Posts tagged: corruption

April 4, 2009

Obama Bows Before the King of Saudia Arabia – Is America Subservient to a King?

categories Executive Screwing, Main Content | comments 0 Comments

“As naïve as that is, Obama did something yesterday that no US president should ever do: he bowed to a foreign leader. Worse still, he did it to the Saudi King. At the G-20 Summit yesterday, Obama did a full bow from the waist when he met King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. This is never done! A U.S. president is never supposed to bow before foreign royalty. He didn’t bow before Queen Elizabeth yesterday. His act has many wondering whether it is another signal to the Muslim world.”
–Muslims in the White House? – HUMAN EVENTS

See for your self.  At just past 50 seconds into the video, you will witness the President of the United States bowing to a Muslim King.

Well there you have it folks! The President of the United States bowing to a Muslim King!

Thanks, Barrack Hussein Obama.  Now we know where your loyalties lie!

A real American born president would never bow to anyone.

America, you voted for this subject of a muslim king.  You are so screwed!

March 24, 2009

Forget bonus outrage, what about ‘ShariAIG’?

categories Screwed by Bankers | comments 0 Comments

I, for one, am not falling for the dog and pony show in the general media.  Read this article and learn how you are being manipulated and screwed every day…

By Diana West

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Congratulations, American taxpayer. Finally, something has roused you from the stupor, the torpor, the catatonia of lingering Obamania.

It was those bonuses. Those AIG bonuses of $165 million. Because that’s your money, your millions of dollars paid out to the same incompetents who got us into this mess, right? Sure. But you’re on the case now.

You’re on top of it. Gave your representatives in Washington a piece of your mind, too. Nobody fools the American taxpayer like that and gets away with it, right?

Sigh. Dear American Taxpayer: If only you knew how easily you have been gulled, played like a greenhorn, a rube, a Madoff mark. This $165 million scandal may have unleashed the first genuine feeding frenzy of the Obama administration, but it is a distraction, a sideshow, a smokescreen over what is really going on: namely, the Bush-initiated, Obama-Pelosi-Reid-led incursion into the private sector designed to nationalize the workings of the economy in order to take over, capture and enslave enough of the free market to transform the fundamental character of this nation.

Remember what our 44th president said back in 1995: "In America," he told the Chicago Reader, "we have this strong bias toward individual action. You know, we idolize the John Wayne hero who comes in to correct things with both guns blazing. But individual actions, individual dreams are not sufficient. We must unite in collective action, build collective institutions and organizations."

That is exactly what’s going on behind the $165 million smokescreen — truly, a masterpiece of misdirection. I have no reason to believe it was planned, although I am open to suggestion. After all, it is notable that the nearly $4 billion in Merill Lynch bonuses, doled out just before the dying firm’s Jan. 1 takeover by Bank of America (which received bailout funds partly due to the takeover), failed to churn the same national waters.

But I digress.

Up in arms about the AIG bonuses, the body politic remains calm, cool, practically collected about the trillions of taxpayer dollars Obama & Co. are drawing on to buy out the economy, expanding the population’s dependency on Biggest Government in the process. There are simply too few of us seeing red, for example, over the surprise Federal Reserve decision (announced this week at the height of Bonus Rage) to pump another $1 trillion into the economy, money the International Herald Tribune said the Fed "will create out of thin air."

Still, there is good in Bonus Rage. It’s a sign of life. As the president said this week, "I don’t want to quell anger. People are right to be angry. I’m angry. What I want us to do is channel our anger in a constructive way." My sentiments exactly (this must be a first), although I’m sure we differ when it comes to what constitutes a "constructive way."

For starters, Bonus Rage should finally drive Democratic Sen. Christopher Dodd from office when he runs for re-election in 2010 — unless he peels off the blindfold and sees the error of his ways sometime sooner. Dodd, after all, is the largest recipient of AIG largesse, "most of it," as John Batchelor reports, "from a dozen AIG executives whose bonuses are protected under the legislation Dodd now admits he wrote."

Ouch. For several days this week, the influential Senate Banking chairman — he who never met a sweetheart deal he didn’t find irresistible — lied about his role in writing legislation that protects AIG’s bonuses. Repeatedly, Dodd insisted that he had had nothing to do with the bonus-protection language in the, ahem, Dodd Amendment until, mirabile dictu, he remembered that he had. As he finally told CNN on Wednesday evening, he actually wrote the provision himself with, he added, input from the administration.

Did I mention President Obama was the No. 2 recipient of AIG largesse? Dodd received $103,100. Obama received $101,332. Now Dodd, after being scorched by these disclosures, says he’ll give his AIG money back. Will Obama? Does it matter? The proof is already in the pudding, even if the burnt offerings go back to the kitchen.

Fume, baby, fume. But there’s more. The nationalization of AIG is not just bankrupting the country by throwing billions of our dollars at AIG’s toxic assets. The nationalization of AIG is forcing the American taxpayer to support a very different kind of toxic asset. I refer to AIG’s promotion of Sharia (Islamic law) in its Takaful division, the Sharia-compliant insurance sector of AIG. Since we the people own 80 percent of AIG, we the people now promote Sharia, too.

Don’t believe me? Takaful insurance, our very own AIG Takaful Web site explains, "avoids prohibited elements in accordance with the Sharia law," adding: "We do not invest in anything that is haram (prohibited under Sharia). We do not borrow, lend or enter into any financial transaction that is unIslamic."

At the very least — aside from promoting from the law of the Koran, Osama bin Laden, the Taliban, the mullahs of Iran, the clerics of Saudi Arabia (not to mention Afghanistan, whose Sharia-supreme "justice" system recently upheld a journalist’s 20-year prison sentence for "blasphemy") — taxpayer support for AIG is by definition sectarian and therefore in violation of the Establishment Clause of the Constitution.

It is on these grounds — that the American taxpayer is now directly funding sectarian Islamic religious activities — that a lawsuit, conducted by the Thomas More Law Center, has been filed against the government. Recently, the Justice Department, another U.S. taxpayer-funded entity last time I checked, entered the case to defend the AIG bailout, filing a motion to dismiss, the Thomas More Law Center notes, based on this being a time of "crisis."

You better believe this is a time of crisis — but not the crisis envisioned by Justice officials charged with safeguarding gross government fecklessness. Only two of our elected officials — Reps. Sue Myrick, R-N.C., and Frank Wolf, R-Va., and bless them for it — have publicly decried the government’s AIG Sharia-bailout; that’s a crisis. Chump change bonuses arouse the wrath of the nation — not the nefarious movement to nationalize the marketplace; that’s a crisis, too. The American people are angry, good. But we need to understand there are far more important things to be angry about.

JWR contributor Diana West is a columnist for The Washington Times.

March 23, 2009

Ruin Your Health With the Obama Stimulus Plan: Betsy McCaughey

categories Say What?, Screwed by Congress | comments 0 Comments

Commentary by Betsy McCaughey

Feb. 9 (Bloomberg) — Republican Senators are questioning whether President Barack Obama’s stimulus bill contains the right mix of tax breaks and cash infusions to jump-start the economy.

Tragically, no one from either party is objecting to the health provisions slipped in without discussion. These provisions reflect the handiwork of Tom Daschle, until recently the nominee to head the Health and Human Services Department.

Senators should read these provisions and vote against them because they are dangerous to your health. (Page numbers refer to H.R. 1 EH, pdf version).

The bill’s health rules will affect “every individual in the United States” (445, 454, 479). Your medical treatments will be tracked electronically by a federal system. Having electronic medical records at your fingertips, easily transferred to a hospital, is beneficial. It will help avoid duplicate tests and errors.

But the bill goes further. One new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective. The goal is to reduce costs and “guide” your doctor’s decisions (442, 446). These provisions in the stimulus bill are virtually identical to what Daschle prescribed in his 2008 book, “Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis.” According to Daschle, doctors have to give up autonomy and “learn to operate less like solo practitioners.”

Keeping doctors informed of the newest medical findings is important, but enforcing uniformity goes too far.

New Penalties

Hospitals and doctors that are not “meaningful users” of the new system will face penalties.  “Meaningful user” isn’t defined in the bill. That will be left to the HHS secretary, who will be empowered to impose “more stringent measures of meaningful use over time” (511, 518, 540-541)

What penalties will deter your doctor from going beyond the electronically delivered protocols when your condition is atypical or you need an experimental treatment? The vagueness is intentional. In his book, Daschle proposed an appointed body with vast powers to make the “tough” decisions elected politicians won’t make.

The stimulus bill does that, and calls it the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research (190-192). The goal, Daschle’s book explained, is to slow the development and use of new medications and technologies because they are driving up costs. He praises Europeans for being more willing to accept “hopeless diagnoses” and “forgo experimental treatments,” and he chastises Americans for expecting too much from the health-care system.

Elderly Hardest Hit

Daschle says health-care reform “will not be pain free.” Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them. That means the elderly will bear the brunt.

Medicare now pays for treatments deemed safe and effective. The stimulus bill would change that and apply a cost- effectiveness standard set by the Federal Council (464).

The Federal Council is modeled after a U.K. board discussed in Daschle’s book. This board approves or rejects treatments using a formula that divides the cost of the treatment by the number of years the patient is likely to benefit. Treatments for younger patients are more often approved than treatments for diseases that affect the elderly, such as osteoporosis.

In 2006, a U.K. health board decreed that elderly patients with macular degeneration had to wait until they went blind in one eye before they could get a costly new drug to save the other eye. It took almost three years of public protests before the board reversed its decision.

Hidden Provisions

If the Obama administration’s economic stimulus bill passes the Senate in its current form, seniors in the U.S. will face similar rationing. Defenders of the system say that individuals benefit in younger years and sacrifice later.

The stimulus bill will affect every part of health care, from medical and nursing education, to how patients are treated and how much hospitals get paid. The bill allocates more funding for this bureaucracy than for the Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force combined (90-92, 174-177, 181).

Hiding health legislation in a stimulus bill is intentional. Daschle supported the Clinton administration’s health-care overhaul in 1994, and attributed its failure to debate and delay. A year ago, Daschle wrote that the next president should act quickly before critics mount an opposition. “If that means attaching a health-care plan to the federal budget, so be it,” he said. “The issue is too important to be stalled by Senate protocol.”

More Scrutiny Needed

On Friday, President Obama called it “inexcusable and irresponsible” for senators to delay passing the stimulus bill. In truth, this bill needs more scrutiny.

The health-care industry is the largest employer in the U.S. It produces almost 17 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product. Yet the bill treats health care the way European governments do: as a cost problem instead of a growth industry. Imagine limiting growth and innovation in the electronics or auto industry during this downturn. This stimulus is dangerous to your health and the economy.

(Betsy McCaughey is former lieutenant governor of New York and is an adjunct senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. The opinions expressed are her own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Betsy McCaughey at Betsymross@aol.com

 

Oh, you wanted “change”, you got change!  You are screwed by Uncle Sam

–Publius