Offshore Wind: The Enormously Expensive Energy Alternative

Reblogged from Watts Up With That?:

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By Steve Goreham

Originally published by The Washington Times

The US Department of the Interior announced the first offshore wind energy lease sale earlier this month. Interior plans a July auction of 164,750 acres off the southern coasts of Rhode Island and Massachusetts for commercial wind farms. But why are federal and state governments promoting expensive offshore wind energy?

The auction is a continuation of the “Smart from the Start” …

Read more… 780 more words

See, wasting money on a project that has no chance of living up to expectations (or hype) is okay, so long as it gives one that warm, fuzzy feeling of doing something for the Earth -- or you're the guys collecting the taxpayer subsidies that these idiocies need to survive. Argh.

Well, gosh. Look at that. Fully 20% of the Ohio voter roll is bull….something

“I get to vote twice? Gee, thanks, pal!”

We all remember how close Ohio was in 2004, when Bush squeaked it out against Kerry, right? (1) And Obama’s 2012 Ohio margin against Romney? A scant three-percent. And now comes news that over a fifth of the Ohio voter roll is inaccurate.

Hello, Columbus? We have a problem:

More than one out of every five registered Ohio voters is probably ineligible to vote.

In two counties, the number of registered voters actually exceeds the voting-age population: Northwestern Ohio’s Wood County shows 109 registered voters for every 100 eligible, while in Lawrence County along the Ohio River it’s a mere 104 registered per 100 eligible.

Another 31 counties show registrations at more than 90 percent of those eligible, a rate regarded as unrealistic by most voting experts. The national average is a little more than 70 percent.

Keeping those voter rolls clean is the duty of the state’s secretary of state, something each state is obligated to do under the 1993 Motor Voter Act. Ohio Secretary of State Husted wanted to do exactly that, but he recognized it was a big, complicated project and he’d need some help, so he turned to the federal Department of Justice. The same DoJ run by Eric Holder.

You can see where this is going, can’t you?

In a Feb. 10 letter, he asked U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder for a personal meeting to discuss how to balance seemingly conflicting federal laws so he could pare Ohio’s dirty voter list without removing truly eligible voters.

“Common sense says that the odds of voter fraud increase the longer these ineligible voters are allowed to populate our rolls,” Husted said. “I simply cannot accept that.”

Holder’s office has never replied.

When contacted last week by The Dispatch about Husted’s letter, a U.S. Department of Justice spokesman who did not wish to be identified by name said, “The department declines comment.”

Maybe they were too busy trying to figure out what is was Holder was supposed to not remember about seizing journalists’ email and phone records.

But, lest you think this is some one-off thing limited to Ohio, J. Christian Adams, who worked in the DoJ’s Voting Section, revealed three years ago how the Obama-Holder Justice Department had no intention of enforcing Section 7 of Motor-Voter:

In November 2009, the entire Voting Section was invited to a meeting with Deputy Assistant Attorney General Julie Fernandes, a political employee serving at the pleasure of the attorney general. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss Motor Voter enforcement decisions.

The room was packed with dozens of Voting Section employees when she made her announcement regarding the provisions related to voter list integrity:

“We have no interest in enforcing this provision of the law. It has nothing to do with increasing turnout, and we are just not going to do it.”

Jaws dropped around the room.

In other words, the DoJ that worked for Barack Obama, who would be seeking reelection in three years, was just fine with inaccurate voter rolls stuffed to the gills with dead or otherwise ineligible voters.

Twenty percent in Ohio, a state Obama won by just three percent. Well within the “margin of fraud.”

Makes one wonder who was supposed to be part of that “increased turnout,” doesn’t it?

To quote a certain savior-president, let me be clear: I don’t believe Obama won the election through fraud. The real problem was a lousy Romney campaign, including a terrible voter turnout effort that saw 4.7 million White voters stay home; if they show up, Romney likely wins. (Though one now does have to wonder how much of a role the IRS played in hampering independent turnout efforts by tying up conservative groups’ 501(c) applications.)

But massively inaccurate voter rolls are still a major problem. While stealing an election at the national level would be darned hard to pull off (though they do try), defective voter rolls like Ohio’s make corruption on down-ticket, more local races a lot easier. This was the kind of thing ACORN thrived on.

More fundamentally, it strikes at the very heart of our democratic system by calling into question the integrity of our elections. If the voter rolls are so bad that we can’t be sure who’s voting (and how often), and with a Justice Department positively scornful of enforcing the relevant law, then how can any American have any faith in the legitimacy of their government at any level?

I take it back. It’s not just Columbus that has a problem.

via the PJM Tatler

Footnote:
(1) I don’t know about you, but, for the record, I was alternating between biting my nails to the quick and the Jack Daniels’ bottle that night.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Shocking? Insider trading on #Obamacare, facilitated by the White House?

I use the question mark because, at this point, after stomping on freedom of speech in the IRS scandal and the utter cynicism behind the Benghazi cover-up, I’m not so sure I’d really be shocked by plain-old cronyism. In fact, a little workaday graft might be refreshing.

Time to call the SEC?

Wall Street investors hungry for advance information on upcoming federal health-care decisions repeatedly held private discussions with Obama administration officials, including a top White House adviser helping to implement the Affordable Care Act.

The private conversations show that the increasingly urgent race to acquire“political intelligence” goes beyond the communications with congressional staffers that have become the focus of heightened scrutiny in recent weeks.

White House records show that Elizabeth Fowler, then a top ­health-policy adviser to President Obama, met with executives from half a dozen investment firms in 2011 and 2012. Among them was Kris Jenner, a stock picker with T. Rowe Price Investment Services who managed its $6 billion Health Sciences Fund.

Separately, an officialin the agency that oversees Medicare and Medicaid spoke in December with managers of hedge funds, pension plans and mutual funds in a conference call. The official, Andrew Shin, was pressed during the 50-minute call for information about upcoming Medicare decisions but declined to discuss matters still under agency review, according to people familiar with the call.

That call and the White House meetings Fowler attended were arranged by political-intelligence firms, an expanding class of consultants in Washington that specialize in providing government information to Wall Street.

But they deny anything hinky or downright corrupt went on. So there. That’s settled. And, besides, they don’t remember.

But didn’t Obama say something about “punishing our enemies and rewarding our friends?”

Sounds like this might be “part B.”  

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Did Eric Holder lie to Congress, a judge, or both?

“Caught in his lies”

I’ve been saying for years that Eric Holder is the worst, most dangerous Attorney General since A. Mitchell Palmer and that he should be removed from office. The list of his offenses against the law and the Constitution over the years reads like an honor roll of shame: the New Black Panther voter intimidation case; the failure to protect the voting rights of Whites in Noxubee county, Mississippi; an overall racialist agenda that sees American civil rights law as a means of “payback,” not an instrument of equal justice for all; Operation Fast and Furious, a gun-running operation run by the DoJ and ATF that resulted in roughly 300 Mexicans dead and at least one US federal agent; the seizure of phone records from the AP that seems to have been nothing more than an act of petulance; tracking reporter James Rosen’s movements and emails in what looks like an effort to criminalize journalism; and… and… Help me out here, folks, I’m sure I’m missing something.

And for all that, Eric Holder has escaped anything worse than the contempt of those who have been paying attention and have a sense of decency and respect for our laws and traditions. He hasn’t resigned, the president hasn’t fired him (presumably because he agrees, let’s be frank), and he’s been able to skate by claiming he didn’t know what was going on, he never read the memos, he recused himself, no one told him, and so on and so forth to the point one wonders what does he do in his office, besides spinning in his chair. But now I can claim vindication.

He’s told a lie too many and finally tripped over one.

In the Rosen case mentioned above, NBC reports that Holder personally signed off on the warrant that gave investigators access to Rosen’s emails:

Attorney General Eric Holder signed off on a controversial search warrant that identified Fox News reporter James Rosen as a “possible co-conspirator” in violations of the Espionage Act and authorized seizure of his private emails, a law enforcement official told NBC News on Thursday.

(…)

Rosen, who has not been charged in the case, was nonetheless the target of a search warrant that enabled Justice Department investigators to secretly seize his private emails after an FBI agent said he had “asked, solicited and encouraged … (a source) to disclose sensitive United States internal documents and intelligence information.”

But, not a week ago, Holder said in sworn testimony before the House Judiciary Committee:

In regard to potential prosecution of the press for the disclosure of material. This is not something I’ve ever been involved in, heard of, or would think would be wise policy.

Holder signed off on that warrant in 2010. It strains credulity, to say the least, that he wouldn’t remember that and could say with a straight face that this was something he’d “never heard of.” So there we have a very strong indication of perjury before Congress.

And he may have lied before a judge, too, observes Jennifer Rubin in the Washington Post:

He is also in potential trouble himself, which necessitates an investigation (obviously not by Justice) beyond his departure. His behavior in the James Rosen and Associated Press matters raise serious questions.

First, the affidavit (paragraph 45) asserts that DOJ exhausted all means available to get the material from Rosen’s e-mails and phone, and “because of [Rosen's] own potential criminal liability in this matter,” asking for the documents voluntarily would compromise the integrity of the investigation. Moreover, the affidavit asserts that the “targets” of the investigation (including Rosen) were a risk to “mask their identity and activity, flee or otherwise obstruct this investigation.” It is highly questionable whether Holder believed any of that to be true. (Really, he imagined a Fox News reporter would flee the country? He thought Rosen would don a disguise?) Was the affidavit a sort of ruse to get Rosen’s records (or later to pressure his cooperation)? Did Holder intentionally mislead a judge when he signed off on the affidavit? That is worth exploring.

Of course, to answer the question in the subject, it’s quite possible he did both.

Lots of sites Right and Left are calling for Holder to resign or be fired — even the Huffington Post! But, you know what? I don’t want either, though I think one or the other is just a few days away, at most.

No, I want Holder and his boss to tough it out; they’re friends, after all and, Lord knows, Obama has stuck with him long past the point most presidents would have stuck with a troubled cabinet member. Such loyalty is to be admired, even among crooks.

Besides, it will give me what I really want: the impeachment and trial of Eric Holder. Ladies and Gentlemen (and Occupiers), I give you Article II, Section 4 of the United States Constitution:

The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

Emphasis added. Hello, Mr. Attorney General!

The House clearly has the grounds to begin hearings on impeachment, both for lying to Congress and possibly to a judge. And I think, in this case, even a heavily Democratic Senate would be forced to convict: few senators would want to be seen backing an obvious perjurer and none of them, I’m willing to bet, want to endorse the man behind the AP and Rosen warrants and then have to face the press. Not with an election year coming up. No, I’m thinking you could find 67 votes for removal.

What a way to cap off a career; first cabinet officer impeached, convicted, and removed from office. (1)

And Eric Holder richly deserves it.

Footnote:
(1) Grant’s Secretary of War, William Belknap, was impeached, but he resigned and was never convicted.

RELATED: More at Hot Air, still more Hot Air, Matt Vespa, The Right Sphere, and Gateway Pundit.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

#IRS scandal: Officials in Washington, California targeted Tea Party groups

Hey, remember when IRS official Lois Lerner said that only a wayward local office in Cincinnati was improperly investigating conservative groups?

Yeah, well… about that:

Internal Revenue Service officials in Washington and at least two other offices were involved in the targeting of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, making clear the effort reached well beyond the branch in Cincinnati that was initially blamed, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.

IRS officials at the agency’s Washington headquarters sent queries to conservative groups asking about their donors and other aspects of their operations, while officials in the El Monte and Laguna Niguel offices in California sent similar questionnaires to tea party-affiliated groups.

IRS employees in Cincinnati also told conservatives seeking the status of “social welfare” groups that a task force in Washington was overseeing their applications, according to interviews with the activists.

Lois G. Lerner, who oversees tax-exempt groups for the IRS, told reporters on Friday the “absolutely inappropriate” actions were undertaken by “front-line people” working in Cincinnati to target groups with “tea party,” “patriot” or “9/12” in their names.

In one instance, however, Ron Bell, an IRS employee, informed an attorney representing a conservative group focused on voter fraud that the application was under review in Washington. On several other occasions, IRS officials in D.C. and California sent detailed questionaires to conservative groups asking more than a dozen questions about their voter outreach and other activities, according to the documents.

“For the IRS to say it was some low-level group in Cincinnati is simply false,” said Cleta Mitchell, a partner in the law firm Foley & Lardner LLP who sought to communicate with IRS headquarters about the delay in granting tax-exempt status to True the Vote.

“True the Vote” is an organization dedicated to election integrity and fight vote fraud. What a shock it was hassled during… an election year.

So, we’ve gone from “front-line people” to the agency’s General Counsel, one step below the Commissioner, who, um… testified there was no such thing going on.

Except there was, and it wasn’t just local and it wasn’t just “front-line people.”

Between this, Benghazi, the DoJ-AP scandal, and the budding Sebelius/HHS solicitations scandal, this week has already turned bad for Team Hopenchange.

Can’t wait to see what comes out between now and Friday. 

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Shocker: Lying weasel Jay Carney caught lying like a weasel about #Benghazi

US Consulate, Benghazi

And I think the shocking thing is that it’s the MSM exposing him (emphases added):

When it became clear last fall that the CIA’s now discredited Benghazi talking points were flawed, the White House said repeatedly the documents were put together almost entirely by the intelligence community, but White House documents reviewed by Congress suggest a different story.

ABC News has obtained 12 different versions of the talking points that show they were extensively edited as they evolved from the drafts first written entirely by the CIA to the final version distributed to Congress and to U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice before she appeared on five talk shows the Sunday after that attack.

White House emails reviewed by ABC News suggest the edits were made with extensive input from the State Department. The edits included requests from the State Department that references to the Al Qaeda-affiliated group Ansar al-Sharia be deleted as well references to CIA warnings about terrorist threats in Benghazi in the months preceding the attack.

That would appear to directly contradict* what White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said about the talking points in November.

“Those talking points originated from the intelligence community. They reflect the IC’s best assessments of what they thought had happened,” Carney told reporters at the White House press briefing on November 28, 2012. “The White House and the State Department have made clear that the single adjustment that was made to those talking points by either of those two institutions were changing the word ‘consulate’ to ‘diplomatic facility’ because ‘consulate’ was inaccurate.”

*(MSM-speak for “Jay Carney is a lying weasel.”)

We already know from The Weekly Standard that State and a failed fiction writer now working as an Obama national-security aide were heavily involved in “editing” the initial CIA talking points. This ABC report shows how many iterations they went through before the bowdlerized version was handed to Ambassador Rice for her role as designated mouthpiece the following Sunday. Then, when the talking points were shown to be a fiction, Carney went before the public to lie about their origins. The only question is was he knowingly lying, or was he played for a sap?

But, annoying as it is to have yet another example of the administration’s dishonesty over Benghazi (1) come out, the real story in my opinion here isn’t that a press secretary lied to cover his boss and his top aides. No, the real story here is that the MSM is finally getting interested in Benghazi, finally “uncovering” all these shocking revelations only after Obama has been safely reelected.

They’ve done their job, you see. They pushed Obama over the finish line twice, so now they can go back to pretending they’re objective journalists. There’s no need to “play Pravda” anymore, at least in this case. Now they can break news of things they could easily have discovered back in September, October, and November, except that it might have hurt Obama’s reelection chances.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m glad they’re finally doing their jobs. Benghazi is a huge scandal and the story has to be told. But don’t expect me to praise them for “holding the powerful accountable,” when their self-serving cynicism (2) is so dazzling.

RELATED: The Right Sphere reaches back in time to remind us that Carney’s boss was telling the same lies on a national stage just before the election.

Footnote:
(1) Remember, the administration knew what happened that night from their people on the ground. The jihadis themselves knew what happened; it was their operation. The only people being deceived here were us.
(2) There are a few exceptions, of course, but the corruption of the MSM as an institution is spread far and wide.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Shock and surprise: Diane Feinstein’s husband’s company lands big high-speed rail contract

“Train wreck”

Because, at nearly $35,000,000 per mile, they surely had to be the cheapest:

Out of the entire universe of those who could have won the first phase construction contract for California’s high speed rail boondoggle, who would stand out as the last person who would win it if there were no political patronage.

Put another way, who is the most likely person to win it if there is political patronage?

Both questions have the same answer: Richard Blum, the husband of California senator Diane Feinstein.

So, who won the contract? Blum, of course, as the principle owner of Tutor Perini, the lead firm in the three-firm consortium selected by the California High Speed Rail Authority.

Yes, Diane, it really does look that bad to us little people.

The group lead by Tutor Perini bid $985,000,000 to build the initial 29-mile stretch, roughly from Fresno to Madera, which doesn’t include the costs for electrification and land purchase. And, as Laer points out at Crazifornia, they started with this section because it’s the cheapest. (I can’t wait to see what the bids are to lay track through the mountain passes…)

I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that the principle owner of the company is husband to a powerful United States senator, who happens to be from the state building said rail system. I mean, it’s not as if there have been any allegations of self-dealing before.

I’m about as shocked as Louis was in Casablanca:

via Katy Grimes

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

One in the many reasons to send the United Nations packing

It’s corrupt from top to bottom and the only people who get punished are those who expose it:

A U.N. whistleblower who was awarded a fraction of the damages he says he suffered at the hands of the United Nations urged Washington on Monday to withhold 15 percent of the U.S. contribution to the world body in accordance with U.S. law.

American James Wasserstrom was last month awarded 2 percent of the $3.2 million he wanted by a tribunal that found U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the U.N. Ethics Office failed to properly review claims he suffered retaliation for alleging U.N. corruption in Kosovo.

According to Section 7049(a) of the 2012 U.S. Consolidated Appropriations Act, the United States is required to withhold 15 percent of its contribution to any U.N. agency if the secretary of state determines that it is not implementing “best practices for the protection of whistleblowers from retaliation.”

(…)

Wasserstrom complained in 2007 to the Ethics Office that he suffered retaliation for reporting alleged misconduct while head of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Oversight of Publicly Owned Enterprises in Kosovo.

He had told the United Nations he was concerned about corporate governance in Kosovo and alleged the possibility of a kickback scheme tied to a proposed power plant and mine that involved top politicians and senior U.N. officials.

Instead of being protected as a whistleblower, Wasserstrom claimed he suffered retaliation, which started with his U.N. public utility watchdog office in Kosovo being shut down and his U.N. contract not being renewed.

Although Wasserstrom eventually won his case, he was only awarded $65,000, despite the fact that he says his legal fees, lost wages and other financial damage incurred amounted to well over $2 million.

Don’t hold your breath waiting for Secretary John “Global Test” Kerry to invoke this law to protect a wronged American; relations with the world body that represents the voice of the international community are too important, you see. (1) More likely, as Rick Moran acidly observes, Kerry will use the UN appeal process as a dodge to avoid doing anything that might upset things. And, I think, in the hope that this pesky little prole will stop bothering his betters with minor matters.

There was a time when, if an American was ill-treated by a foreign regime, the government would try to find a solution and, if that didn’t work, would figuratively go punch the offending government in the gut and keep doing it until they recognized their diplomatic obligations. See, for example, the Barbary Pirates and the Mexican War. (2)

Now, while we can’t declare war on the United Nations, cutting our contribution by 15% would also be an effective gut-punch, one that would command attention and, I bet, meet with wide public approval. (Just “sequester” it…) But, cynical me, I don’t expect this administration headed by  “citizens of the world” to do anything to help Mr. Wasserstrom.

That might make the next cocktail party in New York just too uncomfortable.

Footnotes:
(1) If you detect a note or two (or several thousand) of sarcasm and cynicism, your senses are not deceiving you.
(2) Yes, I’m grossly oversimplifying things, but the shabby treatment of Americans was among the causes of war in each case, as well as others.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Mere coincidence: campaign contributions lead to government loans?

“Obama loan officer at work.”

Say it ain’t so! “Cause for Action,” which bills itself as a “government accountability” group, took a look at “green energy” loans made by the Department of Energy (1) and found a (not so) surprising correlation between energy companies that made campaign donations and those that were awarded loans (2).

Cronyism in the halls of Chicago-on-the-Potomac? You make the call:

Could the Department of Energy Loan Guarantee Program  be characterized as a breeding ground for cronyism in the distribution of loans through the 1703, 1705, and Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing Loan Guarantee Programs? (3)

Cause of Action was able to determine, through publicly available data combined with a FOIA production, that for corporations who have received a loan guarantee of any amount, the likelihood that it made campaign contributions increases significantly. Of the data available, 95% (.95) of DOE loan recipients with less than $1 billion in annual revenue documented political contributions by the organization or senior level staff. Comparatively, only 31% (.319489) of similarly sized organizations that did not receive loans made political contributions in one way or another.

So, winners who happened to make contributions outnumbered losing donors by more than three to one. As they used to say on Laugh-in, “verrrryyy interesting!”

Now, you’ll note the report does not say to whom the donations went. But, look at it this way: parties that lose elections rarely get to hand out the big bucks.

But only a racist would see cronyism, here.

via Steven Hayward, who has other examples of Green failures.

Footnotes:
(1) Until recently headed by Steven Chu, of Solyndra fame. Those Obama “investments” sure pay off, don’t they?
(2) Also known as taxpayer (that’s us) money either taken from us directly or borrowed on our credit.
(3) That last is, I believe, the program under which electric car-manufacturers Tesla and Fisker got their Green loans. Oddly, principals at both companies are big Obama donors. Small world, eh?

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Oh, gee. Look at that. Pro-Obama voter fraud in… Ohio — Updated

“I get to vote twice? Gosh, thanks, pal!”

No, I’m not one of those who believe Obama stole the 2012 election. He won that fair and square through superb organization. (And a pathetic GOTV effort by the Romney campaign.)

But there are persistent reports of voter fraud: people voting twice, “dead people” voting, non-citizens voting, et cetera. Mention these concerns, dare to suggest that voter rolls be cleaned up and identification be required to vote, and you get dismissed by the Left and the media (but I repeat myself) as some sort of paranoid crank, or even a racist. (As we all know, requiring IDs in order to vote must be a form of racism.) Voter fraud, they assure us, is vanishingly rare.

And yet it keeps showing up. This time, as John Fund describes, in the perennial nail-biter state of Ohio. Nineteen voters  in Hamilton county, including poll worker Melowese Richardson, a (you’ll be shocked to learn) Democrat:

According to county documents, Richardson’s absentee ballot was accepted on Nov. 1, 2012 along with her signature. On Nov. 11, she told an official she also voted at a precinct because she was afraid her absentee ballot would not be counted in time.

“There’s absolutely no intent on my part to commit voter fraud,” said Richardson. . . .

The board’s documents also state that Richardson was allegedly disruptive and hid things from other poll workers on Election Day after another female worker reported she was intimidated by Richardson. . . .

During the investigation it was also discovered that her granddaughter, India Richardson, who was a first time voter in the 2012 election, cast two ballots in November.

So, she was just concerned that her vote get counted. An innocent mistake. But then there’s this:

Richardson insists she has done nothing wrong and promises to contest the charges: “I’ll fight it for Mr. Obama and for Mr. Obama’s right to sit as president of the United States.”

Why do I get the feeling poll worker Richardson might have been more concerned that Obama win a state that was expected to be tight, than she was for the integrity of the electoral system?

I must be racist.

Like I said, I don’t think fraud swung the presidential race. But I do think it had the possibility corrupting state and local races. Recall that former Congressman Allen West lost his reelection bid, in which he was a prime Democrat target, under very suspicious circumstances. (Recently the election integrity advocacy group True the Vote filed suit against the St. Lucie county elections supervisor over the “oddities” in the West election. Discovery should be very interesting.)

There’s no question our election system has problems and, given the number of times Democrats are caught stuffing the ballot box (1), it shouldn’t be a surprise that they resist any real efforts to fix it.

Footnote:
(1) As Fund has sometimes pointed out, electoral corruption by Republicans usually takes the form of voter intimidation. Democrats more often engage in ballot-box fraud.

UPDATE: Former DoJ attorney J. Christian Adams writes about the Ohio case, citing the possible federal law violations and comparing it to another infamous example of Democratic voter fraud:

This is the same sort of behavior which occurred in Noxubee County Mississippi in the case of United States v. Ike Brown  that I discuss in detail in my book Injustice – double voting, poll worker collusion, absentee fraud, false voting at the polls. Her double voting sounds like Carrie Kate Windham’s behavior in Mississippi. Windham was a Democrat Party official that cast votes illegally for other people.  In that case, many in the Justice Department didn’t want to do anything about it either.  They were willing to give Brown a pass because of who he was and who the victims were.  Meanwhile, the sanctity of our elections corrode.

Funny how Eric Holder never seems anxious to prosecute these cases.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Journalistic integrity at CBS? Not when it comes to competitors…

Or their innovative technology:

Recently, I found myself thrust in the middle of a kerfuffle when CBS ordered its subsidiary CNET to remove a product from consideration for a “Best of CES” award at the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show. I can never recall any major media company, much less a top-tier First Amendment protector like CBS, publicly mandating an editorial decision based on business interests. The bizarre aggressiveness of CBS executives against the Hopper Sling disturbed me as it not only tainted the CES awards, but it hurt one of the world’s classiest media companies.

The controversy started when Dish introduced the Hopper, a product that allows Dish subscribers to skip through TV commercials under certain conditions. CBS and other networks sued Dish to stop the sale of the Hopper, despite a landmark 1984 Supreme Court decision that innovative products like the Hopper cannot be blocked by copyright owners if the product has many uses. Broadcasters never even challenged the legality of the TiVo personal video recorder back in 1999, which allows easy commercial fast-forwarding.

While the CBS legal challenge to the Hopper case chugs along, Dish used the 2013 International CES, to introduce the Hopper Sling, which allows Dish subscribers to stream one channel over the Internet while another is playing on the home TV. As owners of CES, we had an agreement with CNET to cover the show and recognize the best products. The CNET editorial team identified the Hopper Sling as one of the most innovative products of the show, but CBS brass ordered the CNET editors to remove it from CNET’s website.

For a top media company to impose editorial control so publicly for business reasons created a firestorm, resulting in stories in USA TODAY, Wall Street Journal and several tech blogs. CBS’ actions are puzzling, and troubling, on many levels.

One CNET reporter has already resigned over this, and there may be more on the way. While this is business and not politics, it should serve as a reminder to us all that the MSM is willing to bend or even alter the news to meet its goals. CBS’ “classy reputation” was already tarnished by Rathergate, and NBC News’ president has resigned “under controversy.” (1) And the major media reporting on so-called man-made climate change has been nothing short of disgraceful, agenda journalism at its worst.

Thanks to the space the Internet provides alternative voices, the “gatekeeper of what’s news” function of the MSM is dying, though they still need to be watched like a hawk. As Democratic pollster Pat Caddell recently said, the media has become an “enemy of democracy.” (2)

via Instapundit

Footnote:
(1) For a devastating and nauseating example of NBC’s (and other MSM) dishonesty, have a look through my blog-buddy’s Sister Toldjah’s Trayvon Martin archive, about the persecution of George Zimmerman. She moved mountains exposing their perfidy.
(2) With exceptions for certain individual reporters. But the overall MSM “culture” stinks with corruption.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Quote of the Day: Bob #Menendez follies edition

Via Breitbart:

So a United States Senator slated to become Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee strong-arms the U.S. State Department to approve a 20-year, $1 billion federal contract for Dominican port security with a firm owned by a Florida opthamologist / Medicaid fraud with no security background who…

Read the rest for the punchline.

So true. So very maddeningly true.

The purpose of the Obama tax increases is to reward Obama’s cronies

Payoff

Consider this: contained within the recent “fiscal cliff” legislation are tax increases to make those evil wealthy people (You know, those job creators who make over $400,000 per year) pay their fair share, to the tune of $620 billion over ten years, so about $62 billion in 2013.

But the Washington Examiner’s Tim Carney became curious about tax break extensions for business and energy concerns the White House insisted be included. So, he ran the numbers and… guess what?

…it undermines Obama’s professed desire to close the deficit.

Think about this: just the business and energy tax extenders reduce federal revenue by $67.7 billion in 2013. The tax hikes on the rich Obama won — higher rates on those over $400,000 and reduced deductions on those over $250,000 — raise $620 billion over a decade. As far as I know, we can safely guess that this would be less than $62 billion in 2013.

Unless I’m missing something, the special-interest tax breaks Obama demanded look to be bigger than the money he raised by taxing the rich. If he had just let all these special tax breaks expire — like wind tax credits, algae subsidies, and railroad track maintenance — it would have raised more revenue than his tax hikes on rich individuals and small businesses.

In other words, Obama doesn’t give a damn about shrinking the deficit in the least; instead, the whole charade serves largely to subsidize tax breaks as rewards for (I’m willing to bet) big donors. It’s redistribution from the taxpayers to favored interest groups. And it stinks.

Remember that as ever more is taken out of your check each payday and you hear yet more promises from Obama and the Democrats about how they’re fighting for you. Then compare their words to their deeds.

“By their fruits you will know them.”

via Avik Roy

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

We missed the fiscal cliff (for now), so have a heaping helping of pork to celebrate!

So, a bill meant to address our growing fiscal crisis (hah!) is also loaded with hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, of dollars in pork. You know, those special allocations, set-asides, and tax cuts that constitute taxpayer-funded welfare for some or another group that congressmen and senators are trying to buy votes and donations from.

The Washington Free Beacon has an “interesting” video on the topic:

And they wonder why the public increasingly holds Congress in contempt.

Okay, I know some of these measures may have a rational justification, but there’s just way too many that are nothing more than payoffs to favored constituents. It’s corrupt and corrupting, and it has to stop.

I think the Confederate constitution had a clause limiting any piece of legislation to one topic, so this kind of thing couldn’t happen. (Pork is an old bad habit of this Republic.) I think something similar might be a good idea for the U.S. Constitution, too.

RELATED: On the topic of the fiscal cliff deal, my blog buddy ST has a great piece on how to look at the fiscal cliff deal and one on pork in the Hurricane Sandy relief package.  Back to the fiscal cliff, Peter Wehner argues that a bad deal beats a calamitous outcome.

#FastAndFurious Oh my. ATF agent’s personal firearm found at site of beauty queen’s killing

Updating this item. Two guns linked to the Obama administration’s gunwalking operation were found at the site of a gun battle in Mexico that took the life of model and beauty queen Susana Flores Maria Gamez. Only one of the weapons was purchased by a federal agent:

Mexican beauty queen Susana Flores Maria Gamez and four others died in the brutal gun battle between Sinaloa cartel members and the Mexican military in November. CBS News has learned that an FN Herstal pistol recovered near the crime scene in November was originally purchased by an Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) manager who was faulted by the Inspector General in Operation Fast and Furious: George Gillett. Gillett was the Asst. Special Agent in Charge of ATF Phoenix when Fast and Furious began.

The Herstal pistol is nicknamed a “cop-killer” because of its designation as a “weapon of choice” for Mexican drug cartels. CBS News has learned the Inspector General planned to question Gillett today after a hastily-opened inquiry to determine how this agent’s personal weapon got into the hands of suspected cartel members.

CBS News spoke to Gillett, who is still employed at ATF. Gillett acknowledged he once owned the weapon in question, but says he sold it in Phoenix sometime last year after advertising it on the Internet. He declined to provide the name of the man who bought it, but says he went “above and beyond” what was required by law to complete the firearms transaction. That included asking the purchaser to fill out a form giving personal information and stating that he was in the U.S. legally; and checking his driver’s license, which Gillett said was issued in the U.S.

According to Senator Grassley, however, the aforementioned Form 4473s contained multiple errors and falsifications, which, if true, may cost Agent Gillett up to five years in the penitentiary. And –irony alert– these are the same forms straw buyers for the cartels had to fill out and lie on.

So, in at least this case and with at least this weapon, was an ATF agent himself acting as a straw buyer? Or is he just dumber than a box of rocks? How many other transactions was Agent Gillett involved in, and how many straw purchases did he oversee as part of his work on Fast and Furious?

It seems Senator Grassley and Congressman Issa’s work isn’t done yet.

via Instapundit

RELATED: Earlier posts on Fast and Furious.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

The Link Between High Tax Rates and Corruption

Reblogged from International Liberty:

I've been very critical of Obama's class-warfare ideology because it leads to bad fiscal policy. But perhaps it is time to give some attention to other arguments against high tax rates.

Robert Samuelson, a columnist for the Washington Post, has a very important insight about tax rates and sleaze in Washington.

His column is mostly about Obama's anti-tax reform agenda, but it includes this very important passage.

Read more… 569 more words, 1 more video

And it's not just "breaking the law"-type corruption: high tax rates encourage people and corporations to seek loopholes and special privileges written into the code that the rest of us have no access to. Better to have lower, flatter rates with no incentive to rig the system.

Forget Denmark, something’s rotten in St. Lucie county, Florida

Gee! I get to vote twice? Cool!

I mean, with such a well-managed election operation as this, I can’t see why anyone thinks there’s a problem:

Then there is Gertrude Walker, the 32-year-veteran election supervisor of St. Lucie County, who has spent much of the last two weeks explaining why her office completely botched the count. She admitted that her office had acted in “haste” in issuing election results, and that “mistakes were made.” Among her mistakes was failing to count 40 of the 94 precincts under her jurisdiction on Election Night — and then counting the other 54 twice. Indeed. On Friday, her office announced it had “discovered” 304 additional early votes left in a box. None had been counted

But Walker wasn’t available for comment. She has been hospitalized for unknown reasons.

The news was one reason that Florida’s secretary of state has dispatched a team of experts to audit St. Lucie’s procedures. The St. Lucie Election Canvassing Board voted to approve a complete recount of all the early ballots. It began the recount on Saturday but stopped it at 8 p.m. because the county building’s security system was set to be switched on later that night. Some people complained that the alarms have been switched off in the past to allow county business to continue after hours, but their complaints were ignored. The recount resumed on Sunday morning, but it missed the noon deadline to submit the county’s final returns to Florida’s secretary of state.

So, on Sunday, the previous results—the ones showing Democrat Murphy ahead—were sent to Florida’s secretary of state for certification.

How convenient that this “glitch” means St. Lucie’s returns also cost Rep. Allen West his seat.

Read the rest of John Fund’s article for more on Ms. Walker’s troubling history. Florida has a serious problem with its elections, and owes it to the voters to clean this up.

Addendum: Disappointing news from Legal Insurrection. Thanks to the slow-walking of the recount by Walker’s office, Congressman West may have few legal avenues left and may be preparing to concede defeat. Democrats should remember the warning words of Obi Wan Kenobi.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

As predictable as the sun rising in the East

The Democrat Jackass Party is trying to steal the vote in Philadelphia, which they have to hold to keep Romney from winning the state. Told ya they were panicked.

The PA GOP is fighting back.

This is why we need every (real) voter to show up: we have to get past the margin of fraud.

PS: As you vote, Dear Leader watches.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

(Humor) Klavan on why crony capitalism isn’t capitalism

One of the occasional frustrations I experience happens when I discuss economics and the economy with liberal friends (1). When I praise capitalism and free markets, they point to corrupt practices by business and its government allies as proof that capitalism can’t work, and that we need more government regulation to make the system “more fair.” (“Fair” must be the new “F-word.”)  (2) When I counter that the problem is government intervention and that the picking of winners and losers is what creates the cronyism, they just roll their eyes in pity at my lack of understanding and we go on to the next topic.

Well, Andrew Klavan (3)  makes the same point I do, only –as usual– in a much more witty and entertaining fashion. Maybe, the next time the topic comes up, I’ll just whip out my Kindle Fire and play this video for them:

via Roger Kimball

Footnotes:
(1) Hey, this is California. You can’t avoid having a few. And, other than being wrong, they’re really nice people.
(2) Their faith in government is touching. Childlike and in denial of reality, but touching.
(3) Who used to make the “Klavan on the Culture” videos I’d post. He needs to start that series again. Now. Please?

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

OfA shocked -SHOCKED!!- to find vote fraud going on in its offices

Following up on this story, I guess O’Keefe’s videos exposing corrupt behavior in ACORN and Planned Parenthood offices have made the DNC/Obama campaign (1) a little… sensitive to pain:

The Democratic National Committee has terminated the employment of Houston, Texas, Organizing For America Regional Field Director Stephanie Caballero after she was caught on camera calling voter fraud “cool” and “so funny” while advising a presumably-liberal voter how to vote twice.

In a comment to the liberal Talking Points Memo, DNC spokeswoman Melanie Roussell accused James O’Keefe and Project Veritas of selectively editing their videos – but admitted that what Caballero did on his tape was wrong and she’s now been fired.

They obviously haven’t learned the whole lesson, though. You never, ever accuse O’Keefe and Project Veritas of selective editing, because then they release the whole video and, well, the pain gets worse.

Not that I have much sympathy for them. None at all, in fact.

Via Moe Lane, who notes that this is apparently the first in a series of videos.

Footnote:
(1) But I repeat myself.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)