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"we haven't seen the same surge on the political side, which was the reason for the military surge".
Pay attention to that Pegbot, next time your program comes up with the "what was the purpose of the surge" question.
See, first military surge, that later allows the political surge.
IF , at some later point, no political progress is made, you can say the surge failed
Saying it now makes you seem like a thoughtless squawking parrot
TIA
Well, Obama has released his tax returns already
The biggest deal will be with Willie's foundation- the likely launderer for money flowing to Hillary's account
Will they release their financial records??
Bottom line, it probably won't matter anyway. They're very clever at hiding money trails and it would probably take years to trace it down
PS
How do you feel about willie's pardoning of Rich?
TIA
Hillary and Bill Clinton are not nearly as wealthy as, say, Mitt Romney, but her recent $5 million emergency loan to her own presidential campaign has made one thing clear: the Clintons are doing just fine, thanks. Other matters related to the loan are less clear. For starters, where did Hillary Clinton find the cash? Her aides were reluctant to provide details. In e-mail responses to NEWSWEEK, campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson wrote that she "didn't borrow any money" and noted that she "has made considerably more than" $5 million from her 2003 memoir, "Living History." The loan itself, Wolfson wrote, "came from Senator Clinton's [50 percent] share" of joint resources with her husband.
Clinton, unlike rival Barack Obama, has not released her tax returns. But disclosure forms that Clinton filed with the Senate provide some clues to her family finances. They show Bill Clinton has earned tens of millions of dollars in recent years giving speeches at rates of up to $450,000 apiece. During one week in 2006, the former president collected $1.7 million for talks in Europe and South Africa. (He also collected speaking fees from Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, the Mortgage Bankers Association and other big firms.) The documents are more circumspect about other Clinton financial interests, including his annual income as a "partner" in billionaire pal Ron Burkle's businesses and from Vinod Gupta's InfoUSA. Both payouts are listed as "over $1,000"—a description that is legally adequate but not very enlightening. Clinton spokespeople recently said the former president is preparing to sever his dealings with Burkle and Gupta "should Senator Clinton become the Democratic nominee," in order to avoid any conflicts. But Gupta, whose firm has paid Bill at least $3.3 million since 2003, told NEWSWEEK that he is still paying fees to him; Burkle's spokesman could not be reached for comment.
When the Clintons left the White House, they were drowning in legal bills. But by last year, they had sufficient cash flow to pay off the mortgage on their home in Washington, D.C. According to local property records, they took out a 30-year, $1.995 million mortgage in 2001 but paid it off in full last November. (The Clintons also own a home in Chappaqua, N.Y., but there is no record of a similar mortgage payoff.) Election-law experts say that it is legal for candidates to make unlimited loans—or outright donations—to their own campaigns, as long as they do not seek public campaign subsidies. Candidates can even charge their campaigns interest, as John Kerry did in 2004. But a Clinton campaign adviser, who asked not to be identified discussing internal matters, said that fund-raisers have been told that Hillary's loan is interest-free. Wolfson wrote that the campaign had signed a promissory note for the loan and that Clinton could forgive the debt if she wishes, though the campaign adviser said "she expects to get paid back when this is over."
Newsweek
Can you say "conflict of interest" or foreign funding of a political campaign??
Of course not
Weren't you among the doubters when I posted the article saying that there was a greater chance of getting killed in many American cities that in Iraq??
More liberal principled thinking
Again , are you positing your typical obtuse comment because you advocate sharia law over our system?
Yep, what we need is public stoning deaths of adulterers.
Honor killings of women who have been raped
Yep
Reading an excellent book on the subject- with scientific analysis- by Michael Behe
Highly recommended
His main thesis is that Darwinian theory is useful in explaining certain things- ie adaptations- but can't explain evolution
Shari'a: The Borg Of Jurisprudence
The Archbishop of Canterbury has endorsed the adoption of shari'a in Britain, calling it "inevitable". Most of the British beg to differ, and Rowan Williams now finds himself at the center of a multicultural meltdown:
The Archbishop of Canterbury was embroiled in a fierce political and religious row last night after he called for aspects of Islamic sharia law to be adopted in Britain.
Dr Rowan Williams said that it "seems inevitable" that elements of the Muslim law, such as divorce proceedings, would be incorporated into British legislation.
His comments were immediately attacked by Downing Street, religious groups and MPs from all sides. The head of the equality watchdog denounced his claims while several high-profile Muslims also criticised Dr Williams.
The Archbishop forgot that Britain operates under a representative government, not a theocracy. The adoption of shari'a would obliterate that system and place the UK under the thumb of imams -- a prospect that even British Muslims find distasteful. Khalid Mahmood, a Muslim MP for Labour, noted that Muslims around the world fight to free themselves from such systems, and wondered aloud whether Williams knows what shari'a actually entails.
It's not the first time a member of the clergy has suggested appeasement and surrender for a strategy against expansion of radical Islam. The endorsement of these strategies by the leader of the Anglican Church is especially disheartening, however. That the leader of a worldwide sect of Christianity thinks of shari'a as "inevitable" should prompt questions about his fitness for that office.
Posted by Ed Morrissey on February 8, 2008 8:13 AM | Co
Where the candidates stand on earmarks
By David Heath
Seattle Times staff reporter
John McCain abhors them. Hillary Rodham Clinton embraces them. Barack Obama does a little of both.
The leading contenders for president cover the spectrum in their attitudes toward political pork known as earmarks.
In recent years, earmarks have become mired in controversy and scandal — from a $220 million earmark for a "Bridge to Nowhere" in Alaska to the corruption convictions of lobbyist Jack Abramoff and Rep. Duke Cunningham. Still, members of Congress continue to parcel them out, arguing that part of their job is to bring federal dollars back to their states.
Legions of lobbyists coax lawmakers each year to drop thousands of earmarks for their clients into spending bills with little to no scrutiny or debate. The 2008 defense bill bulged with more than 2,100 earmarks, costing $8 billion, according to the watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense.
The use of earmarks and the powerful influence of lobbyists on Congress have been hotly debated in the presidential race. As that debate has continued, the top presidential candidates dealt with earmarks as senators in starkly different fashion from each other.
In the defense bill, for example, The Seattle Times found that Clinton sponsored 66 earmarks totaling $150 million. Obama sponsored six earmarks totaling $34 million; all were for nonprofit organizations. McCain didn't ask for any earmarks this year.
McCain has never sought an earmark in his 26 years in Congress, said his spokeswoman Melissa Sheffield.
"I believe that earmarking has led to corruption," McCain says on his campaign Web site. "It's like any other evil: You either eliminate it or it grows."
McCain built his reputation as a maverick in part because of his constant criticism of earmarks sponsored by his Republican colleagues.
He thwarted a $26 billion earmark for Boeing that Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, quietly slipped into the defense bill shortly after Sept. 11, 2001. McCain argued the earmark to lease 100 refueling tankers from Boeing broke the rules for major defense purchases. He embarked on a three-year quest to kill it.
E-mails dug up by a congressional inquiry offered evidence that the earmark was sought to shield Boeing from an airline-industry recession. Other details uncovered by the probe eventually led to corruption convictions against Boeing executive Michael Sears and Air Force official Darlene Druyun.
McCain frequently boasts of his crusade against the Boeing earmark, using it as an example of how he's not afraid to wrestle with powerful interests.
In contrast to McCain, Clinton boasts about scores of earmarks she delivers each year throughout her home state of New York. In the defense-bill earmarks Clinton sponsored, she mostly handed out business to defense contractors with operations in New York.
The Seattle Times counted more than 220 earmarks for Clinton in six other recent spending bills.
Those who get earmarks usually donate to election campaigns. Clinton's campaign has received $60,000 from those to whom she gave earmarks — a pittance of the $116 million she's raised. She received a like amount from those same donors for her Senate race.
Clinton rarely sponsors earmarks by herself. Usually, she's joined by fellow New Yorker Sen. Charles Schumer or others. But critics have asked how Clinton and her staff could vet so many earmarks to make sure they're worthwhile.
For example, Clinton this year sponsored a $2.4 million earmark for the New York-based parent company of InSport to sell a "base-layer" shirt to the Marine Corps. Yet the Marine Corps won't buy the T-shirt because, when exposed to heat, it can melt and badly burn the wearer. The Marines will buy a fleece pullover from InSport instead.
A Clinton aide who vets earmarks said in December he understood the InSport earmark was for a fleece pullover, adding that Clinton carefully vets earmarks. After Seattle Times stories about the T-shirt earmark were published, Clinton deleted references to the earmark in her news releases.
As for local companies, Clinton succeeded in getting two earmarks totaling $6 million this year for Bellevue-based eMagin, even though the company lost millions of dollars in each of the last 10 years.
eMagin researches and makes miniature computer displays worn on soldiers' helmets at a plant in Hopewell Junction, N.Y. In the company's latest financial statements, an independent auditor said there was substantial doubt that eMagin could survive. Last year, the American Stock Exchange delisted eMagin for not meeting financial standards.
Clinton's earmarks have boosted the revenues of a company that had been averaging sales of $4 million a year. The chief executive and chief financial officer recently quit. But Bruce Ridley, vice president of sales, said while the earmarks help sales, the company doesn't really make a profit on them.
Like Clinton, Obama doles out earmarks, directing $34 million to universities and to a government-owned weapons maker, Rock Island Arsenal. The Times counted more than 80 more earmarks from Obama in six other spending bills.
However, Obama says he doesn't give earmarks to companies, just nonprofits. Last year, he gave $1.3 million to the Gas Technology Institute to research fuel cells. GTI is a nonprofit whose members include major energy companies.
Those who got defense earmarks have given $16,000 to Obama's campaign funds.
While McCain has made earmarks a campaign issue, Steve Ellis of Taxpayers for Common Sense said that neither Clinton nor Obama have said much on the topic.
McCain and Obama have sponsored or co-sponsored legislation to provide the public with more details about earmarks. All three candidates sponsored a bill to create a new Web site to show more details of government contracts. That bill became law, and the site is www.usaspending.gov.
David Heath: 206-464-2136 or dheath@seattletimes.com.
Anglicans for Sharia [John Derbyshire]
Innumerable readers have asked me to comment on the Archbishop of Canterbury's remarks about Sharia law in Britain being "unavoidable." I have done so in this weekend's Radio Derb, which will be on-site later.
We live in the Age of Bad Ideas. Mass Muslim immigration into Western nations seems to me a strong candidate to be regarded as the worst of all the bad ideas we are afflicted with, and pretty convincing evidence that the West is in the grip of some sort of collective insanity. From the Radio Derb transcript:
There are fifty majority Muslim nations in the world, covering a fifth of the world's land area. Muslims have plenty of places to live, with national laws and customs that suit them. There is no reason for them to migrate en masse into western countries, and no reason for western countries to let them. Britain is one of the most crowded countries in the world — population density twice China's or Nigeria's. The British are fools to permit mass Muslim immigration.
I get a lot of scorn from the Islamophobes for not minding Islam and not appreciating its intrinsically degraded and beastly nature. I plead guilty as charged. I am fine with Islam, a fine, noble old religion that gives consolation and life purpose to hundreds of millions. But, to paraphrase W.C. Fields, I am also quite fond of elephants — just wouldn't want to have one around the house.
Farm Policy Needs to be Plowed Under
By Matt Danko
In December, the Democrat-controlled Senate passed another subsidy-bloated farm bill that continues to benefit wealthy farms with unlimited payments while ignoring the real needs of small American farms as well as farmers in developing nations. Soon President Bush will have the opportunity to fulfill his promise to veto this bill and end the policy of sending payoffs to some of the wealthiest landowners in America. The importance of this legislation, and the genuine reform that is needed, cannot be overstressed, as its effects will be felt by many, including American farmers, African farmers, American taxpayers and consumers.
Current U.S. farm policy dates back to the Great Depression when the first commodity subsidies were given to family farms as a financial safety net. At that time, 20 percent of Americans were farmers. Today, less than 1 percent are farmers and most of them are not full-time farmers. In fact, agriculture in the United States accounts for less than 1 percent of our entire gross domestic product.
Obviously, times have changed, but because of the strong influence of industry lobbyists, these subsidies still exist, and for the most part, they don't go to small family farms. A study by the Heritage Foundation shows that the majority of these payments go to large corporate farms, those that already turn huge profits due to their economies of scale. These mega-farms can easily drive small farms out of business with the intent of buying them out in many circumstances.
The wealthiest 10 percent of American farmers receive 65 percent of all agriculture subsidies. The program literally rewards more farmland with more subsidies, and much of that land does not even have to be farmed. According to the Washington Post, since 2000, the government has given away more than $1.3 billion to farmers that don't farm. Many aren't even farmers, they're people with financial interests in farms. Some of these recipients include David Letterman, David Rockefeller, Ted Turner, Scottie Pippen, Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen, Enron's Kenneth Lay, and some members of Congress. (To see a map of farm subsidy beneficiaries living in New York City, click here.)
Worse, 60 percent of real farmers receive no subsidies at all. This is due to industry lobbying for specific crops. The winners are corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton, and rice, of which many are processed into unhealthy foods for consumers and feed for livestock. These crops are grown primarily by corporate mega-farms. The losers, of course, are fruits and vegetables, which are often grown by smaller farms. The disproportionate rise in the price of fruits and vegetables versus that of fast food is a red flag suggesting that perhaps we're subsidizing the wrong crops.
In 1996, the Republican congress passed the Freedom to Farm Act, which continued to grant subsidies to growers, but under the condition that they would be cut off in seven years. Literally, Congress was attempting to wean farmers off of decades of subsidies. However, when 9/11 happened, security and economic concerns provided the appropriate excuses for passage of the Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002, and so the subsidies continued.
Even as farmers are reporting near-record profits, further subsidies have been authorized in the current farm bill. The posted justifications for crop-specific subsidies remain in serious doubt. As professor, syndicated columnist, and former farmer Victor Davis Hanson has noted, there are very few small farmers left in this country, the large corporate farms own the market (and get the subsidies), so there is little benefit to the traditional family farmer; food prices continue to rise, so there is little benefit to the consumer; and we continue to import almost as much food as we export, so there little benefit to American agricultural independence.
But again, the agriculture industry, like every industry, has its lobbyists. Campaigns are funded and favors are granted, and those that benefit are the politicians and a multibillion-dollar industry that will only continue to grow as the economies of Asia continue to prosper and import more American food.
Reforming farm policy can be politically hazardous: any effort to reform runs the risk of being labeled as anti-farmer, which can be detrimental during an election year. But why can't mega-farmers compete in a free market just like everyone else? Even the typical full-time American farmer retains a per capita income higher than the median family income. Why should the American taxpayer bail out an industry that's doing well, especially when our government is running budget deficits?
On a global scale, subsidies to American agribusiness encourage the overproduction of certain crops, such as cotton, the surpluses of which are sold to the rest of the world. This causes the price of cotton to drop on the world market. This hurts the small farmers of developing nations who literally depend on farming to survive. According to a study by the National Center for Policy Analysis, subsidies to American farmers cost third world farmers $24 billion each year. Add to that we put trade barriers on the importation of such crops from these nations. Trade barriers (which are subsidies by another name) only contribute to the economic impoverishment and political instability of the third world while simultaneously they drive up prices for American consumers.
All of this is in violation of rules set up by the World Trade Organization, and America's disregard for these rules has actually hampered our ability to negotiate trade deals in nonagricultural sectors of the economy. It's hard to promote free markets and free trade when you're subsidizing an entire industry to the detriment of other nations.
In West Africa, cotton is their cash crop and the only source of income for many families. By reforming cotton subsidies and lifting the associated import barriers here at home, therefore raising the world market price of cotton, while simultaneously lowering the price for American consumers, we could help 10 million West Africans significantly improve their impoverished living conditions. And this is a tradition of America: to better the lives of those in developing countries. After World War II, both Germany and Japan used the domestic market of the United States to sell goods and boost their economies. Later, South Korea and Taiwan did the same. This is a type of foreign aid that costs the American taxpayer nothing.
The last hope for a fair farm bill was embodied in several sponsored amendments which would have allowed for a more effective safety net for all farmers regardless of what they grow while placing caps on the amount of money any one entity could receive, thus leveling the playing field between family and corporate farms. They would have also reduced trade-distorting subsidies that hurt farmers of developing nations and would have brought our farm policy into compliance with international trade rules.
Unfortunately, such amendments failed, which is discouraging to say the least. The bipartisan Lugar-Lautenberg amendment was defeated. Even more unnerving, the similar Dorgan-Grassley amendment actually won a 56-43 majority, but failed because Democratic leaders had agreed to require a 60-vote supermajority lest they be filibustered by members of their own party who want to continue paying unlimited subsidies. This same tactic was employed with Senator Amy Klobuchar's amendment to end payments to farms with more than $750,000 in annual income. Hence, the Senate bill passed without any significant income caps and is now to be reconciled in committee with the House's similarly bloated version.
Fortunately, President Bush has expressed his dissatisfaction with this legislation and is threatening to veto it anyway. Unless some form of payment limitations can be worked out in committee to avoid a veto, Congress will have to attempt an override, or extend the current policy on the books and go back to begin a new farm bill, perhaps one more equitable. This begs the question: Why is a Republican administration (so called protectors of the rich) pushing for reforms and a Democratic Congress (so called protectors of the middle class) fighting for corporate welfare? The White House has called for an income cap of $200,000 while the income cap on the farm bill from Nancy Pelosi's House is a staggering $2 million! It could be inferred that the farm vote is simply another vote Democrats are more than willing to purchase with tax dollars.
Farm policy is, above all things, boring. The fact that nonfarmers are virtually unaware of these numerous contradictions and injustices is key to the existence of such contradictions and injustices in the first place. However, the very idea of crop-selective subsidies and trade barriers should hardly be one of partisan contention. Current U.S. farm policy constitutes an outdated corporate welfare program that defies the basic tenets of a free market and thus remains long overdue for reform.
Matt Danko is a freelance writer living in Knoxville, Tennessee. He blogs at PolicyMag.com
I not complaining about her using her money for the campaign. In fact I hope she uses it all and loses
The point here, abviously above your comprehension level is that Bill is raking in big $$ whoring for the Chinese and Saudi's among others. He's also involved in shady uranium deals that netted his foundation $100M
He's also refusing to divulge the contributors to his foundation.
Now given all that, isn't it possible that foreign money is funding Hillary's campaign
Just imagine if it has been Bush in 2004 that was trying to play the same game. The libs would be howling. I'm just asking for some ethical consistency
A less sleazy family would allow scrutiny of the books of the foundation- something Bill has refused to do
Because I read it in an article about their finances
And no, I'm not gonna waste my time providing you a link
Aren't you concerned at all with the potential for abuse here??
Well. see the point was about using foreign money for campaign purposes
You've a;ready shown your ,imited comprehension skills, so I'll say it real slow
B u s h i s n ' t r u n n i n g a g a i n
You'll just have to find another avenue to vent your frustrations
PS
Did you know Soros has interests in the Carlyle group??
THAT"S the point
They have a joint checking account.
There is no way to know which money is being used to fund her campaign
While Bill is out whoring around for the Saudis and Chinese and doing shady uranium deals, the money is put into THEIR account
Even you can see the conflict of interest there, no??
It is illegal for foreign governments to fund campaigns
That is in essence what is going on here
LMAO
For some strange reason, you seem to feel that what you quoted refutes my point that you don't know what you're talking about
You just reinforced my point
"hearing by the word of God
Well, if someone hears the word of god, it's not faith now is it- it's an actual fact
Verses can appeal to logic or facts tangentially, but that doesn't change the definition of faith that I gave before
By definition, faith is not fact based. If it were, it couldn't be faith. If there were actual tangible proof of God, his existence wouldn't be a matter of faith, now would it?
"Faith is based on logic. Faith is based on facts."
Here's a definition:
To commit oneself to act based on self experience to warrant belief, but without absolute proof.[1] Mere belief on the basis of evidence is not faith. To have faith involves an act of will.
Faith, by definition , can't be based on fact
Posts like yours tick me off. Getting snarky w/o even the slightest knowledge of what you're talking about
Is This What Burkle Bought?
In the beginning, everyone assumed that the Clinton machine would dominate fundraising in the Democratic primary. Although it raised prodigious sums of money, Barack Obama managed to keep pace all through 2007. Now, as Obama has also kept pace with Hillary in delegate counts, the Clinton machine appears to have begun running dry:
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton announced yesterday that she had lent her campaign $5 million, a remarkable twist for a candidate who raised more than $100 million last year that came as she and Sen. Barack Obama continued to spar over which of them was the Democratic winner in coast-to-coast Super Tuesday balloting. ...
At her campaign headquarters in Arlington, Clinton defended her maneuver, executed last month but kept under wraps until yesterday, to add money to her campaign coffers. News of the $5 million transfer came as a surprise to Clinton donors who had assumed her campaign, which raised $100 million last year, would keep pace with Obama's. Earlier this month, Obama announced that he had raised $32 million in January alone, and aides said he took in an additional $3.5 million yesterday. ...
It was unclear whether news of Clinton's financial stresses would affect her fundraising. Top fundraisers said they did not learn of her move until after Super Tuesday's contests, suggesting that the campaign was aware it could be a public relations blow.
Hillary raised $13 million in January, much less than half of Obama's total. She now faces the prospect of a tour through Obama's territory with no lead in delegates and a huge gap in financing. The money gap could tamp down her advertising and event staging, leaving a clear field for Obama in Maryland, Virginia, Louisiana, and Nebraska. Even Washington DC and Washington state look grim.
The massive loan may not seem unusual given Mitt Romney's self-funding, but Mitt has plenty of his own money. Where did Hillary get $5 million to loan a presidential campaign? Bill and Hillary have done well on the speaking circuit, and Bill recently got $20 million or so for backing out of his partnership from Ron Burkle. At the time, speculation had Bill wanting to eliminate any potential conflicts between Burkle's business and Hillary's election.
Now, however, one has to wonder whether Burkle may have attempted to float money into Hillary's campaign while bypassing campaign-finance regulations. Did the $20 million, which came just two weeks ago, actually represent a fair-market settlement for Clinton's services and ownership stake in Yucaipa? Or did Burkle inflate it in order to allow Hillary to "loan" herself $5 million to keep pace with a surging Obama campaign?
The Clintons always seem to live at the nexus of questions regarding cash and politics. Whether we talk about Norman Hsu or Ron Burkle, their opacity in financial operations suggests a very, er, flexible attitude towards ethics in government -- and serves as a reminder why so many people oppose a Clinton Restoration.
“In one year, Democrats have instituted tough earmark reform rules that brought about unprecedented transparency, restored accountability to Washington and cut the total cost of earmarks in almost half after 12 years of increases under Republican control,” he said. “We have made progress on earmark reform… and we are open to continued improvements.”
LOL, do you actually believe that
Look at the numbers- the amount of pork/earmarks continues to skyrocket
PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: There's going to be a big earmark vote in the House tomorrow:
Disappointed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) rejection of House Republican calls for an immediate moratorium on all taxpayer-funded earmarks, House Republicans will force a vote on the issue tomorrow, House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) and Whip Roy Blunt (R-MO) announced this afternoon. The leaders said House Republicans will force the earmark reform vote as a higher education authorization bill comes to the floor containing what many argue is a taxpayer-funded slush fund for colleges and universities. . . .
Three GOP members of the House Appropriations Committee — Reps. Jack Kingston of Georgia, Frank Wolf of Virginia and Zack Wamp of Tennessee — have authored legislation that would bring the earmark process to a halt and establish a panel to identify ways to permanently change the spending process. Kingston-Wolf-Wamp has been cosponsored by 129 House Republicans, including the entire House Republican leadership team. However, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who as leader of the Democrat-controlled House has the power to shut down the chamber’s earmarking process immediately, declined to support the measure or the proposed moratorium.
It'll be interesting to see how the vote go
Seems like it's the dems here sandbagging earmark reform.
Imagine that!!!!!
Why in the world would you think that?
Look at their track record while they've had the majority so far.
They vowed to cut down and eliminate pork and earmarks
In reality they've only increased it
You're very naive if you think they actually want to change things
"revolution"???? , yeah right- what exactly does that mean??
Another Clinton Foreign Money Scandal?
Posted by: Amanda Carpenter at 2:35 PM
Apparently, Hillary is considering using some of her own money to finance her campaign.
If she does, I can guarantee there'll be questions about the millions in foreign money Bill Clinton has racked up in speaking fees that's likely stashed in their joint checking account.
I wrote about this in the first chapter of my book .
Since leaving the White House, Clinton has earned more than $20 million in speaking fees from foreign sources in places like the People's Republic of China and Dubai, according to her Senate financial disclosure forms. They also share a joint checking account according to those same forms.
If Hillary uses that foreign money to finance her campaign she will have successfully exploited a loophole in campaign finance rules that forbids the use of foreign money in U.S. elections.
I dunno about you, but it sounds like the beginning of another classic Clinton financial scandal. And this comes on top of recent news that Bill's been courting uranium deals for the benefit of his foundation in Kazakhstan and looming questions about whether Bill would be more of a renegade global ambassador than First Gentleman in the White House.
Update: It's confirmed Clinton has loaned herself $5 million. The Clinton's personal wealth is estimated to be between $10 million and $50 million.
Hillary's Big Risk [Stephen Spruiell]
By loaning herself $5 million from her and Bill's personal wealth, she's taking a big risk by opening up a direct connection between Bill's post-presidency business deals and her presidential campaign. The timing — coinciding with last week's big story in the New York Times about Bill's shady activities in Kazakhstan — couldn't be worse. Time to start taking a closer look at other deals. Amanda Carpenter suggests that, as usual with the Clintons, the People's Republic of China is a good place to start.
Today HRC announced she will lend $5million of her own money to her campaign.
That's a very bad sign for her ( good for the country though )
Obama raised 32M in January''Mcauliffe said that the results from last night would spur more donors, but Obama is actually ahead in delegate count now
Her call for more debates is another sign of desperation
Inside Iraqi politics – Part 1. Examining the Iraqi executive branch
By Bill ArdolinoFebruary 6, 2008 8:50 AM
insideiraqipolitics-button.gif
Security gains in Iraq have maintained momentum for five months and the focus has turned to spurring and gauging the country’s political progress. The ultimate goal of the troop surge executed by the military was for improved security to provide “breathing room” for such progress, which can be simplified to three fronts: “ground-up” political progress, executive political progress by the federal government, and federal legislative progress.
“Ground-up” political progress largely consists of fostering relationships with local leaders – often tribesmen and former insurgents – who now wish to work with the Coalition and Federal Government of Iraq against the insurgency. This effort empowering local institutions – such as neighborhood watches, Provincial Security Forces, and city and tribal councils – is considered integral to durable security and stability.
Executive political progress by the federal government includes, at least in the short term, effectively delivering reconstruction and security resources to all provinces regardless of sectarian make-up, and integrating predominantly Sunni neighborhood watch programs into government employment. These actions will facilitate reconciliation and cement decreases in both insurgency and sectarian conflict.
Legislative political progress by the federal government is measured by the passage of proposed legislation immediately essential to executive functions, such as the 2008 budget; laws stipulating the long-term design of the Iraqi government, like the distribution of federal and provincial authority; and laws crucial for sectarian reconciliation, such as reform that allows more former Baathists into government service.
The first and arguably most important area of political progress, the “ground-up” aspect, has been a linchpin of US military strategy and is significantly responsible for the large security gains since August 2007. These rapidly successful grassroots reconciliation efforts were driven by the emergence of local leadership, budding relationships between the federal government and tribal leaders, quick application of US funds and reconstruction efforts, and local relationships forged across sectarian lines.
Despite such significant regional progress, however, many have questioned the will and ability of the Iraqi federal government to meet its end of the bargain: delivering services and resources, reconciling with former Sunni insurgents, and passing essential legislation. And most media coverage has focused on implacable sectarian interest as the primary reason for the Iraqi government’s underperformance in these areas, a sentiment shared by some American officials.
Colonel Martin M. Stanton, Chief of Reconciliation and Engagement for Multinational Corps–Iraq, is quick to praise the remarkable progress in ground-up reconciliation he’s seen in his job coordinating Iraqis who want to engage with the Coalition and Iraqi government. But he is also candidly skeptical about the willingness of the “Shia [federal] government” to reconcile with Sunnis, in light of sectarian hostility.
“What haunts me is the prospect of wasting all these opportunities,” said Stanton. “It’s encouraging at the bottom, at the tactical level, and then you deal with the people in the Iraqi government who are so paranoid and so reticent, and it’s a real emotional rollercoaster.”
But while most officials acknowledge a heavy atmosphere of mistrust stoked by sectarian carnage that peaked in 2006, many cite other elements that impede action on key political benchmarks. This Long War Journal series on Iraqi politics – involving more than a dozen interviews with American and Iraqi officials – will attempt to examine the factors, including but beyond sectarianism, that have affected political progress by the Iraqi federal government.
A complex executive structure
The Iraqi government differs from its US counterpart in the vast diversity of political interests within the executive branch. Click to view.
Any examination of political progress requires a basic understanding of the inherent challenges to quick action posed by the structure of the executive branch under the Iraqi constitution.
Executive authority is unevenly divided between the Presidency Council – comprised of the president and two vice presidents – and the prime minister, deputy prime ministers, and the Council of Ministers, a deliberative body composed of about 40 heads of Iraq’s ministries. The relatively powerless president is a Kurd, Jalal Talabani. The lion’s share of influence lies with Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, a Shia with the Dawa Party, and the Council of Ministers, which has its own powers, like debating proposed legislation before it’s forwarded to the legislative branch.
The various ministers are appointed by Maliki and must be approved by a majority of Parliament, which apportions the positions as political spoils after extensive haggling among members of the various parties that comprise the ruling coalition, or “government list.” The process doesn’t inevitably result in the most qualified administrators taking charge of the ministries, as priorities are placed on the distribution of political parties and approving candidates who are broadly acceptable. The result is an executive branch of variable competence that is radically divided among various ethnosectarian and political affiliations.
Applied to American politics, such a scenario might look like a Republican president’s cabinet divided among Republicans, Democrats, Independents, and Libertarians, roughly proportional to their prevalence in Congress. For instance, Iraq’s Minister of Municipalities and Public Works is a Shia affiliated with the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, the Trade Minister is a Shia with Maliki’s Dawa Party, the Defense Minister is an independent Sunni, the Foreign Minister is with the Kurdistan Democratic Party, and the Minister of the Interior is an independent Shia.
This structure is designed to force representation from and interaction between Iraq’s various religious sects and ethnicities. Ministers, representing various parties, are ostensibly granted great latitude in carrying out the function of their ministry, and have a practical say in overall executive decisions via their membership in the Council of Ministers. These features of the Iraqi Constitution that place a significant amount of power in a collective, rather than in one person, necessarily slow executive action, even as they prevent the dictatorial abuses of Iraq’s past.
“It’s not an easy structure,” said Phil Reeker, Counselor for Public Affairs at the American Embassy in Baghdad. “Different parties have different ministries, and [ministry] relationships with the prime minister’s office are different.”
For example, fifteen ministers primarily from the main Sunni bloc and Shia Sadrist Movement have left their positions in protest over the last 6 months, though many have returned or are currently negotiating a return.
Despite the decentralized structure, the singular influence of the prime minister remains unmistakable, especially in light of a cultural tendency to defer to a central authority. Ryan Crocker, US Ambassador to Iraq, and other US officials meet almost daily with Maliki and his immediate staff because “the prime minister’s office is important, it’s the center,” Reeker said.
Other advisers also see a strong degree of deference to the prime minister’s authority, as seen through the prism of American frustration with Iraqi administrative inaction.
“[A]ll lines lead back to Maliki,” said Stanton. “Very few ministers or committee members will take an action without clearing it through him.”
But while many note the high degree of prime ministerial authority under a decentralized structure, the complexity of the executive branch makes mapping the government’s progress more complicated than exclusively blaming or lauding Maliki. “Orders of the Prime Minister” are considered the leverage needed to get many things done, but Maliki’s issuance of orders favorable towards reconciliation is tempered by his management of the competing interests within his ruling coalition. In addition, the intent of individual ministers has historically influenced reconciliation issues not explicitly addressed by the prime minister.
For an extreme example, former high-level Sadrist officials in the Ministry of Health were indicted on charges of diverting government funds to the Mahdi Army and allowing the use of Iraqi hospitals and ambulances in sectarian killings during 2006. A more subtle example is the same ministry’s prioritization of opening medical facilities in Shia neighborhoods during 2007, according to a report by General David Petraus' staff. Officials do not consider those actions sanctioned by the Prime Minister. In addition, the recent withdrawal of the Sadrist bloc from the government reduces some historical pressures on Maliki’s decisions regarding military action in Sadr City, the hiring of Sunni security forces, and the long-term presence of the American military.
While Americans and Iraqis still note flaws in Maliki’s leadership, many believe it has improved over the past year, citing his willingness to prosecute rogue elements (Shia as well as Sunni) outside of and within the government, and decisions on reconciliation and security issues that have caused political discord, including the various defections from his government coalition.
“Give Maliki a lot of credit for not looking at the polls, as they say in the US,” said Entifadh K. Qanbar, former Deputy Military Attaché for Iraq and former member of the Iraqi National Congress, a political party. “He makes decisions that might not be popular at first, but [later] people start to realize he’s a strong man who does not get dragged left and right by people threatening him. Maliki is probably not an intellectual, but he’s a street guy, he knows [politics] well.”
But various American and Iraqi officials make it clear that some degree of the executive hesitance towards reconciliation is due to its fundamental structure under the Iraqi constitution. This design has inevitably created a Shia-dominated but still diverse sectarian coalition whose members have varying intent to reconcile and some naturally competing interests. And the influence of party affiliation on the performance of individual ministers remains a factor in Iraq’s progress.
“Are they influenced by [their parties]? Yes. Are they influenced by them so much that they are incapable of acting in a nonpartisan manner? Some of them are. Some of them, I think, are not,” said Stanton.
Administrative difficulties and “building capacity”
While divisive politics and naked sectarian interest receive most of the blame for Iraq’s political inertia, government inefficiency, corruption, and administrative inexperience arguably pose larger problems.
“We think our system is bureaucratic … their system is even more bureaucratic. It tends to be a paper-based system. … They tend to require lots of signatures from different technocrats along the way. They tend not to delegate much,” said Brigadier General Terry Wolff, the Special Assistant to the President and the Senior Director for Iraq and Afghanistan Policy Implementation on the National Security Council.
As an example, a paper-based system of requisitions adds layers of difficulty for various provincial police headquarters getting equipment from the Ministry of the Interior. Thus, both Western observers and police officers in a Sunni province like Anbar might view equipment shortages as the product of sectarian hostility by the Shia-dominated federal government, when much of the delay is really administrative.
“An extremely small percentage … of equipment shortages would be attributed to some sort of deliberate effort to deny somebody something,” said Major General Michael Jones, Commanding General of the Coalition Police Assistance Training Team. In fact, Jones had not seen this occur in the four months he had been in Iraq. He believes that a combination of complex administrative rules and inexperienced bureaucrats is responsible for many delays.
“There are procedures that you have to follow to order equipment or just to do basically everything,” said Jones. “When you look at the volume of procedures that you have in an institution, to have inexperienced people try to suddenly start filling senior roles in that institution with these practices that are not well-known, and in some cases not well-documented, it creates … big challenges.”
Inefficiency is exacerbated by the drastic growth of the young government. A primary focus of American advisers is “building the capacity” to govern and administer, at all levels, in rapidly expanding institutions headed by Iraqis with varying levels of experience, honesty, sectarianism, and patriotism. For example, the Ministry of the Interior’s authorization for the police force in al Anbar has grown from 11,000 to 24,000 in six months. Any organization that makes decisions to grow at such a rapid pace is “going to have huge problems” because of the inherent logistical and hiring challenges presented by such rapid expansion, said Jones.
This highly demanded growth compounds the overall disorganization of a fledgling Iraqi government that in many respects has been reconstituted from scratch.
“The destruction in Iraq was so severe that we don't have a proper staff … capable of proper planning,” said Ali al Dabbagh, Official Spokesman of the Government of Iraq, who notes improvement in the proportion of the government’s budget that was spent in 2007 compared to the previous year. “I think that in 2008 – we call it ‘the year of reconstruction’ – … the capacity of the government will be much, much … better than 2007.”
The US Government Accountability Office, however, recently reported that the Government of Iraq still only spent 4.4 percent of its investment budget by August 2007; 90 percent of that budget is dedicated to the capital projects behind reconstruction and the restoration of services.
If Iraq is to capitalize on security gains, the government must improve its efficiency, as well as mitigate a huge problem with corruption that is a major drain on these resources. An internal report by the US Embassy in Baghdad characterized corruption as “the norm in many ministries" and labeled Maliki’s government as incapable of “even rudimentary enforcement of anticorruption laws.” The corruption watchdog group Transparency International ranked Iraq as the third-most corrupt country of 180 countries measured in a September 2007 report.
While problems with massive theft diminish as security and oversight improve, corruption remains common and, to some degree, a culturally accepted facet of administration in Iraq. Many US officials set pragmatic goals of lowering graft to an extent where it does not interfere with accomplishing the mission of a given organization, from local police forces to national ministries. And some see corruption as a moderately reduced but persistent problem.
Qanbar asserts that the major corruption, the deals worth “hundreds of millions of dollars,” are a way of the past, yet he anticipates that the “middle to lower-level corruption will continue for a long time and will be a huge problem.”
“I think the only way to solve this problem is for the Iraqi parliamentarian system to work better, and it is,” said Qanbar, citing a recent example of Iraqi Parliament calling the Iraqi Minister of Trade to answer questions relating to corruption. He noted that this type of oversight is “unprecedented for this part of the world.”
Diverse impediments to quick action
Interviews with American and Iraqi officials depict an Iraqi executive branch grappling with challenges that include but are more varied than the popular narrative of sectarianism. Rapidly growing government institutions are often run by inexperienced administrators in a complex, paper-based system; poor oversight in the post-invasion chaos has fueled outrageous corruption; and a government design that has divided executive authority among the country's various ethno-sectarian political parties delays action, even as it fosters compromise and successfully curbs the dictatorial abuses of the past. Despite the daunting list of challenges, however, some US officials see opportunity in the diversity of these problems. For example, while it is impossible to quickly push Iraqis towards sectarian accord, continued time and advisership can develop the experience of Iraqi administrators and build institutional "capacity" to govern effectively. And to the extent these issues influence the pace of political progress and improve self-sufficiency, both can and should improve. If security gains are maintained, time will tell whether such improvements are made fast enough to achieve stability and eventual reconciliation.
The next installment of this series will examine the efforts by Iraq’s executive branch to improve services and achieve reconciliation, including an in-depth profile of the Iraqi Implementation and Follow-Up Committee for National Reconciliation, a special body appointed by Maliki.
Find related articles: Iraq
Did you actually see Clinton when he spoke?
Yes, I saw every occasion when both he and Hillary made race baiting comments.
Just ask Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton and many others of the black establishment who were previously in love w/ the Clintons
Do some research
Before I form an opinion, I like to get the complete story or in this case, the complete transcript of what Clinton said.
Well, what's stopping ya? Just google "clinton playing the race card"
Of course, you discount the book w/on actually spending the time to read it
Typical of your intellectual sloth
No, tool, I actually have followed the issue closely and HAVE read the direct quotes that from Billy Bob
I base my stance based on what he actually said
Your stance, as with clownboy Alex is based solely on your faith
I gave you one article- did you actually read it?
There are numerous links in that article. I also suggested other MSM outlets where, if you were serious intellectually about researching the issue, you could have pursued it.
Instead you choose to keep your head in the sand
Typical of libs- they project their own failings on others
Bill is just misunderstood when he does the same things that the brutal racist reps do
As for Bill's comments I thought one had to look hard for them
I guess you only use the same media that Susie does
IT was a huge issue on all the MSM outlets
Bottom line is, whether it was " hard to find " or not, it was racist- STILL appealing to the basest tendencies
Can you deny that?
There's a book on the subject out now- on Amazon's best seller list.
It's an excellent book- a lot of the liberal fascist tendencies are on exhibit on this board daily
Riiight. So, when the dems do it, it's subtle- when the reps do it, it's appealing to "to the basest fears and prejudices of voters"
Please explain how appealig to racism by Bill is NOT appealing to the "to the basest fears and prejudices of voters"
There was nothing subtle about it. DO you think the reps will bring out nooses and suggest lynching??
You forget the reps - and Karl Rove _ have out maneuvered the dems strategically for years-
Calling Bill Clinton subtle- LOL only the most naive moonbat would utter those words
And, re the surge- the dems were primed to use that as a major talking point- its gonna be a liability for them now.
Even the MSM outlets - Murtha, and many former antiwar dem and rep congresspeople have finally admitted it has worked.
The AMerican people, except you moonbats , are aware of this. IT's gonna be hard for either dem candidate to justify cutting and running with the result of that being increased violence and the end to any chance of political progress
PS
I thought you had me on ignore???
Obama claims delegate lead
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In a surprise twist after a chaotic Super Tuesday, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) passed Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) in network tallies of the number of delegates the candidates racked up last night.
The Obama camp projects topping Clinton by nine delegates, 845 to 836.
NBC News, which is projecting delegates based on the Democratic Party's complex formula, figures Obama will wind up with 840 to 849 delegates, versus 829 to 838 for Clinton.
Clinton was portrayed in many news accounts as the night’s big winner, but Obama’s campaign says he wound up with a higher total where it really counts — the delegates who will choose the party’s nominee at this summer’s Democratic convention.
With the delegate count still under way, NBC News said Obama appears to have won around 840 delegates in yesterday’s contests, while Clinton earned about 830 — “give or take a few,” Tim Russert, the network’s Washington bureau chief, said on the “Today” show.
The running totals for the two, which includes previous contests and the party officials known as “superdelegates,” are only about 70 delegates apart, Russert said.
The bottom line is that the two are virtually tied.
See Also
* Race, sex divide Dems; ideology splits GOP
* Super Tuesday: A split decision
* Media restrained in Super Tuesday coverage
Obama won 13 states, some of them smaller, and Clinton won eight.
On Wednesday morning, the battle was on to shape public perceptions about Tuesday.
The Clinton campaign said it was crunching its delegate numbers but was not sure it was correct that Obama got more.
The Obama campaign sent an e-mailed statement titled: “Obama wins Super Tuesday by winning more states and more delegates.”
Campaign Manager David Plouffe said: “By winning a majority of delegates and a majority of the states, Barack Obama won an important Super Tuesday victory over Sen. Clinton in the closest thing we have to a national primary.”
“From Colorado and Utah in the West to Georgia and Alabama in the South to Sen. Clinton’s backyard in Connecticut, Obama showed that he can win the support of Americans of every race, gender and political party in every region of the country,” Plouffe said. “That’s why he’s on track to win Democratic nomination, and that’s why he’s the best candidate to defeat John McCain in November.”
The Obama campaign attached an Excel spreadsheet containing “state-by-state estimates of the pledged delegates we won last night, which total 845 for Obama and 836 for Clinton — bringing the to-date total of delegates to 908 for Obama, 884 for Clinton.”
Obama is a brilliant pol- the best I've seen
IF you missed it, you're not paying attention
It's been all over the MSM- the NYT, SLate, Huffington
Search those sites
As with the clownboy Alex, I'm not gonna do your research for ya
PS,
I'm in a good mood- here's one article- Slate has a liberal bias
http://www.slate.com/id/2182938/
LOL, I guess you missed the part where Bill Clinton made race a part of the campaign in a very nasty and cynical way
I guess you missed the fact that southern white males are refusing to vote for Obama
But, yeah, it's those racist repubs that are ruining the country
Another example of your colourlessness
Exxon's 2007 Tax Bill: $30 Billion
posted on: February 05, 2008 | about stocks: XOM
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Corporate profits receive a lot of media attention, but what receives considerably less attention are the corporate taxes paid on corporate profits. Do a Google search for "Exxon profits" and you'll get about 8,000 hits. Now try "Exxon taxes" and you'll get a little more than 300 hits. That's a ratio of about 33 to 1.
I'm pretty sure that Exxon's tax payment in 2007 of $30 billion (that's $30,000,000,000) is a record, exceeding the $28 billion it paid last year.
By the way, Exxon pays taxes at a rate of 41% on its taxable income!
[Update: The $40.6 billion and $39.5 billion figures are after-tax profits. For 2006, Exxon's EBT (earnings before tax) was $67.4 billion, it paid $27.9 billion in taxes (41.4% tax rate), and its NIAT (net income after tax), or profit, was $39.5 billion.]
Over the last three years, Exxon Mobil has paid an average of $27 billion annually in taxes. That's $27,000,000,000 per year, a number so large it's hard to comprehend. Here's one way to put Exxon's taxes into perspective.
According to IRS data for 2004, the most recent year available:
Total number of tax returns: 130 million
Number of Tax Returns for the Bottom 50%: 65 million
Adjusted Gross Income for the Bottom 50%: $922 billion
Total Income Tax Paid by the Bottom 50%: $27.4 billion
Conclusion: In other words, just one corporation (Exxon Mobil) pays as much in taxes ($27 billion) annually as the entire bottom 50% of individual taxpayers, which is 65,000,000 people! Further, the tax rate for the bottom 50% is only 3% of adjusted gross income ($27.4 billion / $922 billion), and the tax rate for Exxon was 41% in 2006 ($67.4 billion in taxable income, $27.9 billion in taxes).
Mark J. Perry, Ph.D.
About this author:
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* More by Mark J. Perry »
Illegal Immigration and Low Wage Labor
By Lee Cary
Leprechauns, unicorns, and the assertion that illegal immigrants take jobs Americans won't do -- they're all myths. Some myths are harmless, while others, like the medical benefits of bleeding, cause harm. The assertion about illegal immigrants taking unwanted jobs is not harmless. Low wage Americans bear a considerable burden.
As Will Rogers said,
"It's not what you don't know that hurts you. It's what you do know that ain't so."
The Farm Worker Myth
In recent years, ripening crops regularly are accompanied by stories suggesting we need illegal immigrant labor to bring in the harvest. For example, on July 20, 2007, a Wall Street Journal editorial entitled "Immigration Non-Harvest," breathlessly began with this paragraph:
"Peak harvest season is approaching in much of the country, and the biggest issue on the minds of many growers isn't the weather but how in the world they'll get their crops from the vine or off the tree. Thanks to Congress's immigration failure, farmers nationwide are facing their most serious labor shortage in years."
Visions of crops rotting in the fields make for vivid journalism. But in September, 2007 a Congressional Research Service (CRS) Report for Congress (updated from a 2004 version) entitled "Farm Labor Shortages and Immigration Policy," found little cause to worry about crops ripening and spoiling, stating that,
"Trends in the agricultural labor market generally do not suggest the existence of a nationwide shortage of domestically available farm workers...Employment on farms did not show the same upward trend as other industries during the 1990s expansion. While nonfarm jobs generally have risen thus far in the current decade, farm jobs generally have fallen. The length of time hired farm workers are employed has changed little or decreased over the years. Their unemployment rate has varied little and remains well above the U.S. average, and underemployment among farm workers also remains substantial. These agricultural employees earn about 50 cents for every dollar paid to other employees in the private sector."
Any significant shortage of farm workers ought to have been reflected in an increase in their wages, according to the law of supply and demand. But, from 2001 to 2006, the ratio of hourly field worker wages (those engaged in planting, rending and harvesting crops) to private nonfarm worker wages maintained a constant 0.54 for six consecutive years. That doesn't preclude the existence of temporary spot shortages, but it does argue against a systemic shortage of farm workers.
[A 2007 study written by Philip Martin, a professor of agricultural and resource economics at the University of California, Davis, for the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) entitled "Farm Labor shortages: How Real? What Response" further substantiated the conclusions of the CRS Report, and, consequently, challenges the premise of the WSJ editorial.]
Busting The Myth Across Industries
Employment statistics invariably lag behind the calendar. A March 2006 CIS study of the top 22 occupations in 2005 indicated that in no occupational category did immigrant employees outnumber native employees. In other words, native-born U.S. workers are already doing jobs where high concentrations of illegal immigrant are also employed. The largest share of immigrant employees was 44.7%, and the category was "Farming, fishing and forestry." The largest raw number of immigrant employees was in "Construction and extraction" where 2,209,000 immigrants (26.1% of the total labor force) were outnumbered by 6,250,000 native employees.
A deeper examination into statistics that focuses on less-educated workers (high school degree or less) indicates a higher concentration among immigrant employees. In "Farming, fishing and forestry," less-educated immigrants outnumber natives 364,000 to 338,000. But, there were an estimated 56,000 unemployed (14.2%) native workers in that category. In construction, native unemployment was 12.1% with 577,000 unemployed native workers.
The point: low-skilled illegal immigrant workers are wage leveraging native workers out of the occupational categories typically cited by perpetuators of the myth. The job categories include, but not limited to: farm workers, construction laborers, cleaning and maintenance providers, and food preparers.
Here's one example of that wage-leveraging impact from the Federation of American Immigration Reform (FAIR):
"In Los Angeles, unionized black janitors had been earning $12 an hour, with benefits. But with the advent of subcontractors who compose roaming crews of Mexican and El Salvadoran laborers, the pay dropped to the minimum wage of $3.35 per hour. Within two years, the unionized crews had all been displaced by the foreign ones, and without any other skills, most of the native workforce did not find new work."
The myth becomes truth if amended to read: Illegal immigrants accept jobs that American workers won't do for poverty level wages and no benefits (including healthcare).
The Truth Behind The Myth
Some conspiracy theorists claim that an open borders policy aims to create poverty in the U.S. while relieving poverty in Mexico as part of a grand scheme to eventually unite the two countries into one, minimally in the style of a European Union. The truth, though, is alluded to in a December 2006 "Special Report" entitled "Undocumented Immigrants In Texas: A financial Analysis of the Impact to the State Budget and Economy," released by Carole Keeton Strayhorn, Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts.
Strayhorn, the mother of President George W. Bush's former press secretary, Scott McClellan, and an unsuccessful opponent of Texas Governor Rick Perry in the last election, offered this summary of her study:
"The absence of the estimated 1.4 million undocumented immigrants in Texas in fiscal 2005 would have been a loss to our gross state product of $17.7 billion. Undocumented immigrants produced $1.58 billion in state revenues, which exceeded the $1.16 billion in state services they received. However, local governments bore the burden of $1.44 billion in uncompensated health care costs and local law enforcement costs not paid for by the state."
In other words, sure there are costs involved in hiring "undocumented workers." But, forget the laws against illegal immigration and employing illegal immigrants, say some. The benefits are good for the Texas economy and outweigh the costs.
Two famous, now deceased, Americans warned us against uncontrolled immigration. Barbara Jordan, Chair of the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, testifying before a Joint Congressional Committee on June 28, 1995, said,
"The Commission recommends the elimination of the admission [as legal immigrants] of unskilled workers. Unless there is another compelling interest, such as in the entry of nuclear families and refugees, it is not in the national interest to admit unskilled workers. Especially when the U.S. economy is showing difficulty in absorbing disadvantaged workers and efforts towards welfare reform indicate that many unskilled Americans will be entering the labor force."
Jordan's warnings were ignored, as were the words earlier of the founder and president of the American Federation of Labor, Samuel Gompers, who, in a Letter to Congress in March, 1924, wrote:
"America must not be overwhelmed. Every effort to enact immigration legislation must expect to meet...two hostile forces of considerable strength. One of these is composed of corporation employers who desire to employ physical strength (broad backs) at the lowest possible wage and who prefer a rapidly revolving labor supply at low wages to a regular supply of American wage earners at fair wages. The other is composed of racial groups in the United States who oppose all restrictive legislation because they want the doors left open for an influx of their countrymen regardless of the menace to the people of their adopted country."
To paraphrase Will Rogers, it's not the warnings you don't hear that hurt you; it's the ones you hear and don't heed.
I guess you missed the other article I posted about the re opening of a Christian church in Baghdad
Another myopic lib yearning for those great days when SH was in power- amazing
You prove your clownhood yet again
I posted a lengthy article weeks ago that did the numbers
I don't pay for this site and don't have the search feature. Even if I did, I wouldn't waste the time providing information to ankle biters like you.
You discount my post w/o actually reading the info I posted
Not only are you a clown, you're a lazy clown
Has the rise in petroleum prices caused the cost of your clown makeup to skyrocket?
Can you claim depreciation on those long floppy shoes on your income tax?
How DO you all fit into those tiny cars?
This is similar to techniques used by Rife and others:
New Way to Kill Viruses: Shake Them to Death
By Michael Schirber, Special to LiveScience
Scientists may one day be able to destroy viruses in the same way that opera singers presumably shatter wine glasses. New research mathematically determined the frequencies at which simple viruses could be shaken to death.
"The capsid of a virus is something like the shell of a turtle," said physicist Otto Sankey of Arizona State University. "If the shell can be compromised [by mechanical vibrations], the virus can be inactivated."
Recent experimental evidence has shown that laser pulses tuned to the right frequency can kill certain viruses. However, locating these so-called resonant frequencies is a bit of trial and error.
"Experiments must just try a wide variety of conditions and hope that conditions are found that can lead to success," Sankey told LiveScience.
To expedite this search, Sankey and his student Eric Dykeman have developed a way to calculate the vibrational motion of every atom in a virus shell. From this, they can determine the lowest resonant frequencies.
As an example of their technique, the team modeled the satellite tobacco necrosis virus and found this small virus resonates strongly around 60 Gigahertz (where one Gigahertz is a billion cycles per second), as reported in the Jan. 14 issue of Physical Review Letters.
A virus' death knell
All objects have resonant frequencies at which they naturally oscillate. Pluck a guitar string and it will vibrate at a resonant frequency.
But resonating can get out of control. A famous example is the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, which warped and finally collapsed in 1940 due to a wind that rocked the bridge back and forth at one of its resonant frequencies.
Viruses are susceptible to the same kind of mechanical excitation. An experimental group led by K. T. Tsen from Arizona State University have recently shown that pulses of laser light can induce destructive vibrations in virus shells.
"The idea is that the time that the pulse is on is about a quarter of a period of a vibration," Sankey said. "Like pushing a child on a swing from rest, one impulsive push gets the virus shaking."
It is difficult to calculate what sort of push will kill a virus, since there can be millions of atoms in its shell structure. A direct computation of each atom's movements would take several hundred thousand Gigabytes of computer memory, Sankey explained.
He and Dykeman have found a method to calculate the resonant frequencies with much less memory.
In practice
The team plans to use their technique to study other, more complicated viruses. However, it is still a long way from using this to neutralize the viruses in infected people.
One challenge is that laser light cannot penetrate the skin very deeply. But Sankey imagines that a patient might be hooked up to a dialysis-like machine that cycles blood through a tube where it can be hit with a laser. Or perhaps, ultrasound can be used instead of lasers.
These treatments would presumably be safer for patients than many antiviral drugs that can have terrible side-effects. Normal cells should not be affected by the virus-killing lasers or sound waves because they have resonant frequencies much lower than those of viruses, Sankey said.
Moreover, it is unlikely that viruses will develop resistance to mechanical shaking, as they do to drugs.
"This is such a new field, and there are so few experiments, that the science has not yet had sufficient time to prove itself," Sankey said. "We remain hopeful but remain skeptical at the same time."
I posted an analysis of it a while back
You can do the search- I;m not gonna do it for ya
Subprime by Richard Thaler and Susan Woodward
Hillary's disastrous proposal to solve the mortgage crisis.
Post Date Monday, February 04, 2008
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Senator Hillary Clinton presents herself as a policy expert and declares her readiness to govern from "day one." But her recent prescriptions for the housing market should cause doubts for thoughtful observers.
Here is Senator Clinton's plan, as she presented it in a recent speech in South Carolina:
I'm calling for freezing the monthly rate on adjustable rate mortgages for at least five years or until the mortgages have been converted into loans that families can afford. If you have an adjustable mortgage that's about to skyrocket, you'll have the chance to pay it off with affordable payments.
(In an older posting on her Web site, Senator Clinton describes the policy as applying only to sub-prime mortgages. But most of her recent speeches do not include that qualifier, and since Hillary is nothing if not careful, one can only conclude she is either expanding her proposal to all adjustable rate mortgages, or at least would like voters to think so.)
Senator Clinton's proposal might appeal to homeowners with adjustable rate mortgages scheduled for a rate increase. But, as with most offers that look too good to be true, this one comes with many problems.
The first is its enormous scope. The plan is essentially to repudiate, revoke, or compel the revision of millions of contracts. There are approximately eleven million mortgages in America with adjustable rates, with a total value of more than $2 trillion dollars--a lot of money, even by Washington standards. Even restricting the plan to the 3.4 million subprime ARM loans (roughly $700 billion) would require an intervention of massive scale.
An even more serious problem with Hillary's proposal is the nature of the solution it proposes. When someone takes out a loan with a low, so-called "teaser rate" that is scheduled to increase in a couple years, the investors who put up the money for that loan are counting on at least some of the borrowers to hold on to their mortgage long enough to start paying the higher rates. Without the promise of this increase, the initial rate would have had to be much higher. As economists like to say, there is no such thing as a free lunch.
What would happen if scheduled rate increases were halted? Although it might make some borrowers happy, such a freeze could potentially poison the mortgage market and quickly exacerbate the slump in housing prices. If lenders and investors do not receive the interest payments they expected, they will be wary going forward. Should they avoid providing funds for adjustable rate mortgages, since the government would have just proven that the terms can be changed if difficulty arises? Should they avoid all mortgages, since the government now seems to prioritize short-term concerns for borrowers? Maybe they should avoid lending in the United States altogether?
Such a policy would clearly send a dangerous message far beyond our borders. Two trillion dollars of U.S. national debt is held by foreign governments. Interest rates on this debt are low in part because foreigners trust the U.S. to pay back its loans as promised. The rates would surely be higher if its holders thought the U.S. could renege on its promises to pay. But this is precisely the expectation America would encourage by unilaterally changing the terms on $2 trillion in mortgages held by investors around the world.
The Clinton proposal is a blunt tool applied too broadly to problems that are, in principle, contained and specific. Only 3.1 percent of prime (good credit) ARM loans are seriously (90 days or more) delinquent. The disconcerting delinquency rate of 16 percent is for the subprime sector--which is alarming, to be sure, but 84 percent are not seriously delinquent. Over the last three years there was an unusually large volume of aggressive lending activity with flaws at several levels. Some borrowers were led into loans they did not understand. These people deserve some concern. Other loans were made to speculators who do not live in the homes and were betting that house prices would continue to go up. The inhabitants of these homes deserve our concern, but the investors do not. It is now clear that there were too few checks and controls to assure reasonable loan underwriting practices (for example, no escrow accounts for taxes and insurance) or even good recordkeeping.
An accurate assessment of the current mortgage problem would probably reveal no more than 700,000 loans with distressed borrowers. Why, then, would the U.S. government rewrite eleven million loans, or even all 3.4 million subprime mortgages? Any intervention should be targeted at the borrowers who are truly in trouble, especially those who were likely duped by unscrupulous mortgage lenders. The numbers suggest these victims are disproportionately poor, young, and African American. Looking forward, the government needs to take steps to make this market more transparent and make it easier for borrowers to make good choices. But it would be irresponsible to do this by ruling millions of legal contracts null and void.
Senator Clinton's policy amounts to a command-and-control approach to economic policy in which the government announces prices and tells suppliers what to produce. Undertaking such an intervention can only raise interest rates on mortgages (and maybe other interest rates as well) as markets attempt to incorporate risk premiums to cope with possible future interventions. Promising the American people that you can fix things by just lowering their interest rates is dishonest, a fairy tale that won't come true.
Richard Thaler is a professor of economics at the Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago, and author (with Cass Sunstein) of the forthcoming book, Nudge. Susan Woodward is an economist at Sand Hill Econometrics, and formerly served as chief economist of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.