CajunWin4's Blog

9 Obama Scandals

Federal government scandals

2009– Obama Administration

Executive Branch

• Eric Holder Attorney General, was held in Contempt of Congress by the House of Representatives after refusing to turn over all of the documents they had demanded concerning the Fast and Furious gun walking operation. (2012)^[1]
• Terence Flynn an appointee of Barack Obama to the National Labor Relations Board resigned in May 2012 after being accused of serious ethical violations by leaking information to the National Association of Manufacturers.^[2]
• Martha N. Johnson head of the General Services Administration fired two top GSA officials and then resigned herself after it was revealed that $822,000 had been spent in Las Vegas on a four-day training conference for 300 GSA employees.(2010)^[3][4][5][6]

[edit]Legislative Branch

• Jesse L. Jackson Jr. (D-IL) pleaded guilty to one felony fraud count for using $750,000 of campaign money to buy items like stuffed animals, elk heads and fur capes. His wife, Sandi Jackson, who is a Chicago Alderman, pleaded guilty to filing false income tax statements at the same time. ^[7]

• Laura Richardson (D-CA) was found guilty on seven counts of violating House rules by improperly pressuring her staff to campaign for her, destroying evidence and tampering with witness testimony. The Committee ordered Richardson to pay a fine of $10,000. (2012)^[8][9]

• John Ensign (R-NV) resigned his Senate seat on May 3, 2011, before the Senate Ethics Committee could examine possible fiscal violations in connection with his extramarital affair with Cynthia Hampton. (2011)^{[10][11][12][13]} (see Federal sex scandals) In May 2012, aide Doug Hampton (R) in what became the John Ensign scandal reached a plea deal with prosecutors, the details of which have not yet been released.^[14]
• Tom DeLay (R-TX) On November 24, 2010, a Texas jury convicted DeLay of money laundering connected to the Jack Abramoff scandal. (2010)^[15][16] On January 10, 2011, he was sentenced to three years in prison in Texas.^[17][18]

[edit]Judicial Branch

• G. Thomas Porteous The Federal Judge for Eastern Louisiana was unanimously impeached by the US House of Representatives on charges of corruption and perjury in March 2010. He was convicted by the US Senate and removed from office. He had been appointed by Bill Clinton. (2010)^[19][20][21]
• Samuel B. Kent The Federal District Judge of Galveston, Texas, was sentenced to 33 months in prison for lying about sexually harassing two female employees. He had been appointed to office by George H. W. Bush in 1990. (2009)^[22][23]  to have been awarded a Silver Star and feigned paraplegia.^{[287] MOREHERE}

Imagine for a moment that Congress woke up one morning, realized that the United States was suffering from a paralyzing long-term unemployment crisis, and, in a moment of progressive pique, decided to create a welfare program aimed at middle-aged, blue-collar workers.

The one thing everybody could probably agree on is that it should help all those jobless 50-somethings find employment, right?

Well, as NPR's Planet Money argues in an eye-opening story, it turns out there already is a "de facto welfare program" for those struggling Americans. The problem is, instead of getting the unemployed back on their feet, it pays them to give up work for good. 

I'm talking about Social Security's disability insurance program, which over 20 years has quietly morphed into one of the largest, yet least talked about, pieces of the social safety net. Since the early 1990s, the number of former workers receiving payments under it has more than doubled to about 8.5 million, as shown in Planet Money's graph below. More than five percent of all eligible adults are now on the rolls, up from around 3 percent twenty years ago. Add in children and spouses who also get checks, and the grand tally comes to  11.7 million.

That rapid, under-the-political-radar expansion has turned the program into a massive budget item. As of 2010, its monthly cash payments accounted for nearly one out of every five Social Security dollars spent, or about $124 billion. In 1988, by comparison, it accounted for just one out of eight Social Security dollars. Because disabled workers qualify for Medicare, they also added $59 billion to the government's healthcare tab. 

Are disabilities just becoming more common? According to economists such as MIT's David Autor, the evidence says no. The workforce is indeed getting older, and thus more ailment prone. But Americans over 50, who make up most disability cases, report much better health today than in the 1980s. And demographers have found that the percentage of Americans older than 65 suffering from a chronic disability has fallen drastically since then. In the end, economists Mark Duggan and Scott Imberman estimate that, at most, the graying of America's workers explained just 4 percent of the increase in the rate of disability program participation for women, and 15 percent for men, through 2004.

Instead, it seems two things have happened: Qualifying for disability got easier, and finding work got harder. As the Planet Money piece puts it, "there's no diagnosis called disability." According to the letter of the law, disability recipients must prove they are too physically or mentally impaired to hold a job. And early in the program's life, the most commonly reported ailments were easy-to-diagnose problems such as heart-disease, strokes, or neurological disorders. But after the Reagan administration began trying to thin out the program's rolls in the early 80s, an angry Congress reacted by loosening its criteria. Suddenly, subjective measures like self-reported pain or mental health problems earned more weight under Social Security's formula. Today, the most common diagnoses are musculo-skeletal issues, such as severe back pain, and mental illnesses, such as mood disorders -- health problems where the line between a disability and a mild impairment is far blurrier. 

Just as the bar for disability fell, the economy turned on the working class. Factories laid off their assembly workers. The service sector picked up the slack. Wages stagnated for anyone without a college diploma. These changes have made disability more attractive for reasons both obvious and subtle. Although program's payments are small -- the average benefit is a bit over $1,000 per month -- they're not much worse than a minimum wage job. Better yet, they're indexed to inflation, meaning they sometimes rise faster than wages, and come with generous government healthcare. For former blue-collar workers who feel they've lost all hope of finding employment, or who don't want to spend their last years leading to retirement standing all day at McDonald's, disability isn't a bad offer. 

It's little surprise then that, as MIT's Autor notes, disability applications tend to rise and fall with the unemployment rate (as shown in his chart below), or that most applications come from workers who have recently lost jobs. 

If you're a conservative, the reasons to worry about all this are obvious. There are probably a couple million people who could work if absolutely necessary, and are instead choosing to subsist on taxpayer money. The system, from that perspective, is simply being abused.

But the failures here should be obvious to liberals, too. If the job market is so miserably weak that these workers cannot find jobs -- that they are choosing to live in government-guaranteed poverty rather than take a chance on the labor market -- we need to find a better solution than paying them to sit while their skills atrophy. As of now, that's all we seem to be doing. Despite Clinton-era changes to the program that made it possible for participants to ease back into the work force without losing all their benefits, less than one percent of Americans who go on disability ever leave the program.

Moreover, that program, is headed for bankruptcy. As of last year, Social Security's disability trust fund was on pace to run dry by 2016, which would lead to an automatic  21 percent benefit cut affecting all of the program's participants, including the millions who truly can't work because of their impairments. 

Like I said, even if we wanted a new welfare program for the struggling poor, this wouldn't be the way to run it. 

Breaking up is hard to do, especially when it is with a tracking service like a financial institution.

Sometimes you can make a clean break and other times you have to remain “just friends”.

The US government actually has a name for people who have no bank accounts – they call these folks “the unbanked”.  The FDIC defines the unbanked as “those without an account at a bank or other financial institution and are considered to be outside the mainstream for one reason or another.”  Another term is “the underbanked” – “people or businesses that have poor access to mainstream financial services normally offered by retail banks. The underbanked can be characterized by a strong reliance on non-traditional forms of finance and micro-finance often associated with disadvantaged and the poor, such as check cashers, loan sharks and pawnbrokers.”

According to the government, the above scenarios are crisis situations which must be rectified for “your own good”.  There is legislation on the table in many states to set up banking facilities for the unbanked and underbanked.  The assumption is that most folks who do not deal with a bank are too poor to do so.  This could be true in many cases: high minimum balances, bad credit history, NSFs, and account fees can all preclude having a bank account for those in difficult financial straits.

However, the government has a couple more reasons to insist that everyone should have a bank account:

1.)   Ease of confiscation

We need only to look at the horrible situation in Cyprus to see how bank accounts are like all-you-can-steal-buffets for the powers that be.  A suggested theft TAX ofup to 20% of the money in Cypriot bank accounts may be levied in order for the country to meet it’s staggering debts in the terms of the proposed EU bailout.  The banks of Cyprus are loaded with the money of residents and businesses of other countries that have used them as a tax haven.  The banks have been closed for several days and frantic customers are left to withdraw the maximum daily balances from ATM machines in an attempt to salvage what they can.  Many people fear the banks will never reopen their doors.

Think it can’t happen here?  I wonder if the people of Iceland, Greece, Ireland, Hungary, Argentina, Spain, and Portugal thought that too.

2.)  Surveillance

The second reason that “everyone should have access to banking services” is the digital trail that it leaves.  Every dime you receive and spend out of these accounts is part of an intricate system of surveillance.  When your money goes into a bank – any bank – Big Brother knows about it.  It’s a simple matter of compiling information via your social security number (or other federally- assigned number) to find out how much you make, how much you have, and where it comes from.  This can be used to prosecute you for tax purposes, to locate you through where your pay comes from, and to follow your personal money trail for a variety of different reasons.

It can also be used to track your spending – Big Brother can find out that you spent $2000 at a gun store, that you purchased online from a prepper supply website or that you bought some books with “questionable” content in order to paint you as a threat.

Unbanking

So, in this day and age, is it possible to get by completely without a bank account?

It’s tough.  Most work places prefer to pay through direct deposit.  Many landlords, mortgage companies and finance companies do business through direct debit.  You’re going to pay some steep fees if this is the route that you choose to go.  For some, it might be worth it, particularly if you only have a few transactions in a month.

Here are some places you can cash checks for a fee:

• Check cashing depots
• Some retailers like Walmart, 7-11, and some grocery stores (the number of these is dropping rapidly)
• Pawn shops
• The issuing bank will sometimes cash a check drawn from one of their accounts for a non-account holder
• Some prepaid credit card accounts will accept a direct deposit (in my opinion, this is nearly as unsafe as having your money in a bank account)
• Through a friend or family member’s account (also risky – for both you and the account holder)

Here are some ways you can pay bills without a bank account:

• In person, with cash, cashier’s checks, or money orders
• Through the mail, with cashier’s checks or money orders
• Online, with prepaid credit cards
• Through a kiosk using a prepaid credit card
• At a check-cashing depot or retailer

Underbanking

Your next option is underbanking.  For some people this may be the most realistic way to break up with their bank – it’s the “just friends” version.  If you have a lot of transactions that go through your account every month, it isn’t necessarily practical to get rid of your account.  Keep in mind that all of the above methods of unbanking still have a component of financial tracking.  The checks and bills still have your personal information tied to them in most cases.

When you underbank, you still have an account.  Set this up with the lowest possible fee and the lowest possible required balance.  Shop around to find the best deal.  Consider a credit union or community bank instead of one of the big mega-banks.  They are slightly safer, emphasis on slightly.

Your paychecks from work can be directly deposited, which will make your employer happy.  Employers rarely want to do something outside the norm, and if everyone else gets their pay directly deposited, writing a check for you will make you stand out – the opposite of what you want to do.  As well, any other checks you receive, like refunds, tax returns, etc., can be processed through this account.

The goal here is to keep as little money as possible in this account.  Banks are no longer the safest place to keep your money, and the .00001% of interest you will accrue is just not worthwhile.

Immediately upon payday:

• Pay all your bills online or through a kiosk out of this account – rent, utilities, credit card payments (hopefully you don’t have those)
• Buy necessities like groceries if you need to reduce the amount in the account for withdrawal purposes
• Calculate the amount of payments that will be coming out of your account between now and your next pay (rent/mortgage, car payment, insurance)
• Remove all money except that required for impending debits and your minimum balance.  Get it in cash.

Avoid Financial Surveillance

The government wants everyone to have a bank account for another reason besides quick accessibility for the purpose of thievery.  Big Brother wants to know what you earn, what you spend, and where you spend it.  Every penny you spend could one day be used against you, as more and more things become illegal in the police state that is taking over the western world.

Use your bank account as little as possible if you’ve chosen to underbank:

• Buy stuff with cash
• Skip registering your belongings by serial number for warranty purposes
• For heaven’s sakes, don’t get one of those “customer loyalty” cards that track every purchase you make and provide you with “rewards” or “points”
• Buy from places that don’t track you, like yard sales, Craigslist, farmer’s markets, roadside stands, your brother’s friend’s sister’s boyfriend
• Work for cash: this is another suggestion that won’t work for everybody, but if you can do some odd jobs for cash, even if you make slightly less money doing so, this is money that can’t be tracked.

Think about how your purchases tell a story about you that you might rather keep to yourself.  Are you buying lots of farm equipment, soil amendments and seeds?  Are you buying ammo every week?  Are you stocking away large quantities of food or medical supplies?  Have you recently purchased 2,347 books on different guerrilla warfare tactics?  OPSEC is more than just keeping your mouth shut about your prepperly ways.

Ditch the Dollar

Although you require some fiat currency to function in today’s society, as well as some in an emergency fund,  consider using other forms of currency whenever possible.  The following suggestions won’t work for everyone, but some folks may be able to ditch the dollar in the following ways:

• Engage in the barter system: trade goods and services with like-minded people.
• Keep precious metals like gold and silver in a fireproof safe for your “savings account”
• Immediately convert  fiat currency into tangible goods: food, ammo, home defense items, tools, etc.
• Work towards self-sufficiency – if you buy less, you can earn less: grow your food, repair your own home or vehicle, do things manually instead of using expensive equipment, lessen your dependency on the grid
• Simplify – this goes hand in hand with self sufficiency: find your entertainment from library books and online resources, skip eating out, take a walk instead of joining a gym – the less you feel you need, the less money you will have to earn.

The decision to unbank or underbank is unique to every individual.  The further away you can get from “the system” the more privacy and security you will have.  The suggestions above are not meant to be comprehensive – they’re meant to get you thinking about how you can disengage.  As always, your suggestions in the comments can greatly benefit others!

Obama Could Be Stopped- But…Everyone Ignores the Hammer

Feinstein Angry as Majority of the Senate Votes to Ban Gun Control

Senate staffer says “gun grabbers were livid” and “DiFi was pissed”.

Feinstein Angry as Majority of the Senate Votes to Ban Gun Control

Gun Owners of America

Washington, DC --(Ammoland.com)- On Friday, GOA asked you to contact your Senators and urge them to support the Lee amendment which would require Senators to muster 67 votes before adopting gun control legislation.

You responded to the call, and the results were very encouraging.

The good news is that a majority of Senators supported the Lee amendment by a 50-49 vote. The bad news is, since the Senate rules requires 60 votes, the Lee amendment fell ten votes short.

Click here to see how your Senators voted on the Lee amendment.

Part of GOA’s strategy for defeating Harry Reid’s gun control bill (S. 649) has been to put Senators on record and force them to reveal where they stand on gun rights. Are they going to stand with us, or are they going to follow Obama down the road to further gun control restrictions and, therefore, require additional pressure from their constituents?

One high-level Senate staffer, commenting about the vote on the Lee amendment which took place at 4 a.m. Saturday morning, told GOA that, “The gun grabbers were livid when Senator Lee forced the vote. Mark Pryor looked nervous as hell, and DiFi [aka, Dianne Feinstein] was pissed.”

GOA’s strategy was realized twice Saturday when two key amendments were offered to the budget resolution — one amendment by Senator Lee, the other by Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK).

Six Democrats and all but one Republican (Mark Kirk of Illinois) voted in favor of the Lee Amendment which would make S. 649 impossible to pass. Again, this is because the Lee amendment would have required anti-gun Senators to muster 67 votes (rather than a simple majority of 51 votes) before gun control could be adopted.

There were six “Red State” Democrats who voted Against the Lee amendment — Senators Mark Begich (AK), Tim Johnson (SD), Tim Kaine (VA), Mary Landrieu (LA), Harry Reid (NV) and Mark Warner (VA).

Gun owners in these states should be sure to voice their displeasure with these Senators.

The other provision — an anti-UN treaty amendment offered by Sen. Inhofe — passed by a 53-46 margin.  53 senators, including eight Democrats, voted for the Inhofe amendment to kill the UN Arms Trade Treaty — a treaty that would impose gun registration and possibly even ban handguns and semi-autos, while creating a microstamping requirement that would be technologically impossible to comply with.

Anti-gun Mary Landrieu and Harry Reid voted wrong on both amendments — and even refused to join the eight Democrats who oppose the UN Arms Trade Treaty. This treaty could be self-executing and could, without further legislation, force the U.S. to implement gun registration and bans on semi-autos and handguns.

Gun owners in Louisiana and Nevada, you have some homework to do — Mary Landrieu and Harry Reid need to hear from you!

GOA will keep you updated on the status of Harry Reid’s gun control bill (S. 649), which will be voted on right after the Easter recess.

About:Gun Owners of America (GOA) is a non-profit lobbying organization formed in 1975 to preserve and defend the Second Amendment rights of gun owners. GOA sees firearms ownership as a freedom issue. `The only no comprise gun lobby in Washington’ – Ron Paul Visit: www.gunowners.org to Join.

Guillotines – Verification From Insider On Existence & Purpose Of The Guillotines – Another Piece Of The Puzzle!

photobucket   --- note: illustration is a modern guillotine, but not the one seen in the story below...

Steve and Hawk,
I read your alert on the guillotines and then heard Steve on the Hagmann radio show talking about them. I contacted a source in the military and he confirmed some of your information. The guillotines were ordered under the auspices of supposedly cutting "cable lines" and other heavy industrial wires. However none of the mid level individuals in the military bought that line. It was then that the higher ups seeing that no one was believing them came out with the real reason for the them.
When martial law is declared and the system breaks down; most states and cities will be on their own. The orders are already given that any looters, trouble makers, and any one not obeying orders from the authorities will be executed with the guillotines. The guillotines will be put back in the public square to show just how severe the punishment will be and to keep the masses in line. Apparently in the Redstone arsenal in Alabama, their are multi confirm reports that some of the guillotines are stored there.
Steve, Hawk, Greg E, and all the watchmen, and all of the intercessors for you be protected by Jesus in the coming months ahead. Most of my sources in the financial realm and the military realm have gone silent. It is very eerie and disturbing that they have gone "dark". It is here.
God Bless,

Obama’s DHS intends to kill “you and me!” March 23, 2013_Captain Terry M. Hestilow, United States Army, Retired

 On Thursday, Terry M. Hestilow, a retired Army officer with nearly 30  years of service under his belt, as well as combat experience in both  Vietnam and Afghanistan issued a dire warning to all Americans. The following warning was posted on Hestilow's Facebook page:

I fully intend to address this in far greater detail within days, but ask yourself, with all the law enforcement available in the United States, who the DHS is preparing to declare war on inside the U.S.? With the massive purchases of almost 3,000 new armored vehicles  (MRAPs) and 1.6 BILLION rounds of ammunition, with associated weapons, who in the U.S. do they intend to kill? Short answer: You and me! Anyone they think is standing in their way to impose a new Marxist government! Anyone who stands for the U.S. Constitution! We must demand that our representatives (Senators and U.S.  Representatives) stand firm and immediately force, by law if necessary,  the DHS turn over their arsenal of war making equipment to the  Department of Defense. Nothing justifies this massive arms build up of  an agency whose jurisdiction is internal within the United States of  America! They are preparing to go to war against American citizens! Don't wait on people like John McCain or Lindsey Graham to recognize  the threat! Citizens you must demand Congress act to force these  weapons, ammunition, and armored vehicles be turned over immediately to  the DoD! Then let us dissolve the DHS (or SA, or SS... whatever you call them)! Hear me, America. The DHS can only be preparing to declare war on us  with the arsenal of weapons and equipment they are purchasing as they  methodically dismantle our legitimate military made up of patriotic  Americans! If I live and still have a page to speak out  on later this week, I will discuss a proper Constitutional response in a  couple of days. Standby. Out. Captain Terry M. Hestilow, United States Army, Retired  examiner.com/article/army-officer-obama-s-dhs-intends-to-kill-you-and-me?cid=db_articles#.UU4oMtUszdc.facebook

Obama’s Destruction of America

From: John Porter

March 22, 2013

To: Americans everywhere;

Rain Barrel Systems How To – Every Homeowner Should Be Using a Rain Barrel!

      By                             Elizabeth Flock         

Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan., says the Department of Homeland Security was planning to buy 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition over the next five years.

The Department of Homeland Security responded Friday to questions from Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan., about why the agency was allegedly planning to buy some 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition over the next five years.

DHS told Whispers it regularly fills all of its goods and services requirements at one time because it's cheaper for the agency, and that the 1.6 billion number was misleading because the language of DHS's purchase said it would need "up to" a certain amount.

One solicitation by the agency—for training centers and law enforcement personnel—was for "up to" 750 million rounds of training ammunition over the next five years, DHS spokesman Peter Boogaard told Whispers.

[READ: Joe the Plumber Is Back and Giving Away a Free AR-15]

Another five-year contract allows for the purchase of "up to" 450 million rounds of ammunition, he said, and was also for law enforcement. Boogaard noted that the contract would be used by all DHS agencies except the Coast Guard.

"With more than 100,000 armed law enforcement personnel in DHS, significant quantities of ammunition are used to support law enforcement operations, quarterly qualifications, and training, to include advanced firearms training exercises," Boogaard told Whispers.

According to a letter to one lawmaker detailing DHS ammunition purchases, the department procured 148 million rounds in 2012.

[REPORT: DHS Spent Money on Zombie Simulation]

Questions over DHS's big ammunition purchases have been bouncing around the right-wing blogosphere for months. But the story came to a head Friday after a video was posted to the website Infowars of Rep. Huelskamp saying at CPAC that he had expressed concerns to DHS over the purchase but received no response.

"They have no answer for that question. They refuse to answer to answer that," Huelskamp said on the video of the purchases. His office told Whispers that he had sent a letter to DHS with his concerns but had not heard back.

In the letter to DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, Huelskamp wrote that it had "become clear" that DHS was "purchasing vast quantities of ammunition" and that "estimates show that this ... would be enough for 24 Iraq wars." The Kansas congressman also said the timing of the purchase was "of great interest" because of gun control legislation currently being pushed by the Obama administration.

[READ: DHS Named Worst Federal Agency to Work]

"The extraordinary level of ammunition purchases made by Homeland Security seems to have, in states such as my own, created an extreme shortage of ammunition to the point where many gun owners are unable to purchase any," he wrote.

DHS previously responded to concerns over the purchase voiced by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., noting in a detailed letter sent to the senator's office in February just how much had been purchased and for what purpose.

"DHS routinely establishes strategic sourcing contracts that combine the requirements of all its components for commonly purchased goods and services such as ammunition," a DHS legislative affairs person wrote to Coburn. "These strategic sourcing contracts help leverage the purchasing power of DHS to efficiently procure equipment and supplies at significantly lower costs," the department told Coburn.