US President Barack Obama threatened to take military action against Israel not to let Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu strike Iran. Netanyahu was planning airstrikes at an emergency meeting with Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Chief of Staff of the Israeli army Benny Gantz, the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Jarîda said. The meeting was held after it became known that Barack Obama’s administration and the clergy of Iran had concluded a secret agreement. Israel even conducted test flights of its fighter jets in the airspace of Iran after it became possible to overcome the radar protection. However, US Secretary of State John Kerry disclosed Netanyahu’s plans. Afterwards, Obama threatened to shoot down Israeli planes on their way to Iran. As a result, the Israeli Prime Minister had to curtail the operation. The relationship between Israel and the United States have been worsening since then. More... http://www.jewsnews.co.il/2015/03/10/obama-threatens-war-on-israel-if-it-attacks-iran/This ought to get the neocons and Israeli-firsters out in full bunch. |
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9/11 Commission co-chair Lee Hamilton says “I don’t believe for a minute we got everything right”, that the Commission was set up to fail, that people should keep asking questions about 9/11, and that the 9/11 debate should continue
The 9/11 Commission chair said the Commission was “set up to fail”
The Commission’s co-chairs said that the CIA (and likely the White House) “obstructed our investigation”
9/11 Commissioner Bob Kerrey said that “There are ample reasons to suspect that there may be some alternative to what we outlined in our version . . . We didn’t have access . . . .”
9/11 Commissioner Timothy Roemer said “We were extremely frustrated with the false statements we were getting”
9/11 Commissioner Max Cleland resigned from the Commission, stating: “It is a national scandal”; “This investigation is now compromised”; and “One of these days we will have to get the full story because the 9-11 issue is so important to America. But this White House wants to cover it up”. When asked in 2009 if he thought there should be another 9/11 commission, Cleland responded: “There should be about fifteen 9/11 commissions”
The Senior Counsel to the 9/11 Commission (John Farmer) – who led the 9/11 staff’s inquiry – said “At some level of the government, at some point in time…there was an agreement not to tell the truth about what happened“. He also said “I was shocked at how different the truth was from the way it was described …. The tapes told a radically different story from what had been told to us and the public for two years…. This is not spin. This is not true.” More... http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-03-12/911-commissioners-were-conspiracy-theorists |
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How Sens. Chuck Grassley, Rand Paul, and 80,000 Other Americans Clobbered an Ammo BanAt the end of February, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms issued a lengthy epistle on "determining whether certain projectiles are 'primarily intended for sporting purposes.'" Anyone who read the 17-page memo would learn that the ATF was considering a ban on M855 ball ammunition, and that citizens had until March 16 to comment. ... Outside the conservative media, coverage of the panic came in two flavors. The first: Color stories about people snapping up ammo. The second: Eye-rolling about the Republicans telling people to fight the ATF rule. The Daily Beast, for example, used a PAC message about the rule from Kentucky Senator Rand Paul as a case study in how he seized on conservative panics to build his e-mail list. This wasn't wrong, exactly. Paul's the-gun-grabbers-are-coming message asked conservatives to "chip in" and sign a petition, after sharing some reasons to be worried. "Like 'Operation Choke Point'—which targets firearms and ammunition dealers with harassment because the Administration finds them 'objectionable'—the BATF's ammo ban is a backdoor route to imposing President Obama's gun control," wrote Paul. ... Indeed, and they were only getting stronger. On May 9, the day before the surrender, Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley marshaled all but one of his Republican colleagues for a statement against the rule. (Only Illinois's Mark Kirk sat it out.) ... Paul's operation, which had been so recently mocked for lobbying against the rule, was just as happy. "It is why you mobilize people," said Doug Stafford, a spokesman for Paul. "People taking action absolutely can have an impact, as this clearly showed. Gun owners and second amendment advocates have won two major battles, one in Congress and now in the administration, through their advocacy." ... More... http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-03-11/how-chuck-grassley-rand-paul-and-80-000-other-americans-clobbered-an-ammo-banThis must really burn the owner of this media outlet since being the former Mayor of NYC, has been using lots of his billionare money to lobby for gun control all over the country. Sure hope Rand keeps sopping up all the gun owner support going into the next primary election in the GOP.
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NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — Port Authority officials said a runway had been plowed shortly before a Delta flight skidded and crashed through a fence as it landed Thursday morning at LaGuardia Airport Thursday morning. It happened just after 11 a.m. on Runway 13 as Delta Flight 1086 was coming in from Atlanta. The plane was landing at about 100 mph when it skidded out of control. While it was snowing at the time, two other planes had landed safely in the snow earlier, CBS2’s Tony Aiello reported. Photos and video from the scene showed the MD88 aircraft sitting in the snow with its nose through a fence near the water. Passengers could be seen exiting the plane off the wing and trudging through the snow. Video and more... http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2015/03/05/plane-skids-off-runway-at-laguardia-airport/ |
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It's been 25 years since Maria Gonzales left her family's four-acre farm in Mexico to make a life in the United States. Even as she worked and raised a family in Los Angeles, she dreamed of one day returning to that small plot of land in Jalisco where her father planted corn and wildflowers grew. But after her parents died, she got word that a stranger had taken hold of the land. Local officials told relatives that her family no longer had a claim to it. Gonzales, 56, who is living in the U.S. without permission, didn't want to risk going back to Mexico to resolve the dispute herself. "They're taking advantage because we can't be there," said her husband, Ezequiel Becerril, 56, who is also in the country illegally. Last week, Gonzales took the first step to reclaim the land with the help of a Mexican government program that assists immigrants in the U.S. who are having problems with their property back home. Large numbers of Mexicans have land rights because of a series of agrarian reforms enacted after the Mexican Revolution, when many peasants were granted privileges to farm parcels of communal land known as ejidos. More... http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-land-rights-20150305-story.html |
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What a week for Mark Cuban. Fresh off being tapped for the role of the president alongside Ann Coulter in the upcoming blockbuster “Sharknado 3,” the brash billionaire’s bearish forecast has landed him a spot in MarketWatch’s call of the day. “If we thought it was stupid to invest in public Internet websites that had no chance of succeeding back then, it’s worse today,” he wrote in a blog post detailing the risks facing the current crop of angel investors and crowdfunders (more on that below). He’s not alone in his fear-mongering. While retail investors are all-in, equity-wise, as are corporations, prophets of doom are counting the moments until the cards fall in the public markets, as well. The thing is, they’ve been counting them for years now. Check out the chart of the day for how long it’s been since we’ve felt a serious pullback. Spoiler alert: almost three years. More... http://www.marketwatch.com/story/mark-cuban-this-tech-bubble-is-far-worse-than-back-in-2000-2015-03-05 |
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President Barack Obama’s November amnesty will give $1.7 billion in taxpayers’ cash to illegal immigrants, according to a congressional study. The news emerged two days after top Republican leaders overcame GOP opposition to a 2015 budget bill that allows Obama to fund his unpopular amnesty for roughly 5 million illegals. “The program could cost taxpayers $1.7 billion over 10 years, almost all of it in the first five years,” according to a report by the McClatchy Washington Bureau. The rebates are allowed by the IRS’ interpretation of existing laws governing the Earned Income Tax Credit program, which was designed to subsidize low-wage employment in the United States. http://dailycaller.com/2015/03/05/obama-amnesty-to-grant-1-7-billion-in-taxpayer-cash-to-illegals/ |
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Austin, Texas – In a bold piece of legislation, Rep. David Simpson (R) filed a bill that would delete any mention of marijuana from state law. It would completely deregulate it and treat it as any common crop.
In a press release, Simpson said he supported regulating marijuana like the state regulates “tomatoes, jalapeños or coffee.”
“Everything that God made is good, even marijuana” said state Rep. Simpson. “The conservative thought is that government doesn’t need to fix something that God made good.”A recent poll by Pew Research has shown that 63 percent of Republicans under the age of 34 support legalization of marijuana (vs. 77 percent of Democrats of the same age.) This information indicates that both major parties are coming around to the realization that the drug war has done significant damage to the social fabric of U.S. society, and a systemic change is necessary. According to the Houston Chronicle, Simpson said that may of his Republican colleagues were in support of repealing prohibition and also considered the War on Drugs to be an “abysmal failure.” Currently, the U.S. has more non-violent drug offenders incarcerated than any other country on earth. A staggering 25 percent of all people incarcerated worldwide, are being held in a U.S. jail or prison. This fact becomes even more disturbing when combined with the knowledge that the U.S. represents only 5 percent of the world population. In a break from the approach of taxation and regulation, taken in all of the numerous other states that have reformed their marijuana laws, the Texas bill would offer no regulation or taxation. Simpson told KETK that he would like to “reframe the current marijuana discussion” by focusing on prohibition repeal in terms of conservative values such as deregulation and less government. The issue was hotly contested at the Texas Republican Party convention in Fort Worth. Numerous delegates supported legalization but ultimately voted to oppose legalization in the official party platform. .... More... http://thefreethoughtproject.com/texas-bill-treat-marijuana-common-crop-100-deregulated-untaxed/#ODUOQfCVWqQ783vU.99 |
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New Hampshire liberty activists like Katherine Albrecht, the New Hampshire Liberty Alliance, the New Hampshire Libertarian Party, and the New Hampshire Constitution Party started the national anti-REAL ID movement. The movement is still going strong, even this week in New Hampshire. The hook REAL ID uses in seeking to dragoon states into compliance is the threat that TSA agents will refuse IDs from non-complying states at our nation’s airports. The threat is an empty one. Consistently over years, every time a DHS-created compliance deadline has come around, state leaders with spines have backed the Department of Homeland Security down. I detailed the years-long saga of pushed-back deadlines last year in the Cato Policy Analysis, “REAL ID: A State-by-State Update.”
DHS has stopped publishing deadline changes in the Federal Register–perhaps the endless retreats were getting embarrassing–and now it has simply said on its website that TSA enforcement will begin sometime in 2016. But it’s evidently back-channeling threats to state officials. Those folks–unaware that REAL ID doesn’t work, and disinterested in the allocation of state and federal power–are lobbying their state legislatures to get on board with the national ID program.
New Hampshire is one state where this has occurred. Worries about New Hampshirites ability to travel by air recently caused the Department of Public Safety (which houses New Hampshire’ motor vehicle bureau) to seek legislation that would move the state toward REAL ID compliance.
New Hampshire is special because it’s where the first volley in the REAL ID rebellion was thrown. In 2006, after a bill to reject REAL ID got a head of steam in New Hampshire, states across the country rejected the national ID law.
In testimony I delivered to the New Hampshire Senate Transportation Committee yesterday, I detailed this history, telling the story of how DHS has repeatedly backed off its threat to inconvenience travelers when states have rejected this unfunded federal surveillance mandate. The circumstances today are unchanged: If the TSA starts refusing IDs, the TSA, the DHS, and their supporters in Congress will take the blame. The DHS knows this, which is why they always back down before push comes to shove. States should have no fear of TSA interfering with their residents’ travels because of REAL ID.
Rejecting REAL ID is good security, too. If the nation were to spend billions of dollars on REAL ID compliance, undercutting all our privacy and autonomy a little more by putting us into a national identity system, we’d get nothing remotely comparable in security gains. Proponents of this national ID program have never shown how it would provide cost-effective security.
My testimony may have helped. The strong presence of the New Hampshire Liberty Alliance showed the committee that this was not a business-as-usual bill. And I think really excellent, persuasive testimony from New Hampshire Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Devon Chafee carried the day. The committee voted unanimously to reject the REAL ID compliance bill. Once they knew that the DHS is brandishing empty threats to inconvenience travelers at TSA checkpoints, they ended their state’s brief flirtation with REAL ID compliance.
This is information legislators across the country need. A number of states could emulate New Hampshire’s rejection of REAL ID. There are still many places where legislators labor under the impression that REAL ID imposes obligations on them, including South Dakota, California , New Mexico , Hawaii , Idaho, Oklahoma , Arizona , Rhode Island , Illinois, Iowa, New York, and Florida. http://www.cato.org/blog/new-hampshire-ends-brief-flirtation-national-id-compliance |
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The battlefield of the future recently came a step closer, as a Lockheed Martin laser weapon took out a truck in a field test. The 30-kW fiber laser weapon system was fired at a small truck mounted on a test platform, the laser beam disabled the running engine and drivetrain within seconds. The recent field test used Lockheed's Advanced Test High Energy Asset (ATHENA) ground-based prototype, single-mode laser, which is based on the company's Area Defense Anti-Munitions (ADAM) laser weapon system. It incorporates the 30-kW Accelerated Laser Demonstration Initiative (ALADIN) fiber laser developed by Lockheed. ATHENA uses a process that the company calls Spectrum Beam Combining. Though laser weapons have been successfully tested in the past, Lockheed says that even though such systems could acquire, track, and destroy targets, they lack practicality as a tactical weapon because the inefficient nature of the lasers resulted in them being too large, needing too much power, and being difficult to cool. More... http://www.gizmag.com/lockheed-martin-laser-truck/36377/ |
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President Barack Obama today introduced his plan for a progressive takeover of state and local policing.
“We have a great opportunity… to really transform how we think about community law enforcement relations,” he said Monday.
“We need to seize that opportunity… this is something that I’m going to stay very focused on in the months to come,” Obama said, as he touted a new interim report from his Task Force on 21st Century Policing.
Obama also instructed his media allies to help federalize policing, and to sideline the critics of centralized policing rules. “I expect our friends in the media to really focus on what’s in this report and pay attention to it,” he instructed.
.........................
State and local policing may need to be subordinated to federal social policy, Obama suggested. “Our approach to our drug laws, for example, and criminalization of nonviolent offenses rather than taking more of a public health approach — that may be something that has an impact in eroding trust between law enforcement and communities.” More... http://dailycaller.com/2015/03/02/obama-unveils-national-obamalaw-plan/This guy is completely out of control and it seems the more he acts on his own w/o restraint from Congress, the more he feels invisible from any sort of curbs on his growing power. The large part of him being pussy footed around with is because he's black and you got the liberal white guilt on one side and the panty wastes in the GOP that can't handle the liberal mainstream media leveling racist bullcrap at them for putting their foot down on this guy once and for all. |
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...after kingdom kills four more in two days Amnesty calls on King Salman to 'put an end to this shameful record'The rate of executions in Saudi Arabia has reached “unprecedented” levels, a charity has warned, as the kingdom killed four criminals in two days on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Amnesty International said the latest state-sanctioned deaths took its tally of executions for the year so far in Saudi Arabia to 39 – almost three times the equivalent number for this time last year.
Local media say the Saudi authorities have attempted to hail the killings as an example of the government’s commitment to “maintaining security and realising justice”, a crackdown in response to the rise of extremism and the threat of Isis. More... http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/saudi-arabia-executions-now-at-unprecedented-rate-after-kingdom-kills-four-more-in-two-days-10085646.html |
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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court was sharply divided Wednesday in the latest challenge to President Barack Obama's health overhaul, this time over the tax subsidies that make insurance affordable for millions of Americans.
The justices aggressively questioned lawyers on both sides of what Justice Elena Kagan called "this never-ending saga," the latest politically charged fight over the Affordable Care Act.
Chief Justice John Roberts said almost nothing in nearly 90 minutes of back-and-forth, and Justice Anthony Kennedy's questions did not make clear how he will come out. Roberts was the decisive vote to uphold the law in 2012.
Otherwise, the same liberal-conservative divide that characterized the earlier case was evident. More... http://apnews.myway.com/article/20150304/us--supreme_court-health_overhaul-subsidies-60cda80b25.htmlI'm not holding my breath here as to whether anything will change with this abomination of a health care law. Some of these 'justices' are just downright deplorable. |
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One hundred and seventeen years goes by in a flash, according to the world's oldest person.
Misao Okawa celebrated her 117th birthday a day early on Wednesday at a nursing home in western Japan, according to the Associated Press.
During the televised celebration, she told a government official that her life, "seemed rather short."
Okawa, the daughter of a kimono maker, was born on March 5, 1898, in Osaka and was recognized as the oldest person in the world by Guiness World Records in 2013.
...
More... http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2015/03/04/worlds-oldest-person-117-birthday-japan/24362311/Damn, I'd be more than happy to make it into my 80s but this is beyond the pale. |
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Los Angeles (CNN)Federal agents on Tuesday raided more than three dozen "maternity hotels" in Southern California where foreign women give birth, allegedly for the sole purpose of having a U.S.-citizen baby, authorities said.
The "maternity tourism" sites included apartment complexes in Los Angeles, Orange and San Bernardino counties where authorities believe the businesses housed the foreign nationals about to give birth, federal officials said.
Those targeted residences are believed to have catered largely to women from China, who paid $15,000 to $50,000 for lodging, transportation and food, according to a statement by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Those fees don't necessarily include medical care, authorities said. http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/03/us/maternity-tourism-raids-california/index.html |
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Ignore the Drumbeat of DoomDo you hear that? It's starting.
The predictable drumbeat of dire warnings about what will happen if portions of the Patriot Act – the post-9/11 law being used to conduct controversial NSA dragnet surveillance – are allowed to expire on June 1 has already begun.
James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, issued what is likely to be the first of many vague warnings from the intelligence community on Monday. Faced with the expiration of the part of the Patriot Act that allows the bulk collection of information about Americans' phone calls, Clapper brought out the favored hypothetical of the surveillance hawk: An unspecified attack will occur, which would have been prevented if Congress had reauthorized the dragnet collection of Americans' phone calls.
"If that tool is taken away from us... and some untoward incident happens that could have been thwarted if we had had it," Clapper said, "I hope that everyone involved in that decision assumes the responsibility."
There's just one problem with this particular bit of emotional blackmail, however. The pesky, rather inconvenient fact is that the government's mass surveillance programs operating under Section 215 of the Patriot Act have never stopped an act of terrorism. That is not the opinion of the NSA's most ardent critics, but rather the findings of the president's own review board and the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. This program has had over a decade to prove its value, and yet there is no evidence that it has helped identify a terrorism suspect or "made a concrete different in the outcome of a counterterrorism investigation."
... https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/ignore-drumbeat-doom-nsas-call-records-program-didnt-stop-single-terrorist-atLeave it up to these^ guys to report on the matter, surely Fox or the other corporate media tied at the hip w/ the MIC and the surveillance state wouldn't touch it w/ a ten foot pole.
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Seoul (AFP) - The US ambassador to South Korea, Mark Lippert, was injured in an attack by an armed assailant Thursday in Seoul, television reports said.
The YTN news channel, citing police sources, said one man carried out the attack as Lippert was walking to a breakfast meeting in central Seoul.
The channel carried a picture showing the ambassador after the assault with his right hand raised to his face and his left hand smeared with blood. More... http://news.yahoo.com/us-ambassador-attacked-seoul-231729097.htmlSounds like he got stuck w/ a razor blade of sorts by someone that didn't like the US-SK military exercises that were taking place in the sea next to the peninsula, that has happened each quarter of the year for quite some time. Similarly, the assailant is one of those that want unification which would be at the expense of the South. I will say that it is a waste of money trying to show the North who's cock is bigger by holding these quarterly drills. Piggy Kim knows what kind of juice the US has. |
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It's been no secret that US and a handful of UK forces have been planning on traveling
to Yavoriv this spring to begin training Ukrainian forces for their fight against pro-Russian
separatists in the eastern part of the country. But officials have at times been vague as
to dates and times and numbers.
The solicitation also states that "the US and Ukrainian Army shall conduct a joint training
mission at the International Peacekeeping and Security Center (IPSC) near L'viv, Ukraine
from approximately 5 MAR - 31 OCT 15."
The Army will rotate 300 troops at a time it appears, with March, May, July, August and
October being the relief dates for each group.
The plan to train four companies of the Ukrainian National Guard comes as part of a
US State Department initiative "to assist Ukraine in strengthening its law enforcement
capabilities, conduct internal defense, and maintain rule of law," Pentagon spokeswoman
Lt. Col. Vanessa Hillman told Defense News this year.
Funding for the initiative is coming from the congressionally-authorized Global Security
Contingency Fund (GSCF), which was requested by the Obama administration in the fiscal
2015 budget to help train and equip the armed forces of allies around the globe.
The United States has already earmarked $19 million to help build the Ukrainian National Guard... More... http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense-news/blog/intercepts/2015/03/03/ukraine-russia-putin-war/24327263/Up and at em boys, time to go show Putin what for. The $19 mill figure is just to get the ball rollin mark my words. |
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(Bloomberg) -- Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, countering criticism from members of Congress, said the central bank is trying to avoid being too cozy with the Wall Street firms it supervises and wants to ensure that regulators aren’t afraid to confront the financial industry.
“The risk of regulatory capture is something the Federal Reserve takes very seriously and works very hard to prevent,” Yellen said in remarks prepared for a speech in New York on Tuesday night. “It is important that anyone serving the Fed feel safe speaking up when they have concerns about bias toward industry, and that those concerns be addressed.”
The Fed has been criticized by Democratic lawmakers, including Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who say it’s deferential to large banks. The issue was the subject of a Senate hearing in November following allegations by Carmen Segarra, a former examiner at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, who said her colleagues had been too soft on Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
At the hearing, Warren told New York Fed President William C. Dudley that he needs to fix a “cultural problem” or “we need to get someone who will.”
The Fed has also come under fire from Republicans, including Richard Shelby of Alabama, the Senate Banking Committee chairman, who called for more Fed transparency and greater congressional oversight at a hearing Tuesday.
Yellen, in her speech to the Citizens Budget Commission, also took aim at ethical lapses at large banks supervised by the Fed.
“We expect the firms we oversee to follow the law and to operate in an ethical manner,” she said. “Too often in recent years, bankers at large institutions have not done so, sometimes brazenly.”
Such incidents “raise legitimate questions of whether there may be pervasive shortcomings in the values of large financial firms that might undermine their safety and soundness,” she said.
Global regulators, including the Fed, are trying to tighten oversight of financial benchmarks that are used to price everything from student loans to mortgages, oil and currencies.
The world’s largest banks have paid billions of dollars to settle allegations of rigging Libor and other interest rates. Six firms, including Citigroup Inc. and UBS Group AG, paid $4.3 billion in November to settle probes into the manipulation of foreign-exchange rates. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-04/yellen-says-fed-seeks-to-avert-capture-by-banks-it-oversees |
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Sen. Barbara Mikulski, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, and Congressional Millionaires
As if this is a bad thing: this despicable, mummified, failure-of-a-human-being is finally going to terminate her reign of legalized gangstering and turn over her fiefdom to some other up-and-coming, glory-seeking congressional felon. Senator Barbara Mikulski is perhaps most known for her almost-legendary 1990 declaration during a Senate debate citing the need to use tax policy to redistribute from the ‘will-dos’ to the ‘will-nots': “So, let’s go and get it from those who’ve got it.” This courageous proclamation earned her a chorus of cheers from the left-wing brigade in attendance. Her retirement has the media collectively sobbing, while the Washington Post referred to her as a “role model for women in politics” and the National Journal marked this as “the end of an era.”
On the congressional end of the old hag spectrum is Pasteface Pelosi, one of my favorite targets for ridicule and abomination. Apropos the Homeland InSecurity shutdown fiasco, Pelosi recently dared to suggest that most folks can’t go a week or more without their paychecks, and that included members of Congress.
The most recent Roll Call annual financial disclosure review, for the calendar year 2013, revealed a combined minimum net worth of Congress of $2.1 billion, with one-third of all members of congress (188) landing in the millionaire category. The Center for Responsive Politics measured the median wealth factor on congressional members to be north of $1M. One caveat with the numbers, however:
... More... http://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/congress-mummies-r-us/ |
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