Which do you remember? the "Party of corruption" or Tony Rezko? Likely the former (what Nancy Pelosi termed Republicans in the Democrat's sweep of the House). Why would most Americans remember one more than the other? Because when it's a Democratic presidential candidate involved there's always a few free passes first. We'll see how the AngeloGate goes.
Blatant hypocrisy is something even the left leaning media has a tough time swallowing. And hypocrisy is hiring an advisor from the very company one was demonizing just days before. Obama said Jim Johnson, who resigned hours ago from conducting Obama's VP search, didn't work for him. For whom did he work then, senator, as he was helping you choose your VP?WSJ Countrywide Financial Corp. makes mortgage loans through a vast network of offices, brokers and call centers. But a few customers have gotten their loans a special way: through Countrywide Chief Executive Angelo Mozilo.
These borrowers, known internally as "friends of Angelo" or FoA, include two former CEOs of Fannie Mae, the biggest buyer of Countrywide's mortgages, say people familiar with the matter.
One was James Johnson, a longtime Democratic Party power and an adviser to Sen. Barack Obama's campaign, who this past week was named to a panel that is vetting running-mate possibilities for the presumed nominee. Another was Franklin Raines, a onetime Clinton administration budget director, who left Fannie Mae amid an accounting scandal in 2004.
There is nothing illegal about a mortgage firm treating some borrowers better than others. But if Fannie Mae officials received special treatment, that could cause a political problem for the government-sponsored, shareholder-owned company.
The Wall Street Journal editors pile on, justifiably so:Barack Obama may have come up with a creative way to solve the housing recession: Let everyone buy property at a discount the way he did from Tony Rezko, and give everyone in America a discount mortgage the way Angelo Mozilo of Countrywide did for Fannie Mae's Jim Johnson. Team Obama's real estate and mortgage transactions are certainly a change from business as usual. They suggest old-fashioned back-scratching below even current Beltway standards.
A former CEO of mortgage financing giant Fannie Mae, Mr. Johnson is now vetting Vice Presidential candidates for Mr. Obama. But he is also a textbook case for poor disclosure as regulators sifted through the wreckage of Fannie's $10 billion accounting scandal. Despite an exhaustive federal inquiry, Mr. Johnson managed to avoid disclosing one very special perk: below-market interest-rate mortgages from Countrywide Financial, arranged by Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo. Journal reporters Glenn Simpson and James Hagerty broke the story this weekend.
Fannie Mae tells us that Mr. Johnson did not inform the company's board of these sweetheart mortgage deals, nor did his CEO successor Franklin Raines, who also received such loans. We can understand why. Fannie bought mortgages from loan originator Countrywide, and then packaged them into securities for sale or kept the loans and profited from the interest. Mr. Mozilo told Dow Jones in 1995 that he was "working very closely . . . with Jim Johnson of Fannie Mae to come up with a rational method of making the process more efficient by the use of credit scoring."
Since Fannie was buying Countrywide's loans, under terms set by Mr. Johnson and later Mr. Raines – or by people in their employ – the fact that Fannie's CEO had a separate personal financial relationship with Countrywide was an obvious conflict of interest. The company's code of conduct required prior approval of such arrangements. Neither Mr. Johnson nor Mr. Raines sought such approval, according to Fannie.
Even if they had received waivers from the board to enjoy these perks, conscientious board members would then have wanted to disclose the waivers to investors. Post-Enron, the Sarbanes-Oxley law requires such disclosures. But even in the late-1990s, when the Friends of Angelo loans began, board members would likely have raised red flags.
Former SEC Chairman Harvey Pitt tells us that "the best way to deal with issues like this is not to have these kinds of relationships. From both the Countrywide and the Fannie perspective, it is simply bad policy to permit loans to 'friends' on more favorable terms than others similarly situated would be able to get."
One question is whether Messrs. Johnson and Raines were using their position to pad their own incomes that were already fabulous thanks to an implicit taxpayer subsidy. (See the table nearby.) But the bigger issue is whether they steered Fannie policy into giving Mr. Mozilo and Countrywide favorable pricing, which means they helped to facilitate the mortgage boom and bust that Countrywide did so much to promote. A further federal probe would seem to be warranted, and we assume Barney Frank and his fellow mortgage moralists will want to dig into this palm-greasing from Capitol Hill.
The irony here is that Mr. Obama has denounced Mr. Mozilo as part of his populist case against corporate excess, calling Mr. Mozilo and a colleague in March "the folks who are responsible for infecting the economy and helping to create a home foreclosure crisis." Obama campaign manager David Plouffe also said in March that "If we're really going to crack down on the practices that caused the credit and housing crises, we're going to need a leader who doesn't owe these industries any favors." But now this protector of the working class has entrusted his first big task as Presidential nominee to the very man who received "favors" in return for enriching Mr. Mozilo.
Yesterday, ABC News asked Mr. Obama whether he should have more carefully vetted Mr. Johnson and Eric Holder, who is working with Mr. Johnson on veep vetting.
Correspondent Sunlen Miller noted Mr. Johnson's loans from Countrywide and Mr. Holder's involvement as Deputy Attorney General in the Clinton Administration in the pardon of fugitive Marc Rich. Said Mr. Obama: "Everybody, you know, who is tangentially related to our campaign, I think, is going to have a whole host of relationships – I would have to hire the vetter to vet the vetters."
Vetting Mr. Johnson's finances would have been time well spent, judging by a May 2006 report from Fannie Mae's regulator, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (Ofheo). Even if Mr. Obama considers the advisers helping him select a running mate "tangentially related" to his campaign, he might have thought twice about any relationship with Mr. Johnson.
Addressing the company's too smooth (and fraudulent) reported earnings growth in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Ofheo reported: "Those achievements were illusions deliberately and systematically created by the Enterprise's senior management with the aid of inappropriate accounting and improper earnings management . . . By deliberately and intentionally manipulating accounting to hit earnings targets, senior management maximized the bonuses and other executive compensation they received, at the expense of shareholders."
The regulator described how, despite an internal Fannie analysis that valued Mr. Johnson's 1998 compensation at almost $21 million, the summary compensation table in the firm's 1999 proxy suggested his pay was no more than $7 million. Ofheo found that Fannie had actually drafted talking points to deflect such media questions as: "He's trying to hide how much he's made, isn't he?" and "Gimme a break. He's hiding his compensation."
To this list we would add one more, directed at Mr. Obama: Is this what you mean by bringing change to Washington?
Labels: 2008, Countrywide Financial, Hypocrisy, Obama, rezko
One wonders what Sean Penn thinks about the below news? After all, Penn is a glowing fan -- he visited Venezuelan "President" Hugo Chavez a while back and even told the media that "much more positive for Venezuela than he is negative" and that his party's constitution is "a very beautiful document." And, Chavez contributed with Danny Glover for a $20 million movie deal.CARACAS, Venezuela: President Hugo Chávez has used his decree powers to carry out a major overhaul of this country's intelligence agencies, provoking a fierce backlash here from human rights groups and legal scholars who say the measures will force citizens to inform on one another to avoid prison terms.
Under the new intelligence law, which took effect last week, Venezuela's two main intelligence services, the DISIP secret police and the DIM military intelligence agency, will be replaced with new agencies, the General Intelligence Office and General Counterintelligence Office, under the control of Chávez.
The new law requires people in the country to comply with requests to assist the agencies, secret police or community activist groups loyal to Chávez. Refusal can result in prison terms of two to four years for most people and four to six years for government employees.
"We are before a set of measures that are a threat to all of us," said Blanca Rosa Mármol de León, a justice on Venezuela's top court, in a rare public judicial dissent. "I have an obligation to say this, as a citizen and a judge. This is a step toward the creation of a society of informers."
The sweeping intelligence changes reflect an effort by Chávez to assert greater control over public institutions in the face of political challenges following a stinging defeat in December of a constitutional reform package that would have expanded his powers.
Chávez, who has insisted the defeat would not dampen his ambitions to transform Venezuela into a Socialist state, said the new law was intended to guarantee "national security" and shield against "imperialist attacks."
He lashed out at its critics as being agents of the "empire," meaning the United States.
Labels: Hollywood bias, Hypocrisy
[Rev. Jeremiah] Wright attacks capitalism throughout his sermons, an odd ideological target for a man who reportedly drives a Porsche and whose grateful congregants are building him a $1 million, four-garage home in a predominantly white suburb of Chicago (so much for being “unapologetically black”). He has also praised Cuba’s Fidel Castro and Libya’s Muammar al-Qadhafi. So it’s really no wonder that a huckster such as Wright has emerged as some sort of “reality-based community” folk hero. The political left finds common cause with the religious left and is apparently willing to overlook exactly the sort of racist sectarianism that it would be so quick to condemn were its perpetrator a white conservative.
-- James Kirchick, The Politico
Labels: 2008, Economics, Hypocrisy, Obama
Speaking of energy, we can't help but give more attention to a recent press release from some of the Senate's leading liberals. Charles Schumer, Byron Dorgan, Bernie Sanders, Bob Casey and Mary Landrieu are demanding that President Bush tell OPEC nations to increase their oil supplies or risk losing arms deals with the United States. The Senators say U.S. consumers need the price relief that only increased oil production can bring.
Yes, that Senator Schumer and that Senator Dorgan, both of whom voted against increasing U.S. oil production because they couldn't abide drilling across 1% of Alaska's wilderness. Yes, that Senator Casey, who has called for mandatory reductions in emissions of carbon dioxide. At least Senator Landrieu of Louisiana has fought to allow more offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
All of these Senate Democrats are willing to accept greater carbon emissions, as long as we can also outsource jobs in the petroleum industry to Middle Eastern dictatorships. The Senators do aver that "some of us have concerns in general about arming this region to the teeth," but apparently cheap fossil fuel buys a lot of peace of mind.
A special word of concern about Mr. Sanders: He is the only avowed socialist in Congress, but the Vermonter appears to be losing his religion over $122-a-barrel oil. By signing this letter, not only is he officially recognizing the law of supply and demand; he's also proposing a more crassly commercial trade of guns for oil than anything we've ever heard from the most candid realpolitician.
To top it off, the Senator whose Web site proudly proclaims that the first bill he introduced was to combat global warming now wants more fossil fuels ready for burning. We hope his friends are closely watching Mr. Sanders, in case he blows a gasket over all of this cognitive ideological dissonance.
--Wall Street Journal
Labels: Congress, democrats, Economics, energy, Hypocrisy, Oil
All too typical. And hypocritical. Were this discovery made of Republicans you can have no doubt it'd be all the rage in the mainstream media.[Weekly Standard] Speaker Pelosi, did you really think you'd get away with this one?
The Washington Post reported yesterday:In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.
Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said...
With one known exception, no formal objections were raised by the lawmakers briefed about the harsh methods during the two years in which waterboarding was employed, from 2002 to 2003, said Democrats and Republicans with direct knowledge of the matter.
The Democrats have made fools of themselves--once again. Bloggers are having a field day, and agree that this is yet more evidence that the Democrats are only concerned about their image with their left-wing base.
Bryan Preston expresses his rage at HotAir: "This story exposes the fact that the Democrats have been playing games on waterboarding for years now, publicly decrying it while privately raising no useful objection to it."
Captain Ed adds, "Only well after the practice had been abandoned did Congress raise objections to its use, and then never acknowledging their own acquiescence to it earlier. That lack of honesty allowed them to paint themselves as shocked, shocked! that waterboarding had been used as an interrogation technique."
And from Instapundit: "Lots of people who were talking tough back then subsequently changed their tunes -- out of either a sudden flowering of scruples or an unprincipled desire to go after the Bush Administration with any weapon that came to hand."
Democrats are claiming that the world was different immediately after 9/11, so techniques used then may not be necessary now--yet they continue to wonder why. The answer is obvious to the conservative bloggers.
More from Preston: "Has the actual threat of large-scale terrorism receded enough so that we can all go back to a 9-10 slumber and wash our collective hands of the tactics that we approved of in the clarifying months to years immediately after 9-11? I don't think so, though the threat has been blunted by, you guessed it, tough action in Afghanistan and Iraq."
Paul Mirengoff concludes, "We haven't been attacked in more than six years, quite possibly because of the information we obtained through waterboarding and other aggressive techniques. Thus, the partisan instinct, coupled with the joy of posturing, prevails."
And California Conservative raises a question that must be asked before November 2008: "The first instincts after 9/11 was to do whatever it took to 'protect the American people.' It wasn't until groups like CAIR and the ACLU took exception that Democrats objected. What does that tell you about Democrats' ability to prevent terrorist attacks?"
We have to wonder.
Labels: CIA, democrats, Hypocrisy, interrogation, media bias
The editors of the Wall Street Journal take a moment to expose the hypocrisy in Congress.Whatever Pervez Musharraf's failings in Islamabad, his impact in Washington has been nothing short of miraculous. With his declaration of emergency rule, the Pakistan President has single-handedly revived the Bush Doctrine. The same people who only days ago were deriding President Bush for naively promoting democracy are now denouncing him for not promoting it enough in Pakistan.
"We have to move from a Musharraf to a Pakistan policy," declared Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden on Thursday. "Pakistan has strong democratic traditions and a large, moderate majority. But that moderate majority must have a voice in the system and an outlet with elections. If not, moderates may find that they have no choice but to make common cause with extremists, just as the Shah's opponents did in Iran three decades ago."
Joe Biden, neocon.
Labels: Congress, defending liberty, democrats, Hypocrisy, pakistan
Former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy opines that Bill and Hillary Clinton's position on torture and interrogation are a lot more vague than that of attorney general nominee Michael Mukasey. As is the senator's [Hillary Clinton's] wont (see, e.g., myriad positions on Iraq, Iran, illegal immigration, etc.), she has since flipped from this flop — just in time for a candidates' debate before a base inherently hostile to such flashes of common sense. But she clearly made the remarks. It was thus jarring to find her announcing opposition on Monday to Judge Michael Mukasey's nomination to become the next attorney general because, as Sen. Clinton explained, "I am deeply troubled by Judge Mukasey's continued unwillingness to clearly state his views on torture and unchecked Executive power."
As it happens, Judge Mukasey's views on torture and "unchecked Executive power" are a lot clearer than Hillary Clinton's.
...So Judge Mukasey has essentially said that waterboarding might be torture and would, in any event, be illegal in all but the most dire emergencies. Senator Clinton, to the contrary, has said a president could order not just waterboarding but torture, despite a congressional statute and treaty obligations that brook no exceptions. Yet, Democrats are questioning Mukasey's fitness even as they trip over themselves to hop aboard Clinton's bandwagon.
Read the rest. The Democrats' hypocrisy on intelligence and surveillance know no bounds.
In addition, McCarthy highlights Bill Clinton's recent comment to "permit the president to make a finding [a torture warrant]," and that Clinton's Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick testified to Congress in 1994 that "the president [Bill Clinton] has inherent authority to conduct warrantless physical searches for foreign intelligence purposes."
So remember the rule. Democrats can torture and spy without warrants to protect national security. But Republicans are criminals if they attempt to do the same.
Labels: CIA, Clinton, democrats, Hypocrisy, intelligence, surveillance, TSP
ALEXANDRIA, La. (AP) — Two of the "Jena Six" defendants helped present the Video of the Year award on Black Entertainment Television's Hip Hop Awards. Katt Williams, a comedian and host of the show broadcast Thurdsay night, introduced Carwin Jones and Bryant Purvis as two of the students involved in a case of "systematic racism."
"By no means are we condoning a six-on-one beat-down," Williams said during his introduction of the teens, accused of knocking a white student unconscious and then kicking and stamping on him. "... But the injustice perpetrated on these young men is straight criminal."
Jones and Purvis got a standing ovation as they walked onto the stage at the Atlanta Civic Center, where the awards show was filmed on Saturday. "They don't look so tough, do they?" Williams joked."
No, apparently they're only tough when they have four other friends to join them in a six-on-one pile on.
Noel Sheppard of NewsBusters asks the obvious but necessary question, "Just imagine if six white students beat a black student, and then two of them were allowed to present at the Country Music Awards. Think that would generate some outrage?"
Labels: Hollywood bias, Hypocrisy, jena
Lee Bollinger, the President of Columbia, was evidently taken aback by the criticism he got for inviting Ahmadinejad and so found himself backed into what, for a conventional soft-leftie of academe, was a ferocious denunciation of his star guest, dwelling at length on Iran's persecution of minorities, murder of dissidents, sponsorship of terrorism, nuclear ambitions, genocidal threats toward Israel, etc. For a warm-up act, Bollinger pretty much frosted up the joint. The Iranian leader sat through the intro with a plastic smile, and then said: "I shall not begin by being affected by this unfriendly treatment." He offered many illuminating insights: There are, he declared, no homosexuals in Iran. Not one. Where are they? On a weekend visit to Kandahar to see the new production of Mame? Alas, there was no time for follow-ups.
And afterwards Mr. Bollinger got raves even from the right for "speaking truth to power." But so what? It's like Noel Coward delivering a series of devastating put-downs to Hitler. The Fuhrer's mad as hell but at the end of the afternoon he goes back to killing and dear Noel goes back to singing "The Stately Homes Of England." Ahmadinejad goes back to doing — to persecuting, to murdering, to terrorizing, to nuclearizing — and Bollinger cuts out his press clippings and puts them on the fridge.
The other day National Review's Jay Nordlinger was musing about our habit of referring to some benighted part of the world's "humanitarian needs," and wondered when we'd stopped using the term "human needs," which is, after all, what food, water and shelter are. And his readers wrote in to state the obvious: That "humanitarian" prioritizes not the distant Third World victim but the generous western donor — the "humanitarian" relief effort, the "humanitarian" organizations, the NGOs, the western charities: it's about us, not them. Bill Clinton's new bestseller on charity is called Giving — because it's better to give than to receive, and that's certainly true if the giver is busying himself with some ineffectual feel-good "Save Darfur" fundraiser while the recipient is on the receiving end of the Janjaweed's machetes. The Sudanese government appreciates that, as long as we're allowed to feel good about ourselves and to participate in "humanitarian relief," the killing can go on until there's no one left to kill. Likewise, Ahmadinejad knows that, as along as we're allowed to do what we do best — talk and talk and talk, whether at Columbia or in EU negotiations — his regime can quietly get on with its nuclear program.
These men understand the self-absorption of advanced democracies. The difference between Winston Churchill and Ward Churchill, another famous beneficiary of "academic freedom" who called the 9/11 dead "little Eichmanns," is that for Sir Winston talking was a call to action while for poseurs like Professor Churchill it's a substitute for it. The pen is not mightier than the sword if your enemy is confident you will never use anything other than your pen. Sometimes it's not about "freedom of speech," but about freedom. Ask an Iranian homosexual. If you can find one.
-- Mark Steyn
Labels: academic bias, defending liberty, Hypocrisy, Iran
In the U.S. and Europe, the notion of creating "a balance of power that favors human freedom" as a counterweight to terror networks is now routinely mocked as "a dream," "a fiasco" and "a failure." And as soon as the abominable Bush and the neocons are gone, their "oversold" democratic pipe dream will be replaced by an American foreign policy that is more "modest."
As it happens, the opposition party in Burma, the one getting shot, is called the National League for Democracy. Not the National League for Stability, but Democracy. One hopes the monks, reported by the BBC to be headed for internment camps, aren't expecting too much from "the world," because not much is coming. If before deciding to fill Rangoon's streets the "saffron-robed" monks had spent more time reading pundits and foreign-policy intellectuals in Washington or Western Europe, they would have known that democracy has been demoted.
The Bush Doctrine's critics will say this is unfair, that they support aspiring democracies, that their critique of the neocons is mostly about Iraq. Perhaps, but I would argue that this tidy distinction--"we only mean Iraq, we're all for Burma"--has been lost on the popular imagination. The anti-Bush, anti-neocon obsession has been so constant, so often pegged to the broader Bush "dream" for democracy and freedom, that its critics have tossed out the world's democratic babies with the Iraqi and Afghan bathwater.
-- Dan Henninger, WSJ
Labels: burma, defending liberty, Hypocrisy, Iraq
[Investor's Business Daily] Is has become a familiar refrain among Democrats that the Baghdad parliament is unable to solve the country's deep-rooted ethnic-based political problems over a short period.
But someone should remind the Democrat-controlled Congress that it itself hasn't been able to address the biggest problems now facing America: It can't secure the border from terrorists, for instance. And staving off the inevitable fiscal train wreck on entitlement spending isn't even on its agenda.
Meanwhile, the legislature of the largest state in the union, California, is now in the midst of its annual paralysis, unable to approve a budget. Flawed though they may be, Baghdad's lawmakers routinely take bigger risks than either Washington's or Sacramento's.
Good point.
Labels: capitulation, Congress, Hypocrisy, Iraq
A few days ago I noted that global warming proponents are just as well-coordinated and financed as the so-called global warming "deniers." But in reality, it's quite the opposite:[MRC] But as Marc Morano, of the minority staff of the Senate's Committee on Environment and Public Works, noted: "It is the proponents of man-made global warming fears that enjoy a monumental funding advantage over the skeptics. (A whopping $50 BILLION to a paltry $19 MILLION for skeptics -- Yes, that is BILLION to MILLION.)"
The environmental Left are indeed the neo-fascists: the grand lie told often enough becomes tomorrow's conventional wisdom. I give you global warming, the grandest propaganda ever.
Labels: 24, climate, global warming, Hypocrisy
It was inevitable, the Global Scaremongering movement is going to ruin one my favorite shows - Fox's 24 - with climate change bombardment:The "24" page at Fox.com now features energy conservation tips and a public service announcement about global warming featuring Kiefer Sutherland; more information will be posted when the show airs in January. Plus, climate change will be incorporated into the series' plot (which just might scare some viewers into taking action).
"Scare" some viewers? Boy, you can say that again! These days one can't hold a debate on climate change without global warming advocates citing gloom and doom disasters and demonizing anyone who dares challenge those ridiculous and baseless predictions.
To the environmentally wacky, our enemies don't hijack jets and fly them into skyscrapers; they drive Hummers.
It is best summed up by author Mark Steyn in his book America Alone:All dominant powers are hated - Britain was, and Rome - but they're usually hated for the right reasons. America is hated for every reason. The fanatical Muslims despise America because it's all lap-dancing and gay porn; the secular Europeans despise America because it's all born-again Christians hung up on abortion; the anti-Semites despise America because it's controlled by Jews. Too Jewish, too Christian, too godless, America is George Orwell's Room 101: whatever your bugbear you will find it therein; whatever you're against, America is the prime example of it.
That's one reason why its disparagers have embraced environmentalism. If Washington were a conventional great power the intellectual class would be arguing that the United States is a threat to France or India or Gabon or some such. But because it's obviously not that kind of power the world has to concoct a thesis that the hyperpower is a threat not merely to this or that rinky-dink nation state but to the entire planet, if not the entire galaxy.
The Left's blitzkrieg on climate change isn't just misguidedly dangerous but hypocritical too.
The latest issue of Newsweek, for example, dedicates six pages to comparing "global warming deniers" to the former Tobacco lobby, calling them a "well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks and industry [that] has created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change."
Contrarian scientists! Well-coordinated! Free market! The gall of these people!
Quite telling, eh? In other words, for Newsweek and others, the biggest sin of the "global warming deniers" is that they are capitalists and don't look kindly on the usual liberal prescriptions of more government regulation and central-economy planning.
Naturally, not addressed in those six pages is that the proponents of global warming science are just as organized and well-financed as their adversaries, and that they have a far easier time getting their message to the American public than those opponents (See: 24, Jack Bauer).
The Environmental lobby is hard to pin down because it includes formal environmental groups like Sierra Club to the more indirect, soft money entities like Hollywood, George Soros, Ted Turner, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Al Gore, etc. But it's certainly not lacking spokespersons, who can without challenge go on the airwaves and breathlessly issue factless predictions to influence the American economy and the everyday life of the public. So forgive me if I can't take the complaints of a vast-right-wing-climate-denying-conspiracy seriously. Fairness doctrine indeed!
Environmentalism is just as much the billion dollar industry as any energy lobby. The fact that "nine leading corporations - including Alcoa, Caterpillar, Duke Energy, Du Pont and General Electric - called on Congress to 'enact strong national legislation' to reduce greenhouse gases" tells you they've discovered they can make money via trading carbon offsets and other such methods which foul up free market economics.
In a word: hypocrisy. Exxon's lobbying? For liberals, it's something nefarious. But Alcoa's? No problem whatsoever.
Labels: 24, climate, global warming, Hypocrisy
Mike Goldfarb notes that even CNN, the LA Times, and
Robert Novak highlighted that "Rep. John Murtha [D, PA] quietly slipped into the intelligence authorization bill two earmarks costing taxpayers $5.5 million. The beneficiary was a contractor whose headquarters is in Murtha's home town of Johnstown, Pa., and whose executives have been generous political contributors to the powerful 17-term congressman."... Five days later, in a letter to House Republican leader John Boehner, Flake revealed (without describing them) Murtha's two earmarks for the Johnstown-based Concurrent Technologies. One provides $2.5 million for the Mobile Missile Monitoring and Detection program. The other supplies $3 million for the Joint Intelligence Training & Education with Advanced Distributed Learning Technological Phase II.
Murtha's earmark requests attest (as required by the new reforms) that "neither I nor my spouse had any financial interest" in either project. What he did not attest was that officers and employees of Concurrent Technologies contributed $56,475 to Murtha from the 2000 election cycle to the present, according to Federal Election Commission reports. That includes $4,500 from the company's chief executive and president, Daniel DeVos, and $5,000 from its vice president, Emil Sarady.
In his May 15 letter to Boehner, Flake made "another appeal" for House Republicans "to take a more proactive position in opposition to earmarks." The minority leader did not respond. Instead, on May 21, Boehner wrote to Pelosi that Murtha's $23 million earmark for a National Drug Intelligence Center in Johnstown was "a questionable project" secured by "highly suspect methods." Indeed, the project was not placed on the earmark list, as required by the new rules. An effort by Republican Rep. Mike Rogers of Michigan to eliminate this project led to Murtha's notorious threats, in violation of House rules, to eliminate Rogers's own earmarks "now and forever."
In fact, Rogers, a 43-year-old former FBI agent, has 10 earmarks, costing more $45 million, to protect. Flake is a rare Republican who understands that pounding on Democrats will not cure the GOP's earmark addiction. "I am concerned," Flake wrote to Boehner, "that the only action taken regarding earmarks by Republicans thus far this year is to ask for clarification of the earmark rules, in order to ensure that we can take full advantage of earmark opportunities." Boehner, who personally does not use earmarks, told me, "I can't agree with that." But he did not respond to Flake.
Nor do Democrats show interest in curbing earmarks. Rep. Silvestre Reyes of Texas, Pelosi's handpicked intelligence committee chairman, blamed nondisclosure of earmarks on a mistake by the Government Printing Office. House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.) first skirted the new rules by claiming that no earmarks were contained in the supplemental appropriations. Last week, he decreed that henceforth, earmarks in his bills would not be revealed until a measure passes both the House and Senate. The test for Democrats is what they will do about Murtha now that it is known that he rewards contributors with federal funds.
Apparently, they can all be corrupt now.
Labels: Congress, democrats, Hypocrisy
This is just classic Clinton...The travel and consulting fees paid to [Hillary] Clinton's husband have come to light recently in a lawsuit against Vinod Gupta, a Clinton contributor and chief executive of the data company, InfoUSA Inc. (IUSA)
The lawsuit by company shareholders accuses Gupta of excessively spending millions of dollars, including $900,000 worth of travel on the Clintons.
Sen. Clinton, who complained about corporate America's largesse and skyrocketing executive pay during campaign events Wednesday, said she did not believe her message was undermined by her acceptance of the private flights. In line with Senate rules then in effect, Clinton's campaign has said she reimbursed Gupta at the cost of a first-class flight, typically a significant discount off the expense of a private jet.
"Those were the rules. You'll have to ask somebody else whether that's good policy," she said.
Ask somebody else whether it's good policy...? That's the tip of the spear, eh!? Judging right from wrong? I can't do that! I'm too busy running for president!
Frakin' hypocrites...
Labels: Clinton, Congress, democrats, Hypocrisy
Democrats coined the phrase "Culture of Corruption" prior to the 2006 elections to refer to a slew of Republicans embroiled in legal and ethical woes. Even though Democrats such as William Jefferson of Louisiana, whom the FBI caught on tape accepting an apparent bribe of $100,000 in $100 bills, were themselves as worthy of the label, it nonetheless stuck -- with thanks to a partisan media -- and brought Democrats into power. From her elitist pedestal Nancy Pelosi, now Speaker of the House, promised the American people that the era would end under Democratic leadership.
That was six months ago. This is now. Focus is tilted towards Democrats. As the light shines on their improprieties will fellow Democrats hold them accountable? Will the media?
First, Harry Reid (NV, D), the Senate majority leader:[INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY] Double Standard: It took 18 months of wasted taxpayers' dollars to clear former Senate GOP leader Bill Frist of insider-trading charges. Now let's probe Sen. Harry Reid, who made a million selling someone else's land.
... The shady improprieties of the current Senate majority leader are another story altogether. In 2004, Reid got $1.1 million — three times what he paid for it — for residential property on the outskirts of Las Vegas even though he had not owned the land for three years.
The mastermind behind Reid's sweet deal was one Jay Brown, who brags he's been Reid's friend "for over 35 years." The one-time casino lawyer's name has been connected to federal probes of organized crime and political bribery going back to the 1980s.
Brown's scheme worked this way: Reid bought the land in 1998 from a developer and beneficiary of a federal land deal Reid supported. In 2001, Reid "transferred" the land at cost to a corporate entity established by Brown, not bothering to include it on his required yearly ethics report, and misleading Congress that he still owned the property. Brown then got local authorities to rezone the land for commercial use and sold it, slipping Reid a cool million and change.
The deal allowed Reid to avoid taxes as well as public scrutiny, and was a clear violation of Senate ethics rules. No wonder Reid hung up on the Associated Press when it tried to interview him before breaking the story last year.
Reid also violated federal election law by using campaign funds to pay for more than $3,000 in Christmas bonuses to staff, and slipped an earmark into the 2005 highway bill for a bridge between Nevada and Arizona that would hike the value of 160 acres he owns nearby.
But Reid's take is small potatoes compared with the wheeling and dealing of another leading Senate Democrat, Rules Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein of California. In her six years as ranking Democrat on the Senate Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies subcommittee, she "may have directed more than $1 billion to companies controlled by her husband," according to American Conservative Union head David Keene, writing in the Hill, a Washington newspaper, on Monday.
URS and Perini Corp., under the control of Feinstein's husband, Richard Blum, apparently got more than $1.5 billion in government business largely from Feinstein's subcommittee.
"Interestingly, she left the subcommittee in late 2005 at about the same time her husband sold his stake in both companies," quips Keene. The sale appears to have increased the combined net worth of the power couple by 25%, to a total in excess of $40 million.
And here's that referenced The Hill article on Sen. Feinstein's alleged improprieties. You'll note not a peep, by the way, from Democrat-friendly media lapdogs such as the New York Times or ABC News.[The Hill] In other words, it appears Sen. Feinstein was up to her ears in the same sort of shenanigans that landed California Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R) in the slammer. Indeed, it may be that the primary difference between the two is basically that Cunningham was a minor leaguer and a lot dumber than his state's senior senator.
... It may be irrefutable, but she almost got away without anyone even knowing what she was up to. Her colleagues on the subcommittee, for example, had no reason even to suspect that she knew what companies might benefit from her decisions because that information is routinely withheld to avoid favoritism. What they didn't know was that her chief legal adviser, who also happened to be a business partner of her husband's and the vice chairman of one of the companies involved, was secretly forwarding her lists of projects and appropriation requests that were coming before the committee and in which she and her husband had an interest — information that has only come to light recently as a result of the efforts of several California investigative reporters.
This adviser insists — apparently with a straight face — that he provided the information to Feinstein's chief of staff so that she could recuse herself in cases where there might be a conflict. He says that he assumes she did so. The public record, however, indicates that she went right ahead and fought for these same projects.
During this period the two companies, URS of San Francisco and the Perini Corporation of Framingham, Mass., were controlled by Feinstein's husband, Richard C. Blum, and were awarded a combined total of over $1.5 billion in government business thanks in large measure to her subcommittee. That's a lot of money even here in Washington.
Interestingly, she left the subcommittee in late 2005 at about the same time her husband sold his stake in both companies. Their combined net worth increased that year with the sale of the two companies by some 25 percent, to more than $40 million.
In spite of the blatant appearance of corruption, no major publication has picked up on the story, the Senate Ethics Committee has reportedly let her slip by, and she is now chairing the Senate Rules Committee, which puts her in charge of making sure her colleagues act ethically and avoid the sorts of conflicts of interest with which she is personally and so obviously familiar.
Labels: corruption, democrats, Hypocrisy
If you're unfamiliar with the hack job being directed at World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz, you can catch up here. But as Bret Stephens demonstrates in his latest column, Wolfowitz's true outrage - at least for Europe - is that he was a Bush apointee. How else do you explain that the European bloc protects the vice president of the European Commission in Brussels, Günter Verheugen, even though he's actually committed acts of scandel?[Wall Street Journal] In April, Mr. Verheugen, a former German parliamentarian for the Social Democrats, appointed economist Petra Erler as his chief of staff. In August, the couple was spotted au naturel on a Baltic shore. Mr. Verheugen--who also has a wife--has dismissed allegations of impropriety as "pure slander" and asked the German newsweekly Der Spiegel whether "two adults [can't] do as they wish in their private lives?"
In fact, they can't: The EU Commission's Code of Conduct, which he helped draft, observes that "in their official and private lives Commissioners should behave in a manner that is in keeping with the dignity of their office. Ruling out all risks of a conflict of interest helps guarantee their independence."
...But aside from the facts that Mr. Wolfowitz is unmarried and prefers his clothes on, the substance of the cases could not be more different. Mr. Verheugen seems to have obscured the nature of his relationship with Ms. Erler; Mr. Wolfowitz acknowledged his relationship with Shaha Riza before he took the job as Bank president. Mr. Verheugen sought to use the power of his office to bring Ms. Erler nearer to him; Mr. Wolfowitz sought to use the power of his to move Ms. Riza away. Ms. Erler moved into a better job; Ms. Riza was forced into a lesser one. Mr. Verheugen ignored his own code of conduct; Mr. Wolfowitz followed the instructions of his ethics committee, whose chairman later praised him for acting in a "constructive spirit."
What the Wolfowitz scandal comes down to, then, is that he gave Ms. Riza a fat raise after the Bank's board agreed that she deserved compensation for losing her job.
Thus Wolfowitz's true crime? He's a conservative.
Labels: Hypocrisy, wolfowitz, world bank
Does anyone remember that in 1993 former President Bill Clinton had his attorney general, Janet Reno, fire ALL 93 US ATTORNEYS?
Apparently not on Capital Hill and certainly not amongst Bush's critics in the mainstream media. Bush and current Attorney General Alberto Gonzales fire just 8 US attorneys and some people act as though they've been caught on Dateline's To Catch A Predator. They likewise criticize the Bush team for former White House counsel Harriet Miers' suggestion that Bush fire all 93 attorneys (as Clinton did).
So how is it that Clinton actually did it and that was okay, but Bush is vilified for the mere suggestion...? The defender's logic that it's okay to fire the entire staff appointed by a former president but corrupt to fire a handful you appointed yourself is, as the French say, "Effucking stupid." Seriously, that's their defense? I know five-year-olds whose logic is more mature.
Moving along. Of course once again the Bush team's belated self-defense has been lacking at best. Add to that Gonzales' weak concession that "mistakes were made" when no mistakes were made. Weak-knees and hat in hand. Pathetic. It's crazy, but the Bush team never seems to know when it's got the full weight of the law behind them. It is, as columnist and former US attorney Andrew McCarthy said, "most revealing: about the administration’s ineptitude and Washington’s hypocrisy." You said it brother.
Better late than never, today Bush send a letter to ranking Congressional leaders stating, "These [3,000 pages of] documents do not reflect that any U.S. attorney was replaced to interfere with a pending or future criminal investigation or for any other improper reason." Bush reiterated the Constitutional fact that US attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president. In other words, he doesn't have to give a reason to fire them, like it or not.
Non-interference, of course, is far more than one could say of Clinton's 1993 firings. Not that it wasn't brilliant politics - in order for Clinton to obfuscate investigations into a slew of his Whitewater buddies and other things, including Representative Dan Rostenkowski (he later pleaded guilty to corruption charges), Clinton chose to fire all the attorneys rather than single out those charged with investigating his failings. D.C. United States Attorney Jay B. Stephens was within 30 days of making a "critical decision" on "the Rostenkowski case when Ms. Reno directed him and other United States Attorneys to submit their resignations." If memory serves there were likewise ongoing investigations into Vince Foster and the Branch Davidian fiasco that were no doubt effected by the firings.
But you know what? Like it or not Clinton was within his rights as president to fire them. And so is Bush now. Like McCarthy wrote today, "Our system is political. It is intended to be."A White House meddling with the Justice Department for political reasons? The Justice Department, including the attorney general and all 93 U.S. attorneys, are high-ranking officers in one of our two political branches. The head of that branch, the executive branch, is the president. Under our Constitution, he is vested with all of the executive power, including the police power. That power is not divided among several players; it is singularly reposed in him. The president chooses all the U.S. attorneys, and, after Senate confirmation, they, like all executive-branch officers, serve at his pleasure. He doesn’t need a reason to fire any of them — he can ax them because he thinks it’s time for a change, or because it’s Thursday and his horoscope says the stars are aligned for pink slips.
What could be more political than that? Politics is a dirty word in our lexicon, but this is politics in the classic sense of accountability to voters. As it should be."
You can read the rest yourself.
But boy are they lucky I'm not president. Because the CIA and State Department officials also serve at the pleasure of the president. I would, to borrow from JFK, "splinter them into 1,000 pieces." They've proven inept and useless as well.
(Additional: Bruce Bartlett cites many, many examples of this precedent - Democrats FDR and Harry Truman included.)
