2,000 House Staffers Make Six Figures

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0310/35050.html

Nearly 2,000 House of Representative staffers pulled down six-figure salaries in 2009, including 43 staffers who earned the maximum $172,500 — or more than three times the median U.S. household income.

The 43 staffers who maxed out at $172,500 — the salary cap for leadership and committee staffers — include John Lawrence, chief of staff to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi; Paula Nowakowski, the late chief of staff to House Minority Leader John Boehner; and House Parliamentarian John Sullivan. They earned only slightly less than rank-and-file members of Congress, who make $174,000.

State Department Admits No-Bid Contract 'Violates' Obama Campaign Pledges

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/01/31/state-department-admits-bid-contract-violates-obama-campaign-pledges/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+foxnews%2Flatest+%28Text+-+Latest+Headlines%29

The recent awarding of a lucrative federal contract to a company owned by a financial contributor to the Obama presidential campaign -- without competitive bidding -- "violated" President Obama's many campaign pledges to crack down on the practice, a top State Department official told Fox News.

The contract in question, worth more than $24.6 million, was awarded on Jan. 4 by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to Checchi and Company Consulting, a Washington, D.C.-based firm owned by economist and Democratic Party donor Vincent Checchi. The deal called for Checchi's firm to train lawyers and judges in Afghanistan and thereby strengthen the "rule of law" in the war-torn country.

Crowley confirmed that the contract has been "terminated" because the circumstances under which it was awarded “violated the Competition in Contracting Act." Crowley said the contract was actually a renewal of a $44 million contract first awarded to Checchi and Company in October 2004 by the Bush administration -- after a competitive bidding process -- and will now be put out for competitive bids.

Michelle Obama: Snakeskin and Skin in the Game

http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/01/michelle_obama_snakeskin_and_s.html

Michelle's statement about measuring character on what is done, rather than what is said, presents a moral dilemma for the First Lady and President Obama, both of whom never come close to exemplifying the injunctions both freely impose on everyone else.

Nevertheless, Michelle can't very well censure Barack for what she is also guilty of doing. Prior to Obama being elected, Michelle militantly spoke the words, "Barack will require [emphasis mine] his flock to work." Once in the White House, the First Lady, having no official duties per se, hired a staff of 22 assistants with combined salaries totaling $1.5 million per year to assist her every whim. Michelle's words portended imposed toil on the "flock" while harboring full intent to partake of a sumptuous, power-pampered lifestyle -- regardless of whether the rest of the nation wallowed endlessly in the throes of a Great Recession.
Michelle also said, "Barack will demand [emphasis mine] that America sheds its cynicism." Then, while volunteering at a Washington, D.C. food bank, the First Lady fed the impoverished while shod in $540 Lanvin sneakers. Over the past year, through repeated thoughtless actions, Michelle Obama has contributed greatly to Americans' pervasive distrust of each others' professed integrity and motives.

The First Lady also forewarned, "Barack will demand [emphasis mine] ... that America move out of its comfort zone." Yet if Mrs. Obama expresses a hankering for organic kale, then Washington, D.C. promptly shuts down. Three dozen vehicles set to work, police and Secret Service sweep the area, dogs sniff for bombs, barricades are erected, and fruit stands are staked out with magnetometers and rooftop binoculars. Only then, in an armored limo, can Michelle be ferried to the organic food stand to be welcomed with flower leis and cowbells by extremely uncomfortable people cordoned safely off to the side -- far from their comfort zone.

In the UCLA speech, Michelle uttered rousing words of freedom from oppression and overbearing control, claiming firsthand knowledge of the fact that Americans "are sick and tired of other people telling them how their lives will be." In spite of that, the First Lady heartily approves of dictatorial, liberty-curtailing decrees, enforced governmental management, and a presidential agenda poised to significantly impact everybody's life but her own.

The most poignant Michelle Obama declaration was this: "Barack will never allow [emphasis mine] you to go back to your lives as usual." One year later, after thousands of hours of empty, hypocritical rhetoric, Barack's "requiring," "demanding," and "never allowing" actually appear to be words he plans to back up with action. To do so, he needs Harry Reid, which is probably why the First Lady held her nose and said she absolved the contrite senator.

However, if the past is any indication of the future, then Michelle, like Barack, is first and foremost concerned with personal political expediency, power, and prestige. With that in mind, although the First Lady graciously extended public exoneration toward Harry Reid, in reality, it's highly unlikely that she ever really intended to do what was said.

C-SPAN CEO: White House Has Allowed Only ‘One Hour’ of Health Care Coverage

http://www.breitbart.tv/c-span-ceo-white-house-has-allowed-only-one-hour-of-health-care-coverage/

Bankers Get $4 Trillion Gift From Barney Frank

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=a48c8UpUMxKQ

The baby of Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, the House bill is meant to address everything from too-big-to-fail banks to asleep-at-the-switch credit-ratings companies to the protection of consumers from greedy lenders.

It authorizes Federal Reserve banks to provide as much as $4 trillion in emergency funding the next time Wall Street crashes. So much for “no-more-bailouts” talk. That is more than twice what the Fed pumped into markets this time around. The size of the fund makes the bribes in the Senate’s health-care bill look minuscule.

The legislation does create a council of regulators to spot risks to the financial system and big financial firms. Unfortunately this group is made up of folks who missed the problems that led to the current crisis.

The bill also allows regulators to “prohibit any incentive-based payment arrangement.” In other words, banker bonuses are still in play. Maybe Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc. shouldn’t have rushed to pay back Troubled Asset Relief Program funds.

Broken Vows of Government Representatives

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/12/tiger_and_the_political_cheeta.html

Unlike Woods, some prominent politicians who've violated their marriage vows have refused to relinquish their office after being exposed, treating it as a personal entitlement rather than a privilege. Unlike Washington, they imagine that their private immorality has no impact on national morality and the integrity of their constitutional oath.

Maybe it's time to ask candidates for public office if they promise to resign immediately if they breach their marriage vows. If a politician's spouse can't trust him or her to forsake all others, how can we trust their vow to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic," to "bear true faith and allegiance to the same," and "well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office"?

All that is at stake is our life, liberty, and property.

Federal Employees Owe Uncle Sam $3B in Unpaid Taxes

http://www.wtop.com/?nid=428&sid=1838232

At a time when the White House is projecting the largest deficit in the nation's history, Uncle Sam is trying to recover billions of dollars in unpaid taxes from its own employees.

Federal workers owe more than $3 billion in income taxes they failed to pay in 2008. According to Internal Revenue Service documents, 276,300 federal employees and retirees owe $3,042,200,000.

The IRS tracks the voluntary compliance rate of federal employees and retirees each year, and each year feds come up short. The one bright spot in this year's report is that after several years of a steady increase, the amount owed by feds is down from the previous year.

Federal employees and retirees owed $3,586,784,725 in unpaid income taxes in 2007.
The documents show delinquent employees from nearly every federal agency with more than 25 employees

D.C. Hands out $15M in Bonuses Despite Recession, Budget Gaps

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/local/D_C_-hands-out-_15M-in-bonuses-despite-recession_-budget-gaps-8651125-79169767.html

City officials have doled out nearly $15 million in bonuses and awards since Mayor Adrian Fenty took office in January 2007, records obtained by The Examiner under the Freedom of Information Act show.

Among the big winners were Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee, who was handed $41,250 in August 2007 after barely two months on the job; Department of Health Director Pierre Vigilance, who was given $15,000 in 2008; and city property manager Robin-Eve Jasper, handed $18,000 over two years.

The bonuses were ladled out even as the city was facing nine-figure budget shortfalls and officials -- including Rhee -- were firing employees by the busload, claiming they could no longer afford them.

It paid to be on Rhee's good side. School employees, including Rhee's top staff, accounted for nearly half of the Fenty-era bonuses, records show. Then-special education "czar" Phyllis Harris was paid $17,000 in 2008; special-ed bureaucrat Karen Griffin was given $25,000 the same year; and Rhee's chief of staff, Lisa Ruda, was given $17,000 in 2008, records show.

Under Rhee, standardized test scores in the public schools have made marginal improvements. Fourth-graders' test result are now only the fourth-worst in the nation; eighth-graders' are only the second-worst.

Worried by possible bad publicity for doling out cash during a recession, the city council voted to ban the practice as of Oct. 1, 2009. That hasn't stopped the gravy train from rolling: Records show hundreds of employees have been paid more than $565,000 in bonuses since October.

Report: 237 Millionaires in Congress

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1109/29235.html

As Washington reels from the news of 10.2 percent unemployment, the Center for Responsive Politics is out with a new report describing the wealth of members of Congress.

Among the highlights: Two-hundred-and-thirty-seven members of Congress are millionaires. That’s 44 percent of the body – compared to about 1 percent of Americans overall.

Charlie Rangle's Tax Issues

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203706604574376720192072820.html

Earlier this month the Chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee "amended" his 2007 financial disclosure form—to the tune of more than a half-million dollars in previously unreported assets and income. That number may be as high as $780,000, because Congress's ethics rules only require the Members to report their finances within broad ranges. This voyage of personal financial discovery brings Mr. Rangel's net worth for 2007 to somewhere between $1.028 million and $2.495 million, while his previous statement came in at $516,015 and $1.316 million.

When you're a powerful Congressman and working diligently to increase tax rates to pay for President Obama's health-care plan, we suppose it's easy to lose track of one of your checking accounts. That would be the one at the federal credit union with a balance somewhere between $250,001 and maybe as high as $500,000. And when you're crunched for time and pulling together bills to pass in a rush, we guess, too, that you might overlook several other investment accounts, even if some of them are sizable, such as the ones Mr. Rangel missed at JP Morgan, Merrill Lynch, Oppenheimer and BlackRock.

And now introducing, the guy who writes the tax code! What if you or I did this? I doubt we would be let off so easily.

"I’m a Fan of Disruptors"

http://www.breitbart.tv/06-flashback-pelosi-tells-anti-war-protesters-im-a-fan-of-disruptors/

"So I thank all of you who have spoken out for your courage, your point of view. All of it. Your advocacy is very American and very important."

"I'm a fan of disruptors."

But a few years later when on the other side of a debate...

"An ugly campaign is underway not merely to misrepresent the health insurance reform legislation, but to disrupt...civil dialogue. These disruption are occurring because opponents are afraid not just of differing views, but of the facts themselves. Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American."

Charlie Rangel’s Unpaid Taxes

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203946904574300013592601036.html

"Chairman Charlie Rangel, who is leading the charge for a new 5.4-percentage point income tax surcharge and recently called it 'the moral thing to do.'"

So is it the moral thing to do to pay one's own taxes?

"Mr. Rangel soon admitted having failed to report rental income of $75,000 over the years. First he blamed his wife for the oversight because he said she was supposed to be managing the property. Then he blamed the language barrier. 'Every time I thought I was getting somewhere, they’d start speaking Spanish,' Mr. Rangel explained."

But he promised to pay them so all is well and good right?

"Mr. Rangel promised last fall to amend his tax returns, pay what is due and correct the information on his annual financial disclosure form. But the deadline for the 2008 filing was May 15 and as of last week he still had not filed."

Well that was just a one time thing due to the language barrier right?

"The House Ethics Committee is investigating Mr. Rangel on no fewer than six separate issues."

"The Committee of Ways and Means is the chief tax-writing committee of the United States House of Representatives" Source

And this guy is the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee?

Obama Didn't Like Bush Rushing Through Legislation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOnYnIDX0Eg

hy·poc·ri·sy
Pronunciation:\hi-ˈpä-krə-sē also hī-\
Function:noun

1. "When you rush these budgets that are a foot high and nobody has any idea what's in them and nobody has read them...It gets rushed through without any clear deliberations or debate then these kind of things happen."

GOP Cross-Overs Have Earmarks to Gain in $410 Billion Spending Bill

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/03/10/gop-cross-overs-earmarks-gain-billion-spending/

Slightly dated, but I wanted to have it archived here

This is why no one likes politics. Both parties scream at each other, but in the end they do the same thing. It's like earmarks are only bad when they aren't yours...text-book definition of a hypocrite.