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2013
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February
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- Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, February 28, 2013
- Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, February 27, 2013
- Barker's Ramblings
- Pat Buchanan (and yours truly) Opine on What the S...
- Barker's Newsbites: Monday, February 25, 2013
- Weekend Newsbites: Sat. & Sun., Feb. 23 & 24, 2013
- The Wisdom of Patrick J. Buchanan
- Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, February 21, 2013
- Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, February 20, 2013
- Barker's Newsbites: Tuesday, February 19, 2013
- Barker's Newsbites: Monday, February 18, 2013
- Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, February 14, 2013
- Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, February 13, 2013
- Barker's Newsbites: Monday, February 11, 2013
- I... Want... Them... Dead...!!!
- Barker's Newsbites: Friday, February 8, 2013
- Censor the Truth...? Or Just Ignore It...?
- Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, February 7, 2013
- Just a Quick Note...
- Weekend Newsbites: Sat. & Sun., Feb. 2 & 3, 2013
- And We're Back! Dow 14,000 Fuels a New Wealth Boom!
- Barker's Newsbites: Friday, February 1, 2013
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February
(22)
About Me
- William R. Barker
- Pearl River, NY High School Class of '81; Northeastern University, Boston, MA Class of '87.
10 comments:
http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/house/284679-gop-lawmaker-says-obama-using-fake-people-to-flood-twitter-with-gun-control-messages
A Texas Republican on Monday said President Obama's gun control campaign is a fraud based on fake messages over Twitter.
* AND AS THE STORY - FROM THE HILL - DETAILS... THIS REPUBLICAN HAS THE EVIDENCE TO BACK UP HIS STATEMENT. (AND YET... THE HILL STARTS WITH "A TEXAS REPUBLICAN" AS OPPOSED TO DIRECTLY OUTING OBAMA ITSELF.)
Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas) accused Obama of trying to make support for his position look stronger than it really is by flooding Twitter with messages from people who don't exist.
* "ACCUSED" BASED UPON THE FACTS!
Stockman said that in response to Obama's call for people to tweet their congressman in support of gun control legislation, he received just 16 tweets. But he said all of these messages were identical, and that a closer look at them revealed that only six were from real people. "The other 10 are fake, computer-generated spambots," his office said in a press release. As evidence, he said these 10 tweets use default graphics and names, and have not engaged in any interaction with other people.
Two of the tweets were sent at nearly the same time, and both follow just one person: Brad Schenck, Obama's former digital strategist.
(*SMIRK*)
Stockman also added that only one of the six tweets from real people is a constituent of his in Texas.
* NOT MURDER... NOT RAPE... NOT ASSAULT... NOT ROBBERY... BUT, GEEZ, FOLKS - THIS PETTY DISHONORABLE DISHONESTY... THIS PHONINESS... IT MAKES ME SICK.
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/23/us/politics/obamas-backers-seek-deep-pockets-to-press-agenda.html?pagewanted=1&%2359&ref=politics&%2359;_r=0&_r=1&
President Obama’s political team is fanning out across the country in pursuit of an ambitious goal: raising $50 million to convert his re-election campaign into a powerhouse national advocacy network, a sum that would rank the new group as one of Washington’s biggest lobbying operations. But the rebooted campaign, known as Organizing for Action, has plunged the president and his aides into a campaign finance limbo with few clear rules, ample potential for influence-peddling, and no real precedent in national politics.
* GOTTA LUV THE NYT... "HAS PLUNGED THE PRESIDENT..." BUT... BUT... BUT... THIS IS THE PRESIDENT'S EFFORT...!!!
(*SNORT*)
In private meetings and phone calls, Mr. Obama’s aides have made clear that the new organization will rely heavily on a small number of deep-pocketed donors, not unlike the “super PACs” whose influence on political campaigns Mr. Obama once deplored.
(*SMIRK*)
Unlike a presidential campaign, Organizing for Action has been set up as a tax-exempt “social welfare group.”
* GOTTA LUV THE TAX CODE...
That means it is not bound by federal contribution limits, laws that bar White House officials from soliciting contributions, or the stringent reporting requirements for campaigns. In their place, the new group will self-regulate.
(*PURSED LIPS*)
Next month, Organizing for Action will hold a “founders summit” at a hotel near the White House, where donors paying $50,000 each will mingle with Mr. Obama’s former campaign manager, Jim Messina, and Mr. Carson, who previously led the White House Office of Public Engagement.
* NICE...
Giving or raising $500,000 or more puts donors on a national advisory board for Mr. Obama’s group and the privilege of attending quarterly meetings with the president...
* SOUND LIKE "BUYING ACCESS" TO YOU...??? IT SURE DOES TO ME!
...along with other meetings at the White House.
(*CLAP...CLAP...CLAP*)
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
Moreover, the new cash demands on Mr. Obama’s top donors and bundlers come as many of them are angling for appointments to administration jobs or ambassadorships.
(*SMIRK*)
“It just smells,” said Bob Edgar, the president of Common Cause, which advocates tighter regulation of campaign money. “The president is setting a very bad model setting up this organization.”
* THIS... IS... WHO... THIS... MAN... IS...!!!
Mr. Obama’s new organization has drawn rebukes in recent days from watchdog groups, which view it as another step away from the tighter campaign regulation Mr. Obama once championed.
(*SNICKER*)
Over the past two years he has reversed course on several campaign finance issues by blessing a super PAC created by former aides and accepting large corporate contributions for his second inauguration.
* AGAIN... THIS IS WHO OBAMA IS...
(*SHRUG*)
Many traditional advocacy organizations, including the Sierra Club and the National Rifle Association, are set up as social welfare groups, or 501(c)(4)’s in tax parlance. But unlike those groups, Organizing for Action appears to be an extension of the administration, stocked with alumni of Mr. Obama’s White House and campaign teams and devoted solely to the president’s second-term agenda.
Robert K. Kelner, a Republican election lawyer who works with other outside groups, said the arrangement “presents a rather simple loophole in the otherwise incredibly complex web of government ethics regulations that are intended to insulate government officials from outside influence.”
The closest precedents for Organizing for Action exist at the state level. In New Jersey, a 501(c)(4) called the Committee for Our Children’s Future, set up by friends of Gov. Chris Christie, has run hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of advertising praising Mr. Christie’s proposals.
* CHRISTIE'S EDUCATION PROPOSALS...
* ISSUE BASED...
In New York, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo encouraged the formation of a nonprofit group, the Committee to Save New York, that is run by business leaders allied with him, and it has raised millions of dollars from corporations, private sector unions, and individuals. The group supported Mr. Cuomo’s agenda — but it also thrust him into controversy when The New York Times revealed that gambling interests poured $2 million into the group as Mr. Cuomo was developing a proposal to expand casino gambling.
* I DON'T RECALL EITHER CUOMO OR CHRISTIE RUNNING ON "HOPE AND CHANGE," DO ANY OF YOU? OBAMA RAN AS "A DIFFERENT KIND OF POLITICIAN."
http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20130225/AUTO0103/302250430#ixzz2LwiwNDSW
General Motors Co. wants to pay its chief executive $11.1 million in total compensation this year — an increase of more than 20% over 2012, according to a document turned over to Congress.
* BASED UPON...???
The Detroit automaker, which received a $49.5 billion bailout in 2008 and 2009...
* DON'T FORGET THE ADDITIONAL TAX FORGIVENESS...!!!
...must get approval for the pay packages for its top 25 executives from the Treasury Department, as a condition of its government bailout.
* READ THE FULL ARTICLE, FOLKS; ALL HAIL THE AGE OF GEITHNER... THE AGE OF OBAMA...
http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/inside-politics/2013/feb/25/furloughs-are-looming-feds-are-still-hiring/
The federal government is facing massive furloughs beginning later this week, but it is still running help-wanted ads seeking workers to answer phones — at up to $81,000 a year — or to drive cars for the State Department, for as much as $26.45 an hour.
(*CLAP...CLAP...CLAP*)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323384604578324442830547044.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
Americans can sleep soundly knowing that Max Baucus (D., Mont.) isn't in charge of interviewing captured al Qaeda fighters. But the enhanced non-interrogation techniques that the Senate Finance Chairman has been applying to Treasury Secretary nominee Jack Lew still deserve more attention. After Mr. Lew repeatedly responded "I do not recall" to key questions about his actions while working at New York University and Citigroup, Mr. Baucus announced Sunday that Mr. Lew had answered the committee's questions "in a thorough and fully transparent manner." Therefore, the committee will vote Tuesday on the nomination.
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
[T]here are at least two answers that ought to be demanded before Mr. Lew skates to the most powerful job in American finance. They relate to the paychecks he received from his last two employers before returning to government.
We wrote recently about the oddity of New York University paying severance to Mr. Lew in 2006 when he left there voluntarily to work at Citigroup.
* HUH...?!?!
NYU hasn't explained why it would pay someone for quitting to take a job on Wall Street.
(*SQUINTING MY EYES*)
As for the Citi paycheck, the story is how Wall Street has become a get-rich-turnstile for Democratic political operatives.
* YEP... MAINLY DEMOCRATIC POLITICAL OPERATIVES. WALL STREET... FANNIE AND FREDDIE MAC... CITIBANK...
(*SHRUG*)
The terms of Mr. Lew's original employment contract with Citi included a bonus guarantee if he left the bank for a "high level position with the United States government or regulatory body."
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
* WHAT DO WE CALL THAT...? A "PRE-BRIBE" PERHAPS...???
Most companies include incentives for top employees not to leave, but in this case the contract was written to reward Mr. Lew for treating the bank like a revolving door. Citi says it likes to accommodate employees who do public service or work at non-profits. But the Lew contract was specific about a senior job in the federal government. There would be no special payout if he left to run the Red Cross or the New York state budget office.
(*RAISED EYEBROW*)
Citi has been an especially nice landing spot for big-shot Democrats. Former White House budget director Peter Orszag is now a Citigroup vice chairman and somehow finds time to write a column for Bloomberg News. And there was former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, who was paid more than $115 million while encouraging the risk-taking that would have destroyed Citi if not for a taxpayer rescue.
(*PURSED LIPS*)
Mr. Rubin was Mr. Lew's patron at the bank.
(*NOD*)
Mr. Lew's contract suggests that Citi knew from the start that Mr. Lew was headed back to a powerful job in Washington, and that it wanted him to remember the bank fondly when he left. We have nothing against people making a living, but when they show up a few years later to do more "public service," taxpayers have a right to know what their private employers were paying them to do.
All of this matters in particular in a Dodd-Frank world when the biggest banks are public utilities.
(*NOD*)
They have little choice but to do what a Treasury Secretary tells them to do.
(*NOD*)
A too-big-to-fail bank must be pleased to know that in a little more than two years it made the sacrifice of government so much easier for America's most powerful banking regulator.
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/341408/comeback-silent-cal-michael-barone
For years, most Americans’ vision of history has been shaped by the New Deal historians.
* ABSOLUTELY...!!!
Writing soon after Franklin Roosevelt’s death, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and others celebrated his accomplishments and denigrated his opponents. They were gifted writers, and many of their books were bestsellers. They have persuaded many Americans — Barack Obama definitely included — that progress means an ever-bigger government.
In their view, the prosperous 1920s were a binge of mindless frivolity. The Depression of the 1930s was the inevitable hangover, for which FDR administered the cure.
That’s one way to see it. But there are others, and no one is doing a better job of making a counter-argument than Amity Shlaes, whose 2008 book "The Forgotten Man" painted a different picture of the 1930s.
* AN HONEST PICTURE OF THE 1930's... AND 1920's AS WELL!!!
Shlaes agrees that Roosevelt’s initial policies seemed to end the downward deflationary spiral. But then bigger government, higher taxes, and aggressive regulation led to further recession and years of achingly slow growth.
Sound familiar?
(*SIGH*)
(*NOD*)
Now Shlaes has produced a book tersely titled "Coolidge." It shows the 30th president in a far different light than did the New Deal historians, who depicted him as an antique reactionary.
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
Calvin Coolidge began his political career during the Progressive era, a time of expanding government, but he came to national notice when that era was ending in turmoil. It was a time of revolution in Russia and attempted revolutions elsewhere in Europe, a time of continuing war in parts of the world even after the armistice formally ended World War I. At home, it was a time of unemployment and inflation, of bombs set off before the attorney general’s house and on Wall Street, of labor-union strikes in coal and other basic industries.
Coolidge was governor of Massachusetts and in charge of the Boston police when they went on strike in September 1919. The cops had legitimate grievances. But the strike was followed by nights of violence and murder, and looting of department stores and shops. Coolidge fired the striking policemen. He explained why in a telegram to labor leader Samuel Gompers. It famously concluded, “There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, anytime.”
Coolidge became a national celebrity.
The Republican bosses in the smoke-filled room picked someone else to be Warren Harding’s running mate, but the convention delegates stampeded and nominated Coolidge. That made Coolidge president on the sudden death of Harding (who comes off much better here than in the New Deal histories) in August 1923.
Shlaes tells how he settled into a routine of meeting regularly with the director of the new Bureau of the Budget, paring down spending any way he could.
(*SINCERE APPLAUSE*)
Coolidge’s Republicans had small majorities in Congress, and many favored big new spending programs — veterans’ bonuses, farm subsidies. Coolidge said no, with vetoes that were sustained.
(*BOTH THUMBS UP*)
At the same time, he pressed Congress for tax cuts.
After Coolidge won a full term in 1924, the top income-tax rate was reduced from the wartime 70% to 25%. An economy that lurched from inflation to recession between 1918 and 1922 suddenly burst into robust economic growth. That helped Coolidge achieve budget surpluses every year — surpluses that he used to pay down the national debt.
In the summer of 1927, while vacationing in the Black Hills of South Dakota, Coolidge announced, “I do not choose to run for president in 1928.” All the political indicators (random-sample public-opinion polls had not yet been invented) suggest he would have won a second full term — and would have been in office when the stock market crashed in October 1929.
* HIS SON HAD DIED. HE WAS BROKEN-HEARTED.
The New Deal historians depict the prosperity of the Coolidge years as illusory.
* BECAUSE SUCH A FALSE DEPICTION ADVANCED THEIR LEFTIST AGENDA!
In their view, the hangover of the Depression was the inevitable aftereffect of the Twenties’ excess.
* NO. NOT TRUE.
More recent economic historians have suggested that policy mistakes by the Federal Reserve were the prime cause of the deflationary downward spiral. The onerous Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1930 may have been a culprit, too.
* DEFLATION ISN'T NECESSARILY BAD; INFLATION USUALLY IS.
In any case, the standard of living of millions of Americans improved in the Coolidge years. Automobiles, refrigerators, and radios became commonplace possessions.
Shlaes doesn’t argue that Coolidge’s policies could or should be exactly replicated today. But she does establish that the 30th president is worthy of more respect than previous historians have accorded him.
http://www.nationalreview.com/campaign-spot/341471/cut-lego-purchases-first-mr-president
Here, let me help you with the sequestration, Mr. President.
Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood is lamenting that his department will need to make drastic cuts that will immediately impact air traffic controllers and airport security lines.
* MEANWHILE...
A quick perusal of Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn’s last annual Waste Report showcases a bunch of grant programs that could be cut or eliminated immediately to generate significant savings. Let’s start at the Federal Highway Administration, and eliminate the National Scenic Byways Program entirely. Forever.
You’re asking, “the what?”
The National Scenic Byways Program (NSBP) is authorized by 23 U.S.C. § 162, and has been reauthorized and continued through March 31, 2012. The NSBP recognizes roads having outstanding scenic, historic, cultural, natural, recreational, and archaeological qualities. NSBP funding supports projects that manage and protect these intrinsic qualities, interpret these qualities for visitors, and improve visitor facilities along byways.
* I KNOW... IT DOESN'T SOUND SO BAD... YET; READ ON!
In fiscal 2012, roughly $20,600,000 were available for grants. How does that money get spent?
Thirty-thousand Lego pieces, paid for with a $3,700 National Scenic Byways grant, are being assembled to build a miniature replica of a historic downtown street in Martinsburg, West Virginia. The 18-footlong display will depict Queen Street as it likely appeared in the 1920s and ‘30s. It is expected to be a permanent exhibit at the “For the kids, by George Children’s Museum" which will showcase George Washington’s “adventures in the Eastern Panhandle” of West Virginia.
* IN THE 1920's AND 30's...???
(*HEADACHE*)
The museum is primarily funded with a $290,000 National Scenic Byways grant awarded by the Federal Highway Administration.
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
Buy your own damn Legos!
Then there’s the National Historic Covered Bridge Preservation program, which spent $9,762,116 in fiscal 2012. Of that amount, $650,000 was used to repair the Stevenson Road Covered Bridge in Greene County, Ohio, a bridge that is not actually connected to any roads or train tracks.
(*PURSED LIPS*)
It’s time to stop providing federal grants for non-essential projects:
St. Louis is receiving more than $35 million in federal funds for “an old-fashioned style trolley system” that will run on a 2.2-mile line from the Missouri History Museum to the University City Library. The federal funds for the project include a $25 million Federal Transit Administration Urban Circulator grant, a $3.5 million New Markets Tax Credit, and $7.1 million in other federal transportation grants.
States and localities can’t come to Washington with the endless “crumbling roads and bridges” cry and then turn around and spend money on cute old-fashioned trolley systems.
Somehow $145,000 in U.S. Department of Transportation funds are being used for a sculpture garden in the town of Waterloo, Iowa, dedicated to former resident Lou Henry Hoover, the wife of 31st U.S. President Herbert Hoover.
Sculptures aren’t transportation. They don’t move.
It’s ridiculous for LaHood to complain about being asked to cut roughly 1.3% of his budget ($1 billion; the Obama administration requested $74 billion in its last budget request) when his department is funding nonsense like this.
* DIE, LAHOOD, DIE...!
Oh, and does the U.S. Department of Transportation really need a separate Undersecretary for Policy and an Assistant Secretary for Transportation Policy?
* NOPE!
Or did they really need to spend $2,810,246 sponsoring conferences last year?
* NOPE!
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/341492/prez-rev-and-us-jay-nordlinger
President Obama gave an interview to ["The Reverend" Al] Sharpton last week.
* YOU ALL KNOW WHO SHARPTON IS... BUT...
You may not remember who Steven Pagones is.
* IF NOT...
Pagones is the former assistant DA whom Sharpton accused of raping Tawana Brawley.
Here is an excerpt from a piece I wrote, in 2000, about Sharpton and his “mainstreaming”:
. . . [Pagones] held a press conference, which Sharpton, in his theatrical fashion, attempted to crash. “Your accuser has arrived!” he bellowed. Sharpton had said before, “We stated openly that Steven Pagones did it. If we’re lying, sue us, so we can go into court with you and prove you did it. Sue us — sue us right now.” Oddly enough, Pagones did. He spent a decade of his life pursuing a defamation case against Sharpton and his accomplices, finally winning that case one glorious, cleansing day in July of 1998. His life had been a hell — of death threats, illnesses, and assorted other agonies. He said to an interviewer in 1997, “I know that Sharpton doesn’t care how I feel. . . .”
Of course not. Sharpton has never apologized for his evil lies. He says proudly that he never will.
Sharpton bills himself as a Christian minister. People call him “Reverend” or “Rev.” The president of the United States comes to sit with him.
[W]ould the president ever sit with Steven Pagones?
I hear Fox News reviled almost everywhere I go, but I’m fairly sure they don’t have a minister, as a regular commentator, who has falsely accused another man of rape and who is proud not to apologize for it.
This country has economic problems, as we well know. But as severe as those problems are now — a $17 trillion debt and all — I don’t believe our worst problems are economic. We seem to be living in a post-moral society, with the “Reverend” a smiling symbol of it.
(If you want to see him and our president smiling together, try Google images, and try to hold your lunch.)
One more thing: In 2004, the Democrats’ presidential nominee, now our secretary of state, John Kerry, had this to say: “During the primaries, there was one person who consistently was always there, keeping the peace and the compass going in the right direction, and that was Al Sharpton.” I will buy the idea of Sharpton as compass: pointing downward, downward.
By the way, Kerry is a smooth one, isn’t he? “Consistently was always there.” Is there anything a St. Paul’s and Yale education can’t do?
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