politicalpartypoop.com

By J. Peter Pham & Michael I. Krauss - Article Link 

Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is in line to make history as the first female Speaker—and second in line of succession for the presidency—when the new Congress convenes in January. As with any election, a wide variety of issues factored into the dynamics of this year’s midterms. For us, however, the just-concluded campaign, like every federal election, was fundamentally about national security. The federal government’s principal task is providing for the defense of the nation, without which justice, welfare, and all the other blessings of liberty enjoyed inside the various states are, at best, aspirations.

With majority status in the “people’s house” comes a share in responsibility for the security of the Republic. This is why we are so concerned about a shadow which darkens presumptive Speaker Pelosi’s triumphant morning, a shadow which will only grow longer if she allows it to begin appearing prominently in the media coverage of the global war on terrorism, metastasizing into her first “intelligence failure” even before she takes the gavel from outgoing Speaker Hastert. That is the shadow of Alcee Lamar Hastings, the reelected Democratic Representative from Florida’s 23rd District.

Mr. Hastings was, in the outgoing 109th Congress, the second-ranked Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. But the Washington Post’s Charles Babington first reported more than a year ago, in a story that has never been denied (indeed, it has been confirmed in the congressman’s hometown newspaper, the Miami Herald) that Ms. Pelosi plans to replace the committee’s current ranking Democrat, California Representative Jane Harman, with Mr. Hastings who would be installed as committee chairman when the 110th Congress begins. The move would be a payback to the Congressional Black Caucus, to whose support Pelosi owes her election as Minority Leader and whose members she angered by picking Ms. Harman to be ranking member over Georgia Rep. Sanford Bishop in 2003. The incoming Speaker must also mollify the Black Caucus for having pushed Louisiana Rep. William Jefferson (he of the frozen cash) off the Ways and Means Committee.

We have difficulty accepting that Mr. Hastings has been allowed by Ms. Pelosi to venture anywhere near national security matters, much less onto a field as vital as the Intelligence Committee, which exercises oversight of organizations ranging from Central Intelligence Agency to the U.S. Marine Corps Intelligence Department, including the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency. That Mr. Hastings is employed by the United States of America, and is not a guest a federal penitentiary, is itself cause for wonder.

Mr. Hastings’s own website says this about his pre-Congressional background: “Known to many as ‘Judge,’ Congressman Hastings has distinguished himself as an attorney, civil rights activist, judge, and now Member of Congress. Appointed by President Carter in 1979, he became the first African-American Federal Judge in the state of Florida, and served in that position for ten years.”

What this autobiography omits are the reasons Hastings’ judicial tenure, normally a life appointment, was cut short after only a decade. Barely two years into office, “Judge” Hastings accepted a $150,000 bribe in exchange for giving a lenient sentence to two swindlers, then lied in subsequent sworn testimony about the incident. The case involved two brothers, Frank and Thomas Romano, who had been convicted in 1980 on 21 counts of racketeering. Together with attorney William Borders Jr., Hastings, who presided over the Romanos’ case, hatched a plot to solicit a bribe from the brothers. In exchange for a $150,000 cash payment to him, Hastings would return some $845,000 of their $1.2 million in seized assets after they served their three-year jail terms.

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 The best example of when you hear people bitching and complaining about how corrupt the members of Congress are, you know they are just blowing smoke out of their asses.
People say they want tighter controls on gubment spending, and more “fiscal responsibility” you know they are lying.
Politics are all about how much can you get for your people.
Who cares that Byrd is a senile, racist crazy old bastard, “he gets us stuff, lots of stuff.” 

Leaning on two canes, Sen. Robert C. Byrd hardly looks like a billion-dollar industry - or “Big Daddy,” as the 88-year-old Democrat calls himself.

No matter: Voters once again are looking beyond Byrd’s age to his political guile - and the truckloads of federal dollars he’s steered to West Virginia - as they consider whether to give him a record ninth term in the Senate.

“It’s not that we deserve more money than other states, but if he wasn’t there, we probably wouldn’t get as much as we should,” said Ally Hagsett, a Marshall University sophomore and Republican. “While he’s alive, we’d better get as much as we can.”

With Byrd, the getting’s often good: In the last decade alone, he’s brought home more than $2.2 billion to West Virginia. Today, it’s difficult to travel more than a few miles without coming across something plastered with his name - a building, a road, even a giant radio telescope.

This summer, the longest-serving senator in U.S. history played up that role when he dedicated the Robert C. Byrd Biotechnology Science Center at Marshall.

“I rolled up my sleeves to do the work in Congress, to secure the federal funding,” Byrd told the crowd. “Yeah, man, you’re looking at Big Daddy!”

Democrats and Republicans alike see the powerful member of the Senate Appropriations Committee as the state’s Santa Claus. And they shrug off any suggestion that Byrd’s age is a handicap: Byrd’s longevity puts him in line to become committee chairman, if Democrats win control of the Senate.

“It’s like he’s been in there 100 years, but that’s all right by me. (more…)

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By Joseph Farah - 2006 WorldNetDaily.com

WASHINGTON – The master plan for merging the U.S., Mexico and Canada is being devised in American University’s Center for North American Studies whose faculty is subsidized by the U.S. State Department through the Fulbright Program.

For example, joining the center this fall as a visiting chairman in North American studies is Canadian Donald Avery, professor emeritus in the history department at the University of Western Ontario. He arrives at American University through the Fulbright Program, funded through the U.S. State Department.

The university’s Center for North American Studies is headed by Robert A. Pastor, the architect of a plan for a North American Union modeled after the European Union – complete with its own currency, the Amero, replacing the dollar.

“The Center for North American Studies (CNAS) at American University aims to educate a new generation of students to begin a North American journey comparable to that begun in Europe five decades ago,” explains the center’s website. “The center examines the differences and shared characteristics of Canada, Mexico and the United States; compares the North American experiment with Europe’s; and challenges students and faculty to imagine a continental future.”  - READ THE REST HERE

From World News Daily 

Most types of congressional pork merely transfer money from the taxpayers to some favored constituency. Other types of pork are more nefarious: They also trample on individuals’ property rights. Regrettably, Sen. George Allen’s (R.-Va.) “Journey Through Hallowed Ground National Heritage Area Act,” which is co-sponsored in the House by Rep. Frank Wolf (R.-Va.), is an example of the latter.

The Allen-Wolf initiative seems harmless at first glance, save for the wasteful spending. It appears to only divert federal dollars to a local special-interest group for the stated purpose of promoting heritage tourism, thereby allowing politicians like Allen and Wolf to boast about the project in their stump speeches.

If only it were that simple.

For those who may be unfamilar with them, national heritage areas are federally-designated, heavily-regulated land areas over which special interest groups and federal employees are given special powers and federal resources to help them steer land-use decisions. Property rights frequently are curtailed.

Allen’s bill, which would create a new national heritage area covering large parts of Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia, would create a “management entity” for the region comprised of federal employees and preservationist interest groups—many of the latter having a history of anti-property rights agendas. This new management entity would be required to create an “inventory” of all property to be “preserved,” “managed,” or “acquired.” The new management entity would be granted the authority to disburse federal funds to encourage restrictions on local land use and the acquisition of private property.

Citizens of Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania might look to property owners caught within the boundaries of the Yuma Crossing National Heritage Area in Arizona to catch a glimpse of their possible future. A report about the Yuma Heritage area from the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Resources states:

“When the Yuma Crossing Heritage Area was authorized in 2000, the public in Yuma County did not understand the scope of the project and was surprised by the size of the designation… Concerns were raised by citizens about the size of the designation and the potential for additional Federal oversight. The fear of adverse impacts on private property rights were realized when local government agencies began to use the immense heritage area boundary to determine zoning restrictions.”

Considering some of the groups that would round out Sen. Allen’s management entity, property owners caught within the boundaries of “Hallowed Ground” could fare much worse that those in Yuma. One of the groups pushing for the Allen bill is the National Trust for Historic Preservation, whose senior vice-president, Peter Brink, currently serves as vice-chairman of the Journey Through Hallowed Ground Partnership. The Partnership would join the federal government in managing the Heritage Area, should Allen’s bill become law. The National Trust is an organization with a clear record of hostility toward property rights. For example, last year a Louisa, Va., man who wanted to renovate his home ran into opposition from the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Emily Wadhams, a National Trust vice president, argued against the rights of the homeowner in a hearing on Capitol Hill, declaring, “[P]rivate property rights have never been allowed to take precedence over our shared national values and the preservation of our country’s heritage.”

It is curious that an organization claiming to be a guardian of history would so casually revise it.

The National Trust also has worked to defeat state ballot initiatives designed to restore the private property rights of landowners. Recently in Oregon, the National Trust and various environmental groups fought passage of a measure that would fairly compensate property owners when government takes their property rights and devalues their land. In 1995, the group helped bankroll the opposition to a similar property rights referendum in the state of Washington.

Last year’s unpopular U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Kelo v. New London sparked a national outcry for stronger protections for property owners—not for more legislation that further tramples property rights. The uproar over the “bridge to nowhere” shows that many taxpayers are fed up about funding pork. Unfortunately for property owners within the proposed Hallowed Ground Heritage Area, some members of Congress still have not gotten the message.

Sen. Allen has always been quick to invoke the names of Thomas Jefferson and Ronald Reagan when describing his political philosophy. Yet Jeffersonian principles and Reagan-era conservatism do not allow for federal boondoggles like his National Heritage Area.

When I first heard about Spike Lee’s documentary on the Katrina disaster, I expected it to be this anti-Bush bashing Michael Moore esk propaganda attack flick blaming whitey, I’ll admit, it was none of that.
The good thing was that Lee was virtually invisible throughout the program because the pictures and the testimonials is all that was needed to tell the story.
No fancy graphics, no music, no parade of leftist pretending to give a shit about black folks. His 100 interviews of subjects exploring the tragedy of the event was honest and rivetingly.
Make no mistake, what happened was off the charts fucked up for a number of reasons.
This disaster illustrated the colossal failures of big government and more than adequately displayed why big government is almost always doomed to failure.
This is a program everyone must see, there are some powerful images, but what I came away with was just how broken black America has become.
As sad as the images were I could not help to feel angry at how black America was portrayed.
Black folks were portrayed as weak, inferior, helpless and ignorant. This was not about strong, proud resilient folks, the type of individual traits that were from generations past.
All of the struggles suffered by Black Americans through slavery, segregation and constant and consistent racism many in this documentary kept asking the question, “where was OUR government.” I’m thinking you people already thought the government was racist and corrupt, what made them think they would be coming to their rescue?
More than that, black folks from around the country watched as events unfolded, I’m thinking during this documentary, where were these peoples families, their friends, their churches.
If we are going to look at this documentary as an indictment on America we as black folks sure as hell should be looking in the mirror.
Forget the government for a moment, I concede they screwed up, I’ll even take Nigga Nagin off the hook for his utter stupidity and lack of leadership, and I’ll take idiot Governor Blanco off the hook.
But back in the day, when black folks got in trouble, black folks rallied on their own to help their own.
Lets put the spotlight on just where the aid did not come from and why NOLA still looks like shit today despite more than $100 billion in aid sent to the area.
Who are some of our wealthiest athletes and some yearly earnings, keep in mind this is a little dated: Tiger Woods $76,673,413,  Shaquille O’Neal, $40,517,858, LeBron James  $39,018,920, Kevin Garnett, $36,000,000, Kobe Bryant Basketball L.A. Lakers $25,498,000.
What about some net worth for some hip hop artists and entertainers P. Diddy $346 Million, Jay-Z $340 Million, Russell Simmons $325 Million, Dr. Dre $150 Million
Ice Cube $145 Million, 50 Cent $100 Million, Nelly $60 Million.  
What about some wealthy black Women: Sheila Crump Johnson 1.5 Billion BET; Doris Fisher $1.4 billion Gap Inc.; Marian Illitch $1.3 billion Lil Caesar’s Pizza Inc.; Oprah Winfrey $1.0 billion Harpo Productions Inc.; Meg Whitman $800 million E-Bay Inc.; Marcey Carsey $610 million Carsey-Werner Marion Sandler and $550 million Golden West Financial.

There are thousands of people not on this listing of course. Not to mention the absence of groups like the NEW Black Panthers, The Urban League, NAACP, the Christian Leadership Conference, the members of the Congressional Black Caucus, all of the black newspapers, Magazines, media stars and headliners.  

My point is all of the people that want to point the finger at whitey for screwing those poor black folks stood around and let them do it. Well to do black folks could have come together and helped the situation before and after.
Some rich nigga could have sent a plane down there to get those people out. Shit they have no problem flying their entourages around on gambling, shopping and hoe fest parties.
You mean not one rich nigga who either lived, was from, or had ties to NOLA could not shell out some dollars to provide vehicles and busses to get those people out.
All of these black churches around the nation nobody was willing to step up to the plate and say “what do you need mayor”. Remember THEY HAD MORE THAN A WEEK TO PREPARE!    
If any of you, watched the events of Katrina unfold and stared at the pictures and sat on your ass and kept yelling at the TV saying “where is the government”, well you obviously wanted someone else to take responsibility for those poor souls.
Liberal Democrats following the disaster cried racism, but nobody has been down there to see the progress or lack thereof since.
How come Hilliary, Kennedy, Jessie, Sharpton, Dean or any other Democrat have not been making regular trips to right the wrongs of the evil racist Republicans.
Former Presidents Bush 41 and Clinton did not immediately have some crusade for the victims, but then why should they, those are white guys, why would they give a fuck about some poor ignorant black folks.
But even more than that, the one dude who was interviewed who had to leave the body of his dead mother behind, where the fuck was his family?
If my mother lived in NOLA and I had MORE THAN A WEEKS NOTICE that a hurricane was coming, I’m down there getting my family and friends the fuck out of there.
When hurricane Ivan was coming towards Alabama, my brother flew from California and I drove from Kansas, secured the house, gathered their important papers, box some other items of importance, got my mother and grandmother to a shelter, the local church was prepared with a weeks worth of food and supplies, while my brother and I took watch at the house.
Where were the churches, any damm denomination, to come to the aid of those people?
Those people were not just let down by the government and whitey, they were fucked by a selfish society and selfish negros, and when your guilt got to you, folks started pointing fingers at the easiest scapegoat, the president and the government.
The other weakness of the documentary was not explaining that there was an evacuation plan, that hundreds of BILLIONS of dollars were sent to Louisiana over the years and those levees looked like they were constructed by some third world nation.
What the fuck did Louisiana do with OUR money?
All of the elected officials who have served in NOLA and the state of Louisiana over the past 35-40 years, (many of them black, including the crook congressman William “ice box” Jefferson knew of the pending doom and knew that the federal monies dedicated to the wetlands and the levee systems were being diverted to other uses, that is the tragedy. Niggas and rednecks were both complicit in the deception and corruption.
So while you might shed tears at the horrors depicted in Spike’s documentary, remember every damm body failed those people. And in true American style some people (black and white) will profit on the suffering of others.
Spike says someone should go to jail, shit, we don’t have enough jail space for all the folks who are guilty of wrongdoing. The politicians, the media, the families, city, county, state and federal governments, but neglectful families, friends, churches and the niggas with the dollars that could have come to the aid of those people.
But in today’s world it’s every nigga for themselves, just blame whitey. “I’ve gots to get my hair did.”  Niggas on rooftops can wait.

WATCH VIDEO - Porkbusters

CHECK OUT THE WEBSITE.. PASS IT ON! 

From Examiner.com -  Is Congress spending your money in secret?

Congress is considering a bill — the Labor, Health and Human Services appropriations measure — that presently contains 1,867 earmarks worth more than a half-billion tax dollars and averaging nearly $268,000 each. Many are for things that sound like worthy causes such as “hospital facilities and equipment,” yet none of the sponsoring congressmen put their names on their earmarks.

That’s why The Examiner newspapers have joined with the Sunlight Foundation, Porkbusters.org, and Citizens Against Government Waste in posting the database of earmarks in the Labor-HHS appropriations and inviting readers to help identify the congressmen behind each earmark. Organizations like The Heritage Foundation, National Taxpayers Union and Club for Growth blog are linking to the database. The database was obtained from a congressional source and has been checked and double-checked. Congress may still modify the bill, approve it as is or reject it.

Check out the earmarks for your state and then call your congressman and ask if he or she sponsored any of your state’s earmarks. If the answer is yes, ask why the congressman’s name isn’t on the earmark. If you recognize the institution designated to receive the earmarked tax dollars, call them and ask them what they intend to do with your money.

Then email us at info@examiner.com with the subject line “Earmarks” and tell us what you found out. The Examiner will be asking more questions about who got the earmarks and why, so your information could be very important. You will be part of an army of citizen journalists determined to shine some much-needed light on spending decisions made behind closed doors by powerful Members of Congress.

Not sure who is your congressman? Go to this web site: http://www.house.gov/writerep/