The Post Office is only doomed if Congress fails to act and give it the total control it needs to overturn union regulations, adjust it's workforce, salaries and benefits and adjust the organization to the current size of the market. This is the type of problem that unions cause as business conditions change...Look at what we just went through with the Auto Industry....Look at State and Federal Government...Look at Europe....the world changes too fast now to rely on old union policies that tie the hands of free business.
The Post Office needs to have the tools to manage it's destiny and then know that it is on it's own to either succeed or fail. Trust me the service at your local post office will get much better once that happens...
From today's Heritage Foundation Morning Call -
Is the Postal Service Doomed?
Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat is supposed to stop the United States Postal Service (USPS) from delivering mail, but can it be saved from mounting debt, plummeting volume, and the not-so-slow-motion postal train wreck coming quickly down the road?
Last week, the USPS barely avoided default when Congress extended the due date for a $5.5 billion payment due to the U.S. Treasury for retiree health benefits. It lost $8.5 billion last year, and it expects to lose nearly $10 billion more in 2011. From 2006 to 2010, overall USPS mail volume dropped by 20 percent, from 213 billion pieces of mail to 170 billion, all while incurring $20 billion in losses.
The future doesn't look so bright, either. In a new paper, Heritage's James Gattuso explains how e-mail and moves toward other forms of communication have led to the USPS's decline and what the near-term future looks like for the service:
According to a 2010 study by the Boston Consulting Group, mail volume will decline an additional 15 percent by 2020, with first-class mail falling a jaw-dropping 35 percent. This means the average postal customer will receive only one first-class letter per day, down from around two today. At that level of mail, USPS will lose a staggering $15 billion per year.
Gattuso says the "USPS is failing and needs to change. As currently structured, it cannot survive unless supported by tens of billions of dollars in subsidy." To be sure, the USPS has significant problems and needs restructuring. It has already proposed several reforms, including reducing the postal workforce, closing post offices and other facilities, and discontinuing Saturday delivery of mail. Many of those reforms, Gattuso explains, would require congressional authorization to implement.
On Monday at The Heritage Foundation, Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA), a successful businessman before coming to Congress, spoke about his plan to save the USPS from financial collapse. And in a special interview, he told Heritage about some of the reforms his plan would implement:
The real reforms for the Post Office are get efficient vehicles, get efficient distribution centers--they have way too many of them--[and] have sufficient post offices to meet the needs of the post office and the people that they're going to serve.
You take all of those savings in efficiency, reduce the size of labor, have the new facilities, less facilities, what you need, and the Post Office can make a 2 or 3 billion dollar profit next year. We just have to do that, including the right number of workers.
The USPS has a serious problem, and Congress should act quickly to address it. But "saving" the service shouldn't be the goal--and taxpayers shouldn't be on the hook for preserving an obsolete industry. Technology has rapidly changed, as has the way people communicate. With the evolution of digital communications, the USPS must adjust to the new way of doing business, and Congress should make it easier for the USPS to adapt--and that means making it easier for USPS to close post offices, reduce its workforce, and trim services. The USPS doesn't have to become extinct, but Congress needs to allow it to make the changes it needs to survive.
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
A Lying President and A Lying Eric Holder....
Holder's just lying just like this President and his whole Administration does all the time....It's about time that Republicans try to hold Obama and his Teams' feet to the fire...
House Republicans to Request Special Counsel to Probe Holder on 'Fast and Furious'
Published October 04, 2011 FoxNews.com
EXCLUSIVE: House Republicans are going to call for a special counsel to determine whether Attorney General Holder perjured himself during his testimony to the House Judiciary Committee on Operation Fast and Furious, Fox News has learned.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, is sending a letter to President Obama arguing that Holder cannot investigate himself and will request a probe by a special counsel.
The question is whether Holder committed perjury during a Judiciary Committee hearing in May. At the time, Holder indicated he was not familiar with with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives program known as Fast and Furious.
However, a newly discovered memo dated July 2010 shows Michael Walther, director of the National Drug Intelligence Center, told Holder that straw buyers in the Fast and Furious operation "are responsible for the purchase of 1,500 firearms that were then supplied to the Mexican drug trafficking cartels."
In response to the Monday release of that and other documents, the Justice Department said Holder was confused by the question, and that he was answering about when he first learned of the "troubling tactics" of the program, not the name of it.
But House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., told Fox News on Tuesday morning that Holder saying he didn't understand the question rather than he didn't know of the program is not a successful defense to perjury.
House Republicans to Request Special Counsel to Probe Holder on 'Fast and Furious'
Published October 04, 2011 FoxNews.com
EXCLUSIVE: House Republicans are going to call for a special counsel to determine whether Attorney General Holder perjured himself during his testimony to the House Judiciary Committee on Operation Fast and Furious, Fox News has learned.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, is sending a letter to President Obama arguing that Holder cannot investigate himself and will request a probe by a special counsel.
The question is whether Holder committed perjury during a Judiciary Committee hearing in May. At the time, Holder indicated he was not familiar with with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives program known as Fast and Furious.
However, a newly discovered memo dated July 2010 shows Michael Walther, director of the National Drug Intelligence Center, told Holder that straw buyers in the Fast and Furious operation "are responsible for the purchase of 1,500 firearms that were then supplied to the Mexican drug trafficking cartels."
In response to the Monday release of that and other documents, the Justice Department said Holder was confused by the question, and that he was answering about when he first learned of the "troubling tactics" of the program, not the name of it.
But House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., told Fox News on Tuesday morning that Holder saying he didn't understand the question rather than he didn't know of the program is not a successful defense to perjury.
The Obama Failure....
Victor Davis Hanson October 4, 2011 4:00 A.M.
Ten Lessons from Obama
In less than three years Barack Obama has reversed all expectations.
The election of Barack Obama brought all sorts of contradictions. A man with about the least prior executive experience in presidential history was suddenly acclaimed a “god” and the smartest man ever to assume the office.
Most important, a number of critical changes were heralded that would help address the supposed disasters of the Bush administration: a new “reset” foreign policy, a Keynesian economic miracle, a commitment to “millions of green jobs,” and a promise to end politics as usual, specifically the hardball divisive rancor of the past. Obamism, in short, was not a mere change in administration, but a religion.
In less than three years, however, the Obama administration has established a far different legacy from the one it promised, and the lessons of 2009–2011 will be with us for a long time:
1. The type and nature of a presidential candidate’s prior experience will be examined as never before. Obama’s two years in the U.S. Senate are now universally seen as insufficient preparation. The result will be more emphasis on executive experience and far longer tenure. Fairly or not, the Obama legacy hangs over the possible presidential aspirations of everyone from a Chris Christie or Marco Rubio to a Sarah Palin or Herman Cain.
2. For the time being, the media have lost any credibility as nonpartisan and disinterested investigators of presidential candidates. That many journalists now admit they were “saps” or accept that Obama was unqualified only confirms prior culpability. After 2008, can anyone possibly take the media seriously if they complain that a candidate will not release his undergraduate transcripts, or that he once bragged that he attended every service (“each week”) of a racist pastor, or that he once liked “blow”? After Obama, an entire array of old gotchas are off the table.
3. Ivy League certification and prestigious awards will mean far less. The architects of the massive but ineffective borrowing — Geithner, Goolsbee, Orszag, Romer, Summers — were either esteemed academics or high-ranking bureaucrats. We are no longer impressed that Barack Obama and Eric Holder have Ivy League law degrees, or that President Obama and Steven Chu hold Nobel Prizes — not after Solyndra, Fast and Furious, and the present stagnation. Americans assume that Herman Cain learned far more of value turning around Godfather’s Pizza than Barack Obama learned as editor of Harvard Law Review. Texas A&M is about as relevant to Rick Perry’s creating millions of jobs as Harvard is to Barack Obama’s destroying millions.
4. Again, fairly or not, “green” no longer denotes a noble effort to conserve resources and achieve energy independence. A Van Jones, a Solyndra, yet another promise to emulate Spain’s windmills and solar plants, one more call to borrow hundreds of billions for high-speed rail, and more Al Gore profit-driven escapades and fiery outbursts finally add up. Note that the president simply cannot any longer repeat the mantra, “Millions of new green jobs.” You see, there are too many video clips of such boasts associated with failed ventures. The age of Obama has turned “green” into a refuge for scoundrels. The next era will be marked by unprecedented national wealth from vast new gas and oil exploration, not from thousands of acres of subsidized solar panels and windmills. How ironic that Barack Obama will eventually do more for the gas and oil industry than any other president in recent memory.
5. We are reminded that populism and the high life don’t mix. Barack Obama’s efforts to play Huey Long were sidetracked by First Family detours to Martha’s Vineyard, Costa del Sol, and Vail. One cannot both beg from and demonize Wall Street, and still play community organizer. Obama cemented the notion that liberal Democrats are the party of really big money and of very little money — and of few in between. The next populist will have to cut back on golf, stay at Camp David, and avoid the playgrounds of the rich and famous.
6. Keynesian economics are about over for a generation. The antidote to the Bush $4 trillion debt was not another $4 trillion in less than half the time. With near-zero interest rates, record numbers of Americans on food stamps and unemployment, an annual federal budget $2 trillion higher than just ten years ago, and nearly $16 trillion in aggregate debt — and all this along with a moribund economy — few will any longer believe that printing more money and growing government work. More of what has not worked won’t magically start to work.
7. Barack Obama has essentially ended the smears against the Bush-Cheney anti-terrorism protocols. Having himself smeared the prior administration relentlessly, he became de facto its greatest defender. One cannot insist past practices were immoral or illegal and then embrace or expand them all. “War criminal” will recede into the insanity of yesteryear, given that no logician could figure out how waterboarding three self-confessed mass murderers was a crime, while vaporizing two thousand suspected terrorists — including American citizens — by Hellfire missiles is not. Apparently Guantanamo is no longer a gulag, rendition no longer a crime, preventive detention no longer a shredding of the Constitution.
8. Politics simply don’t change. Obama first embraced and then rejected filibusters — the only constant was his relative political position. “Gridlock” was good in 2005, bad in 2011. The suggestion that we should cancel congressional elections for a few years comes from a Democratic governor, not a cigar-chewing, epauletted ex-general. Exasperated liberals call for circumventing the “messy” democratic process, the bothersome Electoral College, the unfairness of senatorial elections — apparently not out of long-expressed philosophical worries, but out of angst that the wonderful system that elected Obama and gave him huge congressional majorities suddenly became unworkable, say, around November 2010.
9. Fight the Smears, JournoList, and AttackWatch.com are not the work of a uniter. “Punish our enemies” and “get in their faces” don’t go well with Greek columns and rainbowed backgrounds. Again, whether rightly or wrongly, the next time a political candidate promises to change the political landscape in Washington, we will have more, not less, suspicion of his motives — and expect website hit lists to follow.
10. The antidote to Bush’s “bring ’em on” bravado was not asking the Arab League to approve no-fly zones over Libya while bombing targets “from behind.” The world of 2008 is pretty much the world of 2011 — with the caveat that an often unliked U.S. is still as unliked but now less respected and feared. Ask the Iranians, Syrians, Russians, and Chinese — or for that matter the Japanese, Israelis, South Koreans, Taiwanese, and Eastern Europeans.
A sadder but wiser electorate in 2012 simply won’t believe that any candidate — Democrat or Republican — can cool the planet or stop the seas from rising. Barack Obama taught us that — and a lot more besides.
— NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author most recently of the just-released The End of Sparta, a novel about ancient freedom.
Ten Lessons from Obama
In less than three years Barack Obama has reversed all expectations.
The election of Barack Obama brought all sorts of contradictions. A man with about the least prior executive experience in presidential history was suddenly acclaimed a “god” and the smartest man ever to assume the office.
Most important, a number of critical changes were heralded that would help address the supposed disasters of the Bush administration: a new “reset” foreign policy, a Keynesian economic miracle, a commitment to “millions of green jobs,” and a promise to end politics as usual, specifically the hardball divisive rancor of the past. Obamism, in short, was not a mere change in administration, but a religion.
In less than three years, however, the Obama administration has established a far different legacy from the one it promised, and the lessons of 2009–2011 will be with us for a long time:
1. The type and nature of a presidential candidate’s prior experience will be examined as never before. Obama’s two years in the U.S. Senate are now universally seen as insufficient preparation. The result will be more emphasis on executive experience and far longer tenure. Fairly or not, the Obama legacy hangs over the possible presidential aspirations of everyone from a Chris Christie or Marco Rubio to a Sarah Palin or Herman Cain.
2. For the time being, the media have lost any credibility as nonpartisan and disinterested investigators of presidential candidates. That many journalists now admit they were “saps” or accept that Obama was unqualified only confirms prior culpability. After 2008, can anyone possibly take the media seriously if they complain that a candidate will not release his undergraduate transcripts, or that he once bragged that he attended every service (“each week”) of a racist pastor, or that he once liked “blow”? After Obama, an entire array of old gotchas are off the table.
3. Ivy League certification and prestigious awards will mean far less. The architects of the massive but ineffective borrowing — Geithner, Goolsbee, Orszag, Romer, Summers — were either esteemed academics or high-ranking bureaucrats. We are no longer impressed that Barack Obama and Eric Holder have Ivy League law degrees, or that President Obama and Steven Chu hold Nobel Prizes — not after Solyndra, Fast and Furious, and the present stagnation. Americans assume that Herman Cain learned far more of value turning around Godfather’s Pizza than Barack Obama learned as editor of Harvard Law Review. Texas A&M is about as relevant to Rick Perry’s creating millions of jobs as Harvard is to Barack Obama’s destroying millions.
4. Again, fairly or not, “green” no longer denotes a noble effort to conserve resources and achieve energy independence. A Van Jones, a Solyndra, yet another promise to emulate Spain’s windmills and solar plants, one more call to borrow hundreds of billions for high-speed rail, and more Al Gore profit-driven escapades and fiery outbursts finally add up. Note that the president simply cannot any longer repeat the mantra, “Millions of new green jobs.” You see, there are too many video clips of such boasts associated with failed ventures. The age of Obama has turned “green” into a refuge for scoundrels. The next era will be marked by unprecedented national wealth from vast new gas and oil exploration, not from thousands of acres of subsidized solar panels and windmills. How ironic that Barack Obama will eventually do more for the gas and oil industry than any other president in recent memory.
5. We are reminded that populism and the high life don’t mix. Barack Obama’s efforts to play Huey Long were sidetracked by First Family detours to Martha’s Vineyard, Costa del Sol, and Vail. One cannot both beg from and demonize Wall Street, and still play community organizer. Obama cemented the notion that liberal Democrats are the party of really big money and of very little money — and of few in between. The next populist will have to cut back on golf, stay at Camp David, and avoid the playgrounds of the rich and famous.
6. Keynesian economics are about over for a generation. The antidote to the Bush $4 trillion debt was not another $4 trillion in less than half the time. With near-zero interest rates, record numbers of Americans on food stamps and unemployment, an annual federal budget $2 trillion higher than just ten years ago, and nearly $16 trillion in aggregate debt — and all this along with a moribund economy — few will any longer believe that printing more money and growing government work. More of what has not worked won’t magically start to work.
7. Barack Obama has essentially ended the smears against the Bush-Cheney anti-terrorism protocols. Having himself smeared the prior administration relentlessly, he became de facto its greatest defender. One cannot insist past practices were immoral or illegal and then embrace or expand them all. “War criminal” will recede into the insanity of yesteryear, given that no logician could figure out how waterboarding three self-confessed mass murderers was a crime, while vaporizing two thousand suspected terrorists — including American citizens — by Hellfire missiles is not. Apparently Guantanamo is no longer a gulag, rendition no longer a crime, preventive detention no longer a shredding of the Constitution.
8. Politics simply don’t change. Obama first embraced and then rejected filibusters — the only constant was his relative political position. “Gridlock” was good in 2005, bad in 2011. The suggestion that we should cancel congressional elections for a few years comes from a Democratic governor, not a cigar-chewing, epauletted ex-general. Exasperated liberals call for circumventing the “messy” democratic process, the bothersome Electoral College, the unfairness of senatorial elections — apparently not out of long-expressed philosophical worries, but out of angst that the wonderful system that elected Obama and gave him huge congressional majorities suddenly became unworkable, say, around November 2010.
9. Fight the Smears, JournoList, and AttackWatch.com are not the work of a uniter. “Punish our enemies” and “get in their faces” don’t go well with Greek columns and rainbowed backgrounds. Again, whether rightly or wrongly, the next time a political candidate promises to change the political landscape in Washington, we will have more, not less, suspicion of his motives — and expect website hit lists to follow.
10. The antidote to Bush’s “bring ’em on” bravado was not asking the Arab League to approve no-fly zones over Libya while bombing targets “from behind.” The world of 2008 is pretty much the world of 2011 — with the caveat that an often unliked U.S. is still as unliked but now less respected and feared. Ask the Iranians, Syrians, Russians, and Chinese — or for that matter the Japanese, Israelis, South Koreans, Taiwanese, and Eastern Europeans.
A sadder but wiser electorate in 2012 simply won’t believe that any candidate — Democrat or Republican — can cool the planet or stop the seas from rising. Barack Obama taught us that — and a lot more besides.
— NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author most recently of the just-released The End of Sparta, a novel about ancient freedom.
The Obama Scandals Keep Coming...
Obama and his Administration all the way up to racist Eric Holder are much more deeply involved in Wasting of Taxpayer money on Green Initiatives and in The Fast and Furious Fiasco....The Scandals keep coming....
From this morning's Heritage Foundation Morning Call -
Come Clean and Cut Funding
What did the President know and when did he know it, goes the old Washington adage. Thus did the American people learn yesterday in separate but equally startling revelations that the Obama Administration knew more about two scandals than it has been revealing. The first is regarding the Operation Fast and Furious gun running disaster and the second is the now-bankrupt, Obama-backed Solyndra solar power company. Both instances provoke serious questions for the White House and demand long-overdue action.
In the case of the Solyndra scandal, it is clear that Congress must shut off funding for the President's green energy programs. Not only is President Obama unapologetic about the wasted funds, but his Energy Department seems intent on doubling down with other solar bets--and with the American people's money.
In the case of Fast and Furious, Department of Justice (DOJ) memos obtained by CBS News show that Attorney General Eric Holder was aware of a controversial cross-border law enforcement operation in July 2010 -- nearly a year earlier than he had previously acknowledged under oath in testimony to Congress. The program, which was overseen by the DOJ, launched an effort to sell weapons to small-time gun buyers in the hopes of tracing them to major weapons traffickers along the southwestern border and into Mexico. Of the 2,000 weapons sold, roughly 1,500 remain unaccounted for, and the weapons have been connected to at least 11 violent crimes in the United States, including the killing of a border patrol agent.
Testifying before the House Judiciary Committee in May 2011, Holder said that he had "probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks." CBS News notes that the pair of memos "directly contradicts [Holder's] statement to Congress." Heritage's Lachlan Markay reports:
On July 9, 2010, Michael Walther, director of DOJ’s National Drug Intelligence Center, briefed Holder on Fast and Furious, which he mentioned by name, according to one of the memos. The operation “involves a Phoenix-based firearms trafficking ring,” Walther wrote, and an unidentified number of “straw purchasers,” who “are responsible for the purchase of 1,500 firearms that were then supplied to Mexican trafficking cartels.”
Four months later Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer, who heads DOJ’s criminal division, informed Holder of eight arrests relating to Fast and Furious, which he also referred to by name.
"The Justice Department told CBS News that the officials in those emails were talking about a different case started before Eric Holder became Attorney General," the network reported. "And CBS News reported that Holder misunderstood that question from the committee -- he did know about Fast and Furious -- just not the details." Heritage Senior Legal Fellow Hans von Spakovsky says, "This raises serious questions about Holder's credibility and whether or not he provided accurate information to Congress."
Then there's the case of Solyndra, the company that received a $535 million government-backed loan to produce solar panels, then went bankrupt. President Obama visited the company in May 2010 and hailed it as "a testament to American ingenuity and dynamism," using it as a showpiece of his "green" jobs initiative. Since the company's bankruptcy in September, questions have been raised about the propriety of the loan and the process by which the Obama Administration is picking winners and losers in the marketplace.
In a new development, e-mails released Monday show that President Obama received advanced warning about the company's financial condition and pleas that he reconsider visiting the company in order to avoid political embarrassment. The Washington Post reports on the exchange:
"A number of us are concerned that the president is visiting Solyndra," California investor and Obama fundraiser Steve Westly wrote to Obama senior adviser Valerie Jarrett in May 2010. "Many of us believe the company's cost structure will make it difficult for them to survive long term. . . I just want to help protect the president from anything that could result in negative or unfair press.”
Yet despite the warnings about the company's financial condition, the Obama Administration went ahead with the loan, putting 535 million taxpayer dollars at risk on a venture that had red flags all over it.
Remarkably, in an interview yesterday with ABC News, President Obama defended his Administration's backing of Solyndra, saying "hindsight is always 20-20" and that Solyndra "went through the regular review process and people felt like this was a good bet."
This, though, was not even a question of hindsight, but of sheer stubbornness in the face of contrary evidence. As the e-mails reveal, the White House had the benefit of foresight--advance warning that the company was on shaky ground. But the e-mails weren't even the only warnings. The Wall Street Journal reports that "by late 2010, Solyndra ran into such severe cash problems that it violated terms of its loan, and the government restructured its agreement in a way that allowed private investors, who agreed to provide a $75 million loan, to be paid ahead of the U.S. if the firm was liquidated." Yet despite all this, the President went ahead and put taxpayer dollars on the line.
Both Operation Fast and Furious and the Solyndra investment raise serious questions about the Obama Administration. In the case of Fast and Furious, it is now clear that Attorney General Holder and the DOJ have not been forthright with the American people. It's time they give the country a full accounting of the operation, its knowledge of it, and why they have not been forthcoming.
As for Solyndra and the President's green jobs gambit, there is certain clarity that the Administration's strategy of backing companies that can't stand on their own two feet is a failure. Congress should cut off funding for the President's green energy programs, regardless of whether the President wishes to see the writing on the wall.
From this morning's Heritage Foundation Morning Call -
Come Clean and Cut Funding
What did the President know and when did he know it, goes the old Washington adage. Thus did the American people learn yesterday in separate but equally startling revelations that the Obama Administration knew more about two scandals than it has been revealing. The first is regarding the Operation Fast and Furious gun running disaster and the second is the now-bankrupt, Obama-backed Solyndra solar power company. Both instances provoke serious questions for the White House and demand long-overdue action.
In the case of the Solyndra scandal, it is clear that Congress must shut off funding for the President's green energy programs. Not only is President Obama unapologetic about the wasted funds, but his Energy Department seems intent on doubling down with other solar bets--and with the American people's money.
In the case of Fast and Furious, Department of Justice (DOJ) memos obtained by CBS News show that Attorney General Eric Holder was aware of a controversial cross-border law enforcement operation in July 2010 -- nearly a year earlier than he had previously acknowledged under oath in testimony to Congress. The program, which was overseen by the DOJ, launched an effort to sell weapons to small-time gun buyers in the hopes of tracing them to major weapons traffickers along the southwestern border and into Mexico. Of the 2,000 weapons sold, roughly 1,500 remain unaccounted for, and the weapons have been connected to at least 11 violent crimes in the United States, including the killing of a border patrol agent.
Testifying before the House Judiciary Committee in May 2011, Holder said that he had "probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks." CBS News notes that the pair of memos "directly contradicts [Holder's] statement to Congress." Heritage's Lachlan Markay reports:
On July 9, 2010, Michael Walther, director of DOJ’s National Drug Intelligence Center, briefed Holder on Fast and Furious, which he mentioned by name, according to one of the memos. The operation “involves a Phoenix-based firearms trafficking ring,” Walther wrote, and an unidentified number of “straw purchasers,” who “are responsible for the purchase of 1,500 firearms that were then supplied to Mexican trafficking cartels.”
Four months later Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer, who heads DOJ’s criminal division, informed Holder of eight arrests relating to Fast and Furious, which he also referred to by name.
"The Justice Department told CBS News that the officials in those emails were talking about a different case started before Eric Holder became Attorney General," the network reported. "And CBS News reported that Holder misunderstood that question from the committee -- he did know about Fast and Furious -- just not the details." Heritage Senior Legal Fellow Hans von Spakovsky says, "This raises serious questions about Holder's credibility and whether or not he provided accurate information to Congress."
Then there's the case of Solyndra, the company that received a $535 million government-backed loan to produce solar panels, then went bankrupt. President Obama visited the company in May 2010 and hailed it as "a testament to American ingenuity and dynamism," using it as a showpiece of his "green" jobs initiative. Since the company's bankruptcy in September, questions have been raised about the propriety of the loan and the process by which the Obama Administration is picking winners and losers in the marketplace.
In a new development, e-mails released Monday show that President Obama received advanced warning about the company's financial condition and pleas that he reconsider visiting the company in order to avoid political embarrassment. The Washington Post reports on the exchange:
"A number of us are concerned that the president is visiting Solyndra," California investor and Obama fundraiser Steve Westly wrote to Obama senior adviser Valerie Jarrett in May 2010. "Many of us believe the company's cost structure will make it difficult for them to survive long term. . . I just want to help protect the president from anything that could result in negative or unfair press.”
Yet despite the warnings about the company's financial condition, the Obama Administration went ahead with the loan, putting 535 million taxpayer dollars at risk on a venture that had red flags all over it.
Remarkably, in an interview yesterday with ABC News, President Obama defended his Administration's backing of Solyndra, saying "hindsight is always 20-20" and that Solyndra "went through the regular review process and people felt like this was a good bet."
This, though, was not even a question of hindsight, but of sheer stubbornness in the face of contrary evidence. As the e-mails reveal, the White House had the benefit of foresight--advance warning that the company was on shaky ground. But the e-mails weren't even the only warnings. The Wall Street Journal reports that "by late 2010, Solyndra ran into such severe cash problems that it violated terms of its loan, and the government restructured its agreement in a way that allowed private investors, who agreed to provide a $75 million loan, to be paid ahead of the U.S. if the firm was liquidated." Yet despite all this, the President went ahead and put taxpayer dollars on the line.
Both Operation Fast and Furious and the Solyndra investment raise serious questions about the Obama Administration. In the case of Fast and Furious, it is now clear that Attorney General Holder and the DOJ have not been forthright with the American people. It's time they give the country a full accounting of the operation, its knowledge of it, and why they have not been forthcoming.
As for Solyndra and the President's green jobs gambit, there is certain clarity that the Administration's strategy of backing companies that can't stand on their own two feet is a failure. Congress should cut off funding for the President's green energy programs, regardless of whether the President wishes to see the writing on the wall.
Obama's Just Politicing...He has no Intention of Trying to Fix the Jobs Problems.....
This is a joke....Obama's complaining that the Republicans are saying NO to everything he wants and they should...that's exactly why we put them there last November to STOP everything that he was ramming through.....BUT what Obama isn't saying is that he can't even get his Job Bill through the democratically controlled SENATE...in fact they haven't even brought the bill up for discussion and their leadership openly admits they do not have the Democrat votes to pass it....
Cantor Says Jobs Bill Dead in House, Obama Complains of GOP Stonewalling
Published October 04, 2011 FoxNews.com
House Republican Leader Eric Cantor said definitively Monday that President Obama's $447 billion jobs bill is dead on arrival in his chamber.
To hear Obama tell it, that's just about par for the course.
"I have done everything I can to try to get the Republican Party to work with me to deal with what is the biggest crisis of our lifetimes," Obama said in an interview with ABC News. "And each time, all we've gotten from them is, 'No.'"
The president was headed to Texas on Tuesday to visit Eastfield Community College in Mesquite, Texas, and tour the campus' Children's Laboratory School before delivering remarks urging Congress to pass the American Jobs Act.
The White House says the legislation will keep 280,000 teachers in the classroom, add tens of thousands more and pay for modernization of at least 35,000 public schools buildings.
On Monday, Obama urged Congress to pass the bill by the end of the month. Speaking to ABC News, Obama acknowledged that he doesn't think Americans are better off today than they were four years ago, but said his administration has made "steady progress" to stabilize the economy even if unemployment is still way too high. He added that the American people are in favor of his proposals.
"When you tick down which approach the American people generally prefer, they'll say mine. Now, what they'll say is, he hasn't been able to get it through Congress. And, you know, I'm the first one to acknowledge that the relations between myself and the Republican Congress have not been good over the last several months, but it's not for a lack of effort," he said. "It has to do with the fact that, you know, they've made a decision to follow what is a pretty extreme approach to governance."
Cantor, R-Va., said Tuesday that Republicans agree with the president's comment that people aren't better off today than four years ago.
"We feel the same way," he said.
Speaking Monday, Cantor told reporters that the GOP is ready to "work together" on parts of the president's proposal, but Republicans won't stand for taking up the bill as a take-it-or-leave-it deal.
"Now, the president continues to say, pass my bill in its entirety. As I have said from the outset, the all-or-nothing approach is just unacceptable," Cantor said, repeatedly accusing the president of being in "campaign mode."
The GOP leader said the House would pull out and act on a proposal to end a requirement that the government withhold 3 percent of payments to contractors. He also said the House would act on the three free-trade agreements the White House sent to Congress for Colombia, Panama and South Korea -- a long-delayed set of measures the president has highlighted in prior jobs speeches, though he did not send them to Congress until this week.
Cantor said the prospect of passing the bill in its entirety, though, is just not feasible, in part because of the problems in the president's own party.
"I think from a purely practical standpoint, the president's got some whipping to do on his own side of the aisle. Clearly, I think comments made by Democrats on both the House and Senate side indicated they have problems with the president's bill," Cantor said.
Not all Democrats are clamoring for the bill the way they supported the stimulus after Obama took office in early 2009. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., an Obama ally, said last week that the Senate doesn't yet have the votes to pass it.
Furthermore, after delivering an expected speech on the jobs bill in Texas Tuesday afternoon, the president plans to attend fundraisers in St. Louis, but one of Obama's top 2008 supporters won't be there. Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill, considered vulnerable in the 2012 election, told The Hill newspaper through an aide that she had a scheduling conflict Tuesday and will not join the president in her home state.
YEA....I'll bet McCaskill has a "scheduling conflict"....the only scheduling conflict she has is very unpopular President who will rub off on her if she shows up...Everyone's trying to run away from Obama and for good cause...
Cantor Says Jobs Bill Dead in House, Obama Complains of GOP Stonewalling
Published October 04, 2011 FoxNews.com
House Republican Leader Eric Cantor said definitively Monday that President Obama's $447 billion jobs bill is dead on arrival in his chamber.
To hear Obama tell it, that's just about par for the course.
"I have done everything I can to try to get the Republican Party to work with me to deal with what is the biggest crisis of our lifetimes," Obama said in an interview with ABC News. "And each time, all we've gotten from them is, 'No.'"
The president was headed to Texas on Tuesday to visit Eastfield Community College in Mesquite, Texas, and tour the campus' Children's Laboratory School before delivering remarks urging Congress to pass the American Jobs Act.
The White House says the legislation will keep 280,000 teachers in the classroom, add tens of thousands more and pay for modernization of at least 35,000 public schools buildings.
On Monday, Obama urged Congress to pass the bill by the end of the month. Speaking to ABC News, Obama acknowledged that he doesn't think Americans are better off today than they were four years ago, but said his administration has made "steady progress" to stabilize the economy even if unemployment is still way too high. He added that the American people are in favor of his proposals.
"When you tick down which approach the American people generally prefer, they'll say mine. Now, what they'll say is, he hasn't been able to get it through Congress. And, you know, I'm the first one to acknowledge that the relations between myself and the Republican Congress have not been good over the last several months, but it's not for a lack of effort," he said. "It has to do with the fact that, you know, they've made a decision to follow what is a pretty extreme approach to governance."
Cantor, R-Va., said Tuesday that Republicans agree with the president's comment that people aren't better off today than four years ago.
"We feel the same way," he said.
Speaking Monday, Cantor told reporters that the GOP is ready to "work together" on parts of the president's proposal, but Republicans won't stand for taking up the bill as a take-it-or-leave-it deal.
"Now, the president continues to say, pass my bill in its entirety. As I have said from the outset, the all-or-nothing approach is just unacceptable," Cantor said, repeatedly accusing the president of being in "campaign mode."
The GOP leader said the House would pull out and act on a proposal to end a requirement that the government withhold 3 percent of payments to contractors. He also said the House would act on the three free-trade agreements the White House sent to Congress for Colombia, Panama and South Korea -- a long-delayed set of measures the president has highlighted in prior jobs speeches, though he did not send them to Congress until this week.
Cantor said the prospect of passing the bill in its entirety, though, is just not feasible, in part because of the problems in the president's own party.
"I think from a purely practical standpoint, the president's got some whipping to do on his own side of the aisle. Clearly, I think comments made by Democrats on both the House and Senate side indicated they have problems with the president's bill," Cantor said.
Not all Democrats are clamoring for the bill the way they supported the stimulus after Obama took office in early 2009. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., an Obama ally, said last week that the Senate doesn't yet have the votes to pass it.
Furthermore, after delivering an expected speech on the jobs bill in Texas Tuesday afternoon, the president plans to attend fundraisers in St. Louis, but one of Obama's top 2008 supporters won't be there. Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill, considered vulnerable in the 2012 election, told The Hill newspaper through an aide that she had a scheduling conflict Tuesday and will not join the president in her home state.
YEA....I'll bet McCaskill has a "scheduling conflict"....the only scheduling conflict she has is very unpopular President who will rub off on her if she shows up...Everyone's trying to run away from Obama and for good cause...
This is Just Unbelievable...Biden's either lying or Just Really Stupid...
This video is unbelievable....Biden Pretends NOT to know who Van Jones is????...I guess he would say he doesn't know who George Soros is because he's also helping to fund these protests....
And where is Obama decrying these demonstrations and quieting down those protesting?...You can bet if these were Tea Party folks out there on Wall Street he'd have a lot to say...
I also don't get all this discussion about Washington being deadlocked...THAT'S WHY WE HAD AN ELECTION IN NOVEMBER OF 2010 TO VOTE REPUBLICANS IN, TAKE CONTROL OF THE HOUSE, AND STOP/BLOCK EVERYTHING THAT OBAMA WAS TRYING TO DO...AND THAT'S JUST WHAT THEY HAVE DONE. EVERYONE KNOWS YOU CANNOT WORK WITH OBAMA AND THIS ADMINISTRATION...IT'S THEIR WAY OR THE HIGHWAY....SO THAT ONLY ALTERNATIVE IS TO BLOCK THEM AT EVERY TURN.
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Vice President Joe Biden doesn't know who Van Jones is
Tuesday morning on AM Tampa Bay on 970 WFLA, Vice President Joe Biden was asked by Jack Harris about the Occupy Wall Street Movement. The VP said "I really don't know about the Van Jones group, except what I read in the press." The group is currently protesting in New York City against the social and economic inequality, corporate greed and the influence of corporate money and lobbyists on government.
Later in his response in talking about the frustration seen in the Tea Party and the Occupy Wall Street Group, Biden said "you have on the one end Van Jones' guys, whoever he is, talking about Wall Street." Jack Harris and Tedd Webb stopped him to tell him he had previously been "Green Czar" in the administration. The VP responded, "Oh is that... alright"
Van Jones was appointed by President Barack Obama in March of 2009 to the newly created position of Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation at the White House Council of Environmental Quality.
Jones resigned from the Obama administration in September, 2009 amidst controversies including his statements alleging U.S. government complicity in the 9/11 attacks as well as particularly disparaging comments about the GOP.
And where is Obama decrying these demonstrations and quieting down those protesting?...You can bet if these were Tea Party folks out there on Wall Street he'd have a lot to say...
I also don't get all this discussion about Washington being deadlocked...THAT'S WHY WE HAD AN ELECTION IN NOVEMBER OF 2010 TO VOTE REPUBLICANS IN, TAKE CONTROL OF THE HOUSE, AND STOP/BLOCK EVERYTHING THAT OBAMA WAS TRYING TO DO...AND THAT'S JUST WHAT THEY HAVE DONE. EVERYONE KNOWS YOU CANNOT WORK WITH OBAMA AND THIS ADMINISTRATION...IT'S THEIR WAY OR THE HIGHWAY....SO THAT ONLY ALTERNATIVE IS TO BLOCK THEM AT EVERY TURN.
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Vice President Joe Biden doesn't know who Van Jones is
Tuesday morning on AM Tampa Bay on 970 WFLA, Vice President Joe Biden was asked by Jack Harris about the Occupy Wall Street Movement. The VP said "I really don't know about the Van Jones group, except what I read in the press." The group is currently protesting in New York City against the social and economic inequality, corporate greed and the influence of corporate money and lobbyists on government.
Later in his response in talking about the frustration seen in the Tea Party and the Occupy Wall Street Group, Biden said "you have on the one end Van Jones' guys, whoever he is, talking about Wall Street." Jack Harris and Tedd Webb stopped him to tell him he had previously been "Green Czar" in the administration. The VP responded, "Oh is that... alright"
Van Jones was appointed by President Barack Obama in March of 2009 to the newly created position of Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation at the White House Council of Environmental Quality.
Jones resigned from the Obama administration in September, 2009 amidst controversies including his statements alleging U.S. government complicity in the 9/11 attacks as well as particularly disparaging comments about the GOP.
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