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POPSFederal government is on an unsustainable fiscal path First, in the short term, President Obama has offered a budget that would increase federal spending to a peacetime-record 24.5 percent of GDP by 2019 -- not even counting the health care plan. Because tax revenues cannot keep up with this spending growth, the President's budget would add $9.1 trillion in new debt over the next decade. It would double the national debt to 82 percent of GDP by 2019. By steeply increasing spending, and digging the nation deeper in debt, the President would leave the nation with less financial flexibility and fewer resources to deal with the $43 trillion shortfall that Social Security and Medicare face over the next 75 years.
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POPSDemocrat Corruption On A Roll Scandals involving the Obama Administration include prominent cabinet picks, some confirmed and others who withdrew amid intense public scrutiny of their wrongdoings. Former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle dropped his bid to be Health Secretary after being exposed for failing to pay tens of thousands of dollars in taxes over the years and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson dropped out as Commerce Secretary amid a grand jury investigation into his out-of-state political donors getting a lucrative state contract. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was confirmed even though he knowingly hired an illegal immigrant and failed to pay tens of thousands of dollars in taxes on his lucrative salary. The nation’s new Deputy Defense Secretary (William Lynn) was a major defense industry lobbyist before becoming the Pentagon’s second-in-command, a violation of Obama’s “strict ethics rules” banning lobbyists from his administration.
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POPSSenate budget writer counting on $14.2 billion in stimulus I'm sure the biggest majority of the stimulus robbery funds will be utilized by states to shore up their deficits rather than it being used to stimulate the economy or create jobs. It will only secure government jobs already taken by crooked politicians
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POPSHow Many Former Bush Administration Officials Sentenced To Jail Time? Eight And Counting
FTA: *For obstructing the Senate investigation into Abramoff and for tax evasion, Italia Federici, a political aide to then Secretary of the Interior, Gail Norton, received a two month sentence in a halfway house. *Fedrici's boyfriend, Steven Griles, who was the number two official at the Interior Department, also received 10 months in jail for his part in the Abramoff scandal. *Bob Stein, the comptroller of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, received the longest sentence of any Bush official (as of yet) - nine years in prison for money laundering, conspiracy and bribery. *Brian Doyle, a deputy press secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, was sentenced to five years in jail for attempting to use a computer to seduce a child. That] brings the total number of Bush administration officials who have gone to jail already to at least eight," Maddow said. "That is not counting all the other convictions that didn‘t result in jail time, all the other investigatio
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POPSExperts: Financial crisis threatens US security House panel members also were concerned about how the government is devoting money to handle the crisis. President Barack Obama has proposed a 4 percent increase in defense spending to $534 billion during the next fiscal year. But with a $787 billion stimulus package, and billions being poured into propping up banks and other companies, many defense analysts believe that Pentagon budgets, one of the largest shares of government spending, are likely targets for cuts. That could include big programs like the Army's plans to modernize its forces, led by Boeing Co., and programs by Lockheed Martin Corp. to build new advanced fighter jets. Dov Zakheim, a Defense Department comptroller during the most recent Bush administration, said cuts in defense spending could create the perception of American weakness.
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POPSIraq: A 'fraud' bigger than Madoff In many cases, contractors never started or finished facilities they were supposedly building. As security deteriorated in Iraq from the summer of 2003 it was difficult to check if a contract had been completed. But the failure to provide electricity, water and sewage disposal during the US occupation was crucial in alienating Iraqis from the post-Saddam regime.
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POPS$125 Billion Fraud: The Iraq Reconstruction "Stimulus" Plan This is how the US gov't manages a "stimulus" plan, in the case of "rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure", which is now being investigated as the largest fraud in U.S. history. To put this figure in perspective, after 9/11 Bush requested $40 billion from Congress for the "war on terrorism", which was considered huge and extraordinary amount. Now consider how much cash this was, distributed partly in "pallets", without a trace of documentation. Where did this money really go?
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POPSIt's A Recession... Congress Gives Lawmakers $93,000 More to Spend 
Remember President Hopey Changey’s castigation of those nasty Wall Street types who had the gall to give out or accept bonuses in these hard economic times? Shame on them! says the President! From the WSJ: A few quick facts about Wall Street bonuses. The pretext for the political outrage was the New York comptroller’s report this week on the aggregate data for bonuses in 2008. That “irresponsible” bonus pool of $18 billion was for every worker in the New York financial industry, from top dogs to secretaries. This bonus pool fell 44% in 2008, the largest percentage decline in 30 years. The average bonus was $112,000; bonuses typically make up most of an employee’s salary on Wall Street. The comptroller estimates that this decline will cost New York State $1 billion in lost tax revenue and New York City $275 million. Both city and state may have to announce layoffs. http://sayanythingblog.com/entry/petty_cash_for_congress_increased_93000_per_member/ (Emphasis mine)
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POPSObama Calls It Irresponsible; I Call It Naked Self Interest That there are still still those who think the Lords of Wall Street should be left to their own devices and unregulated is incomprehensible to anyone whose economic ideology is based on what they can see and not visa versa. To such people the news that some of these Lords lavished themselves with billions of dollars of bonuses even as they had their hand out to Uncle Sam for help is not the least bit surprising. President Obama calls it irresponsible. Wise people call it by its real name: the predictable outcome of unregulated self interest. The only shocking thing is that Obama and others expected the Lords to act otherwise.
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POPSDerivates Notionals by Type of User Insured Commercial Banks After a stint as Chief Economist at the World Bank, Mr. Summers brought this “theory” to Washington mid-way through the first Clinton Administration as Under Secretary of Treasury to Robert Rubin where he began laying the groundwork – with co-conspirators Greenspan, Rubin and Clinton - for the implementation of his “theoretical research”: Gold price suppression began in earnest concurrently with changes in how the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency begins records the mushrooming growth of derivatives :
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POPSGibson's Paradox and the Gold Standard The roots of this most wicked experiment are traceable to the appointment of Alan Greenspan as Chairman of the Federal Reserve and then to academia – Harvard – where Robert Barsky and Lawrence Summers co-authored an academic research paper in the 1980s titled, Gibson's Paradox and the Gold Standard. After a stint as Chief Economist at the World Bank, Mr. Summers brought this “theory” to Washington mid-way through the first Clinton Administration as Under Secretary of Treasury to Robert Rubin where he began laying the groundwork – with co-conspirators Greenspan, Rubin and Clinton - for the implementation of his “theoretical research”: Gold price suppression began in earnest concurrently with changes in how the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency begins records the mushrooming growth of derivatives :
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POPSBlago to Announce Obama Replacement Appt. Burris, 71, may find he has no cause to celebrate. The Chicago Tribune reports: The action comes despite warnings by Democratic Senate leaders that they would not seat anyone appointed by the disgraced governor who faces criminal charges of trying to sell the post, sources familiar with the decision said. So Gov. Blagojevich's announcement won't be nearly as important as Harry Reid's reaction to it.
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POPSSocial Justice and the Mortgage Mess Next up was Comptroller of the Currency John Dugan, who agreed the CRA “certainly was not the cause of the subprime crisis.” ... In a more aggressive pursuit of “social justice,” the Clinton administration revised the CRA in April 1995 to mandate that banks pass lending tests in “underserved” communities and suffer tough new sanctions for failing to make enough loans there. According to the language of the new Clinton regs, banks that used “innovative or flexible lending practices” to address the credit needs of low-income borrowers passed the test. Banks with poor CRA ratings were hit with stiff fines and blocked from expanding their operations. But it wasn’t enough. So Clinton ordered HUD to pressure Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy the higher-risk loans from private banks and lenders, while adopting the same “flexible” credit standards.
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POPSNewly Refinanced Mortgages Go Bust Home loans modified earlier this year are showing a 58% default rate six months after the refinance. This shows something is going terribly wrong in our efforts to keep homeowners in their homes.
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POPSTradition or Cruelty? But there's no ignoring the tragic accidents that continue to occur. Nationwide, it's impossible to know how many work-related horse deaths have happened over the years; many aren't reported publicly, and carriage operators are wary of bad press. Whatever the number, animal advocates and medical professionals agree on one thing: an urban setting is not the place for horse-drawn carriages. "We're trying to keep alive a 19th-century conveyance in 21st-century Manhattan," says Holly Cheever, one of America's foremost equine veterinarians.
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POPSPentagon Wants $450 Billion Increase in Spending ...realizing that Obama might come in with a knife. Note the quote from Rabbi Dov Zakheim (neoconservative and PNAC member) on who's watch billions were lost and "unaccounted for" , in the Pentagon's black book-keeping. (On Sept. 11th the side of the Pentagon destroyed included the accountants and records of the Pentagon Budget Office!) Talk about Wall Street fraud, here is another black hole. Zakheim should be brought up on fraud charges. No comptroller of any corporation would get away with the kind of loss and unaccounted for spending (e.g. Enron). There is no accountability in government, especially the Pentagon. Everything is just fine is the message we get when outrageous abuses take place with taxppayers' money.
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