as usual.”

On Friday, the Democratic-controlled Senate blocked a Republican House bill that would provide stopgap federal spending, plus aid for people battered by hurricanes, tornadoes and other natural disasters.

The legislation also calls for $1.6 billion in spending cuts to help defray the disaster costs. Let me repeat that, the legislation also calls for $1.6 billion in spending cuts to help defray the disaster costs. In other words, cutting $1.6 billion out of $3.7 trillion (or cutting 0.04% of the budget) being spent this year.

Democratic leaders would have none of it. Television networks buzzed with congressional leaders calling it “Tea Party 2.0″ as well as several other well orchestrated phrases chose to implicate “radical” Republicans.

White House spokesman Jay Carney blamed House Republicans for the deadlock. He said they passed legislation that was certain to die in the Senate, just as they did during last summer’s fight over extending the federal debt limit.

“The fever hasn’t broken,” Carney said. “The behavior that we saw this summer that really repelled Americans continues.”

What Mr. Carney fails to comprehend, and what most Democratic leaders have yet to grasp, is that average Americans were not “repelled” by a group of freshman Republicans trying to get our country to stop spending money that we don’t have. We were relieved.

We were relieved at the attempt to bring sanity to this fiscal mess, but disgusted with both parties’ inability to cut spending. All the finger pointing and name calling will not bode well for any incumbents as we head into elections.

The Democratic strategy of resisting every spending cut and then trying to blame the impass on Republicans will fail, and it will fail miserably.

The Democrats fail to see that the Tea Party is not an extremist fringe group. At its core is sound government and fiscal responsibility. We expect the people that we send to Washington to govern intelligently and responsibly. It appears they cannot.

The politicians need to learn that the Tea Party is not a “radical” minority, they are my father, my mother, my sister, and my brother. They are me, they are you, they are all of us.

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Obama’s $500M Incompetent Solyndra Mistake – What he could have done

09/01/2011 By

solyndra corporation fremontThe recent bankruptcy of Solyndra poses a real problem for President Obama. It has exposed the President’s achilles heel, that is, no business experience.

In early 2009, the solar panel maker Solyndra was awarded a $535 million loan guarantee by the Department of Energy. At that time, President Obama made a special appearance at Solyndra’s new factory in Fremont, CA.

But let’s be clear about this, this was not some guarantee to the banks loaning the money to Solyndra. This was a $535 million dollar payment of taxpayer money directly to Solyndra.

To make matters worse, at the time of the loan, Solyndra was losing money AND their technology was not competitive with existing solar panels.

The Obama administration is trying to blame this on low cost panels from China ruining our competitiveness, but the reality is that Solyndra’s technology was more expensive and was ALWAYS projected to be.

This was crystal clear to anyone with minimal business training at the time of the loan. This company would never make money. The cost for Solyndra’s technology to make one watt of electricity had always cost more than conventional solar panels, and always would.

Would you pay more for electricity generation just to use Solyndra technology? Of course not. That is why Solyndra went bankrupt. This simple fact would have been evident to the Obama administration at the time of the loan if any of them had ever worked in industry or had bothered to check the company out.

Instead President Obama jumped on the “Green jobs” bandwagon and wasted $500 million dollars of your money to get a photo opportunity.

What could he have done?

How about using that $500M to seed 10,000 start up companies with a $50,000 seed grant instead?

That’s 10,000 new companies which could be doing everything from technology to manufacturing to services.

After 1 year and a half on this program, some startups would surely fail, but you would still have thousands of new companies and millions of more jobs. Instead they have a company in bankruptcy and all the money gone. 

The Future

The Obama administration is now planning to spend billions more of your money to reduce the interest rate on outstanding mortgages in an attempt to stimulate the housing market and the economy.  

This will fail as well. Why? Because it SPENDS money without creating anything. It lowers costs, and gives people a bit more to SPEND, but no one is CREATING anything. That is why it is a SPENDING program, not an INVESTMENT.

What Obama needs to do

Create a $1 billion startup INVESTMENT fund and let me administer it with no red tape or bureaucracy or debate. A iind of startup INVESTMENT Czar.

What the Obama administration needs is someone who has worked in industry and knows how to grow businesses quickly.

In one year, we’ll have thousands of new companies and millions of new jobs. That will do more to help the housing market and economy than anything the Obama administration has on the drawing board.

Time for a change.

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