Archive for the 'Politics' Category

House panel probes neocon phone jamming in New Hampshire election

Published by
elophan
May 14, 2008 in Election Fraud, Newz, The Congress and The GOP. 1 Comment

By ANDREW MIGA, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - A House panel is probing the Election Day 2002 phone-jamming plot by GOP operatives against New Hampshire Democrats.

Rep. Paul Hodes, D-N.H., wants the panel to focus on key “unanswered questions” about whether the White House played a role in the plot — and whether the Justice Department dragged its feet on the case for political reasons.

“I want to know what the connection was between the White House, the Republican National Committee and the conspiracy to jam phones,” said Hodes, who was scheduled to testify Wednesday before a joint panel of two Judiciary Committee subcommittees.

Hodes said the public deserves to know whether political interference delayed prosecution of the case until after the 2004 elections and President Bush’s re-election. The controversy over the alleged political firings of eight federal prosecutors underscores the need to hold the Justice Department accountable, he said.

The phone-jamming scandal has led to at least three criminal prosecutions and a lawsuit that was settled with Republicans paying the Democrats $135,000.

Allen Raymond, a Republican consultant who served three months in prison for his role organizing the jamming, will also testify. He wrote a book entitled “How to Rig an Election.”

Charles McGee, former executive director of the New Hampshire Republican Party, pleaded guilty and served seven months in prison for his role in the scheme. More…

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Dorgan to introduce supplement funding amendment prohibiting offshore contractors

Published by
elophan
May 8, 2008 in KBR, Newz, Taxes, The Congress, The Dems and The War in Iraq. 0 Comments

By ELISE CASTELLI, Federal Times

A top Senate Democrat wants government contractors to stop dodging U.S. tax laws by setting up offshore firms in known tax havens.

Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., said May 7 he will offer an amendment to the fiscal 2008 emergency Defense Department supplemental to restrict any of the supplemental funds from going to firms that set up offshore subsidiaries to avoid paying U.S. taxes.

Houston-based KBR, which holds a multibillion-dollar Army logistics contract, lists its 10,500 employees working in Iraq as employees of two Cayman Island firms that don’t have phone numbers or offices, Dorgan’s statement said. Another logistics and construction firm, IAP Worldwide Services, hires Americans through offshore subsidiaries to avoid paying Social Security taxes, according to the statement. More…

YAY!!!!! -Sue

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Senate Democrats Seeking a Special Tax on Oil Profits

Published by
elophan
May 8, 2008 in Gas Prices, Newz, Taxes, The Congress and The Dems. 0 Comments

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Democrats on Wednesday called for a temporary special tax on oil companies’ profits and a rollback of $17 billion in oil industry tax breaks as part of an energy package. The Democrats are also seeking federal penalties on energy price gouging and a suspension of oil deliveries into the government’s emergency reserve.

Senate Republicans strongly oppose any additional oil industry taxes, which are widely viewed as unlikely to be enacted and would almost certainly prompt a veto by President Bush.

The proposed 25 percent profits tax would apply just to oil company earnings above what would be considered “reasonable” and only if those profits are not reinvested in expanding refinery capacity or renewable energy sources, according to a summary of the proposals.

The tax would expire after two years.

The only section of the Democrats’ proposal that seems to have widespread bipartisan support is suspending deliveries into the government’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve until oil prices drop to $75 a barrel. More…

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Housing aid bills face vetoes by pResident Bush

Published by
elophan
May 8, 2008 in Economy, Housing, Newz, The Executive Branch and The GOP. 0 Comments

By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Strapped homeowners could refinance into government-backed mortgages and states would get money to deal with foreclosed property under Democrats’ housing aid plan.

The measures, slated for votes Thursday, constitute the most significant action Congress has taken to date to address the housing crisis that’s at the center of the nation’s economic woes.

President Bush has threatened to veto both measures, which he says reward lenders and speculators. Democrats counter that the bills will head off hundreds of thousands of foreclosures, stabilize the shaky housing market, and prevent neighborhood blight.

The centerpiece of their plan is a bill by Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., the House Financial Services Committee chairman, to have the Federal Housing Administration relax its standards and back up to $300 billion in more affordable, fixed-rate loans for borrowers currently too financially strapped to qualify.

Those homeowners could refinance into new loans if their lenders agreed to take substantial losses on the original mortgages. Borrowers would have to show they could afford to make payments on the new loans. They would have to share with FHA at least half of their proceeds if they profited from selling or refinancing again.

The plan is projected to help roughly 500,000 borrowers at a cost of $2.7 billion over the next five years.

A separate bill by Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., would send $15 billion in loans and grants to states for the purchase and rehabilitation of foreclosed properties. Proponents say it will prevent blight in neighborhoods plagued by abandoned, foreclosed homes. More…

So, shrub said he’ll veto, because it “rewards” lenders. But the only way homeowners would qualify, is if lenders agreed to take a LOSS on the original note. Does anyone need anymore proof of how much this administration hates poor and working class people? -Sue

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Republicans threaten to throw tantrum over Iraq funding

Published by
elophan
May 6, 2008 in Newz, The Congress, The GOP and The War in Iraq. 0 Comments

By MARTIN KADY II, Politico

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is about to lead her party into a major showdown over Iraq funding by violating two Democratic campaign pledges in one fell swoop.

To the critics, whether anti-war activists or House Republicans, Pelosi has made her feelings clear: Get over it.

This week’s maneuvering over a $200 billion war spending bill has revealed Pelosi self-confidently playing what she believes — with increasing evidence — is a strong hand.

Strong enough that she is expected to break one promise — her 2006 pledge for a more open and inclusive committee process — by circumventing the powerful House Appropriations Committee on the Iraq bill.

And when the final Iraq bill reaches the president’s desk, any troop withdrawal conditions are likely to be gone from the legislation. That is another 2006 pledge that has fallen by the wayside.

Pelosi’s calculation, say political analysts, seems clear. Democrats are using the Iraq bill as leverage for billions of dollars in domestic spending priorities. As for anti-war activists, they seem to accept the speaker’s logic: More than 40 previous Iraq votes have left Democrats maxed out in terms of legislative efforts to dictate an end to the war over a veto-wielding President Bush.

Most of all, the early signs are that there will not be a backlash from voters. Democratic victories in recent special elections — Don Cazayoux in Louisiana and Bill Foster in Illinois — suggest that individual candidates are not suffering from the low public approval ratings that are afflicting the Democratic Congress.

House Republicans, protesting the bypassing of the Appropriations Committee, promise floor theatrics, with numerous floor votes when the Iraq bill comes for a House vote.

Explaining the threatened tantrum, Jo Maney, spokeswoman for Republicans on the House Rules Committee, said: “You said you were going to do something and you didn’t. They are using process for political objectives.” More…

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U.N. sees world climate change deal in 2009

Published by
Gene Shinai
May 5, 2008 in Foreign, Government, Newz and Politics. 0 Comments

Via Rawstory: 

MADRID (Reuters) - The world can reach a significant new climate change pact by the end of 2009 if current talks keep up their momentum, the head of the United Nations climate panel said on Sunday.

 

The United Nations began negotiations on a sweeping new pact in March after governments agreed last year to work out a treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol by the end of next year.

“If this momentum continues you will get an agreement that is not too full of compromises,” said Rajendra Pachauri, head of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change, during a seminar at the Asian Development Bank annual meeting in Madrid.

Without a deal to cap greenhouse gas emissions around 2015, then halve them by 2050, the world will face ever more droughts, heatwaves, floods and rising seas, according to the U.N. panel.

The United Nations hopes to go beyond Kyoto by getting all countries to agree to curbs on emissions of greenhouse gases that fuel global warming.Only 37 rich nations were bound to cut emissions under Kyoto. The United States, one of the world’s biggest polluters, refused to join the agreement.

The next talks, to be held in Germany in June, will address funding technology to mitigate climate change — a key demand from developing countries who say rich countries should foot much of the bill.

Getting the private sector on board with a well regulated carbon emissions trading system is key to long-term financing, according to delegates at the ADB seminar.

“Investors need some certainty they will get some return,” said Simon Brooks, vice president at the European Investment Bank.

 

PRESTIGE AND POLITICS 

 

 Article Continues @ Sourced Site.

 

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Cheney: History will show Bush created a ‘more hopeful world

Published by
Gene Shinai
May 4, 2008 in Insult and Injury, Middle East, Newz, Policies and Procedures, Politics, The Congress, The Executive Branch, The GOP and The War in Iraq. 0 Comments

From Rawstory:

George W. Bush has made the world a more hopeful place.This from Vice President Dick Cheney, who spoke to a crowd of Oklahoma Republicans Friday evening. 

“When the history is written, it will be said this is a safer country and more hopeful world because George Bush was president,” Cheney said, according to Oklahoma’s Tulsa World.Of Iraq, Cheney quipped: “Our strategy is the right strategy. The only way we can lose is to quit.”

If the US departs, he said, it would show America “doesn’t have the stomach for a fight.” Cheney himself received five draft deferments to avoid service in the Vietnam war.To justify a US presence in the wartorn region, Cheney cited the Russian experience in Afghanistan.

“We were engaged in that country, lending support to the mujahadeen against Soviet forces,” he said. “Afterwards, everybody walked away and forgot about Afghanistan. What followed was a civil war and the emergence of the Taliban. In 1996, Osama Bin Laden was invited into Afghanistan. He trained thousands of terrorists, some of whom were part of the attacks here on the United States.”

He didn’t mention the the US pulled out of Afghanistan as well, after the defeat of the Soviets, or that US business, including those in Texas during George W. Bush’s term as governor, engaged in business with the Taliban regime.

“His remarks did not cover any new ground,” the Tulsa paper noted. “He plugged Oklahoma’s Republican congressional delegation and presumptive GOP presidential nominee John McCain, advocated more oil wells and refineries as the solution to rising gasoline prices and predicted dire economic consequences if current temporary tax cuts and incentives are not made permanent.”

Slams Democrats for bill Bush vetoed 

Article Continues @ Sourced Site. 

 

 

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Bush crony who violated the Hatch Act resigns

Published by
elophan
April 30, 2008 in Government, Newz and The GOP. 0 Comments

By Robert O’Harrow Jr. and Scott Higham, Washington Post Staff Writers

At the request of the White House, General Services Administration chief Lurita Alexis Doan resigned last night as head of the government’s premier contracting agency, ending a tumultuous tenure in which she was accused of trying to award work to a friend and misusing her authority for political ends.

A White House spokesman was not immediately available for comment.

Doan’s resignation came almost a year after Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said he believed Doan could no longer be effective because of the allegations about her leadership.

Waxman’s committee began investigating Doan after stories in The Washington Post showed that she had approved a $20,000, no-bid arrangement last July with a business run by a friend and had tried to reduce the budget of the agency’s inspector general.

Doan had been under scrutiny by the inspector general, Brian Miller, as well as members of Congress and the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, which protects federal employees from prohibited personnel practices.

The committee investigation turned up evidence that Doan might have violated the Hatch Act in January 2007 by asking political appointees how they could “help our candidates” at an agency briefing conducted by a White House official, according to several of the appointees present for the briefing. After a more extensive probe, the Office of Special Counsel concluded that those remarks violated the Hatch Act. The act generally prohibits employees of federal agencies from using their positions for political purposes.

In a letter in June, Special Counsel Scott J. Bloch urged President Bush to discipline Doan “to the fullest extent,” which would include removing her from office. In the ensuing 10 months, the White House said it was considering Bloch’s recommendation but made no further comment. More…

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Supreme Court upholds Indiana’s voter disenfranchisement law

Published by
elophan
April 28, 2008 in Election Fraud, Newz and The Courts. 0 Comments

From Bill Mears, CNN Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON (CNN) — The Supreme Court on Monday backed Indiana’s law requiring voters to show photo identification, despite concerns thousands of elderly, poor and minority voters could be locked out of their right to cast ballots.

The 6-3 vote allows Indiana to require the identification when it holds its statewide primary next week. It also will give most state legislatures time to revise their voter laws for the November elections.

This was perhaps the biggest voter rights case taken up by the justices since the 2000 dispute over Florida’s ballots, in which George W. Bush prevailed to gain the presidency.

At issue was whether state laws designed to stem voter fraud end up disenfranchising large numbers of Americans who might lack proper documents to prove their voting eligibility. The case raised important constitutional questions, but also involved race and partisan politics.

Writing for the majority, Justice John Paul Stevens said any political issues considered by the state were mitigated by its desire to stop voter fraud.

“The state interests identified as justifications for [the law] are both neutral and sufficiently strong to require us to reject” the lawsuit, he wrote.

But in a toughly worded dissent, Justice David Souter said “Indiana has made no such justification” for the statute “and as to some aspects of its law, it hardly even tried.”

Indiana Secretary of State Todd Rokita has conceded the state has never presented a case of “voter impersonation,” which the law was designed to safeguard against. The 2005 Indiana law requires that a valid photo identification be presented by a person casting a ballot at a polling stations. Previously, most citizens needed only to sign a poll book to vote.

For those lacking a driver’s license or other government-issued photo ID such as a passport, the state provides a free voter ID card, issued through the Bureau of Motor Vehicles.

Even so, Souter said, such a law “threatens to impose nontrivial burdens on the voting right of tens of thousands of the state’s citizens.”

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer also dissented.

Stevens candidly noted the “real-world impact” of a statute passed by a GOP-controlled state Legislature and signed by a Republican governor. More…

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McCain Blows by Public Spending Cap

Published by
Gene Shinai
April 25, 2008 in Newz, Policies and Procedures, Politics and The GOP. 0 Comments

From The Washington Post:

 Sen. John McCain has officially broken the limits imposed by the presidential public financing system, reports filed last night show.

 

McCain has now spent $58.4 million on his primary effort. Those who have committed to public financing can spend no more than $54 million on their primary bid.

 

So has McCain broken the law? The answer is far from simple.

 

It depends on whether he has, in fact, withdrawn from the public matching program. McCain was certified to enter the matching program last year when he was starved for cash. But once he started to win primaries, he decided to step back from it. On Feb. 6, after his Super Tuesday victories, he wrote to the FEC to announce he would withdraw from the program.

 

McCain’s lawyers said that gave him freedom to spend as much as he wanted — once he announced his intent to withdraw from the system, they say, he was released from the spending caps.

 

But Federal Election Commission Chairman David Mason wrote McCain’s campaign last month to alert him that the commission had not yet granted his Feb. 6 request to withdraw, and that the commission would first need to vote on the matter. A snag: The FEC has four vacancies and therefore lacks a quorum to consider the matter.

 

There’s little agreement on what the FEC would have done, had they been able to meet. In part, that’s because McCain borrowed $4 million from a commercial bank, and promised to pay the money back through his fundraising efforts. If the campaign went badly, he told the bank, he would use future matching funds to help repay the loan. The rules say that candidates who use matching funds as collateral have to remain within the confines of the system. The Democratic National Committee filed a complaint to the FEC about McCain’s actions, but without that quorum, evaluation of the complaint has been stalled.

 

 Article Continues @ Sourced Site

 

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