Filed under: Democrat Corruption, Foreign Policy, Intelligence, Iraq, Israel, National Security, Progressivism | Tags: London Terrorist Murder, National Defense University, Stockholm Riots
An off-duty British soldier has been butchered on a busy London street by two Islamist terrorists, the first terrorist murder on the British mainland since the 7/7 suicide bombings of 2005. The British-born Muslim convert calmly spoke to a witness’s video phone.
We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you until you leave us alone. Your people will never be safe. The only reason we have done this is because Muslims are dying by British soldiers every day.We must fight them as they fight us. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. I apologize that women had to witness this today but in our lands our women have to see the same. You people will never be safe. Remover your government, they don’t care about you. Do you think David Cameron is going to get caught in the street when we start busting our guns? Do you think your politicians are going to die? No, it’s going to be the average guy like you, and your children. So get rid of them. Tell them to bring our troops back so we, so you can all live in peace.”
Witnesses said the men first ran over the soldier with a car, just yards from the Royal Barracks. Then they set about him with meat cleavers and knives. He was slashed, and eviscerated and beheaded, shouting Allahu Akbar, as horrified passers-by watched.
Here, Christiane Amanpour and Wolf Blitzer wondered why David Cameron and the British government immediately blamed the incident as terrorism.
In Sweden, “unrest” in Stockholm’s suburbs continued for a fourth night as rioters showed their anger by setting fire to as many as 30 cars and buildings, and throwing stones at emergency workers. Another 11 cars were set on fire in Husby, an area of high-rise apartment blocks. Unemployment rates for immigrants from countries outside the EU are nearly three times as high as for ethnic Swedes.
Well, we just had the Boston bombing, which they also had trouble calling terrorism. A bunch of left-leaning media types were hoping out loud that it would turn out to be a “white American” rather than a Muslim extremist. NPR’s Diana Temple-Raston speculated on air that it was likely right-wing extremists behind the bombing because it was Hitler’s birthday that week, and “Hitler’s birthday is ‘big’ for the right.” And today we have learned that a man shot by an FBI agent in Orlando implicated himself and the older Tsarnaev brother in a gruesome 2011 triple murder.
We had considerable difficulty getting anyone to call the incident in Benghazi an “act of terror”, or “terrorism.” Comes right from the top.
President Obama spoke earlier today at the National Defense University, at Fort McNair, in his most droning, lecturing voice. When we were attacked on 9/11, we were shaken out of complacency. “This was a different kind of war. …A group of terrorists came to kill as many civilians as they could:”
And so our nation went to war. We have now been at war for well over a decade. I won’t review the full history. What’s clear is that we quickly drove al Qaeda out of Afghanistan, but then shifted our focus and began a new war in Iraq. This carried grave consequences for our fight against al Qaeda, our standing in the world, and – to this day – our interests in a vital region.
For this president, the only reason for war was revenge against Osama bin Laden and his top deputies. Obama got bin Laden and has done in most of his staff, and ended Bush’s War in Iraq, brought 150,000 troops home, (and because of his mismanagement, never achieved a status of forces agreement, and an ill-prepared Iraq in now falling apart.) “We pursued a new strategy in Afghanistan and increased our training of Afghan forces.” (Hamstringing our forces with the politically-correct idea that we should show our “trust” by having our forces unarmed. This has resulted in a death-toll under Obama that is twice as high as any under Bush). “For over the last decade our nation has spent well over a trillion dollars on war, exploding our deficits and constraining our ability to nation build here at home.” (This from the president who has spent a trillion dollars every year of his administration so far, mostly wasted). He went into a big defense of his drone policy, which is mostly making undeclared war on nations with whom we are supposedly not at war. His defensive comments indicate that he is aware of the opposition from other nations.
Barack Obama does not get terrorism.He is the Not-Bush, everything Bush did was deplorable and he is sure the world hates us for the luxury seaside resort detention center at Guantanamo. He cannot get his mind around the difference between terrorists who have no legal standing under the Geneva Conventions and ordinary criminals.
It was a lecturing, arrogant, defensive speech full of the usual straw men. He’s clearly threatened by all the scandals flowing around the White House. They are bad. Obama’s disregard for the Constitution and its provisions, contempt for the separation of powers, and unfamiliarity with good management and American tradition have led him to believe that he can approach governing America with Chicago-style politics. It would be a bad idea at any time, but in an economy weakened by Chicago-style economics, it has led to trouble. His overblown confidence in his own ideology is proving no more effective in the nation’s capitol than it is in the failing states run by Democratic administrations, like Illinois.
Filed under: Democrat Corruption, Domestic Policy, Economy, Health Care, Immigration, Law, National Security, Politics, Taxes | Tags: Can We Fix Abusive Government?, The Slow Reveal of Scandal, What to Do About Scandal
“One of the greatest uses of scandal is to vividly demonstrate what new laws are needed and to create the political conditions to get them enacted.”
John Steele Gordon has a fascinating essay in The American, on the uses of scandal. He ranges back and forth in American history to illustrate some of our greatest scandals and how they played out.
Washington is suddenly awash with major scandals. The IRS has been caught abusing its powers regarding conservative organizations. The AP had its phone records seized without a court order. The White House explanation for the Benghazi attack has been shown to have been a tissue of lies made for political purposes. There might well be more scandals to come. The Environmental Protection Agency, for instance, has reportedly been routinely waiving the substantial fees to fulfill Freedom of Information Act requests for liberal organizations but not for conservative ones.
This has produced, naturally, a cacophony of talk among the chattering classes, much of it basically gossip. And there’s nothing wrong with that. To gossip, after all, is to be human.
Extracting the truth about the scandal is something else entirely. The information comes slowly in bits and pieces. How long will the investigation keep the public interest? Of all the excuses and alibis being offered for extremely bad behavior by the Obama administration, the most interesting one came from David Axlerod, onetime major adviser to President Obama:
Part of being president is that there’s so much beneath you that you can’t know, because the government is so vast.
As a subhead in the Wall Street Journal asked: “If the President doesn’t run the government, then who does?”
Anyone who has ever worked in a large organization knows that the enemy is bureaucracy. How many layers of management are the optimum and when does it all begin to break down? Few is better, and smaller organizations are better. The real problem is that there are few things that the government should be doing, and fewer that they can do well. I suppose it’s natural for someone who does not have great expertise in management to assume that things would be better if the government was just in charge. Obama will be the case study for that concept for years.
There are things that only the government can do. National Defense, a military, interstate highways, immigration, foreign trade, foreign affairs. But there are far more things the federal government should not be doing. If you go to Wikipedia and enter “List of U.S. Federal Agencies” and separately, enter “Independent Agencies of the U.S. Government” — the first is the vast number of agencies under the various cabinet positions, and the second is the agencies that are independent of any cabinet position. These are sobering lists. Is it possible to reduce the sway of government or has it taken on a life of its own, growing inexorably?
“Your New Health Care System” instantly makes one realize that ObamaCare is just another scandal. This arrogant overreach will not work, is a huge drag on the economy, and is destroying our health care system. Kathleen Sebelius’s attempt to get the health care providers she regulates to donate to the cause of rolling out ObamaCare is a separate and distinct scandal, aside from being against the law.
One of the greatest uses of scandal is to vividly demonstrate what new laws are needed and to create the political conditions to get them enacted. In the case of the IRS, what is needed seems to be a strong sense of ethics. Can you legislate ethics and forbid politicizing the work of an agency? They are a unionized agency. Can these people be fired? Or do the bad apples among government workers simply move to another department?
In a book titled The New, New Deal, author Michael Grunewald writes of the Energy Department’s Office of Weatherization and Intergovernmental Programs. The Recovery Act allocated $5 billion to a three-year program to weatherize 600,000 low-income families’ homes through better windows, insulation, furnaces and air conditioners. The agency was informally known as “the Turkey Farm” for the number of sub-par civil servants sent there over the years when no other agency would take them. He told the story of an excellent manager’s attempts to make the department work. She never stood a chance, Grunwald said. “They knew that political appointees come and go, but civil servants are forever. They call themselves “WeBe’s,” as in “We be here, you be gone.”
So we need not only new laws to fix the underlying problems that produced the scandals, but also a serious effort to get rid of unnecessary and useless agencies. Can we retain the public interest long enough to put real pressure on Congress to make the changes? Can we produce enough activists demanding change?
Political scientist Alan Wolfe has suggested that Conservatives cannot resolve the tensions inherent in “managing government agencies whose missions —indeed, whose very existence —they believe to be illegitimate.” William Voegeli responded: “If conservatives govern badly because they stand outside the borders of modern government yelling Shrink, liberals should govern brilliantly, since their raison d’être is to vindicate the activist state’s right, duty and capacity to handle all the responsibilities entrusted to it over the past century, and then to assign it still more. ” So there you have the conundrum.
Filed under: Democrat Corruption, Taxes, Law, National Security, Immigration | Tags: The Obama Administration, Not Trustworthy, A Common Thread
Professor John Yoo has identified the common thread in the major Obama administration scandals:
Add up all the recent scandals and the message is clear: the Obama administration is showing that it cannot be trusted with the basic functions of government: law enforcement (surveillance of reporters), taxation (IRS scandals), and national security (Benghazi).
The next problem to demand attention is the Immigration system, which is clearly broken. We have no control of our borders. We have an estimated eleven million illegal aliens in the country. Our traditional ways of assimilating new immigrants is broken. They are not assimilating.
The Obama administration cannot be trusted with overseeing that function. The president has decided by executive order that he will not seek the deportation of young illegal immigrants. Actually it’s worse than that. He has ordered ICE and the border patrol to release any new illegals crossing the border, under the age of 31. ICE agents are suing Homeland Security, Secretary Napolitano and the President because they are ordered not to do what the law requires them to do.
Filed under: Freedom, Heartwarming, Military, The United States | Tags: A Marine and His Dog, Iowa Elks Association, Sergeant Ross Gundlach
Twenty-five year-old Sergeant Ross Gundlach served over 150 missions with his bomb-sniffing dog in Afghanistan. He told Casey that he’d look her up when he returned home. Now enrolled at the University of Wisconsin, Gundlach learned that Casey had been mustered out and assigned to the Iowa State Fire Marshal’s Office. Gundlach wrote to State Fire Marshal Director Ray Reynolds, sending pictures and stories about Casey, seeking to adopt her.
Reynolds sought help from the Iowa Elks who agreed to donate $8,500 to buy Iowa another dog., and arranged for Gundlach to come to Iowa to plead his case officially.
Gundlach said “I promised her if we made it out alive, I’d do whatever it took to find her. On Friday he made good on that vow with some surprise help from sentimental state officials in Iowa who know how to pull off a surprise. …
When Gundlach saw Casey, he put his head in his hands and cried. She licked his face, wagging her tail furiously.
“It was a total surprise” he said.”I owe her. I’ll just try to give her the best life I can.”
Filed under: Democrat Corruption, Domestic Policy, Election 2012, Law, Statism, The Constitution, The United States | Tags: A Crooked Agency, Partisanship Gone Rogue, The IRS Scandal
I don’t think I have ever heard anything quite a shocking as Steven Miller’s testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee yesterday on the targeting of organizations that might have been able to raise money to oppose the reelection of Barack Obama.
” I do not believe that partisanship motivated the people who engaged in the practices described in the Inspector Generals’ report. …Foolish mistakes were made by people trying to be more efficient in their workload selection. …We provided horrible customer service. It’s my belief that what happened here is not illegal, but it was unappropriate. It’s my belief that what happened here was not illegal, but I suppose that there are some facts that might come out that would indicate otherwise, but it’s not my area.”
So he said he is accountable and pushed up his previously announced retirement by a couple of weeks. Mistakes were made. Always the passive voice. In an earlier day he might have been run out of town on a rail.
So the United States Treasury Department is crooked. The agency within that department that collects taxes and has the legal power to investigate citizens’ and businesses’ financial affairs believes that they are free to conduct their investigations in a manner which will determine the results of a national election. But that’s not illegal, it’s just trying to be more efficient. Not inappropriate. You cannot trust the Internal Revenue Service. They are not only untrustworthy, but they do not understand what is wrong with what they have done.
The President of the United States, in complete defiance of manners, custom, and the separation of powers defined by the Constitution, which he took an oath to defend, called out the Supreme Court of the United States in the middle of a State of the Union Speech to tell them they were wrong in their Citizens United decision that said corporations has the same right to donate money as unions did. So it starts right at the top, in spite of any allegation of innocence.
Targeting of pro-life groups began in 2009. An IRS agent told the Coalition for Life of Iowa that approval of their application for tax-exempt status was withheld. They were told to send a letter to the agency signed by the entire board—under perjury of the law—stating that they do not picket, protest or organize any other groups to picket or protest any Planned Parenthood clinic.
The Obama administration was aware of the IRS scandal five months before the election. Ace of Spades notes that it’s about a union: the National Treasury Employees Union (NETU). Anything indicating conservative leanings like “Tea Party,” “Patriot,” were not only denied tax exempt status to which they were entitled, donors to right-leaning think tanks names were illegally given to their opponents, but other agencies were directed to investigate such groups. The Tax Professor’s blog includes a long list of links for those who want to understand what the IRS is up to more clearly.
Meanwhile, you might want to investigate the Cayman Islands or other tax sheltering venues.
Filed under: Democrat Corruption, Domestic Policy, Humor, Intelligence, Law, Politics, The United States | Tags: Internal Revenue Snoops, It's All Falling Apart, Scandalous Administration
Filed under: Democrat Corruption, Domestic Policy, Election 2012, Intelligence, Law, National Security | Tags: Hidden Till after the Election, Unaware of Problems?, Who Gets Blamed?
All of the scandals, with their talking points and lack of answers to questions — all of it, which apparently the President was completely unaware of until he found out right when the rest of us did — the purpose of every bit of it, was to cover up unpleasant facts that might have been detrimental to the President’s reelection. Mull that one over.
We are expected to believe that the President of the United States whom everyone on both sides of the aisle agrees is a skilled politician, and who never seems to forget politics for a moment, who has been widely accused of conducting a permanent campaign, and seems to enjoy making campaign speeches above anything else — that political person was unaware that there was a disruption in Benghazi with a dead Ambassador and three more dead Americans that might reflect badly on his campaign if the facts were known.
Although he had made his contempt for the Tea Party and Republicans in general widely known, he was completely unaware that some “low-level” folks in a back room in Cincinnati were working hard to keep any possibility of donations to the Romney campaign put off till after the election. This is the same man who was inadvertently caught on a live mike telling President Medvedev to let Vladimir know that he would have more options after the election. This was also the same president who ordered defense contractors not to issue pink slips or make any announcement of coming unemployment until after the election (in direct conflict with the law that required them to announce) and he promised to pay their fine or waive the fines.
But being entirely aware that these actions might be seized on by the other side to make him look bad, went to great effort to put anything unpleasant off “till after the election” — but he was entirely unaware of the activities of the IRS that were directly related to his reelection effort. Here’s the president’s statement:
I’ve reviewed the Treasury Department watchdog’s report, and the misconduct that it uncovered is inexcusable. It’s inexcusable, and Americans are right to be angry about it, and I am angry about it. I will not tolerate this kind of behavior in any agency, but especially in the IRS, given the power that it has and the reach that it has into all of our lives. And as I said earlier, it should not matter what political stripe you’re from — the fact of the matter is, is that the IRS has to operate with absolute integrity. The government generally has to conduct itself in a way that is true to the public trust. That’s especially true for the IRS.
First, we’re going to hold the responsible parties accountable. Yesterday, I directed Secretary Lew to follow up on the IG audit to see how this happened and who is responsible, and to make sure that we understand all the facts. Today, Secretary Lew took the first step by requesting and accepting the resignation of the acting commissioner of the IRS, because given the controversy surrounding this audit, it’s important to institute new leadership that can help restore confidence going forward.
Second, we’re going to put in place new safeguards to make sure this kind of behavior cannot happen again. And I’ve directed Secretary Lew to ensure the IRS begins implementing the IG’s recommendations right away.
Third, we will work with Congress as it performs its oversight role. And our administration has to make sure that we are working hand in hand with Congress to get this thing fixed. Congress, Democrats and Republicans, owe it to the American people to treat that authority with the responsibility it deserves and in a way that doesn’t smack of politics or partisan agendas. Because I think one thing that you’ve seen is, across the board, everybody believes what happened in — as reported in the IG report is an outrage. The good news is it’s fixable, and it’s in everyone’s best interest to work together to fix it.
All very impressive, except that the Commissioner of the IRS was due to leave in June anyway, so requesting and accepting his resignation is just another cover-up. And we have a long history of this president never, ever being responsible for anything. Was it Jay Carney who tried to blame the IRS scandal on Bush, because the commissioner was a Bush appointee?
Filed under: Democrat Corruption, Domestic Policy, Law, Media Bias, Taxes, The United States | Tags: Attacking Romney Supporters, Attempt to Rig an Election?, The IRS Scandal
There is far more to the IRS scandal than just the attempt to delay or deny tax exempt status to tea party groups and other conservative groups before the 2012 election, as if that weren’t bad enough. The IRS evaluates the applications of nonprofits for 5019(c)(3) or 501 (c)(4) status. A 501(c)(4) organization can engage in political campaign activity, but that activity must not be the main focus of the organization. The application of these standards opens the door to discriminatory enforcement.
In the current scandal, the IRS would routinely hold up such applications, sometimes for years, while making demands on the applicant, that were really irrelevant to the status applied for. At the same time, similar applications from liberal groups sailed through with quick approval.
Separately, the IRS targeted conservatives for audits, especially high-profile donors to conservative causes. There seems to be significant evidence to support that belief. Where the conservative is a wealthy businessman with a complicated tax return, it’s hard to prove that the audit was politically motivated.
Last year, Frank VanderSloot made a sizeable donation to a super PAC supporting Mitt Romney. He signed on as a national co-chairman of Romney’s finance committee. And then the political attack began. The intimidation began in February 2010 when VanderSloot was the subject of hit pieces in left-wing Mother Jones, and by Salon’s Glenn Greenwald. Mr. VanderSloot was surprised by the negative portrayal of Melaleuca, the company he has overseen for more than 25 years.
In April, the Obama campaign named VanderSloot to the first presidential “enemies list” in years. They suggested that eight Romney donors had “less than reputable records. Quite a few have been on the wrong side of the law, others have made profits at the expense of so many Americans.” Their crime was donations to the Romney campaign. In June, the IRS notified VanderSloot that he and his wife would face a tax audit, then two weeks later, the Labor Department informed VanderSloot that it was auditing workers employed at his cattle ranch.
The third IRS part of the scandal is illegal or improper leaking of confidential tax data. We know they leaked pending applications for 501(c) status to the left-wing media group that publicized them, because ProPublica stepped forward to admit it. The National Organization for Marriage has alleged that the IRS leaked confidential NOM data in order to damage the Romney campaign. Their confidential financial documents were leaked to their rival Human Rights Campaign, and published in the Huffington Post. They have published documents that showed the leaked confidential information did not come from a “whistleblower,” but came directly from the IRS. They will sue the IRS for the leak.
President Obama is “concerned”, “outraged,” at the “insufficient oversight” and “lack of managerial review” at the IRS. The IRS Commissioner has stepped down, and he clearly hopes that we can move on. This strikes me as pure Chicago-style politics brought to the nation’s capitol by the Chicago crew in the White House, Obama, Jarrett, Axelrod, Daley. The IG has found that of the 296 applications filed by conservative groups, more than half were still in limbo, many having been on hold for more than three years. It really doesn’t seem to be a random bureaucratic snafu.
ADDENDUM: About that IRS Commissioner stepping down. It seems that his assignment ended in early June, and so he’s just leaving a couple of weeks early. No big deal. The IRS Inspector General’s report is characterized as “a whitewash”. “These allegations are serious — that there was an effort to bring the power of the federal government to bear on those the administration disagreed with, in the middle of a heated national election”, said Mitch McConnell.
Filed under: Democrat Corruption, Foreign Policy, Health Care, Intelligence, Law, Military, National Security, Politics, Taxes | Tags: Administration Scandals, Informing the Public, President Obama's Statement
There’s quite a bit there, and there’s this and that and these and those.
- There’s Benghazi, which is essentially a matter of character, or more specifically the lack thereof. We sent American representatives out under the American flag, on official duty, and refused to offer them security when they went, refused to secure the so-called consulate, refused to offer them security in a city already known to be so dangerous that the British and the Red Cross had evacuated. When the Ambassador was attacked, we denied the nature of the attack. When two former SEALS were told to “stand down,” they went to the aid of the beleaguered people at the consulate anyway, because that’s what SEALS do. They rescued the people at the consulate, and conducted a firefight with the attackers for hours, requesting backup, help, a Spectre gunship, anything, and all sorts of people who wanted to help were told to “stand down.” To far, Not enough time, A pass with a jet wouldn’t help… But they didn’t even try.
- The Internal Revenue Service has been targeting conservative-leaning groups, Tea Party groups, any group with “patriot” in its name, words like “conservative,” any group mentioning the Constitution, or the Declaration, any group criticizing the government — including those who worried about government spending, debt or taxes. The Tea Party Patriots filed a request for a 501-(c)4 tax exemption in December 2010. and still haven’t received it. High level officials were aware of this as early as 2010. Businessmen who spoke out in criticism of the government were targeted, as were big Republican donors before the election. Austan Goolsbee, President Obama’s former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, complained in a press conference that the Koch brothers weren’t paying enough taxes, which he would not know unless he has seen the returns, which is against the law.
- The Justice Department has secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press, a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into how news organizations gather the news. The records listed outgoing calls for the work and personal phone numbers of individuals, for general AP office numbers and for the main number for the AP in the House of Representatives press gallery, according to attorneys for the AP. AP President and CEO Gary Pruitt said the government sought and obtained information far beyond anything that could be justified by any specific investigation. Attorney General Eric Holder said he values freedom of the press. CIA Director John Brennan said not me.
- Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has been denied additional funding for the roll out of ObamaCare by Congress, which presumably thinks they’ve spent enough already. So she is soliciting donations to help promote ObamaCare. She has asked industry and community groups to donate to “Enroll America,” an outside organization created to promote the health care law and encourage people to enroll in its new coverage options. HHS spokesman Jason Young said “Part of our mission is to help uninsured Americans take advantage of new affordable , high quality insurance options that are coming, thanks to the health law. For the last several months the Secretary has been working with a full range of stakeholders who share in the mission of getting Americans the help they need and deserve” They insist they have not made any fundraising requests to “entities regulated by HHS.”
- The Environmental Protective Service (EPA) is facing a number of lawsuits filed to release the emails sent privately, against the law, (transparency) to conduct EPA business out of the public eye. There seems to be a long list of officials conducting public work from personal accounts. EPA administrator Lisa Jackson resigned as lawmakers investigated her use of a private email account under the alias “Richard Windsor.” The EPA has not responded to other Freedom of Information Act requests It is believed they include conversations with green groups and anti-coal radical environmentalist groups, up to and including a potential carbon tax. This matter is again coming to the front as Obama’s nomination of Gina McCarthy as the new director for the EPA is up for Senate approval. Many describe Ms. McCarthy as a radical environmental activist.
- The Institute for Energy Research (IER) has reported that the most recent analysis shows that the Obama administration has created only 2,298 permanent green jobs, which used data from the Energy Department’s Loan Programs Office to reach this conclusion. The Daily Caller reported about a year ago that estimates from the Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory show that of the nearly $9 billion that has so far been spent on green jobs, the government created just 910 new long-term jobs “with a cost to taxpayers of $9.8 million per job.Economist Veronique de Rugy testified to Congress that 2,378 jobs were claimed to be created under the guaranteed-loan program at a potential cost of $6.7 million per job.
- Thirty U.S. troops, including 17 Navy SEALS were killed in a helicopter downing in Afghanistan on Saturday August 6, 2011. At the memorial service conducted by the military, the military brass prohibited any mention of a Judeo-Christian God, and in the true spirit of political correctness, invited a Muslim cleric to peak at the funeral for the fallen Navy SEAL Team VI heroes. The cleric, speaking in Arabic, damned the servicemen as infidels, and directed them to hell. A video of the Muslim cleric’s “prayer” was shown at last week’s press conference with parents of Navy Seals and Army Guardsmen. The Military is consumed with political correctness. Twice as many American troops have been killed in Afghanistan under the Obama administration, as under the Bush administration. It has been said that the politically correct rules of engagement have endangered our troops.
That’s just the “there”in today’s news. Probably more tomorrow as more questions are asked that someone will try to answer.
ADDENDUM: I forgot about Pigford. A handful of black farmers who were arguably discriminated against in their dealings with the Agriculture Department were exploited by a racial grievance industry empowered by the administration to enact a multibillion dollar redistribution scheme to hand out money to any black who ever claimed to farm, and Hispanics and female farmers as well as American Indians. The time frame to file a complaint of discrimination was expanded by a decade, and more than 90,000 people have filed claims. The total cost could top $4.4 billion. The only proof required was a form stating that the claimant had “attempted” to farm (perhaps planting tomatoes in the back yard) and to have a family member vouch for that assertion. The government would then send the “farmer” a check for as much as $50,000. The New York Times examined 16 ZIP codes in Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi and North Carolina and found that “the number of successful claimants exceeded the total number of farms operated by people of any race in 1997, the year the original lawsuit was filed. “ If you wonder where your tax money went…
Filed under: Democrat Corruption, Foreign Policy, National Security, Politics, Progressivism, The United States | Tags: A Question of Character, Ansar al Sharia Attack, Benghazi Libya
Why were so many who wanted to go to the aid of our people under attack in Benghazi told to “Stand down?” Who gave those orders? Excuses, there are plenty of excuses. We didn’t have enough information. There wasn’t time. We didn’t have the right assets. it was too far. We didn’t know who was attacking. We needed more information. We couldn’t put more people at risk. Rescuers couldn’t have reached them in time. Who knew that the attack would go on so long. Woods and Doherty had been told to stand down. We thought it was just a protest that would die out. How were we to know when the attack started — how long it would go on?
We didn’t know. That’s not the point. The point is that we didn’t even try.
