Tag Archives: Corruption

News

Obama cuts off aid to pressure Honduras into communist dictatorship

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Post from Hans Bader at the CEI’s Open market blog.

Excerpt:

The Obama Administration is about to cut off aid to Honduras, one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere. Earlier, the Obama Administration blocked travel to the United States by the people of Honduras.

[…]State Department lawyers, who are not experts on Honduran law, plan to declare the ex-president’s removal a “military coup” to justify cutting off aid, even though Honduras has a civilian president, and the ex-president was lawfully removed from office (although his subsequent exile may technically have violated Honduran law).

[…]Confronted with the sound legal basis for removing the ex-president under his country’s constitution, the Obama Administration has responded with a series of increasingly weak rationalizations for stubbornly seeking to force his return on the Honduran people.

[…]Obama’s demand that Obama reinstate its would-be dictator has emboldened other elected leaders in Latin America to try to make themselves dictators. (Even the liberal Washington Post, which has not endorsed a Republican for president since 1952, admitted in an editorial by Deputy Editorial Page Editor Jackson Diehl that the Obama Administration has shown a “willful disregard of political oppression” by left-wing dictators in Latin America).

Obama’s demand that Honduras’s ex-president be returned to office has been supported by the Cuban communist dictator Castro and the Venezuelan socialist dictator Chavez, who counted Honduras’s deposed president as an ally, despite his background as a wealthy and corrupt landowner.

But allying with Castro and Chavez to force the return of Honduras’s would-be dictator has not even improved U.S. relations with their countries. The dictators Castro and Chavez continue to attack and oppose the United States at every turn, and oppose all of its Latin American initiatives, like its plans for bases in Colombia to fight drug trafficking. Obama has received nothing in exchange for his appeasement of Latin America’s left.

The article details the flaws in Obama’s support for a communist dictatorship in Honduras.

News

Obama blocks drilling at home, makes loan to Soros-backed firm to drill in Brazil

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Story from the Wall Street Journal. (H/T This Ain’t Hell via ECM)

Excerpt:

The U.S. is going to lend billions of dollars to Brazil’s state-owned oil company, Petrobras, to finance exploration of the huge offshore discovery in Brazil’s Tupi oil field in the Santos Basin near Rio de Janeiro. Brazil’s planning minister confirmed that White House National Security Adviser James Jones met this month with Brazilian officials to talk about the loan.

The U.S. Export-Import Bank tells us it has issued a “preliminary commitment” letter to Petrobras in the amount of $2 billion and has discussed with Brazil the possibility of increasing that amount. Ex-Im Bank says it has not decided whether the money will come in the form of a direct loan or loan guarantees. Either way, this corporate foreign aid may strike some readers as odd, given that the U.S. Treasury seems desperate for cash and Petrobras is one of the largest corporations in the Americas.

Why create jobs and cheaper energy here at home, when you can create jobs and cheaper energy in Brazil?

Blocking energy production is the Democrats’ energy policy

Gateway Pundit adds:

Team Obama approved a nuclear energy program for the UAE in May.
But, Obama and the Pelosi-Reid Democrats will not allow nuclear energy expansion in the United States.

Already this year democrats banned offshore drilling, scrapped oil and gas leases in Utah and opened the 111th Congress by introducing a bill to permanently prohibit drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).
But, Team Obama is going to lend billions of dollars to Brazil to finance exploration of its huge offshore oil field discovery.
Unreal.

[…]Over the past 30 years:

Democrats have blocked the development of new sources of petroleum.
Democrats have blocked drilling in ANWR.
Democrats have blocked drilling off the coast of Florida.
Democrats have blocked drilling off of the east coast.
Democrats have blocked drilling off of the west coast.
Democrats have blocked drilling off the Alaskan coast.
Democrats have blocked building oil refineries.
Democrats have blocked clean nuclear energy production.
Democrats have blocked clean coal production.

If there is no energy crisis, how can the Democrats trick the public into letting them take control of the free market? You commoners don’t really need fancy light bulbs and gas-powered carriages. Those are only for your betters in Washington!

George Soros is heavily invested in Petrobras

Check out this Bloomberg article dated last Friday: (H/T Hot Air)

His New York-based hedge-fund firm, Soros Fund Management LLC, sold 22 million U.S.-listed common shares of Petrobras, as the Brazilian oil company is known, according to a filing today with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Soros bought 5.8 million of the company’s U.S.-traded preferred shares.

Soros is taking advantage of the spread between the two types of U.S.-listed Petrobras shares, said Luis Maizel, president of LM Capital Group LLC, which manages about $4 billion. The common shares were 21 percent more expensive than preferred today, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. …

Petrobras preferred shares have also a 10 percent additional dividend, said William Landers, a senior portfolio manager for Latin America at Blackrock Inc.

“Given that there will most likely never be a change in control in the company, I see no reason to pay a higher price for the common shares.” Brazil’s government controls Petrobras and has a majority stake of voting shares.

Ed Morrissey writes:

This story is from last Friday.  Is it a coincidence that Obama backer George Soros repositioned himself in Petrobras to get dividends just a few days before Obama committed $2 billion in loans and guarantees for Petrobras’ offshore operations?   Hmmmmmmmmmm.

On her Facebook page, Sarah Palin is extremely displeased.

News

In Oregon’s government-run health care system, lobbyists prioritize treatments

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See, this is one of the major problems with government-run health care. Whenver government runs anything, private businesses are going have to spend lots of money trying to influence government to favor their interests. That money would normally be spent pleasing customers, in the free market. But as soon as government gets involved in regulating anything, then lobbyists are hired.

Consider this video posted at Stop the ACLU about Oregon’s health care system. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

As it happens, each year politicians get together to decide what illnesses will get priority funding. Naturally, once the politicians (not doctors, but politicians) decide what “deserves” to be funded by Oregon’s government run healthcare system, the lobbyists flood in and begin to agitate for their own priorities.

The result is that often times serious illnesses end up pushed down this list as the political needs of lobbyists get pushed up to be funded first.

Ever wonder why socialized systems cover breast implants, sex changes, elective abortions, and in vitro fertilization?

Lobbying for illegal immigrants to be covered

Here’s some more lobbying going on right now about Obama’s plan.

ECM also send me this story from the Chicago Tribune, via Secondhand Smoke.

Immigration activists say it is “immoral” for hospitals and doctors, as well as a nation, to deny health care to the seriously ill, no matter their legal status. “Those of us with good health insurance just don’t have to live with because we can go get the medication,” said Jennifer Tolbert, a policy analyst at the non-profit Kaiser Family Foundation.

[…]”Concerns over the financial burden have led other hospitals to make…decisions denying treatment”, said Julie Contreras, an organizer in Chicago for the League of United Latin American Citizens.”These people, some of them are going to die,” Contreras said. “When a hospital denies treatment to any human being … this is flat-out immoral.”

Who is going to pay for this compassion? It isn’t free.

Anti-male discrimination

And don’t forget about anti-male discrimination in socialized systems, which I documented in a previous post.

Breast cancer mortality in Canada is 9 percent higher than in the United States, prostate cancer is 184 percent higher, and colon cancer among men is about 10 percent higher.

More than half of American men (54 percent) have had a prostatespecific antigen (PSA) test, compared to fewer than one in six Canadians (16 percent).

Why males vote Democrat is beyond me.