When over 2 million people marched into the District of Criminals on 9.12.2009 to let Washington know that we were awake, paying attention, and keeping score, they weren’t listening. When the Obamacare townhalls became raucous, they whined about being called on the carpet and/or called us astroturf one day and domestic terrorists the next. When we melted the phone lines in Congress day after wretched day they kindasorta started paying attention. One would THINK that when we fired their asses with prejudice and sent them packing in November, 2010, the remaining criminals might actually have UNDERSTOOD how pissed we are.
The Senate voted Wednesday for the first time to repeal a piece of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul, rolling back a new tax reporting requirement that’s been universally panned by business owners.
The amendment to repeal the 1099 reporting requirement passed 81-17 with broad bipartisan support.
81-17?
81-17?
EXCUSE ME??????
REALLY????
ARE YOU FUCKIN’ KIDDING ME?
The 17 losers that decided to continue to hammer small businesses in, what can only be described as delusional hopes of raising $17 Billion dollars against a $14 TRILLION DOLLAR debt? WHERE exactly does that $17 Billion come from when small business stops paying taxes because they are not producing revenue, just tracking less revenue? And does the $17 Billion matter when we pay the Federal Reserve more than that each month in interest on the debt?
NOT striking down certain provisions. NOT meddling and tinkering with the cracked door of socialized medicine.
NOT HALF ASSED MEASURES!
REPEAL!
IN IT’S ENTIRETY!
…still not paying attention. Makes one wonder exactly what it will take to get these asshats’ attention.
Republicans? Democrats? LIEBERMAN? Paying attention? DON’T YOU DARE PICK, CHOOSE OR PLAY POLITICS WITH THIS LAW. We don’t give a rat’s ass whether the crack smokin’ teenagers in the White House like the repeal movement or whether the sorry excuse for a walking, talking, breathing human being who happens to be the worst pResident in the history of the universe vetoes it or not. PASS THE REPEAL!
We told you that we would spend our very last freakin’ penny to get this country back on track and save our childrens’ futures.
WE ARE NOT LIKE YOU!
WE WERE NOT LYING!!!
Straighten up and fly right. We are watching you. Don’t you dare go along to get along.
It appears that ‘The Prince‘ by Niccolo Machiavelli must be required reading by elected officials in the District of Criminals.
This article about the senate omnibus bill has been difficult to write as there are many little pieces to the puzzle, so a brief recap of the dems ‘enhanced negotiation tactics‘ is in order.
The democrat majority has not passed one single appropriations bill (there are 12 of them) this past year.
The dems have waited until four days before the government is set to shut down to drop a 1,924 page package omnibus bill on the senate that includes approximately 6,488 earmarks and funding for Obamacare and additional funds for the IRS. Yes, you can thank my POS senator for this new version of gang-rape.
This bill funds the government until next September, freezing out the new Republican House from making any spending cuts and bringing us many more steps closer to national bankruptcy.
This bill will fund the Financial Fascism law currently nicknamed the FrankenDodd Law that includes tracking of every single financial transaction in the country.
The appropriation is related to his support for the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act – legislation nicknamed the “Akaka Bill” in honor of Hawaii’s U.S. Senator Daniel Akaka, which creates a native Hawaiian sovereign government within the state with its own powers relating to taxation, land ownership, regulation, law enforcement, and more.
Neil Cavuto interviewed Sen. Tom Coburn about this bill earlier today and Mr. Coburn made pertinent points.
If this bill passes, the GOP won’t be able go cut any spending because it funds everything through 2011.
Inability of the GOP to address the impending bankruptcy of the United States.
This bill does not give the American people any confidence that the feds might actually be listening.
What Sen. Coburn failed to mention is that this bill will fund Obamacare and also gives additional funds to the Internal Revenue Service.
Sen. John McCain, 12.14.2010:
Does it ever feel like we are being forced to swallow glass shards while walking across hot coals when it comes to the UTTER VINDICTIVENESS of our elected officials in the District of Criminals? This spending package must be passed this week or the feds will have to shut their doors on Saturday. Who in their right mind allows such a walk on the razor’s edge to occur? This fails to be a lack of planning; it is absolute lunacy and mean-spiritedness from politicians that are holding the American people hostage with their enhanced negotiation tactics in order to fund programs we don’t want, all the while running the clock out fighting over bleeding the American taxpayer even more on January 1st. I used to believe that they were actually trying to start a revolution, but have come to the conclusion that we are entirely invisible while they are playing Machiavellian politics.
(UPDATE: Everybody wave to Monsanto who is currently using DHS’s easy chair.)
Alexander (R-TN) Brown (R-MA) Burr (R-NC) Collins (R-ME) Enzi (R-WY) Grassley (R-IA) Gregg (R-NH) Johanns (R-NE) Kirk (R-IL) LeMieux (R-FL) Lugar (R-IN) Murkowski (R-AK) Snowe (R-ME) Vitter (R-LA) Voinovich (R-OH)
…and of course, every single democrat in the Senate. For a complete listing of the vote, go to the Senate Roll Call Votes Page.
There is ‘talk’ that the House will just pass the Senate version ‘as is’ in order to avoid the FDA’s lock on your food being stalled before the end of the lame duck session. Well folks, let’s just add this bill to the list of laws that will need to be recalled; FinReg, Obamacare, Bailouts, etc. For those that weren’t awake in July, 2009 for the House passage of H.R. 2749, here is the text of that POS bill that was passed by Nancy’s Nazis on July 29, 2009.
Despite unusual bipartisan support on Capitol Hill and a strong push from the Obama administration, the bill could still die because there might not be enough time for the usual haggling between the Senate and House of Representatives, which passed its own version last year. Top House Democrats said that they would consider simply passing the Senate version to speed approval.
Both versions of the bill would grant the F.D.A. new powers to recall tainted foods, increase inspections, demand accountability from food companies and oversee farming. But neither version would consolidate overlapping functions at the Department of Agriculture and nearly a dozen other federal agencies that oversee various aspects of food safety, making coordination among the agencies a continuing challenge.(emphasis added)
And just because people need to know that Big Ag is behind this bill…
Noted Food Safety Expert Michael R. Taylor Named Advisor to FDA Commissioner
Michael R. Taylor, J.D., a nationally recognized food safety expert and research professor at George Washington University’s School of Public Health and Health Services, will return to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to serve as senior advisor to the commissioner.
“I am pleased to welcome Mike Taylor back to the FDA,” Commissioner of Food and Drugs Margaret A. Hamburg, M.D., said in announcing Taylor’s appointment. “His expertise and leadership on food safety issues will help the agency to develop and implement the prevention based strategy we need to ensure the safety of the food we eat.”
Commissioner Hamburg said that Taylor would work closely and collaboratively with her office and with the management of the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, Center for Veterinary Medicine, the Office of Regulatory Affairs, Congress, and with members of the Obama Administration.
Specifically, Taylor will work to:
Assess current food program challenges and opportunities
Identify capacity needs and regulatory priorities
Develop plans for allocating fiscal year 2010 resources
Develop the FDA’s budget request for fiscal year 2011
Plan implementation of new food safety legislation.
Remember how the NY Times stated that this bill doesn’t facilitate more communication between agencies?
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration, moving to address the nation’s fractured food safety system, on Wednesday appointed Michael R. Taylor, a veteran food expert, as deputy commissioner for foods at the Food and Drug Administration. The newly created position is the first to oversee all the agency’s many food and nutrition programs.
The federal government’s oversight of the nation’s food supply has for decades been split among 13 disparate and sometimes feuding agencies. The result has been a growing menu of food recalls, including contaminated peanut butter, spinach and cookie dough, and the annual sickening of about 70 million people.
With new powers and extensive Washington experience, Mr. Taylor is supposed to fix this mess. But he is likely to be on a short leash.
Some powerful legislators in Congress had proposed creating a new agency combining the government’s many food functions. The compromise legislation headed for passage by spring will instead invest more food authority and money in the F.D.A. functions Mr. Taylor will oversee.
But if Mr. Taylor proves unable to prevent or quickly resolve the growing number of food scares, the idea of a separate food agency is likely to be revisited.
In an interview at a Washington coffee shop, Mr. Taylor said his biggest task was readying the F.D.A. to handle the new powers that Congress will soon give it. The legislation is expected to grant the agency the power to recall suspect foods, require manufacturers to establish plans to prevent contamination, and increase food inspections.
“Unless we work in a more unified way, we won’t be able to implement the law effectively,” Mr. Taylor said.
Setting safety standards for produce — a source of a growing number of food scares in recent years — is a top priority, although the task is enormously complicated, Mr. Taylor said. Even more difficult will be enforcing the rules, since there are more than two million farms in the nation, he said.
Mr. Taylor started his career in 1976 as an F.D.A. staff lawyer and over the next three decades migrated among government, industry and academia. He returned to the F.D.A. in 1991 as deputy commissioner for policy and moved in 1994 to head the Department of Agriculture’s meat inspection service.
Since July, he has served as a senior adviser to Commissioner Margaret Hamburg of the F.D.A. He once worked for Monsanto, the agribusiness giant, leading some in the organic movement to oppose his appointment.
Once again, the NY Times glosses over the important stuff because you stupid moos just don’t need to know. This information comes from Mr. Taylor’s Wiki page and I am posting it because it is accurate.
Michael R. Taylor is the Deputy Commissioner for Foods, at the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
He received his law degree from the University of Virginia and his B.A. degree in political science from Davidson College, in 1976, after passing the bar examination, Taylor became a staff attorney for the FDA, where he was executive assistant to the Commissioner.[1]
In 1981 he went into private practice at King & Spalding, a law firm representing the biotechnology company Monsanto[2], where he established and led the firm’s “food and drug law” practice.[3] On July 17, 1991, Michael Taylor left King & Spalding, returning to the FDA to fill the newly created post of Deputy Commissioner for Policy. Between 1994 and 1996 he moved to the USDA, where he was Administrator of the Food Safety & Inspection Service.
After briefly returning to King & Spalding, he then returned to Monsanto to become Vice President for Public Policy.[4]
On July 7, 2009, Taylor once again returned to government as “senior advisor” to the FDA Commissioner.[7] Taylor’s re-appointment to the FDA came just after Obama and the other G-8 leaders pledged $20 billion to fight hunger in Africa over the next three years. According to Paula Crossfield “President Obama is embedded in a bubble” featuring some of the fervent promoters of the biotech industry and a Green Revolution in Africa.[8] Before joining Obama’s transition team, Taylor was a Senior Fellow at the think tankResources for the Future, where he published two documents on U.S. aid for African agriculture, both of which were funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. And on January 13, 2010, he was appointed to another newly created post at the FDA, this time as Deputy Commissioner for Foods.[9]
Taylor is featured in the documentaries “The Future of Food” and “The World According to Monsanto”[10] as a pertinent example of revolving door since he is a lawyer who has spent the last few decades moving between Monsanto and the FDA and USDA.
So a lawyer that moves between Monsanto and government agencies for his entire career is ‘implementing food safety legislation’. How’s that working for ya moos?
From Global Researcher on August 18, 2009. Make sure you read the very last line…
Michael R. Taylor’s appointment by the Obama administration to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on July 7th sparked immediate debate and even outrage among many food and agriculture researchers, NGOs and activists. The Vice President for Public Policy at Monsanto Corp. from 1998 until 2001, Taylor exemplifies the revolving door between the food industry and the government agencies that regulate it. He is reviled for shaping and implementing the government’s favorable agricultural biotechnology policies during the Clinton administration.
Yet what has slipped under everyone’s radar screen is Taylor’s involvement in setting U.S. policy on agricultural assistance in Africa. In collusion with the Rockefeller and Bill and Melinda Gates foundations, Taylor is once again the go-between man for Monsanto and the U.S. government, this time with the goal to open up African markets for genetically-modified (GM) seed and agrochemicals.
In the late 70s, Taylor was an attorney for the United States Department of Agriculture, then in the 80s, a private lawyer at the D.C. law firm King & Spalding, where he represented Monsanto. When Taylor returned to government as Deputy Commissioner for Policy for the FDA from 1991 to 1994, the agency approved the use of Monsanto’s GM growth hormone for dairy cows (now found in most U.S. milk) without labeling. His role in these decisions led to a federal investigation, though eventually he was exonerated of all conflict-of-interest charges.
Taylor’s re-appointment to the FDA came just after Obama and the other G-8 leaders pledged $20 billion to fight hunger in Africa over the next three years. “President Obama is currently embedded in a bubble featuring some of the fervent promoters of the biotech industry and a Green Revolution in Africa,” says Paula Crossfield in the Huffington Post. Before joining Obama’s transition team, Taylor was a Senior Fellow at the D.C. think tank Resources for the Future, where he published two documents on U.S. aid for African agriculture, both of which were funded by the Rockefeller Foundation.
The Rockefeller Foundation funded the first Green Revolution in Asia and Latin America in the 1960s, and in 2006, teamed up with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to launch the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). In Taylor’s 2003 paper “American Patent Policy, Biotechnology, and African Agriculture: The Case for Policy Change,” he states: “The Green Revolution largely bypassed sub-Saharan Africa…African farmers often face difficult growing conditions, and better access to the basic Green Revolution tools of fertilizer, pesticides, improved seeds, and irrigation certainly can play an important role in improving their productivity.”
In an interview with AllAfrica.com, Obama echoed Taylor’s sentiment: “I’m still frustrated over the fact that the Green Revolution that we introduced into India in the ’60s, we haven’t yet introduced into Africa in 2009.”
Yet as Crossfield points out, “There are very good reasons why we have never introduced a Green Revolution into Africa, namely because there is broad consensus that the Green Revolution in India has been a failure, with Indian farmers in debt, bound to paying high costs for seed and pesticides, committing suicide at much higher rates, and resulting in a depleted water table and a poisoned environment, and by extension, higher rates of cancer. If President Obama is lacking this information, it is his cabinet that is to blame.”
The “penultimate draft” of Taylor’s 2002 paper was reviewed by Dr. Robert Horsch, a Monsanto executive for more than 25 years, who left in 2006 to work at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It states, “The ultimate concern of this report is how innovative seed technology derived from patented tools of biotechnology can be developed and disseminated for the benefit of small-scale and subsistence African farmers.”
Taylor’s 2005 paper “Investing in Africa’s Future: U.S. Agricultural Development Assistance for Sub-Saharan Africa,” was co-authored by the executive director of the Partnership to Cut Hunger and Poverty in Africa (PCHPA). Founded in 2000 and based in D.C., PCHPA is a consortium of public-private interests (Gates is one of its primary funders) that includes, among many others, Halliburton, several African heads of state, administrators from several U.S. land grant universities, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and Monsanto. According to its web site, Taylor and Horsch both sit on PCHPA’s advisory committee. Horsch continues to be listed as Vice President for Product and Technology Cooperation for Monsanto, and a member of PCHPA’s working group for Capacity Building for Science and Technology.
Taylor writes of the need to change “archaic, near-subsistence agricultural economies” with a “market-oriented approach and the promotion of thriving agribusinesses.” His recipe is globalized, industrial agriculture: “applied agricultural research,” “markets for agricultural inputs and outputs”, “build rural roads and other physical infrastructure”, and “build agricultural export capacity and opportunity.” Taylor fails to adequately address how liberalized agricultural policies and unfair U.S. agricultural subsidies have been responsible for the bankruptcy of millions of African farmers. Instead, he maintains, “the financial impact of U.S. domestic cotton subsidies on Mali farmers dwarfs the impact of development assistance from USAID and other agencies.”
“Private investment and entrepreneurship are widely understood to be essential. The role of public investment is to provide the critical public goods needed to make private effort attractive and rewarding.”
Taylor maintains that due to the constraints of USAID, which has its funds allocated through congressional earmarks and is squeezed by the wards in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. needs an alternative funding strategy for African agricultural development assistance. His proposal is to broaden the reach of the Millenium Challenge Corporation (MCC), a U.S. government agency established in 2004 by President George W. Bush to implement the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA). “MCC is a new government corporation that operates under a different institutional and policy framework and receives funds that are not earmarked,” says Taylor. ““The MCA was intended to depart sharply from traditional U.S. development assistance by providing large amounts of assistance to select countries that create an enabling environment for economic growth through market-oriented, pro-growth policies.” African countries make up about half of the MCA-eligible countries.
In June 2008, the Rockefeller Foundation issued a press release about the “historic collaboration” between MCC and AGRA. “MCC’s investments in agriculture and in public infrastructure such as roads and irrigation complement AGRA’s investments in providing the rural poor with seeds and fertilizers to increase their incomes and production,” said MCC’s CEO Ambassador John Danilovich. The MCC-AGRA partnership focuses on five areas, including “advancing agriculture research, multiplication of seed, and distribution of inputs and technologies to small-scale farmers,” and “building roads, irrigation and other agriculture-related infrastructure.”
As it arrived in D.C., the Obama Administration received a report from the Chicago Council on Global Affairs titled “Renewing American Leadership in the Fight Against Hunger and Poverty: The Chicago Initiative on Global Agricultural Development.” The report was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and co-authored by its senior fellow Catherine Bertini. “The United States should thus remain willing to support research on all forms of modern crop biotechnology by local scientists in Sub-Saharan Africa,” it reads.
Taylor’s 2007 paper, published by PCHPA and titled “Beating Africa’s Poverty by Investing in Africa’s Infrastructure,” is cited in the Chicago Council report and listed as “key reading on African development” in its appendix. The Chicago Council report makes five specific recommendations, the third being to “increase support for rural and agricultural infrastructure, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa,” with a related priority to “accelerate disbursal of the Millennium Challenge Corporation funds already obligated for rural roads and other agricultural infrastructure projects.”
While people have been debating about whether Michael R. Taylor might support labeling of GM foods (as he is aware, a moot point in the U.S. due to widespread contamination by GM pollen), he has been literally writing the book on U.S. agricultural aid to Africa. While the motives, beliefs and interests of Taylor, the Obama administration, the Gates, Rockefellers and everyone in support of a Green Revolution in Africa are debatable, those of Monsanto are not.
“Once attached to a pool of foreign aid money, the pressure to open markets to biotechnology will be substantial,” points out Food First policy analyst Annie Shattuck.
But what will be the human and environmental costs of unleashing a Green Revolution in Africa? According to the Chicago Council report, the “most respected science academies” have concluded that “genetically engineered crops currently on the market present no new documented risk either to human health or to the environment.” Unfortunately, this is false, and the world cannot afford for Obama to follow the advice of those who support a Green Revolution in Africa.
In May, the American Academy of Environmental Medicine called for a moratorium on GM foods: “several animal studies indicate serious health risks associated with GM food consumption including infertility, immune dysregulation, accelerated aging, dysregulation of genes associated with cholesterol synthesis, insulin regulation, cell signaling, and protein formation, and changes in the liver, kidney, spleen and gastrointestinal system.”
According to a study published by the Union of Concerned Scientists this year, GM seeds do not produce higher yields than conventional seeds. Yet they pose serious ecological risks, especially from genetic contamination from pollen. In the U.S., it is becoming impossible for the organic food industry to certify non-GM foods. In July in South Africa, three varieties of Monsanto’s GM corn produced seedless plants on over 200,000 hectares of land for about 250 farmers. Monsanto had sold some of the seeds to commercial farmers and also given some to resource-poor, rural families.
GM crops also require more chemical spraying than conventional crops, and weeds are developing tolerance to glyphosate, requiring higher and higher doses. According to a recent editorial in the New York Times, “Scientists are connecting the dots with evidence of increasing abnormalities among humans, particularly large increases in numbers of genital deformities among newborn boys…Apprehension is growing among many scientists that the cause of all this may be a class of chemicals called endocrine disruptors.”
Glyphosate is an endocrine disruptor. In March, a molecular biologist at the University of Caen named Dr. Gilles-Eric Seralini published the results of a study that found Roundup causes cells to die in human embryos. “Even in doses diluted a thousand times, the herbicide could cause malformations, miscarriages, hormonal problems, reproductive problems, and different types of cancers,” said Dr. Seralini. In April, Dr. Andrés Carrasco, an embryologist at the University of Buenos Aires, published his findings that even very low doses, glyphosate can cause brain, intestinal and heart defects in frog fetuses.
Taylor’s solution to halt hunger in Africa is for its farmers to industrially produce commodities for global markets in order to generate cash to purchase toxic food at a supermarket. Yet if his goal is to meet the immediate food and nutritional security needs of poor people in sub-Saharan Africa, and given that most of them live in rural areas, his perception of appropriate land use is flawed.
Critics of AGRA assert that the most effective approach to fighting hunger in Africa would be to prioritize the agroecological production of healthy food by and for small-scale, peasant farming families, who would sell their surplus to local, regional and national markets, without being subject to unfair global markets and trade policies, or Monsanto’s Green Revolution package.
Family farms employ more people per acre than industrial farms do, and diversified small and medium farmers are more ecologically and economically resilient than those cultivating a monoculture cash crop. Local food systems consume less fossil fuel. Whereas the patenting and planting of GM seeds threaten humanity’s collective agrogenetic heritage, in a world without Monsanto, millions of family farmers would be the guardians of agrobiodiversity and indigenous farming knowledge.
One has to ask: given its support for Taylor, Monsanto and a new Green Revolution in Africa, does the Obama administration’s foreign agricultural aid program truly represent ‘change we can believe in’?
As Ben Burkett, president of the National Family Farm Coalition, a U.S. member of La Via Campesina, cautioned, “As an African American farmer who has visited farmers in Africa many times, I am deeply concerned that much of the Obama Administration’s pledge to spend $1 billion on agriculture research will be wasted on biotech research that benefits Monsanto more than it does small-scale farmers.”
Isabella Kenfield is an analyst at Americas Program and an associate at the Center for the Study of the Americas in Berkeley, California. She can be reached at isabella.kenfield(a)gmail.com.
(Reuters) – President Barack Obama, still smarting from his Democrats’ big losses in congressional elections, said on Friday the United States cannot afford to get mired in legislative gridlock for the next two years while countries like China forge ahead.
Three days after voters punished Obama’s party for the weak economy, he called for “putting politics aside” as he struck a conciliatory tone with victorious Republicans, saying he was open to hearing their ideas for tackling stubbornly high unemployment. (Editor’s Note: BWWWAAAAHHHHHH!)
Obama now faces a threat by Republican leaders to try to roll back his signature policies, including a healthcare overhaul and Wall Street reform, and to block his agenda for the rest of his term.
“We can’t spend the next two years mired in gridlock. Other countries like China aren’t standing still so we can’t stand still either. We’ve got to move forward,” Obama told reporters before departing on a 10-day Asia tour.
I have a novel idea for you, Barack. When the House and Senate pass constitutionally written bills that are supported by The American People, such as repealing Obamacare, FinReg, auditing the Fed, abolish-ion of the Fed and IRS, yada, yada, yada….
Shut The Fuck Up And Sign It!
We no longer have the luxury of debating the merits of social justice and redistribution of the wealth that has been shipped overseas; the economic clock has run out (as Ben can attest with his trillions of dollars of fake money).
100 years of ponzi scheme, bullshit legislation has finally caught up with us.
(UPDATE: 10.14.2010, Law firms based in the District of Criminals are coming out of the woodwork and reading this post. Everybody wave!!)
Fascism is alive and well in the District of Criminals. Fascism is the only way to describe a federal government so full of themselves that they believe seizing Americans’ 401(k)s is perfectly acceptable; nevermind the immorality or un-Constitutionality of the move. They really do believe that it is their money and they just let us use it.
I found the link to this story on Market-Ticker and one needs to give credit to a master when it is due (which is just about every day with this guy. I am so freakin’ glad Karl is on the internet!)
If there’s a pitchfork moment in this country it had better show up fairly soon, because if this report is accurate you can bet that these clowns are going to find a way to attach this in some obscure section of a 2,000+ page “must pass” bill – another one of those “you have to pass it so you can read it” deals.
I know we are all just waiting and holding our breath for 11.2.2010 in hopes that flipping this congress will actually make some sort of difference in the slow, agonizing, ‘managed decline‘ of the United States under the progressives who by all appearances are throwing everything including the kitchen sink at the economy in an effort to collapse it. This is the part, IMO, that the GOP hasn’t gotten the memo on yet (if their pledge is anything to go by); pitchforks before or after the economy completely tanks.
Here’s the story about Congress seizing 401(k)s, Human Events, 10.8.2010:
Democrats in the Senate on Thursday held a recess hearing covering a taxpayer bailout of union pensions and a plan to seize private 401(k) plans to more “fairly” distribute taxpayer-funded pensions to everyone.
Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), Chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee heard from hand-picked witnesses advocating the infamous “Guaranteed Retirement Account” (GRA) authored by Theresa Guilarducci.
(You can find the blistering interview with Guilarducci by radio talk show host Mark Levin in 2007 at the link).
In a nutshell, under the GRA system government would seize private 401(k) accounts, setting up an additional 5% mandatory payroll tax to dole out a “fair” pension to everyone using that confiscated money coupled with the mandated contributions. This would, of course, be a sister government ponzi scheme working in tandem with Social Security, the primary purpose being to give big government politicians additional taxpayer funds to raid to pay for their out-of-control spending.
From written hearing testimony submitted by Economic Policy Institute (EPI) Vice President Ross Eisenbrey:
“We need a comprehensive solution that addresses interrelated problems. For example, a system that places most of the burden for retirement saving on individuals will always have to wrestle with the problem of pre-retirement loans and withdrawals (simply plugging these leaks will not work, because many workers would stop contributing to the system). A system that relies on tax incentives to promote individual retirement savings will necessarily tend to favor high-income workers who can afford to save more and who benefit the most from these tax breaks. Conversely, a truly universal system would need to shield low-income workers from out-of-pocket costs or wage cuts. EPI has published and advocated what we feel would be an excellent national supplemental retirement plan, the Guaranteed Retirement Account which was authored by Prof. Teresa Ghilarducci, Director of the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis at the New School for Social Research. “
The EPI is housed on the third floor of the building occupied by the George Soros-funded Center for American Progress, a hard-core leftist group whose flavor of socialist policy has brought you the current blend of elitist socialism and crony capitalism bankrupting the American economy. Which speaks volumes about EPI and the Democrat leadership’s choice of witness.
Brett McMahon, spokesman for the Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC), a trade association, warns this hearing exposed part of a process that may come as early as the November lame duck push to bailout union pensions by attaching the bailout to an across-the-board extension of the current tax rates.
“I am deeply concerned that they will try to attach something like the Casey bill or the Casey bill in and of itself to tax cut extensions bill that is inevitably going to have to be dealt with at some point during the lame duck session,” McMahon told HUMAN EVENTS.
As reported in HUMAN EVENTS the Casey bill from Sen. Bob Casey (D-Penn.) is a new entitlement program that would set up a permanent bailout of the union multi-employer pension plans that are desperately underwater through a new “fifth fund” at the government Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC). Casey’s bill would create a line item on the federal budget through the PBGC to fund these union pension bailouts annually — union pensions that are underwater as a result of mismanagement that pre-dates the 2008 financial upheaval.
Yep, they passed the 2300 page “kill small business” POS bill brought forward from those bastions of free market capitalism, Barney Frank and Chris Dodd. Now it’s off to Chairman Zero’s desk for signature.
This new law will allow the federal government to grow even larger, and does nothing to protect consumers. Surprised? If you want to know how badly you are getting screwed, go here.
For those that are keeping track and want the reference page for all the roll call votes for anti-American and anti-Free Market legislation that Bush and Obama pushed through (including Financial Reform), visit the Roll Call Vote Page.
(IF YOU ARE NOT LIVIDLY BESIDE YOURSELF, YOU ARE NOT PAYING ATTENTION!)
Yet another compact with the darkside made in the District of Criminals.
Blanche Lincoln has made a deal lessening the impact of derivative rules (you know, those pesky trades that put us in this fix) so that the financial regulation reform bill could be passed by the Senate and sent onto to Barry’s desk.
LISTEN UP!
This is the bill that creates two new federal agencies, one of which gathers financial intelligence on what appears to be every single person who has a financial transaction in America and compiles it in a single database. Also, according to the bills passed previously in the House and Senate, it allows the Office of Financial Research whose job it is to report to Congress about the health of financial institutions that effect the economy TO USE APPROPRIATED FUNDS TO INVEST. Conflict of interest? It also gives our beloved federal government the ability to seize and breakup any financial company they feel (arbitrarily) is failing. Sounds like tyranny to me.
AND this is the bill where they track every single financial transaction you make including the balances on all of your accounts ranging from checking to retirement to the stock market.
YOU!
How’s that for regulating Wall Street?
This POS bill MUST be repealed as soon as we flip the Congress in November, (are you listening Sen. DeMint?), and re-written with some common sense, principled values instead of being written to look like they are regulating Wall Street when they are tracking you and allowing ‘Too Big To Fail’ to become a permanent addition to the toolbox that an ever growing Big Government has to strong arm you and your wallet.
If you want more information about how you are about to be completely screwed, go here.
Lawmakers closed in on a final Wall Street reform bill early Friday after Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) agreed to a compromise with moderate House Democrats on her derivatives regulation bill – clearing the way for the broadest rewrite of the nation’s financial regulations since the Great Depression.
A House-Senate conference committee prepared to complete work on a final deal on the bill – which would send it back to both chambers on its way to President Barack Obama’s desk.
The agreement would come after almost 24 straight hours of work in the conference committee, a marathon session that tested the negotiating skills, patience and endurance of several dozen lawmakers tasked with reconciling two competing approaches to reining in Wall Street.
The final piece of the deal fell into place around 3:30 a.m., as Lincoln agreed to limit the reach of new derivatives rules to only the riskiest investments, a move to mollify New York lawmakers and moderate Democrats who feared the original plan would cripple Wall Street.
Has not my prescription changed enough reading the Obamacare and financial takeover bills, we now have the next bill in the Borg absorption; Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act brought to you by Lieberman, Collins, and Carper. Though the senators state, in their press release for the bill, “The bill does not authorize any new surveillance authorities or permit the government to “take over” private networks”, I’ll believe when I do not read it.
It just comes down to a trust issue; there just isn’t any anymore.
Whatever the fix, the money spent will not be recovered, said Alex Pollock, a former president of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago who is now a fellow at the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute. “It doesn’t matter what you do or don’t do, Fannie and Freddie will cost a lot of money,” Pollock said. “The money is already lost. There’s an attempt to try to avert your eyes.”
Quoting Sen. Gregg, here is the herd of elephants in the room, (no mention of these two in the Dodd financial reform bill):
June 14 (Bloomberg) — The cost of fixing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage companies that last year bought or guaranteed three-quarters of all U.S. home loans, will be at least $160 billion and could grow to as much as $1 trillion after the biggest bailout in American history.
Fannie and Freddie, now 80 percent owned by U.S. taxpayers, already have drawn $145 billion from an unlimited line of government credit granted to ensure that home buyers can get loans while the private housing-finance industry is moribund. That surpasses the amount spent on rescues of American International Group Inc., General Motors Co. or Citigroup Inc., which have begun repaying their debts.
“It is the mother of all bailouts,” said Edward Pinto, a former chief credit officer at Fannie Mae, who is now a consultant to the mortgage-finance industry.
Senator Gregg was part of a panel on CNBC covering the newly passed senate financial reform bill. What follows is 4 minutes and 17 seconds that you will want to hear. Sen. Gregg covers the problems with this bill including Freddie and Fannie not being addressed, the creation of the Freddie and Fannie debacle by Congress, and the Bureau of Consumer Protection.
…and the failure to take on Freddie and Fannie is almost malfeasance of a criminal level by the Congress, I mean the fact that we would leave on the table, well it’s like having a room, not having an elephant in it, but having the entire herd in it and saying the herd doesn’t exist.
…because this is not about lending for the purposes of having strong credit and good credit going out, it’s about lending to accomplish social justice purpose. That’s what the consumer agency is all about. This is a massive expansion on the agenda of the left in the area of domestic industrial policy.
