26 May 2010

More Cities on Brink of Bankruptcy - CNBC

Broke: The Plan to Restore Our Trust, Truth and Treasure

More Cities on Brink of Bankruptcy

Published: Wednesday, 26 May 2010 | 11:01 AM ET

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By: Kate Kelly
CNBC Reporter

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Jeremy Woodhouse | The Image Bank | Getty Images

The possibility of a bankruptcy filing by the city of Harrisburg, Pa., the state capital, looms large these days—and it could be the first in a series, say some Wall Street traders.

Harrisburg, population 55,000, owes nearly $70 million in debt payments this year, and it's unclear where that money will come from.

Harrisburg now has one of the lowest credit ratings of any municipality in the United States.

Harrisburg Mayor Linda Thompson told CNBC Wednesday that she had assembled a group of bond stakeholders, the city council and other interested parties to work out the crisis "so that we don't become the poster child of the world in terms of bankruptcy."

Municipal bond underwriters are monitoring Harrisburg, which has struggled to contain the costs of financing a troubled incinerator project.

Kate Kelly
CNBC Reporter

In 2003, the city borrowed $125 million to expand and retrofit its incinerator, which officials thought would make money for Harrisburg. The incinerator re-opened five years later, but it's turned out to be nothing but a money drain.

On May 1, the city missed a $452,282 loan payment related to the incinerator.

Raising taxes or selling assets, like real estate or parking lots, are options for Harrisburg. So is a restructuring plan—either inside or outside of bankruptcy.

If Harrisburg does file for bankruptcy, it would do so under Chapter 9—which is employed by cities, but rarely. In one closely watched case, the city of Vallejo, Calif., has been in Chapter 9 since 2008.

About the Harrisburg situation, Jim Lebenthal, head of public affairs for the longtime municipal-bond underwriter, Lebenthal & Co., said that while filing for Chapter 9 would be a small matter in the scheme of things, it's "emblematic" of the larger economic struggles that cities face right now. "If it can happen in a state capital, my God, it can happen anywhere," said Lebenthal.

The overall problem is that the $2.8 trillion muni bond market, long considered one of the safest havens for investors, now faces a daunting level of debt, as cities from Los Angeles to New York struggle with an array of headaches, including less tax revenue and high labor costs.

According to remarks made by Harrisburg mayor Thompson in April, the city spends rought 70 percent of its annual budget on labor.

Cities can always raise taxes to fight a budget shortfall. But costly projects, fewer people in the workforce and more demand for city services can make budgets tough to square these days.

Financial firms underwrite bond offerings for cities and public-works projects, and the default rate on muni bonds has historically been quite low—less than 1 percent—compared to nearly 13 percent for corporate bonds, according to ratings agency figures.

06 May 2010

Is Western Watts Research Biased?

An interesting thing happened to me today. I got a phone call from what sounded like a young college student today asking some political questions. He said he was doing some research and wanted to know where we stood in our household.

He asked if we were registered to vote and I said yes.
He then asked if we mostly leaned Republican or Democrat or Independent. I said, "Mostly Republican".
He then asked how likely we were to vote in the upcoming mid term elections, to which I responded, "Very Likely".
He then asked if we were likely to vote Democrat, Republican or Independent. I responded that I would vote Conservative. Sometimes that's Republican and sometimes that's Independent, but rarely Democrat.
At this point the phone went dead. I hit *69 to see who had called and that's how I got the Company name. So I ask. Is Western Watts Research Biased?

12 April 2010

15 Mayors Who Must Shred The Budget To Save Their Bankrupt Cities

Just as they bankrupted the Auto Companies, the Unions have now bankrupted the cities.
Broke: The Plan to Restore Our Trust, Truth and Treasure

27 February 2010

Big Pharma's Latest Puppet - John McCain

DSSA Bill a Big win for Big Pharma?

The dietary-supplement industry is fighting a bid by U.S. Sen. John McCain to force it to disclose ingredients and register with the Food and Drug Administration.

Most of the industrialized world has incredibly restrictive laws governing supplements. People worldwide often purchase supplements from the U.S. because they are freely available at low costs. The Dietary Supplement Safety Act of 2010 would also strengthen recall authority of any dietary supplement the FDA finds to be hazardous.

Obviously, forcing small companies to go through the FDA's Billion Dollar drug approval process would be way too expensive for natural substances that can't be patented, and would drive up the costs of Natural Supplements substantially.

Tucson's Food Conspiracy Co-op on Fourth Avenue is urging visitors to its Facebook page to take action against the bill, warning it would "create administrative hurdles that small supplement companies could not take on, leaving only products from large pharmaceutical companies."

McCain, who is teaming on the bill with Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., held a press conference in early February to tout it, flanked by several athletes, including swimmer Kicker Vencill, who was banned from the Olympics after taking a tainted supplement. He successfully sued the manufacturer but missed out on the Olympics.

Strong Opposition to DSSA

Stung by rapidly escalating criticism about the bill's intent, McCain made a floor speech last week saying he introduced the legislation at the behest of Major League Baseball, the National Football League and the American College of Sports Medicine, along with several other sports organizations.

He recalled the case of Phoenix Suns' star Tom Gugliotta, who almost died in 2000 after taking a "sleep aid" that sent him into a seizure.

But McCain said the bill was also introduced for the half of all Americans who take some kind of supplement. "People have died from taking dietary supplements, including a young mother and wife who lived in my home state, and thousands have had to be hospitalized or seen by a doctor due to an adverse reaction from a dietary supplement."

Of course, McCain didn't introduce a bill to do anything about the more than 100,000 people a year that die from drug interactions from the Pharmaceutical industry.

He said it was about "truth in labeling," saying it only makes sense because Americans can get ingredients off the side of a cereal box or a container of yogurt.

McCain spokeswoman Brooke Buchanan said it's important for consumers to know ingredients, too, because some compounds may interact poorly with or nullify their prescription drugs.

Buchanan said the bill has been mischaracterized by opponents. The biggest misconception? "That John McCain is trying to take away people's vitamins. It's just not true. He wants to make is safer for you to take your vitamins."

All of this could change, however, if DSSA passes. DSSA would change key sections of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FD&C), undoing protections in the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) of 1994, effectively eliminating free access to supplements.

The importance of DSHEA
The passage of DSHEA resulted from millions of Americans who worked hard to reinforce their freedom to buy and sell supplements. At the time, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was alleging that nutrients like CoQ10 and selenium were dangerous and should be pulled from the market.

Of course, today we know that supplements like CoQ10 have can vastly improve human health, and there are studies that show that CoQ10 can be more beneficial than some of the expressive medications that have been approved by the FDA. In a way, CoQ10 is costing big Pharma Billions in additional profits!

Though weak in some areas, DSHEA established a foundation upon which free access to dietary supplements would be protected from attacks by drug companies and the FDA.

What prompted DSSA?
McCain's DSSA bill emerged in response to illegal steroid use among Major League Baseball players. Likely instigated by pharmaceutical interests, the bill is being posited as necessary to prevent supplement adulteration.

The FDA already has the power to pull supplements from the market that are contaminated but it has not been doing its job. DSSA is not only unnecessary, but it would actually reward the FDA for its failures. DSSA would also strip DSHEA and give full control of the supplement industry to the FDA.

Registration requirements
DSSA would mandate that all supplement companies register with the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), which oversees the FDA. Any company that refuses to register and comply with HHS would be subject to hefty fines, the classification of its products as "adulterated", and their removal from the market. The new system would burden manufacturers with significant new costs that would cause supplement prices to increase. A new taxpayer-funded bureaucracy would also be created to conduct inspections and oversee compliance.

Reporting requirements
DSSA would require all "non-serious adverse events" received by supplement companies to be reported to the government, regardless of whether or not the events are related to the supplements for which they are submitted. Pharmaceutical companies would have access to these reports which they could use to petition the FDA to have supplements removed from the market. The FDA could also arbitrarily pull supplements from the market if it believes it has "reasonable probability" that there may be a problem.

FDA would decide which supplements are legal
Perhaps the most chilling aspect of DSSA is that it would allow the HHS Secretary to establish a list of permitted supplements. Reversing common law, which assumes all is legal unless restricted, DSSA would allow only what is permitted to be legal.

In a nutshell, DSSA would increase supplement costs for consumers, grant incredible new power over the supplement industry to the FDA, and drastically limit the availability of supplements. Drug companies could also use the bill to remove supplements from the market, patent them, and sell them as drugs!

It is absolutely critical to contact your Congressmen and oppose this bill. LifeExtension Magazine has a convenient "Action Alert" page in which to do so.

Original Story

Additional Sources

A Market Solution to Capping CEO Pay

I personally believe that CEO's of PUBLICLY Traded companies, should never be paid more than 10X the Median income in the State they do business in because of that. It's a publicly traded company, not a completely private firm, doing business with completely private money. However, I DO feel that there definitely should be Stock Options given to attempt to match the pay at private companies.

How would this work?

Let's say that you're the CEO of Fannie Mae, and your pay is around 500,000 a year, which is about 10X the median income in DC, where the company is headquartered.
As part of your compensation package, you also get a pool of Stock Options, let's say 500,000 shares (about 1 for every dollar earned), that you can exercise in 5 years. Let's face it, any decisions you make today, won't really impact the company for at least 3 to 5 years.
Now if you did as the last CEO of Fannie Mae did, and lower the value of the stock from 70 bucks a share down to a couple of bucks today, then your Stock Options would be absolutely worthless. Why? Options are given at the price they are the day they are given. In other words, if the price of a share was say $70.00, and over 5 years went up to say $100.00, then your options would be worth around 30 bucks a share, or 15 Million Dollars. 50% higher than today's average "Big Gun" pay of 10 Million a year, but here's the big difference in my "Market Driven" compensation plan.

If you drove the company into a ditch, as Fannie Mae is in now, the options are worthless and you get ZERO bonus. Since it takes 5 years for the Options to kick in, the "Serial CEO", would be gone. Long term growth and stability would take center stage, instead of this mindset of "Short Term" gains.

A perfect example of this is the guy that went to Sears about 30 years ago, fired all the full timers, replaced them with part timers with no benefits. Since this dramatically cut Sears cost of doing business Profits boomed. Before long, he took MASSIVE bonuses and then left just a few years later, JUST as the effects started being felt that eventually drove the company into bankruptcy. What effects you say? Do you think that Part timers are as dedicated to the long term growth and stability to the Company as are full timers, some of which had been at the company for decades? Of course not Can you imagine going over to Mobil, GE or Boeing and saying, "I'm going to cut all the full timers and hire a bunch of part timers and the company's going to make more money". The board would think you're a nut job and fire you.

This same idiot was then hired by Home Depot, where he tried to do the same thing, cut full timers, cut training budgets, took massive bonuses, then left just as Home Depot stock took a 10 years slide. The problem with these kinds of CEO's is that while there's an IMMEDIATE up-tick to the stock price, because of improved profitability, over the long term, they lose their best employees and end up with a sinking ship.

I have no problem with massive compensation to the top guns that run these companies, as long as it is DIRECTLY tied to their performance as CEO's. Take a look at the banks, still getting multi-million dollar bonuses after they had US bail them out, that's sickening. Can you imagine if Paton Manning, who's getting 14 Million a year, decided to get Fat and Lazy and didn't perform as well as he has? He'd be CUT. His 14M a year GONE.

Why do these CEO's continue to get paid MASSIVE salaries from public companies, Government sponsored Enterprises (GSE's) like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, publicly Traded AND publicly funded companies like these top banks, Monopolies like the Utilities and so on. It's insane, and it's definitely NOT capitalism. It's Crony Capitalism, it's "Who do you know". It's almost a Reverse Socialism, where the Super Rich are supported by the little guy.

While I still believe in a very limited government, I do believe that common sense regulations should be in place to protect Wall Street and the public sector from the excessive gluttony that we've seen when it comes to CEO pay. The reason I say this is because it's gotten to the point to where their pay has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the level of performance at the companies.

Proposals like Obama's 500K cap on pay means absolutely nothing because all the board needs to do is give the CEO's additional pay in the form of direct Stocks, (not stock options like my plan would propose). If the board was hell bent on giving the CEO 5 Million bucks, even if the stock went all the way down to $1.00, they would simply give him 5 million shares.

In the mean time, the Government continues their attack on the true hero of the American Economy, the small business owner. God Forbid, any of these guys make over a Million, we have to tax them to death. These guys aren't taking any public money, they're not taking public stocks and grinding them down to nothing. They're not ruining the Pension funds of America, yet they're made out to be the bad guy. Those "Evil People" over there making more than 250K a year. While we're being RAPED by the bank CEO's.

18 February 2010

Why the HealthCare system doesn't work.

I remember when I was a kid, very few people had HMO's. Most had what was called "Indemnity Insurance". Basically the way it worked was very simple. You went to the Doctor, and you paid his fee.

The End.

What? You don't get it? Think of it this way. You have Auto Insurance. Do they pay for Oil changes? No? Why Not, it's Auto Care isn't it? You're right, it's not, it's Auto Insurance. Auto Care probably wouldn't work, because then EVERYONE would start taking their cars to get oil changes 4X a year, just as the Dealers all say we should, then what would happen. There would be an Oil Change Shortage wouldn't there? Prices would go up, but what would we care, we're not paying for it, the Auto Care takes care of that.

Sound ridiculous doesn't it?

Well that's is the problem with the Whole HealthCare system. Where once they used to get involved MAYBE once every 5 to 10 years, when there was some sort of an emergency, the $250.00 to $500.00 deductibles that most policies had, insured that the vast majority of people never used their insurance, which kept the price very, very inexpensive. Now they get involved not only with every Dr. visit, but also every prescription that is filled. Health Insurance companies went from having just a few hundred employees to deal with the occasional claim, to having to hire hundreds of thousands of employees to deal with every single instance of your Medical life. Does that sound cheap to you?

Additionally, how has the health insurance industry impacted the Dr.s Office? Let's compare.

Before, your average Doctor was housed in about a 1000 Sq. Ft. office with a Nurse that doubled as a secretary. In today's dollars, he only had a payroll of maybe $200K Total. If we were to suppose that the good Doctor had a total of about 240 business days in a year doing about 16 appointments per day. Charging around $50.00 a visit would cover his payroll, and he would only need to add in another 10 to 20 bucks or so to pay the Rent and Electric bills and other expenses.

Today your average Doctor needs a couple of Billing Agents to take care of the HMO and PPO Claims, they also need collections people, plus an accountant to keep track of where the money is coming from. Keep in mind that an average Dr. might take about 3 different insurance policies. Additionally, they need a secretary to co-ordinate the calls all these people are getting, plus an office Manager to keep all the employees in line. And let's not forget there's still him and his nurse. Now take a look at Payroll. It has swelled to about $500,000.00! Let's say this doctor had the same number of days, about 240, and does about 16 Appointments per day, one every half hour. Now he needs to charge over $130.00 per visit, JUST to cover the Salaries. Additionally, since he needs a larger space, more phone lines, electricity, computers, repair expenses... you now see why the good Doctor needs to charge around $240.00 for an office visit. How did your health improve?

America has traded the freedom of the medical system for a centrally run insurance conglomerate handling your day to day Medical needs for what? So we would be free of Paperwork? Someone STILL has to do the paperwork, but the Doctor's were NEVER going to do the paperwork for free. It's precisely this system of our NOT wanting to take personal responsibility that took us down this road. Only us taking back our personal responsibility will bring us back from this nightmare.

Before my wife went back to work, I had a Catastrophic Health Policy. It had a very high deductible, I NEVER used it, but it was there to cover JUST THAT, a Catastrophe. If everyone purchased Catastrophic insurance you would not only save THOUSANDS of dollars a year in premiums, but you could demand and get discounts from your Doctors, because you don't NEED the system that he has in place. You are paying him directly, not going through a front group of insurance companies and ultimately that saves him money.

The only reason we went back to an HMO is because the company pays for it. In all honesty if we were given a choice, to have the Cash in our pockets (a Catastrophic Policy with a $5000.00 deductible can be about $10,000.00 a year LESS than an HMO), we would take the Cash and go back to having a $5000.00 a year deductible. Truth is we still have to pay a $25.00 Co-Pay, so really what do we save? $50.00 to $100.00 an office visit? (When I had the Catastrophic Policy, I would negotiate with all the Doctors to let me skate on paying between $75.00 to $125.00 Cash).

HMO's and PPO's place the burden of the Paperwork on the Doctor. The Doctor then has to hire people not only to deal with the Paperwork, but also to collect money from the Companies, for something that the VAST Majority of Americans can afford to pay. He then has to raise his rates accordingly to pay for the expanded payroll. To top it off, we haven't' even talked about the number of people that Insurance Companies have had to hire to go from only occasionally dealing with someone filing a claim going over their deductible to dealing with EVERY SINGLE medical situation. All of these people are additional salaries that have to be paid for, when you pay your insurance premiums and the truth is that it is NOT sustainable. Considering the fact that Government tends to over-regulate things, I don't see them reducing the burden placed on Doctor's that would allow them to reduce staff. We should as a country reconsider the role of HMO's and PPO's in the Health Care debate as a way of curtailing the boom in health care expenditures. While it's clear that the bottom 10% can't afford paying $75.00 for an office visit, we shouldn't design a system with the bottom 10% in mind, that should be a supplemental system put in place AFTER the main system has been fixed.

We need to figure out a system that works for the top 90% of Americans, that lowers costs, keeps Medical inflation in check and gives us the freedom to choose who we want to take care of us. As I've said before, once we've fixed that problem, then we should design a supplemental system to take care of the poor.

16 February 2010

A New Perspective

Time to get educated on the new perspective.

14 February 2010

The Not So Great Depression of 1920

I remember when I was in Middle School and my history teacher was going over the Great Depression. Of course when talking about the Great Depression, they were speaking about what happened between 1929 and 1944. They spoke about how we should not have increased interest rates and Import duties, since all of these things made things worse. I remember how all the books and teachers talked glowingly about FDR and how he fought so hard for the regular Joe to try to make things better for us. Lesson plans like these are what shaped America's belief that FDR was a great President and was the right guy for the right time. I sometimes wonder however, if our opinion of him would have been very different if they had showed more of who he really was, along with sort of a "Compare and Contrast". Especially a Compare and Contrast to Warren G. Harding, the 29th President of the USA. Robert Murry has written a compelling book that seeks to dispel the myth's surrounding his administration, but for now, let's do some Comparing and Contrasting of our own.

FDR Increased spending by the Federal Government.
-- The result? The Government was in the business of picking winners and losers, and usually the winners were the Big Businesses who had the "Right" connections. Crony Capitalism.

Harding Reduced spending by the Federal Government.
-- The result? Federal Debt was paid off, increasing the amount of private capital available for the Private Sector. Banks now needed to look for opportunities to lend, with the Government not giving them any more "Free" business.

FDR Increased Government regulations on business to force them to be more "fair".
-- The result? Since it's always easier for big business to deal with regulations, smaller businesses suffered the most and were driven out of business, thereby increasing the levels of unemployment.

Harding Reduced Government regulations on business to go back to a state of "Normalcy" from the Wartime regulations.
-- The result? With Government "off their backs" all businesses, especially smaller businesses were able to exercise the kind of freedom that allows businesses to prosper and expand without government intervention, thereby increasing the levels of employment.

On Taxation:

Harding reduced the top marginal rate from 75% to 25%, the resultant boom in the economy brought in a 25% increase in Tax revenue with more people working. By the end of his administration, unemployment had dropped to just 1%, the lowest level EVER recorded.

When Hoover took over, his response to the crash of 1929 was to increase taxes from 25% to 63%. FDR was elected in part with campaign promises to reduce taxes, but instead he increased taxes to 100%! on anything over 50K!

-- The result?

With the incentive to make more money removed, the number of people earning over 50K a year plummeted, thereby DECREASING revenue going to the government in the form of Income taxes. Additionally, with the government confiscating an ever expanding amount of capital from the private sector, there was less capital available to start new businesses. New business creation stagnated.

I could go on and on with this "Compare and Contrast", but I think you get the point. The real hero here was Harding, not FDR. Let's not forget that Harding's Recession (which he inherited from Wilson) while initially much worse, only lasted 18 months, while FDR's inherited mess and meddling ended up lasting for about a decade.

Just as we learned in "48 Liberal Lies of American History", our history is being distorted by people with an Agenda. They want us to believe that Big Government is the only solution to our problems, they want us to believe that higher taxation and regulation will bring us prosperity, when in fact history shows us that the reverse is actually true. Harding and Reagan should have proven beyond all reasonable doubt that the only way back to prosperity is by getting government off our backs, reducing legislation, reducing taxes and reducing the size and scope of the government. If we revisited The New Deal, I think we will find that it was more like "The Raw Deal".

In the wise words of Abraham Lincoln,

You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.

Americans won't stay in the dark much longer, they are starting to get educated and they are finally starting to realize what the real truth is.

27 January 2010

Obama quietly continues to defend Bush's terror policies | McClatchy

Obama quietly continues to defend Bush's terror policies | McClatchy
WASHINGTON — Although the FBI has acknowledged it improperly obtained thousands of Americans' phone records for years, the Obama administration continues to assert that the bureau can obtain them without any formal legal process or court oversight.

The FBI revealed this stance in a newly released report, troubling critics who'd hoped the bureau had been chastened enough by its own abuses to drop such a position.

In further support of the legal authority, however, the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel backed the FBI in a written opinion issued this month.

The opinion by the OLC — the section that wrote the memos that justified enhanced interrogation techniques during the last administration — appears to be yet another sign that the Obama administration can be just as assertive as Bush's in claiming sweeping and controversial anti-terrorism powers.

The Justice Department's watchdog, the inspector general, said the OLC opinion has "significant policy implications that need to be considered by the FBI, the Department, and the Congress."

"The FBI says that this kind of activity is in the past," said Michael German, a former FBI agent who's now the American Civil Liberties Union's policy counsel. "But if they're saying that they have a continuing legal authority that means it's not in the past."

In another similarity to Bush era-legal decisions to keep legal theories under wraps, Obama's Justice Department refused to release to McClatchy the OLC opinion, despite the administration's vow to be more open than its predecessors.

The little-noticed revelation about the OLC opinion and the FBI's legal position appears in a heavily redacted section of an inspector general's report released Wednesday.

In the report, Inspector General Glenn Fine concluded the FBI committed egregious violations of the law when it obtained thousands of telephone records without court oversight or through any formal legal process.

The report described a "casual" environment in which FBI agents and employees of telecom companies treated Americans' telephone records so cavalierly that one senior FBI counter-terrorism official said getting access to them was as easy as "having an ATM in your living room."

Yet it also stated that "the OLC agreed with the FBI that under certain circumstances (word or words redacted) allows the FBI to ask for and obtain these records on a voluntary basis from the providers, without legal process or a qualifying emergency."

FBI and Justice Department officials refused to comment on that assertion.

In a letter sent Friday, Sens. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., Richard Durbin, D-Ill., and Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, demanded that Attorney General Eric Holder release a copy of the memo.

"Although much of the information about the OLC opinion is redacted in the public version of the (inspector general) report, the opinion appears to have important implications for the rights of Americans," the senators wrote.

FBI Director Robert Mueller has said that the informal practice of requesting telephone records as described in the report was stopped in 2006 when he found out about it from the inspector general.

Since then, it appears the bureau now refrains from using the authority it continues to assert, according to another heavily redacted section of the inspector general's report.

"However, that could change, and we believe appropriate controls on such authority should be considered now, in light of the FBI's past practices and the OLC opinion," Fine warned.

Privacy and open government advocates called on the Justice Department to release the opinion outright.

"There's a tremendous mystery as to what this legal basis is," said Kurt Opsahl, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit that advocates privacy protections for technology. "It does not seem like a legal justification should be a national security secret."

Last March, Attorney General Eric Holder released Bush administration OLC memos justifying interrogation methods that Bush's Justice Department had refused to release.

"It is my goal to make OLC opinions available when possible while still protecting national security information and ensuring robust internal executive branch debate and decision-making," he said at the time.

Such rhetoric hasn't necessarily translated into action, however, according to the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, an open-government group. CREW released a report this week that criticized the Obama administration for recent decisions to withhold information.

"Judging by CREW's interactions with various federal agencies over the past year, the promise of transparency and openness has not translated into new government-wide . . . policies," the group said.

The American Civil Liberties Union, meanwhile, filed a lawsuit Friday to try to compel the Justice Department to make public a report from Justice's Office of Professional Responsibility that examines possible ethics violations by lawyers who wrote the interrogation memos.

Holder had said in late November the report was finished and would be released soon.

Friday was also the deadline for executive branch agencies to release certain "high-value" data as part of President Obama's open government directive. Open government experts, however, said it remains to be seen how useful the information will be since the agencies themselves are determining what to divulge.

As of Friday afternoon, for example, the IRS had released its files tracking citizens' changes of addresses and the Department of Housing and Urban Development posted federal housing inspection data.

19 January 2010

Brown Wins, Obama fails to rally support!

FANTASTIC Acceptance Speech by Brown!

15 January 2010

Rush Accused of not wanting donations to go to Haiti

Media Tweaked: "Light-Skinned" Remark Pinned on Rush, Not Reid

January 14, 2010

Listen To It! WMP | RealPlayer

Audio clips available for Rush 24/7 members only -- Join Now!

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: To Paducah, Kentucky. This is April. That is one of my all-time, top ten favorite female names. April, thank you for calling. Nice to have you with us. Hello.

CALLER: Thank you, Rush. I'm glad that you chose to have me on today.

RUSH: Yes?

CALLER: This is kind of belated, but I just have a question for you.

RUSH: Yes, ma'am? Yes, ma'am?

CALLER: Where in your right mind do you get the cojones to just completely -- I don't know, I guess -- dismiss a tragedy of possibly a hundred thousand people dead in Haiti? You're -- you're going around discouraging people to send donations because we already donated to Haiti and it's called the US income tax; and Obama, the president of our United States -- your president as well, whether you like it or not.

RUSH: Where did you...?

CALLER: -- you're saying --

RUSH: Where did you hear that I discouraged donations to Haiti?

CALLER: Uh, I read it in, uh, a news thing called the Huffington Post, but that's not the point. I was going to finish my sentence if that's okay with you.

RUSH: Well, but what you just said is a lie. They reported a lie. I did not discourage donations to Haiti.

CALLER: Okay. Well, um, actually the point I was getting to, whether or not you said that -- which actually I believe you did. But...

RUSH: No, it's not "whether or not." That matters. I mean you call here and ask, "Where do I get off suggesting that we don't donate to Haiti because we do in the income tax?" and I tell you I said that, but I also said private donations are going to be much better than a government donation. They're all going, go to the Red Cross, do other things, don't go through the government. It's just going to go through hands and bureaucracies and a dollar is going to end up being 30 cents by the time they get through with it. I did not say, "Don't make donations." That's not a "whether or not" thing. That's why you called.

CALLER: Calm down.

RUSH: Finish your sentence.

CALLER: Calm down. I planned on it, but actually I... Keep denying that, but what is this you were saying about our president of the United States trying to just basically establish credibility in the black community among white (sic) and dark-skinned African-Americans? And why do you, like... After saying that, why would you call yourself a patriot?

RUSH: All right. Now, this is funny. This was our Media Tweak of the Day yesterday, April. You know, what we do here on this program is, purposely, play the media like violin, like a Stradivarius. And I love tweaking them. I love irritating them, and I love upsetting them and all you do is take words uttered by liberals and apply them to current events. It was Harry Reid who looked at Obama and said he's a "light-skinned" guy that "doesn't speak in a Negro dialect."

CALLER: I'm not talking about Harry Reid.

RUSH: Well, I was.

CALLER: I'm talking about you.

RUSH: I was. You see, this is the point. You didn't listen to the program. You're reading people who take what I say out of context precisely to create this sense of outrage that you have.

CALLER: Okay.

RUSH: In fact, I want you to listen to something with me. Before I said all of this I made a prediction, because this was my Media Tweak of the Day -- and it's getting too easy. I mean, you're illustrating how easy it is to outrage these people. I enjoy it. This is a great success. When people start squealing like pigs is when I know I've hit a home run. This is what I said yesterday.

RUSH ARCHIVE: Before this week is out, I will be the one who uttered the words "light-skinned" and "doesn't speak the Negro dialect when he doesn't want to." I'll be the one that said it. Before the week is out I'll be the one that said it, not Harry Reid, and they'll be asking, "Why have you not condemned Rush Limbaugh for what he said (in repeating what Harry Reid said)?" and Harry Reid will condemn me from the Senate floor!

RUSH: And then I proceeded to suggest that Obama is going to be giving aid to both light-skinned and dark-skinned Negroes in Haiti, just designed to get the reaction I got -- and it worked. The people that listen to this program laugh and chuckle every day at this stuff, because we're just needling the media. They talk about me all the time and I can create it any time I want. It's made you mad, and you believe things they take out of context that don't completely say what I fully said, and you get mad.

CALLER: Okay, so you're basically evading the second part of my question. You're not going to tell me why you decided to go around saying something, like, a tragedy that's happened to hundreds of thousands of people, who are suffering.

RUSH: No, I'm not evading it at all. If I said it I meant to say it, and I do believe that everything is political to this president. Everything this president sees is a political opportunity, including Haiti, and he will use it to burnish his credentials with minorities in this country and around the world, and to accuse Republicans of having no compassion. I went further than that even. I'll have to tell you what else I said after the break if you want to hold on.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: We go back now to April in Paducah. I had to interrupt you because we had a hard break and I couldn't miss it. What is it you were going to say?

CALLER: Well, if I remember correctly I was about to go say, like, I've been trying to get you to explain to me, at least -- if not the entire country listening to your show right now -- what...? Like what... Why...? It doesn't sound like the president is making this Haiti donation business a political thing. It sounds like you are. You're just... Uh, you brought up a completely inane, baseless point about establishing credibility in the light- and dark-skinned black communities, and, like, there's no reason for that. There's, like --

RUSH: Now, April, I must ask a serious question: Do you ever listen to my program or do you hear about it in places like the Huffington Post?

CALLER: Um... I... When I'm upstairs in the bedroom I'll have the radio on and I like to listen to some local stations. So, yes, I have heard your show.

RUSH: All right.

CALLER: And I've heard dozens and clips and quotes that you've said and most of the time I'm absolutely disgusted with you. I'll be perfectly honest with you.

RUSH: I see. Okay, now that we've established that you listen sometimes and you're absolutely disgusted. Let me ask you a question. Have you ever heard of the Democrat Party and President Obama politicizing a natural disaster?

CALLER: Have I ever heard of them politicizing...?

RUSH: Yeah, has that ever happened? Has Barack Obama and the Democrat Party ever politicized a natural disaster?

CALLER: Umm, well, this is the -- at least if you're speaking specifically about President Obama, this is the first natural disaster that we've had on, uh -- on his term. So...

RUSH: We had a natural disaster when he was Senator. It doesn't matter whether he was president or not. I said the Democrat Party and President Obama, as a Senator, certainly politicized Hurricane Katrina. You see, the difference, April, is that I know these people. I know who they are and I love to tweak them. I love to tweak the media. I predicted yesterday... How come there's no outrage, by the way, at Bill Clinton suggesting that Obama's nothing more than a slave when he was trying to get Ted Kennedy to endorse Hillary and he says (doing impression), "Come on! Come on, Ted. You know, a few years ago this guy would be fetching us our coffee." You're not outraged about that because the Huffington Post isn't outraged about it. They probably don't write about it but I talk about all of it.

CALLER: Actually... Uh, are you implying that the Huffington Post as the one and only resource that I watch (sic--read)? I even watch Fox News once in a while.

RUSH: No, no, no, no, no. I'm not implying that.

CALLER: Okay.

RUSH: What I'm illustrating here is that you're a blockhead. What I'm illustrating here is that you're a closed-minded bigot who is ill-informed. I am being patient and tolerant and I'm trying to explain this to you, and you're totally closed to it. I'm hitting you with piercing, penetrating logic, and it escapes you -- and it is irritating people like you that I revel in. I absolutely revel in it. I've got 19 sound bites here today, April, of media people going bat manure yesterday over what they think I said. They didn't hear me say it, either. They got it from the Huffington Post or they got it from Media Matters or they got it from someplace else. I did not say don't donate. I did say Obama will use this to help burnish his credentials, 'cause there's no question he will. I'll tell you something else I said, April: It took him three days to go out and talk about the Christmas Day Underwear Bomber. It took him less than 18 hours to get out there and start rallying people about this earthquake.

I'll tell you something else, April. I'm going to make prediction to you, and I'm gonna be right about this. Before the week is out we're going to have to be stories in the Huffington Post and other places that you read pointing out how fast Obama moved into action versus Bush during Hurricane Katrina. To accuse me of politicizing everything is to be ignorant about what I do on this program. I simply react to the left. They're the ones that politicize virtually everything that's happening from health care to terrorism, and I love illustrating absurdity by being absurd. And if you had listened to this program for a modicum of time you would know it. But instead you're a blockhead. You're mind is totally closed. You have tampons in your ears. Nothing is getting through other than the biased crap that you read. So I've had enjoyment here talking to you and illustrating that it's impossible to deal in the truth with you. I appreciate your calling and I appreciate your holding on. I grew up not far from Paducah. If I'd known you were there, I might have stayed.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Let me tell you by way of Tony Blankley, a sound bite we played yesterday. What all of this is, is reacting to what I did not say yesterday on this program.

BLANKLEY: The lesson that we learned from this is not that the Senator said anything particularly remarkable, but that when conservatives say something equally unremarkable, that the feigned outrage drives them out of office; whether it's Rush Limbaugh saying that a black quarterback got better press than had he been white or whether it was Senator Allen who used the word "Macaca" -- whatever that means -- that got six stories on the front page of the Washington Post. The point is, they're not sincere when they're outraged. They're just trying to drive out a political opponent.

RUSH: Exactly. And so all of this outrage that you saw on television last night is feigned. It is fake. I'm not the one that ever used light skinned, dark-skinned. That was Harry Reid! We're laughing at him. We're making fun of him. And they fake all this outrage that I would say this, not even understanding -- and they do understand I was making a joke. They are just feigning outrage to try to take me out, and that's why I do the Media Tweak every day because they're going to bomb out every time they try. I mean, it's just fun.

END TRANSCRIPT

Read the Background Material...

• Wall Street Journal: Harry Reid's Swansong
• National Review: Harry Reid and the Offense Game - Rich Lowry
• Investor's Business Daily: 'Macaca' A La Reid
• NewsBusters: Prior to Harry Reid, Networks Associated Use of 'Negro' Term With Haters
• American Thinker: Harry Reid Trashed White America
• HotAir: Stephen A. Smith: If Lott Had to Go, Reid has to Go
• Newsbusters: Black Professor: If White Republican Said What Reid Did It Would Be Huge News

*Note: Links to content outside RushLimbaugh.com usually become inactive over time.

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