House Democrats Cut War Funding, Ban on Release of Touture Photos While Earmarking Over $100B For Global Bailouts

House Democrats are "playing politics" with our soldiers lives. Why do they hate our military?

As HUMAN EVENTS has been reporting all week, House Democrats have been playing politics with the War Supplemental Bill that funds the military efforts in both Afghanistan and Iraq.  The House and Senate versions of the bill moved into conference and House Democrats have been making substantial changes to the bill behind closed doors. These changes have outraged the Senate and lost support from the entire Republican caucus that is usually a sure vote for passing troop funding.

Democrats reduced the troop funding in the bill by $5 billion and added in $108 billion in unrestricted funds to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a global bailout package.  They also stripped out the Graham-Lieberman amendment language that would bar the release of terrorist detainee photos being sought after by the ACLU.

They want to take money from our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and give over 20 times that amount to international companies to bail them out. Is the survival of foreign companies more important than the survival of our men and women in uniform?

They want to release the "torture" photos that will endanger our troops by enflaming Muslims in the region with picutres of their fellow Muslims being "tortured" by our troops.

This shamelessly shows their contempt our troops. The chance this will pass the Senate is remote, but it is despicable that the House Democrats even thought that this is a good idea.

Almost $30 B More Given to GM As White House Prepares Them for Bankruptcy

GM moves one step closer to bankruptcy:

The Obama administration is preparing to move General Motors into bankruptcy as early as next week under the terms of a plan that would give GM tens of billions of dollars more in government financing, the Washington Post reported.

Under the GM draft bankruptcy plan, the automaker would receive just under $30 billion in additional federal loans, a source told the Post, which would up the government's overall investment in the company to nearly $45 billion.

GM is one more step toward officially becoming a baliout failure for Obama. The writing has been on the wall for months here, here, and here. Why is Obama determined to throw good money after to fail?

Auto Bailouts Success Rate Looks to Fall 0-for-2

Here's more news from on wasted government money:

For General Motors Corp., the task at hand is so difficult that experts say a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing is all but inevitable.

To remake itself outside of court, GM must persuade bondholders to swap $27 billion in debt for 10 per cent of its risky stock. On top of that, the automaker must work out deals with its union, announce factory clo­sures, cut brands and force hundreds of dealers out of business — all in three weeks.

“I just don’t see how it’s possible, given all of the pieces,” said Stephen J. Lub­ben, a professor at Seton Hall Uni­versity School of Law who specializes in bankruptcy.

This further confirmation that all the bailouts done by Bush and Obama only delayed the inevitable outcome of bankruptcy.

Chrysler already declared Ch. 11. Now, GM is about to follow it. That's billions more down the drain.

$2B More Goes Down GM Rathole As CEO Says Bankruptcy "More Probable"

More of our money goes down the drain:

The Treasury Department says it has provided General Motors Corp. with another $2 billion in federal loans as the giant automaker struggles to restructure.

The Treasury said that the payment was made to GM on Wednesday and provides working capital to the company.

This comes after many stories have come out that has the new GM CEO saying that bankruptcy is "more probable". We are just delaying the inevitable. In fact, the GM CEO said that it is even "more probable than it was in the past."

Why are we throwing more of our taxpayer money into a company that their own CEO doesn't believe will recover without bankruptcy? It doesn't make any sense at all. What happened to cutting out things that doesn't work? Obama is dropping the ball big time on this.

Your Taxes Hard at Work: Top 10 Bailoutees Spend $9.5 Lobbying DC in 1Q of 09

The pigs that fed out of the government's trough, apparently, spent some the money they received out of our hard-earned tax money to panhandle in the halls of Congress to get more of the taxpayers' money.

The top 10 recipients of the government's $700 billion financial bailout spent about $9.5 million on federal lobbying during the first three months of the year.

Of those who ate at the government's bailout buffet on our dime, the nearly bankrupt GM was the number one offender. They spent $2.8 million on begging for more scraps.

To get a full list of the deadbeat CEOs here.

Failing Newspapers Next to Receive Bailouts?

U.S. bill seeks to rescue faltering newspapers
03:05 PM EDT By Thomas Ferraro

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - With many U.S. newspapers struggling to survive, a Democratic senator on Tuesday introduced a bill to help them by allowing newspaper companies to restructure as nonprofits with a variety of tax breaks.

"This may not be the optimal choice for some major newspapers or corporate media chains but it should be an option for many newspapers that are struggling to stay afloat," said Senator Benjamin Cardin.

A Cardin spokesman said the bill had yet to attract any co-sponsors, but had sparked plenty of interest within the media, which has seen plunging revenues and many journalist layoffs.

Cardin's Newspaper Revitalization Act would allow newspapers to operate as nonprofits for educational purposes under the U.S. tax code, giving them a similar status to public broadcasting companies.

Under this arrangement, newspapers would still be free to report on all issues, including political campaigns. But they would be prohibited from making political endorsements.

Advertising and subscription revenue would be tax exempt, and contributions to support news coverage or operations could be tax deductible.

Because newspaper profits have been falling in recent years, "no substantial loss of federal revenue" was expected under the legislation, Cardin's office said in a statement.

Cardin's office said his bill was aimed at preserving local and community newspapers, not conglomerates which may also own radio and TV stations. His bill would also let a non-profit buy newspapers owned by a conglomerate.

"We are losing our newspaper industry," Cardin said. "The economy has caused an immediate problem, but the business model for newspapers, based on circulation and advertising revenue, is broken, and that is a real tragedy for communities across the nation and for our democracy.

Newspaper subscriptions and advertising have shrunk dramatically in the past few years as Americans have turned more and more to the Internet or television for information.

In recent months, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Rocky Mountain News, the Baltimore Examiner and the San Francisco Chronicle have ceased daily publication or announced that they may have to stop publishing.

In December the Tribune Company, which owns a number of newspapers including The Baltimore Sun, The Chicago Tribune and The Los Angeles Times filed for bankruptcy protection.

Two newspaper chains, Gannett Co Inc and Advance Publications, on Monday announced employee furloughs. It will be the second furlough this year at Gannett.


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http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSTRE52N67F20090324
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My Thoughts

Now, we're supposed to pay to be propagandized by the liberals in the old print media. If they're classified as non-profit organizations, some our tax dollars will go to the liberally biased print media that have been declared unwanted by the American consumers. People would've bought subscriptions, if they wanted the papers to survive. It has been known for a while that newspapers were in trouble, and they had plenty of warning before the papers started to go under.

Why do we have to keep bailing out these companies that has already been deemed unworthy by the masses? There is a reason that they are failing. We have become tired of being talked down to by elitist snobs that think that they know what is good for us and don't care whether we like it or not.

AIG Bonuses: Topic of Shakespearian Drama Unfolding in DC

The White House Seeks to Block Bonuses at A.I.G.

By EDMUND L. ANDREWS and JACKIE CALMESPublished: March 17, 2009

WASHINGTON - President Obama and his top economic advisers scrambled to calm a nationwide furor on Monday over bonuses paid at the American International Group, even as administration officials acknowledged they had known about the issue for months.

One day after the economic advisers insisted that their hands had been tied by contracts requiring the payments, Mr. Obama ordered the Treasury Department to "pursue every single legal avenue to block these bonuses" and make the American taxpayers whole.

"In the last six months, A.I.G. has received substantial sums from the U.S. Treasury," Mr. Obama said. "How do they justify this outrage to the taxpayers who are keeping the company afloat?

"But as anger from lawmakers escalated and criticism of the retention bonuses overshadowed other news for a second consecutive day, White House and Treasury officials offered only a general sense of how they would carry out Mr. Obama's order and few explanations for why they had not acted earlier.

White House officials said the Treasury would recapture the bonus money by writing new requirements into a $30 billion installment of government aid scheduled to go soon to the ailing insurance conglomerate. The government has already provided $170 billion in taxpayer assistance to keep A.I.G from failing and now owns nearly 80 percent of the company.

But administration officials conceded that almost all of the most recent round of bonuses, totaling $165 million, had been paid last Friday, one day before the Treasury publicly acknowledged that it had reluctantly approved the payouts. The officials said that people who received the bonuses would probably be able to keep them.

Bonuses at A.I.G.

By seeking to link repayment of the bonus money to the coming $30 billion in assistance, the administration seemed to leave open the possibility that the company would effectively be repaying taxpayers with taxpayer money. A Treasury official disputed that taxpayers would be repaying themselves, but could not specify how else the company would give back the money.

Increasing the pressure on the company, Andrew M. Cuomo, the New York attorney general, said he would subpoena A.I.G. for the names, job descriptions and performance evaluations of the employees receiving the bonuses.

"You could argue that if taxpayers hadn't bailed out A.I.G., the contracts wouldn't be worth the paper they were signed on," Mr. Cuomo said.

For all of the furor since details of the bonuses became public over the last several days, the issue of retention payments to A.I.G. employees globally has been percolating publicly since A.I.G. was bailed out in mid-September. About $1 billion in retention payments for 2008 and 2009 are in question, but the controversy involves about half of that, about $450 million over two years, that was intended for employees of A.I.G.'s financial products unit. That unit was the source of the financial derivatives blamed for the near-collapse at the heart of the economy's downturn.

The Treasury and Federal Reserve officials said they had known about the bonus program as far back as last fall. The program has provoked public protests from a handful of critics and at least one Democratic lawmaker in Congress - Representative Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, a member of the House Committee on Government Oversight, who demanded without success in December that A.I.G. provide information about the bonuses.

Mr. Cummings said he had been communicating regularly with A.I.G.'s chief executive, Edward M. Liddy, about the bonuses ever since December. Mr. Cummings said he was particularly concerned that the bonuses were supposed to be paid by March 15, adding that he assumed Treasury officials had the same worries.

"I assumed that they were well aware of it and would take appropriate action" before the March 15 deadline, Mr. Cummings said. "In light of the biggest quarterly loss in history, you would think that A.I.G. and Mr. Liddy would have been able to convince folks who were supposed to be getting these retention payments, based at least in part on performance, that they might want to voluntarily not take all or part of them."

Treasury and Fed officials said they knew that A.I.G. paid $55 million in bonuses in December.

But administration officials said that the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, did not personally become aware until last week that an even bigger round of payments was due on March 15. Administration officials said Mr. Geithner learned of the deadline early last week, when the Federal Reserve Bank of New York alerted him that the bonus payments were coming due.

Mr. Geithner, according to Treasury officials, insisted that the bonus plan was "unacceptable" and called Mr. Liddy on Wednesday to demand changes.

A.I.G. executives said they would never have proceeded with the bonus payments before getting approval from the Treasury and the Federal Reserve.

"We would never make any important business decisions without discussing them with our government managers and owners," said one executive, who did not want to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter.

A.I.G. has so far declined to identify the employees receiving the bonuses, some of whom are thought to be foreigners who worked out of offices in London.

The White House Seeks to Block Bonuses at A.I.G.

The tangle over bonuses highlighted a broader confusion over who actually controls the insurance conglomerate. The Treasury and the Federal Reserve have both pumped vast amounts of money into the company, but the two agencies have never made it clear which of them is in charge. Both agencies have insisted that neither of them "owns" A.I.G., or controls its management decisions, even though the federal government owns almost 80 percent of the company. As a result, the Treasury and Fed officials have repeatedly resisted forcing the company to disclose more about how A.I.G. was spending taxpayer money.

It was only on Sunday, after Democratic lawmakers had criticized the Fed and Treasury for weeks for being too protective of the company, that A.I.G. released the names of the companies that it had repaid with money it received from the government.

Since November, A.I.G.'s financial products unit has been led by Gerry Pasciucco, a former vice chairman of Morgan Stanley who was brought in by Mr. Liddy with instructions to wind down the unit. Company executives said they faced a need to keep skilled professionals in the business unit, which traded trillions of dollars worth of financial derivatives, because it would take great expertise to shut down the business in an orderly manner and without causing more turmoil.

Christina Pretto, a spokeswoman for A.I.G., said Mr. Pasciucco was traveling on Monday and was unavailable. But she said that since his arrival, the company had reduced the volume of its financial positions by more than 25 percent, starting with the "complex and difficult-to-manage positions."

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http://mobile.nytimes.com/2009/03/17/business/17bailout.xml
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My Thoughts


"The Treasury and Federal Reserve officials said they had known about the bonus program as far back as last fall."

That sentence is what jumped out at me the most. They knew about this for months. How can they feign shock and outrage when they didn't do one thing to stop it before it happened? Sen. Dodd (D) even was the one responsible for the amendment in the bill that allowed them to keep their bonuses. they feignback as last fall.

Houston Mayor: I'll Help Citizens Pay Debts, Later That Day: Never Mind

White backs off 'credit score enhancement' with tax $$
Houston plan 'hit a nerve across this country,' councilwoman says
By CAROLYN FEIBEL Copyright 2009 Houston Chronicle
Feb. 24, 2009, 3:25PM

Mayor Bill White this afternoon announced that a plan for the city to pay off some debts for first-time home buyers has been pulled from tomorrow's City Council agenda.

Council members are now professing their "embarrassment" about the proposal, which has hit the national news circuit, including drudgereport.com., which picked up this morning's Houston Chronicle story about the plan

"This issue has hit a nerve across this country," said Councilwoman Anne Clutterbuck. "Not just here in the city of Houston. Giving people the ability to increase their credit score artificially because we're allowing them to pay off their credit cards is exactly what got us into this (national economic) crisis in the first place."

Councilman Jarvis Johnson said the city should continue to help people move from renting to owning.

"But I do believe we can do it in a better way, a more thoughtful way," he said. "But we don't want to become enablers, where people count on the city to be the cure-all."

The “Credit Score Enhancement Program” would have given up to $3,000 in grants to individuals who are trying to qualify for mortgages through the city’s homebuyers assistance program. City officials say some applicants fall short of eligibility by only 10 or 20 points on their credit scores, and paying off some debt balances can quickly improve their numbers.

The proposal aroused critics who say the city should not use public funds to help people pay down car loans, credit card balances, or other debts — even if the slight credit bump would help them realize the dream of home- ownership.

“We just can’t give away government money to help people with their credit scores,” Councilman Mike Sullivan said Monday. “You’re giving them other taxpayers’ money to pay off the bills.”

Clutterbuck called the program well-intentioned, but said it would have gone too far.

“If this credit crisis has taught us anything, we need to focus on paying off our debts and saving more,” she said. “Using government money to help someone pay off their debts is not the same as asking them to pay off their debts themselves.”

The $444,000 proposed for the program is leftover money from a $1.5 million appropriation the city made for emergency home and roof repairs after Hurricane Ike.

The city has three programs that provide grants for down payments and closing costs for qualified homebuyers. The most generous one offers a $37,500 grant to buy a home that costs $135,000 or less, but only in certain disadvantaged Houston neighborhoods the city is trying to revitalize. Participants cannot earn more than 80 percent of the Houston median income.

Some support

Affordable housing advocates were cautiously optimistic about the proposal Monday. The tightening credit market has made it harder for previously qualified families to get mortgages, said Stephan Fairfield, president of Covenant Community Capital Corp., a Houston nonprofit that helps low-income families build assets.

Some banks previously had accepted credit scores of 580 or 600 as a qualifying threshold, but most are now requiring 620, Fairfield said.

“New tools are needed to help families move forward towards home ownership,” he said. “If there are lenders that are offering loan approvals subject to retiring the outstanding payables, or if there is something that can help them get over the credit score threshold, it certainly makes sense.”

John Henneberger, co-director of the Texas Low-Income Housing Information Service, called the Houston plan “a very aggressive approach” to housing assistance. He said he needed to know more details but ventured that it could work if the city provided a good pre-purchase homebuyer education program. The city requires all applicants to complete an educational program.

Henneberger said the subprime meltdown and global financial crisis have made housing advocates take a “more conservative tack.”

“We’ve certainly learned that we don’t do low-income people a whole lot of favors when we get them overly extended on credit.”

‘A bad idea’

Anti-tax activists also cited the harsh lessons of the housing crash and recession.

“I just don’t see any way someone could justify this, with everything that has gone on in the credit market,” said Michael Quinn Sullivan, president of Texans for Fiscal Responsibility. “This is precisely what got us into it, with the playing fast and loose with the credit score.”

“One would think from the federal problem we’ve just had, the city of Houston officials would have learned from that,” said Peggy Venable, state director of Americans for Prosperity, a limited government advocacy group. “It’s a bad idea.”

Program backers defended the proposal, saying it certainly was not for people with poor or damaged credit.

“We don’t talk to them about this unless their credit score is pretty close,” said Brian Stoker, community banking manager for Amegy Bank. The bank is one of the lenders the city uses for its affordable-housing programs.

“For somebody who really qualifies and should have a home, it doesn’t take much to help them get there,” Stoker said. “I think it would be a really innovative and good program. And, of course, it’s not for everybody.”

The city made 130 grants to homebuyers last year and hopes to raise that to 540 in 2009, according to Juan Chavez, manager of the city’s Homebuyers Assistance Program.

“What we’ve seen is that $3,000 will increase a credit score significantly and relatively fast,” Chavez said.

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http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/6277344.html#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My Thoughts
Too bad, he backtracked. I was planning a move to Houston after I heard about this. I guess I’ll have to unpack.

It was rightfully ridiculed, dissed, and dismissed. That kind of “help” to get people loans that couldn’t have afforded it otherwise is exactly what landed us in the mortgage and foreclosure crisis in this country that we have now.

The idea fits the definition of insanity by Mayor Bill White of Houston. Doing the same type of loan stupidity is what organizations like ACORN and the Democrats through bills like the Community Reinvestment Act during forced banks to do is what landed us in the first place.

Bailouts Gone Wild

Porn kings Larry Flint and Joe Francis go begging for a bailout
BY CATEY HILL DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER Wednesday, January 7th 2009, 5:18 PM

Is the porn industry up next for a bailout?  If porn titans Joe Francis and Larry Flynt have anything to do with it, it will.

Yes, ladies and gentleman, the titans of pornography are begging for a bailout.

Joe Francis, creator of the "Girl's Gone Wild" video series, and Larry Flynt, founder of Hustler, will ask Congress for a $5 billion bailout, according to TMZ.

Why does the porn industry need a bailout?  Because apparently even porn is getting smacked by the recession. 

XXX DVD sales have taken a hit - about a 22% hit, according to TMZ.

"With all this economic misery and people losing all that money, sex is the farthest thing from their mind," Flynt is quoted as saying on TMZ. "It's time for Congress to rejuvenate the sexual appetite of America."

Is the porn industry really experiencing a severe downturn?  It depends on who you ask.

Francis Koenig's fund AdultVest, which invests in porn-related assets, was up 50% in 2008, according to Tom Johansmeyer's article in next month's Atlantic (as reported by The Huffington Post).  But video sales are down.

"The industry's not going anywhere," Koenig says. "You've got 6 billion people on the planet," he laughs, "and they're all horny."

The porn industry generated about $12 billion in 2007, according to the Atlantic article.

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http://www.nydailynews.com/money/2009/01/07/2009-01-07_porn_kings_larry_flint_and_joe_francis_g.html
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My Thoughts

Well, apparently this culture of expecting a bailout that was started by Bush and expanded by the Democrats has finally gone too far. Whether or not this is a real expectaion or a joke by Francis and Flint, it is a perfect example of what is happening because of the Congress' lack of a backbone to turn down anyone with their hand out. Sure, they'll put on a show that will make it look like they're going to be tough, but when it comes to it they'll use the taxpayer's money to bailout those that made bad decisions and ruined their companies that they were hired to run.