Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, sent a subpoena Wednesday to Attorney General Eric Holder as part of his investigation into the gun trafficking operation known as “Fast and Furious.”
“Top Justice Department officials, including Attorney General Holder, know more about Operation Fast and Furious than they have publicly acknowledged,” the California Republican said in a statement. “The documents this subpoena demands will provide answers to questions that Justice officials have tried to avoid since this investigation began eight months ago. It’s time we know the whole truth.”
Democrat Culture of Corruption
Investigating Holder
There’s a lot of investigating to be done. House Republicans need to keep up the pressure.
House Republicans are calling for a special counsel to determine whether Attorney General Eric Holder misled Congress during his testimony to the House Judiciary Committee on Operation Fast and Furious, Fox News has learned.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, was sending a letter to President Obama on Tuesday arguing that Holder cannot investigate himself, and requesting the president instruct the Department of Justice to appoint a special counsel.
The question is whether Holder knowingly made false statements of fact under oath during a Judiciary Committee hearing on May 3. At the time, Holder indicated he was not familiar with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives program known as Fast and Furious until about April 2011.
Speaking of Holder, check of this video of DOJ whistleblower J. Christian Adams discussing the politicization and radicalization he witnessed at Eric Holder’s Justice Department.
Another Obama Crony Capitalist
From Politico:
President Barack Obama will raise money in early October with a Missouri businessman whose company benefited from a $107 million federal tax credit to develop a wind power facility in his state.
Tom Carnahan, a scion of Missouri’s most prominent Democratic political family, is listed on Obama’s campaign website as a host of a $25,000-per-person fundraiser to be held in St. Louis on October 4.
Continue ReadingHis energy development firm, Wind Capital Group, was helped by a sizable credit authorized in the stimulus, for an energy project in northwest Missouri…
If the name “Carnahan” sounds familiar it is because Tom is the son of former Missouri governor Mel Carnahan and former Missouri Senator Jean Carnahan. In other words, what we’ve got here is the scion of a massively connected, political family who is building up a personal fortune via taxpayer subsidy. This is the sort of private enterprise our Democrats actually like…someone who is in the private sector, gets massive government aid and then turns around and boosts Democrats at election time. If the Democrats fully had their way, the only people permitted to be in business would be people like Tom Carnahan.
The world Obama wants to build – the change you can really believe in – is to create in the United States an European-style Ruling Class in which all power in government and industry is held by those who are well-connected…not those who earn it; not those in whom public reposes their trust. The future will be Tom Carnahan clones getting rich and Barack Obama’s running the show while the rest of us dwindle in to poverty and slowly die out as welfare and the Culture of Death sap our will to live…
Revolution is the answer…and next year we can do it.
HAT TIP: Hot Air
Democrats Attempt to Limit Solyndra Investigation
As per usual, desperately trying to protect their corrupt, fellow Democrats – from the New York Times:
Democrats would back a GOP subpoena to compel testimony from executives at government-backed solar firm Solyndra who plan to invoke their Fifth Amendment rights at a hotly anticipated oversight hearing tomorrow, according to the party’s senior member on the House Energy and Commerce Committee…
Sounds good, right? First paragraph of the MSM story…good, old Democrats are willing to join the GOP in going after the Solyndra execs. Just great! Except for one thing – the Solyndra execs represent only one half of the corruption…the other half is Obama Administration officials. So, how do the Democrats view that? Some paragraphs down in the story, we’re told:
…Waxman drew a bright line between a potential subpoena of the company and a July edict that Republicans issued to the Office of Management and Budget for emails related to its review of the Solyndra loan guarantee — a party-line subpoena that the Californian then lambasted as “an abuse” and “a fishing expedition”…
So, it is “abuse” to ask Administration Officials about how Administration officials decided to procure a loan benefiting a donor to the President’s political campaigns. Yeah, right. What this really amounts to is a Democrat attempt to limit the investigation…ok to hang the Solyndra execs out to dry, but don’t dare go after the Administration. And if you do, its an abuse…some sick bit of Teabagger, bitter-clinger political nastiness when we’re all supposed to be engaging in a new tone. How dare you!
We must not let Democrats have any say in the House investigation. We have learned that allowing Democrats to participate in any investigation only results in Democrats covering up for other Democrats. Democrats have proven they are not interested in the truth…only interested in limiting the amount of damage to themselves and, if possible, shoving the blame for their own failures on to the GOP. This investigation is vital and it must find the truth…and so the only Democrat input should be under oath, on camera, and in front of the investigating committee.
How Political Payoffs are Done
From MSNBC:
A retired Chicago labor leader secured a $158,000 public pension — roughly five times greater than what a typical retired public-service worker in the Windy City receives — after being rehired for just one day of active duty on the city payroll, local news reports said…
…Gannon, former president of the Chicago Federation of Labor, was able to take a long leave from a city job to work for a union and then receive a city pension based on a high union salary. That arrangement is allowed under a state law signed by Gov. Jim Thompson on his last day in office in 1991, according to an investigation by the Tribune and WGN-TV.
The change has enabled a couple dozen labor leaders to become potential millionaires.
What is different in Gannon’s case is that he became eligible for the especially lucrative pension deal only because the city rehired the former Streets and Sanitation Department worker for one day in 1994, before granting him an indefinite leave of absence, according to the investigation. He retired from the city job in 2004 at age 50…
Now, don’t anyone out there think that any Joe Shmoe can get a job, work a day, go on indefinite leave and then collect millions in pension benefits. This is something entirely reserved only for those the government wants to pay off for one reason or another. I don’t know what services Gannon rendered in order to secure such a massive amount of money for no work, but it was probably pretty stupendous…and probably something the politicians of Chicago and Illinois would prefer we never find out about. And this is just a tip of the iceberg in the total playbook of how to bribe of payoff in politics.
One other way which Matt and I discovered in writing Caucus of Corruption is to donate to powerful politicians who either run un-opposed or against token opposition. You’ll be surprised how many such there are in politics…and even more surprised in how much money they raise for their re-election campaigns. You become un-surprised about it when you find out that their campaign staffers, at very high salaries, are spouses, children, family members and long-time cronies. In other words, you don’t directly bribe Congressman X, you donate to his campaign and he pays his wife $100,000.00 a year to be a campaign “consultant” against a non-existent or quixotic opponent. All perfectly legal, just as Gannon’s pension, but always it is a bribe…it is a means of giving in return for getting without the public finding out just what sort of nauseating filth is going on.
And it is on and on like that all through politics. To be sure, plenty of Republicans engage in it…but it is endemic in the Democrat party. If you found me a Democrat who had never engaged in any sort of shady practice, I’d be surprised…pleased, but surprised. It is endemic over there for two reasons – for generations Democrats were in power and never really had anyone call them to account; secondly, Democrat electorates have proven almost impervious to corruption…no matter how corrupt a Democrat is, he can usually win re-election if he’s in a strongly Democrat district (for instance, Barney Frank had a live-in whore working out of Frank’s DC townhouse; Frank fixed 33 of the whore’s parking tickets and wrote a letter on his behalf to the parole board…a GOPer who had that would be forced to resign in days; Frank has been re-elected 11 times since that scandal). Year by year it has built up – first go ahead and do it; secondly, you never (or, at least, rarely) get punished for it.
The thing to remember is that if the MSM actually did its job and relentlessly investigated the corruption in government, it would be front page headlines every day that some senior politician is on the take…even if the take is “legal” in the sense that corrupt politicians have set up the laws and regulations to make it so, but still crooked as all get out. Nine out of ten of the crooks would be Democrat, of course…and that is why the MSM doesn’t do its job. It doesn’t want to implode the Democrat party in a sea of corruption stories. And, so, it just continues…but, perhaps not for long.
The real fear in the Ruling Class is that someone will get elected next year who doesn’t care about the Ruling Class and is willing to unleash law enforcement on those who have broken the law, as well as ruthlessly exposing those who keep within the law, but are clearly taking/giving bribes and payoffs. The Ruling Class is afraid that their time at the hog trough might be through…that is the real genesis of the Wisconsin protests and recall elections. The Ruling Class was frightened that the corrupt deals, bribes and payoffs might come to a screeching halt…as, indeed, they will now that Wisconsin government doesn’t have to roll over to corrupt public sector unions. If you think Wisconsin was bizarre, just wait until a TEA Party-backed candidate comes to the White House…these people will go ballistic.
But ballistic only because they are afraid they won’t get free money and an easy time in life. That is what must be remembered. They’ll talk like they are fighting for the little guy but all they are really fighting for is their bribes, kickbacks and payoffs…they will be upset that maybe they won’t ever get a chance at millions of dollars in taxpayer money for working a day. There are probably 30 to 50 million people like that in the United States…who are either already living off the taxpayer or dream of doing so…on a larger or smaller scale, but still the goal is to get money they didn’t earn. This is the core constituency of the left…and they are worried sick they might be kicked off the taxpayer’s teat.
And, glad to say, it looks like that is what will happen…a revolution is brewing in this nation. Those who have been paying the freight for a corrupt, lying, morally degenerating Ruling Class have had enough…we’re taking it all back next year, and we’ll fix this nation and restore our greatness. This will result in a lot of leeches having to get real jobs, but that is all to the good…it’ll teach them to be better Americans.
HAT TIP: Mish’s
Solnydra Exec’s to Take the 5th
And I don’t mean a nice bottle of Scotch – from Reuters:
Solyndra LLC’s chief executive and chief financial officer will invoke their Fifth Amendment rights and decline to answer any questions put to them at a Congressional hearing on Friday, according to letters from their attorneys obtained by Reuters.
In the letters sent to the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, attorneys for Solyndra CEO Brian Harrison and CFO W. G. Stover said they advised their clients not to provide testimony during the hearings.
The bankrupt company’s $535 million federal loan guarantee is being investigated by the House Energy and Commerce Committee…
Which means, of course, that someone broke the law somewhere along the line…if you are honest as the day is long and have nothing to be ashamed of (or are of sufficient moral courage to admit to error, regardless of consequences), then you don’t take the 5th. I know it is one of our bedrock rights…there is nothing wrong with refusing to answer as it might incriminate yourself. But if you don’t answer, it means there is something incriminating going on. Period. End of story.
Likely they are keeping their mouths shut as their lawyers try to figure out whether any of them can get jail time for what happened…and their lawyers will likely demand some sort of immunity grant before they openly testify. We can’t give it to them…they might take it and then just lie about what they know. And we need to know what happened – only the threat of jail time will really get them to talk. And if the genuinely turn State’s evidence, then we can consider being lenient…but nothing until we know for sure whatever they end up saying is completely factual.
What we need to know is just how the loan was made – who asked whom and why was it approved. If there is criminal liability, then we need to ensure that everyone who made the decision sees the inside of a jail…and ultimately we need to know what the President knew, and when he knew it. Maybe Obama is completely clear of this and it was rogue subordinates…but only a full investigation with complete White House cooperation can show that.
Lightsquared Scandal: More Attempts to Influence Testimony
From the Daily Beast:
LightSquared, a wireless network backed by billionaire Democratic donor Philip Falcone, could beam broadband Internet everywhere—but some military officials fear it could interfere with critical GPS signals. Now, as The Daily Beast’s Eli Lake exclusively reports, two U.S. officials allege the White House tried to influence their testimony to rush key testing, to LightSquare’s benefit..
…On Monday, a second witness, Anthony Russo, director of the National Coordination Office for Space-Based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing, told The Daily Beast that he too was asked by the OMB to insert the 90-day timeframe into his testimony before the House Science Committee, but he refused. The hearing originally was scheduled for Aug. 3, then rescheduled for Sept. 8.
“They gave that to me and presumably the other witnesses,” he said. “There is one sentence I disagreed with, which said that I thought the testing could be resolved in 90 days. So I took it out.”…
Are you grasping all that, liberals? In service of a billionaire who is a Democrat and a donor to the party, the Obama Administration tried to smooth things along even though the US military and other agencies had grave questions about the risks of the new wireless project. Do you begin to understand? Does it start to dawn on you that all your liberalism is merely a cover for the Ruling Class to gain power and wealth? They’ll throw you a bone of “gay rights” or affirmative action, but the real program is just power and wealth…
I doubt you’ll get it. For ages you have been propagandized that it is we Republicans who do that…and, to be sure, you can find the odd Republican here and there willing to sell out to corporate interests. But not like this – not in a systemic fashion where everything is for sale. And the base of the GOP is firmly against this “crony capitalism” and wishes for a restored, genuine free market in which well-connected corporate bosses aren’t able to suppress competitors and gain government privileges.
More and more it looks as though the Obama Administration – in pure, Chicago-style politics – as put a “for sale” sign on the United States. While Pelosi and Reid ran Congress, there was no oversight at all…and that is why it is only now, 8 months after the GOP took the House, that it is all coming to light. We all expected Obama’s liberalism and we feared the Chicago Way…but even I didn’t suspect that Obama and his cohorts would be so crude and grasping in these matters…that they would act no better than a Chicago ward boss.
Now more than ever it is vital that Obama be defeated next year…this is already bad enough, but imagine what it will be like if Obama is re-elected and never has to fear the voters again? It will become a corrupt free-for-all and our national inheritance will go to the highest bidder.
UPDATE: Rep. Issa to hold hearings on these screwball loans and the general Obama Administration practice of trying to pick free market winners.
The Ultimate Motive of “Gunwalker”?
Interesting take over at Pajamas Media:
…Gunwalker purposefully increases social unrest (increased gun violence/destabilizing Mexico), with the possible result of overloading the U.S. public welfare system (more illegal aliens fleeing the violence in Mexico and Central America). Gunwalker’s perpetrators could then use that influx to create an insurmountable constituency of poor seeking handouts from the Democratic Party. The hope of the strategy is to force a system-wide collapse of the current system, and then to rebuild the government in a variant of the strongest socialist model they think the public will accept.
It sounds too devious. It appears to fit.
Take Operation Fast and Furious in Arizona, the two suspected operations in Texas, Operation Castaway in Tampa, and the newer allegations of “Gangwalker” in the Midwest — they make sense only in the larger context of a Cloward-Piven framework.
These operations could not possibly succeed at interdicting straw purchasers, smugglers, and cartel bosses. No one actually involved in law enforcement could possibly believe that such idiotic operations could work. But these operations are logical when viewed through the context of their implementation as tactical applications designed to support a Cloward-Piven strategy…
Which is an interesting idea – with Democrats viewing illegal immigrants as “undocumented Democrats” the fact of lower numbers of illegals is dismaying. No one knows for sure, of course, but it does appear that as our economy has deteriorated, millions of illegals have self-deported. Even out here in Las Vegas, we can see it – enrollment in the public schools is down, and you don’t see nearly as many Latinos around as you used to. How do you get them to come back if there are no jobs? Perhaps you aggravate violence back home and scare them in to coming here?
I know, rather Machiavellian, isn’t it? But what other explanation can you come up with? Only others equally Machiavellian. Unless one wishes to think that the people running the law enforcement departments are utter idiots (which is a possibility) you are forced to come up with a nefarious, secret reason for things like “Gunwalker”.
There is no logic behind it if the intent is law enforcement. Remember what it amounted to – the United States government legally purchased firearms in the United States and then illegally transferred the weapons to criminal gangs. My view has been it was an effort to re-start gun control: send the guns down there, wait until hundreds of Mexicans are killed by them, then instruct the MSM to issue breathless, heart-rending reports about how American gun dealers are fueling violence south of the border (none of us were ever supposed to find out about “Gunwalker”…we only did because after a Border Patrol agent was murdered with one of the guns, some whistle blowers stepped forward).
If it isn’t rank stupidity, then it is a wicked plan to get something that should not be had – whether its gun control, more Democrat voters or an attempt to overload the welfare system in a Cloward-Piven strategy is unknown…what we need to do is unravel the scheme and see where the evidence leads.
Solyndra Scandal Update
From the Atlanta Journal Constitution:
The Obama administration restructured a half-billion dollar federal loan to a troubled solar energy company in such a way that private investors — including a fundraiser for President Barack Obama — moved ahead of taxpayers for repayment in case of a default, government records show.
Administration officials defended the loan restructuring, saying that without an infusion of cash earlier this year, solar panel maker Solyndra Inc. would likely have faced immediate bankruptcy, putting more than 1,000 people out of work…
Which is a rather stupid defense – because now we’ve got the 1,000 people out of work, plus an additional half billion dollar burden on the American taxpayer. When you start making stupid defenses of your actions, it means you know you’ve really screwed up and are just hoping that it doesn’t entirely blow up in your face.
This scandal, though, is starting to show signs of getting legs – legs which will keep it walking through American politics for quite a while. And legs which just might lead us to ever more scandals just like this. It is clear from Solyndra that at least some in the Obama Administration were happy to make deals which were bad for the taxpayers and good for Obama donors…the only thing we don’t know is the “Watergate” question: what did the President know, and when did he know it?
In a lot of ways, Obama had better hope he loses next year – the rising tide of scandal bodes ill for an Obama second term, and after the 2012 elections, even if Obama does win, he is likely to be faced with a Congress entirely controlled by the GOP…no friendly Reid holding back the Senate half of government oversight. A re-elected Obama might be forced to do nothing but defend himself against scandal after scandal flowing out of his complete control of government 2009-11.
UPDATE: More information emerging in the “LightSquared” scandal – seems that President Obama was an early investor in the company. To remind, there is evidence that Administration officials pressed an Air Force general to change his testimony to be more favorable to LightSquared. This is getting to be the sort of run-of-the-mill corruption we see out of Chicago…has Obama really been playing that particular game while in DC? Only an investigation will settle the matter…
Obama Jobs Bill: Billions for ACORN and the Left
From Pajamas Media:
ACORN and other radical left-wing groups would be eligible for up to $15 billion in federal funding if President Obama’s new economic stimulus package becomes law.
Now that public polling shows Americans are realizing that economic stimulus programs don’t work, the Obama administration is calling the latest round of futile stimulus a “jobs bill.” In a sense it really is a jobs bill: a jobs bill for Saul Alinsky-inspired community organizers.
The draft legislation, which had not yet been introduced in Congress at press time, makes ACORN, Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America (NACA), and a phalanx of leftist groups that regularly feed at the public trough eligible for funding…
With the left getting rebellious over Obama’s failure to turn America fully socialist, Obama has to do something to recover their support…and there is nothing a leftist likes better than some taxpayer swag. To be sure, this doesn’t mean that all $15 billion so earmarked would go to ACORN and similar groups, but with that much cash flowing you know that such groups would pick up at least hundreds of millions…and, perhaps, billions.
This is probably part of the reason Obama wants it passed as is – if he can’t payoff his supporters, there is simply no upside to the bill. It won’t improve the economy, it won’t create jobs…it won’t, that is, do anything to help Obama in the larger sense, so it had better at least solidify his leftist support. If the GOP is allowed a say, then the payoffs won’t be in the final bill.
Kill this bill – don’t even think about passing it. Pass a GOP jobs bill out of the House and let Reid kill that in the Senate, or Obama veto it after passage. We have no reason to work with the President and the Democrats, at all, because their efforts are not directed at helping America, but at helping themselves. Let the people decide in 2012 what they want – legislation which is just a payoff for cronies, or legislation that will actually help the United States.
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