Tag Archives: Corruption

News

A closer look at Obama’s 1-billion dollar “stimulus” earmark

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From the Heritage Foundation. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) likes to say that Congressional earmarking has become the gateway drug to federal overspending.  Is there any better evidence of this theory then President Barack Obama’s $1 billion earmark for a special project in Illinois that was slipped into his failed $862 billion stimulus?  According to Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, the Obama Administration awarded $1 billion on August 5th for a Carbon Capture and Storage Network in Illinois:

Today’s announcement will help ensure the US remains competitive in a carbon constrained economy, creating jobs while reducing greenhouse gas pollution.  This investment in the world’s first, commercial-scale, oxy-combustion power plant will help to open up the over $300 billion market for coal unit repowering and position the country as a leader in an important part of the global clean energy economy

This project was an earmark in the stimulus according to a Washington Post story dated March 6, 2009:

Deep inside the economic stimulus package is a $1 billion prize that, in five short words, shows the benefits of being in power in Washington. The funding, for “fossil energy research and development,” is likely to go to a power plant in a small Illinois town, a project whose longtime backers include a group of powerful lawmakers from the state, among them President Obama.

Stimulus seems to be a way of rewarding the people who voted for you with money from the people who didn’t vote for you. At least, that’s the way it is for Obama, apparently.

News

Senate candidate indicted for showing obscene materials to teen

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Story here from the Toronto Sun.

Excerpt:

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Alvin Greene was indicted in South Carolina Friday on charges stemming from his arrest last year for allegedly showing pornography to a college student.A grand jury indicted Greene, 32, an unemployed Army veteran and campaign novice whose primary win in June stunned political observers, on a felony charge of disseminating, procuring or promoting obscenity and a misdemeanor charge of showing obscene materials to someone without consent.

The charges followed his arrest in November for an incident in which he allegedly displayed obscene or pornographic materials on a computer to a University of South Carolina student and then suggested going to her dormitory room.

Reached at his home in Manning, South Carolina, where he lives with his elderly father, Greene said: “My lawyer is dealing with that. That’s all I have to say.”

The maximum penalty for conviction on the felony charge is five years in prison, with the misdemeanor carrying a three-year maximum sentence, said the office for Greene’s attorney, Eleazer Carter.

Greene, whose long-shot candidacy has attracted intense media scrutiny, won South Carolina’s Democratic Senate primary after a campaign that included no budget, no staff and no verified public appearances.

He defeated former Charleston judge and state legislator Vic Rawl, who had the endorsement of the state Democratic Party. He will face Republican Senator Jim DeMint in the November election.

In several halting interviews with media, Greene has said his platform includes jobs, infrastructure and education and suggested South Carolina’s high unemployment rate could be lessened by manufacturing dolls and action figures of himself.

Greene gave his first public speech last month. He talked for less than 10 minutes and, in a monotone, third-person reference to his legal troubles, mentioned that his anticipated trial had been delayed.

Wow. This is the Democrat Senate candidate for South Carolina running against Jim Demint for a seat in the United States Senate?

News

AFL-CIO union boss says that there is no budget deficit problem

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Here’s the video from Gateway Pundit.

Ooops:

I wonder how the union boss missed that graph.

And when you look at that graph remember that the Democrats controlled the House and the Senate starting in January of 2007. When things started to fall apart, and Bush didn’t have the political capital to pull out his veto pen and cut wasteful spending and bailouts.

Michele Bachmann doesn’t like unions

Anyway, here’s Michele Bachmann explaining what the 26 billion dollar union bailout will mean for the November elections. (H/T Gateway Pundit)

That’s why government should be limited. You only get to choose how to spend your money in a free market. If the government takes your money, then they get to decide how it’s spent, e.g. – on special interest groups that voted for the party in power. A dollar is either going to be spent by you on what you want – or it’s going to be spent by them on what they want. Think about it – who knows more about what to do with YOUR money – you or a politician who wants to be re-elected? The only solution is to keep government small – and only the Republicans (some of them – not all) are willing to try to do that.