How Can This Be??

On a Tip from Jean Sweet 

  

This is an absolute travesty!

Love him or hate him .... 

~Limbaugh Nailed This One~ 

By Rush Limbaugh: 

I think the vast differences in compensation between victims of the September 11 casualty and those who die serving our country in Uniform are profound. No one is really talking about it either, because you just don't criticize anything having to do with September 11. Well, I can't let the numbers pass by

because it says something really disturbing about the entitlement mentality of

this country. If you lost a family member in the September 11 attack, you're

going to get an average of $1,185,000. The range is a minimum guarantee of

$250,000, all the way up to $4.7 million..

If you are a surviving family member of an American soldier killed in action,

the first check you get is a $6,000 direct death benefit, half of which is taxable.

Next, you get $1,750 for burial costs. If you are the surviving spouse, you get

$833 a month until you remarry. And there's a payment of $211 per month for each child under 18. When the child hits 18, those payments come to a

screeching halt.

Keep in mind that some of the people who are getting an average of $1.185 million up to $4.7 million are complaining

that it's not enough. Their deaths were tragic, but for most, they were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Soldiers put themselves in harms way FOR ALL OF US, and they and their families know the dangers.. (Actually, soldiers are put in harms way by politicians and commanding

officers.)

We also learned over the weekend that some of the victims from the Oklahoma City bombing have

started an organization asking for the same deal that the September 11 families

are getting. In addition to that, some of the families of those bombed in the

embassies are now asking for compensation as well.

You see where this is going, don't you? Folks, this is part and parcel of over 50 years of entitlement politics in this country. It's just really sad. Every time a pay raise comes up for the military, they usually receive next to

nothing of a raise. Now the green machine is in combat in the Middle East while their families have to survive on food stamps and live in low-rent housing.  Make sense?

However, our own US Congress voted themselves a raise. Many of you don't know that they only have to be in Congress one time to receive a pension that is more than $15,000 per month. And most are now equal to being millionaires plus. They do not receive Social Security on retirement because they didn't have to pay into the system. If some of the military people stay in for 20 years and get out as an

E-7, they may receive a pension of $1,000 per month, and the very people who

placed them in harm's way receives a pension of $15,000 per month.

I would like to see our elected officials pick up a weapon and join ranks before they start cutting out benefits and lowering pay for our sons and daughters who are now fighting.

"When do we finally do something about this?" If this doesn't seem fair to you, it is time to forward this to as many people as you can.

How many people

CAN YOU

send this to?

  

How Can This Be??

Grand Jury Probes What Edwards Knew About Cover-Up Money

FILE - In this Friday, Dec. 29, 2006 picture, Rielle Hunter, background left, holds a video camera as former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards campaigns in Portsmouth, N.H. A federal criminal investigation is examining how much the two-time presidential candidate knew about money used to cover up his extramarital affair and illegitimate child with Hunter, and whether he had a wider practice of pushing the bounds of campaign finance laws, people involved in the case have told The Associated Press.

WASHINGTON -- A federal criminal investigation targeting John Edwards is examining how much the two-time presidential candidate knew about money used to cover up his extramarital affair and out-of-wedlock child and whether he had other practices that pushed the bounds of campaign finance laws, people involved in the case have told The Associated Press.

A federal grand jury meeting in Raleigh, North Carolina, is combing through records and testimony involving several political organizations and individuals connected to Edwards and trying to determine if the former U.S. senator from North Carolina and 2004 vice presidential nominee broke any laws. A recently issued subpoena focuses on a web of these political groups allied with Edwards, according to subpoena details provided to AP that offer a glimpse into the investigation being conducted behind closed doors.

The case largely stems from money spent to keep Edwards' mistress, Rielle Hunter, in hiding along with former campaign aide Andrew Young, who initially claimed paternity so Edwards could continue pursuing the White House without the taint of the affair.

Investigators are looking chiefly at whether funds paid to Hunter and Young -- from outside political groups and Edwards' political donors -- should have been considered campaign donations since they arguably aided his presidential bid, according to several people involved in the case who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing probe. And they're also looking closely at whether any entities linked to Edwards operated illegally.

While it could not be learned if federal prosecutors have found violations of a specific statute, federal election laws require disclosure of the money spent on campaigns for federal offices, limit the amounts of such donations and prohibit the conversion of campaign funds to personal use. 

Don't worry he is.

Edwards' attorney Wade Smith would not discuss specifics of the investigation but said, "We do not believe there is evidence that John has violated any election laws."

The investigation has been led for nearly two years by George Holding, the U.S. attorney in Raleigh appointed by President George W. Bush, with help from FBI and U.S. tax agents and attorneys from the Justice Department in Washington. North Carolina's senators have asked President Barack Obama not to replace Holding until he finishes this probe.

Several people interviewed by investigators say the questions focused on Edwards' knowledge of campaign finance law, even going back to whether he used his Senate office to conduct political business in violation of congressional rules. Subpoenas issued in the case request e-mails, records and other material related to more than two dozen individuals and organizations connected to Edwards and his allies throughout his political career.

Atop the subpoena list, read to the AP by someone with access to a subpoena, is the Alliance for a New America, which is what is known as a political 527 group, named for the tax code section that governs it. Also on the list is a like-named private entity called Alliance for a New America LLC, or AFNA LLC, and Edwards' former campaign manager Nick Baldick, who ran the political 527 group in support of Edwards' bid for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. (U.S. tax records for the same groups refer to the groups as Alliance for New America, without an "a.")

Baldick and his attorney Jim Lamb would not comment on the federal investigation, but Lamb said Baldick has been told he is not a target of it.

Federal records show that about $3.3 million of the $4.8 million raised by the 527 was distributed to AFNA LLC for unspecified "consulting services." The 527 and the LLC shared not only their name, but the same Alexandria, Virginia, post office box and the same contact, a Baldick associate named Katherine Buchanan. A crucial difference between the two Alliance entities was that the LLC was a limited liability company that did not have to publicly disclose how its money was spent. 

Lloyd Mayer, a Notre Dame law professor and tax expert, said it's clear that the alliance's creators established the LLC to hide the details of expenditures. It's a legal maneuver that campaign finance observers have long feared might become a part of politics as money managers try to shield their operations from the eyes of competitors and the public.

"The spirit of the law is being violated here," said Mayer, who has represented major advocacy group. "You shouldn't be able to hide what you're spending money on. But is the letter of law being violated or did they find a cute loophole?"

Buchanan, also listed in the grand jury subpoena, declined to discuss the groups or how their money was spent. Buchanan's home was listed in Virginia state records as the principal address for the LLC. Buchanan filed paperwork in August 2008 to close the LLC a year after its creation, declaring it "never began business."

A person involved in the investigation and who is familiar with the financial transactions told The AP that Baldick provided Young a salary boost of about $30,000 to move off the Edwards campaign payroll onto one of Baldick's private organizations around the time Young began taking care of a pregnant Hunter in fall 2007, when the primary campaign was heating up. Young also got more than $150,000 in payments as a commission for money he raised for Alliance for a New America. A month after Young got his last campaign paycheck on Nov. 14, 2007, he publicly claimed paternity of Hunter's child. 

Young has long since renounced his paternity claim and broken with Edwards. In a book, "The Politician," Young said he was covering up Edwards' fatherhood of the child. Edwards admitted paternity last year.

The person familiar with the financial transactions said Young received some payments from Slan Productions, a consulting firm also listed in the subpoena. In one filing with the Federal Election Commission, Slan Productions' address is listed as Baldick's home in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

The grand jury also has issued subpoenas for material related to the Hilltop Public Solutions consulting firm created by Baldick, a leading Democratic operative who also worked on presidential campaigns for Al Gore and Bill Clinton before Edwards picked him to manage his 2004 White House bid.

Tax records indicate the Alliance political group did directly spend about a third of its money on advertising in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary campaign. President Obama made an issue of the ads, which supported Edwards in the Iowa caucuses, because Baldick, then Edwards' former campaign manager, was running the group. In response, Edwards said it was a separate entity that he legally couldn't control but publicly called on the group to stop running the ads.

Grand Jury Probes What Edwards Knew About Cover-Up Money

OBAMA AT HALFTIME

OBAMA AT HALFTIME

Arizona Law having tongue in cheek effect...

Phoenix, AZ (AP) - SB-1070 is having an affect.

Illegal immigrants are boycotting Arizona by the thousands, showing their outrage with Arizona 's controversial new SB-1070 law by moving elsewhere. 

In the small town of Guadalupe AZ , south of Phoenix , Manuel Renaldo is one of those who is punishing Arizona by leaving. As he loaded his stolen car with his belongings and family of ten, Renaldo told this reporter through an interpreter "It's a matter of principle. I refuse to be supported by a state that treats me like a criminal."

The effects of the exodus are being felt by Arizona retailers who are reporting dwindling sales of beer, spray paint, and ammunition. Also hit hard are the state’s hospitals, which have reported a dramatic decline in births and emergency room visits. Tattoo parlors are in a state of panic. 

Renaldo told a reporter through an interpreter "He and his family are moving to California , which is a state that will support him and his family with dignity."

Arizona Law having tongue in cheek effect...

Investigate this!

A great article by Ann Coulter

On a tip from:

Ed Kilbane

Senior National Correspondent

The Republicans are back in charge in the House of Representatives this week, and not a moment too soon!

Forget "stimulus" bills and "shovel-ready" bailouts (for public school teachers, who need shovels for what they're teaching), the current financial crisis, which is the second Great Depression, was created slowly and methodically by Democratic hacks running Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac over the past 18 years.

As even Obama's treasury secretary admitted in congressional hearings, "Fannie and Freddie were a core part of what went wrong in our system." And if it's something Tim Geithner noticed, it's probably something that's fairly obvious.

Goo-goo liberals with federal titles pressured banks into making absurd loans to high-risk borrowers – demanding, for example, that the banks accept unemployment benefits as collateral. Then Fannie repackaged the bad loans as "prime mortgages" and sold them to banks, thus poisoning the entire financial market with hidden bad loans.

Believe it or not, the loans went belly up, banks went under, and the Democrats used taxpayer money to bail out their friends on Wall Street.

So far, Fannie and Freddie's default on loans that should never have been made has cost the taxpayer tens of billions of dollars. Some estimates say the final cost to the taxpayer will be more than $1 trillion. To put that number in perspective, for a trillion dollars, President Obama could pass another stupid, useless stimulus package that doesn't create a single real job.

Obama's own Federal Housing Finance Agency reported recently that by 2014, Freddie and Fannie will cost taxpayers between $221 billion to $363 billion.

Over and over again, Republicans tried to rein in the politically correct policies being foisted on mortgage lenders by Fannie Mae, only to be met by a Praetorian Guard of Democrats howling that Republicans hated the poor.

In 2003, Republicans on the Senate Banking Committee wrote a bill to tighten the lending regulation of Fannie and Freddie. Every single Democrat on the committee voted against it.

In the House, Barney Frank angrily proclaimed that Fannie Mae was "just fine."

Rep. William Clay, D-Mo., accused Republicans of going on a "witch hunt" against Fannie Mae and attempting a "political lynching of Franklin Raines" (which, in a game of "bad metaphor Scrabble" would have been a double word score).

Fannie was pressuring banks to write mortgages with no money down and no proof of income. What could go wrong?

In 2004, Bush's White House Chief Economist Gregory Mankiw warned that Fannie was creating "systemic risk for our financial system." In response, Barney Frank went to a champagne brunch with his partner "just because."

Democrats saw nothing of concern in the Fannie debacle. Bad mortgages don't contain sodium, do they? They don't engage in "hate speech." And they don't emit carbon dioxide. There was nothing to catch a Democrat's eye.

In 2005, when the housing bubble burst, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., introduced a bill allowing Fannie Mae to buy up even more schlock mortgages, apparently reasoning that if owning some toxic mortgages is bad, owning lots of them must be better!

He accused Republican opponents of his suicidal bill of being against affordable housing. (And that is a specific example of how liberals love the poor so much, they promoted policies to create millions more of them.)

As late as 2008, Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., who had received more than $133,000 in political contributions from Fannie Mae, called Fannie "fundamentally strong" and "in good shape" – which is the kind of thing the Politburo used to say about Yuri Andropov right after he died.

(Amazingly, Dodd was only the second-most embarrassing Democrat to run for president in 2008, but only because John Edwards was also running that year.)

As the titanic losses were racking up, Fannie Mae's operators, Franklin Raines and Jamie Gorelick, disguised the catastrophe by orchestrating a $5 billion accounting fraud – all the while continuing to pressure banks to make absurd, politically correct loans and denouncing Republicans as enemies of the poor.

In Gorelick's defense, at least when she was wrecking the economy, she wasn't able to wreck national security by building any more walls between the FBI and the CIA.

Have you ever noticed that whenever there's a major calamity in this country, the name "Jamie Gorelick" always pops up? I think I'll pull some articles about the Great Chicago Fire from Nexis to see if there was a "Gorelick" living on Catherine O'Leary's block.

As Peter Schweizer points out in his magnificent book "Architects of Ruin," which everyone should read, Enron's accounting fraud was a paltry $567 million – and it didn't bring down the entire financial system. Those involved in the Enron manipulations went to prison. Raines and Gorelick not only didn't go to jail, they walked away with multimillion-dollar payouts, courtesy of the taxpayer.

(Here's more fascinating Jamie Gorelick trivia: That giant wall she built between the FBI and the CIA, making 9/11 possible? It was financed with a risky loan from Fannie Mae.)

Under the Democrats' 2010 "Financial Reform" bill (written by Chris Dodd, Barney Frank and Goldman Sachs), Raines keeps his $90 million, Jamie Gorelick keeps her $26.4 million, and Goldman keeps its $12 billion from the AIG bailout.

Let's get it back. Twelve billion, one hundred and sixteen point four million dollars might not sound like a lot to you, but it starts to add up.

Investigate this!