recovery (4)



By John W. Lillpop

Surviving liberalism, especially the Obama-Pelosi-Reid variety, without drugs and alcohol can be a formidable task. Mind you, it is possible, provided one has a strong recovery program and a vast right- wing conspiracy to lean on for moral support.

The following 12-step program is offered free of charge for liberals ready to get right with life. Follow these simple steps and you can be healed in time for the November 4 election at which time you can join the revolution to take America back.

The twelve steps.

We recovering liberals:

Step 1: Admitted to being powerless over insane, illogical, and anti-American thinking spawned by liberalism which has made America unmanageable.

Step 2: Came to believe that a power greater than the combined forces of the DNC and the mainstream media could restore sanity to America.

Step 3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of social and fiscal conservatives for restoration of traditional family values and common decency.

Step 4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of all liberal politicians who must be removed from office, or prevented from securing elective office in the first place.

Step 5. Admitted to ourselves and, everyone else who would listen, the exact nature of wrongs committed by liberals.

Step 6. Were entirely ready to have conservative candidates remove all defective characters (liberals) from political office.
POLL: Will Lois Lerner go to jail to protect Obama?

Step 7. Humbly worked to remove liberals from elective offices in all local, state, and federal jurisdictions.

Step 8. Made a list of all American patriot groups harmed by liberals and became willing to make amends to them all by winning the war on terror; reducing taxes, outlawing abortion, etc.

Step 9. Made direct amends to all such patriot groups wherever possible, except when to do so would cause them to register and or vote for Democrats.

Step 10. Continued to take inventory of all liberals and when they were wrong promptly admitted it and told them so..

Step 11. Sought through talk radio and blogging to improve public acceptance of conservative values as we understand them, and to improve our conscious contact with eligible voters everywhere, seeking only to win the White House and conservative majorities in both chambers of the U.S. Congress in order to have the power to advance the conservative vision for America.

Step 12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to all legal voters, and to practice these conservative principles in all our affairs.

To those too weak to adhere to this simple program, we recommend that the suffering liberal either take up smoking or excessive eating until the urge to think like a liberal passes.

Remember, even though liberalism is a severe mental disorder, it can be defeated!

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4063756135?profile=originalNext February, we will celebrate the 5th anniversary of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). You know, President Obama's trillion-dollar spending spree that was sold to the American people as a means to save our economy from the brink of disaster and create American jobs. 

As the former-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in 2010, when she and her left-wing minions were forcing the Affordable Care Act on the American people, “But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of controversy.”

Quite the pathetic statement, however, it is eerily true for us American citizens, because we are either kept in the dark, lied to, or manipulated as to what our government is up to. And once any large piece of legislation is passed, time is what enables us to grasp its impact –– good or bad, corrupt or mismanaged –– and calculate the cost to us hard-working American taxpayers. History has already proven that our government has grown too large, too intrusive, and too expensive.  

To better understand this piece of the "green energy" scandal, let me remind my fellow Americans that President Obama promised to have, and claims to be, the most transparent administration in history. Yet here we are over fours yeas later with David Sanger, the New York Times reporter who has spent two decades reporting in Washington, slamming this theory by proclaiming that the Obama administration is the "most closed, control-freak administration" he's ever covered, reported POLITICO this month.
As if many of us didn't have that sentiment already, especially in the midst of a series of serious scandals that hit the White House this year. More so, when we learned that political appointees within the Obama administration, across several agencies, including the Energy Department, and recently the IRS, have been using secret or personal email accounts to conduct official government business. But secrecy is not the only thug tactic operating inside this administration: they have been known to intimidate inspector generals, as told by Gerald Walpin. "But I learned, through being fired by the Obama administration, that performing one’s responsibilities as one should, and potentially adversely affecting the administration’s image, is not the way to keep one’s job," Walpin wrote this past June.

This brings me to today's Green Corruption File, "The RAT in the Recovery and the Gang of Ten," which is the underbelly of this scandal. First is the deception: other than the overall "save the planet" manipulation, Americans were misled as to the real purpose of the stimulus package. Secondly, the Obama administration's "RAT maneuver" (and those behind it) leaves us with speculation (some will say proof) of premeditation and intention in regards to potential shenanigans with the stimulus funds. Last but not least, the "ten green stimulus authors" (yet there could be more) that I have uncovered and will expand upon in the third section of this post, were allowed to ensure that their "green" interests were represented in the stimulus bill, thus cashing in at the tune of tens of billions of tax dollars.

The RAT in the Recovery


What most don't know, not even the majority of Congress, is that there was a RAT hidden deep inside the 1,073-page stimulus bill, which was drafted by the Obama transition team and congressional aides.

Entitled the Obama-Biden Transition Project, it employed approximately 400 people and it was comprised of Obama bundlers and campaign contributors as well as lobbyist and those that operate inside Washington’s egregious revolving door. In the mix was a squadron of Center for American Progress (CAP) experts, the billionaire George Soros-funded liberal think tank. Within this transition group, we also find many that eventually operated inside this clean-energy scheme, of which I'll highlight later.

"From the first debates over the stimulus bill, the White House has promised unprecedented levels of transparency and accountability," noted U.S. News in 2009, even appointing Vice President Joe Biden as the nation’s stimulus spending cop, Stimulus Sheriff Joe, who ultimately went MIA.


Quite the contrary, and it all started when Team Obama starting planning their trillion-dollar spending spree, because “deep inside” the 2009 Recovery Act was a RAT, an attempt to suppress potential investigations, and only a few news outlets caught it in February of 2009: the Washington Post and the Washington Examiner.
As legislation was moving at rapid speed, and Congress continually failed to read the bills, the Obama administration had placed a “far-reaching and potentially dangerous provision." The creation of the RAT Board (Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board) was supposed to be “an oversight panel headed by a White House nominee.” 

The controversial provision emerged in a January 2009 draft of the bill prepared by Obama's transition team officials and members of the House Appropriations Committee, of which at that time it was labeled by the White House as “critical to prevent waste and corruption.” This RAT board gave them the authority to ask, “That an inspector general conduct or refrain from conducting an audit or investigation.”
 
Did you get that? An Obama appointee could dictate what to investigate and what investigations they wanted to squash. 

According to The Examiner...
When Iowa Republican Sen. Charles Grassley, a longtime champion of inspectors general, read the words “conduct or refrain from conducting,” alarm bells went off. The language means that the board — whose chairman will be appointed by the president — can reach deep inside a federal agency and tell an inspector general to lay off some particularly sensitive subject. Or, conversely, it can tell the inspector general to go after a tempting political target. …”
Senator Grassley (Republican from Iowa), also warned, "This is a dangerous provision that will hamper oversight, restrict transparency, and damage the independence of inspectors general."

Subsequent concerns arose, with Senator Claire McCaskill (Democrat from Missouri), who was alarmed by the sentence that allowed "the panel to order an inspector general to stop an investigation." As reported by The Post in February 2009...
The group representing federal inspectors general recommended that the entire disputed provision be deleted from the legislation, according to David R. Gray, counsel to Phyllis K. Fong, chair of the Council of Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency. 
Senate negotiators changed the board composition. While the president would appoint the head of the panel, the rest of the members would be inspectors general. 
House and Senate negotiators also added a line proposed by McCaskill saying that the final decision on whether to proceed is up to the inspector general. "The language sends a very clear message that the IG is in the driver's seat," she said.

As you can see, eventually lawmakers revised the original bill, and allowed “the watchdog agencies to reject the panel's decisions.” But only after they were BUSTED, leaving many wondering why another layer of bureaucracy? Worse, why would a panel be given that kind or power in the first place, power that was not entirely stripped away.

At that time, they named the former Interior Department Inspector General Earl Devaney, who helped uncover the Jack Abramoff scandal, as the head. Yep, we got a Stimulus Czar, and more taxpayer money going out the door: "The bill allotted about $350 million in oversight measures, including $84 million for the creation of an oversight board," as documented by U.S. News. Mr. Devaney has since retired, and in December 2011, President Obama appointed Kathleen S. TIghe Chair of the Board, with eleven Inspectors General from various federal agencies that serve with her. 

Moreover, “Per the Recovery Act, the Board's Recovery activities were supposed to end on September 30, 2013. However, in the Disaster Relief Appropriations Act of 2013 to assist states and individuals impacted by Hurricane Sandy, Congress stipulated the Board provide oversight of the funding through 2015.”

The irony here is that the RAT Board's stated goals are “to provide transparency of Recovery-related funds and “to detect and prevent fraud, waste, and mismanagement.” While I can't speak for the entire stimulus bill, I know that tucked inside was $100 billion that Team Obama carved out for their big clean-energy push (save the planet funds). Money that I have been following since 2010, which has not only led to plenty of fraud, waste, and mismanagement, but also abuse, cronyism, corruption, and failure.

Most critically is that this “RAT” maneuver only leaves speculation of premeditation and intention in regards to potential shenanigans (an understatement) with the stimulus funds, and the daunting question, what has the RAT Board done about the massive pile of clean-energy dirt? 

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) 
& Its $100 billion renewable energy earmark 

Shortly after President Obama began his reign as our 44th president, in February 2009, he signed into law the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). This was a massive economic stimulus bill –– among the biggest in history –– that was sold to the American people as a means save our economy from the brink of disaster and create American jobs.  

By the beginning of 2012, revelations revealed the real intent behind Obama's trillion-dollar spending spree ("walking around money"): it was “a key tool for advancing the Obama administration’s clean-energy goals and fulfilling a number of campaign commitments.” In fact, the 2009-Stimulus package was jammed-packed full of clean-energy provisions, of which about 10 percent of the monies were earmarked for renewable energy. 

It's important to point out that the $100 billion in stimulus funds is not the only money being used to fuel the Obama administration's efforts to save the planet using other people's money.  I'd say it's closer to $150 billion to date, and counting, because they continue to dish out more. In short, other departments handing out "green" include the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Biorefinery Assistance Program, and we even find that there is a "Green War" being waged: "the Department of Defense has launched more green energy initiatives than any other federal agency and many are duplicative and wasteful," as reported by the Washington Free Beacon.
Another means where huge corporations and Obama's "green" pals get taxpayer money is through the taxpayer-supported Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im), who "has a Congressional mandate to support renewable energy and has been directed that 10% of its authorizations should be dedicated to renewable energy and environmentally beneficial transactions."

Additionally, the president's new Climate Action Plan, announced in July of this year, calls for releasing "$8 billion in loan guarantees for advanced fossil fuel and efficiency projects, and strengthen the Better Building Challenge to increase building efficiency 20 percent by 2020." Meanwhile, the "Obama administration is ready to restart the controversial automotive loan program designed to kick-start the development of alternative vehicles." This is the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing (ATVM) program that holds authority to award up to $25 billion in direct loans. 
Last fall, I chronicled how there were over 100 applicants for this section of the DOE's loan program, yet only the "FAVORED FIVE" were granted ATVM loans totaling $8.4 billion. Three of the five loans are directly tied to President Obama and the other two, both Ford Motor Co. and Nissan, were heavily engaged in negotiations with the administration over fuel economy standards for model years 2012- 2016 at the time DOE was considering their applications."
The ATVM is part of the Energy Department’s Loan Guarantee Program (DOE LGP) which has been a main focus throughout my work since April 2012. This is a program that consists of three separate entities: Section 1703Section 1705, and Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing (ATVM), and has thus far guaranteed $34.7 billion of taxpayer money. Both Section 1703 and the ATVM programs were established during the Bush administration, and Section 1705 was created by the 2009-Recovery Act.

This is the same Energy Department program which the Green Corruption Files has exposed over and over how at least 90 percent of the winners have meaningful politically connections (bundlers, top donors, fundraisers, etc) to the president and other high-ranking Democrats –– in many cases, to both. It also brought you big alternative energy losers such as Solyndra, Beacon Power, Abound Solar, Vehicle Production Group, SoloPower, Nevada Geothermal, and Fisker Automotive, flushing billions of tax dollars down the toilet. Yet there are billions more still at risk, and we're keeping an eye on these DOE projects: AREVA and its $2 billion, Georgia Power Company and its $8.33 billion, NRG Energy, Inc. (BrightSource) and its $1.6 billion, First Solar and its $3 billion, and others.

Still, the Energy Department's loan program is not the only place where we find taxpayer-funded clean-energy losers. At the end of 2012, I calculated that "as many as 50 Obama-backed green energy companies were bankrupt or troubled." In May I revisited this area, with my new numbers reflecting that 25 are bankrupt, and there are four about to go under. Then, if we keep those that were having issues the same (at 29), the latest taxpayer-funded clean-energy failure list is about 60 –– with almost half bankrupt. Stay tuned for a new investigative report on this topic in the near future. 
Continue reading "The RAT in the Recovery and the Gang of Ten" at The Green Corruption Files...
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America Needs a New Sheriff

4063562988?profile=originalThe American labor market showed few signs of new life in the latest jobs report.   First time filings for unemployment benefits rose again last week to a one-month high.  Claims rose for a second week, by 4,000 for the period ended Aug. 18.  After economists had predicted 365,000 new claims, the number climbed to 372,000.

The administration continues to cite the European debt crisis and economic slowdowns in Asia as deterrents to investment.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-23/jobless-claims-in-u-s-climb-for-second-week-to-one-month-high.html

It is far easier to blame the global economy than to admit that this administration’s energy policies are killing jobs in America.  That this administration poked their thumbs into the eyes of millions of unemployed Americans when they laughed about “shovel-ready” projects not being as “shovel-ready” as advertised.  It is not the least bit funny to Americans when they discover that this administration does not know what they are doing, especially after they spent trillions of taxpayer dollars on plans that did not work and redistributed hundreds of billions of the taxpayer’s wealth to rich “progressive” bundlers for the administration’s campaign machine.

Across the country, Americans have had enough of this administration’s policies, starting with those that kill jobs; like the healthcare reform law that levies huge tax hikes on all Americans and imposes additional 4063563020?profile=originalburdens on businesses.  Americans are done with the policies that are killing America’s energy industry, like stifling EPA regulations that make it impossible to build new petroleum refineries or use coal powered energy.  Americans can no longer tolerate a lack of policy; a lack that precludes any hope for recovery in the housing market.  Many small businesses will find it difficult if not impossible to exist, much less expand and hire while banking regulations imposed during this administration make it virtually impossible for banks to loan them money.

Why does America continue to spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year on foreign energy rather than developing the abundant energy in its own country? Why not keep those hundreds of billions of dollars at home in its own sluggish, cash strapped economy?

4063562950?profile=originalAt a time when tens of millions of Americans are struggling to find work and its economy is starving for liquid capital, why does this administration refuse to take advantage of America’s wealth of natural resources? Why does this administration continue to prevent drilling for oil and natural gas or mining for coal? Why not put Americans back to work building refineries and power plants? Why not have Americans delivering gas, coal and natural gas to American consumers?

How many peripheral jobs will be created by that process?

For every new oil well, power plant, refinery or mine there will be new roads built, followed by restaurants, stores, housing, schools and places of worship. All generated by the only force capable of powering America’s economic recovery: the private sector.

The key to economic recovery in America is a shift in policy.  The only way for that shift to happen is to alter the governing philosophy.  For that alteration to take place, America must elect a new sheriff and new deputies.

http://mjfellright.wordpress.com/2012/08/23/america-needs-a-new-sheriff/

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Persistent Presidential Policies Provoke Potential Business Paroxysm

Repeatedly saying, “I am the job’s president,” “I’m a true friend of small business,” “I have the best interests of America’s Business at heart,” “My administration is fully-committed to fostering a climate supporting the business community,” etc., etc., ad nauseum . . . repeatedly spewing words, Mr. President, that are belied by vicious and repeated haranguing from the other side of your mouth . . . and belied more importantly, by a host of anti-business actions since Inauguration Day -- it just doesn’t wash . . . .
Item: If President Obama’s “six-month” moratorium on offshore drilling goes into effect, the eventual economic effect of his moratorium, will in all probability utterly dwarf the economic effect of the spill itself. All the Gulf state governor’s have called the moratorium hasty, ill-conceived and likely to seriously undercut their states’ recovery.
ITEM: Mr. Obama frankly told the San Francisco Chronicle his “energies policies will bankrupt the coal industry.” He has also repeatedly declared his cap and trade plan will “necessarily make the price of electricity skyrocket.” Threatening to bankrupt essential industries? Threatening to make the price of the most fundamental aspect of any business “skyrocket”? This is no way to create business confidence or a supportive business atmosphere.
ITEM: Obama has promised to reinstitute on January 1, 2011, all the tax cuts and tax amnesties instituted by the Bush administration. Spending by this administration has dwarfed that of all previous administrations. Rising taxes and snowballing government spending has always been a recipe for economic shutdown.
ITEM: consider the financial overhaul “Reform” bill just signed into law, Obama said, “Would stop all bailout’s forever.” Actually, the concept of “too big to fail” is written ingloriously right into that law and guarantees that such bailouts will become a way of life. Thus all big (too big to fail) businesses are free to take the most unwise risks imaginable and thus maximize their chances of huge profits while always having that government safety net below them that he just signed into law. Small business can fail while big business canNOT; Big business can gun for huge profits at no risk which would bankrupt small businesses.
ITEM: consider again the financial overhaul “Reform” bill just signed into law, the original problem besetting the country was actually a sub-prime lending crisis brought about largely by ACORN abuse (Barack Obama was an ACORN lawyer shaking down lending companies) and its effect upon agencies like Freddy Mac and Frannie Mae and HUD (housing urban development agency). HUD in 1995 under weaker versions of the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act granted 44% of all their housing loans to people who objectively could NOT afford to repay the mortgage. (Carter’s CRA ’77 was expanded to include Freddie and Fanny in ’92; twice expanded in 1995 and finally expanded on steroids in 1998 -- these last three moves all under Bill Clinton). By 2005 52% of all HUD loans were made to people who objectively were not fiscally eligible for the loans given to them including illegal aliens, people without jobs, and some people without even a rental history. So how were these fundamental problems addressed by the “reform” bill? These problems were NOT addressed at all. Not one single change to HUD, Fanny Mae nor Freddy Mac is found in the 2,300 page bill. In fact, the laws that did us in, all five of them, are still on the books.
ITEM: consider again the financial overhaul “Reform” bill just signed into law, hundreds of “directives” are required by the new law . . . directives not yet written; directives not yet written by regulators not yet hired. Once again a monstrous bill (2,300 pages) has been passed and no one actually knows what’s in it, or what it does, or how it does it. This is gross uncertainty, Mr. Obama. Legitimate business never thrives under uncertain conditions.
ITEM: consider again the financial overhaul “Reform” bill just signed into law, the bill itself is self-contradictory in numerous places implying that execution and control could be under this federal agency or that one or this other one or perhaps under a couple of them or even all three of them. More uncertainty for businesses.
ITEM: consider again the financial overhaul “Reform” bill just signed into law, one thing is certain, the bill is going to be a nightmare for business offices to deal with . . . tons of paperwork, tons of bureaucracy . . . all at huge costs to businesses in time, salaries, repeated efforts, etc. A nasty certainty for business.
ITEM: consider Obamacare’s so-called health care “reform,” more directives not written by more bureaucrats not all hired yet. 3,300 pages worth of newness, including almost 390 brand new government agencies created (FDR’s entire presidency spawned only 40 new government agencies). Uncertainty for the next eight years (when the final shoe drops as Obamacare is phased in) is horrible for business.
ITEM: again consider Obamacare’s so-called health care “reform,” 390 new government agencies means a horrific and an incredible ultra-bureaucratic bombing of businesses . . . the likely paperwork snowstorm is sure to be very expensive of time and money and trouble.
ITEM: again consider Obamacare’s so-called health care “reform,” ooops, it’s going to increase the deficits, the national debt and the problems for the country, not a good atmosphere for business to operate under.
ITEM: again consider Obamacare’s so-called health care“reform,”
health care insurance, as we now know it, is effectively wiped out by 2018 . . . in other words, government interference has consumed and by overbearing bureaucracy, utterly and negatively transformed an entire American business industry. That is certain to invoke the notion, "Are we next? More threat and more uncertainty for business.
Item: again consider Obamacare’s so-called health care “reform,” it is now 100% certain that “elective” abortion is covered by Obamacare as shown by the first two Obamacare offices opened up in New Mexico and in Pennsylvania. Based upon President Obama’s signed paper for Michigan Representative Bart Stupak swearing that the longtime federal policy of NOT funding abortions would continue with Obamacare, then since it clearly appears abortions are among the very first conditions covered by Obamacare, somebody lied and businesses don’t operate well under despotic, lying governments . . . ever.
ITEM: again consider Obamacare’s so-called health care “reform,” it does nothing for improving health. It does nothing to lower health care costs. It merely sticks 390 new government agencies between doctor and patient. It is, in short, a nightmare supposedly designed to help American citizens and American business . . . but actually just a way to grab control of the pulse of America . . . business doesn’t operate well under devious government control . . . ever.
ITEM: returning to the matter of the Obama six-month offshore drilling moratorium, Mr. Obama has had two of his six-month moratoriums set aside by federal judges and is now involved in a third such moratorium he’s issued . . . what Rajjpuut would call ‘sleazy lawyer slow-down shenanigans,’ (even putting the horrible effect on the Gulf economy as each of the now operating well goes out of business and drillers eventually return in five or ten years) get a clue Mr. Obama, businesses don’t operate well under that kind of Washington arrogance and sleaze.
Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,
Rajjpuut
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