Joe Sestak and Occam's Razor

It’s the Friday before a Holiday weekend so it must be time for the White House to clear up some troubling events with a minor press release. This is how the Obama Administration has always dealt with such issues. After all, the number of people available for comment is scarce and the stories that will be written will hit the papers and television news over the weekend when relatively few people are paying attention.

A brief press release issued this morning by White House Council and long time Obama associate, Bob Bauer, to answer the growing question about Congressman Joe Sestak’s claim that a White House official offered him a job if he would agree to abandon his primary challenge against Senator Arlen Specter. Bauer’s statement said that Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel used former President Bill Clinton as an intermediary to offer Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.) an unpaid, executive branch advisory board position to “avoid a divisive Senate primary”. Bauer denied rumors that Sestak was offered a nomination as Navy secretary, and said all discussions were “consistent with the relevant law and ethical requirements.”

If this statement is correct and the White House acted in a manner “consistent with the relevant law and ethical requirements”, why did it take ten weeks and a media storm before the White House would respond to this controversy and why did the White House contact Congressman Sestak’s office as well as Sestak’s brother and campaign manager, Richard Sestak, before issuing this statement? According to Bob Bauer, the White House has “concluded that allegations of improper conduct rest on factual errors and lack a basis in the law". In other words…..we looked at the issue and everything is fine so just trust us. Really?

For the past ten weeks, Joe Sestak has held firm in his account of the exchange. He said not once, but a number of times that he had been contacted by a member of the Obama administration and he was offered a high-ranking administration job in exchange for dropping his primary bid. When asked about the rumors that he was offered the nomination for Secretary of the Navy, Sestak declined to elaborate, saying that doing so would be just getting into politics. Now that the White House has contacted Sestak and his campaign manager prior to today’s press release, Sestak’s account is now mysteriously saying something completely different.

Sestak released his own statement today saying "Last summer, I received a phone call from President Clinton. During the course of the conversation, he expressed concern over my prospects if I were to enter the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate and the value of having me stay in the House of Representatives because of my military background," Sestak added. "He (President Clinton) said that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel had spoken with him about my being on a Presidential Board while remaining in the House of Representatives. I said no."

"I told President Clinton that my only consideration in getting into the Senate race or not was whether it was the right thing to do for Pennsylvania working families and not any offer," he continued. "The former President said he knew I'd say that, and the conversation moved on to other subjects."

Was Sestak having a “Blumenthal moment”? If you recall, Democrat Dick Blumenthal who is running for the Connecticut Senate Seat has been accused of lying about his military service by hinting that he was a Viet Nam veteran. Blumenthal has since apologized and even though there are at least eight different occasions that this happened on film, he simply said he “misspoke” a few words that were taken out of context. The few words were silly things like “in Viet Nam” instead of “during Viet Nam” and “when we returned from Viet Nam” instead of “when my duty with a State-side reserve unit was over”. You know….easily mistaken comments. Could Sestak have simply misspoken a few words, confusing a “high ranking administration job” with a “non-paid appointment to an advisory board”? Perhaps he also confused Bill Clinton with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton when he said he was contacted by a member of the Obama administration? Let’s face it….those high pressure jobs add years to your looks so maybe it was an honest mistake now that Hillary has added a few more wrinkles and some gray hair.

I am a huge fan of Occam’s razor. Occam’s razor (or Ockham's razer) is a theoretical principle proposed by 14th-century English logician, theologian and Franciscan friar William of Ockham that "entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity" (entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem). In essence; that the simplest solution is usually the correct one. In this case, before we can arrive at the simplest solution we must identify the actual questions.

The obvious questions are:

1- Why did the White House refused to comment on this matter for ten weeks?

2- Why was Bill Clinton asked to “intercede” on behalf of the White House?

3- Why did Representative Sestak refuse to elaborate on the issue beyond his initial statement for the past ten weeks?

4- Why was Representative Sestak’s office and campaign manager contacted before the White House press release was issued?

5- Why has Representative Sestak’s account of the incident changed so drastically?

The simplest solution to all of these questions is that the press releases from both the White House and Joe Sestak are lies meant to cover up the true nature of the offer made to Joe Sestak and the identity of the person that made that offer. I’m sure the White House contacted Sestak after his initial statement and told him of the legal ramifications of his allegations. Sestak has nothing to gain by causing the White House embarrassment by further implicating them in what was obviously a criminal act. After all, Sestak is now the Democratic candidate for Specter’s Senate seat and will need the support of the White House and the DNC if he has any hopes of succeeding this November. That easily explains Sestak’s reluctance to elaborate on the offer that was made.

The dismissive non-response to the press’s questions issued by White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs tells me that they initially believed that this would all fade away after the primary, but to their surprise, it didn’t. Legal analysts were scouring US code looking for possible violations of law and the ramifications of those laws being violated meant someone was going to have to be sacrificed if there was any truth to Sestak’s story at all. Since this was fast becoming an issue that could affect the upcoming elections, fellow Democrats joined in the call for explanations and that could not be ignored. Some way had to be found to “help” Joe Sestak back away from his claims without damaging his race for the Senate but the real trick was that it had to be done in such a way that the White House was also clear of any wrong doing.

Ten weeks seems like a plausible amount of time for legal council to review the incident and issue recommendations. I'm sure those recommendations included the need to portray a series of events where someone that was not a member of the administration (Bill Clinton) would speak with Sestak only to suggest that his chances for success in the primary were limited so he should just drop out of that. “Oh by the way…Rahm Emmanuel would like to place you on a Presidential Advisory Board as a non-paid advisor while you retain your all important seat in the House of Representatives.” No government employee and no promise of power or money would skirt all of the problems. While that scenario certainly plays well with respect to the laws against using the power of a government office to interfere with a primary or general election, it does not sit well with the good Congressman’s previous and frequent statements.

As convoluted as this story is, it certainly does not play well with respect to Occam’s razor either. It makes no sense that the White House would risk the political damage of letting people believe that they were stone-walling the issue for ten weeks if Sestak’s original story of the attempted bribe were not true. It makes no sense that Joe Sestak would suddenly change his story so drastically on the day of the White House press release and risk his chances in the November election if he were not coached by the White House that this was the only acceptable way out of this for the both of them. It makes no sense that the White House would attempt to entice Sestak with a non-paid position on an advisory panel when the man was running for the United States Senate. Knowing that Sestak is not one of the wealthier members of Congress like Kerry or Kennedy, that wouldn’t fly at all so they further complicated the story by adding that he was told he could serve on that board and keep his seat in the House; something that Congressional rules currently prohibit. Curiously, Joe Sestak has been avoiding any direct interviews in the wake of the statement he released today that directly contradicts his previous assertions.

About the only part of the story that makes any sense is the Bill Clinton connection. Billy misses the limelight (not to mention access to female White House aides) so he doesn’t mind being drawn into something like this. Actually, Clinton was the perfect name to use in place of Rahm Emmanuel. He is not a member of the White House staff nor is he a paid employee of the Obama administration and if this ruse fails and an investigation is forced upon the White House, we all know that Bill Clinton has no problem lying to special prosecutors, Grand Juries or to the American People.

Paul

The Consistency of Inconsistency

Wow…where do I begin? The most transparent administration this nation has ever seen is about to hold it’s first press conference in more than three hundred days; Eric Holder announced that the Justice Department is beginning the process to challenge Arizona’s immigration law but refuses to investigate allegations that a member of the White House may have committed a felony in offering Representative Joe Sestak a Federal position in exchange for abandoning his primary challenge against Senator Arlen Specter or perhaps the wink and nod given to SEIU protestors by Maryland police when they amassed 500 people on the private property of a Bank or America attorney to protest housing foreclosures?

The news is abuzz with the announcement that President Obama will hold a general press conference before departing for another tour of the Gulf coast to review the steps taken to halt the major oil spill there. This would not ordinarily be news but the President’s last open press conference was more than three hundred days ago. Three hundred days ago, the healthcare bill had not passed, the Fort Hood massacre had not occurred, the failed terror attacks on a flight bound for Chicago and in New York’s Times Square were months in the future and Arizona had not passed its controversial Immigration Law.

Some would argue that the President is not the coach of a sports team or the spokesman for Gillette but consumed with the matters of State and has little time for such things. I think the responses issued for the President by the White House Press Secretary, Robert Gibbs, says more about this administration’s disdain for the media than it does about the President’s busy schedule. The Gibbs press appearances usually take one of three distinct tracks; he refuses to answer, blames the Republicans or accuses the Tea Party of distorting the truth. In fact, the President does not hold press conferences because he and his advisors believe the press is a distraction; that if the truth were printed it would represent a danger to his agenda.

This disdain for the press can be witnessed in the White House’s handling of Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagen. They have refused to allow the press access to Kagan for the usual round of interviews and instead, provided the press with a copy of an interview conducted by a White House staffer. Kagan was asked only the questions that she could answer without jeopardizing her nomination and her answers were as innocuous as the questions were. Is this free press? Of course not but this administration is not impressed with the Constitutional guarantee of a free press nor is it restrained in its obvious attempt to manipulate that fundamental guardian of freedom. Obama’s own appointee to the newly created position of Chief Diversity Officer within the FCC, Mark Lloyd, was not ashamed to comment that if Hugo Chavez had not restrained the free press in Venezuela that his “amazing” revolution could not have occurred; a lesson apparently not wasted on Obama and his thugs.

Lloyd is not the only member of the Obama administration that believes the First Amendment is a problem. Rahm Emmanuel, Obama’s Chief of Staff, was quoted as saying the First Amendment is “highly overrated” and Cass Sunstein, the Regulatory Czar, says the First Amendment needs to be “reformulated” to “reinvigorate processes of democratic deliberation, by ensuring greater attention to public issues and greater diversity of views.” In other words, if a majority of American’s are opposed to their Progressive views on governance then there should be legal methods available to them so as to silence a portion of that majority and provide the illusion that there are just as many supporters. In the end, all I really expect from the President during this press conference is more smoke in mirrors and a shameless attempt to use the oil spill to try and sell his cap and tax, energy bill. After all, Rahm Emmanuel said “never let a good crisis go to waste.”

Eric Holder has become just another caricature in the Obama circus as his Justice Department seems to have lost the meaning of justice. As Attorney General, Holder is supposed to be the highest law enforcement officer in the United States but his political and ideological prejudices have prevented him from effectively discharging those duties. He spoke out against Arizona’s immigration law and commented that he was contemplating legal action to block it weeks before he admitted that he had never read it. Justice?

Holder’s Justice Department refused to act against Black Panther Militants that positioned themselves outside polling places wielding clubs during the 2008 Presidential election. The official statement made by the department is that there was a “lack of evidence” that there was any attempt to interfere with the election. I’m not sure what evidence they need but I’m sure civilians in combat boots holding police style batons within five feet of the front door of a polling place is in that book somewhere. Justice?

Holder’s Justice Department also refuses to investigate charges that a member of the White House offered Representative Joe Sestak a position within the administration in exchange for dropping his primary challenge against Senator Arlen Specter; a challenge that Sestak won handily. This charge, if true, represents a fundamental violation of United States law and the person or person’s involved would have committed a felony if found guilty. The election process is one of America’s most prized rights and any attempt to tamper with that process must be met with the full weight of the law. Of course, if the Justice Department doesn’t recognize that loitering in front of a polling place armed with a weapon is tampering with the electoral process then why should their muted reaction to this surprise us?

Now we have the Washington DC police spotted escorting fourteen buses loaded with SEIU thugs on their mission to torment an attorney in the employ of the Bank of America. The official statement was that this was a lawful protest staged by union members outraged by the flurry of recent home foreclosures but is it? Five-hundred “protestors” exited the buses and congregated on the lawn and front porch of the Bank of America attorney with signs and bull horns. This was a private residence on a small suburban street so whose attention was this protest meant to gain? The only member of the media invited to the “protest” was a blogger that contributes to the liberal rag-sheet, The Huffington Post so it certainly wasn’t for the benefit of the press. It wasn’t a march down Main Street so it wasn’t for the benefit of the public. Was it an expression of the forces that SEIU could assemble meant to intimidate the opposition? That’s what it looks like to me.

While the DC police say that “trailing” assembling protestors are done in the interest of public safety, what the Maryland police did, or did not do, was far more disturbing. The protestors were in clear violation of Maryland law regarding disturbing the peace but Maryland police focused their attention solely on trespass laws. For someone to be in violation of the Maryland trespass law, the property owner would have to request that the trespasser leave the property and the trespasser would then have to refuse before the police can lawfully act. However, the ordinances preserving the peace prohibit any one or any group from entering private property and creating a disturbance through loud noises or threatening gestures. Other residents of the area say they overheard police telling the besieged attorney that they were concerned that police involvement would further incite the mob.

The official comment from the Maryland Police Chief was that the officers dispatched to the scene arrived as the protesters were dispersing and did not witness the activities that were alleged by the neighborhood residents. They categorically deny that the officers said anything about being fearful of inciting the mob and that the acts that the police witnessed were peaceful and within the bounds of the law. Really? Five hundred people carrying signs can walk across your lawn in Maryland, scream over a bull horn, frighten your neighbors and children and no violation of law has occurred?

DC police said they called Maryland police as the caravan of school buses crossed into Maryland and the Maryland police took over from there. Now we are supposed to believe that the mob found parking for fourteen school buses in a quiet suburban neighborhood, discharged their passengers, organized the group and concluded their protest all in the minutes between that call and the arrival of the responding officers? It sounds to me like the SEIU got a free pass by Maryland police. Could that be because of the pressures that unions are facing as Cities and States are asking for concessions as they wrestle with devastating budget shortfalls? Could it be that since SEIU represents thousands of municipal workers that some police organizations may see them as kindred spirits deserving of their respect and assistance? If so, where does that place the public in this new alliance of self-serving special interests?

This incident is also deserving of investigation by Federal authorities but I wouldn’t hold my breath. Former SEIU President, Andy Stern, is still a frequent visitor to the White House and an Obama advisor which pretty much guarantees the SEIU a pass from the so-called Justice Department too.

Paul

Obama Didn't Inherit the Recession - He Hired It

In continuation of Friday’s article, we were discussing whether or not the Obama administration could continue to call this recession the “Bush” recession. The answer is no and the Obama administration has to face the fact that the statute of limitations for blaming Bush has run out and he now owns the economy; especially since his administration has already used all of their “Ivy League” experimental theories to correct it. As much as they would like to enter the 2010 campaign cycle with as much emphasis as possible on the “mess” that Obama inherited, there are several of those pesky little facts out there that all of Obama’s rhetoric will not change. As it turns out, Obama didn’t just inherit the recession, he hired it.

#1- President Obama has retained people within his administration that were previously key policy makers whose actions contributed to the current recession.

#2- Much of the small business community has sited major parts of Obama’s agenda that have shaken the confidence of business in the health of the economy under Obama’s leadership and in their ability to remain profitable should those agenda items become law.

#3- The actions taken by this administration to correct the faltering economy were, and continue to be, centered on government control, government spending, and the monetization of debt complicated by the dangerous misreporting of economic indicators.

We already discussed Tim “Turbo-Tax” Geithner, Obama’s current Treasury Director; specifically how his actions while he was Chairman of the New York Federal Reserve and a member of the Washington “Group of Thirty” have been considered by many economists as directly impacting the economy in ways that have severely damaged the banking industry. We also discussed that Rahm Emmanuel, Obama’s current Chief of Staff was on the board of Freddie Mac during the period that Freddie Mac was plagued with scandals involving campaign contributions and accounting irregularities. Obama torpedoed a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain communication and e-mail records that might have helped an investigation implicate his dear friend and Chief of Staff.

Let’s talk about some new people. Barack Obama’s choice for Director of the Office of Budget and Management (OMB) is Peter “Loverboy” Orszag. If you recall, the OMB gave the Senate Healthcare Bill a failing grade on maintaining the “budget neutrality” that the President required of any bill he would sign. Of course a quick closed door meeting between Obama and his Budget Director fixed that and within days, the OMB reevaluated the plan and Viola! It was budget neutral! Thank God for Orszag! It is critically important to economic recovery that the business community can trust the estimates of government. After all, to be able to expand and chance the hire of new employees, business must be able to accurately estimate little things like future tax liabilities and the burden that new regulations will have on the cost of manufacture, labor and energy. Can you imagine if people began to mistrust the government; especially in the area of official reports and estimates? The ramifications would be astounding. Why you could dump hundreds of billions into the economy and never create a single job!

Orszag is another one of those intellectual theorists that has never held a real job. While he was not a “Rhodes” Scholar like Bill Clinton, he was a Marshal Scholar and after earning a degree in economics from Princeton, Orszag traveled to England where he obtained his Masters Degree and Doctorate in economics from the London School of Economics. He sites several people that he considers “Mentors” including Joseph Stiglitz. Stiglitz was not your average apple pie and baseball American and was himself, a proponent of globalist economic policy, market socialism and what he called a “more sustainable and just global economic order”. In addition to Stiglitz, Orszag also considered Robert Rubin an important influence in his life.

Yes, that is the same Rubin that spent 26 years at Goldman Sachs as a board member and Co-Chairman before joining the Clinton administration as Assistant to the President for Economic Policy. After leaving the Clinton administration, Rubin became Director and Senior Counselor of Citigroup and would eventually serve as interim Chairman between November and December 2007. In January of 2009, Citigroup announced his resignation after having been criticized for his performance. Rubin became one more name on the list of individuals that had brought the financial system to ruin before leaving with more than $100 million dollars in cash and stocks.

The current Director of the White House's National Economic Council for President Barack Obama is Lawrence Summers. “Larry” began his academic career at MIT where he studied physics but soon switched to economics, earning an B.S. in 1975. He attended graduate classes at Harvard where he earned his Ph.D. in 1982. At age 28, Summers became one of the youngest tenured professors in Harvard’s history. Like Orszag, Summers is a theoretician when it comes to work and has spent his life either teaching, in government or governmental organizations like the dreaded World Bank. While all of that sounds impressive, I still don’t know how we let people teach what they have never been involved in….like where business actually fits into a market economy. Summers early career was as an “academic economist” and he was responsible for providing research data for economic studies.

As a researcher, Summers has made important contributions in many areas of economics, primarily public finance, labor economics, financial economics, and macroeconomics. Some of Summers' early papers concluded that corporate and capital gains taxes are an inefficient form of taxation. Cutting the capital gains tax rate, Summers found, could help the economy grow. One of Summers' prominent findings in labor economics is that unemployment insurance and welfare payments are a major contributor to unemployment, and therefore should be scaled back. Since the Obama administration has taken a course contrary to these proven economic strategies, it is apparent that Larry’s career in politics and as a professor at Harvard, has caused him to trade his lust for truth for the comfort of being part of the ruling elite.

Of course there is a down side to losing your “religion” and Summers would find out that when you ignore what you know is right and true because it is unfashionable, bad things are bound to happen. As Treasury Secretary, Summers led the Clinton Administration's opposition to tax cuts proposed by the Republican Congress in 1999; a 180 degree reversal from the data he provided for other economists earlier in his career. Summers supported the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999, which lifted more than six decades of restrictions against banks offering commercial banking, insurance, and investment services (by repealing key provisions in the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act). After passage, Summers announced: "Today Congress voted to update the rules that have governed financial services since the Great Depression and replace them with a system for the 21st century," "This historic legislation will better enable American companies to compete in the new economy. Unfortunately for Summers, the deregulation under the Glass-Steagall Act is widely known to have created the conditions that directly led to the sub-prime mortgage crisis; the precursor to the financial meltdown of 2008.

Summers also testified before Congress that there was no need to require additional regulation of the institutional OTC derivatives market, a move that would later lead to the near collapse of AIG. The work that Summers did for the Clinton administration in fact, created the conditions that would nearly drive the nation into depression a mere ten years later. Upon leaving the Clinton administration, Summers became the President of Harvard University. He decided to invest University funds using the loopholes he created through deregulation. Of course interest swaps and hedge funds can’t be maintained forever and his financial wheeling and dealing would end up costing the University over $1 billion dollars and cost him his job, forcing his resignation in 2006.

Now the Obama administration is shaping the financial direction of the nation under the advice of the actual architects of the financial meltdown that nearly bankrupted the entire financial system of the United States if not the world. One could argue that the Bush administration should have taken reasonable steps to restore the needed regulations which could have prevented the crisis and he probably would have if his administration hadn’t received the assurances of the Federal Reserve and Congress that everything was fine.

So in summary, the Obama administration is blaming the Bush administration for a recession that was brought on by financial deregulation enacted by the Clinton administration under the advice of people that Obama just rehired to direct the financial direction of the country under his administration. The question that remains unanswered is why Obama thinks that any of this is a good idea.

Paul

Is it really Bush's Economy or Obama's?

The New York Times inadvertently validated my assertions that Republicans would be wise to recognize the anti-incumbent fever sweeping the nation but in order to keep their credentials as a liberal member of the Robert Gibbs Propaganda Club, found it necessary to embellish the story with their own pro-Obama flavor. The Times reported that a recent Times/CBS poll shows the President with an edge over Republicans in the upcoming election, totally missing the point. All of Congress is entering the election cycle with its lowest approval rating ever and that should be hard to ignore unless of course, you have the additional armor of being the Liberal media’s intellectually elite shock troops.

Of course the poll was crafted in such a way that you had to agree that Bush was totally at fault for our current economic woes; exonerating the President from all responsibility. I will be the first to admit that Bush’s economic strategies were an abject failure and while he was tough on terror, he was no better than a run of the mill, liberal spending Democrat when it came to economic and public policy. What the poll ignores is the duplicity of Obama’s closest advisors in perpetuating that failure which deepened the recession.

It began with the appointments to his cabinet. Tim Geithner had studied international economics in college and his early career placed him in the International Affairs Division of the U.S. Treasury and as an attaché to the United States Embassy in Tokyo. He was also deputy assistant secretary for international monetary and financial policy, senior deputy assistant secretary for international affairs, assistant secretary for international affairs and the Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs.

One would think that resume would have qualified him to be Obama’s Secretary of the Treasury but there are some disturbing issues hidden in his resume too. In 2002 he left the US Treasury to join the Council on Foreign Relations as a Senior Fellow in the International Economics department. He was also the director of the Policy Development and Review Department at the International Monetary Fund; an organization that rarely has the economic interests of the United States at heart but instead, finds itself regularly aligned with the United Nation’s desire to redistribute the wealth of Western democracies to developing nations.

The friends (and enemies) that Geithner made while traipsing around the world seems to have shaped quite a few of his views and it is his “citizen of the world” mindset that made Geithner necessary to Obama’s cabinet. While going through the confirmation process it was found that Geithner had some tax “difficulties” of his own and he dismissed those difficulties, blaming his lack of expertise in using the personal tax preparation program “Turbo Tax” for the discrepancies. Really? A man studied in international economics that just happened to have an early career in the Treasury Department couldn’t figure out how to use a $19.95 computer program to pay his taxes? Well, the Senate bought that excuse so I will let that rest. Not because I believe him, but because there are bigger problems with Geithner than that.

Geithner was President of the New York Federal Reserve in 2003 and Vice Chairman of the Federal Open Market Committee component. In 2006, Geithner became a member of the Washington financial advisory panel “The Group of Thirty” where in 2007, he worked to reduce the capital required to run a bank. Do you see a red flag there? Geithner also arranged the rescue and sale of Bear Stearns and also supported his friend and Goldman Sachs CEO, Henry Paulson, in his bid to promote the bailout of AIG. While billions in taxpayer funds were flowing into Bear Stearns and AIG, Geithner curiously ignored Lehman Brothers, letting them slip into bankruptcy. But hey, friends are friends and all that. The bottom line is that there are number of private economists that say Geithner’s actions severely damaged the United States economy while he played fast and loose with taxpayer funds; favoring friends and destroying enemies.

If that isn’t bad enough, we have Rahm Emmanuel. Emmanuel is noted for having an explosive temper that manifests itself in ways that could be considered damaging for a White House Chief of Staff. Emmanuel had worked on a number of Democratic campaigns including the Presidential campaign of Bill Clinton. While working on the Clinton campaign, he reportedly sent a dead fish in a box to a pollster that was routinely late in providing much needed poll results. In another incident after the 1996 election, Emanuel was so angry at Clinton’s campaign enemies that he stood up at a dinner with colleagues from the campaign, grabbed a steak knife and began rattling off a list of what he considered traitors, shouting 'Dead!” and plunging the knife into the table after each name was called out. It sounds like Rahm’s parents let him watch way too many violent movies as a child.

Unlike many of his current colleagues, Rahm Emmanuel actually had a real job before entering politics and the seedier world of investment banking. Unfortunately for Rahm, his job at a Chicago Arby’s ended suddenly when he lost part of his finger in one of the machines. Considering Geithner’s qualifications as Treasury Secretary include imploding the US Economy as head of the NY Federal Reserve, I am really surprised that Emmanuel wasn’t named to head OSHA or the Department of Health and Human Services; especially when considering his impeccable safety record. However, it is Emmanuel’s cut-throat Chicago style of politics that is the real criteria for his position as Obama’s Chief of Staff. As Chief of Staff, he is one of the orchestrators of the administration’s “blame Bush” campaign and one of the crafters of the Obama “evil greedy banker” policy. He should know; after all, he was an evil greedy banker himself.

Rahm Emmanuel was an advisor to Bill Clinton; a position he resigned from in 1998 to pursue a career in investment banking with Wasserstein Perella. In his two and a half years at Wasserstein Perella, he earned a reported $16.2 million dollars. As an additional favor to his friend, President Clinton named Emanuel to the Board of Directors for the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation ("Freddie Mac") before he left office in 2001. Emmanuel’s position earned him at least $320,000, including later stock sales. Obviously a political appointment, Emmanuel was not assigned to any of the board's working committees; a Board that met no more than six times per year.

During Emmanuel’s time on the board, Freddie Mac was plagued with scandals involving campaign contributions and accounting irregularities. Imagine that? The Obama Administration subsequently rejected a request under the Freedom of Information Act to review Freddie Mac board minutes and correspondence during Emanuel's time as a director. The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) later accused the board of having "failed in its duty to follow up on matters brought to its attention." Thanks to Obama’s stonewalling of the Freedom of Information Act request, we will never know the depth of Rahm Emmanuel’s participation in those scandals or how much his actions may have damaged the fiscal stability of Freddie Mac. We can only assume that if Obama’s friend and Chief of Staff were not implicated, that the FOI request would probably have been granted.

Emanuel resigned from the board of Freddie Mac in 2001 when he ran for Congress; eventually filling the seat vacated by another Chicago criminal, former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. Blagojevich is currently on trial for Federal Corruption charges stemming from an investigation that alleges that he (Blagojevich) tried to sell the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama when he became President, for cash or favors. Emmanuel kept his Congressional seat until his appointment by Barack Obama to the position of Chief of Staff.

The part that I cannot figure out is how this administration claims insulation from the current financial crisis when so many of Obama’s key appointees played major roles in bringing about the near collapse of the economy? Factually, if the Democrat controlled Congress that Bush was plagued with from 2006 forward, had actually performed their required function of providing oversight for the Federal administration structure, perhaps corrective action would have been taken by Bush that could have mitigated the economic implosion of 2008. Like I said before; friends are friends and enemies are enemies and the Democrats in Congress would have had to crucify some of their own to do that and there was no need to sacrifice them if you had a Republican President you could blame instead.

Monday – Why hasn’t the economy shown signs of recovery? The truths Obama can’t blame on Bush.

Paul

What is Obama's Top Priority?

The President mentioned a whole host of non-descript people that keep saying “slow down” to which Obama commented…”How long must we wait?” So who are these mysterious voices? Republicans have been effectively locked out of the negotiations so it can’t be them. The Tea Party people have been dismissed by this administration as crazy and the polls show that Americans are already angry for being ignored so it can’t be them either. Progressive Democrats are all behind the Obama agenda and are urging immediate action so nope, not them. The moderate Democrats might feign resistance but we now know they are just looking for their buy-out so that roadblock evaporates as soon as the cash is on the table. The secret service keeps the President a comfortable distance from nearly everyone else so I thought perhaps it was the Salahi’s; but they are little more than media hounds and wouldn’t dare risk exposure by taking any side in the discussion.

If Obama weren’t a Progressive radical with a heavy Chicago political background, I might think it were his conscience speaking to him but we all know that Chicago politicians and Progressive radicals have no conscience. With all other possibilities scientifically excluded, that leaves only one voice as the possible suspect; the voice no one in Washington ever mentions….the voice of reason.

I did not find it surprising that Obama didn’t mention the multitude of voices chiding him to accelerate the process; to force legislation before the mid-term elections eliminate the dominance of Congressional Progressives. These voices want healthcare reform with a strong public option because that is the one thing that will bring about their real goal of Socialized medicine within ten years. These voices want Cap and Trade because they know what most Americans don’t. That Cap and Trade is not about saving the planet from global warming but saving the planet from Capitalism. It is a mechanism that will bridle this nation’s ability to further develop domestic energy resources and will complete the migration of manufacturing industries to countries that do not possess the same penchant for self destruction.

We have been discussing those voices for quite some time on the Vigilance Project. The United Nations; George Soros and the multitude of Marxist organizations that he funds through the Tides Foundation; ACORN; The Apollo Alliance; SEIU; G.E. and even though there are many more, let us not forget the Progressives firmly lodged in Congress. Considering the initiatives the President still claims are a priority for the nation, each and every one of these factions are more than adequately represented by this administration.

So why didn’t Obama mention these voices in the State of the Union Address? Because they mirror his own ideas of what this nation should look like before he’s through with it. It’s kind of like Karaoke….It might sound like you’re singing but if you are really quiet, you can hear the original song and artist clearly in the background. When Obama is quiet (he has to sleep sometimes) you can clearly hear the background music in the speeches and interviews of Progressive Democrats, Andy Stern, Jeff Immelt and whispered by all of those radical supporters of the Socialization of America. They are no more dragging Obama to the left than an alcoholic must be dragged to a bar.

The State of the Union Address contained as many contradictions as it did lies. Jobs creation is the administration’s number one priority but we must complete healthcare and pass a comprehensive climate bill; both of which are sited by the business community as creating a climate of uncertainly that has prevented business owners from risking any expansion. The President announced support for developing domestic energy resources in America including nuclear, coal and oil but he has already placed the right people within the EPA that will make sure that can never happen.

Every possible avenue available to the radical environmental movement has been used to indefinitely stall projects that would have developed domestic energy resources in this country. They don’t do this in other countries because we are the only idiots that give them unlimited access to our courts even when the figurehead filing the suit does not reside in the community where the project has been proposed. If the President weren’t merely playing lip service to the development of domestic energy he would be asking Congress to declare the development of these resources vital to the strategic interests on the United States and block interference from both the environmental left and the EPA.

The President announced that the Federal government will fund a high speed rail project because Europe and Japan have taken the lead in high speed rail and we cannot accept second place. Well, high speed rail makes perfect sense in Europe and Japan because they do not have vast tracts of undeveloped land not to mention that many of those nations are barely larger than the state of Texas. We also have the burden of a twelve trillion dollar national debt that White House projections claim will double by the end of his second term and those projections do no include healthcare reform or the passage of a climate bill. To be able to call high speed rail an investment you must first be able to expect a return on that investment. Short of providing a bone for his union friends and of course, GE; there is no return for this so-called investment.

Yesterday the White House announced a plan to provide small business with a five-thousand dollar tax incentive for each new job they create in 2010. In addition, they will forego any increase in the company’s payroll taxes for those new employees. Sounds good right? Not really. The minimum wage established by the Federal government is currently $7.35 per hour. Add payroll taxes and benefits, because we are going to have to provide healthcare and each new employee will cost that company a minimum of $20,000 per year and the tax incentives and relief are a one time shot. That is like saying don’t worry about whether or not you can afford the payments…go ahead and buy that new car and I’ll throw in a tank of gas. Just think how far that will get you!

President Obama has stacked the deck against the American business community and they are not responding to his jobs initiatives or to the dangling carrots of tax breaks because until they can accurately forecast their future tax liabilities, they will not expand their markets and product lines nor add new employees. Unlike the Federal government, business must first ask the question of how they will be able to pay for additional labor or new programs or they will shortly cease to exist as a business.

Curiously, the President has once again proved his arrogance while speaking at a House Republican retreat today in Baltimore. He stood before the crowd and accused Republicans of portraying health care reform as a "Bolshevik plot" and telling their constituents that he is "doing all kinds of crazy stuff that's going to destroy America."

Er, sorry Mr. President…..that would be me, not the House Republicans. I wouldn’t be saying half of what I have been saying if your administration isn’t pocked with people with socialist and communist backgrounds and if your friends and advisors weren’t recycled 1960’s radicals.

Can you deny that you taught Alinsky in college and then applied those lessons to your community “organizing” techniques in the street of Chicago? Can you deny that your climate Czar, Carol Browner, belonged to an organization (Socialist International) that sought to unify the world under a single Socialist government or that your science Czar, John Holdren, proposed forced abortion and mandatory sterilization in his writings? Can you deny that your former green jobs Czar, Van Jones openly admitted to being a communist or that your own chief of staff, Rahm Emmanuel thinks the First Amendment is overrated? I could go on and on but this is getting repetitious.

About the only thing we haven’t discussed on this subject is the purging of your administration of these pariahs only because you have thus far refused to do that. Without the dismissal of the radicals within your administration and circle of advisors, I can only conclude that your aim is to continue to foment support for a Bolshevik plot to take over the healthcare system and are indeed actively pursuing a path that will lead to the destruction of the Constitution of the United States and our Capitalist financial system.

Paul

Who is Ellie Light?

In 1722, Ben Franklin was a fifteen year old apprentice for his older brother’s printing business and news paper, the New England Courant. Young Franklin was as opinionated in his youth as he would be throughout his life and wrote on a variety of subjects hoping they would be published in the Courant. To his dismay, his brother James rejected Benjamin’s writings and instead, insisted that his apprentice devote his attention to the duties of an apprentice.

Not one to be dismissed, Ben Franklin masqueraded as a middle aged widow and secretly submitted a series of letters to the New England Courant under the pseudonym of Silence Dogood. He slipped the first letter under the door of the Courant one night and was delighted when he overheard his brother discussing publishing the letter in the paper. Silence Dogood submitted a new letter every fortnight (fourteen days) as promised in the first letter and each one was subsequently published in the Courant. The letters delighted readers which were a mix of commentary and satire. So complete was the character that Ben had created that once Silence said that she had been widowed, a number of men actually sent proposals of marriage to Silence Dogood through the news paper hoping to gain her attention.

The Courant published fourteen letters in all before James found out that Silence Dogood was none other than his younger brother, Ben. James was furious at having been tricked into publishing Ben’s work especially after he expressly told Ben over and over again to stick to his assigned tasks and leave the writing to those that were employed for that purpose. The rift between the two brothers was serious enough that Ben would eventually leave his apprenticeship without permission and escape to Philadelphia.

It seems that we now have a new Silence Dogood on our hands and while she is not a widow or even witty, she is an ardent supporter of Barack Obama. Letters from a person claiming to be Ellie Light began appearing in January at news paper offices in cities across the country and even at some foreign news papers. Each letter was only slightly different from the others; containing the same basic message which is curiously similar to the excuses that Democratic strategists offer for Obama’s poor performance as President.

The underlying message in the Ellie Light letters is that Obama is doing the best that he can and that he can’t simply wave a magic wand to make all of the problems he inherited from George Bush vanish. She certainly tows the Party line by denigrating Bush, the Tea Party movement, Rush Limbaugh and Fox News before continuing to say that she is appalled at the lack of support that Obama has received from the main stream press and that they appear to be ignorant of the landslide victories that swept him into the Presidency in November or 2008.

Letters of political support are nothing new for the editorial pages of local newspapers and Ellie Light would probably have been chalked up as just another one of Obama’s core group of supporters that would still defend him no matter how badly he fails except there were some red flags that began to appear. More than sixty Ellie Light letters were published in American newspapers and while each one was signed by Ellie Light, she would list her home town as being in the circulation area of that particular newspaper. Once someone began connecting the dots, questions began to fly as to the real identity of Ellie Light and several websites ran with that story. Ellie Light would issue a response to those questions in a series of e-mails to the Plain Dealer, a major daily paper in Cleveland Ohio. Curiously, that e-mail correspondence ended abruptly when she was asked about the different home towns associated with her letters.

So who is Ellie Light? Well, someone named Barbara Brooks claimed to be Ellie Light in her face book page but the Plain Dealer has since spoken with two people that say they are Barbara Brooks. One says she’s a divorced nurse and is the author of the Ellie Light letters and the other claims her husband, not her, wrote the Ellie Light letters. While the Plain Dealer did not elaborate on the husband of Barbara number two, they did report on their interview with Barbara number one.

Barbara number one, the one that claims she is Ellie Light, says she that as a traveling nurse, she has worked in a number of hospitals across the county. She claims that she used the names local towns as her home for each paper because many papers will not print letters submitted by people that do not reside in their circulation area. Brooks denies the suggestions that her letter writing campaign was a plot concocted by the Obama administration saying that if that were true, she would not be whining about the lack of support for the President and would have gone with the White House assertions that support for the President and his agenda remains solid. Of course Ms. Brooks uses Skype, an online phone service and that makes her hard to trace but the Plain Dealer says that Brooks did provide a home address located somewhere in California.

Curiously, a third “Ellie Light has now surfaced. A woman claiming her real name is actually Ellie Light contacted the radio talk show of Michael Smerconish today. Mr. Smerconish describes himself as a life-long Republican and despite his support for many conservative positions, supported Barack Obama in the 2008 election. His support for Obama earned him the honor of being the first radio talk show that was graced with an interview with the President. The Ellie Light that called Smerconish also claims to be a traveling nurse that calls southern California home. Weird huh?

So many Ellie Lights and yet none were asked the crucial question of why the IP address (a computer’s personal identification number) was different in each e-mail, some originating in several foreign countries. That would be a neat trick for a traveling nurse but easily explainable if the letters were actually disseminated from all of those areas. As it turns out “Left Coast Rebel”, a conservative blog, provided a tip on Ellie Light to Dan Reihl of “Reihl World View” after someone claiming to be Ellie Light left a comment on his blog using the screen name “Winston44”. Dan researched that lead and found what appeared to be a dormant Twitter account under that name. While there were no tweets, winston44 followed eighteen people and had six followers. Following a hunch that most people will first add the people they know to a new Twitter account, Dan traced the first of winston44’s contacts and surprise, surprise. That account belonged to Adam Segal, President of the 2050 group.

The 2050 group is an international public relations firm and Segal had been working with the National Alliance for Hispanic Health Care in their push for Obama-care. A November 23rd press release placed the National Alliance for Hispanic Health Care at the White House for a meeting with the President over healthcare. Segal is also well known to be a supporter President Obama especially, his healthcare reform initiative. Now that is curious isn’t it? The Ellie Light letters came from multiple IP addresses, some from Europe. Now there appears to be a link between an international public relations firm that is very friendly to this administration and a Twitter account that Ellie Light used to post at least one comment on a conservative blog. Coincidentally, that public relations firm would have no problem generating e-mails from multiple computers around the world.

This story is evolving daily and Dan Reihl says that he has circumstantial evidence that winston44 is none other than Samantha Powers, the wife of Obama’s regulatory Czar, Cass Sunstein. It just seems that every time you research anything having to do with this administration that webs appear; magically connecting all of the usual suspects so none of this really surprises me.

To read the article on Ellie Light in the Left Coast Rebel follow the link below:
http://www.leftcoastrebel.com/2010/01/ellie-light-and-white-house-via-riehl.html

For a look at Reihl World View use: http://www.riehlworldview.com/carnivorous_conservative/2010/01/ellie-light-now-mark-spivey.html

Paul