Tag Archives: Scandal

News

Republicans prepare to investigate Democrat corruption

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Here is Darrell Issa on Fox News Sunday.

Story from the left-wing Politico web site.

Excerpt:

The WikiLeaks debacle, corruption in Afghanistan and Obama administration regulation are all on the agenda as Rep. Darrell Issa prepares to take the helm of the top House committee tasked with watch-dogging Washington.

[…]”We need to start by asking a very fundamental question: Why hasn’t the economy created the private-sector jobs the president promised?” the memo said.

That hearing would call business leaders to testify about how government regulations are doing “harm to job-creation efforts.” The hearing falls in line with what Issa talked about Sunday, when he told “Fox News Sunday” that administration regulation is hurting American competitiveness.

According to the agenda, Issa also plans to hold hearings on the role played by mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the foreclosure crisis. For that, he intends to call the Federal Housing Administration chief to testify, along with non-government experts. Along those lines, Issa is planning a hearing examining the “failure” of another government panel to find out more about the financial crisis — he wants to dig into the work of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, which he claims has done a “biased” and “highly partisan” job of looking for the root causes of the financial crisis.

Issa also plans to detour into foreign policy. According to the memo, he’ll hold a hearing on how to combat corruption in Afghanistan. He also plans a hearing on WikiLeaks, examining ways the federal government can plug the disclosure of more sensitive information in the future. He plans to call National Security Adviser Tom Donilon to testify.

Issa said on “Fox News Sunday” that Attorney General Eric Holder needs to either do more to crack down on the WikiLeaks document dumps or leave the administration.

And so it begins.

News

Number of Obamacare waivers granted doubles to 222

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From the Verum Serum.

Excerpt:

Last month it was revealed that 111 companies had received one year waivers from costly provisions of Obamacare.

[…]Yesterday HHS updated their site to show that the number of “waived” organizations has now doubled to 222. The total number of people excused from this particular requirement of the new law has gone from 1.1 million to 1.5 million in one month. The largest single addition is American Heritage Life Insurance Company with nearly 70,000 employees. There are also quite a few union locals on the updated list:

  • Bricklayers Local 1 – 1,985 employees
  • International Brotherhood of Trade Unions Local 713 – 861 employees
  • Local 1102 has three listings – 6,271 employees
  • Local 338 – 18,209 employees
  • SoCal Pipe Trades – 12,700
  • Teamsters Local 522 – 270
  • UFCW Local 1445 – 148
  • Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 630 – 1,166
  • UFCW Local 1000 – 3,855
  • SEIU Greater New York – 4,544
  • Laundry and Dry Cleaning Workers Local 52 – 1,547
  • Social Service Employees Union Local 371 – 34,000

I think that the aim is to cause small businesses to go out of businesses so that the government has an easier time controlling the economy, which is what socialists want. It is much harder to control a massive number of cats than a handful of mules.

News

Obama administration used spying, threats and bribes to build support for global warming treaty

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From the radically leftist UK Guardian of all places! (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

Hidden behind the save-the-world rhetoric of the global climate change negotiations lies the mucky realpolitik: money and threats buy political support; spying and cyberwarfare are used to seek out leverage.

The US diplomatic cables reveal how the US seeks dirt on nations opposed to its approach to tackling global warming; how financial and other aid is used by countries to gain political backing; how distrust, broken promises and creative accounting dog negotiations; and how the US mounted a secret global diplomatic offensive to overwhelm opposition to the controversial “Copenhagen accord”, the unofficial document that emerged from the ruins of the Copenhagen climate change summit in 2009.

Negotiating a climate treaty is a high-stakes game, not just because of the danger warming poses to civilisation but also because re-engineering the global economy to a low-carbon model will see the flow of billions of dollars redirected.

Seeking negotiating chips, the US state department sent a secret cable on 31 July 2009 seeking human intelligence from UN diplomats across a range of issues, including climate change. The request originated with the CIA. As well as countries’ negotiating positions for Copenhagen, diplomats were asked to provide evidence of UN environmental “treaty circumvention” and deals between nations.

But intelligence gathering was not just one way. On 19 June 2009, the state department sent a cable detailing a “spear phishing” attack on the office of the US climate change envoy, Todd Stern, while talks with China on emissions took place in Beijing. Five people received emails, personalised to look as though they came from the National Journal. An attached file contained malicious code that would give complete control of the recipient’s computer to a hacker. While the attack was unsuccessful, the department’s cyber threat analysis division noted: “It is probable intrusion attempts such as this will persist.”

The Beijing talks failed to lead to a global deal at Copenhagen.

[…]Perhaps the most audacious appeal for funds revealed in the cables is from Saudi Arabia, the world’s second biggest oil producer and one of the 25 richest countries in the world. A secret cable sent on 12 February records a meeting between US embassy officials and lead climate change negotiator Mohammad al-Sabban. “The kingdom will need time to diversify its economy away from petroleum, [Sabban] said, noting a US commitment to help Saudi Arabia with its economic diversification efforts would ‘take the pressure off climate change negotiations‘.”

The Saudis did not like the accord, but were worried they had missed a trick. The assistant petroleum minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman told US officials that he had told his minister Ali al-Naimi that Saudi Arabia had “missed a real opportunity to submit ‘something clever’, like India or China, that was not legally binding but indicated some goodwill towards the process without compromising key economic interests”.

Wow, so this is what Obama has been working on as the unemployment rate has soared higher to 9.8%.